All posts tagged Linchpin

Seth Godin is author of ten books that have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work. Some of those titles include Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), Purple Cow, and Meatball Sundae. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages, and his ebooks are among the most popular ever published. He is responsible for many words in the marketer’s vocabulary, including permission marketing, ideaviruses, purple cows, the dip and sneezers. His irrepressible speaking style and no-holds-barred blog have helped him create a large following around the world.

Seth is a renowned speaker as well. He was recently chosen as one of 21 Speakers for the Next Century by Successful Meetings and is consistently rated among the very best speakers by the audiences he addresses.

Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry’s leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998. Godin worked as VP Direct Marketing at Yahoo before leaving to become a full time speaker, writer and blogger.
He holds an MBA from Stanford, and was called “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week.

• Do you know what time it is?
• Of course. We have a watch.
• Why do you have a watch?
• The system demands we show up at the right place at the right time.
• it’s about maximizing, centralizing, monetizing.
• The system is pretty new.
• We’ve only had time zones for 150 years.
• Professional wrestling is fake.
• Somewhere along the way someone told you pro wrestling was fake and you believed it.
• It changed the way you looked at professional wrestling.
• You came to understand that there’s a difference between what is and what you are expecting.
• As soon as you realized the truth you could realize the artifice and that
• The economy drives our country.
• 4,000 years ago when we were nomads of tribes of 150 people we had a spiritual and cultural life that matched that.
• The Roman Empire demanded a new type of living. It was a new way of living, from the top down.
• Princes, merchants, banks, imperialists and kings shifted our spiritual and cultural lives.
• The life we know today is driven at every level by the economy we live in.
• The economy changes the way we see things.
• Seth made $40 Billion dollar mistake.
• In 1992 he had a small internet company.
• He compiled a list of the best websites in print.
• Made t-shirts and sold 800 copies of the printed book.
• At the same time, a company started with the same resources called Yahoo.
• They saw the same thing Seth saw… he saw a book idea; they wanted to change the world.
• The record industry is over, dead, it’s toast.
• It used to perfect in so many ways.
• You owned a record, lent it friends and would have to go to a store and buy one if it wore out.
• Then, it changed.
• The old idea was: if you have something people want or want to reach the masses, make it average for average people and yell about it.
• Henry Ford realized the power of mass production.
• Mass production allows you to become more and more efficient because it’s so efficient.
• In order to make the factory efficient you need interchangeable parts and interchangeable people.
• The model of a factory is built into all of us.
• Factories led to schools.
• Factory workers were freaking out because it’s hard to train someone who’s not expecting it.
• Factories trained workers in schools.
• Schools trained our kids to be obedient, to sit in straight rows, to do what they are told and use a #2 pencil while they do it.
• They trained us to buy stuff.
• It was all invented to feed the factory system.
• No one ever taught students how to solve interesting problems… how to do work without a map… how to develop autonomy.
• The factory wants you to fit in so they can ignore you.
• The factory isn’t just a factory or a business, it can even be the spiritual institutions we work for.
• The factory changed us… it put in our heads that what is valuable is a building.
• The factory
• We’ve been brainwashed to have a place of worship we had to have a building.
• Making a light saber isn’t hard… what’s hard is conceiving the idea of a light saber.
• In the world of Google, competence is no longer a scarce commodity.
• There’s always people who can do your job just as good.
• There’s a problem bordering on a crisis.
• We are bowling all day long… avoiding the gutter, aiming for a strike.
• We incrimentally follow the steps and feed the system.
• The problem with factories is that they will die because they race to the bottom.
• If someone is racing to the bottom you don’t want to win that race.
• Someone is always going to beat you.
• Someone will always be better.
• You have to race to the top if you want to win.
• There is a revolution.
• A revolution is destroying the industrial revolution.
• Every revolution destroys the old revolution before it creates a new one. – Clay Shirky
• What can you count on?
• You can count on that we are now connected more than ever before, you can make things more than ever before.
• All that’s left is to make a difference.
• All that’s left is to connect.
• All that’s left is to matter.
• All that’s left is to do work that matters so much that people will miss you when you are gone.
• Will you be more obedient than everyone else or more graceful than everyone else?
• We weren’t taught to do this in school.
• Being graceful is doing work and art that matters.
• Being graceful means when you leave a room people are sad to see you leave.
• The factory was around for a long time… it created institutions that embraced compliance.
• We’ve been trained to be complaint cogs in a system.
• We have a choice.
• We live in a connected revolution.
• We are only 6 handshakes away from everyone.
• You don’t win by being complaint, you win by being connected.
• North Korea is filled with compliance.
• You can’t comply yourself to success.
• You get better at making cupcakes progressively as you veer from the directions.
• Some people fail and go back to the rules; or they choose to fail by trying something different.
• Cupcake failure is not fatal.
• If we want to create a world where we can do our work, the work, we have to be prepared to fail.
• Every coin has two sides.
• You have to prepare to fail and embrace it as a part of growing.
• Tribes are at the heart of marketing, institutions and how ideas spread.
• No one joins a boring tribe.
• CMO = Chief Movement Officer
• If you are going to win, you are going to make a movement.
• You won’t create a movement by being complaint or demanding compliance.
• You make a movement by doing things people hate.
• We bought iPhones because we are part of the tribe… it’s jewelry that has a function.
• Apple realizes they aren’t in the technology business… they are leading a movement and a tribe.
• They win because they chose to create a movement that was easy for people to join.
• Their movement grows because people talk about.
• Boring and bureaucratic doesn’t work.
• People talk about geniuses… people who solve interesting problems, who connect with people and who know what it means to be a human and make a difference.
• If you’re going to be a genius, you can’t have a boss sitting around telling you what to do all day.

