Seth Godin is the author of 18 international bestsellers that have been translated into over 35 languages, and have really changed the way people think about marketing. For a long time, Unleashing the Idea Virus was the most popular ebook ever published in Purple Cow, a book you've probably read, is the best-selling marketing of the decade. Seth's book, Tribes, was a nationwide bestseller, appearing on Amazon, New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. It's about the most powerful form of marketing, leadership, and how anyone can now become a leader, creating movements that matter. His book Linchpin came out in 2008 and was the fastest-selling book of his career. Linchpin challenges you to stand up, do work that matters and race to the top instead of the bottom, something we teach here at Burleson seminars. More than that, though, the book outlines a massive change in our economy, a fundamental shift in what it means to have a job. Since Linchpin, Godin has published two more books, Poke the Box and We Are All Weird, through his Domino Project. He followed these with The Icarus Deception, a great book that he launched via Kickstarter, which reached its goal in less than three hours. Joined by Watcha Going Do With That Duck and V is for Vulnerable, those books are now widely available. In late 2014, he announced his latest book, What To Do When It's Your Turn, sold directly from his website. In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth was the founder and CEO of Squidoo. His blog, you can find it by typing Seth into Google, is the most popular marketing blog in the world. Before his work as a writer and blogger, you probably know Godin was the vice president of Direct Marketing at Yahoo!, a job he got after selling them his pioneering 1990s online startup, Yoyodyne. You can find every single possible detail that anyone could ever want to know, and you can join his podcast at SethGodin.com
In this episode, Dustin talks with Seth Godin about his book, This is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See
You'll discover how digital marketing has spiraled out of control and why the attention economy is so important to personal and relevant messages. Seth shares the critical marketing consequence of unlimited online choices for consumers.
We'll talk about how to work with the first medium ever that wasn't invented to make marketers happy and why it's so important to build something that everyone would miss if you stopped showing up. Seth shares how to think of your customers, prospects or patients as students and the powerful transformation that happens when you aim first to serve and teach.
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This episode is brought to you by Market Hardware. Automatically attract more ideal patients through trust-based marketing. Learn how Market Hardware can help your practice build lasting relationships through trust and proven results at MarketHardware.com today.
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Dustin Burleson:
Seth Godin is the author of 18 international bestsellers that have been translated into over 35 languages, and have really changed the way people think about marketing. Hey, it's Dustin, and you're listening to the Burleson Box. For a long time, Unleashing the Idea Virus was the most popular ebook ever published in Purple Cow, a book you've probably read, is the best-selling marketing of the decade.
Dustin Burleson:
Seth's book, Tribes, was a nationwide bestseller, appearing on Amazon, New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. It's about the most powerful form of marketing, leadership, and how anyone can now become a leader, creating movements that matter. His book Linchpin came out in 2008 and was the fastest-selling book of his career.
Dustin Burleson:
Linchpin challenges you to stand up, do work that matters and race to the top instead of the bottom, something we teach here at Burleson seminars. More than that, though, the book outlines a massive change in our economy, a fundamental shift in what it means to have a job.
Dustin Burleson:
Since Linchpin, Godin has published two more books, Poke the Box and We Are All Weird, through his Domino Project. He followed these with The Icarus Deception, a great book that he launched via Kickstarter, which reached its goal in less than three hours. Joined by Watcha Going Do With That Duck and V is for Vulnerable, those books are now widely available.
Dustin Burleson:
In late 2014, he announced his latest book, What To Do When It's Your Turn, sold directly from his website. In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth was the founder and CEO of Squidoo. His blog, you can find it by typing Seth into Google, is the most popular marketing blog in the world.
Dustin Burleson:
Before his work as a writer and blogger, you probably know Godin was the vice president of Direct Marketing at Yahoo!, a job he got after selling them his pioneering 1990s online startup, Yoyodyne. You can find every single possible detail that anyone could ever want to know, and you can join his podcast at SethGodin.com.
Dustin Burleson:
Welcome, everyone. Thanks for being here. It's Dustin Burleson, and, hey, Seth Godin, unless you've been sleeping under a rock, really is the world's most famous marketer. He coined and invented permission-based marketing back in the '90s. And if you're a direct marketer, unless you've been sleeping under a rock, you probably know who Seth is. But we're honored to have him here on the program. His next book comes out next month. And if you're a platinum coaching member, you'll receive a free copy of that book in this month's packet.
