524. Innovating for Impact: Seth Godin's Revolutionary Strategies for Nonprofit Growth + Fundraising Success

Meet Seth. For more than thirty years, he has made it his mission to inspire, innovate, and challenge audiences to level up, and we’re so honored he is back in our house today to do just that. He’s a prolific author, an entrepreneur and perhaps most of all, a teacher. This conversation is full over surprises from canoeing🛶 to reimagining the charity auction👨‍⚖ to powerful moments of philanthropy he witnessed from his parents. He had us laughing, crying and dreaming of a better future💭 Join us for a conversation that left us with one of our favorite invitations, an opportunity to “upgrade our guts”! 

💡Learn

• How innovation is the key to solving critical fundraising problems
• Why we need to rethink the  nonprofit auction
• What GOODBIDS is + Why we think it’ll be a gamechanger for nonprofits

Today’s Guest

Seth Godin, Bestselling Author + Speaker

For more information + episode details visit: weareforgood.com/episode/524.

Register for ImpactUP: July 11th!

Registration is live! Head over to impactuprising.com to learn more.

About our Sponsor Jitasa

Jitasa comes alongside missions to specialize in bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO services exclusively for nonprofits. If you’re looking for a financial partner who truly understands your mission, visit jitasa.com to learn more.

About our Sponsor Percent

Percent helps nonprofits find new opportunities to save by unlocking product discounts from the world’s leading software companies. This month we’re partnering with Percent to highlight LinkedIn’s discounted tools for nonprofits. Ready to get started and begin accessing discounts from the world’s leading software companies? Sign up at weareforgood.com/percent

Meet - Good Friends - our listener support community here at We Are For Good. Good Friends comes with perks - exclusive episodes with Jon and Becky - including the Good Brief - our monthly cliff notes of the greatest takeaways + lessons learned from that month, PLUS exclusive bonus content and AMA episodes where we answer your burning questions and tap our community of experts.

Head over to weareforgood.com/friends to learn more 🥳

Transcript

Speaker 1: 3:06

Hey, I'm John.

Speaker 2: 3:07

And I'm Becky.

Speaker 1: 3:08

And this is the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2: 3:11

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

Speaker 1: 3:20

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

Speaker 2: 3:28

So welcome to the Good Community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabbit fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

Speaker 1: 3:39

So let's get started. Becky, I just pinched myself and we're still here. This is happening.

Speaker 2: 3:46

It's just another day with our friend in the house.

Speaker 3: 3:49

Sometimes, if you show up on a podcast and make enough noise, they'll invite you back, and I was hoping that would happen.

Speaker 2: 3:56

Evergreen invitation, my friend.

Speaker 1: 3:58

I mean, you already recognize his voice. Right now, seth Godin is in the house and I'm talking. We're not talking about just your average playbook. When you have Seth involved, we are reimagining charity auctions. I feel the collective sigh across our entire sector, that sigh like uplift.

Speaker 2: 4:13

Exhale, yes, exhale, thank you. We are ready for the relief of something new, please.

Speaker 1: 4:19

So I got to tee up the man, the Myth, the Legend. Seth is this prolific author and entrepreneur, but most of all, a teacher. He has taught us so much and every day we get to learn more from his prolific blog. So if you don't know Seth's blog, just type Seth into Google and you will get there. But for more than 30 years he's made it his mission to inspire, innovate, challenge audiences to level up, and we are so honored to have you back in our house to do that. And you know he's spent most of his professional life as a writer.

Speaker 1: 4:45

So I got to drop some of these bestselling books, ones that have shaped the way that we see the world, from the dip, lingepin, purple Cow Tribes. This is marketing. Y'all don't miss any of these books. And we love the song of significance that just came out in the last year. So I mean we have exciting news today. Seth is in the house to always teach us his ways a little bit. Teach about innovation. We're going to talk about some of those good questions, but he's also been working on this project behind the scenes to really revolutionize the sector with something called Good Bids, and we are really excited to be part of amplifying that launch. So just buckle up y'all. Seth, it is a delight to have you back in this house, my friend. Good to see you.

