Seth Godin's Blog, page 285

Hope and the magic lottery

Entrepreneurial hope is essential. It gets us over the hump and through the dip. There's a variety of this hope, though, that's far more damaging than helpful.

This is the hope of the magic lottery ticket.

A fledgling entrepreneur ambushes a venture capitalist who just appeared on a panel. "Excuse me," she says, then launches into a two, then six and eventually twenty minute pitch that will never (sorry, never) lead to the VC saying, "Great, here's a check for $2 million on your terms."

Or the f...

Lula's logic

When Blythe and her partners started Lula's Apothecary, the best vegan ice cream stand in this hemisphere, they didn't have enough money to afford the letters to put "Dairy free" on the sign in their window. They couldn't even afford "vegan." So the signage says nothing about what they don't put in their ice cream.

What they discovered was that word among the tribe of vegans in the East Village of New York City (an even bigger group than you might imagine) spread fast. The product was...

Fear of shipping

Shipping is fraught with risk and danger.

Every time you raise your hand, send an email, launch a product or make a suggestion, you're exposing yourself to criticism. Not just criticism, but the negative consequences that come with wasting money, annoying someone in power or making a fool of yourself.

It's no wonder we're afraid to ship.

It's not clear you have much choice, though. A life spent curled in a ball, hiding in the corner might seem less risky, but in fact it's certain to lead to...

Updated links: The wrapper matters

My previous post had two incorrect or missing links, but they've been fixed. Click through to see the corrected version. Sorry.

The wrapper matters

When you have a big idea, the question is, how to spread it?

You can go through a traditional publisher and have it printed in the tried and true way, like Clay Shirky. I had a chance to read Clay's new book a few months ago. No surprise: it's pure gold, unalloyed insight about the state of media and the world.

If you're looking for big ideas and are prepared to lose a little sleep, there's no better book to buy right now.

You can have someone take a short speech based on your book and have...

Cheating the clock

One way to do indispensable work is to show up more hours than everyone else. Excessive face time and candle-burning effort is sort of rare, and it's possible to leverage it into a kind of success.

But if you're winning by cheating the clock, you're still cheating.

The problem with using time as your lever for success is that it doesn't scale very well. 20 hours a day at work is not twice as good as 18, and you certainly can't go much beyond 24...

What would happen if you were prohibited from...

Hourly work vs. linchpin work

There's a gulf between hourly work and linchpin

work.

You should pay people by the hour when there are available substitutes. When you rely on freelancers you can put a value on their time based on what the

market is paying. If there are six podiatrists in town, and all can heal your foot, the going rate is based on their time and effort, not on the lifetime use of your foot.

On the other hand, if there are no short term substitutes, then you don't pay what the market will bear...

Spending money to (make/lose) money

When I was a struggling freelancer, I hated to spend money. I hired myself to do everything possible, because money I spent was money I didn't get to keep.

When I was hiring researchers to find great leads for my first internet company, I loved to spend money. Every penny we spent made us four pennies, so I spent as many pennies as I possibly could.

And there's the key distinction between two approaches to money.

If you build a business that processes inputs (leads, articles, code, attention...

Paperback Kindle

Steve Jobs reports today that Apple is selling an iPad every three seconds.

This is a pretty urgent moment for my friends on the Kindle team, so here are some bonus thoughts on pricing, business models and competition:

1. The paperback Kindle. Don't worry about touchscreens or color or even always available internet to download new books. Make a $49 Kindle. Not so hard if you use available wifi and simplify the device. Make it the only ebook reader in town.

2. The Kindle as razor. Buy any 8...

Six things about deadlines

People don't like deadlines. They mean a decision, shipping and risk. They force us to decide.

Deadlines work. Products that are about to disappear, auctions that are about to end, tickets that are about to sell out--they create forward motion.

Deadlines make people do dumb things. Every time I offer a free digital document or an educational event that has a deadline, I can guarantee I will hear from several (or dozens of) people with ornate, well-considered and thoughtful arguments as...