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Bestselling author, Entrepreneur and Agent of change. Seth's blog can be found at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
November 2009
Monday November 30, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:21AM EST on November 30, 2009
"How much life insurance do you have?" Zig Ziglar liked to say that with that one question, you could tell if someone was a successful life insurance agent. If they're not willing to buy it with their own money, how...
Sunday November 29, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:17AM EST on November 29, 2009
Wikipedia contains facts about facts. It's a collection of facts from other places. Facebook doesn't have your friends. It has facts about your friends. Google is at its best when it gives you links to links, not the information itself....
Saturday November 28, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:38AM EST on November 28, 2009
Some artists continually seek to tear down boundaries, to find new powder, new territory, new worlds to explore. They're the ones that hop the fence to get to places no one has ever been. Other artists understand that they need...
Friday November 27, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:34AM EST on November 27, 2009
Who do you listen to? Who are you trying to please? Which customers, relatives, bloggers, pundits, bosses, peers and passers by have influence over your choices? Should the Pulitzer judges decide what gets written, or the angry boss at the...
Thursday November 26, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:55AM EST on November 26, 2009
No gifts, no guilt. Universal, even if it's not celebrated on the same day everywhere. Whenever I sit down at this keyboard, I feel humbled and quite lucky to have the privilege. Every day is Thanksgiving, because without the people...
Wednesday November 25, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:30AM EST on November 25, 2009
I've noticed that people who read a lot of blogs and a lot of books also tend to be intellectually curious, thirsty for knowledge, quicker to adopt new ideas and more likely to do important work. I wonder which comes...
Tuesday November 24, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:27AM EST on November 24, 2009
Not only the way you speak—but the way you write and act. More than geography, accents now represent a choice of attitude. Let's define an accent as the way someone speaks (writes, acts) that's different from the way I do...
Monday November 23, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 9:06PM EST on November 23, 2009
You don't charge the search engines to send people to articles on your site, you pay them. If you can't make money from attention, you should do something else for a living. Charging money for attention gets you neither money...
Posted by: Seth Godin at 2:30PM EST on November 23, 2009
You can receive instant daily updates of this blog by following @thisissethsblog. I create the tweets automatically using a service called twitterfeed. It's free and it works really well. (PS this is my only presence on Twitter... I'm focused on...
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:59AM EST on November 23, 2009
Have an argument. Once you start an argument, not a discussion, you've already lost. Think about it: have you ever changed your mind because someone online started yelling at you? They might get you to shut up, but it's unlikely...
Sunday November 22, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:35AM EST on November 22, 2009
If you approve or create online forms or deal with consumer interactions, I hope you'll think about the following: 1. If you have more than seven items in a pull down list, you have failed. Human beings have no trouble...
Saturday November 21, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:11AM EST on November 21, 2009
It's almost impossible to communicate something clearly and succinctly to everyone, all the time. So misunderstandings occur. We misunderstand a comment or a gesture or a policy or a contract. And then what happens? Well, if we're engaged with someone...
Friday November 20, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:41AM EST on November 20, 2009
Many people buy a car (probably their single biggest discretionary purchase) based on slamming a door, kicking a tire and judging the handshake of a salesperson. We choose a surgeon based on the carpeting in his office and a politician...
Thursday November 19, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:46AM EST on November 19, 2009
If you walk into a company-owned cell phone store to sign up for a contract, what are you worth? Given the huge gross margins at AT&T and Verizon and the standard two-year contract, I think it's easy to figure on...
Wednesday November 18, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 3:00PM EST on November 18, 2009
Random thoughts from all over for those of us hungry for new ways to think. This month's list is here. The previous list was blogged in September.
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:03AM EST on November 18, 2009
Tuesday November 17, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:25AM EST on November 17, 2009
There are only two ways to win in the market. You can create a breakthrough. A promotion so powerful that people can't help but engage. An innovation so remarkable, people can't help but talk about it. A pricing strategy or...
