Seth Godin

The challenge is this: training creative, independent, and innovative artists is new to us.

"Everyone will think it's stupid!"
"Everyone says it's impossible."
Guess what? Everyone works in the balloon factory and everyone is wrong.

It’s insulting to call a professional talented. She’s skilled, first and foremost. Many people have talent, but only a few care enough to show up fully, to earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough.

Marketing is the act of making change happen. Making is insufficient. You haven’t made an impact until you’ve changed someone.

Learning is not done to you, it is something you choose to do.

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

Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy.

Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.

The gift is to the giver, and comes back to him . . .” — Walt Whitman

In unstable times, growth comes from leaders who create change and engage their organizations, instead of from managers who push their employees to do more for less.

Marketing is our quest to make change on behalf of those we serve, and we do it by understanding the irrational forces that drive each of us.

Start Your Journey Before You See the End

Great teachers are wonderful. They change lives. We need them. The problem is that most schools don’t like great teachers. They’re organized to stamp them out, bore them, bureaucratize them, and make them average.

Don’t listen to the cynics. They’re cynics for a reason. For them, the resistance won a long time ago. When the resistance tells you not to listen to something, read something, or attend something, go. Do it. It’s not an accident that successful people read more books.

If times are tough, your peers and your boss may very well say that you can’t afford to be remarkable. After all, we have to conserve, to play it safe; we don’t have the money to make a mistake. In good times, however, those same people will tell you to relax, take it easy; we can afford to be conservative, to play it safe.