Dustin Burleson:
Seth, I'm a huge fan of your work. I'm a huge fan of not only what you've done for business leaders and for marketers, but really for society at large. It's a splendid honor to speak with you today and to share your thoughts and ideas with our listeners. Thank you so much for being here.
Seth Godin:
Well, it's a privilege. Thank you for spending the time for leading and for showing up and for having me.
Dustin Burleson:
Thanks. Talk about in the '90s when you build a great company called Yoyodyne that I'm sure a lot of our listeners know sold to Yahoo!. I remember reading the initial concept back in the '90s of internet marketing. Back then they were saying, "We don't even know the value of online advertising," which fast-forwarded to today is amazing that, 20-21 years ago, we were thinking that way.
Dustin Burleson:
Talk about this concept of permission marketing. It was groundbreaking then. And really, it's fundamental today for anyone who wants to share their story and their ideas with the world. If you think back to the early days of internet advertising with banner ads flashing, without any targeting, and now fast-forward to what you've built. And people really take for granted this idea of permission marketing. Talk about why so many companies and advertisers get that wrong.
Seth Godin:
Well, the quick preview is that throughout the '80, I was spending a lot of money that belonged to the software company, where I was an employee at the age of 22 or 23, interrupting people where they had People Magazine. Sales reps came to see me. They want to take me to the US Open. It was the full-out mad-men situation.
Seth Godin:
And when the internet came along, I realized an imbalance was about to occur, which is that in direct marketing, you have to buy stamps. And stamps provide friction. And friction is a thing to keep it from spiraling out of control. But spam, spam is free.
Seth Godin:
And what I saw would happen is that as soon as selfish marketers could steal an unlimited amount of attention they would, and that would lead to a complete collapse in the attention economy.
Dustin Burleson:
We talk a lot with our members the interesting split tests between most doctors who think that all this is unnecessary and that marketing is evil and that we shouldn't have to do any of it. And then, our members who realize if they have a story we're sharing, it takes real investment. And that's where the rubber meets the road as you mentioned. The perceived low barrier to entry of email, and spam, and just blasting a message indiscriminately at anyone and everyone really goes out the window when you have to put stamps on letters and put them in the mail.
Dustin Burleson:
You go back to David Ogilvy, he was the guy who said, "Listen." And he came from that madman age. And he said, "The direct marketers are the only ones that really know what they're doing because they can measure their results."
Dustin Burleson:
Talk about what was that like, trying to convince large companies like Yahoo! and large companies like People Magazine to try and hold their marketing accountable.
Seth Godin:
Well, I mean, we can talk about that all day. I think the key thing is this, anticipated personal and relevant messages always do better than spam. And what happened was I was showing up with an alternative. We had a 75% open rate to the emails that we sent, and we had the ability to get 35% response rates, which was unheard of then. It's even more unheard of now.
Seth Godin:
And what we pioneered was the idea that if people want to hear from you, you will do better than if they don't. So, anticipated personal and relevant messages that people want to get always work better. But here's the problem, and it's still happening to this day. That small business people say, "Wait a minute, I have email addresses. I need some more business. I'll just hit send." Or they say it doesn't cost me anything to post on Facebook, so I'll just post more.
Seth Godin:
And what happens is because we're yelling into a vacuum, yelling into the ether, we get more and more selfish in the way we approach people, forgetting that everybody online has an unlimited number of choices, which means that if people don't want to hear from you, you're invisible. And you don't have to like that, but you have to accept that it's true.
Dustin Burleson:
I saw an interview with Seinfeld. And this concept that Facebook is saying, keep your videos to 15 seconds or under, right, which I'm a huge fan of your podcast. I could listen to your podcast for days. Right? Seinfeld's point was, yeah, I mean, people have a short attention span if the content isn't good. But if they like what you're producing, the attention span in his words, he says is really unlimited.
Dustin Burleson:
And so, talk about what you've seen going back to what you mentioned. And my eyes were just like, wow, those were the days when email else got opened at even at 50% back then. 75% was crushing it. 75% today is almost unheard of unless you've got an audience like we have here that's paying to be here and who has a high affinity and passion for the content we produce because it's so specific to orthodontists and to cosmetic dentistry and to surgery.
Seth Godin:
But you're dismissing something that you shouldn't be dismissing. Right? And that's the key to what's in my new book. And the key to everything that's going forward is marketers who are coming from the old model of average stuff for average people that they believe they have a right to spam the world about are saying, "How do I make this medium work for me?" But this medium is the first medium ever that wasn't invented to make marketers happy.