Speaker 3: 5:20

This is such a treat and it's almost as good as real life. We'll need to do some real life stuff too. You guys are a delight, Thank you.

Speaker 2: 5:28

We want to go canoe with you in the Hudson. Can we manifest that at some point?

Speaker 3: 5:32

Six weeks.

Speaker 1: 5:33

The water will be warm enough. You've shared your background a lot in different places, and so we even got that chance. So I wanted to kind of kick you a curve ball and say tell us about this canoeing habit that you have in life. I mean, you've been doing this for a long time. What is that process, why don't you pour into that and what have you gleaned from it?

Speaker 3: 5:49

In 1970, when I was 10, my mom sent me to Northern Canada to get rid of me for the summer and I wasn't good at tennis or sailing. But I discovered there was this sport that was invented there up in Northern Canada called style canoeing. You should get into a wooden 16-foot canoe in the center facing backwards, you tilt it all the way over like it's going to tip and then you can dance in it. You can make those sideways and backwards and spin it around. And I learned from Chuck, who learned from Billy, who learned from Omer, and Omer invented it in 1924. I got to paddle with Omer when he was in his 70s and I was the instructor up there for years and years and I still go back.

Speaker 3: 6:31

This will be my 43rd summer and I find teaching canoeing is a magical metaphor because it lets people combine the intellectual with the physical and dance with their fear, because nobody gets into a canoe for the first time and feels stable. But you know you can do it. And to be able to help an 11-year-old or a 50-year-old overcome that and paddle a boat by themselves. And then here on Hudson, which is actually not a river, it's a tidal estuary. It's a few word, it goes back and forth To be able to wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning, paddle for an hour while looking at skyscrapers, and then go to work. I mean, how lucky am I.

Speaker 2: 7:15

I mean, john, you needed to have that conversation.

Speaker 2: 7:17

John has been like manifesting kayaking until he became a kayaker, you know, and I just think that these are the things that center us, give us meaning, give us our creativity back.

Speaker 2: 7:30

And this is why we have Seth in the house, because when you want to talk creativity, you want to talk innovation, you want to talk about solving critical problems that are facing the sector. You go to the man and we want to kick off this conversation with you talking about innovation, and because we're going to touch on later on how you're actually doing this right now, in real time, by solving this auction problem, and I'm going to say it's a problem. I'm going to say it is like something that is so old and crusty that it has been needing to be spit-shined for a really long time. But before we get into reimagining that, we had such a good time visiting with you about reimagining so much of the sector when you came into the nonprofit marketing summit, we had this conversation about sunsetting donors and how do we really start to think about the work differently? Talk about why you think innovation is so crucial for nonprofits in today's rapidly changing world.

Speaker 3: 8:28

Okay, so there's two parts to innovation for nonprofits. The first part is almost every nonprofit is trying to solve a problem we don't know the solution to yet. You are doing lab work, you are trying to figure out how to make it, so the problem is the past tense, but if you're solving a problem that hasn't been solved yet, you're going to have to do something that might not work, because if you do all the things that have been tested, you're just repeating yourself right, and so what I think we have the chance to do is take advantage of the benefit of the doubt donors give us the tax break that we have on offer and explore, because if the problem is worth working on, it is worth failing on the way to making things better, and we cannot just industrialize our way to success because we don't know how to do it yet, and that's what innovation is. Innovation is your next good idea in service of a solution, even though you know it's not going to work. It might work, but you don't know it's going to work.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Yeah, I mean part of it is getting okay with that, like developing ourselves as leaders to have a comfort level with that as well. I mean, what do you see as holding us back, like what the heck is holding us, upset as we like look at this, where do you see individuals or nonprofits seriously getting caught up on that?

Speaker 3: 9:49

Well, think about why someone signs up to be in this space. To begin with. You have a heart of gold. You want to make things better. It's tricky in the middle of that to lean into the tension of being able to say out loud this might not work Because there's a sick kid over there or there's a hungry mom over there or there's something that needs to be fixed. To be able to say out loud this might not work is scary indeed, and I did an experiment years and years ago when Fast Company was young. Fast Company had two founding editors, alan and Bill, and what I did was we had a retreat, there were 50 of us there and I had 50 t-shirts made and 25 of them said Bill is cuter and 25 of them said Alan is cuter. And I made two stops. No, you did it and I said to everyone in the room you got to pick one of the two shirts.

