Seth Godin's Blog, page 280

Exploration and the risk of failure

People seem to be in one of two categories:

Those who seek stability, affiliation, work worth doing and the assurance it (whatever it is) will be okay.

Those who explore, need to know that failure is an option and quest to make a dent in the universe.

You can be in either category, the world needs and rewards both. But pick a brand and a job and a posture that matches your category, or you'll fail, and be miserable until you do.

Hint: there is no category of: "does risky...

When technology and tradition diverge

What be the effect on voting patterns if we used digital technology to announce the current vote tally every hour (or every hundred votes).

People would see the direction an election was going and be more likely to be pulled in. Voter attention and ultimately voter involvement would go up, and fraud would be more difficult.

So why don't we do it?

When the secret ballot was introduced, it just wasn't possible to count the votes in less than a few days. So a tradition was established, driven by...

The places you go

Over the weekend I visited one of my favorite places. It didn't matter that I hadn't been there in a while, or didn't know most of the people I encountered. The second I walked in, heard the noise, saw the walls... even the way it smelled... I was transported.

It's incredible to think about--a room could magically change the way I felt. A physical room with the right memories can do this in just a heartbeat. So can a metaphorical one, even a brand.

The states of your emotions (your moods and pa...

Competition

The number one reason people give me for giving up on something great is, "someone else is already doing that."

Or, parsed another way, "my idea is not brand new." Or even, "Oh no, now we'll have competition."

Two big pieces of news for you:

1. Competition validates you. It creates a category. It permits the sale to be this or that, not yes or no. And this or that is a much easier sale to make. It also makes decisions about pricing easier, because you have someone to compare against and lean...

The decision before the decision

This is the one that was made before you even showed up. This is the one that sets the agenda, determines the goal and establishes the frame.

The decision before the decision is the box.

When you think outside the box, what you're actually doing is questioning the decision before the decision.

That decision is far more important and much more difficult to change than the decision you actually believe you're about to make.

Sleeping funny

It's not a joke. Sometimes you sleep funny, wake up tired and feel cranky all day. No comic timing required.

Do you ever work funny?

Ever have a day when none of the things you need to focus on materialize, when the emotional labor doesn't come naturally?

Most of us have come up with a strategy for days we're working funny--we do the busy work, we reply, react and occasionally respond. We show up at the meetings and we answer our email, and we go home feeling as though we accomplished at least a...

Choosing your customers

Yes, you get to choose them, not the other way around. You choose them with your pricing, your content, your promotion, your outreach and your product line.

When choosing, consider:

How much does this type of customer need you

How difficult is this sort of person to find...

and how difficult to reach

How valuable is a customer like this one...

and how demanding?

It's not a matter of who can benefit from what you sell. It's about choosing the customers you'd like to have.

Are you a bullfrog in a china shop?

They make a lot of noise but don't break anything.

They're annoying but not dangerous.

They create a swirl but no impact.

They don't ship.

Train your customers

Yes, you can train them. By rewarding some behaviors over others, by keeping some promises not others, by having some expectations instead of others, you get the audience you deserve. Some things you can train customers to do:

Be respectful

Be patient

Keep their satisfaction to themselves

Be selfish

Be focused on a superstar

Demand personal service

Be calm

Never settle for the current iteration

Be cheap

Embrace acceptance

Spread the word

Expect pampering

Demand free

Be eager to...

Accept all substitutes

Commerce is about pricing, and pricing is about scarcity. Scarcity, of course, demands no easy substitutes.

Some news websites are foolishly putting up paywalls, requiring readers to pay by the day or the year to see what's there. This is foolish because substitutes are so easy to find. If I can't get to the Times of London or Time magazine, no problem, I'll find the same news (or almost the same news) somewhere else.

This is the mistake that book publishers are making on the Kindle. I was...