Quotes from Seth Godin

ASSOCIATE WITH WINNERS Four groups of people will dramatically influence how your business evolves: » Customers » Employees » Vendors » Peers Line yourself up with the wrong people in each category and, like a poorly created bonsai tree, your business will grow up twisted and misshapen.

You've certainly met these people. They're too busy taking notes to get anything done, too busy inventing to actually instigate. To stop this process, one needs to do only two things: Start. And then . . . Ship. Can't

The alternative to tourism The linchpin, the engaged one, the graceful actor in an unfolding play—these people don't seek to only inspect. They're not traveling in order to tick a checkbox. Instead, they open themselves to the world they bought a ticket to, knowing full well that they will be changed.

Emotional labor is the hard work of making art, producing generosity, and exposing creativity. Working without a map involves both vision and the willingness to do something about what you see. 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.

You don't have to like change to take advantage of it.

The driving force that gets people to pay a specialist is that their disease is unpredictable or hard to diagnose. The reason we're here is to solve the hard problems.

Believe it or not, quitting is often a great strategy, a smart way to manage your life and your career. Sometimes, though, quitting is exactly the wrong thing to do.

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.

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

More fashion = less need for quality

Ben & Jerry's avoided temptation for years. If they didn't have a super-cool flavor or a great promotional idea, they did nothing. Yes to free ice cream once a year at every scoop shop, but no to 5 percent off any pint this week at your local store.

This book is about love and art and change and fear. It's about overcoming a multigenerational conspiracy designed to sap your creativity and restlessness. It's about leading and making

3. ALWAYS LEAVE BOTH SIDES AN OUT. Nothing lasts forever, especially business partner- ships. A dear friend of mine spent two years wrestling with a former partner when he left in a huff. In the end, everyone loses. Make sure you have a well-defined clause that lets either party leave without wrecking the business.

Your business has to work when it's small in order to survive to the point where it gets big.

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. 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.

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.

It's called Zipf's law, and it applies to résumés and college application rates and best-selling records and everything in between. Winners win big because the marketplace loves a winner.

A life without attachment and stress can give you the freedom to see things as they are and call them as you see them. If you had this skill, what an asset you would be to any organization.

Tribes are about faith—about belief in an idea and in a community. And they are grounded in respect and admiration for the leader of the tribe and for the other members as well. Do you believe in what you do? Every day? It turns out that belief happens to be a brilliant strategy.

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. The

Something remarkable is worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. New. Interesting. It's a Purple Cow.

in virtually every industry the most trusted brand is also the most profitable. Frequency led to awareness, awareness to familiarity, and familiarity to trust. And trust, almost without exception, leads to profit.

The mistake that's so easy to make is to get greedy as you choose your hive, to say, "this product is for everyone" or "anyone can benefit from this idea." Well, there are seven billion people on the planet, so it's unlikely your comment is correct; even if it is, there's little chance that a virus would spread across a hive that big.

If you accept that human beings are difficult to change, and embrace (rather than curse) the uniqueness that everyone brings to the table, you'll navigate the world with more bliss and effectiveness. And make better decisions, too.