Quotes by Seth Godin With Free Shareable Pictures

If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.

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.

Change is not a threat, it's an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.

No one knows more about the way you think than you do.

Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in.

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.

Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.

Our job is obvious: We need to get out of the way, shine a light, and empower a new generation to teach itself and to go further and faster than any generation ever has.

Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.

Life is like skiing. Just like skiing, the goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill. It's to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.

Real content marketing isn't repurposed advertising, it is making something worth talking about.

Everybody has their own Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

Be relentlessly generous, without focusing on when it will come back to you.

Set a goal, and in small, consistent steps, work to reach it. Get support
from your peers when you start flagging. Repeat. You will change.

Deadlines have a lousy name. Call them live-lines instead. That´s what they are.

Sharing an idea you care about is a generous way to change your world for the better.

Surprise comes from defying expectations.

Ordinary thinking and ordinary effort are almost never enough to generate leadership.

It's not an accident that successful people read more books.

Facts are irrelevant. What matters is what the consumer believes.

Blaming the system is soothing because it lets you off the hook. But when the system is broken, we wonder why you were relying in the system in the first place.

You don't win an Olympic gold medal with a few weeks of intensive training.

Discomfort brings engagement and change. Discomfort means you're doing something that others were unlikely to do, because they're hiding out in the comfortable zone.

Communication is the transfer of emotion.

Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.

Transparency in the traditional school might destroy it.

Risking the appearance of weakness takes strength. And the market knows it.

Great work is always shunned at first.

As you've probably discovered, great work makes us uncomfortable.

It takes confidence and guts to intentionally create tension.

Initiative is the privilege of picking yourself.

The only purpose of customer service, is to change feelings.

Either you defend the status quo, or you invent the future.

The status quo is persistent and resistant. It exists because everyone wants it to. Everyone believes that what they've got is probably better than the risk and fear that come with change.

If you wait until you are ready, it is almost certainly too late.

A dialogue leads to connection, which leads to trust which leads to engagement.

The tiny cost of failure...is dwarfed by the huge cost of not trying.

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.

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.

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.

You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.

Competence is the enemy of change!

Habits are where our lives and careers and bodies are made.

Marketing used to be about advertising, and advertising is expensive. Today, marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread.

Instead of focusing on arguing with people who say no, it might be easier to get near the people who like to say yes.

More and more people now have jobs that require them to confront the risk of appearing stupid on a regular basis.

By my definition, most art has nothing to do with oil paint or marble. Art is what we're doing when we do our best work.

You are far more likely to do your best work if you are willing to delight a few as opposed to soothe the masses.

Art is what we're doing when we do our best work.

The world is begging for you to lead.

When exactly were we brainwashed into believing that the best way to earn a living is to have a job?

Acknowledge to yourself that the factory job is dead. Having a factory job is not a natural state. It wasn't at the heart of being human until very recently. We've been culturally brainwashed.

Most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.

A brand that stands for what all brands stand for stands for nothing much.

What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.

Successful people are the ones who are breaking the rules.

The industrial age brought compliance and compliance brought fear and fear brought us mediocrity.

Being charismatic doesn't make you a leader. Being a leader makes you charismatic.

Catering to the passionate is exactly what you should do.

Remarkable work is always not on the list, because if it was, it would be commonplace, not remarkable.

The number one thing to steal from your competitors: Wisdom.

Be genuine. Be remarkable. Be worth connecting with.

By being remarkable, being genuine, you can be worth connecting with. And you don't have to have it figured out perfectly the first time -- you can adjust.

Sometimes, we're so focused on being consistent that we also lower the bar on amazing.

Kings fear change. Leaders crave it.

Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.

Everyone is not your customer.

Choose your customers, choose your future.

Which are you?...competen t, inspiring, passionate, obsessed, provocative, impatient, hungry, driven, adoring, inspired, an artist, a genius, someone who cares...?

With all these remarkable, powerful, important options available to each of us, why do so many of us default to competent?

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.

Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That's not marketing though, that's efficiency.

The art, the new, the ability to connect the dots and to make an impact -- sooner or later, that can only come from one who creates, not from a teacher and not from a book.

Anything worth achieving in life has a dip.

It's easy to pretend expertise when there's no data to contradict you.

Something remarkable is worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. New. Interesting. It's a Purple Cow.

The fatigue was there, but some people understood that putting it aside was the single most important factor in succeeding.

Defending mediocrity is exhausting.

Art is a human act, a generous contribution, something that might not work, and it is intended to change the recipient for the better, often causing a connection to happen.

