Working With Seth Godin

I was trying to date my trip to Dobbs Ferry for the “work a day with Seth” conference. I had to use my divorce as a marker (lol). It was 2002. Seth used to have “work with Seth” days. I don’t think he does it anymore. There was a $2K "tuition" fee to a charity. There was only one problem.

I was broke. Every dollar I had was in FoundObjects.com (now RIP). I sold my Litespeed titanium bicycle to pay for airfare to head north for a day in Dobbs Ferry with Seth. My Litespeed had Campy all the way around (sweet bicycle). It was an indulgence I could afford before leaving corporate America, before moving to North Carolina to become an entrepreneur.

Lance Armstrong wrote an excellent book entitled It’s Not About The Bike and he is right if you last name is Armstrong. That bike made me feel like a superhero. My riding may not have commanded respect on the Chicago lakefront, but that bike did. So for at least a short moment in a galaxy far, far away it was about the bike :).

I emailed Seth and told him I was broke and couldn’t afford “tuition” for the conference. Seth asked participants to donate $2,000 to a charity to save the rainforest. I love the rainforest and want it saved, but Seth could have asked for $20 and I couldn’t have covered. Many things were at an end.

Everything was changing...again.

I didn’t know much about Internet marketing in 2002, but I knew Seth Godin preached truth. Seth's book The Idea Virus and the Gladwell's book The Tipping Point changed my marketing life.

I learned sequential marketing at P&G and M&M/Mars. We would sit in conference rooms with white boards and draw MTP plans (Medium Term Plans lasting 3 years). Our “marketing” was so neat and orderly and all so utterly crazy (lol).

I was trained to sell to the cushy middle, the breadbasket well across Geoffrey Moore's famous chasm. * There was a marketing sequence, rules and predictable expectations. We would create the new thing. Kudos was the last new candy brand I worked on at Mars.

Our MTP would figure out how to spend $20,000,000 or so in TV and print. We paid the “slotting allowances” demanded by Harris Teeter, Winn Dixie, Kroger, et.al. Distribution was the challenge not the product itself. Once you shouldered your way onto the grocery store shelf, life was assured. Cross that goal off the sheet and life would be good.

Then marketing life changed.

Jeff Bezos changed it. Two guys from Stanford changed it (Google). Seth changed it.

I told Seth about sacrificing the Litespeed and that I was broke. He was cool with me joining the “work with Seth” gang despite not being able to help his charity. I became Seth’s charity and he was and is very generous. How many uber-marketing moguls do you know who answer their own email?

Arriving in Grand Central Station
Seth’s instruction was meet at the information booth in Grand Central Station. This is instruction enough because the information booth sits like an island in the stream with beautiful art deco balls that say “information”.

By the time Seth’s bald head, his brand, bobbed toward us the "work with Seth Godin" crew knew a little bit about each other. We happy few represented a full spectrum of e-commerce from large health care, regional ad agencies and a tiny gift distributor who sold his bike to be there.

Seth bounced up said, “follow me” and we were off to catch the train to Dobbs Ferry. Following Seth I remembered how geese imprint on a mother goose. Once they see mom they don’t lose mom again. We twenty-five goslings followed our mother goose into the catacombs of a bright clean Grand Central.

We sat down together taking up an old car with backward seats. It was mid-morning so few were on the train heading out of New York. Once seated Seth asked us to team in threes. He handed out pieces of paper. On slips of paper were questions such as, “What should Kaza do?” We had about five minutes to bat a question around before being reformed into new groups and handed a new question. Seth said little reading a book on most of the ride north.

Another question was, “How would you improve the Google site design?”. That is an aces and eights question – answer it and you are dead. You can’t improve the Google page design. Even Google has a VP whose job it is to bat new home page suggestions to the ground. On the train that day we were still uninitiated, we weren’t part of the Holy See yet, we were just goslings on a train heading north.

Seth’s assistant who is more like an intern met us at the station and we piled into a borrowed van to get to Seth’s studio. I’ve been an artist a long time and visited studios including Keith Harring’s (visited his foundation after his death), Peter Max (long strange trip to be told fully soon) and Louise Nevelson (great visit with my mother) and Seth’s place was right at home with this crew. His building was old Dobbs Ferry industrial not far from the Hudson.

Seth had half the second floor. Walking in the door the first thing we saw was a huge blow up of the bald head and impish eyes. The room was a big open L. Seth moved us to the middle of the L. There was a wide circle of cushions, drums and tambourines all thrown about very upstate New York hippie sheek. Seth motioned us to sit. We did so in unison. Imprinting dies hard.

Seth started our meeting with a "drum circle". Drum–circles are cool. Everyone starts beating. It sounds awful. In a split second there is emergent cohesion in another second twenty-five people are beating drums and tambourines in unison. Very cool.

We spent the morning discussing Seth’s books. He was writing Purple Cow at that time. Things came up like Moore’s Crossing the Chasm idea and Seth would say, “yeah that is interesting, I have to use that (and he did extensively in Purple Cow).” Everything we tossed was either in a Godin book or about to be. Seth sees the whole field and is open to any idea, any thread that creates new space. Elastic would be a single word description of Seth’s process.

Everything Bad Is Good For You, by Steven Johnson describes our need to probe and telescope, probe and telescope. Seth is a probing and telescoping robot. The cool thing is not one time did he ever make anyone feel small, insignificant or stupid. It was like riding with Lance. You knew he could drop you at will but appreciated the generosity of collaboration, suggestion and consideration.

After discussing books written and unwritten all morning we broke for a box lunch. In the morning I was my usual self. I was younger then and wanted Seth’s approval. I read a lot and can usually see how thread A relates to thread B, so I tried to be “smart guy.”

Again, Seth was generous. He could have treated “smart guy” me harshly. Twenty-five people didn’t come to New York to hear what I was thinking (lol). Not only did Seth not smack me even when I deserved a light chop, he rewarded me by treating me as a fellow traveler.

He built on one or two of my ideas. At the break I asked him in my best puppy-dog fashion, “was I alright?” I was really asking was I too much of a pain in the rear. Putting his hand on my shoulder Seth said, “you were a star.” Seth knew what was coming.

Web Site Review
Want to find the land of humble pie fast have Seth Godin review your website in front of twenty-five peers. I wrote every line of code on FoundObjedts.com, Photoshopped every image and wrote every word. FoundObjects.com was the closest thing to a child I will ever have.

Now my baby was going to be judged. Ouch! Seth spent fifteen minutes or so on each site using an old fashioned overhead projector. He made great penetrating suggestions and left us all spent and ready for the train ride home.

Sometimes you see the hand of God. Sometimes he is bald. ** On the train ride back to Grand Central I got to know Red Maxwell. The irony, and here is the strange hand of God thing, is Red lives an hour from me. Red is from North Carolina. I sell my bike to meet a hero in Dobbs Ferry and meet someone who will be a lifelong friend. Serendipity maybe or the strange workings of the great bald one. Believe what you want. I am going with the bald story.


* Moore Crossing the Chasm a marketing "must read".

** I was thinking about God one day, not sure why, and realized that she isn’t one mysterious huge thing you see when you die. She is like the song says, “one of us.” If you look carefully you see her hand for brief flickering moments playing a trumpet, riding a bike or writing a book. I amuse myself by creating God Haiku’s that always have two lines. Sometimes you see the hand of God. Sometimes he holds a paint brush (Robert Rauschenberg). Sometimes you see the hand of God. Sometimes she cooks a meal (Paul Prudhomme). Send me your God Haikus.

Read more about Seth Godin at http://ScentTrail.blogspot.com.