Seth Godin | Local Business Marketing Consultant

Don Quijote didn’t ship

Society makes heroes out of entrepreneurs and adventurers that tilt at windmills and succeed. Napster slays the music industry! Twitter comes out of nowhere!

The thing about taking on the biggest giants is that most of the time (so often as to be all of the time if you’re willing to do some rounding) you fail. You don’t just fail at the end, you often fail long before the end.

Yet the dreamers persist. These are usually the garage entrepreneurs, people with little market success behind them, those working without a track record or significant resources. People forget that Google was backed with millions of dollars from the biggest VCs in the world when they took on Yahoo.

I know, I know, I’m supposed to be the guy who says, “go for it!” but the fact is, most of the time the choice to take on impossible odds, to challenge the entrenched monopolist is the work of the lizard brain. After all, if you dream the impossible dream and go after the thing that can’t possibly work, you don’t have to worry about being criticized, you don’t have to worry about the responsibility of shipping or serving your customers. After all, it was impossible.

Tangling with the largest possible opponent, when you are severely overmatched is a way of giving in to the resistance, of not actually shipping.

My best advice: win little battles. Get in the habit of winning, of shipping, of having customers that can’t live without you. Once you’ve demonstrated you know how to do the art, then go after the windmills.

Technorati Tags: Adventurers, Don Quijote, Dreamers, Giants, Google, Habit, Heroes, Impossible Dream, Impossible Odds, Lizard, Market Success, Monopolist, Music Industry, Napster, Opponent, Resistance, Significant Resources, Tilt At Windmills, Twitter, Vcs

Filed Under: Strategies Tagged With: Adventurers, Don Quijote, Dreamers, Giants, Google, Habit, Heroes, Impossible Dream, Impossible Odds, Lizard, Market Success, Monopolist, Music Industry, Napster, Opponent, Resistance, Significant Resources, Tilt At Windmills, Twitter, Vcs

All you need to know…

by Seth Godin Leave a Comment

is that it’s possible.

Mike sent me a great story about an ultra-lightweight backpacker:

“Wolf was carrying a super-small pack which weighed 14 pounds including food and water. When asked how he got his pack weight so low, Wolf would reply, ‘All you need to know is that it’s possible.’”

One of the under-reported stories of the internet is this: it constantly reports on what’s possible. Somewhere in the world, someone is doing something that you decided couldn’t be done. By calling your bluff and by pointing out the possibilities, this reporting of possibility changes everything.

You can view this as a horrible burden, one that raises the bar and eliminates any sinecure of comfort and hiding you can find, or you can embrace it as a chance to stretch.

Most organizations forget to ask the question in the first place.

Technorati Tags: Ask Question, Lightweight Backpacker, Possibilities, Sinecure, Somewhere In The World, Wolf

Filed Under: Strategies Tagged With: Ask Question, Lightweight Backpacker, Possibilities, Sinecure, Somewhere In The World, Wolf

Sentences, paragraphs and chapters

by Seth Godin Leave a Comment

It’s laughably easy to find someone to critique a sentence, to find a missing apostrophe or worry about your noun-verb agreement.

Sometimes, you’re lucky enough to find someone who can tell you that a paragraph is dull, or out of place.

But finding people to rearrange the chapters, to criticize the very arc of what you’re building, to give you substantive feedback on your strategy–that’s insanely valuable and rare.

Perhaps one criticism in a hundred is actually a useful and generous contribution in your quest to reorganize things for the better.

[And for those in need of subtitles, this isn't a post about your next novel. It's about your business, your career and your life.]

Four people tell you that there was a typo on the third slide in your presentation. A generous and useful editor (hard to call them a consultant), though, points out that you shouldn’t be doing presentations at all, and your time would be better spent meeting in small groups with your best clients.

Technorati Tags: Apostrophe, Arc, Business Career, Chapters, Critique, Finding People, Generous Contribution, Noun Verb Agreement, Novel, Paragraph, Paragraphs, Presentation, Presentations, Sentences, Small Groups, Typo

Filed Under: Strategies Tagged With: Apostrophe, Arc, Business Career, Chapters, Critique, Finding People, Generous Contribution, Noun Verb Agreement, Novel, Paragraph, Paragraphs, Presentation, Presentations, Sentences, Small Groups, Typo

Are you an elite?

by Seth Godin Leave a Comment

In the developing world, there’s often a sharp dividing line between the elites and everyone else. The elites have money and/or an advanced education. It’s not unusual to go to the poorest places on earth and find a small
cadre of people who aren’t poor at all. Sometimes, this is an unearned position, one that’s inherited or acquired in ways that take advantage of others. Regardless, you can’t just announce you’re an elite and become one.

In more and more societies, though (including my country and probably yours [and I'm including virtually the entire planet here, except perhaps North Korea] ), I’d argue that there’s a different dividing line. This is the line between people who are actively engaged in new ideas, actively seeking out change, actively engaging–and people who accept what’s given and slog along. It starts in school, of course, and then the difference accelerates as we get older. Some people make the effort to encounter new challenges or to grapple with things they disagree with. They seek out new people and new opportunities and relish the discomfort that comes from being challenged to grow (and challenging others to do the same).

Perhaps I’m flattering myself (and you) but I think almost everyone who reads blogs like this one is part of the elites. It’s not because of birth or financial standing, it’s because of a choice, the decision to be aware and engaged, to challenge a status quo of your choice.

The number of self-selected elites is skyrocketing. Part of this is a function of our ability to make a living without working 14 hours a day in a sweatshop, but part of it is the ease with which it’s possible to find and connect with other elites.

The challenge of our time may be to build organizations and platforms that engage and coordinate the elites, wherever they are. After all, this is where change and productivity come from.

Once you identify this as your mission, you save a lot of time and frustration in your outreach. If someone doesn’t choose to be part of the elites, it’s unclear to me that you can persuade them to change their mind. On the other hand, the cycle of discovery and engagement and shipping the elites have started is going to accelerate over time, and you have all the tools necessary to be part of it–to lead it, in fact.

Technorati Tags: Advanced Education, Challenges, Developing World, Dividing Line, Earth, Elite, Elites, Frustration, money, New Opportunities, North Korea, Outreach, People, Platforms, productivity, Sweatshop

Filed Under: Strategies Tagged With: Advanced Education, Challenges, Developing World, Dividing Line, Earth, Elite, Elites, Frustration, money, New Opportunities, North Korea, Outreach, People, Platforms, productivity, Sweatshop

Where do you find good ideas?

by Seth Godin Leave a Comment

Do you often find ideas that change everything in a windowless conference room, with bottled water on the side table and a circle of critics and skeptics wearing suits looking at you as the clock ticks down to the 60 minutes allocated for this meeting?

If not, then why do you keep looking for them there?

The best ideas come out of the corner of our eye, the edge of our consciousness, in a flash. They are the result of misdirection and random collisions, not a grinding corporate onslaught. And yet we waste billions of dollars in time looking for them where they’re not.

A practical tip: buy a big box of real wooden blocks. Write a key factor/asset/strategy on each block in big letters. Play with the blocks. Build concrete things out of non-concrete concepts. Uninvite the devil’s advocate, since the devil doesn’t need one, he’s doing fine.

Have fun. Why not? It works.

Technorati Tags: 60 Minutes, Asset Strategy, Billions Of Dollars, Bottled Water, Clock, Collisions, Concrete Concepts, Consciousness, Devil S Advocate, Misdirection, Onslaught, Skeptics, Suits, Waste Billions, Wooden Blocks