Seth Godin Quotes
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There's no map for being an artist.
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Initiative is the privilege of picking yourself.
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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.
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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.
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Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.
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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!
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It's impossible to have a coin with only one side. You can't have heads without tails. Innovation is like that. Initiative is like that. Art is like that. You can't have success unless you're prepared to have failure. As soon as you say, 'failure is not an option,' you've just said, 'innovation is not an option.'
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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.
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Fitting in is a short-term strategy that gets you nowhere. Standing out is a long-term strategy that takes guts and produces results.
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You don't launch a popular blog, you build one.
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As creators, our pursuit of perfection might be misguided, particularly if it comes at the expense of the things that matter.
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I look at Starbucks, Howard Schultz has made many brilliant decisions, and one of the things that they did was they invented the third space. It's not work, it's not home. That's one of the engines of its spread. But at the same time he was doing that, he bet the farm to open more and more stores in any given town, and making it ubiquitous made it much easier to say to your friend, I'll meet you at Starbucks.
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You win by trying. And failing. Test, try, fail, measure, evolve, repeat, persist.
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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.
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We are too focused on avoiding criticism and not enough on making a difference.
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The question isn’t whether or not you should wait to be picked, the question is whether you care enough to pick yourself.
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Yes, I think it's okay to abandon the big, established, stuck tribe. It's okay to say to them, "You're not going where I need to go, and there's no way I'm going to persuade all of you to follow me. So rather than standing here watching the opportunities fade away, I'm heading off. I'm betting some of you, the best of you, will follow me.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that's how long it's going to take, guys.
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Embracing the fear of freedom, deciding to determine your own path, this is the work of a grownup.
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You can be right or you can have empathy. You can't do both.
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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.