Speaker 2: 10:43

And John's already comfortable.

Speaker 3: 10:46

I'm so uncomfortable, my face is red. People would not. They wouldn't do it. They wouldn't pick a shirt Like how could the stakes be any lower? It was a silly t-shirt, but even in that moment, people are like well, I don't want to offend anyone, I'm doing the wrong thing, et cetera. So when we think about the nonprofit world, compared to a century ago, so many things have changed. So many things work more efficiently, so many lives have been changed. Every single one of those things was an innovation once, and we're just getting started, but we can't be afraid to make things better. Therefore, we have to acknowledge the fact that sometimes it's not going to work.

Speaker 2: 11:24

I mean, no one's surprised that Seth has been beating this drumbeat for like 30 years. He's been saying innovation should be picked in for many, many decades. And I think you said it best when you were talking about managing the tension and even, honestly, just the bravery of feeling like I can speak up and say I got an idea. I'm not sure if it's ever going to work, john. By the way, this happened to us. This is literally the employee giving campaign that we put together. We were like we just have this radical idea. It's not baked in anything, we just see that everybody else is doing it. We hate all of that. So what if we just tried something different? We're not lucky on that, and it's also you have so many untapped ideas in your heads, friends, that we want you to get in a state of vocalizing them, trying them.

Speaker 2: 12:16

I mean, this is not just AB testing on practical, tactical things. This is like moving this into our cultures. And I think you talked a little bit just about staff, and I want to stay there, because one of our trends this year is that we're really talking about the retention crisis that's hit the nonprofit and, honestly, we're seeing some spillover into social enterprise too, and there's some that are in the we Are For Good community that we're seeing some research done and, after surveying hundreds of these leaders, we're not surprised, but we're very sad to see that there is supposed to be a 75% turnover, probably within the next 18 months, in the sector, with people who are either actively planning to leave or looking to change into another job. We cannot innovate when we can't keep talent in the door. So we'd just love to hear your thoughts about this, but they go together.

Speaker 3: 13:12

Becky, they're the same thing. Tie it. So if you work in a factory and the machine you're working on keeps scraping your knuckles, gives you a carpal tunnel and doesn't produce the thing it's supposed to make, and people yell at you all the time, you're not going to stay in that job very long. So what people are burning out from is, if they're fundraisers, they're being charged with shaming their donors into getting them to turn into cash registers. That's not fun. It's not fun to shame people. It's not fun to be shamed and they're spinning the flywheel ever faster. But they're the soft tissue in between the good work the group is doing and the donors who support it.

Speaker 3: 14:56

Well, of course, that's going to burn you out. And if you believe, you have to be quote authentic. When you show up in front of these people and you're getting rejected all the time, you feel like it's personal. So when I add all those things up, it's a miracle you've stayed as long as you have. But we have this business, this industry, now raising a billion dollars a day from the citizens of the United States. That's the number we have to hit every single day to hit the annual number, a billion dollars a day. And you can't get there by doing what you did yesterday, but louder. We're going to have to find a different path, and when you start looking for new paths, it suddenly becomes energizing, because now you're on that liminal place between here and there, where you're on this journey, and that never leads to burnout. Burnout is what happens when we do the same thing and expect a different result.

Speaker 1: 15:50

It does just all stack Even. I just think of, like your books, how they stack, like why does Seth come in in 2023? I'm guessing, when it dropped with the song of significance with this brilliant marketing mind. It's about this core. I mean, like, if we can't reverberate those values and actually live them out and create these places that people are alive and pouring in and feeling engaged in our work, like how can we ripple that out? I think it is all connected and we try to put it in boxes and I love that you're tearing that down.

