Person
Seth Godin's books and book recommendations
Across 4 podcasts. Every show Seth Godin appears on, in one place — not just one.
Seth Godin is an American author, marketing expert, entrepreneur, and a former dot-com business executive. During podcast appearances, he recommended and discussed several books across various topics. He pointed to Robert Rodriguez's Rebel without a Crew to illustrate a creative approach to resource constraints and recommended Patti Smith's Just Kids as an example of an artistic journey. Discussing his cooking experiences, Godin mentioned Chris Schlesinger's The Thrill of the Grill alongside foundational culinary books like Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef. He also recommended Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future as an inspiration for creating The Carbon Almanac, and brought up Ben H. Winters's The Last Policeman to illustrate a philosophical point about living with impending doom. Additionally, Godin mentioned Jacqueline Freeman's Song of Increase while sharing a personal story about a beekeeper in Australia, and recommended Mahan Khalsa's Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play to explain effective business-to-business sales approaches.
Books by Seth Godin
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Purple Cow
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The Dip
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Show me language books
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Unleashing the Ideavirus
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Free Prize Inside
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The Big Moo
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Small Is the New Big
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Meatball Sundae
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Permission Marketing
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All marketers are liars
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We Are All Weird
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Poke the box
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The 1995 Information Please(R) Women's Sourcebook (Information Please Women's Sourcebook)
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Survival Is Not Enough
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Carbon Almanac
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INFO PLEASE BUS (Information Please Business Almanac and Sourcebook)
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The Idiot's Guide to DOS
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Wisdom, inc
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If You're Clueless About the Stock Market and Want to Know More
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The Big Red Fez
Books recommended by Seth Godin
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The 4-Hour Workweek
The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss is a highly influential lifestyle design manual that challenges conventional career paths and encourages readers to automate, delegate, and escape the traditional nine-to-five grind.
Discussed“same thing's true with the 4-Hour Work Week same thing's true with permission marketing right that if you read the first three chapters of permission marketing you know what it's about”
Where to get it
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Crossing the Chasm
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A.
Recommended“the second one also based on a curve is crossing the chasm by Jeff Moore there are many editions of this book I like the older editions but that's just cause I'm a Boomer”
Where to get it
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Just Kids
Just Kids by Patti Smith is a celebrated memoir chronicling the author's profound artistic relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe during their youth in New York City and the Chelsea Hotel.
Recommended“The best audio book ever recorded is Just Kids by Patti Smith.”
Where to get it
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Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play
Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play by Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig is a business book that outlines a straightforward methodology for effective business-to-business sales.
Recommended“Mahan Khalsa has written a book called Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play about B2B selling. But the lesson of Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play is simple.”
Where to get it
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Rebel without a Crew
Rebel without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez is an influential filmmaking memoir that details how the director shot his ultra-low-budget feature film El Mariachi for just seven thousand dollars.
Recommended“yeah there's an amazing story people can check it out in a book called a rebel without a crew by by Robert Rodriguez”
Where to get it
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Secrets of Closing the Sale
Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar and Kevin Harrington is a comprehensive guide filled with classic sales techniques, principles, and motivational stories.
Recommended“The stories in the book Secrets of Closing the Sale are gold.”
Where to get it
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See You at the Top
See You at the Top by Zig Ziglar is a classic motivational book centered on the power of positive thinking, goal setting, and salesmanship.
Recommended“And his original classic See You at the Top, also filled with stories.”
Where to get it
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Song of Increase
Song of Increase by Jacqueline Freeman is a book that explores beekeeping and the spiritual connection humans can share with bees.
Recommended“And he started talking to me about the bees, and he told me the story of Jacqueline Freeman's Song of Increase. And The Song of Increase is just such a great Tim Ferriss story.”
Where to get it
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The Gift
The Gift by Lewis Hyde is a classic exploration of the creative spirit, examining how artistic creation functions as a gift economy rather than a market-driven commercial enterprise.
Recommended“the gift by Lewis Hyde we gave the gift to many of the first thousand or 2,000 people who took the author MBA the gift is a dense extraordinarily researched book written by a brilliant writer”
Where to get it
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The Last Policeman
The Last Policeman by Ben H.
Recommended“And there's a great book that I loved called The Last Policeman. I'm not sure I'd say it's a great book. It's a great concept, and I really loved reading it.”
Where to get it
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The Ministry for the Future
The Ministry for the Future is a speculative fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson that explores the challenges and societal impacts of near-future climate change.
Recommended“I read the magnificent Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, and it completely upended the way I saw the world.”
Where to get it
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The Pursuit of Wow!
The Pursuit of Wow! by Tom Peters is a high-energy business and management book published in 1994 that urges professionals and organizations to embrace radical innovation, passionate leadership, and customer-centric excellence in a rapidly changing marketplace.
