55 Inspirational Seth Godin Quotes on Life, Business and Marketing

A few days back, I ran into an old friend. It was a surreal moment for both of us because we haven’t met for almost a decade. We had a lot to catch up on so she invited me to her place for a delicious dinner.

As I was looking around her living room, I noticed that she had hundreds of books, I had never read. It reminded me of how much is out there, just waiting for us to explore and understand.

Inspiration is everywhere if you choose to look and listen. And when I think of inspiration, I think of Seth Godin.

Seth is the reason why I got into marketing. It’s always inspiring listening to him or reading his work. My admiration for him knows no bounds.

And I might be out on a limb here, but for me, he is one of the greatest thinkers and marketers of this generation. He has a daily blog with a readership in the millions.

Seth has also written 19 bestselling books that have been translated into more than 35 languages. He was inducted into the American Marketing Association‘s Marketing Hall of Fame in 2018 and his blog was named by Time among its 25 best blogs of 2009.

Some of his works include Purple Cow, This is Marketing and Linchpin, where he goes through some really fascinating concepts about human beings.

So it’s only right that I cumulate some of his best quotes — where he talks about success, business, marketing and life, so you get inspired and do great things because it’s worth it.

Enjoy!

55 Seth Godin Quotes On Life, Business, Marketing and Success

1. “How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?”

2. “Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.”

3. “Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”

4. “Either you’re going to tell stories that spread, or you will become irrelevant.”

5. “People don’t want what you make. They want the way it will make them feel, and there aren’t that many feelings to choose from.”

6. “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”

7. “Marketing is about spreading ideas, and spreading ideas is the single most important output of our civilization.”

8. “The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.”

9. “We sell feelings, status, and connection, not tasks or stuff.”

10. “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make but about the stories you tell.”

11. “If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.”

12. “One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that.“

13. “The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset.”

14. “There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.”

“15. You can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it, but it’s getting raised regardless.”

16. “We believe what we want to believe in, and once we believe something, it becomes a self-fulfilling truth.”

17. “Plans are great but missions are better. Missions survive when plans fail, and plans almost always fail.”

18. “The only thing worse than starting something and failing is not starting something.”

19. “It’s better to make a decision, even the wrong one, than to be in limbo.”

20. “Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t.”

21. “Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it’s a lot easier to launch work that matters.”

22. “Make something happen today, before you go home, before the end of the week.”

23. “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.”

24. “The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don’t know.”

25. “You can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.”

26. “The art of moving forward lies in understanding what to leave behind.”

27. “We don’t need more stuff. We need more humanity.”

28. “Sell a story that some people want to believe. In fact, sell a story they already believe.”

29. “The mass market is being replaced by multiple micro-markets and the long tail of choice.”

30. “Be personal. Be relevant. Be specific.”

31. “Be with the ones you love (and the ones that love you). Ignore everyone else.”

32. “Courage is the willingness to speak the truth about what you see and to own what you say.”

33. “Take appropriate risks, risks that keep you in the game even if you fail.”

34. “If you use your money to create exceptional products and services, you won’t need to spend it on advertising.”

35. “People who make up new rules continue to be in very short supply.”

36. “If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, he will find someone cheaper than you to do it.”

37. “Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”

38. “Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.”

39. “Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death. “

40. “Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.”

41. “If you’re a marketer who doesn’t know how to invent, design, influence, adapt, and ultimately discard products, then you’re no longer a marketer. You’re deadwood.“

42. “A long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.”

43. “You can be right or you can have empathy. You can’t do both.”

44. “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.”

45. “Becoming a superstar takes about 10,000 hours of hard work.”

46. “Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing.”

47. “Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.”

48. “If you hesitate to map out your future, to make a big plan or to set a goal, you’ve just gone ahead and mapped your future anyway.”

49. “If your audience isn’t listening, it’s not their fault. It’s yours.”

50. “There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to execute them.”

51. “Don’t have any meetings about your web strategy. Just do stuff. First, you have to fail, then you can improve.“

52. “Don’t try to make a product for everybody, because that is a product for nobody.”

53. “Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.”

54. “When exactly were you brainwashed into believing that the best way to earn a living is to have a job?”

55. “You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself.”