95 Things I Learned from Seth Godin’s “Meatball Sundae”

So, I’m on vacation for the next two weeks (my couch).

However, I wanted to keep last week’s tradition alive since the feedback from the Ridiculously Long Lists was so positive! As such, I came up with five more lists. This should hold you over until I return on January 7th.

See ya in ’08!

Oh, and don’t forget to read all the lists from last week:
101 Lessons Learned from 2007
101 Ways to Create a Powerful Web Presence
123 Questions Every Marketer Must Ask
69 Mini Philosophies on Just about Everything
49 Ways to become an Idea Powerhouse

But now for today’s list:
98 Things I Learned from Seth Godin’s “Meatball Sundae”

Which, by the way, goes on sale TODAY. And if you don’t buy it here, your 2008 might be DOOMED!

1. An inbound email is an opportunity.

2. Appeal to the reachable.

3. Are you telling people about me?

4. Assume that every chamber is loaded, that every interaction is an interaction with a critic.

5. Be customizable, upgradeable and discussable.

6. Be on the lookout for everyone.

7. Being well rounded is totally overrated. (Actually from The Dip.)

8. Blogs validate our three desires: to hear our own voices, to be heard by others and to hear what the crowd thinks.

9. Build a permission asset.

10. Build the foundation of your idea around your marketing.

11. Bundling isn’t necessary. It slows people down from finding specifically what they really need.

12. Businesses grow because customers tell other customers.

13. Capture the attention and commerce of the people who truly care.

14. Create a story that spreads from person to person, from blog to blog that moves through a community and leaves an impact as it goes.

15. Create art not to please a gallery, but to please yourself and to please the people who are attracted to your vision?

16. Customers are saying, “I’m not a hostage any longer.”

17. Customers are working overtime to ignore you.

18. Do you quit when it’s HARD or quit when it’s RIGHT.

19. Don’t find 100,000 people, find 10 people each of whom know 1000 people.

20. Don’t hype it up. Just appear.

21. Don’t send users away from your site, claim them as your own.

22. Embed the idea into the experience itself.

23. Embrace the chaos of your industry and figure out how to weave it into a long term asset for the future.

24. Enter the public square and enable conversations.

25. Every interaction with a customer is a make or break proposition. You don’t get a chance for a learning curve. You don’t have the opportunity for the user to overcome initial discomfort.

26. Everyone can be the best in the world at something, they just need to figure out what that is.

27. Everyone picks the best one when given a choice.

28. Find a market that hasn’t been found yet. Create something so remarkable that people in that market are compelled to find you. String together enough of those markets so you can string them together as a business.

29. Given the choice, people want the choice.

30. Going through all the trouble and time to get halfway there is a waste.

31. Humans hate to make commitments because commitment is risk and risk is frightening.

32. Ideas that spread through groups of people are far more powerful than ideas delivered at an individual.

33. If it doesn’t cost your life, it isn’t a quest. (Also from The Dip.)

34. If it doesn’t sound perfect after a sentence or two, it’s easy to glance down at the next ad.

35. If you can’t see a curve, how dare you go into that field.

36. In a free market, we reward the exceptional. (Also from The Dip.)

37. In a transparent world, people avoid the deceitful.

38. In a world of choice, compromised solutions rarely triumph.

39. In a world of choice, nobody picks something that is good enough.

40. In a world of networks, few pick the isolated.

41. Instead of how well you use a paintbrush, success in the world of art is how compelling your idea becomes.

42. Instead of racing around trying to find attention, stand around and allow attention to find you.

43. Instead, focus on creating an environment where other people could have a conversation, work hard to offer enough value that people will choose to have the conversation in your place – and make it from you from time to time.

44. Invest what it takes to be seen as the best in the market you choose to compete in.

45. It’s easier than ever to sell something.

46. It’s not us and them, it’s us and us.

47. Live a story that matches the story you want people to tell other people.

48. Make something worth talking about and make it easy to talk about.

49. Make sure the architecture of your idea is viral.

50. Make sure the FIRST group of people you share your idea with are open to big ideas and have big mouths.

51. Most people, most of the time, want to be like most people, most of the time.

52. Movements are at the heart of change and growth. A movement – an idea that spreads with passion through a community and leads to change – is far more powerful than any advertisement ever could be.

53. Movements come from out of nowhere, from small companies or impassioned individuals.

54. No dip = no scarcity = no value. (Yep, from The Dip.)

55. No dips = begging to be frustrating. (Yep, from The Dip.)

56. Nothing deserves to be viral, it becomes viral if the selfishly motivated consumer spreads the word, and if they’re not spreading the word, there’s something about the idea that makes them NOT CHOOSE to spread the idea.

57. People have control over the attention they give marketers.

58. People who are perceived as the best get rewards that DWARF the people who are third and fourth and fifth.

59. People who really care will find you.

60. Practice a calm and patient approach to permission marketing.

61. Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers. (Best line of The Dip.)

62. Quitting is winning.

63. Realize that you’re not in charge.

64. Satisfy people who can best leverage your ideas.

65. Selling is about a transference of emotion, not a transference of facts.

66. Settle only for mastery.

67. Some external force has to make you a safe choice, i.e., media, book.

68. Speaking fee range is based on what serves the needs to the person who made the decision.

69. Starbucks offers 19,000 different beverages.

70. Stuff that stands on its own tends to be more remarkable. They have to be, the creators figure, because without a helping hand from a wealthy partner, that’s all they’ve got. It’s their only chance.

71. That’s why being a doctor is worth something – because not everybody’s a doctor.

72. The average length of video is five minutes, but the average length of viewing time is ten seconds. Ten seconds is all you get to prove to the viewer that it’s worth it to invest another ten seconds, and if you get someone to stick with you until the end, you’ve hit a homerun.

73. The distance between the brain of the designer and the ear of the consumer is shorter than it ever was before.

74. The internet doesn’t forget.

75. The Internet has nothing to do with what the movement is; the Net merely makes it easier than every for a movement to take place.

76. The moment your message ceases to be anticipated, personal and relevant, you cease to exist in your customer’s world.

77. The question isn’t, “How do you get Dugg,” the question is, “How do you make stuff worth Digging?”

78. The Web is like Santa Claus, but without the gifts.

79. The world is competitive, and you can only pick one, so why not pick the best.

80. The world now acts smaller and works faster.

81. There isn’t a mass market anymore: you’ll do great if there’s a niche, if your customers have natural peers.

82. There must be something about it that makes the people eager to spread it.

83. There’s not a lot of reason to persist with something that isn’t engaging.

84. Things become viral because the AUDIENCE wants to be viral, not because of you.

85. Today’s spoiled customer is willing to pay almost anything for the exclusive, noteworthy and indulgent.

86. Track attention and monetize interaction.

87. Treat every interaction, service, product and side effect as some kind of media.

88. Trust comes from repeatedly delivering insight and truth.

89. We don’t need to look for things to use our spare time because we don’t have any.

90. We feel safe and secure and validated when we choose the popular records.

91. When you get to the end of the dip, compounding your activity works, but once you’ve earned the respect, keep getting better at the craft, but stop promoting yourself because it takes away from the story – get out of the way so the people who are in love with you can talk about you.

92. Who knew? The Web knew.

93. Within you world, whatever world that is, you can see who is winning.

94. You can buy tiny slices of attention for a fraction of what it cost a decade ago.

95. You can harness the power of thousands of people for very little money.

96. You don’t have the money to command people to listen to you.

97. You’re always on the record, everyone is a critic, and the Web remembers forever.

98. Your people want to be heard