Seth Godin's Blog, page 295

Rights and responsibilities

Robert Bookman from the restaurant industry was quoted as saying that it would violate the free speech rights of restaurant owners if they had to post a health department grade of their cleanliness in the window.

More and more, businesses and businesspeople talk about their rights.

It seems, though, that organizations and individuals that focus more on their responsibilities and less on their rights tend to outperform.

You're responsible to your community, to your customers, to your employees...

The Levy flight

Clay Shirky taught me this very cool mathematical concept that shows up in nature, and now in marketing and social media.

An animal that forages will hang out in a small area, looking for nuts or berries, then will realize it has used up all the likely sources in this spot. It will then head off in a random direction, walk many paces, and start foraging again. When you plot the Levy flight, it looks like this:

Someone discovers your site. They poke and prod and join and return and return...

Secrets of the biggest selling launch ever

Apple reports that on the first day they sold more than $150,000,000 worth of iPads. I can't think of a product or movie or any other launch that has ever come close to generating that much direct revenue.

Are their tactics are reserved for giant consumer fads? I don't think so. In fact, they work even better for smaller gigs and more focused markets.

Earn a permission asset. Over 25 years, Apple has earned the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to their...

The Linchpin index is now available (free)

Josh Bernoff is a generous guy with an unusual hobby... he likes to make book indices.

Safer than juggling knives, that's for sure.

Josh just posted the missing index for my book Linchpin. Usually, the publisher does the index, and I'm embarrassed to admit I hadn't realized it was missing. Now I'm glad it's here.

Two asides about the book: The full-length audio (itunes, audible) is probably the best reading of one of my books. Audio books work (for me) when you can listen to them more than...

Revisiting conspicuous consumption

The reason you have a front lawn? It's a tradition. Lawns were invented as a way for the landed gentry to demonstrate that they could afford to waste land. By taking the land away from the grazing sheep, they were sending a message to their neighbors. We're rich, we can happily waste the opportunity to make a few bucks from our front lawn.

Conspicuous consumption has a long history. Wasting millions of dollars on a shark in a tank, or on $50,000 platinum stereo cables that sound an awful lot l...

Accepting limits

It's absurd to look at a three year old toddler and say, "this kid can't read or do math or even string together a coherent paragraph. He's a dolt and he's never going to amount to anything." No, we don't say that because we know we can teach and motivate and cajole the typical kid to be able to do all of these things.

Why is it okay, then, to look at a teenager and say, "this kid will never be a leader, never run a significant organization, never save a life, never inspire or create..."

Just b...

High praise indeed

The best thing to say to an artist of any kind might be, "someday, people will think what you did is really important."

If it's popular with everyone right away, it might not be art, it might just be good marketing. But if it earns attention and respect over time, if it wins over the skeptical, then you've really created something.

One in a million

The chances of a high school student eventually becoming first violin for the Boston Philharmonic: one in a million.

The chances of a high school student eventually playing basketball in the NBA? About the same.

In fact, the chances of someone growing up and getting a job precisely like yours, whatever it is, are similarly slim. (Head of development at an ad agency, director of admissions for a great college... you get the idea). Every good gig is a long shot, but in the end, a lot of talented...

Road Trip!

Digital interactions are highly leveraged and widespread, but there's nothing like face to face time to hammer home an idea. To that end I'm noodling with the idea of doing a series of day-long talks and seminars around the US this year (probably every three weeks). I often am hired to do private talks for groups, but it occurs to me that it might be more efficient and open to organize my own public talks as well.

Rather than just dreaming up the entire plan, I thought I'd ask for your...

Failure, success and neither

The math is magical: you can pile up lots of failures and still keep rolling, but you only need one juicy success to build a career.

The killer is the category called 'neither'. If you spend your days avoiding failure by doing not much worth criticizing, you'll never have a shot at success. Avoiding the thing that's easy to survive keeps you from encountering the very thing you're after.

And yet we market and work and connect and create as if just one failure might be the end of us.