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That's Why There's Lots And Lots Of Kinds Of Hot Sauces, And Not So Many Kinds Of Mustard. Not Because It's Hard To Make Interesting Mustard - You Could Make Interesting Mustard - But People Don't, Because No One's Obsessed With It, And Thus No One Tells Their Friends.

-Seth Godin

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That's Why There's Lots

Seth Godin

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That's Why There's Lots And Lots Of Kinds Of Hot Sauces, And Not So Many Kinds Of Mustard. Not Because It's Hard To Make Interesting Mustard - You Could Make Interesting Mustard - But People Don't, Because No One's Obsessed With It, And Thus No One Tells Their Friends.

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Reject The Tyranny Of Picked. Pick Yourself.

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Black Friday Is A Media Trap, An Orchestrated Mass Hallucination Based On Herd Dynamics And The Media Cycle.

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As Soon As We Associate Reading With A Test, We've Missed The Point.

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It's Human Nature To Quit When It Hurts. But It's That Reflex That Creates Scarcity.

It's Entirely Possible That There Won't Be A Standing Ovation At The End Of Your Journey. That's Okay. At Least You Lived.

Take The Long Way. Do The Hard Work, Consistently And With Generosity And Transparency. And Then You Won't Waste Time Doing It Over.

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Evolution Is The Most Popular Way We Have For Dealing With Change.

Once You Have Permission To Talk To Someone, Finding New Products Or Services For Them Is A Smart Way To Grow.

Leaders Who Set Out To Give Are More Productive Than Leaders Who Seek To Get.

Every Activity Worth Doing Has A Learning Curve.

The Desire That We Have To Do Something That’s Never Been Done Before Means That The People Who Are Around You Generally Will Not Encourage You To Do It…if They Were Encouraging You To Do It, Then Other People Would Be Doing It Already And It Wouldn’t Be Unique.

Anyone Who Says Failure Is Not An Option Has Also Ruled Out Innovation.

Thought Provoking

Failure Is Not An Option

One Theory Says That If You Treat People Well, You're More Likely To Encourage Them To Do What You Want, Making All The Effort Pay Off. Do This, Get That. Another One, Which I Prefer, Is That You Might Consider Treating People With Kindness Merely Because You Can. Regardless Of What They Choose To Do In Response, This Is What You Choose To Do. Because You Can.

If You Can't Be Remarkable, Perhaps You Should Consider Doing Nothing Until You Can.

In A Digital World, The Gift I Give You Almost Always Benefits Me More Than It Costs.

When You Think About Uber And Airbnb And The Other Companies That Are Turning Things Upside Down, Uber Isn't Big 'cause They Ran A Lot Of Ads. They're Big Because Someone Took Out Their Iphone And Said To Their Friend, Watch This, And Pressed A Button And A Car Pulled Up.

No One Can Be Responsible For Where Or How We Each Begin. No One Has The Freedom To Do Anything Or Everything, And All Choices Bring Consequences. What We Choose To Do Next, Though, How To Spend Our Resources Or Attention Or Effort, This Is What Defines Us.

Successful People Fail Often, And, Worth Noting, Learn More From That Failure Than Everyone Else.

This Notion That It Is Up To Each Person To Innovation In Some Way Flies In The Face Of The Industrial Age, But You Know What, The Industrial Age Is Over.

You Don't Launch A Popular Blog, You Build One.

It's Uncomfortable To Resist The Urge To Settle.

Instead Of Wondering When Your Next Vacation Is, Maybe You Should Set Up A Life You Don't Need To Escape From.

Now, Before Sliced Bread Was Invented In The 1910s I Wonder What They Said? Like The Greatest Invention Since The Telegraph Or Something. But... The Thing About The Invention Of Sliced Bread Is This - That For The First 15 Years After Sliced Bread Was Available No One Bought It; No One Knew About It; It Was A Complete And Total Failure.

Communication Is The Transfer Of Emotion.

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Instead Of Focusing On Arguing With People Who Say No, It Might Be Easier To Get Near The People Who Like To Say Yes.

The Only Purpose Of Starting Is To Finish

Make A Decision. It Doesn't Have To Be A Wise Decision Or A Perfect One. Just Make One.

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Differentiation

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The Market ... Demands A Signal From You That You're Serious, Powerful, Accepted, And Safe.

Please Stop Waiting For A Map. We Reward Those Who Draw Maps, Not Those Who Follow Them.

Make Something Happen Today, Before You Go Home, Before The End Of The Week. Launch That Idea, Post That Post, Run That Ad, Call That Customer. Go The Edge, That Edge You've Been Holding Back From... And Do It Today. Without Waiting For The Committee Or Your Boss Or The Market. Just Go.

The Only Path To Amazing Runs Directly Through Not-yet-amazing . But Not-yet-amazing Is A Great Place To Start, Because That's Where You Are. For Now.

Great Projects, Like Great Careers And Relationships That Last, Are Gardens. They Are Tended, They Shift, They Grow. They Endure Over Time, Gaining A Personality And Reflecting Their Environment. When Something Dies Or Fades Away, We Prune, Replant And Grow Again.

