Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Seth Godin, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Seth Godin quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 1068 Seth Godin quotes for you to read and share.
Going out of your way to find uncomfortable situations isn't natural, but it's essential. -- Seth Godin
At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet. -- Seth Godin
Here's conventional wisdom: Success makes you happy. Happiness permits you to be generous. In fact, it actually works like this: Generosity makes you happy. Happy people are more likely to be successful. -- Seth Godin
I spend 95% of my time persuading people to take action and just 5% of the time on the recipes. -- Seth Godin
Real change comes from finding and embracing and connecting and amplifying those that are inclined to like you and believe in you. Ideas spread from person to person, not so much from you to them. So find your biggest fans and give them a story to tell. -- Seth Godin
Shame must be accepted to be effective. -- Seth Godin
School is at its best when it gives students the expectation that they will not only
dream big, but dream dreams that they can work on every day until they accomplish
them-not because they were chosen by a black-box process, but because
they worked hard enough to reach them. -- Seth Godin
I believe that uncertainty is really my spirit's way of whispering, I'm in flux. I can't decide for you. Something is off-balance here. -- Seth Godin
My new favorite word is 'awkward.' ... Th e reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn't be worth the effort. -- Seth Godin
Art is the act of doing work that matters while dancing with the voice in your head that screams for you to stop. -- Seth Godin
Universities no longer spend as much time bragging about the size of their libraries. The -- Seth Godin
The resistance is the voice in your head telling you to use bullets in your PowerPoint slides ... It's the voice that tells you to leave controversial ideas out of the paper you're writing, because the teacher won't like them. The resistance pushes relentlessly for you to fit in. -- Seth Godin
The resistance is not something to be avoided, it's something to seek out. -- Seth Godin
Don't listen to the cynics. They're cynics for a reason. For them, the resistance won a long time ago. When the resistance tells you not to listen to something, read something, or attend something, go. Do it. It's not an accident that successful people read more books. Symptoms -- Seth Godin
The mirror we hold up to the person next to us is one of the most important pictures she will ever see. -- Seth Godin
Expectations are the engine of our perceptions. -- Seth Godin
People talking about you is far more effective
than talking about yourself. -- Seth Godin
Playing safe is very risky. -- Seth Godin
That's why there's lots and lots and lots of kinds of hot sauces and not so many kinds of mustard. Not 'cause it's hard to make interesting mustard - you can make interesting mustard. But people don't because no one's obsessed with it, and thus no one tells their friends. -- Seth Godin
Being an artist isn't a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It's an attitude we can all adopt. It's a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things, you're an artist. -- Seth Godin
4: Stories let us lie to ourselves. And those lies satisfy our desires. -- Seth Godin
The problem doesn't lie with the great teachers. Great teachers strive to create linchpins. The problem lies with the system that punishes artists and rewards bureaucrats instead. Here -- Seth Godin
Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations -- Seth Godin
If you appreciate a gift, consider saying, thank you and ... -- Seth Godin
We live in a vague world. And it gets vaguer all the time. In this environment, the power of the specific, measurable and useful promise made and kept is difficult to overstate. -- Seth Godin
The thing about goals is that living without them is a lot more fun, in the short run. It seems to me, though, that the people who get things done, who lead, who grow and who make an impact ... those people have goals. -- Seth Godin
Thomas Hawk is the most successful digital photographer in the world. He has taken tens of thousands of pictures, on his way to his goal of taking a million in his lifetime. The -- Seth Godin
Effort is its own reward if you allow it to be. -- Seth Godin
Understanding the mythology of your partner, your customer and your audience is far more important than watching the instant replay of what actually happened. -- Seth Godin
If you take action, you will be judged. There's no way around it. The alternative, of course, is much safer. To be ignored. Up to you. -- Seth Godin
Your first mistake might be assuming that people are rational.
Your second mistake could be assuming that people are eager for change.
And the marketer's third mistake is assuming that once someone knows things the way you know them, they will choose what you chose. -- Seth Godin
Sign your work ... If you're not proud of it, don't ship it. If you are, sign your work and own the results. We'll know who to thank. If you work for a place where work goes unsigned (internally, in particular) it's worth asking why. -- Seth Godin
In your career, even more than for a brand, being safe is risky. The path to lifetime job security is to be remarkable. -- Seth Godin
If you can't state your position in eight words, you don't have a position. -- Seth Godin
Leo Babauta's brilliant little book Zen Habits helps you think your way through this problem. His program is simple: Attempt to create only one significant work a year. -- Seth Godin
You don't need a new plan for next year. You need a commitment. -- Seth Godin
If you can't fail, it doesn't count. -- Seth Godin
Just as we don't spend a lot of time worrying about how all those poets out there are going to monetize their poetry, the same is true for most bloggers. -- Seth Godin
Dreamers don't have special genes. They find circumstances that amplify their dreams. -- Seth Godin
It's what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view. -- Seth Godin
For many of us, the happiest future is one that's precisely like the past, except a little better -- Seth Godin
What happens when the world cares more about unique voices and remarkable insights than it does about cheap labor -- Seth Godin
I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace. -- Seth Godin
This might end up in crying. If you're not prepared to cry about it, I'm not sure you're making art. And if you're not prepared to dance in anticipation, you're definitely not making art. -- Seth Godin
The sooner we realize that the world has changed, the sooner we can accept it and make something of what we've got. Whining isn't a scalable solution. -- Seth Godin
Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards
and living up to them
is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it. - -- Seth Godin
Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them. -- Seth Godin
If you have no wish, how can it possibly come true? -- Seth Godin
Human beings, thanks to culture and genetics, are inclined to be pessimistic, fearful, skeptical and believers in conspiracy theories. We also don't like change. -- Seth Godin
Our society is struggling because during times of change, the very last people you need on your team are well-paid bureaucrats, note takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF laborers, map followers, and fearful employees. -- Seth Godin
You don't have to settle. It's a choice you get to make every day. -- Seth Godin
Every activity worth doing has a learning curve. -- Seth Godin
The problem with words is that they easily lose their meaning. Say something often enough and it becomes a tic, not an expression of how you actually feel. Not only that, but words rarely change things. Actions do. -- Seth Godin
I don't like offending people, and it's easy to offend people when you don't know as much as they do. This group knows more about what it takes to lead in this way than I ever will. My goal is to push people, but I need to do it from a place of respect. -- Seth Godin
Remember the Bob Dylan rule: it's not just a record, it's a movement. -- Seth Godin
The thing about information is that information is more valuable when people know it. There's an exception for business information and super timely information, but in all other cases, ideas that spread win. -- Seth Godin
Art is when we do work that matters in a creative way, in a way that touches (people) and changes them for the better. -- Seth Godin
The people that are doing work that matters aren't doing work thats popular. They're just doing work that changes some people. -- Seth Godin
If you borrow money to make money, you've done something magical. On the other hand, if you go into debt to pay your bills or buy something you want but don't need, you've done something stupid. Stupid and short-sighted and ultimately life-changing for the worse ... -- Seth Godin
Successful people fail often, and, worth noting, learn more from that failure than everyone else. -- Seth Godin
By being customer-focused instead of retail-focused, or factory-focused, a manufacturer or merchant can widely increase its offerings, thus increasing share of wallet. -- Seth Godin
Sometimes, we're so focused on being consistent that we also lower the bar on amazing. -- Seth Godin
An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally. -- Seth Godin
The object isn't to be perfect. The goal isn't to hold back until you've created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all. -- Seth Godin
Most of our lives in public are spent papering over, rationalizing, and otherwise denying our fear. We go to war because we're afraid, and we often go to spiritual events for the very same reason. -- Seth Godin
Twenty years ago, the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 either dug something out of the ground or turned a natural resource (iron ore or oil) into something you could hold. Today, fewer than half of the companies on the list do that. The rest make unseemly profits by trafficking in ideas. -- Seth Godin
It's all a risk. Always. That's not true, actually. The only exception: it's a certainty that there's risk. The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That's because the world is certainly, definitely, and more than possibly changing. -- Seth Godin
Before you promise to change the world, it makes sense to do the hard work of changing your neighborhood. -- Seth Godin
If you love writing or making music or blogging or any sort of performing art, then do it. Do it with everything you've got. Just don't plan on using it as a shortcut to making a living. -- Seth Godin
The purpose of an elevator pitch is to describe a situation or solution so compelling that the person you're with wants to hear more even after the elevator ride is over. -- Seth Godin
It's uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle. -- Seth Godin
As creators, our pursuit of perfection might be misguided, particularly if it comes at the expense of the things that matter. -- Seth Godin
Real change rarely comes from the front of the line. It happens from the middle or even the back. Real change happens when someone who cares steps up and takes what feels like a risk. People follow because they want to, not because you can order them to. -- Seth Godin
Real content marketing isn't repurposed advertising, it is making something worth talking about. -- Seth Godin
Basically you create your experience through your beliefs about yourself and the nature of reality. Another way to understand this is to realize that you create your experiences through your expectations. -- Seth Godin
Every single important thing we do is something we didn't use to be good at, and in fact, might be something we used to fear. -- Seth Godin
Reputation is what people expect us to do next. It's their expectation of the quality and character of the next thing we produce or say or do.
We control our actions (even when it feels like we don't) and our actions over time (especially when we think no one is looking) earn our reputation. -- Seth Godin
The rest of the world isn't nearly as important as the few who are here. -- Seth Godin
Market-driven design builds the success of the product's marketing into the product itself. -- Seth Godin
If failure is not an option, then neither is success. -- Seth Godin
If failure isn't an option, then success isn't either. Success is just failure repeated until it works. -- Seth Godin
Waiting isn't easy, which is precisely why it is so effective when engaging with other people. -- Seth Godin
The second person to write a story about a young boy and an escaped slave on the Mississippi wasn't a novelist, he was a typist. -- Seth Godin
You win by trying. And failing. Test, try, fail, measure, evolve, repeat, persist, ... -- Seth Godin
One way to work the system is to work the system. The other way is to refuse to work it. -- Seth Godin
The edge is a great place to be. Inside the box is too dark. Outside the box, there's no leverage. But on the edge of the box, you can get things done! -- Seth Godin
It's uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers. It's uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail. It's uncomfortable to challenge the status quo. It's uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle. When you identify the discomfort, you've found the place where a leader is needed. -- Seth Godin
Marketing isn't done by computers, it's done by people. And people who sense opportunity and have the confidence to be remarkable will always defeat defensive actions by people who have given up. -- Seth Godin
Here's the fascinating part, call it the golden shoulder: We have no idea in advance who the great contributors are going to be. We know that there's a huge cohort of people struggling outside the boundaries of the curated, selected few, but we don't know who they are. -- Seth Godin
Initiative = Happiness -- Seth Godin
The reason they want you to fit in ... is that once you do, then they can ignore you. -- Seth Godin
We drink the can, not the beverage. -- Seth Godin
Loving what you do is almost as important as doing what you love, especially if you need to make a living at it. -- Seth Godin
One thing that most comic artists avoid is showing decisions. They show action, sure, and they show results, but they don't show (because it's difficult to show) the hero or the villain making a choice. -- Seth Godin
An individual artist needs only a thousand true fans in her tribe. It's enough. -- Seth Godin
If I fail more than you do, I win. -- Seth Godin
students today are educated collecting dots. Almost none of it spent teaching
them the skills necessary to connect dots. The magic of connecting dots is that once you learn the techniques, the dots can change but you'll still be good at connecting them. -- Seth Godin
People yearn for change, they relish being part of a movement, and they talk about things that are remarkable, not boring. -- Seth Godin
If the only side effect of the criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you'll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable, and great for your career. Feeling bad wears off. -- Seth Godin
A great school experience won't keep you from being remarkable, but it's usually not sufficient to guarantee that you will become so. There's something else at work here. -- Seth Godin
By being remarkable, being genuine, you can be worth connecting with. And you don't have to have it figured out perfectly the first time - you can adjust. -- Seth Godin
Social Networking that matters is helping people archive their goals. Doing it reliably and repeatability so that over time people have an interest in helping you achieve your goals. -- Seth Godin
By all means, fire the customers who aren't worth the time and the trouble. But understand that the moment you insist the customer is wrong, you've just started the firing process. -- Seth Godin
The first step toward becoming extraordinary is, of course, to stop being ordinary. -- Seth Godin
The thing is, the future happens. Every single day, like it or not. Sure, tomorrow is risky, frightening and in some way represents one step closer to the end. But it also brings with it the possibility of better and the chance to do something that matters. -- Seth Godin
Frequency led to awareness, awareness to familiarity, and familiarity to trust. And trust, almost without exception, leads to profit. -- Seth Godin
At least at first, the new thing is rarely as good as the old thing was. If you need the alternative to be better than the status quo from the very start, you'll never begin. -- Seth Godin
This is not a book for the wild-haired crazies your company keeps in a corner. It is a book for you, your boss, and your employees, because the best future available to us is a future where you contriubute your true self and your best work. Are you up for that? -- Seth Godin
The problem with holding a grudge is that your hands are then too full to hold onto anything else. It might be the competition or a technology or the lousy things that someone did a decade ago. None of it is going to get better as a result of revisiting the grudge. -- Seth Godin
THE RIGHT INFORMATION BRINGS KNOWLEDGE. AND KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. SHARING IT IS EMPOWERMENT. -- Seth Godin
