I choose to be remarkable..

A while back (in 2008) I started following Mongezi Mtati on Twitter, and because I thought he’s a fun guy I decided to mess with him by sending him an IM telling him he looks like the newsreader on The Negro News Brief when he interviews people on his online television channel – NetWEbTV. So Mongezi and I come a good distance together online, and earlier today I log on to his blog just to see what cat is up to these days.. and was I blown away.. cat has a NetwebTV episode of him interviewing non other than marketing demigod Seth Godin himself. I had to watch this.

Mongezi asks Seth a series of questions centred around Seth Godin’s latest book – Linchpin,, which he answers with real fervour. I like that. You can watch the video below in your own time, but let me – quickly – share with you what happens here. I have just recently read Seth’s books Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside myself, so i was very.. no.. extremely curious about what this latest book is about.

Seth doesn’t miss a beat explaining the concept to Mongezi (yaw – can you believe this? Someone from right here in South African cyberspace speaks to Seth Godin live). The book fundamentally hinges on you – in a changed world and economy – making a choice between fitting in and running the risk of having what you do outsourced or downsized and working “outside the template” and standing out. Seth asserts that if you go the “stand out” route, you will be happy, what you do will be in more demand and you’ll ultimately make a difference.

He goes on to explain what he calls the “Linchpin Economy” with a question: “Why should i hire you and pay you more?”
The answer to that question weighed strongly in favour of the “i’m here” factor then, but now – in a changed economy – everything is geography-independent and is driven by people with big ideas.. people who make change happen. Then he continues on to something that really abducted all my attention (i’m a natural mental multi-tasker) for the full 2 minutes he spent expounding on this. Mongezi asks why one should give stuff away for free, and his answer is classic. Seth says that two mindsets are at play here. The poverty mindset, which holds that everything is about me.. mine.. more for me and the tendency to hold on to things. The mindset of wealth – on the other hand – says that “i can be generous”. He says people who give stuff away are the ones with real people with real power; the ones who can afford to. Reminded me of Chris Andersen’s “Free”, which I read last year sometime.

He further asserts that in the normal economy you pay for an item with money. You give money. You get an item. Nobody owes anybody anything. In the linchpin economy – however – to build a business “people (must) owe you”. He says to give away free samples of a physical product is impossible, but if you’re in the business of making ideas, you can give away as many as you wish. The more ideas you give away the more your ideas will spread. His advice is that if you make an item, you need to figure out how to wrap an idea around that item and then spread the idea.

In conclusion, the one piece of take-away he envisages with Linchpin is that we must ultimately make the choice between whether we’re going to try and fit in, keep struggling and fighting.. or stand out, make a difference and make change happen.

So what will I do after having seen this video?

I choose to be remarkable..

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