Seth Godin People Quotations

Most people have bosses who hire them to fill a slot in the work chart and to do what they are told. And most people who are doing what they are told feel safe; it feels reliable.

When enough people care about autism or diabetes or global warming, it helps everyone, even if only a tiny fraction actively participate.

Normal is fading away. Governments and industries and schools like normal, because it's easier, it scales and it's profitable. But people don't like it - we want to be who we are, not who some marketer tells us to be.

And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.

If you're going to build a lean enterprise, you can test and measure how often the company ships iterations, how often it fails, how often it is putting things in front of people that don't work.

One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice.

If a product's future is unlikely to be remarkable - if you can't imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product - it's time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new.

Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed. They want to be missed the day they don't show up. They want to be missed when they're gone.

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.

No offense intended...Most people online are gorillas. When a gorilla walks into an experiment, what they say is 'What do I do now? Where's the banana?'

We've had people who were yoga instructors. ... We have a former marine, and we have everything in between,

The most popular TV show in America is a game show, ... People have been playing our games for years and are playing more and more games. The relationship they build is similar to a magazine that has a subscription base or a newspaper with home delivery customers.

Great boss is challenging people in the right way. Leading, not managing. Supporting them by giving them both a platform they can count on and expectations they can stretch for.

Making an average pitch to average people, or having an average gala for average people isn't going to scale anymore. You've got to find the people who care. Those people are worth all of your time.

I feel like I'm treating people as I'd like to be treated.

You have to pay the price to be in the right place at the right time often enough that people tend to see you as the regular kind.

What marketers used to do is make average products for average people. That's what mass marketing is. They would ignore the geeks, and - God forbid - the laggards. It was all about going for the center. I don't think that's the strategy we want to use anymore.

So by giving people a tool that they can share and benefit from, it's a form of media that isn't controlled by Rupert Murdoch or the guys at Viacom. It is a form of media that is earned every single time it spreads.

I hope I'm better looking than Yoda, but - I'm really interested in people who have something to say, a change they want to make and can't figure out why they can't make it spread.

Or, if I take that same auditorium and I make it much bigger and put more space between seats, it'll be quieter because it's much harder when you're not in physical contact with people to spread a virus from person-to-person, right? There are all sorts of patterns that we see in epidemiology that help us understand why something spreads.

Teaching young people to sell is a priceless gift.

What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.

Treat different people differently. Anything else is a compromise.

One reason people who spend a lot of time thinking about and working on a problem or a craft seem to find breakthroughs more often than everyone else is that they've failed more often than everyone else.

The essence of marketing today is to tell a story to people who want to hear it, in a way that resonates with them so they are likely to either respond or connect to you, or tell their friends.

Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed.

Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.

The wettest, weirdest environment is human interaction. Whatever we build gets misunderstood, corroded and chronic, and it happens quickly and in unpredictable ways. That's one reason why the web is so fascinating-it's a collision between the analytic world of code and wet world of people.

Here's the fascinating part, call it the golden shoulder: We have no idea in advance who the great contributors are going to be. We know that there's a huge cohort of people struggling outside the boundaries of the curated, selected few, but we don't know who they are.

Entertainment has seduced us into believing that we have a chance to live the life they live in the movies. Even the people in the movies don't live that life. It doesn't take 135 minutes to make a life, it takes almost a century. Everything doesn't depend on what happens in the next ninety seconds. Ever.

If you're remarkable it's likely that some people won't like you.

The reason business writing is horrible is that people are afraid. Afraid to say what they mean, because they might be criticized for it. Afraid to be misunderstood, to be accused of saying what they didn't mean, because they might be criticized for it.

Marketing isn't done by computers, it's done by people. And people who sense opportunity and have the confidence to be remarkable will always defeat defensive actions by people who have given up.

Here's conventional wisdom: Success makes you happy. Happiness permits you to be generous. In fact, it actually works like this: Generosity makes you happy. Happy people are more likely to be successful.

It’s okay. Let your ego push you to be the initiator. But tell your ego that the best way to get something shipped is to let other people take the credit. The real win for you (and your ego) is seeing something get shipped, not in getting the credit when it does.

What I learned: Shun nonbelievers. Ignore critics. Do your best for people who want to dance with you.

Personalizatio n wasn't supposed to be a cleverly veiled way to chase prospects around the web, showing them the same spammy ad for the same lame stuff as everyone else sees. No, it is a chance to differentiate at a human scale, to use behavior as the most important clue about what people want and more important, what they need.

If we can fall in love with serving people, creating value, solving problems, building valuable connections and doing work that matters, it makes it far more likely we're going to do important work

All good ideas are terrible... Until people realize they are obvious. If you're not willing to live through the terrible stage, you'll never get to the obvious part.

I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

You can't fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.

Social Networking that matters is helping people archive their goals. Doing it reliably and repeatability so that over time people have an interest in helping you achieve your goals.

No organization ever created an innovation. People innovate, not companies.

You dont need to convince everyone. All you need to do is motivate people who choose to follow you.

The goal, then, isn't to draw some positioning charts and announce that you have differentiated your product. No, the opportunity is to actually create something that people choose to talk about, regardless of what the competition is doing.

People watch what you do more than listen to what you say.

Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been...frighten ed enough to hold it back. It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.

