Seth Godin (b.1960) is an American entrepreneur and management consultant. He is a popular author and public speaker on branding and the psychology of marketing.
Godin is famous for his storytelling and his brilliant sound bites in his numerous books, articles, and speeches. His bestsellers include Purple Cow (2003,) Free Prize Inside (2004,) The Dip (2007,) Tribes (2008,) and Linchpin (2010.) Purple Cow, specified how brands and individuals could make their stories seem noteworthy.
Tribes argued that one could create social change if one could find one’s “tribe” (those with whom we share our ideals.) Linchpin urged readers to apply “emotional labor” for others, to “give gifts” of time and energy to facilitate becoming the indispensable employee no organization would ever consider firing.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Seth Godin
If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Leadership, Management
One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
You know something is important when you’re willing to let someone else take the credit if that’s what it takes to get it done.
—Seth Godin
Somewhere in the world, someone is doing something that you decided couldn’t be done.
—Seth Godin
Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
Don’t try to please everyone. There are countless people who don’t want one, haven’t heard of one or actively hate it. So what?
—Seth Godin
Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Ideas
The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
There’s no correlation between how good your idea is and how likely your organization will be to embrace it.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Ideas
When kids grow up wanting to be you, you matter.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Greatness
The status quo is leaving the building, and quickly.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Mediocrity
99% of the time, in my experience, the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of.
—Seth Godin
Scarcity creates value.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Economics, Appreciation, Gratitude
The easiest thing is to react. The second easiest thing is to respond. But the hardest thing is to initiate.—When people ask you to tell them what to do, resist.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Management, Leadership
It’s better to make a decision, even the wrong one, than to be in limbo.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
When you see the world as it is, but insist on making it more like it could be, you matter.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Greatness
If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
Expectations are the engines of our perceptions.
—Seth Godin
Little changes cost you. Big changes benefit you by changing the game, but only if you go first.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Change
Positive thinking is hard. Worth it, though.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Greatness
If you want to become the kind of person that any company would kill to have as an employee, you need to be the kind of employee that’s really picky about who you align with.
—Seth Godin
Developing expertise or assets that are not easily copied is essential; otherwise you’re just a middleman.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.
—Seth Godin
Once you have permission to talk to someone, finding new products or services for them is a smart way to grow.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
If you can’t state your position in eight words or less, you don’t have a position.
—Seth Godin
Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Change
Bad behavior and irrational decisions are almost always caused by fear. If you want to change the behavior, address the fear.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Fear
It’s essentially impossible to become successful or well off doing a job that is described and measured by someone else. The only chance our country (your country, depends where you live), your economy and most of all, your family has to get ahead is this: make up new rules. People who make up new rules continue to be in very short supply.
—Seth Godin
You can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Ideas
People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Belief
Playing safe is very risky.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Change
Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Management, Leadership
Big ideas are little ideas that no-one killed too soon.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Ideas
Give up control and give it away … The more you give your idea away, the more your company is going to be worth.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
Don’t try to be the ‘next’. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Business
Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Change
Most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.
—Seth Godin
Topics: Criticism
If it’s worth doing,
it’s worth doing well.
—Seth Godin
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Tom Peters American Management Consultant
Steve Jobs American Entrepreneur
Herb Kelleher American Entrepreneur
Martha Stewart American Businesswoman
Robert Ringer American Entrepreneur
Russell Simmons American Music Promoter
Walt Disney American Entrepreneur
Jim Rohn American Entrepreneur
Sam Walton American Entrepreneur
William Penn American Entrepreneur