Why Is Seth Godin Still Successful Anyway?!
Saying that Seth Godin is popular is an understatement.
Some people call him “the rockstar of marketing”. Some other “America’s greatest marketer”.
He is an entrepreneur with several successful gigs under his belt, among which selling Yoyodyne to Yahoo for about $30 million in 1998 and creating Squidoo, a revenue-sharing writing site which listed among the 500 most visited sites in the world.
He published 23 books of which 19 of them became international bestsellers and have been translated in over 35 languages.
His blog it’s easily one of the most read in the world. It counts over 7100 blog posts, it has over half a million visit per month, 434K referral backlinks and 16.6% of traffic coming from direct search (you can find it on Google just by typing “seth”).
He scored few successful projects in the world of education too. In 2015 he started the altMBA, an intensive, 4-week online workshop for high-performing individuals, with over 1800 participants from 45 different countries. He also launched the Marketing Seminar, a marketing course which has seen already over 6000 students participating in it.
The number of successes could go on and on and on.
And yet… his advice about marketing often goes upstream.
It’s unlike anything you hear or read around. He talks about addressing “minimum viable audiences”, about “shining a light for someone”, being empathetic, generous..
Is this really how one of the supposedly greatest marketers of America” has achieve all these incredible results?
Well… yes. But there is more to it.
There are a few, key powerful ideas in Seth’s approach to business that make his career and legacy one of a kind. We tried to put them together in this article for you to enjoy his enduring wisdom, once again.
Be a rebel. ✊
When you see or hear Seth Godin speak, one thing that strikes the most is his soothing, gentle manner. He doesn’t scream to be heard. Nor he goes after enemies. He doesn’t even drop the “F” word here and there: when interviewed, Seth speaks calmly and with eloquence.
However, don’t let yourself be mislead by it. Seth is at his core, a true rebel. One of the most “dangerous” ones: the ones who can actually plant the seed of rebelling into the minds of many. Is not uncommon hearing him saying that we need less obedience and more hubris in our society. But his way of rebelling is of a different kind, it’s one driven by creativity and entrepreneurship.
Seth understood early on that the school system was invented by industrialist, to teach people to do what they’re told once they enter the job market. To follow instructions as a compliant factory worker.
Seth passionately advise against this passive mindset. He knows that “out there” there are no real rules to follow. You can create your own rules, your own reality.
And the way to do it, is not by being average. It’s by being remarkable.
Be remarkable. 🐮
Seth’s most popular idea is the one of the purple cow. The idea is simple yet powerful.
In order to stand out in the market, you need to be so remarkable with your work that if people see your product on a supermarket shelf, in a store, or on their Facebook feed, they would stop whatever their doing and think:
“Wait….WHAT?!?”
In other words, it’s about creating something phenomenal, counterintuitive and exciting. Something worth making a remark about. Like a purple cow!
Seth urges you to implement this mindset into everything you build, do, or create, because — after all — great marketing starts with goods and services worth promoting in the first place.
In order for you to be remarkable, you will need to break patterns, innovate and create things.. and to do that, you will need to take risks.
Take risks. 🛩️
According to Seth’s experience the safest thing you can do in life, is to take risks. To explain this ideas, Seth brilliantly recalls the popular myth of Icarus, giving it a new perspective.
The story goes that Icarus was told by his father Daedalus not to fly too close to the sun or his wings would melt and he would fall and die. As you probably know, Icarus didn’t listen to his father and died. The myth as we know it, would suggest that taking risks is dangerous and better avoided, along with disobeying authority.
However, as Seth points out, this was not the full story. When you actually go read the original, it says not to fly too low either. In fact, flying closer to the ocean might feel safer, but the water could make the wings wet, heavy and impossible to flap, which could lead Icarus to drown too.
What Seth wants to convey by retelling the full myth as it was, is that you should stop to play it small, play it “safe”. In fact, there is no such thing as safety in life, and even doing what feels safe now could be actually compromising in the long term.
Therefore, he suggests, try to be a linchpin: one of those indispensable people who take the intellectual and emotional risk to show the way forward. To create the products and services we can’t live without.
To become a linchpin, you need the courage to speak your ideas out loud. To ship your product to the market, no matter what the reaction might be. Don’t wait for the perfect opportunity, for the right timing. It does not exist, or to better put it: it is always the right time.
Therefore, choose something you are going to put your 100% in and and stick to it. The fear of failing is not going to go away, it’s hard-wired in us. You gotta dance with it, on the edge. To put it in his own words: “If you are asking for guarantee, you are in the wrong line.”
To become a linchpin, you need to do something with care. For the smallest viable audience.
Focus on the few. 📣
When every marketer is shouting about growing your list, scale your business and 10x your revenues, Seth is whispering instead to start from the smallest viable audience. If you do that well — he says — “the rest will take care of itself”.
To understand Seth’s point of view, you really only need to see one graph:
This is the graph of the normal statistical distribution, which among many things represents the diffusion of innovative products and services on the market.
The vast majority of consumers finds comfort in the middle, in the average. That is where the “more” economy takes place. Businesses driven by profits with the only goal of maximizing it. When you operate in such market, you quickly start making compromises. Your main focus becomes “How do we reach more people?” which often translate into “How do we get more average?”. A breathless race for your audience’s attention, trying to trick as many people as possible to enter your marketing “funnel”.
Seth strongly advises against this. He is all about focusing on the purple parts of the graphs. The tiny percentages of innovators and early adopters who believe in what you do.
The test to know if you are on the right path, as Seth would say, is to see if your first 10 customers spread the word about it, if they will tell their friends about your product or service. If they do, that’s your minimum viable audience to focus on. You’re probably onto something good.
One of the “secrets” to succeed in this initial endeavour, is not only to have a good product but also to start building something money can’t get you: a genuine connection with your customers and community, by being empathetic and generous.
Very few people approach marketing with empathy. But empathy makes a difference: if you were to disappear from the public scene tomorrow, would someone miss hearing from you? Or would you be replaced in a matter of days?
In a world where we can connect with whomever we want, people don’t want to connect with people that are pretentious and selfish. They want to engage with people and businesses that are genuinely interested and generous.
That is, afterall, what marketing is really about.
Improve people’s lives. 💜
In his latest bestselling book “This Is Marketing”, Seth provides his definition of what marketing is all about. But before he does that, Seth states clearly what marketing is not.
Marketing is not about spamming, interrupting, tricking people into buying and doing things they don’t want to do.
Marketing is not done to people. It is done with them.
In fact, Marketing should always be approached as an act of changing people’s lives. To bring an idea or a product or a service to someone who needs it. When you start from this approach, you should always be of thinking of the dreams and hopes of your potential customers, and care about creating a solution to their problems.
This is what Seth refers to as long-term marketing, the kind of marketing that pays off in the long run. This is what ultimately works, how you make a real impact, and you change someone’s life for the better.
If this doesn’t sound overall too new or exciting is because.. it isn’t. This is the way it has always worked, and that it always will.
One of Seth’s best ability and most important contribution probably, is to always bringing back the focus of the conversation to the important things. The things that matter. The simple yet profound ideas worth adopting in everyday business life.
This is a true gift, for all of us: when lots of people around rush into all kinds of direction, raising a lot of dust and making a lot of noise.. Seth stands still, like a lighthouse, showing us the way.
Kind of like a parent, patiently telling his unreasonable kids for the for the umpteenth time what is really best for themselves.
Here at LeadsBridge, we are truly greatful for it. We can’t promise we’ll be impeccable kids, dear Seth. But we promise we will listen more.
Hey! Thank you for reading. If you liked this story, give us a clap! We appreciate it. 💜
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