Seth Godin's Blog, page 286

Organizing the unorganized

There may be no bigger opportunity online for bootstrappers than finding people who would benefit from being connected and then connecting them.

Not so they can waste time sending digital love notes back and forth, but so they (and you) can create value for others.

Build a network of experts and make it available for hire.

Build a network of researchers and generate information useful to others.

Build a network of leaders and represent them to advertisers, marketers or recruiters.

Getting people a...

Drill baby drill

I used to see a black Hummer driving around town, complete with a "Drill, baby drill" bumper sticker.

What a fabulous slogan.

Slogans are fabulous when they use few words (two! one used twice) to unite, energize and signify a tribe. You're either an insider or an outsider, but there were no fence sitters on this one. The slogan captured a can-do, engineering-centric, please-get-out-of-my-way, anti-intellectual, regulate-industry-less mindset that this driver (and presumably others in his...

Seized of the matter

The Security Council of the UN often ends resolutions with the obscure phrase, "remains seized of the matter".

Turns out that the entire body is not supposed to debate an issue that's been seized by the Security Council. (Not that the United Nations is a role model for active problem solving... they often do their best work by exhausting everyone instead).

I think it's fascinating to think of issues as being seized. Are your issues being seized by someone else? What happens if you take...

But you're not saying anything

And this is the problem with just about every lame speech, every overlooked memo, every worthless bit of boilerplate foisted on the world: you write and write and talk and talk and bullet and bullet but no, you're not really saying anything.

It took me two minutes to find a million examples. Here's one, "The firm will remain competitive in the constantly changing market

for defense legal services by creating and implementing innovative and

effective methods of providing cost-effective...

Surely not everyone

A newspaper asked me the following, which practically set my hair on fire:

What inherent traits would make it easier for someone to becoming a linchpin? Surely not everyone can be a linchpin?

Why not? How dare anyone say that some people aren't somehow qualified to bring emotional labor to their work, somehow aren't genetically or culturally endowed with the seeds or instincts or desires to invent new techniques or ideas, or aren't chosen to connect with other human beings in a way that...

16 questions for free agents

If you're starting out as an entrepreneur or a freelancer or a project manager, the most important choice you'll make is: what to do? As in the answer to the question, "what do you do?"

Some questions to help you get started:

Who are you trying to please?

Are you trying to make a living, make a difference, or leave a legacy?

How will the world be different when you've succeeded?

Is it more important to add new customers or to increase your interactions with existing ones?

Do you want a...

Reminders

A few deadlines are coming up, and alas, we can't do extensions, so I thought I'd remind the last-minute hold-everything types:

More than 4,000 people in 700 cities have signed up for the June 14 Linchpin meetup. Maybe you'll meet someone who's shipping. It's free and it's semi-unofficial.

Deadline for submitting a picture for the Linchpin cover is June 1 at midnight EST.

Also on June 2, the price for the full day ticket for the Boston road trip event goes up.

Is this noise inside my head bothering you?

Not just my head, but your customer's head and yes... yours.

Everyone has multiple conversations and priorities going on, competing agendas that come into play every time we make a choice about doing, buying, creating or interacting. I think these voices (and a few I missed) determine which career we

choose, how good a job we do, where we shop and what we watch. Here are a few:

The ego--seeks applause and recognition.

The lizard--seeks safety, wants to fit in and not be rejected...

Redoubling to system failure

Every 18 months for the last decade, the world has doubled the data it pushes to you.

Twice as much email, twice as many friend requests, twice as many sites to check, twice as many devices.

When does your mind lose the ability to keep up? Then what happens? Is it already happening?

But what have you shipped?

Yes, I know you're a master of the web, that you've visited every website written in English, that you've been going to SXSW for ten years, that you were one of the first bloggers, you used Foursquare before it was cool and you can code in HTML in your sleep. Yes, I know that you sit in the back of the room tweeting clever ripostes when speakers are up front failing on a panel and that you had a LOLcat published before they stopped being funny.

But what have you shipped?

What have you done...