How Seth Godin became a speaker, writer, and blogger in demand | Hacker News Reader

How Seth Godin became a speaker, writer, and blogger in demand

businessweek.com

13 pointshhm24 comments

Unalone had a great quote regarding Seth Godin's popularity on this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=305741.

"It's [his popularity is] because he writes short articles that usually make sense on the surface and so people read him because they think it will make them rich."

I tend to agree. What he says usually lack substance, I can't help. Don't want to be harsh, but sometimes I consider it just a distraction.

I think that a lot of the time, it is. He's got one or two nicely-written articles and a lot of noise that sounds excellent.

The same goes for Tim Ferriss, Robert Kiyosaki, Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky, the 37signals crowd, and many other authors.

Really, writing about getting rich is probably one of the most surefire ways to get rich.

PG was rich before he was known as a writer. Spolsky and the 37signals crowd more than likely would have been rich either way, just not near as quickly.

I 100% agree for Tim Ferriss and that pile of shit, vapor peddling, scam fuck, Robert Kiyosaki.

http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html

Seth is a free thinker. I may not always agree with what he says.

During the Q&A session at a Seth Godin lecture I attended, a parent asked him a question about how he taught his kids. He answered with a story about how the school his children attended was doing a play. Seth suggested that instead of having one kid play the lead role for the entire play that they rotate it - so that every kid could get the chance to be the star/be the main role. The kids loved it, most parents loved it.

This is just more of the every-child-is-special bullcrap that we fill our kids' heads with these days. Come on, people. Some kids are just lousy actors. Why should they get a chance to be in the main role? The real world doesn't work that way. When these same kids grow up, they will be so badly calibrated that they'll have trouble functioning.

What's wrong with telling a kid he's bad at something, and should move on to try other things?

Wait. Do you really think that people are going to give a crap if they are good actors at age 7?

No. They're expected to screw up and it looks better on camera anyways.

Acting was just an example. The point is that if you give every kid in the class a gold star, there's no incentive for any of them to actually work hard. Also they will be shocked when they encounter criticism for the first time.

There's a difference between doing good and just doing.

If your pudgy slow kid wants to pick his nose on the soccer field with chocolate ice cream on his uniform, by God let him.

Sure, at some point you help to lead them to excel... but before that point let them engage in whatever they want.

When I was in middle school, I badly wanted a guitar for my birthday. My mom had delayed for more than a year, and at last gave me a talk about how I was tone deaf, and would have a lot of problems playing guitar. I told her I didn't care, I wanted the guitar anyway. Turns out, I was able to teach myself tones and pitches, and I ended up being quite good at guitar.

At a young age, the point is just to give exposure to many experiences, so that they can learn what they love and what they might like to be good at.

Your mother's doubt, and you subsequently proving it wrong... don't you think that prepared you for when you inevitably met those kind of doubts again in real life?

My point is that the world we present to children should be more representative of the real world. I think your mom was doing the right thing by giving you that honest evaluation, even though it was obviously wrong.

My point is that the world we present to children should be more representative of the real world.

I agree with that. I just think it's very difficult to tell if a child is innately bad at something and should try something else, or if they are bad it but could greatly improve with practice.

You sound like Michael Cera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAV0sxwx9rY

I get what you're saying, but you're being a little harsh.

What you want to avoid is the fools that get up on American Idol and break windows because they've never been told that they suck. If you tell a 7 year old he sucks though, they often just believe you and never really try.

Somewhere in between the first experience and being a william hung though, the role of the parent is to ensure that the child can properly evaluate himself against others.

This is achieved in a gentle manner over time, simply by not blowing smoke up someone's butt but at the same time being supportive of practice, learning and effort.

For every Michael Jordan there are millions of washed up bums that were probably just as skilled at one point. There's no hard and fast formula, and it falls on the parent to draw the line.

Everyone can act at age 7. To suggest otherwise is being a little extreme.

It's actually quite difficult to disagree with what Seth says, because there's usually not enough substance there to actually disagree with. Sometimes he's contrarian, but more often he's just superficial.

And it's just vague enough that people read into it what they want it to mean.

Each reader thinks he's confirming their own private intuitions, which makes them them feel smart and good, which makes them like him more.

Do you think this is how: "In 2001 he wrote 'Unleashing the Ideavirus' in five days." ?

Or is that just marketing/exaggeration?

"Since then, through trial and error, he has developed a winning formula: brief, simple books with eye-catching covers and provocative titles—and no business-speak. Tribes, for example, is a 147-page, anecdote-filled call to readers to become leaders of a movement, or "tribe."

Instead he just makes up or misuses words, which is often just as bad or worse than "business-speak."

I'm not sure how well Godin's strategies work for people, but he is an absolute master at marketing one thing: himself.

That's an easy thing to say, but it's just not true. Seth hates promoting himself, it makes him uncomfortable, and he goes out of his way to avoid ever mentioning his own books or his startup on his blog. When he releases a new book he'll usually post a couple paragraphs from it on the blog, and that's about it. In the three years since Squidoo went into private beta he's promoted it maybe three or four times on his blog and probably mentioned it less than ten times total.

Alex3917 - I don't disagree. But, isn't Godin's approach still masterful self marketing? Being self-referential is tacky. So, justifiably, he avoids it.

My point: the fact that you know his style of promotion means he's self promoting. :)

Thanks for giving a more human side of the story. I think Godin is a very good self promoter, but I also think he's someone like Tom Peters: an out of the box marketer. He has different ideas, he can support them, but also he chooses a more shallow way of explaining them, probably to get them faster to the general public. I don't buy Kiyosaki for example, but Peters and Godin: they have interesting, original and honest ideas. I can't say if they are sooo great, but I think they might be useful sometimes.

Anyway, Godin's blog isn't very interesting, but the books are better, at least the ones I read.

Patrick Barwise, a London School of Business professor of management and marketing, tut-tuts that while Godin's writing is "very readable with lots of examples, it's not grounded in research. His arguments are oversimplified and overstated."

Sounds lot like academic marketing aswell. It's not that rare that highly regarded authors suggest different views or even complitely contradict views and solutions to same problems.

Its not like actual science, you know.

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