The market ... demands a signal from you that you're serious, powerful, accepted, and safe. -- Seth Godin
Where do you go to get permission to make a dent in the Universe ? If you think there's a chance you can make a dent, go ! -- Seth Godin
Art, at least art as I define it, is the intentional act of using your humanity to create a change in another person. -- Seth Godin
If you have a book to write, write it. If you want to record an album, record it. No need to wait for someone in a cubicle halfway across the country to decide if you're worthy. -- Seth Godin
Fear for a linchpin is a clue that you're getting close to doing something important. -- Seth Godin
Is it worth getting one more tweet out, or putting your phone down and doing something that is worth tweeting? -- Seth Godin
Being charismatic doesn't make you a leader. Being a leader makes you charismatic. -- Seth Godin
Do your art. But don't wreck your art if it doesn't lend itself to paying the bills. That would be a tragedy. -- Seth Godin
In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he's tired. Everyone is. That's not the point. The point is to run. -- Seth Godin
The instinct to produce great work doesn't require a fancy notebook. -- Seth Godin
Repeating easy tasks again and again gets you not very far. Attacking only steep cliffs where no progress is made isn't particularly effective either. No, the best path is an endless series of difficult (but achievable) hills. -- Seth Godin
No, everything is not going to be okay. It never is. It isn't okay now. Change, by definition, changes things -- Seth Godin
One bad review doesn't ruin my day because I realize what a badge of honor it is to get a bit of criticism at all. -- Seth Godin
If you wait until there is another case study in your industry, you will be too late! -- Seth Godin
Trust is precious and easily wasted, and guessing is a lousy foundation for future progress. -- Seth Godin
Are you copying others? People won't pay extra for that. You won't be followed for that. -- Seth Godin
The challenge, it turns out, isn't in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by. The challenge is getting into the habit of -- Seth Godin
Most competitors quit long before they've created something that makes it to the top. -- Seth Godin
Great design = getting people to do what you want. -- Seth Godin
If you are wiling to do something that might not work, you are closer to being an artist. -- Seth Godin
Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another. -- Seth Godin
If you hesitate to map out your future, to make a big plan or to set a goal, you've just gone ahead and mapped your future anyway. -- Seth Godin
The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way. -- Seth Godin
When you are leading a tribe, a tribe that you belong to, the benefits increase, the work gets easier, and the results are more obvious. That's the best reason to overcome the fear. -- Seth Godin
More than anything else, I think prospects, customers and citizens watch what you do more than they listen to what you say. -- Seth Godin
Art is a human act, a generous contribution, something that might not work, and it is intended to change the recipient for the better, often causing a connection to happen. -- Seth Godin
We're better in the rearview mirror than we are at predicting - 'cause you're never going to be right every time. You can handicap it. You can point to certain elements that make it work, and many of those elements come straight out of epidemiology, right? -- Seth Godin
I've found that giving gifts is transformative. It makes me better. It clarifies my thinking and allows me to do better work. -- Seth Godin
Most people have bosses who hire them to fill a slot in the work chart and to do what they are told. And most people who are doing what they are told feel safe; it feels reliable. -- Seth Godin
All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works. -- Seth Godin
The best marketing strategy is to destroy your industry before your competition does. -- Seth Godin
The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don't have much wiggle room here. -- Seth Godin
Set a goal, and in small, consistent steps, work to reach it. Get support from your peers when you start flagging. Repeat. You will change. -- Seth Godin
Great boss is challenging people in the right way. Leading, not managing. Supporting them by giving them both a platform they can count on and expectations they can stretch for. -- Seth Godin
Now for the first time, you can choose yourself. You can be responsible for what you do and how you do it. You have to do the hard work of finding and pleasing an audience. -- Seth Godin
Fear of criticism is a powerful deterrent because the criticism doesn't actually have to occur for the fear to set in. Watch a few people get criticized for being innovate, and it's pretty easy to convince yourself that the very same thing will happen to you if you're not careful. -- Seth Godin
Big ideas are little ideas that no-one killed too soon. -- Seth Godin
As soon as we associate reading with a test, we've missed the point. -- Seth Godin
Your business has to work when it's small in order to survive to the point where it gets big. -- Seth Godin
In nearly every case, trying to lead everyone results in leading no one in particular. -- Seth Godin
If the game is designed for you to lose, don't play that game. Play a different one. -- Seth Godin
The real power of tribes has nothing to do with the Internet and everything to do with people. -- Seth Godin
When you walk around braced for impact, you're dramatically decreasing your chances. Your chances to avoid the outcome you fear, your chances to make a difference, and your chances to breathe and connect. -- Seth Godin
Measurement is fabulous. Unless you're busy measuring what's easy to measure as opposed to what's important -- Seth Godin
The reason it's difficult to learn something new is that it will change you into someone who disagrees with the person you used to be. -- Seth Godin
Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it -- Seth Godin
When our responses turn into reactions and we set out to teach people a lesson, we lose. We lose because the act of teaching someone a lesson rarely succeeds at changing them, and always fails at making our day better, or our work more useful. -- Seth Godin
Taking delight in the journey takes confidence. It pushes the envelope of design. -- Seth Godin
Quite or be exceptional. Average is for losers. -- Seth Godin
Decide, before you start, that you're going to change three things about what you do all day at work. Then, as you're reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn't to persuade you to change, it's to help you choose what to change. -- Seth Godin
If you're going to build a lean enterprise, you can test and measure how often the company ships iterations, how often it fails, how often it is putting things in front of people that don't work. -- Seth Godin
Change almost never fails because it's too early. It almost always fails because it's too late. -- Seth Godin
You can't shrink your way to greatness! -- Seth Godin
There's a huge difference between being a replaceable cog on the assembly line and being the one who is missed, the one with a unique contribution, the one who made a difference. -- Seth Godin
Why are you easily replaceable at one venue but not the other? Are you charming when you go on a date or meet a handsome guy at a party? But not at a meeting at work? -- Seth Godin
It takes three years to be an overnight success, sometimes more. -- Seth Godin
Be remarkable Be generous Create art Make judgment calls Connect people and ideas . . . and we have no choice but to reward you. -- Seth Godin
If you can't make money from attention, you should do something else for a living. -- Seth Godin
We don't need to be taught to make art, but sometimes we need permission to do so. Following instructions is overrated. -- Seth Godin
Content Marketing is all the Marketing that's left. -- Seth Godin
Don't measure anything unless the data helps you make a better decision or change your actions.
If you're not prepared to change your diet or your workouts, don't get on the scale. -- Seth Godin
Fear is the workout we give ourselves imagining what will happen if things don't work out ... Worry is our effort to imagine every possible way to avoid the outcome that is causing us fear, and failing that, to survive the thing that we fear if it comes to fruition. -- Seth Godin
Its never too late
... to start heading in the right direction. -- Seth Godin
The best way to overcome your fear of creativity, brainstorming, intelligent risk-taking, or navigating a tricky situation might be to sprint. -- Seth Godin
Give up control and give it away ... The more you give your idea away, the more your company is going to be worth. -- Seth Godin
A very good senior programmer (who might get paid $200,000) gets paid about the same as a great programmer, who delivers $5 million worth of value for the same price. That's enough of a difference to build an entire company's profit around. Do it with ten programmers and you're rich. -- Seth Godin
Eye contact, all by itself, is enough to throw your lizard brain into a tizzy. Imagine how scary it must be to set out to do something that will get you noticed, or perhaps even criticized. -- Seth Godin
This is an addictive pastime. You take no real risk, touch the world, and it responds. Repeat. -- Seth Godin
A dialogue leads to connection, which leads to trust which leads to engagement -- Seth Godin
Nine years of experience is very different from one year of experience, nine times. -- Seth Godin
So now, having learned from machines, organizations are applying the same logic to people. Letting people in the organization use their best judgment turns out to be faster and cheaper - but only if you hire the right people and reward them for having the right attitude. -- Seth Godin
The road to comfort is crowded and it rarely gets you there. Ironically, it's those who seek out discomfort that are able to make a difference and find their footing. -- Seth Godin
You don't have to settle for the status quo, for being good enough, for getting by, for working all night. -- Seth Godin
What tribes are, is a very simple concept that goes back 50 million years. It's about leading and connecting people and ideas. And it's something that people have wanted forever. -- Seth Godin
Life is actually far better than it is in the movies. And it takes longer. -- Seth Godin
You can't lose. Go, go, go! -- Seth Godin
Go ahead, do something impossible. -- Seth Godin
Build it, and they will come" only works in the movies. Social Media is a "build it, nurture it, engage them, and they may come and stay. -- Seth Godin
I'm not a psychopath-I'm wearing a tie! -- Seth Godin
When you think about Uber and Airbnb and the other companies that are turning things upside down, Uber isn't big 'cause they ran a lot of ads. They're big because someone took out their iPhone and said to their friend, watch this, and pressed a button and a car pulled up. -- Seth Godin
Make a decision. It doesn't have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one. -- Seth Godin
The linchpin feels the fear, acknowledges it, then proceeds. I can't tell you how to do this; I think the answer is different for everyone. What I can tell you is that in today's economy, doing it is a prerequisite for success. -- Seth Godin
Don't be different just to be different. Be different to be better. -- Seth Godin
If we can fall in love with serving people, creating value, solving problems, building valuable connections and doing work that matters, it makes it far more likely we're going to do important work -- Seth Godin
In a race, sooner or later there's a moment that separates the winner from those who don't win. That instant is your chance, the moment you've been waiting for. -- Seth Godin
The nature of revolutions is that they destroy the perfect and enable the impossible. -- Seth Godin
As long as you want to please everyone, you won't please anyone. -- Seth Godin
Once you have permission to talk to someone, finding new products or services for them is a smart way to grow. -- Seth Godin
We're all obsessed with ideas because ideas, not products, are the engine of our new economy. -- Seth Godin
If you're passionate, be passionate enough to fail. Fail small, accept responsibility, repeat. The people who make change are the survivors of serial failure. -- Seth Godin
For most modern marketers, quantity isn't the point. What matters is to matter. Lives changed. Work that made an actual difference. Connection. -- Seth Godin
Competence is no longer a scarce commodity. -- Seth Godin
You will fail at this. Often. Why is that a problem? In fact, this is a boon. It's a boon because when others fail to be remarkable or make a difference or share their art or have an impact, they will give up. -- Seth Godin
You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself. -- Seth Godin
It's entirely possible that there won't be a standing ovation at the end of your journey. That's okay. At least you lived. -- Seth Godin
The enemy of creativity ... is fear. We're all born creative, it takes a little while to become afraid. A surprising insight: an enemy of fear is creativity. Acting in a creative way generates action, and action persuades the fear to lighten up. -- Seth Godin
If you think your organization needs a bigger marketing budget, maybe you just need to be less average instead. -- Seth Godin
We'd like to believe that efficient, useful, cost-effective products and services are the way to succeed. That hard work is its own reward. Most marketers carry around a worldview that describes themselves as innovators, not storytellers. -- Seth Godin
Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. Persistence is having the same goal over and over. -- Seth Godin
The only thing worse than starting something and failing ... is not starting something. -- Seth Godin
We're not going to outgrow our need for information. -- Seth Godin
When enough people care about autism or diabetes or global warming, it helps everyone, even if only a tiny fraction actively participate. -- Seth Godin
Marketing yourself to a new person often involves being charismatic, clever and quick-but most jobs and most relationships are about being consistent, persistent and brave. -- Seth Godin
The essence of marketing today is to tell a story to people who want to hear it, in a way that resonates with them so they are likely to either respond or connect to you, or tell their friends. -- Seth Godin
Permission Marketing is the tool that unlocks the power of the Internet. -- Seth Godin
You can use social media to turn strangers into friends, friends into customers and customers into salespeople. -- Seth Godin
If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try. -- Seth Godin
Habits are more powerful than fears. -- Seth Godin
School does a great job of teaching students to do what we set out to teach them. It works. The problem is that what we're teaching is the wrong stuff. Here -- Seth Godin
Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress. -- Seth Godin
The future of marketing is leadership -- Seth Godin
The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there.
People will follow. -- Seth Godin
If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued. The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it's unlikely it would be worth the journey. Persist. -- Seth Godin
It's okay. Let your ego push you to be the initiator. But tell your ego that the best way to get something shipped is to let other people take the credit. The real win for you (and your ego) is seeing something get shipped, not in getting the credit when it does. -- Seth Godin
Industry the most trusted brand is also the most profitable. -- Seth Godin
Great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories don't teach people anything new. Instead the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the thirst place. -- Seth Godin
If it's worth listening to, it's worth questioning until you understand it. -- Seth Godin
It's foolish to expect that one exposure to your message will instantly convert someone from stranger to raving ideavirus-spreading fan. So plan on a process. Plan on a method that takes people from where they are to where you want them to go. -- Seth Godin
The job is not your work; what you do with your heart and soul is the work. -- Seth Godin
It turns out that the people who like their jobs the most are also the ones who are doing the best work, making the greatest impact, and changing the most. -- Seth Godin
Many people are starting to realize that they work a lot and that working on stuff they believe in (and making things happen) is much more satisfying then just getting a paycheck and waiting to get fired (or die). -- Seth Godin
Organizations that destroy the status quo win. Whatever the status quo is, changing it gives you the opportunity to be remarkable. -- Seth Godin
We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen. -- Seth Godin
Make something happen today, before you go home, before the end of the week. Launch that idea, post that post, run that ad, call that customer. Go the edge, that edge you've been holding back from ... and do it today. Without waiting for the committee or your boss or the market. Just go. -- Seth Godin
Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers. -- Seth Godin
A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.
