Author, strategist and marketing guru Seth Godin took part in a live video interview at Impact Day 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia, in conversation with entrepreneur Eric Edmeades.
Over the course of a half an hour or so, the pair discussed the concept of sustainability as a mindset focused on longevity and resilience rather than short-term gain. As Godin noted, sustainability requires systemic change, and storytelling has the power to shift collective behaviour by building movements rather than isolated actions.
For investors and consumers alike, he said, the key to achieving positive actions from sustainability is about aligning incentives with the long-term good, as well as amplifying systems that promote positive human behaviour.
SustainabilityOnline was in attendance – here are some of the key takeaways from the discussion.
On defining sustaianbility
“There’s a lot of ways to talk about sustainability. I can talk for a very long time about the climate emergency that we’re all facing – and we should talk about it – but sustainability should be more than that.
“I don’t think that I would have succeeded far more by conventional metrics, if I had not chosen a sustainable path. There’s always a hustle to be done. There’s always a way to reach more to the bottom. You can steal from sleep. You can steal from trust. You can steal from attention. And I discovered – I think when I was around 17 – that when I did that kind of theft, I could get ahead in the short run, but it wasn’t going to be what I signed up for.”
On the right kind of action
“The word ‘act’ is the key to the whole thing. One person acting changes nothing. But if we can tell a story of community action, we can tell that story in a way that’s going to change things for the better.
“If you think about a company like Patagonia, which is worth billions and billions of dollars, they’re not worth billions of dollars because they make fleece. Lots of people make fleece. They’re worth billions of dollars because they raced to the top, by organising people. They didn’t race to the bottom by hustling.”
On creating new systems
“What we’re looking for here in terms of action is not ‘oh, it’s Thursday, I’m gonna do one really good thing today’. What we’re looking for is how do we create new systems, where you get social status – more of what you seek – by doing things that lead to resilience.
“The easiest way to attract the crowd is to cry wolf. The easiest way to attract the crowd is to punch somebody in the face. We’re not interested in attracting the crowd. We’re interested in consistently and persistently building systems that permit people to thrive.”
On effective activism
“The work of activists and communities is to bring the future to the present. When you bring the future to the present, then they are in alignment. And the thing is, because we’re all hooked on convenience, consumers don’t do that. Consumers say, ‘yeah, it is better today, so I’m not all that worried about the future’. So if you, as a consumer, aren’t worried about the future, then all the people who have short-term incentives aren’t going to worry about the future either.
“Day by day, we have a choice. We race to the top or we race to the bottom. It’s very simple.”
On amplifying the right message
“The way to take action is to find and amplify a community – persistently and consistently, over time. Systems cannot resist this. If you do this, the system will change.
“When you build a system that amplifies the worst parts of our nature, they’re going to get amplified. […] So, when we see a system that amplifies something we don’t want, the good in us can take action and change the system.”
Impact Day continues on Friday 10 October. More information can be found here.
