The Net is not television. It is the finest direct-marketing mechanism in the history of mankind. It is direct mail with free stamps, and it allows you to create richer and deeper relationships than you've ever been able to create before.
— Seth Godin
Marketing is a contest for people's attention.
When enough people care about autism or diabetes or global warming, it helps everyone, even if only a tiny fraction actively participate.
Habits like blogging often and regularly, writing down the way you think, being clear about what you think are effective tactics, ignoring the burbling crowd and not eating bacon. All of these are useful habits.
Kickstarter isn't a profit center, it's an organizer and an instigator.
Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.
Most people have bosses who hire them to fill a slot in the work chart and to do what they are told. And most people who are doing what they are told feel safe; it feels reliable.
The thing about information is that information is more valuable when people know it. There's an exception for business information and super timely information, but in all other cases, ideas that spread win.
In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.
Normal is fading away. Governments and industries and schools like normal, because it's easier, it scales and it's profitable. But people don't like it - we want to be who we are, not who some marketer tells us to be.
This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.
The way to work with a bully is to take the ball and go home. First time, every time. When there's no ball, there's no game. Bullies hate that. So they'll either behave so they can play with you or they'll go bully someone else.
Dig your well before you're thirsty.
And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.
Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It's not just about entertainment - it's about education. Permission marketing is curriculum marketing.
I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.
My blogging life is basically goalless. I like the zen nature of that, and paradoxically, it improves results.
I think there's plenty of room for blogs that exist to pay the blogger, or blogs that exist to turn a profit. That's just not the kind of blog I'm writing, and I'm not the kind of blogger that could do that.
Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work.
The minute there's a map, there is no art. Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity.
If you're going to build a lean enterprise, you can test and measure how often the company ships iterations, how often it fails, how often it is putting things in front of people that don't work.
If we live in a world where information drives what we do, the information we get becomes the most important thing. The person who chooses that information has power.
If you're going to buy a real book, a paper book, there better be a good reason. Perhaps scarcity is one of those reasons.
The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.
I intentionally abandoned the hard stuff early on because not only do I think it's useless, I think it's a distraction.
A bully is playing a game, one that he or she enjoys and needs. You're welcome to play this game if it makes you happy, but for most people, it will make you miserable.
Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that's where charisma comes from, from the leading.
The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it's allowed is silos of interest.
Permission marketing is marketing without interruptions.
I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.
I find that I have about six bloggable ideas a day. I also find that writing twice as long a post doesn't increase communication, it usually decreases it. And finally, I found that people get antsy if there are unread posts in their queue.
One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice.
I made a decision to write for my readers, not to try to find more readers for my writing.
I was lucky enough to co-found a business in college that ended up with 400 employees, and I launched 20 different projects while I was there - a project a week.
We're not going to outgrow our need for information.
If a product's future is unlikely to be remarkable - if you can't imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product - it's time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new.
I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.
Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person.
The danger of the Web is that you can go from idea to public announcement in under ten minutes.
The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.
Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed. They want to be missed the day they don't show up. They want to be missed when they're gone.
What tribes are, is a very simple concept that goes back 50 million years. It's about leading and connecting people and ideas. And it's something that people have wanted forever.
