You can download the PDF form of this special limited edition of People Like Us here.
I like reading Seth Godin’s books and blogs, and this one was free and short—easy to dive into during a time when I was navigating spaces where I felt like an outsider, trying to understand the unspoken rules everyone else seemed to know instinctively.
What I found was less about fitting in and more about understanding how culture actually works.
Godin’s core argument is deceptively simple: people make decisions not based on logic, features, or benefits, but on identity. We do things because “people like us do things like this.” It’s the internal narrative that drives our behavior and not the ideas that were pitched to us.
And yet, Godin isn’t talking about “the culture” as some monolithic thing we’re all part of. He’s talking about “a culture,” our little pockets of the world. There’s no universal “us” that defines everyone. Instead, we’re all part of multiple, overlapping cultures, each with its own norms and signals and ways of being.
I found myself thinking about the different versions of myself I inhabit throughout the day. The “me” at work operates within one culture. The “me” with family follows different unspoken rules. The “me” online navigates yet another set of expectations. Perhaps this is why change feels so difficult sometimes. We’re not just changing ourselves; we’re negotiating multiple cultural identities at once.
Godin suggests that if we want to create change, we can’t try to reach everyone. We have to pick one culture or one specific group and focus all our energy there. In some of his writings, he calls this the smallest viable audience, which calls us to understand their worldview deeply enough to tell a story that resonates. It’s not about convincing everyone; it’s about mattering to someone.
This felt both freeing and daunting. Freeing because it released me from the impossible task of universal appeal (something I grapple with every time I hit publish on this blog). Daunting because it requires making a choice: this group, not that one.
What lingered with me was this: we’re all making it up as we go. Our decisions, our identities, and our sense of what’s “normal” are all invented and not discovered. There’s no mathematical formula; we’re constantly creating and recreating the cultures we’re part of, whether we realize it or not.
Culture isn’t something that happens to us. It’s something we participate in shaping, one small decision at a time, within our own little pockets of influence.
Have you noticed how the “people like us” narrative shapes your decisions? What culture are you trying to change—or trying to join?
jessa 