Seth Godin Quotes

Market-driven design builds the success of the product's marketing into the product itself.

Faith in yourself, in your friends, in your colleagues and most of all, faith in your ability to impact our future is the best strategy I know.

Put aside your need for a step-by-step manual and instead realize that analogies are your best friend.

Desire can't be sated, because if it is, the longing disappears and then we've failed, because desire is the state we seek.

Your biggest failure is the thing you dreamed of contributing but didn't find the guts to do.

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

If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place.

We're going to spend our entire future living in tomorrow-investing now, when it's difficult, is the single best moment.

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.

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

Following the well-lit path, offers little in the way of magic.

The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security.

In nearly every case, trying to lead everyone results in leading no one in particular.

If you measure it, it will improve.

There's no correlation between how good your idea is and how likely your organization will be to embrace it.

Don't fix me; Love me for what's broken.

This notion that it is up to each person to innovation in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.

One way to work the system is to work the system. The other way is to refuse to work it.

What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do for a living is ship.

The sound of a small bell during a dark night, is louder than the din of traffic outside your window during rush hour. Surprise and differentiation have far more impact than noise does.

Quality is not an absolute measure. It doesn't mean 'deluxeness' or 'perfection'. It means keeping the promise the customer wants you to make.

It's much easier to spend a lot of time making your microphone louder than it is working on making your message more compelling.

A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they’re doing work that most any trained person could do.

Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.

Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.

Competence is no longer scarce.

Your success is no longer about your ability to do what you are told, and do it well.

If you're not willing to get your 'worst one ever' out of the way, how will you possibly do better than that?

Our cultural instinct is to wait to get pickedNo one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.

It takes confidence and guts to intentionally create tension.

That the horrible Zika virus or HIV, we can look at what it means to be patient zero, what it means to need not much contact to spread, and all of those things follow into the way ideas spread.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

If school is about postponing the day you have to stand up in front of the world and put yourself at risk, the resistance would like to stay there forever.

It's war that makes generals

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there.People will follow.

In a battle between  two ideas, the best one doesn't necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.

How was your day? If your answer was "fine, " then I don't think you were leading.

Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work.

That's your opportunity--to approach your work in a way that generates unique learning and interactions that are worth sharing.

When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you’ll be blameless.

How we respond to the opportunities and challenges of the outside world now determines how much the outside world values us.

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth.   Not going all the way, and not starting.”   Siddhrtha Gautama

The challenge, it turns out, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by. The challenge is getting into the habit of

This is an addictive pastime. You take no real risk, touch the world, and it responds. Repeat.

I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance…and if you have anxiety about initiating a project, then of course you will associate risk with failure.