Seth Godin:
We invented television because there was no place to run TV ads, and they needed a place to put TV ads, so they invented TV. But that's not why they invented the internet. And therefore, all the exceptions, my blog has a huge open rate, your community where people are paying, everyone would miss you if you didn't show up. And if you didn't show up three times in a row, they'd ask for a refund. They're paying with their money and their attention.
Seth Godin:
And my point is, if you can't build something like that with your practice, with your work, with something that you do, it is naïve and ultimately self-defeating to believe that you will get people's attention. You won't, so stop acting like you deserve it.
Dustin Burleson:
That's a great point. And anyone who read your books, who listens to your podcast, which I cannot recommend highly enough. You've got to go listen to Akimbo. What Seth is doing there is really an amazing gift to the world. It's my favorite podcast.
Seth Godin:
Well, thank you.
Dustin Burleson:
You create amazing content. And I think if you dig a little bit beneath the surface, there's a lot that goes into it, obviously. But the intention with which you create things and share your content, there's nothing in your content, not in your books, not in your programs you teach, not in the podcast, that hasn't had a high level of intention.
Dustin Burleson:
Talk about how you stay on track and maintain that. Because it is so easy and so tempting to just send anything and everything out to the world because you find it important at that time. What's that like for you to balance that in your day-to-day routine to really stay focused in a world where there's an unlimited potential vacuum to shout into? How do you stay focused?
Seth Godin:
Here's a trick that we've been teaching in the marketing seminar that seems to really resonate with people. For a day, get rid of the word prospect or customer or patient, and instead use the word student. If you had students, voluntary students, because there's no such thing as mandatory education. If they were voluntarily enrolled in going where you were going, how would you teach them? What would the lessons be? What would you cover?
Seth Godin:
If you can treat the people you seek to serve and change as students, then the level of intention you bring is transformed. Because if you're a great history teacher and you know you only have a hundred classes, you know each class is only going to give you 30 solid minutes. That means you only have 50 hours to teach the history of the world. You're not going to waste time talking about your dry cleaner unless talking about your dry cleaner is helpful.
Seth Godin:
And so, about five years ago, I shifted my blog to one a day. Some years, I was doing three a day, but I only do one a day. And by doing one a day, I've said to myself, "What's the best thing I could say today?" And that means I have a surplus of choices. I have more than one blog post I could post today. I never say, "Ugh, what am I going to post?"
Seth Godin:
I say, "Of all the things I could post, what's the best that's going to move this forward?" And that ability to act like a teacher, because people have enrolled to be students is transformative. So, if you're in the business of cosmetic dentistry, for example, there is a brief moment in time when somebody cares more about what you do than anything else in the whole world.
Seth Godin:
During that brief moment of time, what are you going to teach them? How can you get them enrolled in the next part of the cycle? And in our day-to-day craftsmanship, sometimes we forget that that posture of being a teacher is at the heart of what it is to be a professional.
Dustin Burleson:
That's brilliant. And you see so many in our world, small practitioners or even medium-sized group practices, behaving the exact opposite of that. So, I mean, right now, if you went and just exposed yourself to the vacuum of elective healthcare advertising and marketing, you hear a lot of people shouting, "$500 off Invisalign, " shouting into a vacuum, where this concept of yours which is really, really smart of teaching and substituting the word student, instead of using prospect, lead, conversion or new patient, totally changes that conversation.
Dustin Burleson:
And it's a unique differentiator because no one's really doing it, right? And so, we talk with our clients about where you are in your head and where the consumer is in their head is so far apart that you ask them to take this huge leap. First of all, no one really loves going to the dentist, not even me, and no one really looks forward to going to see a cosmetic surgeon, except for the desired outcome.
Dustin Burleson:
And that large space between where we are and where someone is coming into our world for the first time, we advocate taking small baby steps and building trust, something that you are teaching in your marketing really is all about. In your book, Tribes, you say the most powerful form of marketing is leadership, right? And leaders, they don't just build followers. They really build consensus and trust, and they move the agenda forward for the benefit of everyone, for all stakeholders.
Dustin Burleson:
Talk about why you think first that the most powerful form of marketing is really leadership. And then, dovetail that with how everything you do and teach is really about trust, and why there's so much of it lacking in today's marketing.
Seth Godin:
When we think about leadership, we sometimes get hung up on the TV version of leadership of Gandhi or the Reverend King, changing everything. But most leadership is not macro. It's micro. It's the smallest possible group, not the largest possible group. And that's fine. What it means to lead is to make positive change happen, voluntarily and engaging with people to move them from here to there.
