Seth Godin
Hey, it’s not even about crowDsourcing, or new business moDels, or tHe internet. It’s about being willing to fail and relishing the idea of being different.
If you page through this book, you’ll see example after example of love and art and joy... but not a lot of fear. Fearlessness and recklessness might appear to be related, but they’re not. Jake is fearless. He understands that the actual risks are fairly small, and given that the risks are accounted for, he dives in. Reckless business people, on the other hand, are dangerous because the risk everything all out of proportion to the upside.
Ever since I encountered Threadless, and then, particularly after I had lunch with “the two Jakes,” I’ve been in awe of their willingness to be wrong and their desire to be different.
So, my hat’s off to the crazy (smart) people at Threadless. Here’s a company that hires the unhirable, codes the uncodable, markets the unmarketable. They did during a time when everyone else was wringing their hands and whining, and they did it with flair and aplomb.
Different = risky.
Can I have my free t-shirt now?
Risky today = safe. The magic of what Threadless has built lies in their apparent recklessness. But they’re not reckless, of course. General Motors was reckless, wasting billions on boring cars they knew wouldn’t sell. Circuit City was reckless, rolling out giant temples of average, knowing that people could find stuff just as average right down the street.
Seth Godin is the author of twelve international bestsellers including Purple Cow, Tribes and Linchpin. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have helped change the way we think about work, marketing and change. His hugely influential blog is the world’s most popular marketing blog. Seth is also the founder of squidoo.com.
2008
location Chicago, USA member since July 10, 2003
i had a well documented childhood—both my parents are photographers and we had a darkroom in the house in baton rouge, louisiana, where i was raised. i’m their only child, so they dragged me to all the art openings they could. i resisted every time and would always try to devise ways to cut out early. but as much as i fought it, some of this art and culture must have stuck with me. During my pre-college years, I filled dozens of sketchbooks with pencil drawings of cars, basketball shoes, animals and super. I remember having a bump on my top of my middle finger from drawing so much and pushing the lead down too hard to the paper. when college started, i hastily decided i wanted to be an architect. i stuck with this for about a week before i realized i did not enjoy math. so i switched to graphic Design—the “sell out” of art school culture. i had some memorable professors who helped me get a hold of the basics—kerning, letraset, swiss design, garamond, negative space, acetate, adobe, saul bass, and i did my best to soak it all up like a sponge. I read a blurb about Threadless in Communication Arts while wasting time in a Barnes and Noble. I was supposed to be researching some web project. I went home that night and made my first T-shirt design. It was horrible, but of course in my mind it was an amazing, original idea. There would be a heart (shoddily vectored in Macromedia Freehand) printed on the sleeve of the shirt (thus it would be a heart on your sleeve—ha, so bad). It deservedly tanked on the site. People destroyed me in the comments, which was awesome. It got me hooked. So then I wanted to prove to all these cleverly-named-faceless-wince-inducing commenters that I could do something they liked.
ROSS ZIETZAKA
2008
2008 People’s Choice “Mr. Melicano, this shirt is perfection. fierce, realistic wolf pelt? check. sexy pout? check. sideswept bangs and mysteriously hidden eyes? check. houndstooth print? check. cute but deadly weapon? check. gingham and wicker? check. independent woman? check. glorious coloring, shading and lines? check. grimm’s fairy tale reference? check. perfect placement to flatter the female form? check.”
Red by Kneil Melicano aka Roadkill3d, USA Score: 3.51 by 1,281 people