Speaker 3: 16:21

Yeah, I mean, that's just gets super practical because I don't want to leave this spot before we do. How often does your boss say at the meeting List three things you did last week that didn't work? If you can't, you're in trouble. You got to bring three things every week to the meeting. That didn't work. I've not been in a lot of non-profit offices where that comes up. But if you are a scientist and you try to save your supervisor I did no experiments in the last week because experiments are about figuring out things that might work. You can't stay in the lab. Well, part of what we're doing is dialing for dollars. Part of what we're doing is what we did yesterday and turning and turning and turning. But a big part of what we're doing is saying how can we serve our donors by bringing them a new story that lights them up so that they A eagerly contribute and B tell their friends? If you're not bringing that news to them, where is the growth going to?

Speaker 1: 17:23

come from. I mean, yeah, seth's talking movement building. He's talking culture building. He's talking innovation. This is where I love that we can take this conversation today, because it's one thing to talk about being innovative and it's quite another to bring a new idea to market, to throw it to the wilderness and see what happens. I feel like you're doing that in real time with good bids. So I want to tee this up, because you are really disrupting the historical charity auction. Thank you so much, but give us a little bit of background. How did this originate? And then we're going to get into it more of the specifics.

Speaker 3: 17:57

Okay. So I grew up thinking that it was normal to do philanthropy and that it was normal to work with nonprofits. My dad was the volunteer head of the United Way in Buffalo, my mom was the first woman on the board of the Albright Knox Art Museum and she was on the board of the local senior citizens home and stuff. That's what I thought everyone did, and I've been really fortunate that I've been able to work with nonprofits for years that do really important work, and I have seen just how stressful it is to do this kind of fundraising. And one of the things that too many nonprofits rely on are gallows. I hate gallows.

Speaker 3: 18:37

The overhead is ridiculous, not just in how much it costs, but in that it paralyzes many people in the organization for weeks or months. What kind of napkins and what does the invitation look like? That's not what you're here, not in the gala business, but one of the byproducts of a gala is the charity auction. Now, the best charity auction, by the numbers every year for sure, is Robin Hood. They raise over $100 million in a few hours. If you're already doing that, you can turn off this podcast. You don't have to listen to this, but for anyone else, for the 99% of us great.

Speaker 3: 19:10

Right. Unless you've got drunk billionaires in a room, each of whom is trying to show their higher status than the other, your auction is not going to work very well. And it's not going to work very well because as soon as you say the word auction, you trigger something, and the trigger is you should get a bargain when you go to an auction. You don't overpay at an auction. You should get a bargain, but the charity doesn't want that. The charity wants people who eagerly pay a lot, not because they're overpaying but because they're contributing.

Speaker 3: 19:41

So there's this tension which is, on one side you got social history of I shouldn't pay a lot and on the other side, you got a charity that wants to raise as much money. So the story I promised you we used to go to charity auction for a local school and one of the things they auctioned off every year in the silent auction where you had the little thing where each person up. It was a party at the local tennis club and there was a woman in town who loved tennis and she would bid $25. And then she stood in front of the clipboard and said to anyone who showed up.

Speaker 3: 20:16

Don't bid. If I just get it, I'll invite you to come to the party. We'll get it for $25. And the thing about this is it doesn't feel, actually, when you hear it, that wrong because bidders are supposed to sort of conspire to get bargains. That's what auctions trigger in our brain.

Speaker 2: 20:38

I was thinking bidders B-I-T-T-E-R-S when you said that.

Speaker 3: 20:42

There you go, I like that, I like that. So about a year ago I was thinking about charity auctions and I invented something called the positive auction. I think it's original, I think it's a breakthrough, and we built it one by hand and tested it and it worked great. And then I said, well, now I got to go do it. So I've put together a team of people worldwide and a software development company and I'm funding the whole thing myself.

Speaker 3: 21:10

And how can I build this tool so that nonprofits can use it to run a different kind of auction online that has the potential to be really generative and effective and fun? And if we can offer this tool to nonprofits at a really good fee price, I think that's a useful contribution. So goodbidsorg is going to launch in April with a dozen auctions to see how it resonates with people, and we're lucky enough to be working with Save the Children and Charity, water and the Innocence Project and Build On and a half a dozen other charities to launch it. I think it could go. I'm very excited about it, I mean you're naming all of our favorite organizations who actually live out innovative, you know practices in the day to day.

