Book Review: Purple Cow

In Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable, Seth Godin explains that a Purple Cow is a product, service or company that is remarkable, exceptional, worth talking about and noticing. It’s something new or very interesting. For now. You see, many products and services start out as Purple Cows.


Godin contends that the traditional marketing concept no longer works with consumers. Paradoxically, marketers have created their own problems. Back when consumerism was young and many products were new, marketers merely advertised a product and consumers purchased it. Pour more money into advertising and receive more sales. It was a pretty simple formula.


But consumers are too busy to pay attention to advertising. And, worse, yet, they have everything they need! So how does a marketer gain the attention of consumers?


By being remarkable. But it’s a little more complicated than that. Targeting consumers no longer works because marketing messages are largely ignored. And creating a product to market to the masses, according to Godin, is a waste of time and money. Those products for the masses are already taken.


Godin suggests creating a product or service that serves a niche. That way, consumers who are in need of the niche product or service can find you. But that product or service must be remarkable. Very good won’t cut it anymore. Products and services that are very good are normal.


Once you’ve created a remarkable niche product or service, market it to consumers who are most likely to be listening. According to Godin, it is useless to advertise to anyone except those actually interested in your product or service.


Purple Cow is a required read for anyone in business. Godin’s insight into why marketing no longer works and how to reach consumers in an age of marketing overload and consumer apathy are spot on. Read this book if you want to gain marketing advantage over your competitors.

Book Review: Thought Vibration

Written in 1906, Thought Vibration by William Walker Atkinson, is as current and relevant today as it was a century ago. Atkinson, a somewhat forgotten New Thought pioneer, was also an attorney, merchant, publisher, editor and author of more than 100 books, many under pseudonyms.

Without being preachy, Atkinson explores the ideas of increasing willpower, mastering the real self, living fully, ridding the mind of negative thought, training habits, harnessing emotions, and developing new brain power. His older writing style is still lively and surprisingly refreshing 100 years later.

I love Atkinson’s “in your face” attitude about will power. (If you don’t have any, you’re mentally lazy!) And his thoughts on what he calls “asserting the life-force” or really living and experiencing each moment of every day, call us to stop doing things half-hearted. Take an interest, man!

Atkinson spends a lot of time discussing fear and how it affects our attitudes and, eventually, our ability to succeed. Fear, he says, is an expectancy of the feared thing. To banish fear, start to do some of the things you could do if you were not afraid to try. Assert courage and, eventually, the fear will recede.

Atkinson leaves us with some thoughts on our views of successful people. We imagine successful people to be superior. And if we ever get the chance to meet someone we deem as superior, many times we are disappointed to find that they are the same as ourselves! The difference, Atkinson asserts, is the successful person’s belief in themselves and their ability to concentrate. Resist the urge to undervalue ourselves and overvalue others.

Amazing how the world around us is so different yet the human element remains the same!

Book Review: Fearless Living

I recently read the new book, The Essential Laws of Fearless Living by Guy Finley. Guy says that we have an insatiable desire to be someone in the world. What drives that? The wish for power, he asserts. We think that power will put us above the world of the ordinary. It will move us out of our unremarkable daily lives and into a life of excitement and pleasure. We are running from the fear of being no one. But, as Guy points out . . .”what we resist persists.” So by living in fear and discouragement because we are unable to move away from the fear, we are only bringing more of the same feelings! It’s a vicious, never-ending circle. We try using power to control and possess others – a really bad idea Guy points out because by trying to control another person, we are, in fact, giving our power over to that person. So not only are we not in control, someone else has control over us! Not exactly what we had in mind. So instead of trying to control others, give to others what we ask from them. That is the secret to receiving what we wish for from others

Most of us automatically resist the unknown. But in order to become fearless, we must practice self-liberation. We live in negative states of self-doubt and fear. But if we realize that these states are voluntary, not mandatory, we can begin to free ourselves from their imprisonment. The more we think negative thoughts, the more we sink into negativity. And the more we live in negativity, the more we react negatively. We must realize that negative reactions make nothing better!

So how do we become fearless? By letting go of those limiting beliefs. And how do we find our limiting beliefs? Through self-reflection and thought. Put a question to ourselves – such as, what do I fear? – and really think about the response. Self-awareness puts us in touch with the higher intelligence that already lives within all of us.

Stop trying to change the world that we see. Instead begin by changing the way we see the world. Work on the inner first and the outer will follow.