Success Stories: Seth Godin

One of the best authors of all time. His books are clear, concise, witty, focused and fun to read. My personal favourite is "The Dip" and "Tribes". At 14, Godin took his first steps into entrepreneurship printing Biorhythms at the local university and selling them for $30 each. At 16, Godin founded a ski club and took a group of 50-60 children to ski by his house in Buffalo every week. Around this time Godin is also known to have worked at a fast food outlet and in media sales. Godin graduated from Tufts University in 1982 with a degree in computer science and philosophy. Godin earned his MBA in marketing from Stanford Business School. From 1983 to 1986, he worked as a brand manager at Spinnaker Software. For a time Godin commuted every week between California and Boston both to do his new job and to complete his MBA. After leaving Spinnaker Software in 1986, Godin became a book packager. It was in the same offices that Godin met Mark Hurst and founded Yoyodyne. After a few years Godin sold the book packaging business to his employees and focused his efforts on Yoyodyne, one of the first online marketing companies. It was with Yoyodyne that Godin came up with the concept of permission marketing. For a period of time, Godin served as a columnist for Fast Company. Below is one of the best posts he's ever posted about success.

The secret of success is Patience.

Google was a very good search engine for two years before you started using it.

The iPod was a dud.

The irony of the web is that the tactics work really quickly. You friend someone on Facebook and two minutes later, they friend you back. Bang.

But the strategy still takes forever. The strategy is the hard part, not the tactics.

I discovered a lucky secret the hard way about thirty years ago: you can outlast the other guys if you try. If you stick at stuff that bores them, it accrues. Drip, drip, drip you win.

It still takes ten years to become a success, web or no web. The frustrating part is that you see your tactics fail right away. The good news is that over time, you get the satisfaction of watching those tactics succeed right away. This can be applied to investments as well, where you collect and save and watch your money pile up slowly but deliberately. Drip, drip, drip you win.

The trap: Show up at a new social network, invest two hours, be really aggressive with people, make some noise and then leave in disgust.

The trap: Use all your money to build a fancy website and leave no money or patience for the hundred revisions you'll need to do.

The trap: read the tech blogs and fall in love with the bleeding-edge hip sites and lose focus on the long-term players that deliver real value.

The trap: sprint all day and run out of energy before the marathon even starts.

The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that's how long it's going to take, guys.