Seth Godin:
And if you think about it, what is marketing? Marketing is making change happen to turn non-patients into patients, to turn people with bad teeth into good teeth, to turn people who are fed a little bit into people who are well-fed, that is the work of marketing to make change happen. And the way we can do it is not by saying, "How do I get everyone to work with me?" I don't know the numbers. I'm sure you do.
Seth Godin:
It would seem to me if I had to guess that 1,000 people who are regular customers is probably enough to make a living in your industry. Maybe it's a couple of thousand, but it's not many more than that. Right? So, 2,000 people is one out of every 150,000 people in the country. One out of 150,000, such a small number that if you drew it on a piece of paper, you wouldn't need even see the dot. That means you're full. That's all you need, that many.
Seth Godin:
So, the goal is not to get everyone. The goal is to say what community of people who are connected by geography, by interest, by need, by communication method, by something, what group of people can I become part of, can I contribute to, can I create a horizontal idea for, so they talk to each other in a way that makes engaging with me something that they need to do.
Seth Godin:
So, the example from my own youth is Dr. Schuller, who did the retainer on the top of my mouth. Every single kid in my school went to Dr. Schuller. How did that happen? Well, it's because he wasn't serving kids in Tonawanda or even East Amherst. He focused on a community of moms. And so, when a mom needed to have their kids' teeth look into, they asked the other moms, "What do you do?"
Seth Godin:
And because Dr. Schuler's name came up over and over and over again, he got another patient. And that idea seems super simple and prosaic, but it's totally avoided by people who are instead going for the low-hanging fruit. Because the low-hanging fruit is running out in the PennySaver, offer a discount, come up with a come on and take all comers. And that works in the short run, but it stays expensive.
Dustin Burleson:
Yeah. Why do you think so many businesses do that? They think everyone is their best customer. They do focus on lowest hanging fruit. Why do you think that is?
Seth Godin:
Well. I struggled for more than seven years as an entrepreneur. I was really close to bankruptcy many times. And at one point, I found myself in a nursing home, running a spreadsheet. So, a nursing home operator could decide if they wanted to buy this nursing home or not. I'm surrounded by disinfectants. I'm sitting next to people who have memory problems.
Seth Godin:
And I look at myself in the mirror, and I'm like, "Why am I here? Is this my arc? Is this what I want to do?" And I knew the reason I was there is that I needed the $5,000 I was getting for this job, but I never did anything like it again.
Seth Godin:
Because I said, better to make nothing and eat macaroni and cheese than to distract myself with the short-term emergency, and becoming a meaningful specific instead of a wandering generality as Zig Ziglar would say, is the hallmark of every successful small business person I know.
Dustin Burleson:
That's exactly right. We see clients who say, if I could wave a magic wand and solve one problem for you, what would that be? And it's almost always, I need more new patients, more new patients, more new patients. And no one's really taking the time to define what that is. Right? So, they just think more new patients will solve all of their problems.
Dustin Burleson:
Two years ago, when we started focusing only on kids, and on my own practices, we do pediatric dentistry and adolescents. We stopped treating adults, because we were really, really good at, to your example, working with busy moms. And we weren't really good at working with adults or working with other types of cases that was our sitting in the nursing home realizing what are we doing here, what we're here. We're here to get checked, and not necessarily to build a long-term sustainable asset.
Dustin Burleson:
Share some examples. You've really have more direct marketing experience with firms of all sizes, anyone on the planet. Talk about that struggle when you bring on either a new student or you bring on a new client, and you look at how do we make this leap into being different or being specific as opposed to... a joke in our industry is not every person with teeth and a credit card is a good potential new patient for you. How do you walk someone into that realization?
Seth Godin:
That's a great line. To be completely fair, I have no clients. I've never had clients. I don't do any consulting. So, most of my experience is from watching people get stuck as well as from giving friends and people I care about help. And I spend a lot of time with charities where I volunteer to help them think this through. And one example I'll give you.
Seth Godin:
A charity that I've worked with for many years, most of their donations were between $50,000 and $200,000 at a time because rich people need to give money to charity too. And when a rich person gives money to charity, they're not going to write a hundred-dollar check. This was the top of the market. And they got a chance to go on Oprah. And that was back when Oprah was a big deal. And everyone said, "You got to do it. It's going to change everything."
Seth Godin:
And I insisted that they not. And I prevailed. And the reason was that if you go on Oprah, the phone rings and $20 donations pour in. And that's great, but then you get hooked on $20 donations. And then, you start doing the things that get you $20 donations, and then you start staffing for $20 donations. And then, the next thing you know, you're not a hundred thousand dollars charity. You're a $20 charity, which is fine as long as you can get 5,000 times as many donors. Right?