Without a boss in a new economy, who exactly setting your agenda?

• Is it about compliance or relentless curiosity.
• The heart of it is art.
• 1/3 of all of the oil paintings in the world are painted in China.
• Art isn’t painting.
• Art is a human act that changes someone and its generous.
• It’s a gift you can’t sell.
• The act of being able to help someone is the work of art.
• We get paid for doing what someone needs us to do.
• It’s gift-giving and connecting with people that changes people.
• Doing acts that bring us closer together is at the heart of what makes a connection economy work.
• The thing we need to do is our art.
• When you figure out what your art is you figure out what your purpose is. They are the same thing.
• People don’t learn by understanding they learn by some other way. The world changes.
• When you figure out why something works you understand.

Art demands emotional labor.

• We get paid for a different kind of labor.
• The labor of exposing ourselves is an intellectual risk.
• The labor of exposing ourselves to people who might not like us.
• Emotional labor is work worth doing.
• We need people who care opposed to people who are just doing their jobs.
• We need people who can make a human connection.
• We need people who can make change even if it means failure in the short term.
• A resume is a list of names proving you are good at following the rules.
• Do you fire people who don’t make mistakes or those who do?
• What are you rewarding?
• What are you attracted to?
• Why do we do what we do?
• Do we do it because it’s safe or because it’s what we are supposed to do.
• The more change we can make it’s more likely the tribe will join us.
• How tight is the tribe?
• That is our opportunity.
• Would the tribe miss you if you were gone?
• If the tribe disappeared how long could it be replaced?
• If you are at the center of a tribe that matters people will miss you.

That’s fine, but my boss won’t let me…

• Of course they wont!
• Your boss won’t let us try new things.
• Change is made by individuals who stop seeking deniability.
• That’s what we spend most of our day doing…
• Change is made by people who eagerly accept responsibility.
• You accept responsibility while not commanding authority.
• You must give away credit.
• You can never fit in enough…  You will never fit in all of the way.
• Stop trying!
• Emotional labor is hard.

The Lizard Brain

• Deer killed more people than sharks last year.
• Why did the chicken cross the road? Because his chicken brain told him to.
• We all have a lizard brain. It’s responsibility for anger, revenge, and reproduction.
• Animals are wild because their lizard brian tells them to.
• We all have a lizard brian.
• The lizard takes over when it’s upset.
• Stephen Pressfield calls the voice of the lizard the resistance.
• It’s the voice that tells us we can’t do it, we aren’t good enough, etc.
• The Resistance forces us to choose safety.
• The Resistance is our enemy.
• The lizard brain prevents us for doing work that matters.

The Downside of Tribes

• We’ve created a culture filled with politicians who divide us.
• Why is it so important for the tribe win?
• Is it about winning, really?
• Is that what we need to focus on?
• There’s a difference between scarcity and abundance.
• We are moving to a connected, revolutionary world.
• What happens when you give gifts instead?
• Is that seat taken?
• How many people would give everything to have our seat?
• How many people would want to have the opportunity we have.
• Do not waste the revolution.
• Do work that matters.
• Hurry.