Seth Godin's Blog, page 306

The lesson from two lemonade stands

The first stand is run by two kids. They use Countrytime lemonade, paper cups and a bridge table. It's a decent lemonade stand, one in the long tradition of standard lemonade stands. It costs a dollar to buy a cup, which is a pretty good price, considering you get both the lemonade and the satisfaction of knowing you supported two kids.

The other stand is different. The lemonade is free, but there's a big tip jar. When you pull up, the owner of the stand beams as only a proud eleven year old g...

Neat resource of vintage ads

Type in a few search terms (like Babies and Airplanes) and out pops one of the millions of ads in this incredible database.

Certain to inspire, or possibly just give you fodder for a great presentation.

The future of the library

What should libraries do to become relevant in the digital age?

They can't survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don't want to own (or for reference books we can't afford to own.) More librarians are telling me (unhappily) that the number one thing they deliver to their patrons is free DVD rentals. That's not a long-term strategy, nor is it particularly an uplifting use of our tax dollars.

Here's my proposal: train people to take intellectual initiative.

Once...

The victim

Does your job happen to you?

If you're a willing cog in the vast machinery of work, it's entirely possible that the things that occur all day feel like they're being done to you.

The alternative is to create a job where you create forward motion, where you do things to the job, not the other way around.

Take a look at the language you use to describe what happened at work yesterday, that's your first clue. If you're not the one creating the change, perhaps it's time to start.

[SOLD OUT!] Last chance for January 15 talk in New York

In case you missed it over the holidays. There were a few tickets left, but now they're gone. Sorry. See you there!

Last chance for January 15 talk in New York

In case you missed it over the holidays. There are a few tickets left.

Why ask why?

The secret to creativity is curiosity.

We often forget to teach kids to be curious. A student who has no perceived math ability, or illegible handwriting or the inability to sit still for five minutes gets immediate and escalating attention. The student with no curiosity, on the other hand, is no problem at all. Lumps are easily managed.

Same thing is true for most of the people we hire. We'd like them to follow instructions, not ask questions, not question the status quo.

Yet, without "why?...

What every mass marketer needs to learn from Groucho Marx

Perhaps the most plaintive complaint I hear from organizations goes something like this, "We worked really hard to get very good at xyz. We're well regarded, we're talented and now, all the market cares about is price. How can we get large groups of people to value our craft and buy from us again?"

Apparently, the bulk of your market no longer wants to buy your top of the line furniture, lawn care services, accounting services, tailoring services, consulting... all they want is the cheapest...

Bullhorns are overrated

They cost too much and they don't work very well.

Most people ignore them, they don't last very long and they're undependable.

Anil Dash has discovered that having ten times as many Twitter followers generates approximately zero times as much value.

The goal shouldn't be to have a lot of people to yell at, the goal probably should be to have a lot of people who choose to listen. Don't need a bullhorn for that.

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