So the question is: Have you ever done that? -- Seth Godin
The challenge is this: training creative, independent, and innovative artists is new to us. -- Seth Godin
When you are trusted because you care, it's quite likely the revenue will take care of itself -- Seth Godin
Stick with the Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources -- Seth Godin
Many Things That Are True Are True Because You Believe Them. -- Seth Godin
Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable. -- Seth Godin
Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success. -- Seth Godin
Marketers want to get their messages in front of you. They must get their messages in front of you, just to survive. The only problem is-do you really want more marketing messages? -- Seth Godin
Leadership isn't something that people hand to you ... [i]t's a gradual process, one where you take responsibility years before you are given authority. And that's something we can teach. -- Seth Godin
Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario. -- Seth Godin
The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us. -- Seth Godin
All good ideas are terrible ...
Until people realize they are obvious. If you're not willing to live through the terrible stage, you'll never get to the obvious part. -- Seth Godin
Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human. -- Seth Godin
You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art. -- Seth Godin
Strategy is empty without change, empty without passion, and empty without people willing to confront the void. -- Seth Godin
I think there's plenty of room for blogs that exist to pay the blogger, or blogs that exist to turn a profit. That's just not the kind of blog I'm writing, and I'm not the kind of blogger that could do that. -- Seth Godin
One reason people who spend a lot of time thinking about and working on a problem or a craft seem to find breakthroughs more often than everyone else is that they've failed more often than everyone else. -- Seth Godin
In a story so good that it should be apocryphal, Zappos offers graduates of their two-week paid training school $2,000 if they will quit their new jobs. -- Seth Godin
When exactly were we brainwashed into believing that the best way to earn a living is to have a job? -- Seth Godin
The internet has opened the door for millions of businesses to do things differently, because there are other assets now, assets that can transcend location. Your permission to talk to customers, your reputation, your unique products-you can build a business around them online. -- Seth Godin
Fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to their faith before they explore it. As opposed to a curious person who explores first and then considers whether or not they want to accept the ramifications. -- Seth Godin
Skill and attitude are essential. Authority is not. In fact, authority can get in the way. -- Seth Godin
When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you'll be blameless. -- Seth Godin
Acknowledge to yourself that the factory job is dead. Having a factory job is not a natural state. It wasn't at the heart of being human until very recently. We've been culturally brainwashed. -- Seth Godin
Good marketers tell a story. -- Seth Godin
If failure is not an option, neither is success. Innovation is just repeated failure till you come up with something that works. -- Seth Godin
I don't think we have any choice. I think we have an obligation to change the rules, to raise the bar, to play a different game, and to play it better than anyone has any right to believe is possible. -- Seth Godin
Evolution is the most popular way we have for dealing with change. -- Seth Godin
Discomfort brings engagement and change. Discomfort means you're doing something that others were unlikely to do, because they're hiding out in the comfortable zone. When your uncomfortable actions lead to success, the organization rewards you and brings you back for more. -- Seth Godin
If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either. Part of leadership (a big part of it, actually) is the ability to stick with the dream for a long time. Long enough that the critics realize that you're going to get there one way or another ... so they follow. -- Seth Godin
What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love. -- Seth Godin
The way to work with a bully is to take the ball and go home. First time, every time. When there's no ball, there's no game. Bullies hate that. So they'll either behave so they can play with you or they'll go bully someone else. -- Seth Godin
Mass attention is almost unattainable and it's not clear that you want it. -- Seth Godin
Permission Marketing Is Anticipated, Personal, Relevant -- Seth Godin
People don't believe what you tell them.
They rarely believe what you show them.
They often believe what their friends tell them.
They always believe what they tell themselves. -- Seth Godin
Begin to realize that the safest thing you can do feels risky and the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe. -- Seth Godin
How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable? -- Seth Godin
Initiative and starting are about neither of these. They are about "let's see" and "try." If there's no clear right answer, perhaps the thing you ought to do is something new. Something new is often the right path when the world is complicated. -- Seth Godin
Seek out habits that help you overcome fear or inertia. Destroy those that do the opposite. -- Seth Godin
Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you've got, you're more likely to do it.
And this is precisely why it's difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part. -- Seth Godin
Before a marketer can build trust, it must breed familiarity. But there's no familiarity without awareness. And awareness - the science of letting people know you exist and getting them to understand your message - can't happen effectively in today's environment without advertising. -- Seth Godin
The connected economy of ideas demands that we contribute initiative. And yet we resist, because our lizard brain, the one that lives in fear, relentlessly exaggerates the cost of being wrong. -- Seth Godin
If you don't like your definition of 'good enough', then feel free to change that, but the goal before shipping is merely that. Not perfect. -- Seth Godin
The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don't know. -- Seth Godin
Great projects, like great careers and relationships that last, are gardens. They are tended, they shift, they grow. They endure over time, gaining a personality and reflecting their environment. When something dies or fades away, we prune, replant and grow again. -- Seth Godin
A bully is playing a game, one that he or she enjoys and needs. You're welcome to play this game if it makes you happy, but for most people, it will make you miserable. -- Seth Godin
Are you doing work worth doing, or are you just doing your job? -- Seth Godin
Excellence isn't about working extra hard to do what you're told. It's about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing. -- Seth Godin
The joy of art is particularly sweet, though, because it carries with it the threat of rejection, of failure, and of missed connections. It's precisely the high-wire act of "this might not work" that makes original art worth doing. -- Seth Godin
Solving problems - actually solving them, not just claiming you do - solving perceived, urgent problems, is a surefire way to get the world to beat a path to your door. -- Seth Godin
You don't have enough time to be both unhappy & mediocre. It's not just pointless; it's painful. -- Seth Godin
What if getting bigger isn't the point? What if you merely got better? -- Seth Godin
When we think about what might go wrong, we're more likely to design something that goes right. -- Seth Godin
Your audacious life goals are fabulous. We're proud of you for having them. But it's possible that those goals are designed to distract you from the thing that's really frightening you
the shift in daily habits that would mean a re-invention of how you see yourself. -- Seth Godin
Some people read business books looking for confirmation. I read them in search of disquiet. Confirmation is cheap, easy and ineffective. Restlessness and the scientific method, on the other hand, create a culture of testing and inquiry that can't help but push you forward. -- Seth Godin
The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want. -- Seth Godin
Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new. -- Seth Godin
If there's time for an emergency, why isn't there time for brilliance, generosity or learning? -- Seth Godin
The YouTube video maker gets more out of making a video than you get out of watching it. -- Seth Godin
Increasingly, there are only two kinds of companies: brave and dead. -- Seth Godin
When the legacy you leave behind lasts for hours, days or a lifetime, you matter. -- Seth Godin
A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they're doing work that most any trained person could do. -- Seth Godin
Don't fix me; Love me for what's broken. -- Seth Godin
Multiply that scenario by one hundred or one thousand books a year. Using permission, Amazon can fundamentally reconfigure the entire book industry, disintermediating and combining every step of the chain until there are only two: the writer and Amazon. -- Seth Godin
It's not an accident that successful people read more books. -- Seth Godin
Marketing is the act of telling stories about the things we make - stories that sell and stories that spread. -- Seth Godin
Abundance is possible, but only if we can imagine it and then embrace it. Will -- Seth Godin
We notice what we choose to notice. -- Seth Godin
Initiating is really and truly difficult, and that's what leaders do. They see something others are ignoring and they jump on it. They cause the events that others have to react to. They make change. -- Seth Godin
Once you've engaged with an organization or a relationship or a community, you owe it to your team to start. To initiate. To be the one who makes something happen. To do less is to steal from them. -- Seth Godin
Most of your competition spend their days looking forward to those rare moments when everything goes right. Imagine how much leverage you have if you spend your time maximizing those common moments when it doesn't. -- Seth Godin
My best advice: win little battles. Get in the habit of winning, of shipping, of having customers that can't live without you. Once you've demonstrated you know how to do the art, then go after the windmills. -- Seth Godin
Art has no right answer. The best we can hope for is an interesting answer. -- Seth Godin
Attention is a bit like real estate, in that they're not making any more of it. Unlike real estate, though, it keeps going up in value. -- Seth Godin
The problem with putting it all on the line is that it might not work out. The problem with not putting it all on the line is that it will never (ever) change things for the better. Not much of a choice, I think. -- Seth Godin
Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users' standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better. -- Seth Godin
The only thing all successful people have in common is that they're successful, so don't waste your time copying "the successful strategies" of others. -- Seth Godin
The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability. -- Seth Godin
I feel like I'm treating people as I'd like to be treated. -- Seth Godin
There are lots of good reasons to abandon a project. Having a little competition is not one of them. -- Seth Godin
And the reason is that until Wonder came along and figured out how to spread the idea of sliced bread, no one wanted it. That the success of sliced bread is not always about what the patent is like or what the factory is like, it's about can you get your idea to spread or not? -- Seth Godin
The industrialist (your boss, perhaps) demands that everything be proven, efficient, and risk free. The artist seeks none of these. The value of art is in your willingness to stare down the risk and to embrace the void of possible failure. -- Seth Godin
Blaming the system is soothing because it lets you off the hook. But when the system is broken, we wonder why you were relying in the system in the first place. -- Seth Godin
Marketing tells a story that spreads. Sales overcomes the natural resistance to say yes. -- Seth Godin
Permission Marketing represents a huge threat as well as a huge opportunity. -- Seth Godin
The mistake so many marketers make is that they conjoin the urgency of making another sale with the timing to earn the right to make that sale. In other words, you must build trust before you need it. Building trust right when you want to make a sale is just too late. -- Seth Godin
The easiest way to thrive as an outlier is to avoid being one. At least among your most treasured peers. Surround yourself with people in at least as much of a hurry, at least as inquisitive, at least as focused as you are. -- Seth Godin
Your biggest failure is the thing you dreamed of contributing but didn't find the guts to do. -- Seth Godin
You can't have good ideas unless you're willing to generate a lot of bad ones. -- Seth Godin
The enemy of fear is creativity. -- Seth Godin
The innovator creates a business where they are making money, even when they sleep. -- Seth Godin
Don't try to be the 'next'. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new. -- Seth Godin
Our job is to make change. Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they'd like to go. Every time we waste that opportunity, every page or sentence that doesn't do enough to advance the cause is waste. -- Seth Godin
The danger of the Web is that you can go from idea to public announcement in under ten minutes. -- Seth Godin
There are always limits, and opportunities. The ones we rehearse and focus on are the ones that shape our future. -- Seth Godin
A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate. -- Seth Godin
Marketing is the act of inventing the product. The effort of designing it. The craft of producing it. The art of pricing it. The technique of selling it. -- Seth Godin
Remarkable work often comes from making choices when everyone else feels as though there is no choice. -- Seth Godin
Don't waste time looking for a better pencil: learn to write better. -- Seth Godin
The secret to being wrong isn't to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn't fatal. -- Seth Godin
Great teachers are wonderful. They change lives. We need them. The problem is that most schools don't like great teachers. They're organized to stamp them out, bore them, bureaucratize them, and make them average. Why -- Seth Godin
If you never fail, either you're really lucky or you haven't shipped anything. -- Seth Godin
I intentionally abandoned the hard stuff early on because not only do I think it's useless, I think it's a distraction. -- Seth Godin
Don't scale because you think there's a pot of gold over that rainbow. Scale because you're ready and eager to do heroic work, every day, forever. -- Seth Godin
Faced with the opportunity to become the category of one, we almost always hesitate, almost always compromise, almost always dumb it down to play it a little bit safer -- Seth Godin
The ironic thing is that marketers have responded to this problem with the single worst cure possible. To deal with the clutter and the diminished effectiveness of Interruption Marketing, they're interrupting us even more! -- Seth Godin
Excellence isn't about meeting the spec, it's about setting the spec. It defines what the consumer sees as quality right this minute, and tomorrow, if you're good, you'll reset that expectation again -- Seth Godin
Competition validates you. It creates a category. It permits the sale to be this or that, not yes or no. -- Seth Godin
The Net is not television. It is the finest direct-marketing mechanism in the history of mankind. It is direct mail with free stamps, and it allows you to create richer and deeper relationships than you've ever been able to create before. -- Seth Godin
If your feet are in two buckets and the average temperature of the water is 90 degrees, you're probably fine - unless one bucket is at 35 and the other is at 145 degrees. On average, you're fine. Based on variation, though, you're miserable. -- Seth Godin
Marketing guru Jay Levinson figures you have to run an ad twenty-seven times against one individual before it has its desired impact. Why? Because only one out of nine ads is seen, and you've got to see it at least three times before it sinks in. -- Seth Godin
It's really easy to insist that people read the manual. It's really easy to blame the user/student/prospect/customer for not trying hard, for being too stupid to get it, or for not caring enough to pay attention. -- Seth Godin
When we intentionally seek out the difficult tasks, we're much more likely to actually create value. -- Seth Godin
Art is the work of a human, an individual seeking to make a statement, to cause a reaction, to connect. Art is something new, every time, and art might not work, precisely because it's new, because it's human and because it seeks to connect. -- Seth Godin
