One of my favorite phrases about being an entrepreneur came from reading Seth Godin’s last book: What to do when it’s your turn, and it’s always your turn.
“I’m no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.†– Leonard Bernstein
This quote is stark on a bright yellow page shortly after starting the book. This is the kind of thinking that makes me love Seth. Seth is one of the most prolific minds in marketing in our age. He started email marketing as we know it today. His book permission marketing is one of the seminal texts in how marketing works in the 21st century. Â His DAILY blog is always insightful and challenging.Â
But most of all he gave me permission to go and do.
One of the things that Seth harps on, in a good way, is that you no longer need permission to do things. The internet has destroyed the gatekeepers. The internet is the great equalizer. Because that is gone, we no longer need permission to do our best work or the work we want. We just have to go and get it.
After months of reading Seth’s books and even doing a program called “Krypton Community College”, GO NARWHALS!, I realized the only person standing between me and doing good work was me. This belief in my freedom, or permission to do it, played a big role in the mind shift that allowed me to quit my job.
Believing that you can is half of the jump to starting self-employment. I am honestly not sure if I would have had the courage to make the jump if it had not been for the permission that Seth Godin gave me.
Seth Godin
