Latest Seth Godin Quotes from Interviews

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• You know, if I look at an auditorium full of high school students and the big man on campus and his girlfriend are busy talking while the lecture's going on, the rest of the room is going to do it because they're powerful sneezers. They have influence. They reach out to a whole bunch of people in a way that makes the idea of being disrespectful spread.

  Seth Godin

  Girlfriend, Powerful, School

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• Or, if I take that same auditorium and I make it much bigger and put more space between seats, it'll be quieter because it's much harder when you're not in physical contact with people to spread a virus from person-to-person, right? There are all sorts of patterns that we see in epidemiology that help us understand why something spreads.

  Seth Godin

  Epidemiology, Space, People

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• We're better in the rearview mirror than we are at predicting - 'cause you're never going to be right every time. You can handicap it. You can point to certain elements that make it work, and many of those elements come straight out of epidemiology, right?

  Seth Godin

  Mirrors, Epidemiology, Elements

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• That the horrible Zika virus or HIV, we can look at what it means to be patient zero, what it means to need not much contact to spread, and all of those things follow into the way ideas spread.

  Seth Godin

  Zero, Mean, Ideas

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• I look at Starbucks, Howard Schultz has made many brilliant decisions, and one of the things that they did was they invented the third space. It's not work, it's not home. That's one of the engines of its spread. But at the same time he was doing that, he bet the farm to open more and more stores in any given town, and making it ubiquitous made it much easier to say to your friend, I'll meet you at Starbucks.

  Seth Godin

  Home, Space, Decision

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• That's why there's lots and lots of kinds of hot sauces, and not so many kinds of mustard. Not because it's hard to make interesting mustard - you could make interesting mustard - but people don't, because no one's obsessed with it, and thus no one tells their friends.

  Seth Godin

  Interesting, People, Hot Sauce

  "How to get your ideas to spread". TED Talk, www.ted.com. February, 2003.

• You have to pay the price to be in the right place at the right time often enough that people tend to see you as the regular kind.

  Seth Godin

  Pay The Price, People, Kind

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• You have to find a group that really desperately cares about what it is you have to say. Talk to them. They have something I call otaku. It's a great Japanese word. It describes the desire of someone who's obsessed to, say, drive across Tokyo to try a new Ramen noodle place 'cause that's what they do, they get obsessed with it.

  Seth Godin

  Desire, Trying, Care

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• To make a product, to market an idea, to come up with any problem you want to solve that doesn't have a constituency with an otaku, is almost impossible... There's a hot sauce otaku, but there's no mustard otaku.

  Seth Godin

  Ideas, Hot Sauce, Want

  "How to get your ideas to spread". TED Talk, www.ted.com. February, 2003.

• What marketers used to do is make average products for average people. That's what mass marketing is. They would ignore the geeks, and - God forbid - the laggards. It was all about going for the center. I don't think that's the strategy we want to use anymore.

  Seth Godin

  Thinking, Average, People

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• So by giving people a tool that they can share and benefit from, it's a form of media that isn't controlled by Rupert Murdoch or the guys at Viacom. It is a form of media that is earned every single time it spreads.

  Seth Godin

  Media, Giving, People

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• But if the cow is purple, you'd notice it, OK? The thing that's going to decide what gets talked about, what gets done, what gets changed, what gets purchased, what gets built is, is it remarkable? And remarkable's a really cool word 'cause we think it just means neat, but it also means worth making a remark about, and that is the essence of where idea diffusion is going.

  Seth Godin

  Mean, Thinking, Essence

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• When you think about Uber and Airbnb and the other companies that are turning things upside down, Uber isn't big 'cause they ran a lot of ads. They're big because someone took out their iPhone and said to their friend, watch this, and pressed a button and a car pulled up.

  Seth Godin

  Thinking, Iphone, Uber

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". "TED Radio Hour" Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• And it doesn't matter to me whether you're running a coffee shop or you're an intellectual or you're in business or flying hot air balloons. People who can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are, win. But consumers, they got way more choices than they used to and way less time.

  Seth Godin

  Running, Coffee, Winning

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• And in a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff. And my parable here is, you're driving down the road and you see a cow, and you keep driving 'cause you've seen cows before. Cows are invisible. Cows are boring. Who's going to stop and pull over and say, oh, look, a cow? Nobody.

  Seth Godin

  Obvious Things, Choices, Littles

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• Now, before sliced bread was invented in the 1910s I wonder what they said? Like the greatest invention since the telegraph or something. But... the thing about the invention of sliced bread is this - that for the first 15 years after sliced bread was available no one bought it; no one knew about it; it was a complete and total failure.

  Seth Godin

  Years, Bread, Firsts

  "How to get your ideas to spread". TED Talk, www.ted.com. February, 2003.

• And the reason is that until Wonder came along and figured out how to spread the idea of sliced bread, no one wanted it. That the success of sliced bread... is not always about what the patent is like, or what the factory is like - it's about can you get your idea to spread, or not.

  Seth Godin

  Ideas, Patents, Bread

  "How to get your ideas to spread". TED Talk, www.ted.com. February, 2003.

• I hope I'm better looking than Yoda, but - I'm really interested in people who have something to say, a change they want to make and can't figure out why they can't make it spread.

  Seth Godin

  People, Want, Figures

  "What Makes An Idea Go Viral?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

• The edge is a great place to be. Inside the box is too dark. Outside the box, there's no leverage. But on the edge of the box, you can get things done!

  Seth Godin

  Dark, Done, Boxes

  Interview with Bryan Hutchinson, positivewriter.com.

• Will you succeed because you are more well-rounded than others? Because you fit in better than everyone else? Bloody unlikely. We succeed when we are trusted to be the best at what we do.

  Seth Godin

  Succeed, Fit, Being The Best

  Interview with Bryan Hutchinson, positivewriter.com.

• The only reason to buy a paper book any longer is to own it and cherish it and remember it and tell a story about it.

  Seth Godin

  Book, Stories, Paper

  Interview with Laura Cohen, www.experian.com. October 10, 2011.

• There's a huge difference between being a replaceable cog on the assembly line and being the one who is missed, the one with a unique contribution, the one who made a difference.

  Seth Godin

  Unique, Differences, Cogs

  "Seth Godin: On Passion, Fighting Resistance & Being Weird". Experian Interview, www.experian.com.

• There's no life-work balance. I think you have to have the discipline to have the life you want to have. And if you are stealing from one part of your life in order to make the other part work, you are going to pay for it.

  Seth Godin

  Thinking, Order, Discipline

  Source: productivemag.com

• If you're passionate, be passionate enough to fail. Fail small, accept responsibility, repeat. The people who make change are the survivors of serial failure.

  Seth Godin

  Responsibility, People, Survivor

  "Small Business Marketing Resources". Experian Interview, www.experian.com.

• Great boss is challenging people in the right way. Leading, not managing. Supporting them by giving them both a platform they can count on and expectations they can stretch for.

  Seth Godin

  People, Giving, Expectations

  "Seth Godin: On Passion, Fighting Resistance & Being Weird". Experian Interview, www.experian.com.