We can schedule for it. Thursday, April 3rd, 3:05 ... start something. We can train for it, plan for it, announce it, and even hire for it. If initiating is as essential to the modern organization as it appears, we better be doing all of that and more. -- Seth Godin
The universal truth is beyond question-the only people who excel are those who have decided to do so. -- Seth Godin
If you want to get in shape, go to the # gym every single day, change your clothes and take a shower. If you can do that every single day for a month, pretty soon you'll start doing something while you're there ... -- Seth Godin
Rehearsing failure is simply a bad habit, not a productive use of your time. When you choose to visualize the path that works, you're more likely to shore it up and create an environment where it can take place. -- Seth Godin
She solves problems that people haven't predicted, sees things people haven't seen, and connects people who need to be connected. -- Seth Godin
Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand. -- Seth Godin
In general, organizations are afraid to fire customers, no matter how unreasonable. This is a mistake. It's good for you. -- Seth Godin
Content marketing is the only marketing left -- Seth Godin
Ideas don't get smaller when they're shared, they get bigger. -- Seth Godin
Marketers have to move upstream now. We have to stop being the last step in the process and start being the first step. -- Seth Godin
Leaders who set out to give are more productive than leaders who seek to get. -- Seth Godin
Making an average pitch to average people, or having an average gala for average people isn't going to scale anymore. You've got to find the people who care. Those people are worth all of your time. -- Seth Godin
Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed. -- Seth Godin
The industrial age brought compliance and compliance brought fear and fear brought us mediocrity. -- Seth Godin
More process, less innovation. More operations, less innovation. More management, less innovation. More entrepreneurs, more innovation. -- Seth Godin
In creating an ideavirus, the advertiser creates an environment in which the idea can replicate and spread. It's the virus that does the work, not the marketer. -- Seth Godin
The desire that we have to do something that's never been done before means that the people who are around you generally will not encourage you to do it ... if they were encouraging you to do it, then other people would be doing it already and it wouldn't be unique. -- Seth Godin
The only people who get paid what they're worth are people who don't follow the instruction book, who create art, who are innovative, who work without a map. -- Seth Godin
Permission Marketing is just like dating. It turns strangers into friends and friends into lifetime customers. Many of the rules of dating apply, and so do many of the benefits. -- Seth Godin
Becoming a superstar takes about 10,000 hours of hard work. -- Seth Godin
Not changing your strategy merely because you're used to the one you have now is a lousy strategy. -- Seth Godin
Go for the edges. Challenge yourself and your team to describe what those edges are, and then test which edge is most likely to deliver the marketing results you seek. -- Seth Godin
Past performance is no guarantee of future success. -- Seth Godin
When access to information was limited, we needed to load student sup with facts. Now, when we have no scarcity of facts or the access to them, we need to load them up with understanding. -- Seth Godin
Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion. -- Seth Godin
Anticipated, personal, and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk. -- Seth Godin
We've greatly exaggerated the risk of sinking, without celebrating the value of swimming. -- Seth Godin
As we'll see, the greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. -- Seth Godin
If you can discipline yourself to read, you can free up two years of your life for the good stuff!) -- Seth Godin
Art is the act of navigating without a map. -- Seth Godin
No one has a transparent view of the world. In fact, we all carry around a personal worldview - the biases and experiences and expectations that color the way we perceive the world. -- Seth Godin
Marketing is the art of seeing (and then creating) what might be interesting to more than our friends -- Seth Godin
The reason Steve Herrell's shop did so well is that it was famous for having a line! People brought folks from out of town to have the experience. -- Seth Godin
There's nothing wrong with having a plan. Plans are great. But missions are better. Missions survive when plans fail, and plans almost always fail. -- Seth Godin
I'll confess that I don't watch the Olympics, but you'd have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the corruption and the expense. An amorphous organization with no transparency, unclear lines of responsibility, huge amounts of politics and a great deal of unearned power. -- Seth Godin
If it wasn't a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn't be worth much. -- Seth Godin
The new American Dream, though, the one that markets around the world are embracing as fast as they can, is this: Be remarkable Be generous Create art Make judgment calls Connect people and ideas -- Seth Godin
Doing justice to the work is your task, not setting a world record. -- Seth Godin
Life is like skiing. Just like skiing, the goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill. It's to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets. -- Seth Godin
I'm not proposing that you let the crowd dictate, or that you work hard to fit in. Far from it. I'm proposing that you know the impact your choices are having and act accordingly. -- Seth Godin
It doesn't hurt to ask Actually, it does hurt. It does hurt to ask the wrong way, to ask without preparation, to ask without permission. It hurts because you never get another chance to ask right. -- Seth Godin
If you can't be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can. -- Seth Godin
Learning is not watching a video, learning is taking action and seeing what happens. -- Seth Godin
The only reason to buy a paper book any longer is to own it and cherish it and remember it and tell a story about it. -- Seth Godin
Without a specific reason for the consumer to behave, without a reward or benefit, the overwhelmed consumer will refuse. -- Seth Godin
You gain converts by winning at something the existing provider didn't think was so important. -- Seth Godin
Just because the tide is out, doesn't mean there is less water in the ocean. -- Seth Godin
It's rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who is also an angry person. They can't occupy the same space, and if your anger moves in, generosity and creativity often move out. It's difficult to use revenge or animus to fuel great work. -- Seth Godin
To be willing to do new things you don't think you'll like requires you to prefer the unknown. Not just tolerate it, but to prefer it. -- Seth Godin
In fact, stories only magnify the need to have something remarkable (and honest) to say. -- Seth Godin
Artists think along the edges of the box, because that's where things get done. That's where the audience is, that's where the means of production are available, and that's where you can make an impact. -- Seth Godin
Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person. -- Seth Godin
I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge. -- Seth Godin
When in doubt, tell yourself the truth. -- Seth Godin
Bullhorns are overrated: having ten times as many Twitter followers generates approximately zero times as much value. -- Seth Godin
The easier it is to quantify, the less it's worth. -- Seth Godin
Self sufficiency appears to be a worthy goal, but it's now impossible if you want to actually get anything done. All our productivity, leverage and insight comes from being part of a community, not apart from it. The goal, I think, is to figure out how to become more dependent, not less. -- Seth Godin
People who make a difference never wait for just the right time. They know that it will never arrive. -- Seth Godin
If you're working with a spreadsheet or a thread of correspondence or a set of data, I'm not sure you're doing your best work if you're doing it on an iPhone. -- Seth Godin
No is the foundation that we can build our yes on. -- Seth Godin
If you think cat food is for cats, how come it doesn't come in mouse flavor? -- Seth Godin
Normal is fading away. Governments and industries and schools like normal, because it's easier, it scales and it's profitable. But people don't like it - we want to be who we are, not who some marketer tells us to be. -- Seth Godin
A brand that stands for what all brands stand for stands for nothing much. -- Seth Godin
Data is not useful until it becomes information. -- Seth Godin
What is school for? If you're not asking that, you're wasting time and money. -- Seth Godin
Don't save the canary. Fix the coal mine. -- Seth Godin
Remarkable work is always not on the list, because if it was, it would be commonplace, not remarkable. -- Seth Godin
The public square is more public than ever, but minds are rarely changed in 140 character bursts and by selfies. -- Seth Godin
If you could do tomorrow over again, would you? -- Seth Godin
Go ahead, fail. Try to avoid mistakes, though. -- Seth Godin
The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor. -- Seth Godin
That's it - three steps: motivate, connect, and leverage. -- Seth Godin
The first thing you do when you sit down at the computer: If you're an artist, a leader or someone seeking to make a difference, the first thing you do should be to lay tracks to accomplish your goals, not to hear how others have reacted/ responded/ insisted to what happened yesterday. -- Seth Godin
Dreams are difficult to build and easy to destroy. -- Seth Godin
The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you'll need later. -- Seth Godin
Don't do it because it's your job, do it because you can. -- Seth Godin
If you had a chance to do a TED talk, what would it be about? What have you discovered, what do you know, what can you teach? You should do one. Even if you don't do one, you should be prepared to do one. -- Seth Godin
the new form of marketing is leadership, and leadership is about building and connecting tribes of like-minded people. -- Seth Godin
'Teamwork' is the word that bosses use when they actually mean 'Do what I say' -- Seth Godin
Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a deal breaker. -- Seth Godin
Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work. -- Seth Godin
The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now. -- Seth Godin
Life's too short to fight the forces of change. Life's too short to hate what you do all day. Life's way too short to make mediocre stuff. -- Seth Godin
Little changes cost you. Big changes benefit you by changing the game, but only if you go first. -- Seth Godin
Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can't see it -- Seth Godin
When the room brightens when you walk in, you matter. -- Seth Godin
One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that. -- Seth Godin
The digital asset that matters is trust. Awareness first, then interaction, and maybe a habit, but all three mean nothing if they don't lead to permission and trust. The privilege of connection. Everything else is slippery. -- Seth Godin
The status quo is leaving the building, and quickly. -- Seth Godin
The rules are now clear: no one is going to inform you, but it's easier than ever to inform yourself. -- Seth Godin
No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say, and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down. -- Seth Godin
One option is to struggle to be heard whenever you're in the room ...
Another is to be the sort of person who is missed when you're not.
The first involves making noise. The second involves making a difference. -- Seth Godin
Please stop waiting for a map. We reward those who draw maps, not those who follow them. -- Seth Godin
Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities. -- Seth Godin
I don't think there's a shortage of remarkable ideas. I think your business has plenty of great opportunities to do great things. Nope, what's missing isn't the ideas. It's the will to execute them. -- Seth Godin
Leaders lead when they take positions, when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the tribe connect to itself. -- Seth Godin
Speak up. Not just tomorrow, but every day. -- Seth Godin
One way to sell a consumer something in the future is simply to get his or her permission in advance. -- Seth Godin
People rarely buy what they need. They buy what they want. -- Seth Godin
In the case of personality, most psychologists agree that there are five traits that are essential in how people look at us: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability. -- Seth Godin
Everyone will think it's stupid!"
"Everyone says it's impossible."
Guess what? Everyone works in the balloon factory and everyone is wrong. -- Seth Godin
My problem with the search for the badge of real is that it trades your goals and your happiness for someone else's. -- Seth Godin
As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus. -- Seth Godin
No, the only way to know what people think is to watch what they do, not what they say. Do they come back for more? Do you cause them to change their behavior? Can you make them smile? -- Seth Godin
I find that I have about six bloggable ideas a day. I also find that writing twice as long a post doesn't increase communication, it usually decreases it. And finally, I found that people get antsy if there are unread posts in their queue. -- Seth Godin
One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you'll discover that some good ones slip through. -- Seth Godin
When your art fails, make better art. -- Seth Godin
If you hear my idea and dont believe it , thats not your fault its mine. -- Seth Godin
The big win is when you refuse to settle for average or mediocre. -- Seth Godin
Perhaps your challenge isn't finding a better project or a better boss. Perhaps you need to get in touch with what it means to feel passionate. People with passion look for ways to make things happen. -- Seth Godin
The key to success is to find a way to stand out
to be the purple cow in a field of monochrome Holsteins. -- Seth Godin
Creating ideas that spread and connecting the disconnected are the two pillars of our new society, and both of them require the posture of the artist. -- Seth Godin
People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of. -- Seth Godin
If you're brilliant and undiscovered and underappreciated (in whatever field you choose), then you're being too generous about your definition of brilliant. -- Seth Godin
I see things differently when I'm focused on opening doors for other people, and more often than not, my doors are opened as well. -- Seth Godin
And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect. -- Seth Godin
The best way to be missed when you're gone,
Is to stand for something when you're here -- Seth Godin
You become a winner because you're good at losing. -- Seth Godin
All marketers are storytellers. Only the losers are liars. -- Seth Godin
Marketing used to be about advertising, and advertising is expensive. Today, marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread. -- Seth Godin
Which are you? ... competen t, inspiring, passionate, obsessed, provocative, impatient, hungry, driven, adoring, inspired, an artist, a genius, someone who cares ... ?
With all these remarkable, powerful, important options available to each of us, why do so many of us default to competent? -- Seth Godin
Keep starting until you finish. -- Seth Godin
It's almost impossible to have fun playing ping pong with someone who doesn't care, won't try or isn't any good. -- Seth Godin
The weird set an example for the rest of us. They raise the bar. They show us through their actions that in fact we're wired to do the new, not to comply with someone a thousand miles away. -- Seth Godin
If school is about postponing the day you have to stand up in front of the world and put yourself at risk, the resistance would like to stay there forever. -- Seth Godin
Outsiders are way more likely to approach your organization with fabulous projects if they think they're likely to both get a good reception and succeed when they get to market. -- Seth Godin
Go do something interesting. Ask if you need help. -- Seth Godin
New fashions (of all sorts) come from unexpected places, not from the arbiters of what's correct. -- Seth Godin
Marketing is a contest for people's attention. -- Seth Godin
If you're going to buy a real book, a paper book, there better be a good reason. Perhaps scarcity is one of those reasons. -- Seth Godin
Quality is not an absolute measure. It doesn't mean 'deluxeness' or 'perfection'. It means keeping the promise the customer wants you to make. -- Seth Godin
Art is what we're doing when we do our best work. -- Seth Godin
If you wait until you are ready, it is almost certainly too late. -- Seth Godin
No one has ever built a statue to a critic, it's true. On the other hand, it's only the people with statues that get pooped on by birds flying by. -- Seth Godin
Sharing an idea you care about is a generous way to change your world for the better. -- Seth Godin
Art is original. Marcel Duchamp was an artist when he pioneered Dadaism and installed a urinal in a museum.
