2 posts in 1 month…I know… I said that this year is different

Seth Godin has hit it out of the park again.

If you haven’t heard of Seth, go check him out. He has a new book out, that I can’t wait to read.

In this post on his blog, he discusses people in just two groups: Hunters and Farmers.

Seth mentions the very skill sets as we see them today:

A kid who has innate hunting skills is easily distracted, because noticing small movements in the brush is exactly what you’d need to do if you were hunting. Scan and scan and pounce. That same kid is able to drop everything and focus like a laser–for a while–if it’s urgent. The farming kid, on the other hand, is particularly good at tilling the fields of endless homework problems, each a bit like the other. Just don’t ask him to change gears instantly.

Honestly, I can see both skill sets in myself. But overall I tend to be a hunter. I really believe that is what I am good at. Which obviously lends itself to the idea that Seth quotes of author, Thom Hartmann:

That medicating kids who might be better at hunting so that they can sit quietly in a school designed to teach farming doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Though we as hunters also have to understand that our system was built by the farmers, as well as the fact that they are people to respect too.

As a marketer this isn’t a lens through which I would have previously looked, but Seth has again pointed me in the right direction.

I will end my post the same way he did:

“All I know is that it often explains a lot about behavior (including mine).

Some ways to think about this:

• George Clooney (in  Up in the Air) and James Bond are both fictional hunters. Give them a desk job and they freak out.
• Farmers don’t dislike technology. They dislike failure. Technology that works is a boon.
• Hunters are in sync with Google, a hunting site, farmers like Facebook.
• When you promote a first-rate hunting salesperson to internal sales management, be prepared for failure.
• Farmers prefer productive meetings, hunters want to simply try stuff and see what happens.
• Warren Buffet is a farmer. So is Bill Gates. Mark Cuban is a hunter.
• Hunters want a high-stakes mission, farmers want to avoid epic failure.
• Trade shows are designed to entrance hunters, yet all too often, the booths are staffed with farmers.
• The last hundred years of our economy favored smart farmers. It seems as though the next hundred are going to belong to the persistent hunters able to stick with it for the long haul.
• A hunter will often buy something merely because it is difficult to acquire.
• One of the paradoxes of venture capital is that it takes a hunter to get the investment and a farmer to patiently make the business work.
• A farmer often relies on other farmers in her peer group to be sure a purchase is riskless.

Who are you hiring? Competing against? Teaching?”