Lynn's Reviews > Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

I have literally had this book on my book shelf for years, and I'm glad to finally be able to say that I read it! If you are looking for the "how" behind making a Purple Cow, you may be disappointed. This book only introduces the idea and explains the "why" behind it. Looking briefly through the reviews here, I feel the people that found the book unsatisfying were looking for a how to guide. I plan to read Free Prize Inside soon, which boasts on the cover that it will tell you "How to make a Purple Cow", but I suspect that there really is no simple step-by-step formula. The entire point of being remarkable is that you need to spend some time really figuring out your market and how to be different in it.

Purple Cow is rare in that while being concise, you don't feel ripped off by the brevity of the book. Instead I came away appreciating that Godin could get to the point quickly and back up his ideas with quick case studies. The bullet points sprinkled throughout the book in bold were actually worth being bolded. Often when you encounter business books made up of many brief sections, I find a lot of to be fluff or immediately forgettable. The opposite is true here. This book gave me a lot of ideas and spurred conversation with my partner about ideas we should implement in our small business.

You don't have to be a marketer to appreciate or learn something from this book, but I do think business owners who sell a tangible product may come away with more useful info than people that sell service-based or one-off projects. My business falls in the latter category, and while I agree with what Godin says, a lot of the wisdom is hard to apply to my business, but it did get the gears turning.