Sunday, February 7, 2010

Seth Godin Love

I just want to take a few minutes to tell you how much I love Seth Godin.  As a new entrepreneur, which I am super-duper excited about, I love reading and learning all about operating a business.    A friend introduced me to him when I first started turning over the idea of actually starting my own business and committing to making it succeed.  She's brilliant and has a brilliant, successful family.  I think it's important to surround yourself with people who have qualities you don't have, and she is definitely an asset.  

But enough about her and back to Seth.  Brilliant.  And the most brilliant part about him is the simplicity and common sense of his ideas.  For example, today, he wrote:

"One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that. That's actually what they spent most of my time at business school teaching me.

No sense putting more on that pizza, sending more staff to that event, answering the phone in fewer rings... what's the point? No sense being kind, looking people in the eye, being open or welcoming or grateful. Doing the least acceptable amount is the way to maximize short term profit.

Of course, there's a different strategy, a crazy alternative that seems to work: do the most you can do instead of the least.

Radically overdeliver.

Turns out that this is a cheap and effective marketing technique."

Can you even believe how simple and effective that idea is?  Over-deliver instead of under-deliver.  Brilliant.  Sometimes people just need to be reminded of the little things that make a business successful.  He has more complex ideas, as well, but he always make them simple to understand. 

Not to mention his fun book overs:

 

  

  
 

 

1 comment:

Jolie said...

:) Linchpin is really good...I am almost done reading it. I can loan it to you, but you would have to read it on your computer, I have the eBook version.