Wouldn't it be great to be gifted? In fact... It turns out that choices lead to habits. Habits become talents. Talents are labeled gifts. You're not born this way, you get this way.

The problem with holding a grudge

is that your hands are then too full to hold onto anything else.

Trust is precious and easily wasted, and guessing is a lousy foundation for future progress.

The good news is that more than ever, value accrues to those that show up, those that make a difference, those that do work that matters.

People are buying only one thing from you: the way the engagement (hiring you, working with you, dating you, using your product or service, learning from you) makes them feel.

One key to learning and success is the willingness to try something new, and feel momentarily incompetent.

Data is not useful until it becomes information.

Initiating is really and truly difficult, and that's what leaders do. They see something others are ignoring and they jump on it.

Remarkable visions and genuine insights are always met with resistance.

The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security.

Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.

The relentless act of invention and innovation and initiative is the best marketing asset.

When the legacy you leave behind lasts for hours, days or a lifetime, you matter.

Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario.

The greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace.

Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.

The reason they want you to fit in... is that once you do, then they can ignore you.

If you hesitate to map out your future, to make a big plan or to set a goal, you've just gone ahead and mapped your future anyway.

Art is the act of navigating without a map.

Human nature is to need a map. If you're brave enough to draw one, people will follow.

At least at first, the new thing is rarely as good as the old thing was. If you need the alternative to be better than the status quo from the very start, you'll never begin.

The problem with taking offense is that it's really hard to figure out what to do with it after you're done using it. Better to just leave it on the table and walk away. Umbrage untaken quietly disappears.

While you may have made money doing something a certain way yesterday, there's no reason to believe you'll succeed at it tomorrow.

Networking that matters is helping people achieve their goals.

How do I dance with the fear? Fear is not the enemy. Paralysis is the enemy.

In our desire to please everyone, it's very easy to end up being invisible or mediocre.

It takes three years to be an overnight success, sometimes more.

Marketing yourself to a new person often involves being charismatic, clever and quick-but most jobs and most relationships are about being consistent, persistent and brave.

Piracy is not the problem, obscurity is.

If you hear my idea but don't believe it, that's not your fault; it's mine. If you see my new product but don't buy it, that's my failure, not yours. If you attend my presentation and you're bored, that's my fault too.

No more than six words on a slide. Ever. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.

It's easy to be afraid of taking a plunge, because, after all, plunging is dangerous. And the fear is a safe way to do nothing at all. Wading, on the other hand, gets under the radar. It gives you a chance to begin.

We're often in a hurry to finish. Or in a hurry to close a sale. What happens when we adopt the posture of being in a hurry to be generous? With resources or insight or access or kindness... It's an interesting sort of impatience.

The resistance is the voice in your head telling you to use bullets in your PowerPoint slides...It's the voice that tells you to leave controversial ideas out of the paper you're writing, because the teacher won't like them. The resistance pushes relentlessly for you to fit in.

I wonder if real art comes when you build the thing that they don't have a prize for yet.

Don't wait to be picked. Pick yourself.

If it's worth listening to, it's worth questioning until you understand it.

If school is about postponing the day you have to stand up in front of the world and put yourself at risk, the resistance would like to stay there forever.

Playing the game is a form of winning the game. In those competitions, we win by being resilient.

Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.

If you can't be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can.

We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you've already figured out, demands initiative.

Why do we value leadership, connection and grace? Because it's scarce, and that scacity creates value.

Competence is no longer a scarce commodity.

Art is the act of doing work that matters while dancing with the voice in your head that screams for you to stop.

If you don't like your definition of 'good enough', then feel free to change that, but the goal before shipping is merely that. Not perfect.

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.

Becoming a superstar takes about 10,000 hours of hard work.

When you can swim, who cares how deep the water is?

It's all a risk. Always. That's not true, actually. The only exception: it's a certainty that there's risk. The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That's because the world is certainly, definitely, and more than possibly changing.

Just because the tide is out, doesn't mean there is less water in the ocean.

Take the long way. Do the hard work, consistently and with generosity and transparency. And then you won't waste time doing it over.

Is it worth getting one more tweet out, or putting your phone down and doing something that is worth tweeting?

Great work is the result of seeking out tension, not avoiding it.

If you believe that a given situation should make you unhappy, then it will, and the unhappiness will then reinforce the condition.

Mass attention is almost unattainable and it's not clear that you want it.