Seth Godin:
And the choice that we make when we show up in the world is people are saying, "Well, what institution is this? What folks are these people?" And so, if I go to Mount Sinai Hospital, I expect that I'm going to get world-class surgery. But I don't think they should have a pedicure station because pedicures don't belong in Mount Sinai Hospital. That's a different gig, even though people are paying money and something is happening to their body. It's not the same thing.
Seth Godin:
So, you pick the people you seek to serve. You double down on that. You say, "This is it. I've burned my boats. I am on this island." And once you realize that's the one committed to, you will end up serving those people, overserving them, in a way that gets them to tell their community.
Dustin Burleson:
Yeah. I think we see a lot of businesses get distracted. And so, entrepreneurs often shiny object people. And it would be tempting for a lot of people to say, "Well, the people are here and they need their nails done. Let's add the pedicure station." It might be economically feasible to do it, but if it doesn't fit, as you pointed out into the long-term vision of the organization, there needs to be discipline in place.
Dustin Burleson:
Talk about where you see the smartest companies going. I know you're a great observer of not just marketing, but also human behavior. It's apparent from your podcast and your writings that you really have a gift there. Talk about why so many people are distracted and maybe a few ideas to overcome that.
Seth Godin:
Well, the thing that I'm really focusing on, I talk about it a lot in the book. But I think that it's happening everywhere from school to politics to general commerce. It's this. That once a community has what it needs, which means a roof, brown rice, and a modest amount of healthcare, everything after that is wants. What do people want? And what many people want is to avoid fear. They want to avoid fear and they want to avoid pain.
Seth Godin:
And that's the main reason that the dental health industry has so much trouble because the dental health industry brings fear and pain to most of its patients, not on purpose, but that's one of the side effects, two of the side effects. So, what is the opposite of that? What causes people to take action around things that are more expensive than they want them to be or a little bit uncomfortable? And the answer is the concept of status roles.
Seth Godin:
And status roles are almost never talked about, but they're seen everywhere. And so, I'm going out on a limb and talking about them in detail. So, let me try to explain the concept first, and then I'll explain how it works in the setting that you guys are working in. You may remember the opening scene of The Godfather. And the opening scene of The Godfather, Bonasera, the undertaker comes to the don to ask him for a favor on his daughter's wedding day.
Seth Godin:
In that moment, Bonasera is raising his status by taking advantage of the don's moment of weakness and insisting that the don lower his status. Well, status roles define who we are as humans. And we don't want them to change. We people who like moving up want to keep moving up. So, if you look at the Hamptons or at Hollywood, the reason luxury cars cost $200,000 now is because some people wanted a car that cost more than their friend who had a $150,000 car.
Seth Godin:
And we see the same thing with what size office people have or how expensive their suit is or where they go on vacation. These are obvious status role issues. So, the question is when we look at certain countries that have money but don't have good teeth, why are they different than our country, which has money where people do have great teeth? And the answer is because in our culture, great teeth, our status symbol, and to walk into a meeting and smile with brown crooked teeth will cost you too much status. You can't abide it.
Seth Godin:
Or, if you're a mom in Scarsdale and your kid has crooked teeth, yes, you want your kid to have straight teeth for the rest of her life. But also, let's not forget your status as a mom is impacted by the fact that your kid has braces. Your status as a mom is impacted when you mention which dentist you went to.
Seth Godin:
And so, status lives in a hundred different ways in our culture. It lives when one teenager talks to another. It lives with what senior citizen home you're in all throughout our lives. It's not just about money. It's about scarcity. It's about affiliation. It's about who respects you. And what many people in dental health have accidentally done is taken advantage in a good way of our need for status.
Seth Godin:
But somewhere along the way, they get frustrated, because they forget that almost all our decisions, particularly if there's insurance are gated, not by can I afford this, but is it important to me? And what makes it important to me is probably a mixture of comfort and status.
Dustin Burleson:
That is brilliant. And I hope everyone goes back and listens to that segment again. Because particularly in our industry, there's so many individuals who assume consumers behave rationally that they will do something out of duty or obligation because they should do it for their kid or they should do it for themselves. But consumers, as you wisely pointed out, do a lot of things for status. They do it for bragging rights. They do it for emotional reasons, not always logical reasons.
