Seth Godin's Linchpin

Being a Seth Godin fan boy in marketing circles is like announcing that Frank Lloyd Wright was a genius in a room full of architects -- no one will disagree with you, but you're not going to win any awards for originality either.

I am an ardent fan of Seth's and have written about him before on this blog. While it's hard to quantify exactly what makes him so powerful, he helps articulate it brilliantly in his latest offering, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable.

Godin believes the days of the entitled, overpriced bureaucrat are over. In the twentieth century, many careers were built around skills that can now be done by machines or outsourced for a fraction of the price. Only by passionately producing and "shipping" your unique "art" can you become an indispensable linchpin within an organization or in your own business.

The road to linchpinhood is no walk in the park. First one has to confront a lifetime of conditioning that encouraged us to fit in, or as Godin believes, become replaceable cogs in the system. We must then confront the "lizard brain" -- our own inner voice pleading with us to accept the happy mediocrity of the status quo.

Personally, I found the chapter on "shipping" the most powerful part of the book. Godin points out that Pablo Picasso produced over a thousand paintings, but most of us can only remember three of them. He also reminds us that he himself has written over a hundred books, most of which didn't sell very well, but the process of doing so made his work infinitely more readable. The lesson here is that creativity is an iterative process. Godin truly believes that sheer output, regardless of the ratio of crap to critical, equals progress -- one can't develop and become more valuable if one is standing still. In other words, if you are going to fail, fail forward; fail fast.

This has given me a newfound respect for musicians like David Bowie, bands like Blur and authors like William F. Buckley Jnr. I used to feel that the mountains of crap they produced for every piece of good stuff was revealing -- that a body of work more mediocre than masterpiece was something to be embarrassed by. But now I can see that for most everybody, this dedication to shipping forms the crucible of their creativity. One of my Dad's favorite quotes to us as kids was Thomas Edison's, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." This much is becoming clearer by the day.

While Godin is known for his visionary but commonsensical thoughts on marketing, Linchpin is first and foremost a self-help book, but a finer one you will not find. The book is incredibly enlightening, thoroughly readable, and as Forrester analyst and author of Groundswell, Josh Bernoff writes, "You should buy a copy. Unless, of course, you're enjoying that rut you're in."

Seth Godin is Cap Rooney

I took a peek at the Ad Age Power 150 for the first time in a while this morning. It’s great to see some blogs of real quality climbing the list. Some of my personal faves are David Armano’s Logic + Emotion, Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation and Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategy by Jeremiah.

However, more surprising to me was the fact I couldn’t find Seth Godin’s name near the top of the list. After a bit of a scroll, I was amazed to find that Godin, for so long king of the blogosphere, had slipped to number 89. What gives?

Seth Godin is a blogging pioneer. He has been churning out his commonsense nuggets every day for the best part of a decade. He publishes a book a year, most of which become bestsellers. He is the unanimous first choice any aspiring author has to write on their bookjacket.

Why then such a big slide? After all, in the realm of blogosphere clout, Godin has few peers.

Godin’s slide is indicative of the macro blogging environment. There are plenty of great thinkers out there, and on the web there are few gatekeepers keeping great ideas locked up. As such, Seth's slide in the AdAge rankings is not so much a decline of his influence as the rise of everyone else’s.

A particularly apt analogy here comes from the Oliver Stone Film film Any Given Sunday. In a pivotal scene, Coach Tony D’Amato is telling overnight quarterback sensation Willie Beamen he will be benched when veteran Cap Rooney returns from injury. He’s having trouble persuading Beamen that Rooney’s track record of success means he is an automatic start until he hits him with an irrefutable truth, “Sure Willie, you kicked ass, but Cap Rooney’s been doing it for years.”

Seth Godin is the Cap Rooney of the blogosphere – an enduring champion, a source of inspiration to others, more importantly a leader that makes those around him better. Bloggers of all stripes become better because of him.

Why Godin Matters

Seth Godin is the doyen of bloggers. Not just marketing bloggers, but bloggers period. His blog tops the Advertising Age Power 150, and he’d be #1 on the wishlist of any aspiring author to have write on their bookjacket. You get my drift - the guy is a big deal.

But why? There are several reasons. Firstly, he is a prolific publisher, averaging a book a year, and a blog post a day since the turn of the century. This ensures he is constantly part of the ongoing conversation. Second, he is very much a servant leader, a lot of his posts feature mentions of other businesses and people he admires. When he writes a recommendation for a book, it is always creatively complimentary and tightly linked to the subject material. You can’t fake the obvious interest and admiration he has for his peers.

But how has Godin remained so popular for so long? I tried to capture a shopping list of reasons in the diagram above. Godin vs the Blogosphere is not meant to diminish the work of the countless terrific bloggers out there -- most add great value to web 2.0 and the age of conversation. Rather, the comparison is meant to help unveil specifically why Godin is so popular.

To use a term coined by another visionary blogger David Armano, Godin is a synthesizer. While others report on the singularity of events, Godin paints broader, thematic strokes -- distilling the cacophony of noise into commonsense nuggets which he serves daily -- rain, hail or shine.

Perhaps that’s why Godin occasionally draws the ire of marketing academics who claim he simply re-packages old ideas -- simplifying marketing theory so that the lay-person can understand…

What a terrible crime, I really don’t know how he sleeps at night…

Writing a Great Business Plan

I have read a lot of business plans lately - helping craft several of them myself. It's amazing how cutting to the thrust of a great idea is infinitely tougher than it looks!

The best ones share three key attributes:
EMPATHY for the reader.
CLARITY in language and expression.
URGENCY in tone.

The more insights the writer has about its reader, the more a plan can be tailored to their interests and desires. As entrepeneurs already have a clear idea of their own product or service, objectively writing for a specific audience is tougher than it sounds, but can make or break the success of a plan.

Like Godin the Great, I believe no one ever sat through a presentation and thought "I wish it was longer." In crafting a business plan, I would take it even further, "No one ever read one wishing it was longer or more complicated." As the founders of Southwest Airlines showed with their famous Back of the Napkin sketch, clarity really is king.

Lastly, a great business plan must be a call to action saying to the investor "the time is now!!" There should be a description why a tipping point in the industry has been reached, and why the business solution is well positioned to capitalize on the paradigm shift.