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Canoeing Was Hard And Scary, And The Wind Could Blow You Across The Lake If You Did It Wrong. After A Year Of Not Doing It Right, I Could Talk To People And Get Them To Sit Up Straight, Take Different Kinds Of Chances, To Breathe Differently, To Engage In The Moment In The Boat. And I Changed Them, And I Changed Me In The Process.

-Seth Godin

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Canoeing Was Hard And

Seth Godin

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Canoeing Was Hard And Scary, And The Wind Could Blow You Across The Lake If You Did It Wrong. After A Year Of Not Doing It Right, I Could Talk To People And Get Them To Sit Up Straight, Take Different Kinds Of Chances, To Breathe Differently, To Engage In The Moment In The Boat. And I Changed Them, And I Changed Me In The Process.

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The Best Marketing Strategy Is To Destroy Your Industry Before Your Competition Does.

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When In Doubt, Tell Yourself The Truth.

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The Secret Of Getting On The Shortlist Is Doing Your Best Work Fearlessly For A Long Time Before You Get On The List.

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Marketing Is No Longer About The Stuff That You Male, But About The Stories You Tell.

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If I Fail More Than You Do, I Win.

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If You Wait Until You Are Ready, It Is Almost Certainly Too Late.

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Transferring Your Passion To Your Job Is Far Easier Than Finding A Job That Happens To Match Your Passion.

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It Takes Three Years To Be An Overnight Success, Sometimes More.

Art Isn't Only A Painting. Art Is Anything That Is Creative, Passionate And Personal. Art Is The Unique Work Of A Human Being Created To Touch Another. Art Is Created To Have An Impact, To Change Someone Else.

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You Can't Have Good Ideas Unless You're Willing To Generate A Lot Of Bad Ones.

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Fear Is The Dream Killer, The Silent Voice That Pushes Us To Lose Our Passion In A Vain Attempt To Seek Safety.

No Niche Is Too Small If It's Yours.

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Competition Validates You. It Creates A Category. It Permits The Sale To Be This Or That, Not Yes Or No.

Whining Isn't A Scalable Solution.

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Measurement Is Fabulous. Unless You're Busy Measuring What's Easy To Measure As Opposed To What's Important

All The Good Things In My Career Are A Direct Descendant Of What I Did And Learned At #‎ Camp

Fans, True Fans, Are Hard To Find And Precious. Just A Few Can Change Everything. What They Demand, Though, Is Generosity And Bravery.

Where Do You Go To Get Permission To Make A Dent In The Universe ? If You Think There's A Chance You Can Make A Dent, Go !

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The Only Reason To Build A Website Is To Change Someone. If You Can't Tell Me The Change And You Can't Tell Me The Someone, Then You're Wasting Your Time.

Wasting Your Time

At Least At First, The New Thing Is Rarely As Good As The Old Thing Was. If You Need The Alternative To Be Better Than The Status Quo From The Very Start, You'll Never Begin.

Turn Strangers Into Friends. Turn Friends Into Donors. And Then Do The Most Important Job: Turn Your Donors Into Fundraisers.

All Artists Are Entrepreneurs. All Entrepreneurs Are Artists.

If You Want To Dig A Big Hole, You Need To Stay In One Place.

I've Found That Giving Gifts Is Transformative. It Makes Me Better. It Clarifies My Thinking And Allows Me To Do Better Work.

Marketing Yourself To A New Person Often Involves Being Charismatic, Clever And Quick-but Most Jobs And Most Relationships Are About Being Consistent, Persistent And Brave.

Just Because The Tide Is Out, Doesn't Mean There Is Less Water In The Ocean.

The Problem With Putting It All On The Line Is That It Might Not Work Out. The Problem With Not Putting It All On The Line Is That It Will Never (ever) Change Things For The Better. Not Much Of A Choice, I Think.

Books Work As An Art Form (and An Economic One) Because They Are Primarily The Work Of An Individual.

A Brilliant Author Or Businesswoman Or Senator Or Software Engineer Is Brilliant Only In Tiny Bursts. The Rest Of The Time, They’re Doing Work That Most Any Trained Person Could Do.

A Tribe Is A Group Of People Connected To One Another, Connected To A Leader, And Connected To An Idea. For Millions Of Years, Human Beings Have Been Part Of One Tribe Or Another. A Group Needs Only Two Things To Be A Tribe: A Shared Interest And A Way To Communicate.

The Internet Was Supposed To Homogenize Everyone By Connecting Us All. Instead What It's Allowed Is Silos Of Interest.

Copy, Not From Your Industry, From Others. You Have To Go Where There Is No Competition.

Living With Doubt ... Is Almost Always More Profitable Than Living With Certainty. People Don't Like Doubt, So They Pay Money And Give Up Opportunities To Avoid It. Entrepreneurshi P Is Largely About Living With Doubt. If You Need Reassurance, You're Giving Up Quite A Bit To Get It. On The Other Hand, If You Can Get In The Habit Of Seeking Out Uncertainty, You'll Have Developed A Great Instinct.

The Best Time To Start Promoting Your Book Is Three Years Before It Comes Out. Three Years To Build A Reputation, Build A Permission Asset, Build A Blog, Build A Following, Build Credibility And Build The Connections You'll Need Later.

Your Peer Group Are People With Similar Dreams, Goals And Worldviews. They Are People Who Will Push You In Exchange For Being Pushed, Who Will Raise The Bar And Tell You The Truth. They're Not In Your Business, But They're In Your Shoes. Finding A Peer Group And Working With Them, Intentionally And On A Regular Schedule, Might Be The Single Biggest Boost Your Career Can Experience.

I've Never Once Met A Successful Blogger Who Questioned The Personal Value Of What She Did.

Personal Values

While You May Have Made Money Doing Something A Certain Way Yesterday, There's No Reason To Believe You'll Succeed At It Tomorrow.

I Wonder Why Anyone Would Hesitate To Be Generous With Their Writing. I Mean, If You Really Want To Make A Living, Go To Wall Street And Trade Oil Futures ... We're Writers. We're Doing Something That Is Inherently A Generous Act. We're Exposing Ourselves To The Muse And To The Things That Frighten Us. Why Do That If You're Not Willing To Be Generous? And Paradoxically, Almost Ironically, It Turns Out That The More Generous You Are, The More Money You Make. But That's Secondary. For Me, The Privilege Of Being Generous Is Why I Get To Do This.

I Look At Starbucks, Howard Schultz Has Made Many Brilliant Decisions, And One Of The Things That They Did Was They Invented The Third Space. It's Not Work, It's Not Home. That's One Of The Engines Of Its Spread. But At The Same Time He Was Doing That, He Bet The Farm To Open More And More Stores In Any Given Town, And Making It Ubiquitous Made It Much Easier To Say To Your Friend, I'll Meet You At Starbucks.

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