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Business Success and Purpose

1:04:42 recording · EN · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

Answer who it's for and what it's for, then build systems instead of doing every job yourself.

  1. Name who it's for and what it's forIf you can't answer both questions specifically, Godin says go back and start over.
  2. Stop hiring yourself for every jobThe cheapest available worker is you, which is why freelancers who want scale end up exhausted.
  3. Judge the decision, not the outcomeA lottery win is still a bad decision; ask whether a good decision maker would have chosen what you chose.
Executive Summary AI
  • Mel Robbins opens the episode on business and career and brings in Seth Godin, bestselling author of more than 20 books and her mentor from afar for the last 15 years.1:11
  • Godin's one piece of advice is to stop 'just doing my job' and do work worth doing, using his line that you're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.4:54
  • He grounds everything in two questions, who's it for and what's it for, illustrated by a hairdresser who only cuts curly hair and cuts ten people's hair a day, and a New York broker who sells only in one luxury building of $8 million apartments.6:42
  • Being in the granola business means logistics, packaging and hiring rather than cooking, as with his wife's gluten-free bakery By the Way, in 700 stores with more than 80 employees, where he only delivers a cake in an emergency.14:27
  • He separates freelancers, who get paid when they work, from entrepreneurs who build assets, warns that a 40-million-view TikTok sold four books, and cites Annie Duke on never confusing good outcomes with good decisions.23:26
Key Quote
“One of the lines I like the most is, you're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.”
— Seth Godin5:39
Key Quote
“The number of times you're going to be in the kitchen inventing a new kind of granola is close to zero.”
— Seth Godin14:47
Key Quote
“If you are doing the work, you're probably a freelancer.”
— Seth Godin23:46