Monday November 16, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:13AM EST on November 16, 2009
If your business needs money, it seems as though you have two choices: Get a loan from a bank Raise equity from an investor, giving up part of your company in exchange Banks are everywhere, so the idea that they...
Sunday November 15, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:51AM EST on November 15, 2009
Some people are way better at this than others. The other day, I was talking to someone about a complex and specialized issue. It's quite possible that this was the first and only time in the history of the world...
Saturday November 14, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:42AM EST on November 14, 2009
Some book publishers don't like the Kindle. Either they're afraid of it or they've crunched the numbers and they don't like what they see. (Some days, 95% of the top selling Kindle titles are free... demonstrating that digital goods with...
Friday November 13, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:35AM EST on November 13, 2009
So, if it's true that to a person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, the really useful question is, "what sort of hammer do you have?" At big TV networks, they have a TV hammer. At a...
Thursday November 12, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:32AM EST on November 12, 2009
Getting someone to switch is really difficult. Getting someone to switch because you offer more of what they were looking for when they choose the one they have now is essentially impossible. For starters, they're probably not looking for more....
Posted by: Seth Godin at 12:14AM EST on November 12, 2009
If I had to pick a book of mine to recommend that you haven't read yet, it would probably be All Marketers are Liars. The reason you haven't read it, I'm guessing, is that it has a terrible title and...
Wednesday November 11, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:38AM EST on November 11, 2009
Marketers rarely think about choosing customers... like a sailor on shore leave, we're not so picky. Huge mistake. Your customers define what you make, how you make it, where you sell it, what you charge, who you hire and even...
Tuesday November 10, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:42AM EST on November 10, 2009
Successful organizations spend a lot of time saying, "that's not what we do." It's a requirement, because if you do everything, in every way, you're sunk. You got to where you are by standing for something, by approaching markets and...
Monday November 9, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:22AM EST on November 9, 2009
How much of time, staffing and money does your organization spend on creating incredible experiences (vs. avoiding bad outcomes)? At the hospital, it's probably 5% on the upside (the doctor who puts in the stitches, say) and 95% on the...
Sunday November 8, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:37AM EST on November 8, 2009
This is so cool: because we only look at things we want to look at, only talk about things worth talking about, the amount of fabulous in the world continues to rise exponentially. Even though we're at the tail end...
Saturday November 7, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:34AM EST on November 7, 2009
When you're just starting out or when your organization is struggling or when the economy isn't hot, it's very tempting to take what you can get. You just graduated from law school and you have a lot of debt and...
Friday November 6, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:29AM EST on November 6, 2009
The problem with "everyone" is that in order to reach everyone or teach everyone or sell to everyone, you need to so water down what you've got you end up with almost nothing. Everyone doesn't go to the chiropractor, everyone...
Thursday November 5, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:36AM EST on November 5, 2009
Mark points us to this great set of stats. Basically, all of the clicks for all the ads online come from only 16% of the surfers, and most of them come from just 4% of all internet users. So, if...
Wednesday November 4, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:54AM EST on November 4, 2009
Until recently, most of the decisions we were called on to make were based on hunches, insight and a little bit of data. Occasionally, a field like direct marketing would develop into something quite data-driven ("I don't care if you...
Tuesday November 3, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 10:41AM EST on November 3, 2009
It seems as though the Apple tablet is unlikely to be ready in time for the holidays... what to get? How about a boxed (a wooden box) set of five of my books? Very limited (only 800 will be sold,...
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:50AM EST on November 3, 2009
The either-or world continues to decay, confronted by a shifting economy and the tools of the net. It used to be easy to tell if someone was a journalist. Either you were or your weren't. So giving special privileges to...
Monday November 2, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:52AM EST on November 2, 2009
It's interesting to see that people are much better at putting up with things that happen to them than they are at living with the consequences of a bad choice. When you can blame someone else (or the gods of...
Sunday November 1, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:22AM EST on November 1, 2009
For many organizations and individuals, attention is the most precious resource. The pursuit of attention for our ads, or our city or our careers dominates all else. How else to explain the silly math that is used to justify Olympic...
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