Seth Godin quotes:

The Net is not television. It is the finest direct-marketing mechanism in the history of mankind. It is direct mail with free stamps, and it allows you to create richer and deeper relationships than you've ever been able to create before.

In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.

The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.

Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It's not just about entertainment - it's about education. Permission marketing is curriculum marketing.

Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person.

Habits like blogging often and regularly, writing down the way you think, being clear about what you think are effective tactics, ignoring the burbling crowd and not eating bacon. All of these are useful habits.

I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.

My blogging life is basically goalless. I like the zen nature of that, and paradoxically, it improves results.

Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that's where charisma comes from, from the leading.

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.

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.

Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you've got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don't start, you never get a chance.

The way to work with a bully is to take the ball and go home. First time, every time. When there's no ball, there's no game. Bullies hate that. So they'll either behave so they can play with you or they'll go bully someone else.

I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.

I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.

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.

I intentionally abandoned the hard stuff early on because not only do I think it's useless, I think it's a distraction.

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.

The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.

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

Art is a personal act of courage.

People are not afraid of failure, they're afraid of blame.

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.

Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.

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."

The competitive advantages the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you."

The public square is more public than ever, but minds are rarely changed in 140 character bursts and by selfies.

If we live in a world where information drives what we do, the information we get becomes the most important thing. The person who chooses that information has power.

Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

Not adding value is the same as taking it away.

It's rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who is also an angry person. They can't occupy the same space, and if your anger moves in, generosity and creativity often move out. It's difficult to use revenge or animus to fuel great work.

Just about anything worth doing is worth doing better.

Change isn't made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later.

Viewing the web as a platform for generosity is very different than seeing an opportunity to turn it into an ATM machine.

Your audacious life goals are fabulous. We're proud of you for having them. But it's possible that those goals are designed to distract you from the thing that's really frightening you--the shift in daily habits that would mean a re-invention of how you see yourself.

Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths... whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it's over

A well-defined backup plan is sabotage waiting to happen. Why push through the dip, why take the risk, why blow it all when there's the comfortable alternative instead? The people who break through usually have nothing to lose, and they almost never have a backup plan.

Being charismatic doesn't make you a leader. Being a leader makes you charismatic.

Being an artist isn't a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It's an attitude we can all adopt. It's a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things, you're an artist.

If you are wiling to do something that might not work, you are closer to being an artist.

Good enough' stopped being good enough a long time ago. so why not be great?

You don't have to settle for the status quo, for being good enough, for getting by, for working all night.

The secret to being wrong isn't to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn't fatal.

The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.

You can risk being wrong or you can be boring.

Our best work can't possibly appeal to the average masses, only our average work can. Finding the humility to happily walk away from those that don't get it unlocks our ability to do great work.

Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.

No one has ever built a statue to a critic, it's true. On the other hand, it's only the people with statues that get pooped on by birds flying by.

Black Friday is a media trap, an orchestrated mass hallucination based on herd dynamics and the media cycle.

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

If you love writing or making music or blogging or any sort of performing art, then do it. Do it with everything you've got. Just don't plan on using it as a shortcut to making a living.

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

Most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.

Acknowledge to yourself that the factory job is dead. Having a factory job is not a natural state. It wasn't at the heart of being human until very recently. We've been culturally brainwashed.

The mistake so many marketers make is that they conjoin the urgency of making another sale with the timing to earn the right to make that sale. In other words, you must build trust before you need it. Building trust right when you want to make a sale is just too late.

The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don't have much wiggle room here.

Organizations grow when they persuade a tiny cadre to be passionate, not when they touch millions with a mediocre message

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.

You can't win by being more average than average.

Don't save the canary. Fix the coal mine.

If you wait until there is another case study in your industry, you will be too late!

By the time there is a case study about your industry, you are already too late...

So sure, start with a slogan. But don't bother wasting any time on it if you're merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.

Marketing yourself to a new person often involves being charismatic, clever and quick-but most jobs and most relationships are about being consistent, persistent and brave.

The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work in a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.

All motivation is self-motivation. Your family, your boss, or your co-workers can try to get your engine going, but until you decide what to accomplish, nothing will happen.

