Quotes from Seth Godin

Hope is not the same as reassurance. Hope is trusting yourself to have a shot to make things better. But we can hope without reassurance. We can hope at the same time that we accept that what we're working on right now might not work.

Marketing is the act of telling stories about the things we make—stories that sell and stories that spread. Marketing elects presidents, and marketing raises money for charity. Marketing also determines if the CEO stays or goes (Carly Fiorina learned this the hard way). Most of all, marketing influences markets.

Está claro que las ideas que se difunden triunfan; pero las ideas que no llegan a expresarse siempre fracasan.

Perfect closes the door. It asserts that we're done, that this is the best we can do. Worse, perfect forbids us to try. To seek perfection and not reach it is a failure.

The more important the project we take on, the more difficult it is to find certainty that our work will succeed before we begin. We can begin with this: If we failed, would it be worth the journey? Do you trust yourself enough to commit to engaging with a project regardless of the chances of success?

The way we make things better is by caring enough about those we serve to imagine the story that they need to hear. We need to be generous enough to share that story, so they can take action that they'll be proud of.

If you are using outcomes that are out of your control as fuel for your work, it's inevitable that you will burn out. Because it's not fuel you can replenish, and it's not fuel that burns without a residue.

For me, marketing works for society when the marketer and consumer are both aware of whats happening and are both satisfied with the ultimate outcome.

Your work is a tree. The roots live in the soil of dreams and desires. Not the dreams and desires of everyone, simply those you seek to serve.

Marketing, the verb, changed the market. The market is now a lot less impressed with average stuff for average people, and the market is a lot less impressed with loud and flashy and expensive advertising. Today, the market wants change. "Established 1906" used to be important. Now, apparently, it's a liability. The rush from stability is a huge opportunity for you.

Diversity might involve ethnicity or physical abilities. But it's just as likely to involve idiosyncratic approaches and differences in experience. If enough peculiar people get together, something new is going to happen. Author Scott Page has shown that as systems get more complex, diversity creates ever more benefits.

The problem is obvious—if you spend all day hitting the ball back, you'll never end up serving.

Work that matters for people who care is the shortest, most direct route to making a difference.

If you are making a decision based on how you feel at that moment, you will probably make the wrong decision.

We're humans. Our work isn't us. As humans, we can choose to do the work, and we can choose to improve our work.

The Dip is the reason you're here. It's not enough to survive your way through this Dip. You get what you deserve when you embrace the Dip and treat it like the opportunity that it really is.

We each have our own narratives. The noise in our head, the worldview that is unique to us, the history and beliefs and perceptions that shape who we are and what we choose.

Good marketers tell a story. Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to others. Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in a conversation rich world.

Picasso hesitates for a moment and asks, "So what do you think reality looks like?" The man grabs his wallet and pulls out a picture of his wife. "Here, like this. It's my wife." Picasso takes the photograph, looks at it, and grins. "Really? She's very small. And flat, too.

Kiasu is the Hokkien word for "the fear of being left behind" or not getting enough. It's a common affliction, not only in Singapore, where the phrase originates, but around the world. Far more than FOMO, it's a grasping insufficiency that drives many people forward.

past performance is no guarantee of future success.

Why do people choose one restaurant over another? One college? Why drive this car and not that one? Why did that poker champion make a bad bet? Why rent a house instead of buying one? What club do you belong to? If you look closely at decisions that don't initially make sense, you'll likely see status roles at work. The decision didn't make sense to you, but it made perfect sense to the person who made it. We spend a lot of time paying attention to status.

Of course, kiasu is actually about fear and insufficiency. And it couldn't exist if we trusted ourselves enough to know that we're already on a path to where we seek to go.

Jay Levinson famously said, "Don't change your ads when you're tired of them. Don't change them when your employees are tired of them. Don't even change them when your friends are tired of them. Change them when your accountant is tired of them.