Recommended“it's called the pursuit of Wow from 1994 I met Tom in 84 right after in search of excellence came out it was just a random connection but ever since then I have been inspired and amazed by his energy and by his passion and this book captures so much of it”
Where to get it
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The thrill of the grill
The Thrill of the Grill by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby is a popular cookbook focused on outdoor cooking, bold flavors, and grilling techniques.
Recommended“Um so for me, cooking changed when my wife uh got me a cooking class with Chris Schlesinger who wrote the book Thrill of the Grill.”
Where to get it
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Think Like a Chef
Think Like a Chef by Tom Colicchio is a culinary guide that teaches home cooks how to master techniques and flavor profiles rather than merely following rigid recipes.
Recommended“But after that I bought a few foundational books, Think Like a Chef, some books from Alice Waters, uh Daniel Leader's groundbreaking books on baking.”
Where to get it
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Thinking in Bets
Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets is an insightful guide that applies poker strategies and decision-making frameworks to everyday life, teaching readers how to navigate uncertainty and avoid cognitive traps.
Recommended“and the third strategy book is called thinking in bets by Annie Duke yes that Annie Duke World Poker champion and the first chapter alone will change your life”
Where to get it
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What Technology Wants
What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly is a compelling examination of the evolution of technology and its relationship with humanity.
Recommended“and you know kevin kelly's book what technology wants is a must read it will change the way you see so many of these issues”
Where to get it
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Atomic Habits
Atomic Habits by James Clear is a widely acclaimed guide on habit formation, personal development, and systems design.
Discussed“and James did a great job with atomic habits but I will be delighted to wager that many people didn't read the whole thing”
Where to get it
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Man's Search for Meaning
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E.
Discussed“There are a few books that have been brought up on this podcast more than that one, and Viktor Frankl's story, survival of four concentration camps, just generous, heroic.”
Where to get it
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Permission Marketing
Discussed“but like when i wrote permission marketing people said i was delusional and they said that uh email marketing wasn't a thing”
Where to get it
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The Practice
The Practice by Seth Godin is a guide to shipping creative work, overcoming resistance, and committing to the daily process of making art and solving problems.
Discussed“and in the case of the practice i think i might be able to thread the needle here between that's really useful”
Where to get it
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The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride by William Goldman is a beloved fantasy adventure novel that expertly blends romance, satire, and swashbuckling comedy into a timeless classic.
Discussed“A story isn't always the Princess Bride. A story isn't always once upon a time.”
Where to get it
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The War of Art
Steven Pressfield's The War of Art serves as a profound guide for creatives, entrepreneurs, and thinkers seeking to understand and conquer the psychological barriers that hinder productivity and inspiration.
Discussed“you know i discovered the war of art 10 years ago when i was writing linchpin i can't believe no one told me about it beforehand”
Where to get it
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Wabi-sabi
Discussed“Leonard I want to say it's that same scorn wrote a book called wabi-sabi in which he conflated two words Wabi and sabi”
Where to get it
Appearances
Other mentions (16: passing, ad reads, own books)
“And so I spent two years organizing the carbon almanac with 1900 co-authors, full-time volunteer work for me.”
“So I wrote the first book about quitting. It's called The Dip and I was amazed at how many people felt like it touched them.”
“I'm never going to write a story a book called This is God the tactic Monger volume one right exactly so if I'm not going to write this is God or this is tactics at least I could write this is strategy”
“same thing's true with the 4-Hour Work Week same thing's true with permission marketing right that if you read the first three chapters of permission marketing you know what it's about”
“and in the case of permission marketing I wrote a book but it turned into a hundred billion dollar year industry right that MailChimp and HubSpot and all the others they were built around the idea in that book”
“And that's what the book is about, significance, the search for meaning.”
“Um for a long time my best dish was my crispy tofu, which I put in the footnotes of my book Survival Is Not Enough cuz I needed the world to know about my crispy tofu recipe.”
“I wrote Permission Marketing, which invented the business of email marketing, and I wrote a book called Purple Cow, but I don't need to write books.”
“I wrote Permission Marketing, which invented the business of email marketing, and I wrote a book called Purple Cow, but I don't need to write books.”
“or the other thing is i could be someone that a thousand people would really miss if i were gone and as kevin kelly has pointed out a thousand true fans let you do your work”
“and so i wrote a book about this process of shipping creative work and it counters so many of the myths that people have about”
“And so i wrote a book about this process of shipping creative work and it counters so many of the myths that people have about what does it mean to even be creative”
“you know i discovered the war of art 10 years ago when i was writing linchpin i can't believe no one told me about it beforehand”
“and what I write about in this is marketing is most marketers say I have a key”
“All of them because if you're going to write to kill a mockingbird or Harry Potter a lot of people are gonna read it”
“All of them because if you're going to write to kill a mockingbird or Harry Potter a lot of people are gonna read it”