Who you hang out with determines what you dream about and what you collide with. And the collisions and the dreams lead to your changes. And the changes are what you become. Change the outcome by changing your circle.

The industrial age brought compliance and compliance brought fear and fear brought us mediocrity.

It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. Stop settling for what's good enough and start creating art that matters.

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.

Content Marketing is all the Marketing that's left.

Content marketing is the only marketing left

Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it

Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in.

If you have a book to write, write it. If you want to record an album, record it. No need to wait for someone in a cubicle halfway across the country to decide if you're worthy.

We know what you want to accomplish... The real question is, 'what are you willing to push through the dip for?' What are you willing to stand up for, bleed for, commit to and generally be unreasonable about? Because that's what's going to actually get done.

Sooner or later, many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.

Any customer that walks away, disrespected and defeated, represents tens of thousands of dollars out the door, in addition to the failure of a promise the brand made in the first place. You can't see it but it's happening, daily.

Loving what you do is almost as important as doing what you love, especially if you need to make a living at it.

If you borrow money to make money, you've done something magical. On the other hand, if you go into debt to pay your bills or buy something you want but don't need, you've done something stupid. Stupid and short-sighted and ultimately life-changing for the worse...

Don't waste time looking for a better pencil: learn to write better.

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.

Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust. Then you can worry about the rest.

Measurement is fabulous. Unless you're busy measuring what's easy to measure as opposed to what's important

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.

If failure is not an option, then neither is success.

Anyone who says failure is not an option has also ruled out innovation.

It's impossible to have a coin with only one side. You can't have heads without tails. Innovation is like that. Initiative is like that. Art is like that. You can't have success unless you're prepared to have failure. As soon as you say, 'failure is not an option,' you've just said, 'innovation is not an option.'

If failure is not an option, neither is success. Innovation is just repeated failure till you come up with something that works.

The goal of a marketing interaction isn't to close the sale, any more than the goal of a first date is to get married. No, the opportunity is to move forward, to earn attention and trust and curiosity and conversation.

Fitting in is a short-term strategy that gets you nowhere. Standing out is a long-term strategy that takes guts and produces results.

Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from.

Turn strangers into friends. Turn friends into donors. And then do the most important job: Turn your donors into fundraisers.

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

I've found that giving gifts is transformative. It makes me better. It clarifies my thinking and allows me to do better work.

Practice works because practice gives us a chance to relax enough to make smart choices.

The art of good decision making is looking forward to and celebrating the tradeoffs, not pretending they don't exist.

Every great company, brand, career has been built in exactly the same way: bit by bit, step by step, little by little.

Embracing the fear of freedom, deciding to determine your own path, this is the work of a grownup.

Make something happen today, before you go home, before the end of the week. Launch that idea, post that post, run that ad, call that customer. Go the edge, that edge you've been holding back from... and do it today. Without waiting for the committee or your boss or the market. Just go.

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.

Kickstarter isn't a profit center, it's an organizer and an instigator.

Permission marketing is marketing without interruptions.

As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.

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

Go ahead and act as if your decisions are temporary. Because they are. Be bold, make mistakes, learn a lesson, and fix what doesn't work. No sweat, no need to hyperventilate.

Be bold, make mistakes, learn a lesson, and fix what doesn't work.

In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he's tired. Everyone is. That's not the point. The point is to run.

If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do

Most of your competition spend their days looking forward to those rare moments when everything goes right. Imagine how much leverage you have if you spend your time maximizing those common moments when it doesn't.

Most people with a big idea, great talent and/or something to say don't get lucky at first. Or second. Or even third. It's so easy to conclude that if you're not lucky, you're not good. So persistence becomes an essential element of good, because without persistence, you never get a chance to get lucky.

Remarkable work often comes from making choices when everyone else feels as though there is no choice.

Good marketers tell a story.

Great marketers don't make stuff. They make meaning.

For most modern marketers, quantity isn't the point. What matters is to matter. Lives changed. Work that made an actual difference. Connection.

Good marketers measure.

Cheap is the last refuge of a product developer or marketer who is out of great ideas.

You can win with consistent benefits, delivered over time. You win by incrementally earning share, attention and trust.

The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven't given them anything else to care about.

The best marketing strategy is to destroy your industry before your competition does.