Speaker 1: 22:00

And I mean Becky and I were laughing before this started because the situation you described, we all have those horror stories.

Speaker 2: 22:07

All of us.

Speaker 1: 22:08

And it's just so far removed from, like, what we're trying to accomplish. You ask a bigger, better question and got to a different result, and I love it so much. So let's break this down because I feel like there's other pieces. This unlocks the idea of virability, urgency, et cetera. I mean, maybe walk us through like how this kind of sets the auction apart, like how it functionally is different. Sure, okay.

Speaker 3: 22:29

So there's two parts that are new GoodBidsorg launches with something like a Neil Armstrong Apollo 11 patch that he used to own or signed.

Speaker 1: 22:41

You're serious, that's amazing.

Speaker 3: 22:43

We have a Mission Impossible crew jacket that Apple Computer made for the original movie that Guy Kawasaki signed. We have a Grateful Dead Bobby Weir signed guitar priceless stuff that people oh, my goodness, yeah, amazing. And each one of them goes for $10 as the first bid and the bidding goes up in tens 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and you can't skip a step. Okay, so that's fairly normal. Here's the first shift. Every bid is actually a non-refundable donation, which means that when you type $20 and it goes in, that money goes straight to Save the Children and you don't see it ever again. Whether you win or not, you have made a generous donation. Thank you, the last bidder, and in Save the Children's case, it'll be for front row Taylor Swift tickets. The last bidder gets the tickets and if you want to be the last bidder, then you should not bid the person who's the bidder.

Speaker 3: 23:37

Now, the math of this is that if the auction goes for $230, the charity gets $2,400. And if the bidding goes for $900, the charity gets almost $100,000. So you have these items that are worth a lot that are going for not a lot, and you get this unstable equilibrium of you're looking at this thing that someone is about to get for much less than it's worth. And it only costs you a few hundred bucks to find out if you could be the last bidder. And every time someone bids there's anti-sniping. So the auction gets extended a little bit and the goal here is a charity can organize donors who are going to give them money anyway they can participate in this. But then the question is, why will they tell their friends? Because there's an economic incentive to tell no one, so you'll be the only bidder.

Speaker 3: 24:33

So the second innovation is if you tell someone about any of these auctions and share a link with them, and they bid any amount, even $10, you get a free bid of any amount, even $1,000. And it turns out these free bids don't cost the charity anything. So let me take a minute to explain that. So let's say you tell someone about the Mission Impossible jacket early in the auction. They bid $10. You have a free bid in your account and you see the Grateful Dead guitar and you bid. It's at $490, you bid $500.

Speaker 3: 25:07

Well, let's say you win. The charity already got the $490 and the $480 and the $470, so your last bid didn't cost anybody anything. Let's say you don't win and someone outbids you. Well, they just bid extra because you were in it. So, either way, the charity either ties or comes out ahead and people have this dynamic, which is you're going to find something you really want, you're going to promote all the other auctions to people and then you'll use the free bids to just keep the cycle going. And our hope remembering that Warren Buffett's last lunch auction went for $19 million our hope is that one of these auctions goes for $1,000 or $1,200 or $1,500, in which case the charity will get hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's what we think can happen. The money goes straight to the charity and then, at the end of the auction, we send them an invoice for 10% of what they raise, and if they don't raise anything, we don't charge them anything.

Speaker 2: 26:02

Seth Arthur Godin I don't know what your middle name is, but I'm trying to add drama. Okay, I just want to say this right off the bat One thank you for not just thinking about it but using your mind to work it out and explain it to us like we're five. But you have literally re-centered the nonprofit and the mission at the very front of the auction. All of a sudden, it is not the afterthought, it's the forethought, and that alone is a mindset shift in this. We don't have anybody elbowing each other out of the way. I mean, we were just sharing some horror stories of trying to get those last couple seconds in when you're working with paper and pen, but it's also.