I'll confess that I don't watch the Olympics, but you'd have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the corruption and the expense. An amorphous organization with no transparency, unclear lines of responsibility, huge amounts of politics and a great deal of unearned power.

If you're not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it's almost certain you're not reaching your potential as a leader.

It's uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.

We live in a vague world. And it gets vaguer all the time. In this environment, the power of the specific, measurable and useful promise made and kept is difficult to overstate.

Nothing about becoming indispensable is easy. If it's easy, it's already been done and it's no longer valuable.

When in doubt, tell yourself the truth.

Whining isn't a scalable solution.

In general, organizations are afraid to fire customers, no matter how unreasonable. This is a mistake. It's good for you.

You're competing against people in a state of flow, people who are truly committed, people who care deeply about the outcome.

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt.

Great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories don't teach people anything new. Instead the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the thirst place.

Dreamers don't have special genes. They find circumstances that amplify their dreams.

Your positions on everything are based on the story you tell yourself and not some universal fact from the universal fact database.

Surprise and differentiation have far more impact than noise does.

In a digital world, the gift I give you almost always benefits me more than it costs.

Any customer that walks away, disrespected and defeated, represents tens of thousands of dollars out the door, in addition to the failure of a promise the brand made in the first place. You can't see it but it's happening, daily.

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

Just as we don't spend a lot of time worrying about how all those poets out there are going to monetize their poetry, the same is true for most bloggers.

Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs.

Own your dreams. There is no better way to make them happen.

One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice.

All the creativity books in the world aren't going to help you if you're unwilling to have lousy, lame, and even dangerously bad ideas.

Now for the first time, you can choose yourself. You can be responsible for what you do and how you do it. You have to do the hard work of finding and pleasing an audience.

Big ideas are little ideas that no-one killed too soon.

Organizations grow when they persuade a tiny cadre to be passionate, not when they touch millions with a mediocre message.

Design is the last great competitive advantage.

Emotional labor is available to all of us,

but it is rarely exploited as a competitive

advantage.

Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.

The job is not the work.

Here's conventional wisdom: Success makes you happy. Happiness permits you to be generous. In fact, it actually works like this: Generosity makes you happy. Happy people are more likely to be successful.

The combination of fear and ignorance (two sides of the same coin) can be paralyzing.

There's no correlation between how good your idea is and how likely your organization will be to embrace it.

We've been trained to prefer being right to learning something, to prefer passing the test to making a difference, and most of all, to prefer fitting in with the right people, the people with economic power. Now it's your turn to stand up and stand out.

If there's time for an emergency, why isn't there time for brilliance, generosity or learning?

Two elements of successful leadership: a willingness to be wrong and an eagerness to admit it.

You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.

If you're not willing to face the abyss of choice, you will almost certainly not spend enough time dancing with opportunity.

Even good excuses, really good ones, don't help very much.

Explanations, on the other hand, are both scarce and useful.

And accurate forecasts and insightful intuition are priceless.

Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them.

Fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to their faith before they explore it. As opposed to a curious person who explores first and then considers whether or not they want to accept the ramifications.

Basically you create your experience through your beliefs about yourself and the nature of reality. Another way to understand this is to realize that you create your experiences through your expectations.

There's no shortage of great ideas. There's a shortage of execution.

I don't think there's a shortage of remarkable ideas. I think your business has plenty of great opportunities to do great things. Nope, what's missing isn't the ideas. It's the will to execute them.

I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

People are not afraid of failure, they're afraid of blame.

Art is a personal act of courage.

Not adding value is the same as taking it away.

The wettest, weirdest environment is human interaction. Whatever we build gets misunderstood, corroded and chronic, and it happens quickly and in unpredictable ways. That's one reason why the web is so fascinating-it's a collision between the analytic world of code and wet world of people.

Viewing the web as a platform for generosity is very different than seeing an opportunity to turn it into an ATM machine.

It's rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who is also an angry person. They can't occupy the same space, and if your anger moves in, generosity and creativity often move out. It's difficult to use revenge or animus to fuel great work.

Just about anything worth doing is worth doing better.

Change isn't made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later.

Sign your work...If you're not proud of it, don't ship it. If you are, sign your work and own the results. We'll know who to thank. If you work for a place where work goes unsigned (internally, in particular) it's worth asking why.

There's no map for being an artist.

You succeed because you've chosen to be confident. It's not really useful to require yourself to be successful before you're able to become confident.

The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.

One bad review doesn't ruin my day because I realize what a badge of honor it is to get a bit of criticism at all.