What I asked Seth Godin
I had the pleasure of attending a “fireside chat” with the legendary Seth Godin a while ago.
The Q&A consisted of all sorts:
"Seth, how do I scale my business so I can write a book?"
"Seth, is marketing inherently unethical?"
"Seth, what’s the next generation of the C-suite going to look like?"
My question was: “Seth, how do you determine when something is "ready" to share?”
As an author of 18 NYT bestsellers, I was very curious for his take on “perfectionism.” What’s the balance between volume of output and craft? When are you just sharing for the sake of sharing vs. providing real value?
His answer was poetic, of course:
“To be clear, I’ve never said “just ship it”, because "just ship it" implies “what the hell.” I’m not interested in that, saying, “It’s crap, I’m putting it out there.”
You need to ship everything one day before you think you’re ready to ship it. Maybe 2 days. Maybe 2 weeks. You’ve got figure out where your thermostat is. But you will never, ever be ready. You might be prepared, but you will never be ready. Because ready means you’re sure, and If you’re sure, it’s too late.
You’ve gotta ship it before you’re ready, after you’ve done the work, where you know some people are going to hate it and you’ll learn something. Then you do it again, and again, and again.
Saturday Night Live goes on at 11.30, not because it’s ready, but because it’s 11.30.
I’ve done 30 years of projects and written all of these books, and every one of them I could’ve made better. And once every two weeks there’s a glaring typo in my blog. I know what I could do to get rid of those typos, and it wouldn’t be worth it. Because then I’d only blog once a month.
So you’ve got to figure out what you stand for, and calibrate it so it’s always going out just a little sooner than you’re ready.”
If you’re not familiar with his work, dig in, it’s all brilliant.
Forever a student,
Jack Butcher
Twitter: @jackbutcher
Instagram: @jckbtchr