Speaker 2: 26:51

you've made the one to one so attractive that it feels like your one could be many. I mean to get the free bid feels like the more you share, the more that you talk about this, and then the virability of it keeps going and going and going, and so anyone feels like they could be a winner, anyone feels like they have made a difference. It is truly like a win-win thing. This has to work. I want this to work.

Speaker 3: 27:20

Well, we wanted to work. The first line of our terms of service is bid at your own risk. What we're saying to people is this is not a store, this is not eBay. You're here to make a donation to a charity and on every single page it says this is a nonrefundable donation. Go ahead and bid because you want to support a charity, and the last bidder is going to get a reward. But we're not running a store and you're not buying it from good bids. You're going directly to save the children, directly to the Innocence Project, and saying here I'm supporting you. Oh and, by the way, this is sort of fun to think about, and if I'm the last bidder, that's cool too. But we're not trying to pit people against each other.

Speaker 2: 28:01

It's the way that it should be. It shouldn't be adversarial, it should be collectively uplifting. That's why we're there, that is why we are literally in this work, and I think reorienting people to remember that mindset to come in is such a cool innovation. And I want to shout out to your team, annemarie. I want to say hi to Jennifer. We're doing so much incredible work. I mean your team. They shared with us, like, if you can get a cool item, whether it's experiential, whether it's something you can actually touch and feel and you know how to use eBay, you could run a good bids auction. And so tell us more about how any organization listening right now who's saying, oh, I want to do this, oh, I want to be on the front end of trying this out, how can they get started today?

Speaker 3: 28:50

The way we're rolling this out is in April we'll be doing the dozen auctions I described. We have some other very cool things that I didn't announce yet, but each one is like, oh, I need to have that. And then we're going to be slowly rolling it out to nonprofits that sign up to join us. But once you decide to do it, you need to find someone in your network who has a prize they want to offer, and it shouldn't be your Aunt Marilyn's crocheted baby sweater that's in the basement. I was just thinking that.

Speaker 1: 29:27

Unless she's prolific.

Speaker 3: 29:30

It turns out. You know people who have a thing that a small group of people really want, and one of the problems as charity auctions got bigger is the quality of stuff went down because you were trying to fill out the whole. You just need one thing to get started, and then the second thing you do is you email your core donors and say the auction starts now. Go see it. The first few bidders even get a free bid. There's a reason to go first, even though you're not going to quote win, because that's how you support us. And, by the way, we've asked you to tell all your friends about our charity. You never do, because it's awkward, but you can tell them all about this auction because that's fun, and so we're giving the charities a tool to get people to talk about what they do.

Speaker 1: 30:16

Okay, Seth, I want to quote Seth to Seth and I can't.

Speaker 3: 30:19

I want to.

Speaker 1: 30:19

I want to get this quote right, but in one of your books I feel like it says the cost of not trying is so little Right.

Speaker 3: 30:26

I like to talk about lifeguarding, one of the things that the camp where I learned how to paddle. You swim in the lake and there's a dock. In order to be a lifeguard, you have to be certified as a water safety instructor and if you're on the dock, there's a lifeguard every 10 feet and someone in front of you is struggling in the water or drowning. You should not say to yourself other people did a better job than me in the life saving class. Other people are better than me at mouth to mouth. There's someone probably 50 feet away who could do a better. You don't say that you jump in the water and you save somebody because in that moment, in that spot, you are the best person to take action. And the thing is there is probably someone somewhere who is better at writing copy than you, or who is better at intervening than you, or is better at coming up with a creative idea than you, but they're not here, not right now. You are. So if this cause is worth everything, you've given up to be part of it and you've given up a lot. Every person who's listening to this, who isn't working at Goldman Sachs, who isn't just coasting through life as a handbag designer. You all gave up a lot to do this. Don't blow the last step. The last step is you are here right now. You have your finger on the keyboard. You can do a thing. That thing could range in wildly.

