Seth Godin's Blog, page 189

Hurrying almost always makes it take longer

If you don't have time to do it right, how will you find time to do it over?

PS stalling is even worse than hurrying.

The simple power of one a day

There are at least 200 working days a year. If you commit to doing a simple marketing item just once each day, at the end of the year you've built a mountain. Here are some things you might try (don't do them all, just one of these once a day would change things for you):

Send a handwritten and personal thank you note to a customer

Write a blog post about how someone is using your product or service

Research and post a short article about how something in your industry works

Introduce one colleague to another in a significant way that benefits both of them

Read the first three chapters of a business or other how-to book

Record a video that teaches your customers how to do something

Teach at least one of your employees a new skill

Go for a ten minute walk and come back with at least five written ideas on how to improve what you offer the world

Change something on your website and record how it changes interactions

Help a non-profit in a signficant way (make a fundraising call, do outreach)

Write or substiantially edit a Wikipedia article

Find out something you didn't know about one of your employees or customers or co-workers

Enough molehills is all you need to have a mountain.

Last reminder

The application deadline for my free non-profit session is Friday morning. Also, only 13 early bird tickets left for the weekend seminar. Thanks.

"Well deserved"

This is one of the nicest things you can say to someone who just got good news.

"Congratulations" is fine for winning the lottery, but "well deserved" is reserved for people who put in the effort and the time and took the risk to get somewhere.

The interesting thing is that we get to choose what sort of prizes we're in line for. It seems to me that vying for the ones that come with "well deserved" makes more sense than merely spinning the wheel over and over.

The people who came before you

Maybe I'm not listening to your pitch because the 100 people who came before you abused my trust, stole my time and disrespected my attention.

Perhaps I'm not buying from you because the last time someone like you earned my trust, he broke my heart.

People are never irrational. They often act on memories and pressures that you're unaware of, though.

I want to put you in a category

When I meet you or your company or your product or your restaurant or your website, I desperately need to put it into an existing category, because the mental cost of inventing a new category for every new thing I see is too high.

I am not alone in this need. In fact, that's the way humans survive the onslaught of newness we experience daily.

Of course, you can refuse to be categorized. You can insist that it's unfair that people judge you like this, that the categories available to you are too constricting and that your organization and your offering are too unique to be categorized.

If you make this choice, the odds are you will be categorized anyway. But since you didn't participate, you will be miscategorized, which is far worse than being categorized.

So choose.

What is this thing? What are you like? Are you friend or foe, flake or leader, good deal or ripoff, easy or hard, important or not? Are you destined for the trusted category or the other one?

Make it easy to categorize you and you're likely to end up in the category you are hoping for.

Six audiences

You get what you focus on. Focus on nothing, and you won't get much.

The successful organization can be focused on any of these constituencies (a partial list):

The sales force

the stock market

potential new customers

existing customers

employees or

the regulators.

Many companies are sales-force driven. When the salesforce is happy, the CEO is happy.

Others organizations are driven by the daily (or hourly) stock price. The company is run to please Wall Street.

You can choose to focus your best work on attracting new customers. This evangelical growth model is going to change your pricing and your product development efforts too.

Contrast this with the organization that puts a priority on delighting existing customers. This will refocus a non-profit on doing work that gets existing donors to up their commitment, for example. It changes the way you talk (more depth) and what you make.

Pleasing employees, of course, might help with any of these constituencies, but also changes how you make difficult decisions.

And finally, if the lawyers have enough sway, you might make your hardest decisions around what you think a regulator will say.

There are also ego choices, like focusing on the media or your neighbors or the competition. And political choices, like focusing on what makes one department head happy... but those are much harder to turn into successful enterprises.

Every organization chooses its own audience, and that choice is based on the architecture of the industry, the mindset of the boss and the history of how you got here. But don't doubt that it changes everything you do.

Two seminars in October

First up, a free, small-group seminar in my office near New York City for leaders of non-profit organizations. Check out the details and apply via this form. The deadline for applications is next Friday, so don't delay.

I'll be hosting about fifteen leaders on October 15, and I apologize to those that I can't accomodate. Here's a recent review of the day-long office experience as well as a shorter review of a previous event, and a video from 2009.