The second person to install a urinal wasn't an artist, he was a plumber. -- Seth Godin
Communication is the transfer of emotion. -- Seth Godin
The factory is a dead end and so is compliance. More obedience will not make us better. That's why graceful is in such demand. -- Seth Godin
What are you working on? If someone asks you that, are you excited to tell them the answer? If you're not, you're wasting away. -- Seth Godin
Black Friday is a media trap, an orchestrated mass hallucination based on herd dynamics and the media cycle. -- Seth Godin
The art of good decision making is looking forward to and celebrating the tradeoffs, not pretending they don't exist. -- Seth Godin
The conversation is happening about your brand whether
you're a part of it or not. -- Seth Godin
In the linchpin economy, the winners are once again the artists who give gifts. Giving a gift makes you indispensable. Inventing a gift, creating art - that is what the market seeks out, and the givers are the ones who earn our respect and attention. -- Seth Godin
Mass marketing means appealing to the masses which means appealing to the average. -- Seth Godin
Why do we value leadership, connection and grace? Because it's scarce, and that scacity creates value. -- Seth Godin
Your positions on EVERYTHING are based on the story you tell yourself and not some universal fact from the universal fact database. -- Seth Godin
Facts are irrelevant. What matters is what the consumer believes. -- Seth Godin
It's far easier to put your future into someone else's hands than it is to slog your way forward, owning the results as you go. -- Seth Godin
Put aside your need for a step-by-step manual and instead realize that analogies are your best friend. -- Seth Godin
You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support, and you market every time you send a memo. -- Seth Godin
Passion is caring enough about your art that you will do almost anything to give it away, to make it a gift, to change people. -- Seth Godin
Successful heretics create their own religions ... You can recognize the need for faith in your idea, you can find the tribe you need to support you, and yes, you can create a new religion around your faith. Steve Jobs did it on purpose at Apple and Phil Knight is famous for doing it at Nike. -- Seth Godin
Everyone is not your customer. -- Seth Godin
If you don't know how it works, find out. If you're not sure if it will work, try it. If it doesn't make sense, play with it until it does. If it's not broken, break it. If it might not be true, find out. -- Seth Godin
When you set down the path to create art, whatever sort of art it is, understand that the path is neither short not easy. That means you must determine if the route is worth the effort. If it's not, dream bigger. -- Seth Godin
In other words, they believe it's wiser to focus more on increasing sales to a smaller percentage of your existing customers than to find new ones. -- Seth Godin
We're often in a hurry to finish. Or in a hurry to close a sale. What happens when we adopt the posture of being in a hurry to be generous? With resources or insight or access or kindness ... It's an interesting sort of impatience. -- Seth Godin
You need editors, not brand managers,who will push the envelope to make [a brand media property] go forward. -- Seth Godin
If you measure it, it will improve. -- Seth Godin
Following the well-lit path, offers little in the way of magic. -- Seth Godin
Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs. -- Seth Godin
Instead of wondering when you're next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life that you don't need to escape from. -- Seth Godin
Practice works because practice gives us a chance to relax enough to make smart choices. -- Seth Godin
Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad of interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you've got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you're learning to say it better. - David Mamet -- Seth Godin
It's possible that your next frontier isn't to get more efficient, it's to get more brave. -- Seth Godin
Mostly, the best way to be the next Mark Zuckerberg is to make difficult choices. -- Seth Godin
We're going to spend our entire future living in tomorrow-investing now, when it's difficult, is the single best moment. -- Seth Godin
Marketing management is now tribal leadership. -- Seth Godin
Two different things: A crowd is a tribe without a leader. A crowd is a tribe without communication. Most organizations spend their time marketing to the crowd. Smart organizations assemble the tribe. -- Seth Godin
Successful people are successful for one simple reason: they think about failure differently. -- Seth Godin
No more than six words on a slide. Ever. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken. -- Seth Godin
Be with the ones you love (and the ones that love you.) Ignore everyone else. -- Seth Godin
If you demand that everything that happens be something you are adequately prepared for, I wonder if you've chosen never to leap in ways that we need you to leap. Once we embrace this chasm, then for the things for which we can never be prepared, we are of course, always prepared. -- Seth Godin
Many people believe that great designers get great clients. It's the other way around. -- Seth Godin
Don't have any meetings about your web strategy. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve. -- Seth Godin
Change is powerful, but change always comes with the possibility of failure as its partner. "This might not work" isn't merely something to be tolerated; it's something you must seek out. -- Seth Godin
People are not afraid of failure, they're afraid of blame. -- Seth Godin
If you can't sell to 1 in 1000, why market to a million? -- Seth Godin
Too often, the person who wrecks our work is us. -- Seth Godin
The status quo is persistent and resistant. It exists because everyone wants it to. Everyone believes that what they've got is probably better than the risk and fear that come with change. -- Seth Godin
It's more important that you be passionate about what you do all day than it is to be passionate about the product that is being sold. -- Seth Godin
If you use your money to create exceptional products and services, you won't need to spend it on advertising. -- Seth Godin
If you speak up online and your ideas have currency, people are going to show up and want to connect with you. What we need more of are people with the guts and emotional labour to do this. The greatest shortage in today's society is an instinct to produce. -- Seth Godin
Learning is not done to you, it is something you choose to do. -- Seth Godin
Those who fear risk also begin to fear movement of any kind. -- Seth Godin
Your drudgery is another person's delight. It's only a job if you treat it that way. The privilege to do our work, to be in control of the promises we make and the things we build, is something worth cherishing. -- Seth Godin
The problem with requiring people to be loud and angry to get things done is that you're now surrounded by people who are loud and angry. -- Seth Godin
A well-defined backup plan is sabotage waiting to happen. Why push through the dip, why take the risk, why blow it all when there's the comfortable alternative instead? The people who break through usually have nothing to lose, and they almost never have a backup plan. -- Seth Godin
My blogging life is basically goalless. I like the zen nature of that, and paradoxically, it improves results. -- Seth Godin
You want it to be hard. If it's hard, then that means others can't do it easily and you can charge for that value. -- Seth Godin
Marketing is the name we use to describe the promise a company makes, the story it tells, the authentic way it delivers on that promise. -- Seth Godin
Just saying yes because you can't bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work. -- Seth Godin
When you learn to listen to your fear, you've found a compass that can show you what matters. -- Seth Godin
Own your dreams. There is no better way to make them happen. -- Seth Godin
When kids grow up wanting to be you, you matter. -- Seth Godin
Products that are remarkable get talked about. -- Seth Godin
If you can embrace the idea that your success and happiness are tied up in defeating the fear that's holding you back, you're 90 percent of the way to where you need to go, because no, we're not kids, and no, this is not a bike. -- Seth Godin
A one-hit wonder is a legend who stopped early. -- Seth Godin
If you treat your employees like mushrooms (keep them in the dark and regularly throw crap on them), it's entirely likely you will get precisely the work you deserve in return. -- Seth Godin
You can define advertising as the science of creating and placing media that interrupts the consumer and then gets him or her to take some action. -- Seth Godin
The goal is to quit the tasks you're doing because you're hiding on behalf of the lizard brain and to push through the very tasks the lizard fears. Is -- Seth Godin
And it doesn't matter to me whether you're running a coffee shop or you're an intellectual or you're in business or flying hot air balloons. People who can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are, win. But consumers, they got way more choices than they used to and way less time. -- Seth Godin
Playing the game is a form of winning the game. In those competitions, we win by being resilient. -- Seth Godin
If you think the solution is more rules and less humanity, I fear you will be disappointed by the results. Organizations that can bring humanity and flexibility to their interactions with other human beings will thrive. -- Seth Godin
If it's work, we try to figure out how to do less, If it's art, we try to figure out how to do more -- Seth Godin
Too often, we don't give people the opportunity to fill in the blanks. -- Seth Godin
Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers. -- Seth Godin
You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long. -- Seth Godin
If you can influence the outcome, do the work.
If you can't influence the outcome, ignore the possibility. It's merely a distraction. -- Seth Godin
Permission marketing is marketing without interruptions. -- Seth Godin
Catering to the passionate is exactly what you should do. -- Seth Godin
Emotional labor is what you get paid to do, and one of the most difficult types of emotional labor is staring into the abyss of choice and picking a path. Your -- Seth Godin
Things that look like shortcuts are actually detours (disguised as less work). -- Seth Godin
A factory demands a compliant workforce in order to succeed. And so we've organized around this idea of compliance in all things - in school, in the foods we eat, in the way we respond to marketing. And it's a dead end. -- Seth Godin
The goal, then, isn't to draw some positioning charts and announce that you have differentiated your product. No, the opportunity is to actually create something that people choose to talk about, regardless of what the competition is doing. -- Seth Godin
The challenge of our time is to find a journey worthy of your heart and your soul. -- Seth Godin
Most people are searching for a path to success that is both easy and certain. Most paths are neither. -- Seth Godin
How we respond to the opportunities and challenges of the outside world now determines how much the outside world values us. -- Seth Godin
The craftsman and the artist say, "Here, I made this." The workingman is asked to follow instructions. -- Seth Godin
Every great company, brand, career has been built in exactly the same way: bit by bit, step by step, little by little. -- Seth Godin
The ONLY thing leaders have in common is the shared decision to lead. -- Seth Godin
One day, I'd like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but my fear is that it would be too long. -- Seth Godin
As consumers, we're too busy to pay attention to advertising, but we're desperate to find good stuff that solves our problems. -- Seth Godin
Copy, not from your industry, from others. You have to go where there is no competition. -- Seth Godin
Fear is the dream killer, the silent voice that pushes us to lose our passion in a vain attempt to seek safety. -- Seth Godin
The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven't given them anything else to care about. -- Seth Godin
Education isn't a problem until it serves as a buffer rom the world and a refuge from the risk of failure. -- Seth Godin
Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that's where charisma comes from, from the leading. -- Seth Godin
Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your return policy. -- Seth Godin
What people are afraid of isn't failure. It's blame. Criticism. -- Seth Godin
Tell your lizard (brain) to shut up. -- Seth Godin
The secret of getting on the shortlist is doing your best work fearlessly for a long time before you get on the list. -- Seth Godin
Isn't the drawing board the place where all the best work happens? It's not a bad thing to go back there. It's the entire point. -- Seth Godin
No one can be responsible for where or how we each begin. No one has the freedom to do anything or everything, and all choices bring consequences. What we choose to do next, though, how to spend our resources or attention or effort, this is what defines us. -- Seth Godin
Skepticism doesn't help you hear. -- Seth Godin
Change isn't made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later. -- Seth Godin
The greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace. -- Seth Godin
Teaching young people to sell is a priceless gift. -- Seth Godin
One of the things that school is for is to teach our children to understand and relish the idea of intellectualism, to develop into something more than a purpose-driven tool for the industrial state. -- Seth Godin
The application process changes the list of who applies. Your applicants reflect your methods. -- Seth Godin
I don't remember writing most of these posts. -- Seth Godin
You don't win an Olympic gold medal with a few weeks of intensive training. -- Seth Godin
The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it's allowed is silos of interest. -- Seth Godin
You are far more likely to do your best work if you are willing to delight a few as opposed to soothe the masses. -- Seth Godin
Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map - these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long. -- Seth Godin
Any customer that walks away, disrespected and defeated, represents tens of thousands of dollars out the door, in addition to the failure of a promise the brand made in the first place. You can't see it but it's happening, daily. -- Seth Godin
People are buying only one thing from you: the way the engagement (hiring you, working with you, dating you, using your product or service, learning from you) makes them feel. -- Seth Godin
Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt -- Seth Godin
Great work is the result of seeking out tension, not avoiding it. -- Seth Godin
Great innovations, powerful interactions and real art are often produced by someone in a state of wonder. Looking around with stars in your eyes and amazement at the tools that are available to you can inspire generosity and creativity and connection -- Seth Godin
The only long-term motivation is self motivation. So hire people who are self motivated and get out of their way. -- Seth Godin
It's human nature to quit when it hurts. But it's that reflex that creates scarcity. -- Seth Godin
If you're not willing to get your 'worst one ever' out of the way, how will you possibly do better than that? -- Seth Godin
Sure, ideas that spread, win, but ideas that don't get spoken always fail. -- Seth Godin
We are leaving the industrial economy and entering the connection economy. -- Seth Godin
So sure, start with a slogan. But don't bother wasting any time on it if you're merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead. -- Seth Godin
Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you've got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don't start, you never get a chance. -- Seth Godin
Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. -- Seth Godin
We're seeing an explosion in new approaches, new models and new forms of interaction. This growth comes from change, insight and exploration, not obedience. -- Seth Godin
Embracing the fear of freedom, deciding to determine your own path, this is the work of a grownup. -- Seth Godin
You can risk being wrong or you can be boring. -- Seth Godin
If you hear my idea but don't believe it, that's not your fault; it's mine. If you see my new product but don't buy it, that's my failure, not yours. If you attend my presentation and you're bored, that's my fault too. -- Seth Godin
So great leaders don't try to please everyone. Great leaders don't water down their message in order to make the tribe a bit bigger. Instead, they realize that a motivated, connected tribe in the midst of a movement is far more powerful than a larger group could ever be. -- Seth Godin
Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger, and it benefits our entire economy. -- Seth Godin
If you don't require the journey to be easy or comfortable or safe, you can change the world -- Seth Godin
Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion. -- Seth Godin
Turning you Passion into your Job is easier than finding a Job that matches your passion -- Seth Godin
Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money. -- Seth Godin
Design is the last great competitive advantage. -- Seth Godin
Emotional labor is available to all of us,
but it is rarely exploited as a competitive
advantage. -- Seth Godin
Everyone we interact with is changed forever. The only questions are: How will they be different (and how different will they be), and how will we be different (and how different will we be) as a result? -- Seth Godin
The industrial age is ending, and a new one is beginning. It produces art instead of stuff and it rewards gracefulness. -- Seth Godin
And yet the real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world. -- Seth Godin
For the rest of us, it's not about what you're born with, it's about what you do. -- Seth Godin
Plans are great, but missions are better. -- Seth Godin
So here we are. We live in a world where we have the -- Seth Godin
The only reason to build a website is to change someone. If you can't tell me the change and you can't tell me the someone, then you're wasting your time. -- Seth Godin
Fitting in is a short-term strategy that gets you nowhere. Standing out is a long-term strategy that takes guts and produces results. -- Seth Godin
We are too focused on avoiding criticism and not enough on making a difference. -- Seth Godin
Where do you put the fear when you choose to innovate? The fear is there, but you have to find a place to put it. -- Seth Godin
Great teachers are precious. Lousy teachers cause damage that lasts forever. We need to reorganize our schools to free the great teachers from tests and reports and busywork, and to expel the lousy -- Seth Godin
I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance. -- Seth Godin
You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art. -- Seth Godin
The reason business writing is horrible is that people are afraid. Afraid to say what they mean, because they might be criticized for it. Afraid to be misunderstood, to be accused of saying what they didn't mean, because they might be criticized for it. -- Seth Godin
The tiny cost of failure ... is dwarfed by the huge cost of not trying. -- Seth Godin
Cheap is the last refuge of a product developer or marketer who is out of great ideas. -- Seth Godin
You can't fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience. -- Seth Godin
Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking.
