You don’t have it anymore

“Movie execs thought they had the power to fight TV. Record execs thought they had the power to fight iTunes. Magazine execs thought they had the power to fight the web. Newspaper execs thought they had the power to fight Craigslist.”

“Here’s a way to think about it, inspired by Merlin Mann: Imagine that next year your company is going to make $10 million insteand of $100 million in profit.”

“What would you do knowing that your profits were going to be far less than they are today? Because that’s exactly what the upstart with nothing to lose is going to do. $10 million in profit is a lot to someone starting with zero and trying to gain share. They don’t care that you made $100 million from the old model.”

Every word is from Seth Godin, and as he says in the post, if you think he is only talking about publishing, you should read the whole thing again and think carefully about the ways digital will change your business model.

“Smart business people focus on the things they have the power to change, not whining about the things they don’t.”

Do yourself a favor. Read Seth’s new book, just out last week: Linchpin – Are You Indispensable?

Then spend an hour, outside your office, thinking about one thing that you could do today to make your product remarkable.

Not one thing you could do to cut expense.
Not one thing you could do to make your job easier.

One thing you could change right now — add, delete, or create — that would cause even one of your listeners to go, “Oh wow! THAT is amazing!”