Second, for entrepreneurs, freelancers and people working for organizations seeking to make a ruckus, a weekend seminar at the fabulous Helen Mills Theater in New York on Saturday and Sunday, October 20 and 21.

The Helen Mills is an intimate space with less than 125 seats, so there will be a lot of connection going on. Expect to be interacting with CEOs, up and comers and independent writers, impresarios and agents of change.

Sunday adds a new format, and I'm hoping you'll come for both days and see how far it can take you.

A weekend devoted to small businesses, entrepreneurs, freelancers and anyone in a larger organization that wants to take responsibility and make something happen. The internet has opened doors, made connections and created leverage. The post-industrial age is here, and it brings with it the opportunity to carve a completely different path--for you, for your team and for your organization.

People who have attended previous events have left with new strategies, new tactics, and most important, new resolve on how to get through their Dip. Knowing that there are other people in the same place, and being able to establish lines of support can really change the way you do your work.

The format: I'll set the stage with an hour-long talk about the role of impresarios, the connection economy and the chance to create work that matters. From that, we'll shift to a wide open Q&A session in which attendees share their stuckness, talk about their strategies and mostly ask about how this new way of thinking (and doing) can help them. I've discovered that by spending more than six straight hours leading the discussion and answering questions, I can start to get under your skin and help you see how this revolution is open to you.

For the entire day, you'll be surrounded by fellow travelers, by people in just as much of a hurry as you are. I'll provide lunch and snacks (and lots and lots of coffee) and we'll go at it until about 3:45. It's a long day, but worth the effort.

That afternoon, you'll have the chance to connect with other attendees and (if you're staying for Sunday) dive into your homework. Dinner that night (optional, dutch treat) will be divided across ten restaurants throughout the city, with groups picked to maximize cross-pollination. If you don't meet someone who significantly changes your outlook and your future projects, you probably were hiding...

The next morning, the Sunday attendees will reconvene bright and early at 9. For Sunday's session, we're moving out of the theatre and into the group space upstairs. We'll spend the day alternating between group work, assignments, presentations and feedback from me.

Both days include lunch, snacks, Q&A, surprises but, sadly, no dancing monkeys.

This is my last public event until my book launches, and I hope you'll be able to join a very motivated, very talented group of people for a weekend that will both frighten and empower you to go do the work you're capable of.

Get tickets here. There are a few early bird discount seats for blog readers.

PS To be clear, Saturday is a classic Seth Godin Q&A session, designed to help you think through the challenges you're facing and to see the common elements that so many successful projects share. Sunday is that plus group work, presentations, thought exercises, the Shipit workbook and more. It builds on Saturday and is a smaller group, with more airtime for all.

If you have questions, drop a line to michelle@sethgodin.com

If you want to get paid for your freelance work

...then access to tools is no longer sufficient. Everyone you compete with has access to a camera, a keyboard, a guitar. Just because you know how to use a piece of software or a device doesn't mean that there isn't an amateur who's willing to do it for free, or an up and comer who's willing to do it for less.

...then saying "how dare you" is no longer a useful way to cajole the bride away from asking her friend to take pictures at the wedding, or the local non-profit to have a supporter typeset the gala's flyer or to keep a rock star from inviting volunteers on stage.

...then you ought to find and lead a tribe, build a base of people who want you, and only you, and are willing to pay for it.

...then you need to develop both skills and a reputation for those skills that make it clear to (enough) people that an amateur solution isn't nearly good enough, because you're that much better and worth that much more.

...then you should pick yourself and book yourself and publish yourself and stand up and do your work, and do it in a way for which there are no substitutes.

It's true, if someone wants professional work, then he will need to hire professionals.

But it's also true that as amateurs are happy to do the work that

professionals used to charge for, the best (and only) path to getting paid is to

redefine the very nature of professional work.

Scarcity is a great thing for those that possess something that's scarce. But when scarcity goes away, you'll need more than that.

All the slow hedgehogs are dead

For fifty years, it was a national disgrace.

Motor cars in the UK often left behind road kill. Hedgehogs would meander across the road and splat.

Today, you hardly see that anymore. One reason is that there are fewer hedgehogs due to suburbanization. The real reason, though, is that slow hedgehogs became former hedgehogs, which meant that they were unable to produce more slow hedgehog kids. The new hedgehogs are fast.

Draw your own organizational analogy.