It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day
to deliver your message with authority.
You should write one.
Seth Godin -- Seth Godin
You can win with consistent benefits, delivered over time. You win by incrementally earning share, attention and trust. -- Seth Godin
Difference between TV and the internet was how far you sat from the screen. TV was an 8 foot activity, and you were a consumer. The internet was a 16 inch activity, and you participated. I think the sitting down thing is similar. You're not going to buy an armoir while standing on the subway. -- Seth Godin
A business owner is the boss, but it's a job, a place that is stable and profitable. An entrepreneur is an artist of sorts, throwing his/herself into impossible situations and seeking out problems that require heart and guts to solve. Both are fine, but choose. -- Seth Godin
Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work. -- Seth Godin
The number one thing to steal from your competitors: Wisdom. -- Seth Godin
No one is as smart as all of us -- Seth Godin
Being open is art. Making a connection when it's not part of your job is a gift. You can say your lines and get away with it, or you can touch someone and make a difference in their lives forever. -- Seth Godin
Something remarkable is worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. New. Interesting. It's a Purple Cow. -- Seth Godin
A symptom of the revolution: When we state something is impossible in theory, but then change our minds when we discover that it is possible in practice. -- Seth Godin
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting. Siddhrtha Gautama -- Seth Godin
Piracy is not the problem, obscurity is. -- Seth Godin
That the horrible Zika virus or HIV, we can look at what it means to be patient zero, what it means to need not much contact to spread, and all of those things follow into the way ideas spread. -- Seth Godin
Defending mediocrity is exhausting. -- Seth Godin
Even good excuses, really good ones, don't help very much.
Explanations, on the other hand, are both scarce and useful.
And accurate forecasts and insightful intuition are priceless. -- Seth Godin
But this is a remarkable egg, an egg worth talking about, an egg worth crossing the street for, an egg worth writing about. -- Seth Godin
Laptop computers dramatically increased the time people spend doing work. (The internet dramatically decreased it, so we're even). -- Seth Godin
Confusion sets in when you're not sure if your product or service is bought or sold, or worse, if you are a salesperson just waiting for people to buy. -- Seth Godin
Conventional wisdom is that you should find a job that matches your passion. I think this is backwards. -- Seth Godin
Popular is not the same important, or often, not the same as good. -- Seth Godin
The art, the new, the ability to connect the dots and to make an impact - sooner or later, that can only come from one who creates, not from a teacher and not from a book. -- Seth Godin
There's no life-work balance. I think you have to have the discipline to have the life you want to have. And if you are stealing from one part of your life in order to make the other part work, you are going to pay for it. -- Seth Godin
Great work is always shunned at first. -- Seth Godin
Desire can't be sated, because if it is, the longing disappears and then we've failed, because desire is the state we seek. -- Seth Godin
Books work as an art form (and an economic one) because they are primarily the work of an individual. -- Seth Godin
Authenticy in marketing is telling a story people want to hear. -- Seth Godin
Reality is the best reassurance of all. -- Seth Godin
Part of leadership (a big part of it actually) is the ability to stick with the dream for a long time. -- Seth Godin
The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing. -- Seth Godin
It always feels too soon to leap. But you have to. Because that's the moment between you and remarkable. -- Seth Godin
We long to connect, all of us. We long to be noticed, to be cared for, to matter. Generosity is the invisible salve on our wound of loneliness, one that benefits both sides, over and over again. -- Seth Godin
Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust. Then you can worry about the rest. -- Seth Godin
Our cultural instinct is to wait to get pickedNo one is going to pick you. Pick yourself. -- Seth Godin
'Good enough' stopped being good enough a long time ago. so why not be great? -- Seth Godin
Change is not a threat, it's an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is. -- Seth Godin
Habits like blogging often and regularly, writing down the way you think, being clear about what you think are effective tactics, ignoring the burbling crowd and not eating bacon. All of these are useful habits. -- Seth Godin
The challenge is to focus on the work, not on the fear that comes from doing the work. -- Seth Godin
Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That's not marketing though, that's efficiency. -- Seth Godin
When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. And -- Seth Godin
The goal of a marketing interaction isn't to close the sale, any more than the goal of a first date is to get married. No, the opportunity is to move forward, to earn attention and trust and curiosity and conversation. -- Seth Godin
Anxiety is practising failure in advance. Anxiety is needless and imaginary. It's fear about fear, fear that means nothing. -- Seth Godin
Real gifts don't demand reciprocation (at least not direct reciprocation), and the best kinds of gifts are gifts of art. -- Seth Godin
When you meet someone, you need to have a superpower. -- Seth Godin
I made a decision to write for my readers, not to try to find more readers for my writing. -- Seth Godin
Competition and the market are like water, they go where they want -- Seth Godin
You can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it, but it's getting raised regardless. -- Seth Godin
Be relentlessly generous, without focusing on when it will come back to you. -- Seth Godin
There are two ways to grow: by stealing from the competition or by growing the market. The first path is slow and painful and difficult. The second path is where the magic of fast growth kicks in. -- Seth Godin
Pain s the truth of art. Art is not a hobby or a pastime. It is the result of an internal battle royal, one between the quest for safety and the desire to matter. -- Seth Godin
Before you tell yourself you have no right to invent this or improve that, remind yourself that the person before you had no right either, but did it anyway. -- Seth Godin
Will you succeed because you are more well-rounded than others? Because you fit in better than everyone else? Bloody unlikely. We succeed when we are trusted to be the best at what we do. -- Seth Godin
You can't win by being more average than average. -- Seth Godin
When your organization becomes more human, more remarkable, faster on its feet, and more likely to connect directly with customers, it becomes indispensable. The very thing that made your employee a linchpin makes YOU a linchpin. -- Seth Godin
We've been trained to prefer being right to learning something, to prefer passing the test to making a difference, and most of all, to prefer fitting in with the right people, the people with economic power. Now it's your turn to stand up and stand out. -- Seth Godin
Our economy now rewards artists far more than any other economy in history ever has. -- Seth Godin
There's no shortage of great ideas. There's a shortage of execution. -- Seth Godin
Those that spend the most effort in search of shortcuts are often the most disappointed and the least successful. -- Seth Godin
Schools have figured this out. They need shortcuts in order to successfully process millions of students a year, and they've discovered that fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance. -- Seth Godin
We don't need more stuff, we need more humanity. -- Seth Godin
The goal has never been to always succeed. The goal is to be allowed to keep initiating. -- Seth Godin
Either you defend the status quo, or you invent the future. -- Seth Godin
If you're not upsetting anyone, you're not changing the status quo. -- Seth Godin
Commit to the frightening work of flying blind -- Seth Godin
You have brilliance in you, your contribution is valuable, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do, and you must. -- Seth Godin
People have been indoctrinated so completely by their jobs that they don't want to know how something works, they're willing to accept that perhaps the laws of nature don't work as they expect, and by the way, can I have the remote? -- Seth Godin
The way I understand gifts is that the giver must make a sacrifice, create an uneven exchange, bring himself closer to the recipient, create change and do it all with the right spirit. -- Seth Godin
Everyone has a comfort zone. Worth considering: How hard (and how often) are you willing to work to get out of it? You can turn that into a habit if you choose. -- Seth Godin
I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first. -- Seth Godin
In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible. -- Seth Godin
What evidence would you need to see to change your mind about this? -- Seth Godin
The wettest, weirdest environment is human interaction. Whatever we build gets misunderstood, corroded and chronic, and it happens quickly and in unpredictable ways. That's one reason why the web is so fascinating-it's a collision between the analytic world of code and wet world of people. -- Seth Godin
Generosity generates income. This works whether you are selling paintings or innovation or a service. Linus -- Seth Godin
The best favors are worth doing for the doing, not because we'll ever get paid back appropriately. -- Seth Godin
Somewhere in the world, someone is doing something that you decided couldn't be done. -- Seth Godin
Just imagine how much you'd get done if you stopped actively sabotaging your own work. -- Seth Godin
If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do -- Seth Godin
Nobody says, 'Yeah, I'd like to set myself up for some serious criticism!' And yet, the only way to be remarkable is to do just that. -- Seth Godin
I think "creativity" is better described as failing repeatedly until you get something right. -- Seth Godin
Learn. Ceaselessly. Learn to code, to write persuasively, to understand new technologies, to bring out the best in your team, to find underused resources and to spot patterns. -- Seth Godin
Rich is my word for someone who can afford to make choices, who has enough resources to do more than merely survive. -- Seth Godin
When we try to drill and practice someone into subservient obedience, we're stamping out the artist that lives within. -- Seth Godin
The Dip is the long stretch between beginner's luck and real accomplishment. The Dip is the set of artificial screens set up to keep people like you out. -- Seth Godin
Here's the thing: The book that will most change your life is the book you write. -- Seth Godin
At the heart of art is learning to see -- Seth Godin
Ten times as much polishing is definitely not ten times as good. Whether you're polishing a piece of furniture or an idea, the benefits diminish quickly. The polishing turns into stalling. -- Seth Godin
Permission Marketers are totally obvious about their objectives with the consumer. -- Seth Godin
Passion can overcome fear - the fear of losing, of failing, of being traditional. -- Seth Godin
The only purpose of customer service is to change feelings. -- Seth Godin
Emotional labor is the task of doing important work, even when it isn't easy. Emotional -- Seth Godin
Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don't. -- Seth Godin
Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance. Tell yourself enough vivid stories about the worst possible outcome of your work and you'll soon come to believe them. Worry is not preparation, and anxiety doesn't make you better. -- Seth Godin
Just start. Start now. Fail often. Enjoy the ride. -- Seth Godin
The question is not Will you succeed? but rather, Will you matter? -- Seth Godin
Go ahead and make something for the elites. Not the elites of class or wealth, but the elites of curiosity, passion and taste. Every great thing ever created was created by and for this group. -- Seth Godin
In unstable times, growth comes from leaders who create change and engage their organizations, instead of from managers who push their employees to do more for less. -- Seth Godin
Fitting in is a short-term strategy, standing out pays off in the long run. -- Seth Godin
Be genuine. Be remarkable. Be worth connecting with. -- Seth Godin
A customer is never out of warranty, even if his product is. -- Seth Godin
It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. Stop settling for what's good enough and start creating art that matters. -- Seth Godin
Do you believe in what you do? Every day? It turns out that belief happens to be a brilliant strategy. -- Seth Godin
Saying 'no' or even 'stop' is the hallmark of the professional you want on your team. -- Seth Godin
If you can raise money, you're never going to have trouble getting a job. -- Seth Godin
insulation prevents you from making the change and finding the understanding you set out to achieve in the first place. -- Seth Godin
The market and the consumer and idea trump the system. -- Seth Godin
The devil doesn't need an advocate. The brave need supporters, not critics -- Seth Godin
Your job isn't to do your job. Your job is to decide what to do next. -- Seth Godin
Connect, create meaning, make a difference, matter, be missed. -- Seth Godin
If you want customers to hear about you, make something worth talking about. -- Seth Godin
In an era of grassroots change, the top of the pyramid is too far away from where the action is to make much of a difference. It -- Seth Godin
Make more decisions. That's the only way to get better at it. -- Seth Godin
1. Your business needs more linchpins. It's scary to rely on a particular employee, but in a postindustrial economy, you have no choice. 2. You are capable of becoming a linchpin. And if you do, you'll discover that it's worth the effort. -- Seth Godin
You are not your resume, you are your work. -- Seth Godin
I think if you're remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn't have a resume at all. -- Seth Godin
I hope I'm better looking than Yoda, but - I'm really interested in people who have something to say, a change they want to make and can't figure out why they can't make it spread. -- Seth Godin
Not adding value is the same as taking it away. -- Seth Godin
Lack of resources (payroll), time and competing priorities are why so many nonprofits haven't done well. It's that simple. -- Seth Godin
The most successful givers aren't doing it because they're being told to. They do it because doing it is fun. It gives them joy. -- Seth Godin
It's clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them. ~ Seth Godin -- Seth Godin
The next thing you do today will be the most important thing on your
agenda, because, after all, you're doing it next. Well, perhaps it will
be the most urgent thing. Or the easiest. In fact, the most important
thing probably isn't even on your agenda. -- Seth Godin
We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don't need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime. -- Seth Godin
One key to moving forward is knowing what to leave behind. -- Seth Godin
With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top. -- Seth Godin
In a digital world, the gift I give you almost always benefits me more than it costs. -- Seth Godin
The ladder of success isn't a ladder. It's a series of steps with leaps interspersed along the way. -- Seth Godin
Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy. -- Seth Godin
What we most need in our lives, though, is something worth doing, worth it because we care. -- Seth Godin
The question isn't whether or not you should wait to be picked, the question is whether you care enough to pick yourself. -- Seth Godin
The way you make something happen is to do something that a fool could screw up. -- Seth Godin
Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It's not just about entertainment - it's about education. Permission marketing is curriculum marketing. -- Seth Godin
The challenge with being an initiator of projects is that you are never, ever done. -- Seth Godin
It's war that makes generals -- Seth Godin
The way you feel about giving money to good causes has a lot to do with the way you feel about money -- Seth Godin
The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security. -- Seth Godin
Perhaps marketing is about to transition to a new kind of profession, one that requires insight, dedication and smarts. -- Seth Godin
The business model should be such that the employees needed possess the lowest possible level of skill necessary to fulfill the functions for which each is intended. -- Seth Godin
Nothing about becoming indispensable is easy. If it's easy, it's already been done and it's no longer valuable. -- Seth Godin
Go ahead and act as if your decisions are temporary. Because they are. Be bold, make mistakes, learn a lesson, and fix what doesn't work. No sweat, no need to hyperventilate. -- Seth Godin
Seeing clearly means that you're smart enough to know when a project is doomed, or brave enough to persevere when your colleagues are fleeing for the hills. Abandoning your worldview in order to try on someone else's is the first step in being able to see things as they are. -- Seth Godin
The best creative solutions don't come from finding good answers to the questions that are presented ... They come from inventing new questions! -- Seth Godin
Most people don't see that they have options beyond what society tells them to do. That's the biggest problem. They honestly believe that compliance is the shortcut to success. -- Seth Godin
If not enough people doubt you, you're not making a difference. -- Seth Godin
If you're not willing to face the abyss of choice, you will almost certainly not spend enough time dancing with opportunity. -- Seth Godin
Mediocre is merely a failed attempt to be really good. -- Seth Godin
The object of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater. -- Seth Godin
I've never once met a successful blogger who questioned the personal value of what she did. -- Seth Godin
Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations. -- Seth Godin
Generous and authentic leadership will always defeat the selfish efforts of someone doing it just because she can. How -- Seth Godin
One key to learning and success is the willingness to try something new, and feel momentarily incompetent. -- Seth Godin
If you believe that a given situation should make you unhappy, then it will, and the unhappiness will then reinforce the condition. -- Seth Godin
Care. Care more than you need to, more often than expected, more completely than the other guy. -- Seth Godin
Studying entrepreneurshi p without doing it ... is like studying the appreciation of music without listening to it. -- Seth Godin
If you're short on passion, it might be because your # goals are too small or the # fear ... -- Seth Godin
Bloggers around the world are discovering that it's cheaper and faster and more effective to build their own media channels than it is to waste time arguing with the old ones. -- Seth Godin
Trying to appeal to everyone is almost sure to fail, for the simple reason that everyone wants something different! -- Seth Godin
You don't need more time in your day. You need to decide. -- Seth Godin
Sure, compare. But compare the things that matter to the journey you're on. The rest is noise. -- Seth Godin
On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you're doing great work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to pretend you're mediocre. You're free to contribute. -- Seth Godin
Bullet points are not the point. -- Seth Godin
The easiest thing is to react. The second easiest thing is to respond. But the hardest thing is to initiate. -- Seth Godin
Who you hang out with determines what you dream about and what you collide with.
