Seth Godin – Full Stop Failure.

hey Umair, yes our infamous 10 page about us :) It’s hidden at the moment while I make it even longer to incorporate the successes and struggles of our current health and fitness experiments. When it’s up, we actually get more email about our story than anything else. Maybe one day there will be a part 2 to this interview, where we all get to hear Seths abandoned 1000 miles from home story. Sounds like good old Victorian self reliance training to me. Didn’t do Richard Branson any harm either. Thanks for commenting. Paul.

Alyson, “Congrats Paul on an interview worthy of discussion and re-circulation” thank you, that means a lot.
I think the key to your solution is for people to define the “community” they seek very carefully. A word that is completely overused and abused online, but ironically its the internet that allows us to self select more supportive people to “surround” ourselves with in support of our uncommon values. It’s funny but even in the “creative” communities, hard lines are drawn. We found our early niche supporting musicians who also wanted to create art. The traditional music press weren’t at all interested in such a radical departure. But we love people who blur the lines. The challenges with being part of a community always come down to status. Traditionally I think the lines of where we stood, in a much smaller group, where clearer. My ideal picture of a supportive work focused community – working with the best people from a whole other bunch of different disciplines. But not people trying to do what we’re doing. 20 writers / musicians / carpenters / marketers / whatever in a room is boring. 20 individuals who share similar underlying values is interesting. And I think even the values have to be similar, not the same. I don’t agree with everything Seth says, or most people we interview for that matter. And that process of comparing and contrasting and reasoning makes everyone a little smarter I think. Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Paul.

Hi Tammy, I think the real opportunity here isn’t to learn something new. Seth with hair, Seth in a canoe, even the punchy posters headlines aren’t the point. They just set the stage for you and me and anyone else to notice where we’re falling short. After that, there’s a window of opportunity. It might last 10 seconds or 10 minutes, or 10 hours. But that’s when it’s down to you to take some action. Pick up the guitar or the pen or whatever and take the first step. All I can offer and it’s not much, but it’s all I have, is the promise of recognition for people who take up that challenge and DO something. I’ll big up those people all day long. That’s what this Community of DONE idea is all about. So I’d love to see / read / hear your next piece of work. I’d love for you to post about it here. Paul.

Andrew, I tried, but it would have been frightfully rude to do a paxman, we’re british don’t you know. :) http://youtu.be/1KHMO14KuJk

Hi Carey, thanks for your comment.
“factorythink” is that worrying about punctuation?
5 proof readers. If they didn’t catch it, I don’t care about it :)

Sarah, remember “make like a scientist”? they don’t get emotional when a test doesn’t go to plan. (thats NOT a girl dig) They just reason out what happened and keep testing. We have to go against our instincts and do the same sometime. Advertising in the competitive world we live tends to follow the same patterns anywhere. There are likely a dozen factors that make the most profitable stall in the market worth while for the vendor. Its the same with a google ad and a landing page and a sales letter. You’ll never hit all 12 on the first go. Lets brainstorm what might effect your sales;
- your location within the market (big factor)
- your familiarity to shoppers (did they see you before, therefore trust you more)
- how is your stall dressed, as eye catching as the best one in the place? if not you’re missing eyeballs
- how are you dressed? same as above.
- what’s the weather like?
- how enthusiastic are you 2 hours in, 4 hours in, 7 hours in?
- how’s your smile?
- how easy is it to demonstrate the benefits of your products?
- how much do your products make your buyers look funny/clever/sexy/smart/something else?
- how busy does your stall look? – best tip ever – have a friend with a big old video camera interview you every hour for a minute or two.
- how confident are you in telling people what you have is great – this is a market, ham it up.
- what else?

all these things individually might add up to 2 or 3 or 4 more sales. together and over time they mean profit and fun over loss and misery.
Find a way to stick with it, break it down, test each element, see what makes a difference and focus in on it. Never reply on one off hits. The only person who wins is the event organiser.
Incorporate some light aerobic into your more ambitious market pitch and its a winner all around.
You’re too talented and too German not to make this work.
No Grit, No Glory!
Paul.

