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Written by : Luther Silcott |
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uh hi everybody we are uh extremely extremely happy to have uh seth with us today say thanks a lot for uh being here so safe is again a person who does not need much introduction and i'm going to keep it really short because uh all of us are here to hear him speak so sadism is an entrepreneur a best-selling author and speaker and he's written more than 19 books and most of which are in our bookshelves and our go-to books for us whenever we have a brain block or we need to think clearly so we've been extremely big fans of seth and we really are happy to have him here to share his knowledge and uh though uh renowned for his writing and speaking uh safe has also founded two companies right so squidoo and yoyodain uh which was acquired by yahoo so seth has very very strong experience in entrepreneurship and uh he's a mentor for a lot of people across the world and a very interesting fact about seth as well is that in 2013 seth was just one of the three professionals inducted into the direct marketing hall of fame and in may 18 he was also inducted into the marketing hall of fame as well right so he is probably one of the only uh he's probably one of the people who is uh the only one who's been into uh both these i'm actually struggling forward because i'm so happy to have safe here so i'm going without much shadow i'm going to hand it over to seth for a very intriguing session to all of you so hope you guys have fun thank you rajiv yeah i i don't have a knighthood like sir mike does but i was lucky enough that he bought my company when he was at yahoo so with that said i want to talk for a little bit and then take your questions for a little bit i want to start with two stories about travel which is something i don't get to do one of them involves driving in canada if you want to get up to algonquin park which is one of the most beautiful places on earth you go to toronto you rent a car you drive up the 400 to highway 11. and highway 11 is not beautiful at all highway 11 is a disaster one place after another where you just don't want to stop gas stations muffin stores places up sell fireworks places that sell muffins places to sell propane there's one place that sold propane and fireworks in the same facility i didn't stop there you just go and as you're driving up the road you pass a place called weber's which is a hamburger stand but unlike every other place on the road it has a line of 50 people who are waiting for a hamburger and right next to weber's is rita's candy shop rita's candy shop i stopped by a little shack she sells candy from all over the world and i was talking to rita it turns out the average customer at rita's was spending sixty dollars u.s a visit sixty dollars why right well it turns out what webers and rita's have in common is one of the things i want to talk about today what they have in common is that they are not common they are not like everything else they are peculiar they are idiosyncratic they are worth talking about they've decided to go outside the edges and they've gained customer traction because it was interesting to listen to mike talk about what he wants to fund but what he left out is that every single one of his successes is an organization that got customer traction that made something that not only did people want but that people chose to talk about so what's my second road story my second road story happened to me in india in between delhi and barely which is approximately an eight hour drive and uh we were in a van and of course the united states we drive on the wrong side of the road so i wasn't used to driving on the side of the road that people drive on in india and the driver of our van was driving as fast as he could but there was a lot of traffic and it's a single lane highway and what would happen is he would pull up in front of whatever car or truck was in front of us and he would honk and honk and honk until he could pass them and this went on for four and a half hours of pulling up behind a car honking honking passing etc and it's enervating because the whole time we're driving on the wrong side of the road and i'm just sitting there willing us not to be in a horrible crash after four and a half hours we had passed all the cars and trucks that were in front of us and you've already guessed what the driver did he slowed down because there was no one to pass that what these two stories have in common is that we are wired from a really young age to keep track of who's on our left and who's on our right to fit in to comply but maybe to win by half a second it's interesting to note that uh sir roger bannister i think he was a sir when he broke the four minute mile in the months afterwards lots and lots and lots of people broke the four minute mile because he was able to demonstrate that it could be done what it means to build a brand from scratch what it means to build a startup particularly in these troubled times is you're going to have to do something that other people aren't doing that there's a lot of pressure on you to fit in and to be a little cheaper and a little faster than the competition there's a word for that it's called the race to the bottom and the problem with the race to the bottom is you might win or worse you might come in second that the internet likes rewarding the race to the bottom sort by price right sort by price is the thing that wrecked air travel sort by price is the model for places like flipkart and amazon because if it's all the same just buy the cheap one so if you're busy hustling i will start by reminding you no one wakes up in the morning saying i wish someone would hustle me today i wish someone would come up to me with their average stuff for average people and somehow pushed me to buy from them not what anyone wants if you're making average stuff for average people hoping that you'll get found it's going to be a very long road for you and it's not going to end well if your motto is you can pick anyone and where anyone it's going to be a problem because if i can pick anyone i'm probably not going to pick you so where do we go from here what is our option what could we do instead what you do instead is race to the top right what we can do instead is decide to be idiosyncratic and unique and the one and only we can realize that the engine that mike moritz has made his fortune on over and over again is one thing the network effect things that work better when more people use them the reason you found out about name your favorite software is because someone told you to use it why why did someone tell you to use word why did someone tell you to use google because it would make their life better if you would do that that's the magic of the network effect most things before the internet did not benefit from the network effect if i told everybody to go to my favorite private lake or park or whatever it would get crowded it would suck but if everyone has a fax machine or everyone has a twitter account where everyone is doing something i come out ahead so the network effect is about building community in a circle around something that people can connect over so
Thanks for your comment Carla Mccleod, have a nice day.
- Luther Silcott, Staff Member
Thanks for this interesting article
Thanks Elinore your participation is very much appreciated
- Luther Silcott
About the author
I've studied gerontology at WON Institute of Graduate Studies in Glenside and I am an expert in land management. I usually feel rushed. My previous job was journalist I held this position for 15 years, I love talking about word searches and mountaineering. Huge fan of T-Pain I practice dog sledding and collect beer cans.
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