Seth Godin Business Quotations

I was lucky enough to co-found a business in college that ended up with 400 employees, and I launched 20 different projects while I was there - a project a week.

The thing about information is that information is more valuable when people know it. There's an exception for business information and super timely information, but in all other cases, ideas that spread win.

Everyone is not your customer.

Give up control and give it away ... The more you give your idea away, the more your company is going to be worth.

If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either.

Some people read business books looking for confirmation. I read them in search of disquiet. Confirmation is cheap, easy and ineffective. Restlessness and the scientific method, on the other hand, create a culture of testing and inquiry that can't help but push you forward.

...treasure what it means to do a day's work. It's our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it's certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day's work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you'll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.

Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.

The market and the consumer and idea trump the system.

The application process changes the list of who applies. Your applicants reflect your methods.

One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that.

Once you have permission to talk to someone, finding new products or services for them is a smart way to grow.

Lack of resources (payroll), time and competing priorities are why so many nonprofits haven't done well. It's that simple.

Don't try to be the 'next'. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.

Choose your customers, choose your future.

We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you've already figured out, demands initiative.

A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.

Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.

If you hear my idea but don't believe it, that's not your fault; it's mine. If you see my new product but don't buy it, that's my failure, not yours. If you attend my presentation and you're bored, that's my fault too.

It's not about you, it's about the next person. The single best use of a business book is to help someone else. Sharing what you read, handing the book to a person who needs it... pushing those around you to get in sync and to take action-that's the main reason it's a book, not a video or a seminar. A book is a souvenir and a container and a motivator and an easily leveraged tool. Hoarding books makes them worth less, not more.

If you're going to invest a valuable asset (like time), go ahead and make it productive. Use a postit or two, or some index cards or a highlighter. Not to write down stuff so you can forget it later, but to create marching orders. It's simple: if three weeks go by and you haven't taken action on what you've written down, you wasted your time.

Decide, before you start, that you're going to change three things about what you do all day at work. Then, as you're reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn't to persuade you to change, it's to help you choose what to change.

Successful people are the ones who are breaking the rules.

People rarely buy what they need. They buy what they want.

Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a deal breaker.

Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it's a lot easier to launch work that matters.

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers.

If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.

Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards--and living up to them--is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it." -

Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.

Playing safe is very risky.

Change is not a threat, it's an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.

There's no shortage of remarkable ideas, what's missing is the will to execute them.

People don't believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves.

Make a decision. It doesn't have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.

The challenge with being an initiator of projects is that you are never, ever done.

Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.

The only thing worse than starting something and failing... is not starting something.

You are not your resume, you are your work.