Reality TV and the Writing of Seth Godin

If you watch “Survivor” (which I do) or “Big Brother” (which I don’t) or any other “social game” reality contest (where you are competing largely based on your standing among your peers, not some specific skill you have or task you are given), you know that it’s important to position yourself correctly in a group of people (in both these cases, if you wanna win a million bucks, but in a non-game show sense, if you want to be successful in your career). 

I couldn’t help but think about “Survivor” while I was reading Seth Godin’s last two books. Seth Godin is a marketing guru known for his blog, his bald head (it’s not our fault- he refers to it a lot), and his series of highly-readable and informative books. [Full disclosure: I am a fan with probably 10 Godin titles on my shelves.] 

“Tribes,” which came out in 2008, is a no-brainer to bring to mind a show which uses the tribal breakdown as a social grouping. At 142 pages and halfway to being pocket-sized, it was a quick and easy read. It had lots of great anecdotes which held together nicely, like a series of really good Seth Godin blog posts which had a natural progression and added up to a solid but simple message: Choose to become a leader of a tribe of like-minded people grouped around your specific passion, point-of-view, or mission in life. 

“Linchpin,” which came out recently, is a standard-sized book and it’s 235 pages. Its premise is that you need to be the indispensable key person, the natural leader and human connector who innovates even when it means going against the grain, in any work situation in order to have job security and a meaningful life. A good, solid concept, but sadly, the book does not have the same amount and quality of compelling true-life stories to illustrate it and also does not have the natural progression. 

“Linchpin” is pretty much “Tribes” taken to the next level. And had this been a “Tribes”-sized (and quality) tome, it would’ve been an excellent companion piece next to it on my bookshelf. Unfortunately, “Linchpin” reads like Godin is getting paid by the word, or like he’s so in love with his own voice (or his publishers are), he didn’t get a talented editor with a backbone to pass his book through multiple rounds of revisions. The first 100 pages should’ve been 20. The next 130 pages could’ve easily been 50. 

My other theory is that Godin took so seriously the “call to ship” he expounds about at length in “Linchpin” (meaning finishing creative projects and products on deadline no-matter-what and getting them out the door to the customer) that he didn’t get a chance to properly develop and hone the ideas contained in the book, to make sure he had the right stories to bring his concepts to life, and to edit, edit, edit.* 

It’s a shame, whatever the reason, that this one came out undercooked. Godin’s work is usually amusing, inspiring, and sometimes mind-blowing. This one was a laborious process to get through. 

As for “Survivor,” recently one of the tribes in “Survivor: All Stars” chose to get rid of a “positive” player and keep a “negative” one (in this case, a choice between the tribe’s two leaders, linchpins in every sense of Godin’s definition) and the other tribe kept the “positive” person and got rid of the “negative” one. 

And had I written this post a couple weeks ago, it would’ve been about how the tribe who kept the negative person, a natural leader but a destructive force, is screwed and the one who kept the positive person, a good guy who had upped his game since the negative player had left, was going to dominate. But this being a TV show contest, things got complicated by an immunity idol and it looks like the “good guy” team has screwed themselves by making a serious tactical error. 

But in “Survivor” as in life, tribes only take you so far before you have to stand for yourself. In other words, the game changes again when there is a merge. I for one will stay tuned to “Survivor,” and pick up “Tribes” again for a reminder of why I like Seth Godin’s writing so much and hope he takes another pass at “Linchpin” and makes it as strong a call-to-action as “Tribes.”

 *For those of your regular readers who remember last week’s post about my blown deadline and regrouping on my eBook project, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that reading “Linchpin” was one of my inspirations to chart a steadier, more deliberate course when I felt the end product was going to suffer in my rush to ship. (Thank you, Seth, for that.) More on my plan and progress on that project as the weeks progress.

[NOTE: The bookcover photo and the product links are affiliate links, which means if you go to Amazon through clicking on them and buy either the featured products or most other things, the brains being the MYF operation gets a few cents. Thanks in advance!]

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1 comment April 22nd, 2010

Overcoming The Dip, Illustrated: Denis Leary

It's Good to Be King

How many times do you think Denis Leary was told his dreams were too big? How many agents didn’t want to rep him, how many clubs didn’t want to book him? How many friends told him to maybe try something else? How many empty rooms he did stand-up in, how many hecklers he endured? How many pitch meetings were cancelled because the executives thought his career was over, when he knew it had just begun?

Think about that the next time you are watching his critically-acclaimed, long-running FX show, Rescue Me, or reading his best-selling book, Why We Suck. (Good job, Denis!)

1 comment April 16th, 2009

Recommended: The Dip

I spent about an hour and a half on a conference call last week for a woman who was trying to decide whether to keep her web-based business open, transform it into something else, or close it altogether and move on. The call had been put together by a blogger/social networking consultant/operator of successful web-based community (busy gal!) and included a publicist, two other entrepreneurs, a couple of other smart women with different career paths, and myself, initially wearing my entrepreneur hat.

Though most of us did not know the business owner, we were all familiar with her business and were fans of the idea, and we’d been prepped as to what the problem was. We all quickly dove in, discussing the issue, throwing out ideas on how to overcome it or work around it, good ideas, but of course, ideas which involved time and energy and, in some cases, financial investment.

To each idea, the owner of the business tiredly informed us that she’d already tried some version of the solution being proposed. Her tone started to feel familiar to me, one I sometimes heard when initially meeting with Career Rutbuster clients. Exhaustion, disillusionment… surrender.

I put on my career consultant hat at that point and and gently said, “You sound pretty down about the the whole thing.” A small voice answered back, “Yes.” Fighting emotion.

It had become clear to me that this entrepreneur was not in a place to take another passionate stab at making her business model work. She was just too tired, too down. “How would you feel if I suggested taking a break from it, doing something else for a while… maybe three months?” I asked.

The rest of the conversation was mostly about how she couldn’t quit, she’d put too much into it, she was too old to admit defeat and start new with something else. And no matter how many times we reassured her that we were just talking about taking a break, putting the business on hold (something that actually was possible in her case), she kept coming back to the same concept: FAILURE.

You see, this woman was facing The Dip. The Dip, as defined by Seth Godin in his aptly titled book, is either a temporary setback that you will overcome if you keep pushing or it’s a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better no matter how hard you try. Godin’s belief is that winners quit fast and quit often, and quit without guilt– until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons.

I have no idea whether the business owner on the conference call is experiencing a temporary Dip she could/should overcome in order to hit the big time and make her business thrive, or whether it’s a dead end she should walk away from on the way to something else.

All I knew when I was on that call– and YES, I did recommend the book to her (and now that I think about it, should probably remind her of)– was that she was not in a place to answer that question for herself.

The idea of walking away from her business- or even making it into something else which was not the exact model she had been working on for the past few years- was the equivalent of admitting defeat. And my point- which was Godin’s point- is that some Dips should not be overcome. They are not failures- they are steps along the way to finding that something that will work, whether it is a business or a job or a political movement.

So if you are finding yourself in a Dip these days and trying to make sense of it and decide your next move, check out The Dip.

Add comment April 14th, 2009