Seth Godin's Blog, page 203

A true story

Of course, that's impossible.

There's no such thing as a true story. As soon as you start telling a story, making it relevant and interesting to me, hooking it into my worldviews and generating emotions and memories, it ceases to be true, at least if we define true as the whole truth, every possible fact, non-localized and regardless of culture.

Since you're going to tell a story, you might as well get good at it, focus on it and tell it in a way that you're proud of.

Where's the heat?

Is that your goal? To find the next hot thing? Do you want to buy it, sell it, use it, eat it?

In every industry where there's fashion (which is every industry), people spend an enormous amount of time looking for heat. It defines the cutting edge, determines what's in or out, what's hot or not.

Two things worth considering:

a. the hot thing isn't always the thing that's aligned with your goals. Sure, sometimes the most profitable item is also the hot item of the moment, but for many companies, market share or profitability or utility has not a lot to do with being on the cutting edge of fashion. And as a user, the hot item of the moment isn't necessarily the thing that will create value or even identify you as truly hip.

b. The cycle of hot keeps getting shorter.

You can chase this, but it's not free, and it might not get you where you want to go.

Not everyone

If you're marketing a bass guitar or an orchid or an electric SUV, why are you concerned with what everyone thinks about it?

It seems to me that you should only care about the opinion of those that are actually open to buying one.

Shun the non-believers.

The quickest way to get things done and make change

Not the easiest, but the quickest:

Don't demand authority.

Eagerly take responsibility.

Relentlessly give credit.

Digital analogs are no longer sufficient

The parking meter was rebooting. I guess we're supposed to walk to the other end of the garage and find one that's working.

We're seeing digital awareness coming to just about everything. In this case, it was the parking meter near the library. Of course, it's not really a parking meter, it's a centralized fee collection system that saves the town a lot of money. It's easier to collect from, certainly, it doesn't waste the time of meter readers (who get alerted as to what spaces aren't paid for, as opposed to checking them all) plus it doesn't let a new parker enjoy a few minutes of the last person's payment.

I understand how the incremental sale of this device was easier to maket to the town and to the community. It's just like what we have now, but better.

The problem, of course, is that it's not as better as it could be. Just about every traditional non-digital solution is bounded by the limits of mechanics. Once we start connecting (and the connection revolution won't rest until it's all connected) then the problem can be reset--we can find the best solution, not a better way to solve it the old way.

Why do I have to guess how long I'm going to be parking? Why pay a penalty if I underguess, or waste community resources on patrolling for compliance?

Of course, I don't care much about parking meters. I care a lot about using digital shadows of real world devices because we don't have the imagination to reinvent them.

In this particular case: why bother have a meter at all? After all, the state knows my license plate, the state has a billing relationship with me, the state can (and does) collect money for my driving behaviors (like EZ Pass). So why not drive into the space and have the space just take care of all the paperwork and billing? No tickets, no meter readers. If you don't want local merchants to park in the good spaces, no need to spend a lot of time searching them out...

Instinctually, we want to maintain the hunter/prey relationship of the independent citizen who isn't being snooped on. But you know what? You're already being snooped on, ceaselessly. A parking meter isn't your problem.

Obviously, parking meters aren't the important device here. The connection revolution is going to upend the way we understand the where, who, how much and when of everything around us.

Hard work on the right things

I don't think winners beat the competition because they work harder. And it's not even clear that they win because they have more creativity. The secret, I think, is in understanding what matters.

It's not obvious, and it changes. It changes by culture, by buyer, by product and even by the day of the week. But those that manage to capture the imagination, make sales and grow are doing it by perfecting the things that matter and ignoring the rest.

Both parts are difficult, particularly when you are surrounded by people who insist on fretting about and working on the stuff that makes no difference at all.

Worldliness

Intelligence is the combination of knowing a lot about a little while you also know a little about a lot.

Deep domain understanding helps you create analyses. Your ability to understand how a particular system (no matter how small) works allows you apply a confident analysis to new systems you encounter. Once you know everything there is to know about nuclear physics, soccer or the praying mantis, it makes it easier to understand new systems.

At the same time, it's impossible to be smart without also being aware of the wider world. That's because it's the random interactions and the surprising coincidences that help us navigate our daily lives.

The challenge of the net is that it made the large world a whole lot larger. There are the personal lives of your 1000 closest friends, on display, every day. Here is the news of the world, the whole world, not just what used to fit in the newspaper. And over there is every book ever published, every scientific discovery, every fringe political candidate.

Suddenly, it's a lot more difficult to know a little about a lot. It's tempting to spend ever more time pursuing that goal. That doesn't mean, I think, that you should give up knowing a lot about a little in order to devote ever more time to the noisy mosaic that's on your doorstep, nor does it mean you ought to give up and dive back into your hole. We've redefined worldly, but being an expert remains just as tough and important as it used to be.

The reason the customer is always right...

If you insist that they are wrong, they stop being your customer* (if given half a chance).

People spend their time and attention and money in places that make them feel valued.

*There's nothing wrong with asking customers who are wrong to leave. Just be sure you do it on purpose.

Dedicating the merit

For an author, one of the nicest parts of the traditional book is the dedication page. The dedication is far more than an acknowledgement to someone who helped you write the book, it's a permanent signpost, a capstone to the work of a year or more.

Even if the person you've dedicated the book to can't read it, the writer benefits from the knowledge that a connection was made and that a memory was preserved.

Here's the thing: you can dedicate just about anything. A project, a meeting, a tweet. You don't have to tell anyone but yourself. This blog post, like all the posts before it, has a dedication page, at least in my head.

When you start creating for and in honor of those that have made a difference to you, your work changes.

Naming things

"Over there, by the fire, is that a stick or a snake?"

It turns out that humans have been naming things for a long time. If we know that this is a cheetah, or a grapefruit, we can make intelligent decisions on how to deal with it.

Lately, though, we've been naming more than things. Now we classify ideas and opportunities as well.

Getting smart about naming is at the heart of marketing. Calling every single person a 'customer', for example, is hardly a nuanced way of engaging with the public. Salespeople are especially nuanced at this, but often make mistakes as well. Car salesman are notorious for misnaming women who walk in (spouse instead of primary decision maker).

As an investor, are you misnaming the businesses you look at, mistaking a cliff business for a bootstrappable idea? Dozens of book editors misnamed Harry Potter at first glance, labeling it a 'loser from the slush pile' instead of the most profitable book they were ever offered.

Job interviews are nothing but sessions where we try to put a name on a stranger looking for employment. Is she a superstar in the making or someone we ought to avoid?

Most of all, are you misnaming opportunities and calling them risks instead?

When you are isolated or if the world is stable, your need to name new things goes down, and the world might feel safer as a result. Most of us don't live in that world, so our ability to name things becomes critical.

Just because we're not good at it doesn't mean it's not important.