Seth Godin

The secret to creativity is curiosity.We often forget to teach kids to be curious. A student who has no perceived math ability, or illegible handwriting or the inability to sit still for five minutes gets immediate and escalating attention. The student with no curiosity, on the other hand, is no problem at all....

Perhaps the most plaintive complaint I hear from organizations goes something like this, "We worked really hard to get very good at xyz. We're well regarded, we're talented and now, all the market cares about is price. How can we get large groups of people to value our ...craft and buy from us again?"Apparently, the bulk of your market no longer wants to buy your top of the line furniture, lawn...

They cost too much and they don't work very well.Most people ignore them, they don't last very long and they're undependable.Anil Dash has discovered that having ten times as many Twitter followers generates approximately zero times as much value. The goal shouldn't be ...to have a lot of people to yell at, the goal probably should be to have a lot of people who choose to listen....

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If so, I'm not seeing it.When something is scarce, it's valuable and smart people try to make more of it. So, should we be trying to make more fear?Looking around, it appears as though the government, various media players and lots of well-meaning people have come to a ...conclusion that there's a shortage of fear....

One of the most common things I hear is, "I'd like to do something remarkable like that, but my xyz won't let me." Where xyz = my boss, my publisher, my partner, my licensor, my franchisor, etc.Well, you can fail by going along with that and not doing it, or you can do ...it, cause a ruckus and work things out later.In my experience, once it's clear you're willing (not just...

Technicians who invented it, run it Technicians with taste, leverage it Artists take over from the technicians MBAs take over from the artists Bureaucrats drive the medium to banality TV used to be driven by the guys who knew how to run cameras and transmitters. Then i...t got handed off to the Ernie Kovacs/Rod Serling types....

Here are my picks for the two most important trends of the decade we're just starting: Change: The infrastructure of massive connection is now real. People around the world have cell phones. The first internet generation is old enough to spend money, go to work and buil...d companies. Industries are being built every day (and old ones are fading)....

A friend worried out loud to me the other day, "I spent the last seven months doing this [job] and I have nothing to show for it. If I had known I would have spent seven months and gotten nothing, you can bet I would have done something a lot more fun."Ten years ago I w...rote this post about the decade that ends today.The oughts (the "uh-ohs"?) were a tough decade...

For most products and services, most of the time, people sign up for the Cheapest Reliable Alternative Plan. If everything appears to be the same, then of course they're going to pick the cheapest one that's good enough.In the face of this understandable strategy, you h...ave a few choices:You can be cheapest (difficult to sustain).You can be more reliable (great if you can figure this out).You can be redefine the playing...

Here's a positive step to avoid the faceless bureaucracy that wants to take over your organization:Every new rule needs to be associated with one and only one person who is willing to stand up for it and explain it (to your people and to the public)."No swimming until 45 minutes after eating." Really?...

If you want to know if a ship is going to sink, watch what the richest passengers do.iTunes and file sharing killed Tower Records. The key symptom: the best customers switched. Of course people who were buying 200 records a year would switch. They had the most incentive.... The alternatives were cheaper and faster mostly for the heavy users.Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore....

Let's try a thought experiment:A flying saucer comes to Earth, destroys a major city to get our attention, then announces that in 10,000 years it is coming back to destroy the Earth. In order to eliminate any doubt, it then blows up Mars.Assume for a moment that you bel...ieve the threat and there's nothing we can do about it...Question: how would knowing that the planet would disappear in 10,000 years change...

The great brands of our time are not about what they are. They are about what they represent.Apple, Sarah Palin, Harley Davidson, Tom's Shoes... In each case, the reality of the product means far less than what the brand represents.The facts of iPod battery life, knowle...dge of world affairs, gas mileage and foot comfort are almost irrelevant....

If the tooth fairy didn't exist, we'd probably have to invent her. Perfect fable for that moment. What would you say to your kid when he lost a tooth if there wasn't a tooth fairy legend?Kwanzaa is only 43 years old, but it feels as if it's been around forever....

Bob wonders if there's a difference. I'm pretty sure there is.Hiring is what you do when you let the world know that you're accepting applications from people looking for a job.Recruiting is the act of finding the very best person for a job and persuading them to stop d...oing what they're doing and come join you.Hiring is easy and fast and is basically a retail operation.Recruiting is artful and slow and...

Kevin Kelly really changed our thinking with his post about 1,000 true fans.But what if you're not an artist or a musician? Is there a business case for this?I think the ability to find and organize 1,000 people is a breakthrough opportunity. One thousand people coordin...ating their actions is enough to change your world (and make a living.)1,000 people each spending $1,000 on a special interest cruise equals a million dollars.1,000...

I just set up a friend's PC. I haven't done that in a while.Wow.Apparently, a computer is now not a computer, it's an opportunity to upsell you.First, the setup insisted (for my own safety) that I sign up for an eternal subscription to Norton. Then it defaulted (opt out...) to sending me promotional emails....

A few people are afraid of good ideas, ideas that make a difference or contribute in some way. Good ideas bring change, that's frightening.But many people are petrified of bad ideas. Ideas that make us look stupid or waste time or money or create some sort of backlash.T...he problem is that you can't have good ideas unless you're willing to generate a lot of bad ones.Painters, musicians, entrepreneurs, writers, chiropractors, accountants--we...

Many brands want deep and long-lasting relationships with their customers.Social media makes these interactions even more likely, because it encourages customers to speak up and to connect.The fallacy is believing that whining equals intimacy. It doesn't. Whining and co...mplaining is easy and natural, but it's not a foundation for a long term relationship.Instead, the goal should be to get your customers to share their dreams, not their peeves.

A friend is building a skating rink. Unfortunately, he started with uneven ground and the water keeps ending up on one side of the rink. Water's like that, and you need a lot of time and power and money if you want to change it. One person, working as hard as he can, ha...s little chance of persuading water to change.Consider this quote from a high-ranking book publisher who should know...

When you're trying to sell your idea, it's natural to assume that the people you're selling to think the way you do. If you can only show them the facts and stories that led you to believe what you believe, then of course they'll end up where you are... believing.The pr...oblem, of course, is that people don't always think like you.Go watch some videos of people of different political ideologies talking...

If your boss asks you to move a box from point a to point b, it's probably not okay to say, "I don't feel like it right now."If you work on the chain gang and it's time to dig a ditch, you don't get a reprieve if you roll your eyes and say, "that's not what they pay me ...for."And if you're a dishwasher, you don't get a chance to say,...

I'm doing a live presentation on the morning of January 15th in New York. The low price for general admission is basically the retail price of the new book, and we're giving ticket buyers a copy of the book as well.Arrive as early as 9:20 am to get your ticket checked, ...doors open at 9:30, we start at 9:45 sharp.Hope to see you there....

It's far easier to mix up a Rubik's cube than to solve one.People are often paid to enforce compliance. The job is to ensure that everything is in its place, that errors are zero, that things are delivered on time and as expected. The random event is a problem, somethin...g to be feared an extinguished.A few people (not many) get paid to create a ruckus, to insert the random, to yell...

If you read the previous post this morning, you saw tons of links, many from some of the smartest people I know. And too many were broken (they're all fixed now... click through to see the accurate list, which I'll update all day, and thanks for clicking). Apologies for... the hassles.We keep adding all this power to the web, but with the power seems to come complexity....

A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, ...make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer. A brand's value is merely the sum total of how much extra people...

Here it is.Alas, it doesn't work for groups, won't even let you share a username. That's what we need. Everyone on your team adds items, everyone can cross off items. Go. Maybe next revision. In the meantime, it's so pretty you'll cross stuff off just because you can.