Have you ever felt like an imposter when selling your services? In this episode of the Productive Insights podcast, Ash Roy sits down with legendary author and entrepreneur Seth Godin to unpack why imposter syndrome is actually a sign you're doing important work — and how to use the concept of tension to sell authentically, without ever feeling pushy or salesy.
0:00 — Intro: Imposter syndrome & selling
0:23 — Ash's background & the question
0:51 — Seth: "You are an imposter — and that's a good thing"
1:19 — Why selling requires creating tension
2:06 — The law firm directory story
4:00 — How do I create tension for my membership?
4:49 — The Joe Mancuso CEO circle story
6:28 — The flu shot analogy: tension because it's true
6:43 — Ash's takeaway: tell the truth about what's at stake
7:32 — Outro & link to full conversation
Ash Roy and Seth Godin Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Ash Roy: Ever feel like an imposter when you try and sell your services or market them to your audience? Seth Godin told me that feeling is actually a precursor to doing important work. In fact, it's a part of it. Now, that one idea changed how I think about selling. I'm Ash Roy. I've got a CPA and an MBA with a distinction average from the Australian Graduate School of Management.
I've hosted the Productive Insights podcast for 284 episodes over more than a decade, and in my conversation with Seth, I asked him how to use the idea of tension when it comes to selling my membership. Here's that conversation. I have a tendency, I think, to understate my skills or my ability. So how does one say that I am your guy without coming across as arrogant?
Seth Godin: Well, okay, so first, of course you feel like an imposter because you are one, and so am I. Anyone who is doing important work is an imposter 'cause you're hypothesizing something that might happen, but you've never done this exact thing. So that is what it is to do creative work, right? Is to say, "I can help you with X even though your particular problem is unique, so I can't prove that I've done that exact thing before.
I'm going to assert this." But leaving imposter syndrome aside, the reason it's hard is you must willingly inflict tension. Mm. Generously create tension, and this is what makes actual selling difficult. So one of the first things I did in my career was a book called The Select Guide to New York Law Firms, and it's too long a story to go into all the detail, but the short version was, "This book is gonna go to 15,000 law students around the country for free, and it's gonna list the top law firms, two pages of each, uh, in New York City, to make it easier for you to recruit these top law students, 'cause you have a big problem, which is it's very expensive for you to get the top law students, and if you don't hire the top law students, your firm's future is in jeopardy.
And your job is you're the head of recruiting at the law firm, and you have a budget, and you have to get these students." So I show up and I say, "This book's going to 15,000 students, and I already have these firms in the book. Do you wanna be in it?" Now that statement creates tension because now that woman has to go to her boss and get $2,000 to be in the book, and she has to worry that if she doesn't get that or doesn't go to her boss, her boss is gonna say, "Why didn't you tell me about this book?
We're not in it." So the tension is, do you wanna be in it or not be in it? And the value is obvious, which is this is worth $50,000 if it works, and if it doesn't work, it only costs you 2,000 and there's a money back guarantee. So it's a fair offer. You're eager for me to call you to tell you this 'cause I created tension.
Once the tension is released by you sending me $2,000, your status goes up because now your boss is happy that you got us into this book, which is the best law firms in New York. So my contribution was connecting law firms to law students, but my work was creating tension.
Ash Roy: Okay. Now, I've never understood this tension thing until you just explained it that way.
That was fantastic. Thank you.
Seth Godin: Thank you
Ash Roy: If I, as the founder of this membership program, for which I do charge money, you know, we show up twice a week to work together, and we have a mastermind call twice a month. We just have a catch-up on a Friday evening, and it's just really nice. I struggle to sell that membership.
Seth Godin: Mm-hmm.
Ash Roy: How would I go about creating tension? So the problem that this membership is offering to solve is the CFO thing you were saying earlier. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners feel lonely. We offer that community. It's a sounding board. We have some content, but we're not all about just content.
We're about, you know, peer support. So how would I create tension for my audience without being salesy about [00:04:00] it?
Seth Godin: Here's the story of Joe Mancuso. I needed to license the right to something, so he had a book, and I found it, and I called him up, and he said, "Sure, you can have that." And I said, "What do you do for a living?"
And Joe explained to me what he did. He created these circles, and the way the circle worked was there were 12 people in a circle. You had to be the CEO of a company between one and four million dollars in sales. Each month, the circle met at a different person's office. At the month it was yours, the 11 people would come to your office.
They would spend the morning going through your books and talking to your senior people, and then they would spend the afternoon ripping you to shreds about what you needed to do to, to do better. And then the next 11 months, you would do that for everybody else, and it cost $3,000. And in, in 1988, I didn't have a lot of $3,000 piles of money, but he said, "I will recommend you to a group which currently has 11 people in it.
They decide if you're gonna get in or not."
Ash Roy: With or without the [00:05:00] $3,000?
Seth Godin: No, I, I get the $3,000 back if I don't get accepted, but if I get accepted, I have to pay $3,000.
Ash Roy: And is that every month or just a one-off?
Seth Godin: No, a year. So I get in, and it's an interesting experience. We can talk about it another time. But it turns out Joe has 40 of these circles So I'll let you do the math in 1988 money.
He has 40 of these circles of 12, each paying $3,000 to him, right? And the tension was, "I'm not sure I'm gonna get in. I'm not sure they're gonna like me. I'm not sure I'm good enough to be here." The tension is, "I could just blow it off, but then I'll be hiding. I could just blow it off, but then if my business struggles, it's 'cause I didn't get advice from these 11 people."
There's all of this tension that was created when Joe offered me the chance to be in one of these limited circles.
Ash Roy: Right.
Seth Godin: Right? And the magic of how he set it up is there was always room for another 12, but each circle was finite, so [00:06:00] the scarcity was real, right? And he honestly felt like he was doing a service to each...
for each of us, 'cause any of us could have done it on our own, but none of us did, right? And the people who were in it, some of them are probably still in it, and it didn't match what I needed, so I left after a year, but other people, it was exactly what they needed. But no one in that whole situation was an imposter, and no one in that whole situation was hustling anybody.
It was simply, "I'm gonna create tension to get you to do..." The same way they say you should get a flu shot. Well, the second sentence is, "'Cause if you get the flu, you might die." Uh-huh. That's tension, and the doctors don't feel bad about saying it, 'cause it's true.
Ash Roy: Okay. I love that. Okay, so when Seth talks about the word tension, he talks about telling the truth about what's at stake, and that can actually be a good thing.
There might be a real deadline, a genuine scarcity [00:07:00] around, say, the number of places at that particular event you're selling, and what it actually costs to do nothing, the cost of doing nothing, taking no action. Now, you don't make anything up, you don't create false scarcity, and you don't push for the sale.
You just tell the person the truth about what's at stake and let them decide. You know, for a long time, I thought selling was about being pushy, otherwise people wouldn't notice. And after this conversation with Seth, I realized that doesn't have to be the case. Okay, so I've linked the full conversation with Seth in the description below.
Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.