Quotes from Seth Godin

Deadlines? Surely you know someone who is late all the time. Someone who can't deliver anything of value unless they've stalled so much they've created an urgency, an emergency that requires mind-blowing effort and adrenaline to deliver. This is not efficient or reliable behavior, and yet they persist. The reason is simple: they can't push through the common fear of completion unless they can create a greater fear of total failure.

You need editors, not brand managers,who will push the envelope to make [a brand media property] go forward.

Are you overinvesting (really significantly overinvesting) time and money so that you have a much greater chance of dominating a market? And if you don't have enough time and money, do you have the guts to pick a different, smaller market to conquer?

Sure, ideas that spread, win, but ideas that don't get spoken always fail.

It's not an accident that school is like a job, not an accident that there are supervisors and rules and tests and quality control. You do well, you get another job (the next grade), and continue to do well and you get a real job. Do poorly, don't fit in, rebel—and you are kicked out of the system.

We're not born to be selfish. And the economics of living in community make it clear that short-term hustle rarely benefits anyone. But when you're flailing and looking for something (anything) to stand on, there's pressure to choose the selfish path. To a drowning man, everyone else is a stepping-stone to safety.

the stupid thing to do is to start, give it your best shot, waste a lot of time and money, and quit right in the middle of the Dip.

We run our schools like factories. We line kids up in straight rows, put them in batches (called grades), and work very hard to make sure there are no defective parts. Nobody standing out, falling behind, running ahead, making a ruckus. Playing it safe. Following the rules. Those seem like the best ways to avoid failure.

Waiting isn't easy, which is precisely why it is so effective when engaging with other people.

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.

When you lead without compensation, when you sacrifice without guarantees, when you take risks because you believe, then you are demonstrating your faith in the tribe and its mission.

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.

Instead of being scientists, the best marketers are artists.

If you can discipline yourself to read, you can free up two years of your life for the good stuff!)

If you have any comments at all about the store, please call me at home.

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.

Wouldn't it be great to be gifted? In fact... It turns out that choices lead to habits. Habits become talents. Talents are labeled gifts. You're not born this way, you get this way.

If religion comprises rules you follow, faith is demonstrated by the actions you take.

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.

Choose your customers, choose your future.

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.

REDO THE MISSION STATEMENT AND THE BUSINESS PLAN EVERY THREE MONTHS

Modern society is based on a modern idea: get the work done by replaceable cogs, by individuals programmed to do what they're told, follow instructions and work cheap. The attraction of this system is evident by how easily ordinary organizations replace ordinary employees, and how eagerly schools indoctrinate their students.

You need a formal business reinvention process. Put it in your calendar. Every three months, take your most trusted advisers, employees, backers, and even customers and get away from the phones for a little while. Start from scratch. "If we were starting over—no office, no employees, no customers—would we choose to be where we are today?" If the answer isn't, yes, then it's time to take a hard look at the path you took and the impact it has had on your business.