Care. Care More Than You Need To, More Often Than Expected, More Completely Than The Other Guy.

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Art Is The Act Of Doing Work That Matters While Dancing With The Voice In Your Head That Screams For You To Stop.

Sure, Compare. But Compare The Things That Matter To The Journey You're On. The Rest Is Noise.

The First Step To Getting Good Is Admitting That You Aren't (yet).

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Is It Worth Getting One More Tweet Out, Or Putting Your Phone Down And Doing Something That Is Worth Tweeting?

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If You Have A Book To Write, Write It. If You Want To Record An Album, Record It. No Need To Wait For Someone In A Cubicle Halfway Across The Country To Decide If You're Worthy.

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The Question Is Not Will You Succeed? But Rather, Will You Matter?

If Not Enough People Doubt You, You're Not Making A Difference.

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I Feel Like I'm Treating People As I'd Like To Be Treated.

What Is School For? If You're Not Asking That, You're Wasting Time And Money.

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The Key To Getting A Reputation For Being Brilliant Is Actually Being Brilliant, Not Just Acting Like You Are.

Life Is Like Skiing. Just Like Skiing, The Goal Is Not To Get To The Bottom Of The Hill. It's To Have A Bunch Of Good Runs Before The Sun Sets.

No One Knows More About The Way You Think Than You Do.

Somewhere In The World, Someone Is Doing Something That You Decided Couldn't Be Done.

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Everyone Picks The Best One When Given A Choice.

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The Question Isn’t Whether Or Not You Should Wait To Be Picked, The Question Is Whether You Care Enough To Pick Yourself.

The Problem With Holding A Grudge Is That Your Hands Are Then Too Full To Hold Onto Anything Else.

The Easier It Is To Quantify, The Less It's Worth.

Taking Delight In The Journey Takes Confidence. It Pushes The Envelope Of Design.

Surprise And Delight And Connection Are Remarkable.

If You Hear My Idea But Don't Believe It, That's Not Your Fault; It's Mine. If You See My New Product But Don't Buy It, That's My Failure, Not Yours. If You Attend My Presentation And You're Bored, That's My Fault Too.

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Making A Difference

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'good Enough' Stopped Being Good Enough A Long Time Ago. So Why Not Be Great?

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Here's The Thing: The Book That Will Most Change Your Life Is The Book You Write.

The Instinct To Produce Great Work Doesn't Require A Fancy Notebook.

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No More Than Six Words On A Slide. Ever. There Is No Presentation So Complex That This Rule Needs To Be Broken.

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Making A Difference

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It's Never Too Late To Start Heading In The Right Direction.

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Or, If I Take That Same Auditorium And I Make It Much Bigger And Put More Space Between Seats, It'll Be Quieter Because It's Much Harder When You're Not In Physical Contact With People To Spread A Virus From Person-to-person, Right? There Are All Sorts Of Patterns That We See In Epidemiology That Help Us Understand Why Something Spreads.

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If You Love Writing Or Making Music Or Blogging Or Any Sort Of Performing Art, Then Do It. Do It With Everything You've Got. Just Don't Plan On Using It As A Shortcut To Making A Living.

There's No Shortage Of Remarkable Ideas, What's Missing Is The Will To Execute Them.

The Problem With Working With A Coach Isn't That We Don't Know What To Do. The Real Problem Is That We Don't Want To Change Our Mind.

If The Game Is Designed For You To Lose, Don't Play That Game. Play A Different One.

Traditional Corporations, Particularly Large-scale Service And Manufacturing Businesses Are Organized For Efficiency. Or Consistency. But Not Joy. Joy Comes From Surprise And Connection And Humanity And Transparency And New...if You Fear Special Requests, If You Staff With Cogs, If You Have To Put It All In A Manual, Then The Chances Of Amazing Someone Are Really Quite Low.

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I Think That The Economics Of Book Publishing Favor Hits With Long Book Runs. You Make All Your Money On The Last Bunch Of Books, Not The First.

The Industrial Age Brought Compliance And Compliance Brought Fear And Fear Brought Us Mediocrity.

Change Is Not A Threat, It's An Opportunity. Survival Is Not The Goal, Transformative Success Is.

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

When We Intentionally Seek Out The Difficult Tasks, We're Much More Likely To Actually Create Value.

Difficult Tasks

It's Impossible To Have A Coin With Only One Side. You Can't Have Heads Without Tails. Innovation Is Like That. Initiative Is Like That. Art Is Like That. You Can't Have Success Unless You're Prepared To Have Failure. As Soon As You Say, 'failure Is Not An Option,' You've Just Said, 'innovation Is Not An Option.'

Life Is Not About Gutting Out Every Situation. It's About Identifying Opportunity Or The Lack Thereof. If Your Pride Is All That Is Standing In The Way Of Quitting, Quit. The Right People Won't Care And The Wrong People Don't Matter. If You Know You're On The Right Path, Persevere Though The Pain. It Will Be Worth It.

Why Waste A Sentence Saying Nothing?

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The Innovator Creates A Business Where They Are Making Money, Even When They Sleep.

We Do Not Need To Teach Students To Embrace The Status Quo.

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