Top 931 Quotes & Sayings by Seth Godin - Page 15

Content Marketing is all the Marketing that's left.

One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that.

If you have no wish, how can it possibly come true?

No niche is too small if it's yours.

Your positions on EVERYTHING are based on the story you tell yourself and not some universal fact from the universal fact database.

The competitive advantages the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.

Your biggest failure is the thing you dreamed of contributing but didn't find the guts to do.

The good news is that more than ever, value accrues to those that show up, those that make a difference, those that do work that matters.

Most people don't see that they have options beyond what society tells them to do. That's the biggest problem. They honestly believe that compliance is the shortcut to success.

At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.

Cheap is the last refuge of a product developer or marketer who is out of great ideas.

Faith in yourself, in your friends, in your colleagues and most of all, faith in your ability to impact our future is the best strategy I know.

Desire can't be sated, because if it is, the longing disappears and then we've failed, because desire is the state we seek.

Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.

If it's work, we try to figure out how to do less, If it's art, we try to figure out how to do more

If you measure it, it will improve.

Be with the ones you love (and the ones that love you.) Ignore everyone else.

A well-defined backup plan is sabotage waiting to happen. Why push through the dip, why take the risk, why blow it all when there's the comfortable alternative instead? The people who break through usually have nothing to lose, and they almost never have a backup plan.

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.

Developing expertise or assets that are not easily copied is essential; otherwise you're just a middleman.

A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.

In our desire to please everyone, it's very easy to end up being invisible or mediocre.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.

The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security.

The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven't given them anything else to care about.

You can win with consistent benefits, delivered over time. You win by incrementally earning share, attention and trust.

In contemporary art or movies, it makes perfect sense to be focused on the bleeding edge, on the new idea that's never been previously contemplated. But when we're discussing our goals, our passion and the way we interact with the culture, it seems to me that what works is significantly more important than what's new.

The application process changes the list of who applies. Your applicants reflect your methods.

Don't save the canary. Fix the coal mine.

In nearly every case, trying to lead everyone results in leading no one in particular.

Following the well-lit path, offers little in the way of magic.

The status quo is leaving the building, and quickly.

Put aside your need for a step-by-step manual and instead realize that analogies are your best friend.

We're going to spend our entire future living in tomorrow-investing now, when it's difficult, is the single best moment.

Marketing isn't done by computers, it's done by people. And people who sense opportunity and have the confidence to be remarkable will always defeat defensive actions by people who have given up.

Market-driven design builds the success of the product's marketing into the product itself.

Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.

The rules are now clear: no one is going to inform you, but it's easier than ever to inform yourself.

The object isn't to be perfect. The goal isn't to hold back until you've created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.

The problem with words is that they easily lose their meaning. Say something often enough and it becomes a tic, not an expression of how you actually feel. Not only that, but words rarely change things. Actions do.

It's uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place.

There's no correlation between how good your idea is and how likely your organization will be to embrace it.

When we think of design, we usually imagine things that are chosen because they are designed. Vases or comic books or architecture... It turns out, though, that most of what we make or design is actually aimed at a public that is there for something else. The design is important, but the design is not the point. Call it "public design"... Public design is for individuals who have to fill out our tax form, interact with our website or check into our hotel room despite the way it's designed, not because of it.

This notion that it is up to each person to innovation in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.

Don't fix me; Love me for what's broken.

A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they’re doing work that most any trained person could do.

Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.

If you hear my idea but don't believe it, that's not your fault; it's mine. If you see my new product but don't buy it, that's my failure, not yours. If you attend my presentation and you're bored, that's my fault too.

The sound of a small bell during a dark night, is louder than the din of traffic outside your window during rush hour. Surprise and differentiation have far more impact than noise does.

Real change comes from finding and embracing and connecting and amplifying those that are inclined to like you and believe in you. Ideas spread from person to person, not so much from you to them. So find your biggest fans and give them a story to tell.

Quality is not an absolute measure. It doesn't mean 'deluxeness' or 'perfection'. It means keeping the promise the customer wants you to make.

The problem with holding a grudge is that your hands are then too full to hold onto anything else. It might be the competition or a technology or the lousy things that someone did a decade ago. None of it is going to get better as a result of revisiting the grudge.

One way to work the system is to work the system. The other way is to refuse to work it.

Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.

It's much easier to spend a lot of time making your microphone louder than it is working on making your message more compelling.

Fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to their faith before they explore it. As opposed to a curious person who explores first and then considers whether or not they want to accept the ramifications.

Marketing is the act of inventing the product. The effort of designing it. The craft of producing it. The art of pricing it. The technique of selling it.

New fashions (of all sorts) come from unexpected places, not from the arbiters of what's correct.

What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do for a living is ship.