I’ve read 3 of of Seth Godin’s books at this point, Tribes, Linchpin, and Purple Cow. Tribes is about the idea that you must become a leader. Linchpin argues that in order to be appreciated, you must do things that make you important. Purple Cow suspects that uniqueness and difference are important in order to succeed. Of these three, although the anecdotes are distinct, they are all built with the same underlying structure, or in this case a formula.
I would put these books in the genre of what I would consider ‘light’ self-improvement. These books aren’t trying to sell you on a specific way of achieving your goals, but are instead encouraging you to get started now, and affirming that you can keep pushing forward. If you build it, they will come.
From Seth Godin’s perspective, this makes sense. In order to create a noteworthy product or experience, you need to design it first and differently. Otherwise, the main thing you’ll be differentiating yourself on is price, something that gets ugly quickly. This is essentially the backdrop of his argument.
If I was to describe the skeleton of each of his books, they go something like:
In order to see *aspirational success story*, you must *differentiate* or you’ll compete on price, meaning that *specific fear*. However, there is hope. If you get started doing *whichever type of differentiation the book is about*, you too will be able to thrive.
From a writing style perspective, I would imagine these books are easy to do research for, but hard to edit down. I would imagine Seth has the ambition to write more broadly, but each distinct book tries to aim its sights on a specific element of differentiation. This makes sense, given that Seth is a marketer, and a primary directive of marketers is to explain why your product is unparalleled. This is an effective and important tool, and is great for capturing people’s attention, especially because schooling often emphasizes obedience, standardization, and conformity. For those aching to be freer, this message is quite compelling.
I don’t think maintaining this formula for writing is unintentional. McDonald’s aims to have a consistent consumer experience for the same reason. People want to broadly know what they’re getting out of a book, and the simplistic style, ease of understanding, and mild sense of inspiration are nice. If he was not well established as a writer, I don’t know how well received his work would be. But, it’s also unclear why counterfactuals are relevant in this context- Seth built his brand on his writing style. I think Seth started out with blogging for a while, something I can relate to, and his chapters often read like blog posts.
At this point, I want to shift gears to assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of his writing: what I think he does remarkably, and what he doesn’t.
Starting with his strengths. The primary goal of any piece of writing is to get people to read it. Seth’s writing stands out in this regard for three reasons.
First, the titles are often zany and interesting. This means that people are likely to pick it up.
Second, because he keeps his writing high level and conversational. The writing is easy to follow, and its short enough that it won’t feel like an arduous task reading through it. Similarly, it doesn’t have many ‘quit points’ where someone will feel as though its going way too ‘in the weeds’, making it easy to finish his work and feel a sense of satisfaction and inspiration.
Third, it’s very choose your own adventure. This allows people to imagine their specific dreams, rather than hearing every millisecond of Wilco’s rise to fame. This is good because everyone’s favorite subject is themself. Knowing this, it’s clear that Seth leaves space for this to feel like this book is about them.
Another broad strength is his multifaceted branding and authority. Seth blogs (Yay!), has launched two businesses, won several prestigious awards, and has a good track record. In a sense, his brand is his writing, and his brand is good. If he ends up teaching a course on personal branding, I’m sure it would be very lucrative for him.
On the other hand, there’s only so much time in the day. But, if I was him, and looking to maximize my impact, I would delegate by hiring a ghostwriter and see if I could build out more of a media empire.
Over here is where I think his writing could be more insightful. I’ll keep this short, because overall, I think his work is excellent as a tool for waking people from their stunted stupor.
First, I don’t completely agree with the philosophy that “if you build it they will come”. Regardless, this is a better message to people than stay the same, but is one that I’d iterate towards a more validated-learning style of development.
More generally, I think that most big successes are the result of lots of tiny gambles and attempts to improve expected value. This view isn’t as glamorous as the idea that innovating, taking a stand and being stubborn is enough, but I think is probably closer to the truth. In this sense, I think talking more about execution and continued customer service as differentiators would complete this broader perspective.
Second, and this is more personal preference, I would like more sources and further reading if I want to learn more about these concepts. Because he’s so open-ended about finding success, I don’t think the books are as imminently practical, and may not lead to as many great results as I would hope.
Finishing up, I think Seth has built an amazing brand, and has a winning formula. If he furthers his media empire as I recommend, I’ll be the first to welcome our Godin overlords.
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