Who's Your Seth Godin?

About a quarter of a million people read Seth Godin’s blog each day. That’s like every household in North Dakota reading his posts. What’s even more amazing is that it's all his--no group of writers for my man Seth. He writes every single post every single day. Worldwide, his blog in the top 20, easy. He writes, he speaks and he creates companies too. Score!

After more than 3,500 posts, he is still going strong. Some say his posts are even getting better. One a day, like clockwork, arriving in my RSS feeder before breakfast. The blog stud, I call him. Look at his picture--I could find him in a big conference room, but he couldn’t find me. We’ve never met. And yet. I wanted his help.

The point I want to make today is that many of you are worrying needlessly. In your own world, you might be thinking: How can I ask my version of Mr. Godin for help and advice when he is much too busy to help me? Why would he want to help me? He doesn’t know even know me. Why would he help me network to find a new job?

It’s paralysis by analysis. Maybe you are too smart and can think of a bunch of reasons why something won’t work as opposed to assuming they will. It keeps you from asking for help or getting the advice you need to improve at your job. It hinders your networking ability.

Maybe you need an example of how this works.

This month I opened up my own blog to about 30 other bloggers--“Share the Podium” month I called it. Some very good bloggers contributed articles. But I needed one more to conclude the month and I wanted it to be a doozy.

What did I do? I just up and asked Seth Godin if he would write one for me. I was nice about it, sure. I figured, what was the worst that could happen? I guess he could have said something like he was much too busy to write something about job hunting, and that I was an idiot for even asking. So, that was the worst. The best would be that he would actually write an original post for me.

His exclusive post is over at What Would Dad Say today. Score!

G.L. Hoffman is a serial entrepreneur and venture investor/operator/incubator/mentor. Two of his companies have traveled the entire success path from the garage to IPO. Currently, he is chairman of JobDig, and his blog can be found at WhatWouldDadSay.com or at JobDig.com.