Seth Godin @ Business of Software 2010.

“Are you afraid to truly make an impact? The opportunity for linchpin organizations and the people who run them.”

Bio – Seth Godin writes the most popular marketing blog in the world. He is a renowned speaker and bestselling author of 10 books that have been translated into 20 languages, and have transformed the way people think out marketing, change and work. He is responsible for many words in the marketer’s vocabulary including permission marketing, ideaviruses, purple cow, the dip and sneezers. His latest book, Tribes, is about leadership and how anyone can become a leader, creating movements that matter.

Seth Godin

The big idea. If your idea doesn’t naturally spread, you have no business. Marketing moved from a world where you create a cute, edible mascot for your idea, you anthropomorphise your business and that was enough. It moved to a place where you just SPAM people with your idea but now there are too many brands spamming your brain.

Brand Bombardment Seth Godin BOS2010

So brands tried begging but that doesn’t really work because no-one cares enough. The only way to sell your product is to find people you want to sell to, get them to engage with your work and get your customers to talk to others about you. People WANT, DESIRE, NEED to belong to a tribe. People are waiting to be led.

The need for belief is infinite Seth Godin BOS2010 - a Gaping Void?

• If you can write it down, someone can do it cheaper.
• Software that is boring will never turn into a movement.
• Competence will drive the cost of boring software to $0
• Avoid anything that is like bowling (maximum score is 300). People don’t watch it because you cannot score off the charts.

Competence is no longer a scarce commodity Seth Godin BOS2010

Seth Godin’s rules of scaleable business ideas:

• Does this connection between people create demonstrable value?
• Is it easy and obvious for someone who is in to recruit someone else that is in?
• Is it open enough to be easy to use but closed enough to avoid becoming a zero-cost commodity? (Too open means there is no money).

Do you have to be some kind of genius to make all this happen? Einstein has skewed our understanding bout what genius is. Henry Ford was a genius in a different way. He created process and made people interchangeable. Public school was created and developed in order to train people to do what they were told for 12 hours – working in a factory, a call centre, a coding farm. In 1800 there were less than 400 corporation in the United States. Now there are millions or corporations. Almost everyone works for one.

Now we should all strive to be artists. Marchel Duchamp placed a urinal in an art gallery, it was art. Second person to put a urinal in a gallery was a plumber…

When you think about the mission of your company, is it to churn out yet another version of the same thing or is it to create something like art? The opportunity for software people is to realise that you have the most scaleable, useful, valuable thing there is. Software site at the top of the Hierarchy of Value:

• Create and Invent
• Connect
• Sell
• Produce
• Grow
• Hunt
• Lift

Value sits at the far right of this chart.

Pay vs Hours of work Seth Godin BOS2010

Richard Branson works and creates value for 4 minutes a day but those are the most important 4 minutes in the business. Seth worked for about 60 minutes – 35 minutes of talking and then a great Q&A. Art and value created.