Purple Cow

p 50

• Differentiate your customers. Find the group that's most profitable. Find the group that's most likely to sneeze. Figure out how to develop / advertise / reward either group. Ignore the rest. Your ads (and your products) SHOULDN'T cater to the masses. Your ads (and products) should cater to the customers you'd choose if you could choose your customers.

p58

• 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.
• 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 apart of what makes their successful work great

p 61

• You can't know if your Purple Cow is guaranteed to work. You can't know if it's remarkable enough or too risky. That's the point. It's the very unpredictability of the outcome that makes it work.
  

p 82

• The opposite of "remarkable" is "very good"
• Ideas that are remarkable are much more likely to spread ideas that aren't. Yet so few brave people make remarkable stuff. Why? I think it's because they think that the opposite of "remarkable" is "bad" or "mediocre" or "poorly done". Thus, if they make something very good, they confuse it with being virus-worthy.
  
• Very good is an everyday occurrence and hardly worth mentioning

4 steps of Purple Cow (p110)

1. get permission from people you impressed the first time. Not permission to spam them or sell them leftovers or squeeze extra margins from them. Permission to alert them the next time you might have another Cow
2. Work with the sneezers in that audience to make it easier for them to help your idea across the chasm. Give them the fools and the story they'll need to sell your idea to a wider audience.
3. Once you've crossed the line from remarkable to profitable business, let a different team milk it. Prioritize your services, servicize your products, let a thousand variations bloom. But don't believe your own press releases. This is the inevitable downward slide to commodity. Milk it for all it's worth, and fast
4. Reinvest. Do it again. With a vengeance. Launch another Purple Cow (to the same audience). Fail and fail and fail again. Assume that what was remarkable last time won't be remarkable this time.
   

Life [is What you Make it]

By Peter Buffett

New York Times article "Is this the time to chase a career dream?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/jobs/19pre.html

Goethe's Poem:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.