The Purple Cow

location iconStrategy and Growth

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of Seth Godin and in particular his concept of The Purple Cow.  I’ve recently found that he wrote a good summary of the book in the Guardian which you can see here, or if you want my really short summary read on…

The Purple Cow: You’re either boring or you stand out. You’re either invisible or remarkable.  If you want to grow, you have to be remarkable like the Purple Cow.

And for a slightly longer summary, here are the ten key steps to being a purple cow:

  1. Understand the urgency of the situation.
  2. Remarkable means being remarkable to the reader. Are they going to make a remark about you?
  3. Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable.
  4. Extremism in the pursuit of remarkability is no sin. Rock stars have groupies because they’re rock stars, not because they’re good looking.
  5. Remarkability lies in being he biggest, fastest, slowest, richest, easiest, most difficult.
  6. Most people don’t appreciate your efforts to be remarkable. Your goal is to please those that will spread the word.
  7. If it’s the accepted wisdom, it’s not remarkable. You have to do something first and best.
  8. It’s not really as frightening as it seems.
  9. A few people insanely focused on what you do is far far better than thousands of people who are mildly interested.
  10. What’s fashionable soon becomes unfashionable. You have to reinvest and reinvent.

Be remarkable. Go all the way to the edge. Not in a big thing, perhaps, but in a little one. Find some area where you have a tiny bit of authority and run with it.

Be remarkable – Now! If you don’t start tomorrow, you’re not really serious. Tomorrow night by midnight or don’t bother. Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Start now!

Bob Bradley

Bob is a specialist in running high value added service businesses, having run five such businesses as General Manager, Managing Director or Chief Executive. His last employed role was as Chief Executive of a £16M, 200 person family owned business having previously been Chief Executive of an AIM listed company for which he raised £5M funding and which he grew from £4M to £12M in three years through two acquisitions and organic growth, and a corporate PLC subsidiary where he was Managing Director responsible for delivering £10M profit on £45M turnover through 450 staff.

Bob is now following a portfolio career providing entrepreneurial business leaders with mentoring and coaching around business leadership, business growth, merger integration and exit planning.

Core to his portfolio is MD2MD. Having experienced for himself the value of having a strong sounding board of fellow Managing Directors he founded MD2MD in 2004 to provide groups of business leaders with a confidential environment within which they can support and challenge each other to raise their game as leaders and by doing so improve the success of their organisation.

More about Bob

MD2MD membership

  • You meet your peer group privately for structured confidential conversations about real business challenges. You meet online for 90 minutes every 3 weeks.
  • You attend one of a selection of open workshops led by top professional speakers sharing best practice on a wide range of leadership topics.
  • You join our annual conference LeaderFest and our annual ‘Retreat to advance’.
Apply for trial membership