Name: Why Strategy Always Beats Talent (w/Seth Godin)
Uploaded: 2025-07-05T18:02:15.000Z
Duration: 40 min 36 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Strategy says, doesn't matter how fast you're going if you're going in the wrong direction.

And figuring out where the prevailing winds are, figuring out who we're trying to help, getting that part clear before we start racing around with all the tactics and the clicking and the posting is so important, and yet people skip it.

Billionaires I know skip it, non-profit leaders I know skip it, seven-year-olds skip it.

We got indoctrinated to skip the strategy, and it just felt to me like people didn't understand what strategy was, and maybe I could help them.

Thank you for joining me, joining us, our audience of listeners.

They're super big fans of yours, and you're back on the show.

You know, I would be on the show even if you forgot to hit record just so we could chat.

You remember not too long ago, sitting in a cafe set somewhere in the Upper West Side?

With the slippery floor, and you beaming went into your backpack and pulled out a stack of paper.

And the stack of paper, I have that stack of paper with me right here.

And for the people who are listening, you can't see this, but it is a, what is this?

A 17 by 11 printout of your new book before it was published.

And this is one of the most generous, to me, your most generous offerings.

When you said you were writing a book on strategy, I was very baffled.

I'm like, what is a book on strategy about?

And then I'm, you know, 25 pages in, and it all flicks for me that this is the best thing you could ever write about.

Why did you decide to write about this in your next book?

Well, as you know, writing a book isn't what it used to be.

It's this five minutes of inspiration followed by a year of slog.

And part of the reason— Good thing they don't tell you in writing school, right?

Part of the reason I do it truly is so I can have conversations like this with people like you.

Part of the reason I do it is because I want other people to talk about it.

It's a signal that says, this isn't a blog post.

It demands to be rejected or absorbed or discussed.

And what I found, like you, I have peers and friends who ask me questions, advice.

But what I found is people would come to me with marketing questions that weren't marketing questions.

They would come to me with philosophical questions that were strategy questions or whatever their frustration was.

Strategy says, it doesn't matter how fast you're going if you're going in the wrong direction.

And figuring out where the prevailing winds are, figuring out who we're trying to help, getting that part clear before we start racing around with all the tactics and the clicking and the posting is so important.

And we got indoctrinated to skip the strategy.

And it just felt to me like people didn't understand what strategy was and maybe I could help them.

Well, that is about as clear a lens as I've ever heard on the concept of strategy, especially that it's relevant to, you know, whether you're seven or 70 and whether you're a billionaire or you're just trying to get your own, you know, your business off the ground.

Is it the equivalent of if you're going to chop down a tree, you need to spend some time sharpening your ax first rather than just chopping?

Part of it is if you're going to chop down a tree, it helps to plan 20 years in advance so you can plant a tree.

And part of it is figuring out which kind of tree to chop down.

Because if you're making a cherry wood canoe paddle and you chop down a pine tree, you're out of luck.

So yeah, sharpening the ax is a good tactic.

But a strategy is why do we have an ax at all?

And so, you know, since you made me start thinking of trees, who chopped down the last tree on Easter Island, which then led to the demise of the entire population?

Didn't they see that there was only one tree left?

Well, another interesting question is who chopped down the hundredth from the last tree on Easter Island?

Because by the time there's only one tree left, it's probably too late.

Sometimes it's an actual ecosystem with trees.

Sometimes it's an ecosystem filled with social media or competitors or whatever.

Do we understand that tomorrow is going to be a little like today, but different?

And what's going to grow and how it's going to shift?

And, you know, when I think about the seminal breakthrough business that you started, it worked partly because of your magic, but also because you saw the systems.

You saw the rise of the independent freelancer.

You saw that people were craving not just craft, but connection.

All of that was an insatiable desire that you showed up to fill.

And other people showed up and said, I got a hack for today.

But that's not as good as having a strategy.

So I think for a lot of people who are listening or watching, the concept of a strategy is fuzzy.

It's like, you know, they go right into the tactic.

Therefore, I should post on social media as an example that you've already articulated.

And yet the same thing is true with a million other things.

I see that they have this camera, and they're really good or further along in their journey than I am.

And therefore, I need to do these kinds of media.

And so it's very much like a culture of mimesis, where we're just imitating what we see other people doing.

And then, you know, if you put a pin in that, the way that most every artist, author, entrepreneur breaks through is from strategically doing something different.

So how do we get out from underneath what most people who are listening and watching run to, which is the tactic?

What, you know, what advice would you give us to get started thinking strategically first before we even, you know, record our first video, for example?

So I'm going to assert that most of the people who are listening see themselves as creatives and are probably freelancers or soloists.

First of all, you signed up to do things that are creative.

So finding a creative strategy without a rule book and a list of tactics should probably be okay with you.

Because you said you wanted to be a creator.

And second, the only way for you to have achievement for you to advance is not to work more hours because you can't.

It's to get better clients, better clients, demand more, talk about you more, come back more often, pay you more.

And you don't get better clients by doing a really good job for bad clients.

You get better clients by creating the conditions for better clients to seek you out.

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Why Strategy Always Beats Talent (w/Seth Godin)

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