Seth Godin Quotes

Every time a new CEO came, I got a promotion till I was made CEO myself.

I knew if I wanted to be a general manager, I was going to have to leave to work for another organization.

Up or out" greatly magnified the careerist emphasis on holding a position rather than doing a job.

For the most ambitious young people, the corporate ladder is obsolete.

Work changes over time, as you change and the world changes.

I started out in engineering. I was a geophysical engineer. Throughout the course of my life I've done a lot of strange jobs, and the effect has been to make me think a little more skeptically about our capitalist society.

I am very excited and delighted to be an important part of the development of corporate America.

I'm in a place in my life where I get offered parts that I didn't get offered before - fathers and uncles and grandfathers and so on. And it took me a long time to get to that place, but I'm glad because it opens up new territory.

If you want a CEO role, you have to prepare for it with a vengeance.

I don't want to play fat cops for the rest of my life.

I'm hoping that the administration and other thought leaders will succeed eventually in bringing the country back to the older idea that the American dream is having a career, getting a job, and getting involved in it, and doing well. That was the core of the good life.

I think everyone starts in the mailroom at some point! It's a right of passage. Your boss has to throw something at you and order you around for at least two years.

No one is born a CEO, but no one tells you that.

I only want to do better work. That's the focus of my life.

If I had a normal job and had been moving up, I'd be management level now.

I've never had a job in my life that I was better than. I was always just lucky to have a job. And every job I had was a steppingstone to my next job, and I never quit my job until I had my next job.

I am very fortunate to have a career. I always have to act. I don't know if I'll have a career to support it for the rest of my life, but I know I'll always act.

At age 28, I had no retail experience, no consumer marketing experience and no real Internet experience. But I decided I wanted to work for myself. I felt starting a company would enable me to get the responsibility I deserved and that I couldn't do that within the confines of a bigger company.

I started at Pillsbury as a manager in one of their analysis functions, then worked my way up the corporate ladder to become vice president. Moving to Burger King was an important moment in my career.

I think it's really important to remember that it's a long life, and it's a long career. In a perfect world, your career will be long. It does not begin and end with any one job. The point is to continue to have longevity in your career.

I'm actually developing a project so that I can have a lead.

You grow and learn a lot about the industry and what happens behind closed doors over the years.

Good people climb quickly - just like in a company.

I went to college, grad school. I got an M.B.A., had a really cush corporate job. But I was just bored stiff. I didn't fit that mold.

That just seems like a tough thing to do... just work in the middle of a company for your entire life. You just do the same thing out of college until you're 60, and then you retire.