Dustin Burleson:
Now there are segments of the population that do have to buy based on price or based on location or perhaps where their insurance tells them they have to go. But that really is particularly an elective healthcare, is minority of the population. So, you just unpacked what could be an entire semester of advanced marketing. And thank you for sharing that.
Dustin Burleson:
One of your recent podcasts, you opened my eyes to this really cool concept called Wabi-Sabi, which is a Japanese art of finding beauty and imperfection. So, I'm shifting gears a little bit. Because I love how you think. Most people think about a foot wide and an inch deep. And you go miles wide and miles deep. So, this concept of finding beauty and imperfection balance with what a lot of our clients have been exposed to through us, which I stumble across with Bob Iger at Disney. We work a lot with the Disney Institute.
Dustin Burleson:
And Bob, the CEO of Disney, gives every upper-level executive a copy of the movie focusing on Jiro Ono, a 90-year-old sushi chef who got a Michelin three-star immediately upon... they said they didn't even go through the one, two, three-star process. They just said that we've seen nothing like this, where Jiro Ono talks about the concept of Kaizen, which is continuous improvement.
Dustin Burleson:
So, there's this counterbalance of always trying to get better. And particularly as dentists, and surgeons, and people listening to this interview have a tendency to be perfectionistic and always trying to get better. Balanced with this, you open my eyes to Wabi-Sabi, which is finding some beauty and imperfection. And how do you balance that both in own life and in your professional life?
Seth Godin:
If you want to eat dinner with Jiro, he will not accept a reservation from somebody outside the country nor will they accept one from someone who doesn't speak Japanese. You need your Hotel Concierge to book the table. You probably can't because it's all sold out. When you arrive, you get 22 minutes to eat dinner. It's exactly the same as it is for the person next to you, as it was yesterday, as it was six months ago. It costs over $275. And 25 minutes later, you're back on the street.
Seth Godin:
The Wabi-Sabi has been completely eliminated from the experience of eating with Jiro. If you eat at Jiro's son's place, it's exactly the same restaurant except a mirror image, because his son is left-handed. And the experience is exactly the same, except his son is not famous.
Seth Godin:
On the other hand, if you go down the street, you can afford the same price, eat sushi at a sushi bar that only has six seats. And it takes two and a half hours. And you'll have an engagement with the chef and his wife, the only two people who work in the restaurant. And years later, you'll remember many, many things about the experience because Wabi-Sabi was present. It was alive. It was real. It was imperfect.
Seth Godin:
There were courses that weren't as polished as other courses, because it was the first time. And there are moments when you want a Jiro-like experience. For example, if someone's going to do a... I don't know, put a pacemaker in me, I would like to not be the first person they ever put a pacemaker into. And I would like to know that it's at the six-sigma level of quality.
Seth Godin:
But when you think about the natural limits of growth of Disneyland or Disney World, or you think about the lack of joy that Jiro now has in his life, because he's ostensibly crossed a line and he's cashing out for him and his family and he has every right to do so, that's because the humanity has been sucked out of it. Because the experience has been so rehearsed that the woman in the Snow White costume has to act just like she did yesterday, because she's playing a role.
Seth Godin:
But the reason we go to a Broadway show instead of a movie, because at a Broadway show, something magical could happen and our status would be increased if we were present for that magic. So, when I think about voluntary healthcare, there are moments in it when I desperately want there to be Wabi-Sabi, where I want to be seen as a human, where I want to engage with someone who sees my fear, shares their fear, where status roles are exchanged, where something happened that was magical.
Seth Godin:
And then, there are other moments that I want there to be six sigma quality. And I don't think we should get confused about the two. So, when I do Akimbo, I record it right here where I'm sitting. And if Louie, the dog in the next department barks, and you listen really carefully, you can hear him. And that's on purpose because I want people who are listening to know that I sat down in my office and I recorded it. And they weren't a team of people processing it and cleaning it up and making it pristine. It's me and a microphone.
Seth Godin:
Whereas when we're watching a hundred-million-dollar movie blockbuster, we don't want there to be one's frame that's out of whack, because we didn't go to see the work of a human. We went to see the perfect of a committee.
Dustin Burleson:
Talk about why people get confused there, the people listening to this program. The average, Orthodontic Practice in the US generates between one and 2 million in revenue per year. Our clients are starting at three to five, and they go above 20 million per year because they have this sense of scaling, which is very hard to do in healthcare. They have this sense of putting systems in place.
