Seth Godin's Blog, page 290

Announcing first dates for the road trip (Boston, DC, MN and Chicago)

As mentioned before, I'm bringing my New York seminar on the road. I've found that people can really benefit from direct and personal interactions, and so I'm bringing the seminar to a select group of cities over the next year (more if people show up).

My favorite concerts have always been the acoustic tours. Instead of fancy production, dancing rabbits and lip syncing, it's one person, one microphone and a human-scaled interaction. (Or sometimes five people plus Jerry).

So that's the way...

No new customers

What if a rift in the time-space continuum changed the universe and it was suddenly impossible to get new customers, new readers, new donors or new viewers?

How would that change what you do all day and how you spend your money and what you measure?

What if you tried acting that way now?

Do you have a media channel strategy? (You should.)

Twenty years ago, only big companies and TV stars worried about media channels.

Oprah was on TV, then she added radio. Two channels. Then a magazine.

Pepsi set out to dominate TV with their message, and billboards and vending machines. Newspapers, not so much. The media you chose to spread your message mattered. In fact, it could change what you made and how you made it. [Stop for a second and consider that... the media channel often drove the product and pricing and distribution:].

Today, of...

Odds and ends

Can't decide which are the odds, and which are the ends:

Right now, go buy this hard drive and do a bootable backup of every computer you care about. $60. If you spend six minutes a month (set it up before you go to bed), you'll thank me one day.

This blog makes me smile every day. If you're not in the habit of reading blogs by subscription, now is a great time to start.

If you're remotely serious about cooking, you should buy a cast iron fry pan. Your grandchildren will fight over it when...

Bad behavior

Bad behavior and irrational decisions are almost always caused by fear. If you want to change the behavior, address the fear.

And yet we don't.

Instead, we impose an embargo or throw someone in prison. We put a letter in the permanent file or put the employee on a performance improvement plan. We walk away from a prospect or blame a lack of sales on our advertising.

"What are you afraid of?" is not just a great line for a movie trailer. It's a shortcut in understanding what motivates.

David Byrne is angry with me

I recently bumped into David (he of Talking Heads fame) at a conference. Our paths have crossed before, we share a few friends, I'm a big fan and he uses permission marketing to sell his records now. I said "hi."

David's eyes flashed, he turned his shoulders, muttered something and rushed away.

What did I say? What did I do? Why he is upset with me?

Of course, David Byrne isn't angry with me. David Byrne doesn't even remember who I am. In fact, David Byrne was busy, or late, or trying to figure ...

The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer)

For 400 years, higher education in the US has been on a roll. From Harvard asking Galileo to be a guest professor in the 1600s to millions tuning in to watch a team of unpaid athletes play another team of unpaid athletes in some college sporting event, the amount of time and money and prestige in the college world has been climbing.

I'm afraid that's about to crash and burn. Here's how I'm looking at it.

1. Most colleges are organized to give an average education to average students.

Pick up...

Carrying capacity

An organization with eight people in it might be happy, profitable and growing. The same business with twenty might be on the way to bankruptcy.

Ideas, markets, niches and causes have a natural scale. If you get it right, you can thrive for a long time. Overdo it and you stress the inputs.

The earth has a carrying capacity, certainly. It might change as a result of technology (we know how to grow food more efficiently than we did a century ago) but in any moment of time, there's a limit beyond ...

"Powerpoint makes us stupid"--these bullets can kill

The US Army reports that misuse of Powerpoint (in other words, using Powerpoint the way most people use it, the way it was designed to be used) is a huge issue.

I first wrote a popular short free ebook about this seven years ago and the problem hasn't gone away. So much for the power of the idea.

Here's the problem:

Bullets appear to be precise



They define the scope of the issue, even if they are wrong

They are definitive, even if they aren't



Bullets that are read from the screen...

The paralysis of unlimited opportunity

There aren't just a few options open to you, there are thousands (or more).

You can spend your marketing money in more ways than ever, live in more places while still working electronically, contact different people, launch different initiatives, hire different freelancers... You can post your ideas in dozens of ways, interact with millions of people, launch any sort of product or service without a permit or factory.

Too many choices.

If it's thrilling to imagine the wide open spaces, go for...