Speaker 3: 31:59

What was my dad's innovation? My dad's innovation was the United Way in Buffalo raised a whole bunch of money each year, but it was never enough. The way they would raise more is they would yell at people about how important the work they did was or how urgent this year was. What my dad did was he looked at the donor list and he saw that there were a bunch of people who gave $1,000. This was in the 70s, when $1,000 was more than it is now. He saw that when you looked at that list of names, many of those people were influential leaders. He started the $1,000 club and he would just go down the street and say to other people do you belong on this list? He didn't give them a whole song and dance about what the United Way does with the money, because people knew that. He said there's a list and it's an esteemed list and I don't think you want to be left off the list. That was the story that they responded to because they hadn't responded to the story of do it for the community. My point is it didn't cost anything for him to do that, that it could have been that after five of those calls, not one person would say sure, I'm in. But it turned out that he more than tripled the number of people who gave $1,000 just by finding this group of people and asking who wanted to join them.

Speaker 3: 33:16

That feels like an innovation to a nonprofit. It feels like something you're not allowed to do. You need your bosses, bosses, approval and then a board meeting. Okay, that's the kind of nonprofit you've decided you work at, but you don't have to and you could start acting like this. Work is too important to sacrifice to the status quo, too important to sacrifice to hiding. What we're going to do instead is serve our donors by doing something for them, with them, by them, that happens to raise the money that our cause desperately needs, as opposed to viewing them as a cash register that we have to pull the handle over and over again.

Speaker 1: 33:55

Gosh, I mean, do you feel as seen as buoyed, as like let's go get him, as I'm feeling sitting in this chair right now? I mean I love how you just framed that, seth, I feel like we can do this. It's not as scary as it seems. I got to ask you. I mean what is your dream, what is your vision for this sector, of what could be unlocked as we all pour into these missions, how we stop holding ourselves back, what do you see?

Speaker 3: 34:21

Well, so, as you both know, I spent a year and a half as a full-time volunteer on the carbon almanac. In fact, every single person who's working on good bits with me is an alumni of the carbon almanac, you're kidding.

Speaker 3: 34:32

And when you think about the price we paid to build the world we live in right now, that these are, in so many ways, the best of time, so many things we take for granted are about to become much more fragile, that we worked super hard to be able to get to this moment. It doesn't make any sense to waste it on Netflix, or to waste it on figuring out how to get two more basis points on some loan your corporation is going to issue. This is what we did all the work for this moment in time, and in this moment in time, when the world is more connected than it has ever been, it makes no sense to act like it's 1920. It makes no sense to act like it's community chest or nothing. That we have so many things, the fact that the three of us know each other, that we're connected and we're not in the same room that's impossible. This is a science fiction movie we live in, and so why can't we then upgrade our guts?

Speaker 3: 35:38

And so my vision here for good bits in particular, is I'd like to raise a billion dollars For the nonprofits who are on this call. It's simple, which is let's get back to the first principles of why you signed up for this in the first place. You didn't sign up for it because it was an easy job. You didn't sign up for it because it was the highest paying job. You signed up for it because it matters. And if it matters, then the work we have to do is not the work of digging a ditch, but the emotional labor of saying I made this, I'm taking responsibility. It might not work, but we learned something. Now we get to try a new thing, and if we can cycle that with all the tools that are right here in front of us, I think we can make a big difference in the world, each of us.

Speaker 2: 36:26

I just feel like I wish I would have known your parents. I wish I would have gotten to see how them just quietly living this life of generosity, this life of generative engagement, and how it has benefited all of us. And I just think that when we think I believe I used to think in terms of Seth Godin was my marketing guy, but y'all, seth Godin is the impact guy. I feel how much you love us, I feel how much you are rooting for us, and upgrading our guts has got to be one of the greatest phrases that has been spoken on this podcast, because we're saying it, but we're saying it in a million different ways. We've got to step into being change agents, not just thought leaders. We've got to be brave enough to speak up for the injustices that we see on the daily, without worrying about what our top donor is going to think, because this matters.

Speaker 2: 37:32

Like you literally wrote this book, the Carbon Almanac. I have to tell you all it is the most raw and beautiful thing that if you love this earth, you love your spaces, you need to read this book and then you need to buy it for a friend. But if we can reorient and upgrade everything, we're talking about upgrading auctions right here, and that's going to be one step. Upgrading our guts is going to be a step. Upgrading our bravery and our connectivity is also a step, and I just thank you, my friend, for just being fearless in this and saying it like you're almost talking about the weather, because it should be that common place to us.