Dustin Burleson:
If you go back and unpack what you just said, I think too many companies get focused on this has to be like Disney. And they forget all the things that emotionally build relationships with the people who are going to refer to you and are going to come back to you. Talk about why businesses get confused about the balance between Wabi-Sabi and this art of perfection.
Seth Godin:
Well, the confusion comes from wanting to be off the hook. If you buy a Ford Explorer, not one human being is responsible for that car because the system made the car. Whereas if you engage with somebody who poses in the middle and says, "Whoa, I've never seen anything quite like this. Let me bring my partner in and we'll talk about it," a human being showed up and acted like a human being, but that means human being is responsible.
Seth Godin:
So, there are medical transactions that I have that work exactly the way I want, which everyone has no face. I never wait. It's reasonably priced. I'm in and I'm out. And it's completely pristine in the sense that no emotion was expended.
Seth Godin:
And then, there are other times when I'm dealing with the medical-industrial complex, where I desperately want to not be like that, where I want the doctor with the messy desk to sit with me and spend five extra minutes talking to me like a person and telling me about when his daughter had the same thing, and sharing his insights and his fears about my fears and my status.
Seth Godin:
Because there's two parts of me. And part of me, it feels like a car that needs a loop job. And part of me is a human being that's afraid and wants to be seen. And you don't go to Disney because you want to be seen. You go to Disney because you want your kids to have a predictable experience that you can then move on from.
Dustin Burleson:
That's so smart. Yeah. When I get my flu shot, it's very much I don't need to know anything about you, you don't need to know anything about me. Just get the flu shot so I can go back to the hospital and work with our cleft palate team. But on the other hand, if you're about to have a serious procedure or you've been given serious diagnosis or a loved one of yours is about to go into serious long-term engagement with healthcare, that's a totally different scenario.
Dustin Burleson:
I'm curious of your thoughts. I listened to an interview. I was on Wharton business school. And I've forgotten the name of the CEO. It's a new upstart, but they have 10 thousand physicians, 30,000 home care aids all across the country. And if they were publicly traded, I would've gone and shorted the stock. They had such a great question. And it was, what have you learned that you didn't think you would know right now in trying to scale healthcare? And he gave a huge tell.
Dustin Burleson:
He said, "Listen. Even though the systems are the same in Milwaukee and Dallas and in Hogan, it really rides on the back of a few exceptional people who I think are probably doing this balance of being humanistic and being systematic." What do you see with healthcare moving forward, as everyone consolidates?
Dustin Burleson:
We've got Humana potentially being acquired by Walmart. We've got CVS being acquired by Aetna. Amazon, and JPMorgan, and Buffet say they want to get in the game. It's 20% of the GDP in the US. Where do you see healthcare fighting that balance? What's your gut say about where this goes?
Seth Godin:
In Linchpin, I wrote about a book called the E-myth Revisited, which is not a bad book, but the thesis of the book makes every single task in your company capable of being done by the least limited person you could ever hire. Because if you do that, you're not depending on the insight or the magic of a human being. It scales. And that's what big fortune 100 companies are good at that.
Seth Godin:
The number of people it takes to run a Walmart is very small. And the number of people who are linchpins in a Walmart is very small because it's a system. And as someone who's paying for a lot of the healthcare in this country, I want the system to be super-efficient.
Seth Godin:
But if you're a small business person, you have to make a choice. And your choice is either that you are going to build a system that is reliable, and efficient, and cheaper than Warren Buffet and people like Walmart can make. Or, you're going to be the one that people go to when they want to get out of the system. You're going to be the linchpin, the one and only, the person we would miss if they were gone. And those are the two choices, go high or go low.
Seth Godin:
And the problem with the race to the bottom is you might win or worse, coming second. And I'm a huge fan of the race to the top instead. And just speaking as somebody who's gone to the same dentist for 15 years when his partner is taken over for his appointments, I don't go that day. Because if I wanted a stranger to work with me, I find someone cheaper and faster than this guy.
Seth Godin:
So, those are my two choices, is anonymous dental health that's done fast and cheap or human dental health that's neither fast nor cheap. But if you're in the middle, you've got big troubles.
Dustin Burleson:
It resonates so well with what we teach and all your books. You've influenced what we teach a lot. So, your methods and systems are being passed through us, to dentists. And we see a lot of it right now. So, there's a lot of private equity in dentistry. There's a lot of private equity in cosmetic surgery. And particularly, orthodontics. There's a billion-dollar publicly-traded company with a brilliant CEO and in full transparency. I'm a large shareholder in that company.