Great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories don't teach people anything new. Instead the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the thirst place.

Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your return policy.

The organizations of the future are filled with smart, fast, flexible people on a mission

People are buying only one thing from you: the way the engagement (hiring you, working with you, dating you, using your product or service, learning from you) makes them feel.

What people are afraid of isn't failure. It's blame. Criticism.

The notion that I do my work here, now, like this, even when I do not feel like it, and especially when I do not feel like it, is very important. Because lots and lots of people are creative when they feel like it, but you are only going to become a professional if you do it when you don't feel like it. And that emotional waiver is why this is your work and not your hobby.

Emotions are far more contagious than any disease. A smile or a panic will spread through a group of people far faster than any virus ever could. When you walk into the office or a negotiation, then, wash your bad mood away before you see us. Don't cough on us, don't sneeze on us, sure, but don't bring your grouchiness, your skepticism or your fear in here either. It might spread.

Authenticy in marketing is telling a story people want to hear.

Most people don't see that they have options beyond what society tells them to do. That's the biggest problem. They honestly believe that compliance is the shortcut to success.

People talking about you is far more effective than talking about yourself.

Networking that matters is helping people achieve their goals.

Confusion sets in when you're not sure if your product or service is bought or sold, or worse, if you are a salesperson just waiting for people to buy.

If you're remarkable, then it's likely that some people won't like you. That's part of the definition of remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous praise - ever. The best the timid can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out. Playing it safe. Following the rules. They seem like the best ways to avoid failure. Alas, that pattern is awfully dangerous. The current marketing “rules” will ultimately lead to failure. In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.

Giving people what they want isn't always what they want.

The people that are doing work that matters aren't doing work thats popular. They're just doing work that changes some people.

Competent people are the most resistant to change

Instead of focusing on arguing with people who say no, it might be easier to get near the people who like to say yes.

Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow them.

Successful people fail often, and, worth noting, learn more from that failure than everyone else.

Without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it's unlikely to be worth the journey. Persist.

You can't control other people, and giving them the power to decide if you will continue to produce good work is foolish.

Many people believe that great designers get great clients. It's the other way around.

An organization filled with honest, motivated, connected, eager, learning, experimenting, ethical and driven people will always defeat the one that merely has talent. Every time.

Human nature is to need a map. If you’re brave enough to draw one, people will follow.

The real power of tribes has nothing to do with the Internet and everything to do with people.

It's pretty easy to decide to roll with the punches, to look at the enormity of natural disaster and choose to hunker down and do less. It's more important than ever, I think, to persist and make a dent in the universe instead. We've all been offered access to so many tools, so many valuable connections, so many committed people. What an opportunity.

Don't create for the masses. Create for the people who are your kind of weird.

If you're different somehow and have made yourself unique, people will find you and pay you more.

Laptop computers dramatically increased the time people spend doing work. (The internet dramatically decreased it, so we're even).

Too often, we don't give people the opportunity to fill in the blanks.

More and more people now have jobs that require them to confront the risk of appearing stupid on a regular basis.

Are you copying others? People won't pay extra for that. You won't be followed for that.

You don't become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to become indispensable is to be different. That's because if you're the same, so are plenty of other people.

The only people who get paid what they're worth are people who don't follow the instruction book, who create art, who are innovative, who work without a map.

The easiest way to thrive as an outlier is to avoid being one. At least among your most treasured peers. Surround yourself with people in at least as much of a hurry, at least as inquisitive, at least as focused as you are.

No, the only way to know what people think is to watch what they do, not what they say. Do they come back for more? Do you cause them to change their behavior? Can you make them smile?

In fact, most of the time, people with similar information, similar beliefs and similar apparent choices will choose similar actions. So if you want to know why someone does what they do, start with what they know, what they believe and where they came from. Dismissing actions we don't admire merely because we don't care enough to have empathy is rarely going to help us make the change we seek. It doesn't help us understand, and it creates a gulf that drives us apart.

If you're passionate, be passionate enough to fail. Fail small, accept responsibility, repeat. The people who make change are the survivors of serial failure.

Developing expertise or assets that are not easily copied is essential; otherwise you’re just a middleman. “ “Don’t try to be the ‘next’. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new. “ “Everyone is not your customer. “ “Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a deal breaker.

That's why there's lots and lots and lots of kinds of hot sauces and not so many kinds of mustard. Not 'cause it's hard to make interesting mustard - you can make interesting mustard. But people don't because no one's obsessed with it, and thus no one tells their friends.

Art is when we do work that matters in a creative way, in a way that touches (people) and changes them for the better.

The desire that we have to do something that’s never been done before means that the people who are around you generally will not encourage you to do it…if they were encouraging you to do it, then other people would be doing it already and it wouldn’t be unique.

The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don't know.

The fatigue was there, but some people understood that putting it aside was the single most important factor in succeeding.

Marketing is a contest for people's attention.

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.

The less people know, the more they yell.

Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don't.

Most people are searching for a path to success that is both easy and certain. Most paths are neither.

Perhaps your challenge isn't finding a better project or a better boss. Perhaps you need to get in touch with what it means to feel passionate. People with passion look for ways to make things happen.

The only thing all successful people have in common is that they're successful, so don't waste your time copying "the successful strategies" of others.