Just recently I’ve been really enjoying Seth Godin’s new podcast Akimbo.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Seth, you need to check out his work. He’s a famed marketer, whose books, including The Dip and Purple Cow, are some of the best and most innovative in the business advice space. He’s certainly been a huge influence on me.
Anyway, Seth’s recently started this new podcast. It comprises 30-minute episodes with him talking about a different issue connected with contemporary marketing, media or entrepreneurship each week. It’s simple, all-killer no-filler stuff. There are no interviews, just Seth.
Perfection
In a recent episode, called Quality and Wabi-Sabi, Seth talked about perfection, and how it is unattainable. You can never achieve perfection. You try to fashion the perfect sphere, and it won’t be perfect—not quite. You try to write and record the perfect song, but you won’t. Not even if you’re Bob Dylan. There will always be mistakes and little imperfections that slip through the net.
At the same time, consumers are increasingly seeking out artifacts that aren’t perfect. This, according to Seth, is why sales of vinyl records and real books have been on the up in recent years. Yes, you can get perfect digital manifestations of both in the form of streaming and ebooks. But it turns out that we rather like slight imperfections. We rather like something to be flawed—it makes it more personal for us somehow.
This is an extremely important concept, and one we should keep in mind both in our business and personal lives (or both together, if you happen to be building a brand based around your personality).
Authenticity is key.
Now, in a dating scenario that doesn’t mean you should ‘just be yourself’. It’s a little more nuanced than that. After all, if ‘yourself’ is a chode with few social skills and a boring personality then of course you need to work to improve those things, just as you must ensure your dress sense and grooming etc. are also top notch.
But what you should avoid is trying to be too perfect, so that you’re basically a clone of some idealised person. Your essence is valuable. Your quirks are what make you. You stand out because of them. You are special because of them.
If you try to iron out all the wrinkles in your personality then all you will end up with is a very well-ironed but rather dull personality. And that’s no good for anything.
Yes, work on self-improvement every day. But don’t, whatever you do, lose those things that make you unique. Instead, you should accentuate them—because they are your biggest differentiator and thus your biggest assets.
If you want to find out more about radically differentiating yourself from others then pick up a copy of my book How To Be An Assh*le. It gives you all the tips you need about standing out from the crowd.
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