Dustin Burleson:
Again, not to beat a dead horse, there this distraction in our healthcare industry, where we as providers and we s certainly as small business owners, I think fail to understand what you just mentioned. And that is everything gets better when the relationship is stronger. And when you have patients who will wait for you to come back from vacation so that they don't have to see your associate or they'll wait to bring their kids when they know that you're in the office, you build a really strong relationship and lifetime customer value goes up, referrals go up.
Dustin Burleson:
And really, if you've answered the question we talked about earlier, who are you really for, why are you here, that cements home in my mind why all of this is relevant. And again, I want to thank you for what you've shared, not just with business owners and marketers, but really the world at large and your concepts. This is how business should be. It shouldn't really be a race to the bottom.
Dustin Burleson:
We always say, the race to the bottom usually ends in bankruptcy court. If you're only sole differentiator is that you're quick and cheap, someone can come along and be quicker and cheaper. And everyone thinks Walmart will always be around. We thought Kmart would always be around, and that we thought A&P Grocery would always be around. And we thought that Sears would always be around.
Dustin Burleson:
And right now, we think that Amazon will always be around. Now that one's harder to argue. They are pretty impressive. But the race to the bottom is a scary race. So, I want to thank you for teaching and promoting the concepts to race to the top. Talk about why you think so many companies won't race to the top. Why is it so tempting to race to the bottom?
Seth Godin:
The race to the bottom isn't popular because it's fun. It's popular because economic pressure and status roles push us to do so that the person who wants you to take more care and charge more money isn't showing up asking you to do that. But the person who wants you to go faster and cheaper is all the time. And so, that's who's calling and that's who's in our face. Because that person is willing to push and negotiate to get a deal and walks out when you raise the price.
Seth Godin:
But if you do the math, you realize that having patients who pay 15% more because they want something special, more than pay for themselves. And the challenge that we have is to find the guts and the belief in our self, the empathy to imagine that someone actually wants us to give them more, not more according to us, but according to them. And that's difficult.
Seth Godin:
It's difficult to find that empathy because either we believe our own hype, we believe that we're better than we are, which is super common, or we believe our own downgrade. And that we're not as good as we could be. And that believing yourself enough to say there are a lot of dentists in this town, but I'm the only one who can do blank, that takes guts to believe that. And you have to act as if, because until you act as if, it can't possibly be true.
Dustin Burleson:
And it circles all the way back to one of your first points, and putting a system like that in front of a market, right? This should compel everyone listening to switch and remove the word prospect, lead or new patient, and replace it with student, right? Because that's where this all starts. And so, it's a great summary where I think of what we've shared today. And I appreciate you being here so much. I could talk to you for days and days and days. I know you are extremely busy, and I'm honored that you were here.
Dustin Burleson:
I want to give you a minute to talk a little bit about the new book, talk a little bit about how people can find what you're teaching, what you're writing and anything you want to share before we wrap up.
Seth Godin:
Well, thanks. I promise I would invite a new book, and I built this thing called The Marketing Seminar, which is an intensive hundred-day online thing. We've had a lot of people in dental health go through it actually. But some people said, "I just want to watch the videos." So, we made a video course out of it. But then, I realized some people just want to read the book. So, I wrote a book.
Seth Godin:
It's called This is Marketing. And it's got a lot of confidence in that title. And what I'm arguing inside the book is there's only a few marketing and this is one of them. And it's the marketing we want to do. It's the marketing of addressing the smallest possible market and spreading the word. And it's been fun to write. And I think it will get under people's skin.
Seth Godin:
If you want to hear more about what I do, just type Seth into Google. And my blog has 7,500 blog posts all free. I've written a bunch of ebooks. There's videos. So, sethgodin.com if you forget to type Seth into your favorite search engine.
Dustin Burleson:
Seth, it's been an honor. Thanks for being here. Keep doing what you're doing and pushing everyone forward in the right direction. It's truly a pleasure and an honor. And to everyone listening, I hope you dig into the resources. I hope you read the book, and thank you all for being here. Thank you, Seth, particularly.
Seth Godin:
Well done. Thanks for this work. It was a pleasure.
Dustin Burleson:
You've been listening to another episode of the Burleson Box, where we bring you and your team leaders into the conversation with today's best authors and business leaders. If you enjoyed today's program, please share us with a friend or colleague. Visit the burlesonbox.com where you can sign up to receive my monthly reading lists and action guides for each of the books and authors we interview. As a member of the program, we invite you to send the Burleson Box to your referring doctors and centers of influence.
Dustin Burleson:
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Dustin Burleson:
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