Purple Cow by Seth Godin Read Free Book Online

path than his peers did. Today, his books have sold millions of copies. He gets the satisfaction of knowing that his writing, speaking, and clinics have helped hundreds of thousands of people. And he’s really, really rich. All because he did something that most of his classmates would view as reckless and risky. The fascinating thing is that while the vast majority of those doctors are overworked, tired, and frustrated at the system they helped create and work every day to maintain, Andrew Weil is having a blast. Being safe is risky.
    We often respond to our aversion to criticism by hiding, avoiding the negative feedback, and thus (ironically) guaranteeing that we won’t succeed! If the only way to cut through is to be remarkable, and the only way to avoid criticism is to be boring and safe, well, that’s quite a choice, isn’t it?
    You do not equal the project. Criticism of the project is not criticism of you. The fact that we need to be reminded of this points to how unprepared we are for the era of the Cow. It’s people who have projects that are never criticized who ultimately fail.
    Will you do some things wrong in your career and be justly criticized for being unprepared, sloppy, or thoughtless? Sure you will. But these errors have nothing at all to do with the ups and downs you’ll experience as a result of being associated with the Purple Cow. When you launch a clunker, the criticism of the failure will be real, but it won’t be about you—it’ll be about the idea. The greatest artists, playwrights, car designers, composers, advertising art directors, authors, and chefs have all had significant flops—it’s part of what makes their successful work great.
    Cadillac’s new CTS, in my humble opinion, is perhaps the ugliest car ever produced outside the Soviet bloc. Cadillac has been roundly criticized in car magazines, at dealerships, and on countless online bulletin boards. Guess what? These cars are selling. Fast. It’s a rebirth for a tired brand, the biggest success Cadillac has had in decades. What difference does it make that the “official” critics don’t like the car? The people who are buying it love it.
    On the list of most profitable movies of 2002, right next to Spider-Man and Goldmember, is a surprise: My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Criticized by Hollywood for being too low-key (and by the independents for not being original or edgy), this $3 million sleeper succeeded for exactly those two reasons. A cheap, feel-good date movie was just exceptional enough to stand out—and the market grabbed it.
    Almost forty years ago, Bob Dylan, one of my favorite Purple Cows, appeared at the Newport Folk Festival. He was practically burned in effigy. The act of “going electric” was viewed as treason. He had abandoned the cause, they said, and they were angry. “They” were also wrong.
    In 2001, billionaire Mike Bloomberg ran for mayor of New York. He was criticized, shunned, booed, and worst of all, dismissed as a dilettante. But he won. Go figure.
    After the failure of the Apple Newton (wonderfully satirized in Doonesbury as a bizarre technological dead end), the folks who invented the Palm Pilot had their work cut out for them. Early models didn’t work. Early co-ventures failed. They blew a trademark fight and lost their name to a Japanese pen company. The easy and smart thing to do would have been to give up and go do good work at some R&D lab. But the founders persisted, continuing to make their device single-minded (when conventional wisdom demanded multipurpose devices) and cheap (when conventional wisdom demanded expensive high-tech introductions). The founders were exceptional, and they won.
    Only when Palm tried to play it safe did they start to stumble. Three years in a row of incremental feature creep has cost them market share and profit.
    Compare these successes to the Buick. The Buick is a boring car. It’s been boring for almost fifty years. Few people aspire to own a Buick. The Buick