A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate. (Location 36)
Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements. (Location 144)
Leadership isn’t difficult, but you’ve been trained for years to avoid it. (Location 161)
Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change that you believe in. (Location 170)
Marketing is the act of telling stories about the things we make—stories that sell and stories that spread. (Location 190)
Marketing used to be about advertising, and advertising is expensive. Today, marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread. (Location 192)
No one watches a mediocre YouTube video they’ve seen before. No one passes on a boring e-mail. No one invests in a stock that’s boring, with few prospects for big growth. (Location 201)
If you want to grow, you need to find customers who are willing to join you or believe in you or donate to you or support you. And guess what? The only customers willing to do that are looking for something new. (Location 223)
Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow them. (Location 278)
it takes only two things to turn a group of people into a tribe: • A shared interest • A way to communicate (Location 287)
a leader can help increase the effectiveness of the tribe and its members by • transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change; • providing tools to allow members to tighten their communications; and • leveraging the tribe to allow it to grow and gain new members. (Location 294)
Most organizations spend their time marketing to the crowd. Smart organizations assemble the tribe. (Location 355)
“Good enough” stopped being good enough a long time ago. So why not be great? (Location 365)
Whatever the status quo is, changing it gives you the opportunity to be remarkable. (Location 411)
We choose not to be remarkable because we’re worried about criticism. (Location 530)
If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader. (Location 636)
Leadership is a choice. It’s the choice to not do nothing. (Location 674)
Others will scoff and move on, wondering what the obsession is all about. That’s what makes it a tribe, of course. There are insiders and outsiders. (Location 720)
It’s easy to underestimate how difficult it is for someone to become curious. For seven, ten, or even fifteen years of school, you are required to not be curious. Over and over and over again, the curious are punished. (Location 731)
the safest thing you can do feels risky and the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe. (Location 735)
Change isn’t made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later. (Location 807)
Faith is the cornerstone of humanity; we can’t live without it. But religion is very different from faith. (Location 934)
In order to lead, you must challenge the status quo of the religion you’re living under. (Location 935)
Leadership almost always involves thinking and acting like the underdog. That’s because leaders work to change things, and the people who are winning rarely do. (Location 968)
Sometimes, though, it may make more sense to take the follow. Leading when you don’t know where to go, when you don’t have the commitment or the passion, or worst of all, when you can’t overcome your fear—that sort of leading is worse than none at all. (Location 986)
The best time to change your business model is while you still have momentum. (Location 1073)
I define sheepwalking as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them brain-dead jobs and enough fear to keep them in line. You’ve probably encountered someone who is sheepwalking. (Location 1091)
Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school. So why does it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep? (Location 1102)
The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success. (Location 1219)
The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. (Location 1226)
Hope without a strategy doesn’t generate leadership. Leadership comes when your hope and your optimism are matched with a concrete vision of the future and a way to get there. (Location 1372)
most people want you to be average, and that doesn’t get you anywhere. (Location 1432)
Tribes grow when people recruit other people. That’s how ideas spread as well. The tribe doesn’t do it for you, of course. They do it for each other. (Location 1452)
If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either. (Location 1477)
Part of leadership (a big part of it, actually) is the ability to stick with the dream for a long time. Long enough that the critics realize that you’re going to get there one way or another …so they follow. (Location 1478)
People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves. (Location 1542)
What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about change. (Location 1545)