The Purple Cow Christmas

I'm back from Christmas holidays and ready to get back at it. My wonderful wife got me a couple books from my business hero Seth Godin to read. I read his book "All Marketers Are Liars" a while back and wanted to read the rest of his stuff but never got around to it. Katlyn made me get around to it and I'm glad she did.

The first book I read was Seth Godin's Purple Cow. He talks about how most businesses make the mistake of trying (consciously or subconsciously) to be normal to attract the masses. But in the process, those businesses become so vanilla that they aren't attractive to anyone. This book pushes you to be remarkable for a sliver of your target market. If you're truly remarkable for these people, your ideas will spread.

I don't do this book justice. The ideas are so simple, but so incredible at the same time - you need to pick up a copy.

I'm about halfway through Small is the New Big also by Seth Godin. This book is not your typical business book. It contains excerpts from Seth's blog and books, with each one ranging from as short as one paragraph to as long as a few pages. Each entry contains valuable information that makes you think differently about marketing and business in general. It's worth a read.

The thing I love about Seth's ideas are that he never just accepts things the way they are. He always asks why something is the way it is and uses common(?) sense to challenge the status quo. If you don't subscribe to his blog, you should. If you haven't read any of his books, I suggest you do. His blog is currently listed as the 15th most popular blog on Technorati. The numbers don't lie, he has some good ideas.