And the collisions and the dreams lead to your changes.
And the changes are what you become.
Change the outcome by changing your circle. -- Seth Godin
The habit of doing more than is necessary can only be earned through practice. -- Seth Godin
The myth that the CEO is going to discover you and nurture you and ask you to join her for lunch is just that, a Hollywood myth. -- Seth Godin
Our culture works hard to prevent change. -- Seth Godin
Creating value through interaction is far more important than solving a consumer's problem in thirty seconds. -- Seth Godin
How was your day? If your answer was "fine," then I don't think you were leading. -- Seth Godin
Empathy requires something extremely difficult: accepting the fact that we are not and never will be in the other person's shoes. There's no rational, universal course because individuals have different goals, different worldviews and different experiences. -- Seth Godin
Leadership is a choice. It's the choice not to do nothing. -- Seth Godin
No one can force you to stand up, speak up and make a difference. But if you back off and play along, please understand that whatever happens happened, at least in part, because you acquiesced. -- Seth Godin
All Marketers are liars tell stories, -- Seth Godin
If you don't get it built, the work doesn't matter. -- Seth Godin
Leading is a skill, not a gift. You're not born with it, you learn how. -- Seth Godin
(It's easier for investors and bosses to spend time and money going after a proven market, even though proven markets are the hardest to break into.) -- Seth Godin
Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from. -- Seth Godin
Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow. -- Seth Godin
Perfect is an illusion, one that was created to maintain the status quo. The Six Sigma charade is largely about hiding from change, because change is never perfect. Change means reinvention, and until something is reinvented, we have no idea what the spec is. -- Seth Godin
Group projects are the exception in school, but they should be the norm. -- Seth Godin
Genius is the act of solving a problem in a way no one has solved it before. -- Seth Godin
Leaders have followers, managers have employees. Managers make widgets, leaders make change. -- Seth Godin
The largest enemy of change isn't 'no', it's 'not yet' - that is the easiest way to forestall change. -- Seth Godin
Alternative to planning on late is to initiate before it's required, to ship before deadline, to put the idea out there before the crisis hits. This act of bravery actually gives you influence, leverage, and control in a way that planning on late never can. Dandelion -- Seth Godin
Believe in what you do, because you may have to do it for a long time before it catches on. -- Seth Godin
Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can. -- Seth Godin
In our desire to please everyone, it's very easy to end up being invisible or mediocre. -- Seth Godin
Our job as marketers and leaders, is to create vibrant pockets, not to hunt for mass. -- Seth Godin
It's extremely difficult to find smart people willing to start useful projects. Because sometimes what you start doesn't work. The fact that it doesn't work every time should give you confidence, because it means you're doing something that frightens others. -- Seth Godin
Just about anything worth doing is worth doing better. -- Seth Godin
If you're remarkable it's likely that some people won't like you. -- Seth Godin
Our best work can't possibly appeal to the average masses, only our average work can. Finding the humility to happily walk away from those that don't get it unlocks our ability to do great work. -- Seth Godin
Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself. -- Seth Godin
It's much easier to spend a lot of time making your microphone louder than it is working on making your message more compelling. -- Seth Godin
We know what you want to accomplish ... The real question is, 'what are you willing to push through the dip for?' What are you willing to stand up for, bleed for, commit to and generally be unreasonable about? Because that's what's going to actually get done. -- Seth Godin
I think that any time reality doesn't match your expectations, it means that marketing was involved. -- Seth Godin
The combination of passion and art is what makes someone a linchpin. -- Seth Godin
I was lucky enough to co-found a business in college that ended up with 400 employees, and I launched 20 different projects while I was there - a project a week. -- Seth Godin
To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional. Not just survive the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can't help but talk about it, recommend it, and, yes, choose it. -- Seth Godin
When you put your ideas in the world, then, and only then, do you know if they're real. -- Seth Godin
That's your opportunity
to approach your work in a way that generates unique learning and interactions that are worth sharing. -- Seth Godin
Fact is, the first 100 years of our country's history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks. The third century is about ideas. -- Seth Godin
Choose your customers, choose your future. -- Seth Godin
The time to look for a new job is when you don't need one. The time to switch jobs is before it feels comfortable. -- Seth Godin
Why waste a sentence saying nothing? -- Seth Godin
Art is a personal act of courage. -- Seth Godin
Linchpins are the essential building blocks of tomorrow's high-value organizations. They don't bring capital or expensive machinery, nor do they blindly follow instructions and merely contribute labor. Linchpins are indispensable, the driving force of our future. -- Seth Godin
The fatigue was there, but some people understood that putting it aside was the single most important factor in succeeding. -- Seth Godin
The first rule of doing work that matters: Go to work on a regular basis. -- Seth Godin
Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time. -- Seth Godin
People watch what you do more than listen to what you say. -- Seth Godin
Every voice doesn't matter
only the voices that move your idea forward, that make it better, that make you better, that make it more likely you will ship work that benefits your tribe. -- Seth Godin
Where did your art go while you were tweeting? -- Seth Godin
The definition of a revolution: it destroys the perfect and enables the impossible. -- Seth Godin
Positive thinking doesn't guarantee results, all it offers is something better than negative thinking. -- Seth Godin
You dont need to convince everyone. All you need to do is motivate people who choose to follow you. -- Seth Godin
Faith in yourself, in your friends, in your colleagues and most of all, faith in your ability to impact our future is the best strategy I know. -- Seth Godin
Kickstarter isn't a profit center, it's an organizer and an instigator. -- Seth Godin
A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner. -- Seth Godin
How do I dance with the fear? Fear is not the enemy. Paralysis is the enemy. -- Seth Godin
Competence is the enemy of change! -- Seth Godin
All the good things in my career are a direct descendant of what I did and learned at # camp -- Seth Godin
Turn strangers into friends. Turn friends into donors. And then do the most important job: Turn your donors into fundraisers. -- Seth Godin
If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place. -- Seth Godin
Differentiation is a zero-sum, advertising-based game. -- Seth Godin
Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders. -- Seth Godin
I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else. -- Seth Godin
Criticism comes to those who stand out. -- Seth Godin
So we take the deal. We agree to do a job in exchange for a set of instructions. And for the hundred years that it led to increasing standards of living, it seemed like a very good deal. -- Seth Godin
The only way to get what you're worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about. -- Seth Godin
Your history of work is as important as the work you'll do tomorrow. -- Seth Godin
Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements. -- Seth Godin
The future isn't so much about absorbing or tolerating change, it's about making change. -- Seth Godin
People who can spread ideas regardless of what those ideas are, win. -- Seth Godin
Our job is obvious: we need to get out of the way, shine a light, and empower a new generation to teach itself and to go further and faster than any generation ever has. -- Seth Godin
Ideas aren't a sideshow that make our factory a little more valuable. Our factory is a sideshow that makes our ideas a little more valuable! -- Seth Godin
The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand. -- Seth Godin
Because frequency is free in an online permission program, and much more effective offline, the marketer has the luxury of riding the impact curve up without a matching cost curve. -- Seth Godin
If you're a marketer who doesn't know how to invent, design, influence, adapt, and ultimately discard products, then you're no longer a marketer. You're deadwood. -- Seth Godin
After you produce you can select. you can curate. you can censor. But for now, have bad ideas, lots and lots of bad ideas. -- Seth Godin
It's easy to be afraid of taking a plunge, because, after all, plunging is dangerous. And the fear is a safe way to do nothing at all. Wading, on the other hand, gets under the radar. It gives you a chance to begin. -- Seth Godin
You can be right or you can have empathy. You can't do both. -- Seth Godin
Developing expertise or assets that are not easily copied is essential; otherwise you're just a middleman. -- Seth Godin
Just because something is easy to measure doesn't mean it's important. -- Seth Godin
Average feels safe but it's not. It's invisible. -- Seth Godin
If there isn't a good reason, go home. If there is, then do something ... loud, now, and memorable. -- Seth Godin
Farmer will tell you that fertile land is much more important than better seeds.) -- Seth Godin
orr we find a typo in a book. -- Seth Godin
3. Here's a gift, I love you. -- Seth Godin
In the long run, doing work that's important leads to more happiness than doing work that's merely profitable. -- Seth Godin
Tribes makes our lives better, and leading a tribe is the best life of all. -- Seth Godin
One way to figure out a great theory is to look at what's working in the real world and figure out what the various successes have in common. With -- Seth Godin
What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do for a living is ship. -- Seth Godin
While you may have made money doing something a certain way yesterday, there's no reason to believe you'll succeed at it tomorrow. -- Seth Godin
All artists are entrepreneurs. All entrepreneurs are artists. -- Seth Godin
Anyone who says failure is not an option has also ruled out innovation. -- Seth Godin
Your success is no longer about your ability to do what you are told, and do it well. -- Seth Godin
The world is begging for you to lead. -- Seth Godin
Debt creates stress, stress creates behaviors that don't lead to happiness. -- Seth Godin
Be bold, make mistakes, learn a lesson, and fix what doesn't work. -- Seth Godin
A book is a souvenir of an idea. -- Seth Godin
Stop trying to find the formula that will instantly make your idea into a winner. Instead of being scientists, the best marketers are artists. They realize that whatever is being sold is being purchased, because it creates an emotional want, not because it fills a simple need. -- Seth Godin
A Timid Trapeze Artist Is a Dead Trapeze Artist -- Seth Godin
Then a deadline arrives and you have to cut it short. Is shipping that important? I think it is. I think the discipline of shipping is essential in the long-term path to becoming indispensable. -- Seth Godin
Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about. -- Seth Godin
If you work in an urgent-only culture, the only solution is to make the right things urgent. -- Seth Godin
The first step to getting good is admitting that you aren't (yet). -- Seth Godin
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.
