I think the people who have read my work, it doesn’t feel right to them, but over time you get used to it, which is failure is the point. That if you’re going to say “failure is not an option” then you’ve just ruled out success as well. Because the only way you get to success is by learning what doesn’t work.

If what you doing isn’t working, don’t keep doing it just to be consistent. Stop and do something else.

I don’t think he’s saying we have to burn down all the business schools, and I’m surprised at David Biedny’s awful in-person impression of him.

I’m not much of a follower of anyone or anything, but I take my support and advice where I can get it. There are entire swathes of Godin’s manifestos that completely ignore the remaining value in entrenched ways of doing things– such as trades, or higher education. But I have no problem with the way he repackages ideas as guiding methods, even if those ideas weren’t his own to begin with (are anybody’s?). And I have no problem with him contradicting himself from one day’s blog to the next; by his own admission, it’s good to fail often, and he practices that with plenty of turds among the gems, lots of stillborn buzzmemes, and plenty that I choose to discard. It’s not fire-and-brimstone doctrine he’s pumping out, it’s a framework of take-it-or-leave-it, guiding ideas.

I don’t think I’m a sheep following one guy’s breathless advice blindly, and I’m seeing measurable results with my own business. The Internet will want me to back this up… my rate of accepted painting quotes is so much higher than the rest of the industry’s (30-50%) that nobody believes me when I tell them. My prices are at the upper end of the spectrum, I don’t advertise traditionally, and yet I receive at least one call a day during my busy season. (My average job size is about $1400 and mean job size about $800.)

Godin is a big part of my toolkit but there are many, many other tools in that kit. I think dismissing him wholesale is as impertinent as worshiping him.

I’m less enthusiastic about the idea of creative destruction which he and too many others seem to delight in. Ok, industries change, but that should not give us carte-blanche to abandon entire sectors of the economy, i.e. publishing. That’s great that in a few freak cases people can support themselves by giving it all away for free, but ultimately, it’s companies with many employees earning many paychecks that make for a stable communities, which, I would hope is our goal, and not simply our own individual success. People need to start thinking a little more big picture here about how we can organize our economy so that the most number of people can participate and benefit, imho.

Anyway, I’ve been told the highest compliment you can give a writer is that you feel personally addressed by their work. Just don’t discuss these matters with therapists, friends or family, because they will say that you’re crazy and need to stop spending so much time on the blogs. But forget them! Thanks Seth Godin for all the positive, personal encouragement. That’s cool Avi got an interview and posted it here! Go BB!

While Godin has some interesting points to make, he’s a perfect example of a problem that is pretty endemic amongst the Internet punditocracy, i.e., “My fairly unique experience is applicable to everyone! Why aren’t you all as successful as I am?”

Got it!

It’s interesting to hear about Mr Godin, and there are some nice self-help soundbites here so I may read some of his books but tbh, by the end of the piece I was slightly put off– I’m interested in new points of view but not in joining a personality cult.

I was so glad I did. I thought it was a great interview. I didn’t even know about the idea of moving lectures to night and homework to day, but I think that would have changed my entire school experience for the better. Who cares if he didn’t make it up – it’s an interview.

Anyway, thanks Avi and Seth (whoever you are)!

Bingo. I’ve found his greatest talent, is purely self-promotion. In “the new” way. Too little signal, too much noise, for me.

I love this part: “The hard part about business today is knowing how to take a leap.”

Really? What about hiring decisions? Firing decisions? Sales metrics, business intelligence, people management, logistics (oooohhh, logistics, jeebus…)operations, physical plant, agency and contractor relationships, pricing, international relations and markets, advertising (I know, he’ll say AdWords is all you need) – these are all things that a business school education will teach you. Never mind the intangibles like “how likable do my team members have to be? Is there a sliding scale of competence, social intelligence and work ethic that I can manage in my business to get different skill levels to gel?”

Much ink and vitriol have been spilled about “the Case Study.” What nobody says about the “Case Study” is that whatever your conclusions about the case examined, it’s taught the Case Study team the basics of a business.

Godin is this weird sort of Doug Henning / Deepak Chopra / Perpetual Oprah Guest of the Internet, the kind of guy who wishes that it was 1993 again so that nobody would nail him down on specifics about “The World Wide Web;” and perpetually writing to the editors of Mondo 2000 that his ideas are the reasons he needs a column, not the actual history of his previous output.

Too little signal, too much noise, for me.

Agreed.

Yes, there’s a built-in hypocrisy in self-help books like this. A great majority of those that read them will fail in the very thing the book promotes. There’s also something self-fulfilling in a guy who successfully sells books and makes a living telling people they can sell books and make a living (even though they likely won’t). It’s also likely that those with the greatest success (define your own version of success) do so without the help of any such book.

But that doesn’t make the book wrong.

I get that I’m a self-help junkie. I love me some Getting Things Done, Creative Habit, War of Art, and Poke the box. But I don’t just read them and nod my head not do anything. I try to learn something from them, something that helps me do what I want to do. I won’t be able to quit my job but some of these ideas helped me earn a second income on a hobby that used to just suck money out of me. There’s nothing wrong with that.

You’re not going to become an internet star reading Seth Godin, but if you listen to him you might find a bigger audience for your creative work than sitting there writing angry forum posts and calling yourself a writer.