SETH GODIN

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 you're going to buy a real book, a paper book, there better be a good reason. Perhaps scarcity is one of those reasons.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My blogging life is basically goalless. I like the zen nature of that, and paradoxically, it improves results.

Dig your well before you're thirsty.

Permission marketing is marketing without interruptions.

Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person.

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.

The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it's allowed is silos of interest.

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.

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 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.

We're not going to outgrow our need for information.

When enough people care about autism or diabetes or global warming, it helps everyone, even if only a tiny fraction actively participate.

The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.

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.

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.

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.