Mixergy’s Andrew Warner recently interviewed marketing guru Seth Godin about his newest book and the 45-minute video is well worth the time it takes to watch. Here’s one of Godin’s initial comments that should give you a taste of what the interview’s all about:
The opportunity is that the industrial age just ended. It lasted for 200 years, the cotton gin, the assembly line, interchangeable parts, Henry Ford, the TV industrial complex, interrupting lots of people was spam, and average products for average people, and compliant cogs working in the factory, doing what they were told. I can go on for a while. We all grew up with it, it was our lives.
You sit in school in a straight row, number 2 pencil filling out little circles, no stray marks, what’s that about? It’s about training you to work in the factory. And then all of a sudden the race to the bottom ended. It ended when you could buy a barrel of pickles at Walmart for two dollars. It ended when you could go online and buy anything in the world cheaper from someone else. It ended when Ford Motor Company laid off 10,000 innocent people that didn’t do anything wrong, but they lost their jobs because they’d followed all the instructions. And so, with all of that pain, where’s the opportunity?
The opportunity is we’re now rewarding individuals who make a difference. We’re now celebrating leaders. We’re now seeking out people online and off, who make things by hand, or keep their promises, or challenge the status quo. So the question that the book asks is, why don’t you do that? If it’s so valuable and so fun and so rewarding why don’t you do that?
I couldn’t agree more. Can’t wait to read the book.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
What a great quote. I should have excerpted it myself, but I didn’t catch it. Thanks for pointing it out!
Seth and Andrew – 2 of my favorite people.
The industrial age never ended. It simply moved. So we are still in a race to the bottom.
If the industrial economy disappeared, so did the information economy, knowledge economy, and in the lower tier, so did the ag economy. All we have left is resource extraction, so we have found the bottom with our arm outstretched. Next will be the full body slam.
We have achieved the bottom. We didn’t accidentally arrived here.
By the way, the new economy died a long time ago. It’s all old money these days. The bankers are voting with loans.
@Andrew: Thank you for putting out a great interview.
@David: Interesting thoughts. I can’t wait to see what the “full body slam” looks like.