Speaker 3: 38:15

Oh, you're very good to me and I'm getting a little choked up. But thank you, becky. You know I want to give my mom equal time. I lost both of them years ago. But when she worked at the Albright Knox there were two kinds of people in Buffalo people who came into the museum and people who didn't. And it used to break her heart that lots of brides this still happens would get their pictures taken outside the beautiful building of the museum and never come in. And she made peace with that and said well, if that's one of the services we offer, that's cool too. But before there was Antiques Roadshow, she called up Sotheby's and she said can you send a couple of praisers to the museum? And then they got an article written in the local paper on Saturday Bring your candlesticks and everything else. Two guys from Sotheby's will be here to tell you what it's worth. And you know, the night before she's like what if no one comes? And then she realized well, if no one comes, no one will know. No one came.

Speaker 2: 39:16

And this is a Renaissance woman ahead of her time.

Speaker 3: 39:21

And we got to the museum the next morning and there were a thousand people waiting in mind.

Speaker 2: 39:28

That was really special.

Speaker 1: 39:30

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Speaker 2: 39:32

Okay, we're going to dab our eyes and we're going to close this out with a one good thing. My friends Seth, throw us one. What's a one good thing we can take away from this conversation today?

Speaker 3: 39:46

I don't think the people who are listening to this have listened to as many podcasts as I have and realize how fortunate they are that John and Becky are here for them. That is a good thing. That doesn't get said very often, but we are nothing but information now. We are not physical labor. We are how we processing information and what are we doing with it. When generous conduits show up and tell us the truth and inspire us, I think it's worth saying thank you, goodness sakes, seth Garan.

Speaker 1: 40:22

I don't know what to say. I'm trying to keep my mask on.

Speaker 2: 40:24

Oh my gosh. Okay, you have heard about good bids. You have heard Seth's story. I think now is the time to try some stuff. You know, that's our very technical phrase for innovation. Let's try some stuff. Y'all, seth, drop us the links. Where can they learn about good bids? How can we watch even your launch? I think that's going to be something to watch. And how can we pour in?

Speaker 3: 40:52

If a charity is interested, a nonprofit is interested in finding out if they can work with us, it's joinusgoodbidsorg If people want to see us as we roll things out. Starting in April probably April 8th or 9th or 10th it'll be at goodbidsorg For the first week that we're launching. I will be profiling the auctions. We're launching one a few a day at Seth'sblog. So it's super fun to be able to write an article about, for example, your name in a John Grisham novel as a minor character, which I think would be a really good present to give somebody.

Speaker 2: 41:28

I would definitely buy the Stephen King version. You can take John Grisham, John Got it.

Speaker 1: 41:33

Seth, I mean yeah, so much gratitude just for the way that you show up in the world. I think the first time that we met, we made it our personal mission, after we got to connect with you, to just spread the word that Seth's not just one of these people that shows up authentically and wins your heart when you read his books. Every interaction with you is so genuine and authentic. I'm just so grateful to know you in this world. I just mean that and just feel a kinship with you. So hope you're listening. Don't think of Seth Godin that's in the marquee lights at these launches. Think of him as this human that is fighting for you and is on your side.

Speaker 2: 42:12

You're hanging on the Hudson. That's it, that's our.

Speaker 3: 42:15

Seth, it's a date, it's gonna come. We gotta go paddle it's gonna happen, manifesting it now.

Speaker 1: 42:20

I'm reading my friend. Good to see you, thank you.

Speaker 3: 42:22

Big hugs, love you both.

Speaker 1: 42:26

Thanks so much for being here. Friends, and you probably hear it in our voices, but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before.

Speaker 2: 42:35

We'd love for you to come join our good community. It's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode. Sign up today at weareforgoodcom. Backslash hello.

Speaker 1: 42:46

And one more thing if you love what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating interview? It means the world to us and your support helps more people find this community. Thanks so much, friends. Can't wait to hear our next conversation.