What leads you to believe someone is credible?
What makes you trust someone? Respect them? Admire them?
Is it what they’ve done in the past? What they’re doing today? What they’re working on for tomorrow?
Or maybe it’s something else entirely.
Seth Godin falls into my coveted (totally hetero) “mancrush” category – along with the likes of Trent Reznor and Zack Morris, so you know this is reserved only for the elite of the elite.
Why Seth? Why Purple Cow and Linchpin and The Domino Project? Aside from his accomplishments, the thing I respect the most out of Seth is his ability to turn the ordinary routine thing you and I think about and/or experience everyday, and spin it, weave it into a masterpiece – a little nugget of wisdom that almost always has you saying “Huh, I never thought about it that way, but that’s brilliant”!
It’s his ability to do this in very few words that speak volumes. His posts are almost always read in under a minute, but I’m almost always left re-reading, re-tweeting – sharing his message with others. There’s something about his content that compels you to not only digest it, but to tell others about it. His writing is relevant, and it resonates on a personal level and to a wide audience.
Now there are a lot of folks out there doing similar things, but I think it’s his ability to wrap up what you and I might be thinking, but to do so in so few words – his brain is clearly working and thinking in different ways than you and I. I’m not saying he’s smarter than you (thought he probably is) – but he’s trained his brain to process things and get to the point quickly – cutting through the excess.
And yes, he would have had this post wrapped up a long time ago.
A couple things for you to go and do, today
1) As writers, shoot from the hip more often. In Seth’s writing, both on his blog and his books, you can tell he isn’t over-thinking. Stream-of-consciousness in writing can be a nightmare, but practice makes perfect. Instead of worrying about writing the PERFECT paragraph, instead of digging through the thesaurus to find “just the right” word, shoot from the hip, write what comes to mind first, and go with that. It may not always be the most eloquent, but it’s almost always more real – and I’d connect more with genuine writing over eloquent writing any day.
2) Think about who you admire and respect. Do it right now. Write them down, make a list, and next to each one, summarize in a couple words WHY you respect them. Then think about what you can do to display similar traits – and get to work.
I’d love to hear who made your list – so if you’d be so inclined, leave a couple of the “Who’s” and “Why’s” below.
Meanwhile, I’m off to work on how I could have made this post < 100 words.
Yep, I have a long way to go.