36 Profound Seth Godin Quotes on the World Today – Pick Yourself!
Entrepreneur, TED-speaker and bestselling author of The Icarus Deception, Seth Godin is a man always connected to his time, seeing the world for what it is and with a good feel for where it is heading.
The hot topic of today, in this new world that we live in, is the importance of being vulnerable, and personal. And the new rules and opportunities of the “connected economy;” a new economy based around us all being connected through the Internet and social media. And what that means for you in terms of being able to make a business out of anything.
These Seth Godin quotes are a mix of classic ideas and contemporary observations on the new world of business.
“A part of what happens if you are going to be an entrepreneur, or even a freelancer; someone dancing on the edge, is you are paying attention to the audience”
– Seth Godin
“Once we learn to shun the none believers, to be comfortable enough to say ‘it’s not for you,’ then we free ourselves up. No one can make something for everyone”
– Seth Godin
“There is no product that everyone wants. You can either spend all of your time trying to get the last person to like you, or you say ‘I’m sorry it’s not for you, I’ll go talk to these guys instead’”
– Seth Godin
“We’re too focused on ‘how do I avoid criticism,’ and not focused enough on ‘how do I make a difference?’”
– Seth Godin
“In a world where we can connect to whom ever we want, why would we connect to someone who is boring and selfish? We are going to connect to people who are interesting, walking the tight rope, and generous”
– Seth Godin
“We got brainwashed into asking for roadmaps”
– Seth Godin
“Someone who is good in school is actually someone who is good at following maps”
– Seth Godin
“I don’t know anything about Pablo Picasso’s life. I don’t know anything about Edward Albee’s life. I don’t need to. All I need to know is that when they made their art, they opened themselves up. They put an emotion on the table”
– Seth Godin
“That’s not in the rule book, it’s human. Its something new and fresh”
– Seth Godin
“What happened is that the gatekeepers, all at once lost their power. If you want to make a record, make a record. Put it on iTunes; pick yourself. If you want to write, write. Build a blog; pick yourself”
– Seth Godin
“Authors and writers and singers and entrepreneurs and physical therapists and anyone who wants to, because we’re all now one click away from each other, raise their hand and say ‘I’m in, this is what I make’”
– Seth Godin
“The idea of picking yourself is available now because communication is so easy”
– Seth Godin
“Once we learn to shun the none believers, to be comfortable enough to say ‘it’s not for you,’ then we free ourselves up. No one can make something for everyone”
– Seth Godin
“There is no product that everyone wants. You can either spend all of your time trying to get the last person to like you, or you say ‘I’m sorry it’s not for you, I’ll go talk to these guys instead’”
– Seth Godin
“Give your work to ten people, and if it’s good and they’re the right ten people, they’ll give it to ten people and now you have a hundred. And if it’s good they’ll tell a thousand. And once you have one thousand true fans, you’re in! And if the first ten don’t do anything with it, your work isn’t good enough or they’re the wrong ten people”
– Seth Godin
“What we are afraid of is having to admit to ourselves that we did something that didn’t work. We think that is when the universe will call us out as the fraud that we know we are”
– Seth Godin
“Generations gave up their spark in exchange for richness. But now the new deal shows up, and it says: ‘You have to be scared out of your mind, you have to feel like you’re risking everything, and then some of you will get rich. But all of you will actually have a better life because you are not cogs in a machine’”
– Seth Godin
“The connection economy rewards little things. Little connections, little followings. If a programmer has 2000 people who read her blog, and she is good, she doesn’t need her company anymore”
– Seth Godin
“One by one, as individuals build these webs of connection and trust, the guys on top have way less power than they used to”
– Seth Godin
“Tony Hsieh built a billion dollar shoe store, and he did it one bit of trust a time. No fancy buildings. No authority. Just one person who trusted him and told another person”
– Seth Godin
“The question I would ask the entrepreneur, the freelancer, the consultant, is: ‘Do more people trust you and pay attention to you today than six months ago, and what are you going to do between today and six months from now, that is going to radically change the number of people, and how deeply they pay attention and trust you?’”
– Seth Godin
“You don’t say ‘I have this great product, who can I push it on?’ You say: ‘which group of people is open to being connected? Open to being lead, or open to being worked with to create art?’ Those people will be my costumers. I pick you”
– Seth Godin
“Never once did I say to myself or the people around me, ‘let’s do this because the Internet is going to be a big thing and we’ll be able to sell our company’”
– Seth Godin
“The people I see who are doing this hustle-thing, and who are trying to ‘hack’ the thing, you never meet those people at the other end when they say ‘wow, this was the right path for me and I’m going to keep doing it.’ The people who set out to use commerce as a way to change their culture in a positive way, those people can keep doing it forever”
– Seth Godin
“My posture is if I see something that looks a little broken, I say ’why is that broken? How can I make that better?’ And then I try. If it makes it better then I’ve learned something. If it doesn’t make it better, no one was harmed. That’s how you learn how to ‘see’”
– Seth Godin
“You learn how to ‘see’ by making predictions”
– Seth Godin
“I don’t watch television and I don’t go to meetings. So I have 7 more hours every day than everybody else. And in those 7 hours, if I do 2 hours of productive work and spend 5 hours walking around noticing things, that’s a good day”
– Seth Godin
“I don’t think creativity is the goal. I think the goal is connection and trust. If you have more connection and trust today than yesterday, you are moving forward. If you have a lot of connection and trust you will never trouble making a living, you will never have trouble making a difference”
– Seth Godin
“The purpose of being creative, the purpose of solving problems, is so that you can generously give those insights away. Because people like it when you do that, and they’ll become more connected with you. And if your work meets the promises you make for it, they will trust you more”
– Seth Godin
“If you create this pattern of regularly doing interesting work, doing edgy work, where you become more trusted because you are earning connections, you come out ahead”
– Seth Godin
“I’m not saying you should be a freelancer who works for free, because giving away your work for free doesn’t make you more trusted, it just makes you cheaper. The goal is to have work that no one else can do; that is so important to other people that they will happily pay extra for it because no one else can do it”
– Seth Godin
“That is what we hide from. We would rather read a dummies-book and follow the manual than say ‘here: I’ve made this’”
– Seth Godin
“I would argue that most people on Instagram would not be missed if they disappeared. A few would be missed, but most people who are following 100 people would say ‘oh, now I’m following 99 people’”
– Seth Godin
“We don’t need to buzz in people’s ears to be connected to them. But what I know is that books change the world. Books make people cry. Twitter rarely does”
– Seth Godin
“The answer isn’t to yell louder than everybody else, the answer is to have earned connections”
– Seth Godin
“Sell to people who are listening”
– Seth Godin