Hey Nicholas, thanks for commenting. I took at quick look at your blog. I know who you’re talking about. I’d love to interview him. I can also see a touch of influence in the style of your last 2 posts. I love them and think it’s a great direction to go in. What he is good at, and you obviously have great potential for is not being boring! I think right now the biggest challenge we all have online is cutting through the endless noise. The biggest mistake I see is people optimising everything for keywords and not people. I can see how writing is harder than “hedge funding”. Its personal. Personal is scary. So now you’ve warmed up with a comment, what are you going to do next? What’s the action required now to get your mentor? Lets make it happen! Paul.

hi Shann, thanks for your comment. Had a quick look at your site, we’ll have to talk about workbooks sometime. I’ve been playing with more action oriented book formats for a while. As for the community of DONE, it’s a new idea and a gamble. It’s so much easier to get “interaction” talking about low entry topics that result in the appearance of community but nothing actually getting done. It raises the bar scarily high for everyone including me. But my gut tells me that’s where the most interesting people come alive, jumping over the highest bars. I’ve had a few really touching emails in the last couple of days, people making life changing decisions. That makes it all worth while for me. Whether I’ll ever be able to convince people to share those stories publicly or not is another matter. The idea might fail if they don’t. But I’m going to try, because each action story changes this from a passive viewing experience to an active opportunity. I’m hoping to spread the idea to other sites if it works.

hey Matt, thanks for commenting. Well failed! :) Reminds me of the story of the IBM exec (i’m paraphrasing) who lost a million bucks on a project. The vice president suggested to the boss of the company that he be sacked instantly. The boss said – sacked! why on earth would we sack a guy we just spent a million bucks educating?
I don’t know what regenerative design sciences are, but a quick look at your site had me thinking about a really cool open source technology site ( http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/LifeTrac ) that teaches people how to make various machinery parts that can be used to build a village. Simple tractors and brick making machines and all sorts of really cool stuff, really inexpensively without having to rely on traditional suppliers. I came across them on TED.com are you familiar with the site? Love he quote, you have to say it with an accent for it to work ;)

Hi Alan, thanks for commenting.
Bruce Lee said “learn to die”, the samurai used to meditate on dying 1000 different ways, the stoics practiced living like peasants. Whatever we’re afraid of, we need to condition ourselves against by doing it. Ancient wisdom that sometimes makes our fears seem silly.

Hi Melanie, thanks for the kind words.

Hi Fadi, I’ll pass on your regards. Toni is a girl by the way.
Paul.

hey Mazarine,
thanks for sharing your failures! Lots and lots of valuable lessons in there I’m sure. “which business?” is one of those classic questions and of course for any entrepreneur struggling to make their mark, it’s easy to have “the grass is always greener over there goggles”. I think for most of us, we could be perfectly happy and successful in any number of different businesses. Its not the vehicle but the values that fuel us. That should always be at the very start of any business checklist. Does this business perfectly match my deepest values and does it allow me to express them fully. For anyone who isn’t clear on what their values are, start digging. Until you know yourself you’ll struggle to stay afloat in the sea of self doubt and conflicting gut feelings that can be entrepreneurial life. A good place to start is Simon Sineks book “start with WHY”. Always know why you want something and the values that lie behind that WHY. Once you know what makes you tick, good or bad, you’ll have the battery power to stick with anything, all the way to success.
Glad you found your track Mazarine. Keep rolling.
Paul.

hey David, thanks for your comment. I can’t ask for more than to have people on the edge of their seat, as long as I push them all the way off the seat at the end and into action! Well done on starting the failed attempts list. I can’t remember what my spec. for the failed attempts list was, but I’ll add, incase its not obvious, that the purpose of such a list isn’t to keep trying at something that failed because it was just a bad idea. We must have a good idea of why we failed in the first place. Sometimes things fail because the rest of the world just doesn’t share our vision. Or our vision is too far ahead of its time. Sometimes those failures are ok to leave where they are. I’m not encouraging flogging a dead horse for the sake of tenacity.

But far more often we fail because, as I mentioned in my comment to Mazarine, we haven’t understood and aligned our real values carefully enough. Most often this shows itself in the form of chasing someone elses vision. Especially when we think there’s a fast buck in it. But we aren’t intrinsically motivated by what we’re doing. This is the more practical version of “do what you love”.

And of course even more common is failure by fear. We don’t get past the starting blocks because we never understand our own fear response. We don’t cultivate and condition ourself against it. But if we want to be our best we have to be able to step back out of our emotions and observe ourselves, coldly and rationally. I like to use Tennis metaphors, even thought I don’t play. But on TV these days the tennis commentators measure every hit, every miss, every dropped back hand or forehand or when it hits the net. When you start to compare players in this way you clearly see where they are weak or strong. And how to beat them. We can, bit by bit look at ourselves like this. We can take the view of the scientist, the cold observer.

Ask, where am I strong? Under what conditions?
Where am I weak? Specifically?
How will I work on my weaknesses in a planned strategic manner to turn them in to strengths or, how will I continue to build on my strengths so they make my weaknesses irrelevant? And always, through the process, be checking ourselves. The ultimate question for entrepreneurs – am I being honest with myself, or acting out of fear?

My favorite question to ask myself is – what would I do if I wasn’t afraid? Those are the things that should be on a failed attempts list. Because after we give ourselves a kick in the ass, they are easy wins.

Come back and share your results with your failed attempts list.
Paul.