Small is the new big: review.

Godin, Seth  (2006) Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas. P.352. ISBN-13: 978-1591841265

      

I recently read Seth Godin’s Small is the new big. Fantastic read for aspiring entrepreneurs and people who want to be the best they can be i.e. remarkable. Being remarkable is the main thesis of the book. The book is a compilation of his blogposts and some posts are available here.

Again, it is a very good read and I like that each post is short and you don’t have to read it in a particular order. However, the book is US/Western-centric. In our part of the world, the odds are stacked against us (see this post) unlike in the West where can live a decent life and determine whether or not you want to be remarkable without so many obstacles.

Reproduced below are some of my favorite lines from the book

• Anonymity is the enemy of civility (Godin argues that we would be well-behaved on the internet especially if we are not anonymous)
• The percentage of the work you get paid to do goes down as you get paid more (so true, our bosses “do nothing” and get higher salaries)
• Changing people's minds: being right isn't the point. Being persuasive doesn't seem to matter that much either. Being right, being persuasive and being with the right person when that person is predisposed to change their mind- that's when things happen
• Pay attention to detail and take responsibility- two obvious secrets of every service business
• What did you do during the 2000s?
• Ask why (Yes ask why)
• Working class: having a job where the worker has little control over her acts - her goals, her time, the outputs created. (This is the best definition of working-class I have seen)
• Urgent is not an excuse
• If you don’t have the time to do it right, there’s no way in the world you’ll find the time to do it over
• You will succeed in the face of change when you make the difficult decisions first
• Progress: humans tend to work on a problem until they get a good-enough solution, not a solution that’s right
• The marketplace often rewards solutions that are cheaper and good enough, instead of investing in the solution that promises to lead to the right answer
• RPB: Relentless pursuit of better
• Getting the job you want: be remarkable, build a network of people who truly want to hear from you
• People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want. E.g ringtones
• People are selfish, lazy, uninformed, and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find
• There is no correlation at all between success and hours worked. The secret is understanding the key issues and making decisions about how to act on them
• Sales in one easy step: make something people want to buy
• What’s my free prize? What makes me standout?
• Short words are better than long ones and short sentences get read