That would be you. -- Seth Godin
The enemy of creativity is fear. -- Seth Godin
It will take you less time and effort to do a thing the difficult way than it will to buy, try and discard all the shortcuts. -- Seth Godin
There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do. -- Seth Godin
I can do this forever. It's like adjusting a pair -- Seth Godin
Figure out the people part and the technology gets a whole lot simpler. -- Seth Godin
Risking the appearance of weakness takes strength. And the market knows it. -- Seth Godin
Take the long way. Do the hard work, consistently and with generosity and transparency. And then you won't waste time doing it over. -- Seth Godin
When we recognize the fraud for what it is, we feel incredibly stupid. Something more than our bank accounts is damaged - our egos are damaged. As a result, it's almost impossible for the marketer to regain our trust. -- Seth Godin
If we live in a world where information drives what we do, the information we get becomes the most important thing. The person who chooses that information has power. -- Seth Godin
Incrementalism ceases to be a good strategy when there's a cliff on the route. -- Seth Godin
You don't become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to be indispensable is to be different. That's because if you're the same, so are plenty of other people. -- Seth Godin
How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable? -- Seth Godin
All motivation is self-motivation. Your family, your boss, or your co-workers can try to get your engine going, but until you decide what to accomplish, nothing will happen. -- Seth Godin
We fail when we give up too soon. -- Seth Godin
It might be bold to put your work into the world unadorned, but it's probably ineffective. -- Seth Godin
Ideas that spread win. -- Seth Godin
Faith is underrated. Paradoxically, religion is vastly overrated. -- Seth Godin
You will never become a category of one if you run with the pack. -- Seth Godin
Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you male, but about the stories you tell. -- Seth Godin
Networking that matters is helping people achieve their goals. -- Seth Godin
Most of the time, creative entrepreneurs lose interest long before their marketing message loses its power. -- Seth Godin
There's no map for being an artist. -- Seth Godin
The opportunity is not in being momentarily popular with the anonymous masses. It's in being missed when you're gone, in doing work that matters to the tribe you choose. -- Seth Godin
Marketing begins before the product is launched. -- Seth Godin
Competent people are the most resistant to change -- Seth Godin
Play a new game, not the older game but faster. -- Seth Godin
One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice. -- Seth Godin
Believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic. -- Seth Godin
Don't create for the masses. Create for the people who are your kind of weird. -- Seth Godin
Say what you believe and see who follows. -- Seth Godin
You can't control other people, and giving them the power to decide if you will continue to produce good work is foolish. -- Seth Godin
Gratitude and opportunity create more of the same. -- Seth Godin
There's no correlation between how good your idea is and how likely your organization will be to embrace it. -- Seth Godin
Surprise and delight and connection are remarkable. -- Seth Godin
Instead of focusing on arguing with people who say no, it might be easier to get near the people who like to say yes. -- Seth Godin
All the creativity books in the world aren't going to help you if you're unwilling to have lousy, lame, and even dangerously bad ideas. -- Seth Godin
Every revolution destroys the average middle first and most savagely. -- Seth Godin
The minute there's a map, there is no art. Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity. -- Seth Godin
Marketing used to be what you say
Now, marketing is what you do. What you make. How you act. The choices you make when you are sure no one is looking. -- Seth Godin
The problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win -- Seth Godin
Way more productive, I think, to push yourself to be more in the world, not to encourage yourself to hide. -- Seth Godin
As soon as you are willing to say 'it's not for you', you're freed up to make art. -- Seth Godin
More time [to decide] without more information just creates anxiety, not insight. -- Seth Godin
Action or inaction are both forms of leadership and standard setting. -- Seth Godin
The combination of fear and ignorance (two sides of the same coin) can be paralyzing. -- Seth Godin
The world doesn't owe you a living, but just when you needed it, a door was opened for you to make a difference. -- Seth Godin
In every organization everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed with fear. -- Seth Godin
More fashion = less need for quality -- Seth Godin
Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn't mean mattered. -- Seth Godin
Art is what we do when we're truly alive. -- Seth Godin
The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work in a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user. -- Seth Godin
If you're different somehow and have made yourself unique, people will find you and pay you more. -- Seth Godin
It takes confidence and guts to intentionally create tension. -- Seth Godin
If you're not proud of where you work, go work somewhere else. -- Seth Godin
If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely. -- Seth Godin
It's uncomfortable to challenge the status quo. -- Seth Godin
The person who fails the most wins. -- Seth Godin
Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it's a lot easier to launch work that matters. -- Seth Godin
I do not think you can get rid of the fear ... but you can dance with it. -- Seth Godin
Make enough mole hills, and eventually you will build a mountain. -- Seth Godin
You can listen to what people say, sure. But you will be far more effective if you listen to what people do. -- Seth Godin
Becoming a linchpin is not an act of selfishness. I see it as an act of generosity, -- Seth Godin
The act of trying to guarantee the success of an innovation is almost certain to make it less likely that it will succeed. -- Seth Godin
Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does. -- Seth Godin
Fans, true fans, are hard to find and precious. Just a few can change everything. What they demand, though, is generosity and bravery. -- Seth Godin
Amazon appears to be building a permission asset, not a brand asset. -- Seth Godin
We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo. -- Seth Godin
You cannot buy your way to share of voice today; you cannot buy attention anymore. -- Seth Godin
There are fewer and fewer good jobs where you can get paid merely for showing up. Instead, successful organizations are paying for people who make a difference and are shedding everyone else. Just -- Seth Godin
Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow them. -- Seth Godin
If you try to delight the undelightable, you've made yourself miserable for no reason. -- Seth Godin
Do the emotional labor of working on things that others fear. -- Seth Godin
The reason social media is so difficult for most organizations: It's a process, not an event. -- Seth Godin
Getting picked is fine if it happens to you. But it's not a plan. It's a version of waiting and hoping. -- Seth Godin
Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death. -- Seth Godin
Denigrating art you don't understand doesn't hurt the art - it reveals something about your willingness to learn. -- Seth Godin
Anything worth achieving in life has a dip -- Seth Godin
The Dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value -- Seth Godin
The essential thing to know about the Dip is that it's there. Knowing that you're facing a Dip is the first step in getting through it. -- Seth Godin
We seek out experiences and products that deliver more value, more connection, and more experience, and change us for the better. -- Seth Godin
You succeed because you've chosen to be confident. It's not really useful to require yourself to be successful before you're able to become confident. -- Seth Godin
Gifts are not favors. If you expect something in return, it's not a gift. -- Seth Godin
Your generosity is more important than your perfection. -- Seth Godin
An organization filled with honest, motivated, connected, eager, learning, experimenting, ethical and driven people will always defeat the one that merely has talent. Every time. -- Seth Godin
Positive thinking is hard. Worth it, though. -- Seth Godin
By the time there is a case study about your industry, you are already too late ... -- Seth Godin
Initiative is the privilege of picking yourself. -- Seth Godin
The only way to consistently grow in B2B is to be better than very good. -- Seth Godin
Write like you talk. Often. -- Seth Godin
You can keep waiting to get plucked from obscurity, or you can learn how to champion your project one person at a time. -- Seth Godin
People that take responsibility are often given responsibility! -- Seth Godin
No organization ever created an innovation. People innovate, not companies. -- Seth Godin
If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you'll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job. -- Seth Godin
Marketers have turned advertising into an interactive process. Using relationships and frequency and permission, -- Seth Godin
Seeing, despite the name, isn't merely visual. -- Seth Godin
The one path that never works is the most common one: doing nothing at all. -- Seth Godin
A big part of doing your work is defending your time and your attention so you can do your work. -- Seth Godin
You don't make art after you become an artist. You become an artist by ceaselessly making art. -- Seth Godin
Just about every great, brave or beautiful thing in our culture was created by someone who didn't do it for money. -- Seth Godin
Soon is not as good as now. -- Seth Godin
The value we create is directly related to how much valuable information we can produce, how much trust we can earn, and how often we innovate. -- Seth Godin
The web has made kicking ass easier to achieve, and mediocrity harder to sustain. Mediocrity now howls in protest." The -- Seth Godin
The key to getting a reputation for being brilliant is actually being brilliant, not just acting like you are. -- Seth Godin
Viewing the web as a platform for generosity is very different than seeing an opportunity to turn it into an ATM machine. -- Seth Godin
We need to care enough to connect, to put ourselves at emotional risk and play one note worth hearing. -- Seth Godin
It doesn't matter if anyone reads it, buys it, sponsors it or shares it. It matters that you show up. -- Seth Godin
What I mean by art is the human act of doing something that connects us to someone else -- Seth Godin
Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in. -- Seth Godin
Successful people are the ones who are breaking the rules. -- Seth Godin
No one knows more about the way you think than you do. -- Seth Godin
What I learned: Shun nonbelievers. Ignore critics. Do your best for people who want to dance with you. -- Seth Godin
Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed. They want to be missed the day they don't show up. They want to be missed when they're gone. -- Seth Godin
It's easy to pretend expertise when there's no data to contradict you. -- Seth Godin
Here's an assignment for you: Write it down. Write down under what circumstances you're willing to quit. And when. And then stick with it. -- Seth Godin
Success brings with it the fear of blowing it. With more to lose, there's more pressure not to lose it. -- Seth Godin
Human nature is to need a map. If you're brave enough to draw one, people will follow. -- Seth Godin
No niche is too small if it's yours. -- Seth Godin
The key piece of leverage was this promise: follow these instructions and you don't have to think. Do your job and you don't have to be responsible for decisions. Most of all, you don't have to bring your genius to work. -- Seth Godin
Everyone picks the best one when given a choice. -- Seth Godin
The good news is that more than ever, value accrues to those that show up, those that make a difference, those that do work that matters. -- Seth Godin
Finding new ways, more clever ways to interrupt people doesn't work. -- Seth Godin
Two elements of successful leadership: a willingness to be wrong and an eagerness to admit it. -- Seth Godin
The Cul-de-Sac ( French for "dead end" ) ... is a situation where you work and work and work and nothing much changes -- Seth Godin
We vote for a presidential candidate without saying, Why not run the country for a month and then we'll see . -- Seth Godin
If you're in the idea business, it doesn't matter where you're from. It matters if we care about the change you're making. -- Seth Godin
Surprise comes from defying expectations. -- Seth Godin
So much easier to aim for the smallest possible audience, not the largest, to build long-term value among a trusted, delighted tribe, to create work that matters and stands the test of time. -- Seth Godin
In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn't necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it. -- Seth Godin
Be personal. Be relevant. Be specific. -- Seth Godin
'How was your day?' is a question that matters a lot more than it seems. -- Seth Godin
What They Should Teach in School Only two things: 1. Solve interesting problems 2. Lead SOLVE -- Seth Godin
Make it easy to believe. -- Seth Godin
As you've probably discovered, great work makes us uncomfortable. -- Seth Godin
Surprise and differentiation have far more impact than noise does. -- Seth Godin
Who gets to decide what you want? -- Seth Godin
Organizations grow when they persuade a tiny cadre to be passionate, not when they touch millions with a mediocre message -- Seth Godin
Selling is about a transference of emotion, not a presentation of facts. -- Seth Godin
Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can't deal with the stress of the moment. -- Seth Godin
Good marketers measure. -- Seth Godin
The job isn't to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo. -- Seth Godin
Treat different people differently. Anything else is a compromise. -- Seth Godin
The opposite of coherent is interesting. -- Seth Godin
The less people know, the more they yell. -- Seth Godin
We don't become mediocre all at once, and we rarely do it on purpose. -- Seth Godin
Listen to your fear but don't obey it. -- Seth Godin
I define a factory as an organization that has figured it out, a place where people go to do what they're told and earn a paycheck. -- Seth Godin
We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you've already figured out, demands initiative. -- Seth Godin
The biggest secret of the Internet is that it is inherently a direct marketing medium. In fact, the Internet is the greatest direct marketing medium of all time. -- Seth Godin
This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over. -- Seth Godin
Think for a second about the people you know who are engaged, satisfied, eager to get to work. Most of them, I'll bet, make change. -- Seth Godin
Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in a conversation-rich world. -- Seth Godin
The organizations of the future are filled with smart, fast, flexible people on a mission -- Seth Godin
The job is not the work. -- Seth Godin
The goal is to be on the hook, not to let someone else do the scary parts. -- Seth Godin
The only path to amazing runs directly through not-yet-amazing -- Seth Godin
If you're not the best in the world at what you do, then you have to get better. -- Seth Godin
Delivering unique creativity is hardest of all, because not only do you have to have insight, but you also need to be passionate enough to risk the rejection that delivering a solution can bring. You must ship. -- Seth Godin
Giving people what they want isn't always what they want. -- Seth Godin
When you can swim, who cares how deep the water is? -- Seth Godin
I wonder if real art comes when you build the thing that they don't have a prize for yet. -- Seth Godin
We're all born creative, it takes a little while to become afraid. -- Seth Godin
Perfect can't possibly be the goal, we're left with generous, important and human instead. -- Seth Godin
If you want to be a leader, go lead -- Seth Godin
The answer to the question "where do good ideas come from" is always the same, the come from bad ideas. If you come up with 20 bad ideas you get one good one. -- Seth Godin
A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone. -- Seth Godin
There's no shortage of remarkable ideas, what's missing is the will to execute them. -- Seth Godin
Don't wait to be picked. Pick yourself. -- Seth Godin
More and more people now have jobs that require them to confront the risk of appearing stupid on a regular basis. -- Seth Godin