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Purple Cow – Seth Godin
The Purple Cow and the Wild Geese: Lessons in Creating Remarkable Products. A note to readers is that this was published in 2005. I find most of the book relevant today.
You need to have a remarkable product in a remarkable market.
Today’s potential consumers are too busy, there is too much noise, so you need to catch their attention. The old way of inventing a product and marketing it to the masses is dead.
Moore’s Crossing the Chasm – how (tech) products move through a population.
Godin states that this curve applies to both products and services. I agree. Further, I would postulate that this has to do with the innovators having a risk-taking mindset. He says that the old market targeted the middle-fat section of the curve – dependable, consistent, and safe! In today’s market, you should focus on the influence, not the size,i.e. early adopters.
The purple cow is like a mayfly. Short-lived for our attention-less society.
To figure out what is working look at the real world and look at the things that are working and find out what those things have in common. E.g threads, chatGPT,- they are working because they do what they say they will do. They are easy to use and most of it is spread by word of mouth.
There are plenty of good remarkable ideas out there, the problem is people need to execute.
Remember the thing you are selling can be an idea or a way of doing something differently.
Don’t invest in products that are no longer remarkable. Create something new.
Back to Moore’s curve, he says that innovators are such that they want to be the first to have it, but they may not need it – very small market size. Early adopters, however, require the product and are a much larger market size than the innovators. NOTE, you sell to this group only! As they will sell to the next group. Therefore, you need to make this product easy to use (think Threads and chatGPT). The early and late majority are followers, and buy it because they don’t want to be left out: this group doesn’t listen to anyone, except the early adopters. They like safety, security and keeping their comfortable shoes on. Finally, the laggards come in adapters). They don’t start to use a product until it is obsolete.
Please do not make a product for everyone, as they are already taken. You must target a niche. If successful it diffuses and migrates to the masses. Godin suggests putting your new ideas through this mini-analysis:
1. How easy is it to spread the idea?
2. How often will people spread this idea?
3. How tightly knit is the group you are targeting?
4. Do they trust each other?
5. How reputable are the people likely to spread your idea?
6. How persistent is your idea? E.g. mayfly or tortoise
Who is your target group? Find the most profitable. Who is most likely to spread the idea?
How niche can you make your product? International school teachers who are entrepreneurial and love taking risks.
Remember that you absolutely must stand out from the crowd. For good or bad. Fitting in equals failing. Boring = failure.
Godin has a great metaphor for following the leader. He talks of a flock of geese, and the reason why the geese follow the lead goose is because it breaks the wind resistance, and it is safer there. He infers that this leader sets the path, and the followers follow, despite the path being wrong at times. Godin goes on to say that this method is risk-averse, and stuck in the old ways of doing things. There is a paradoxical juxtaposition against Mary Oliver’s wild geese. In her poem, and from my perspective, the geese are to be seen as risk-taking. Whatever the case, I do like Goldin’s goose!
You cannot reach everyone all at once.
Measure every metric of your product, looking at what works and what doesn’t. Then analyze why.
Once you create the cow, milk it for everything it’s got and try to create an environment for the next one.
Make a collectable version of your product.
Find a market that has a passionate subculture, then make your product remarkable – not the other way around.
Godin talks again about the edge cases and tests ( the p’s) to see where you are most likely to succeed. What are the edge cases in education? You need to be irresistible to that tiny group.
Slogans act like scripts for the ‘sneezers’ to promote your product.
Sell something that people are already buying. What problems are you solving for your customer?
If you are a marketer, then you need to know how to design.
You should be passionate about your remarkable product.
You don’t need to be outrageous to be remarkable.
Come up with 10 ways to change your product, so that it becomes appealing to your target market.
So go ahead and milk your purple cow for all it’s worth, but don’t forget to keep an eye out for the next wild goose that’s ready to break through the noise and capture the attention of your target market!
Cache and Carry – My Week In International Education – Entry 11 – The Sun is Setting on Inertia
Ed Tech I’m Using
This week a bunch of people posted some SAMR posters that have been online for a while. Having some free time on my hands as it is the summer vacation, and feeling the need to do something other than procrastinate, I give the SAMR model a little redesign, heavily influenced by E Schein’s Iceberg.
AI I’m Exploring
Recraft.ai is a text-to-vector AI web app. You have to create an account before you start using it, but once you get signed up, it is really simple to create an image, and they are pretty impressive. My favourite part about Recraft is the amount of options that it gives you when creating images. You can change the style from 5 different vector arts to photorealism. Moreover, you can adjust the level of detail, colour palette and level of detail. You can also save your art as SVG, or PNG etc. Check out what I created with the input of “scuba diver, diving below an iceberg’ below and my brief video walkthrough here.
Teaching Practice I’m Trying (or will be when vacation is over)
It is not just any teaching practice, but rather my approach to change that I am considering this month. For this enter Moore’s Crossing the Chasm. Although this was initially designed for the adoption of consumers to new technology, I would argue that this can be applied in education as well, along with a bunch of things. For example, when I was trying to persuade faculty to try out a new technique or app, I would target smaller groups first, those I had good relationships with and in turn they have credibility and potential impact upon others. They were my early adopters. I thought that if I could convince them, then the early majority would follow. As is often the case, this sounded a lot easier in my head and didn’t quite pan out how I expected.
Media I’m Consuming
In this Ted talk the speaker advocates for AI personal tutor for every single child in education on the planet. He says, references to Bloom, accelerate the learning of learners. He goes on to show how the new AI bot can help learners with math problems. The bot assumes the role of a personal coach, able to give constructive feedback and coach the learner to the correct answer. There are other different coaches and counsellors. The chat with the bot in Khan. As with the co-founder of Perplexity, Aravind Srinivas, Khan also talks about allowing AI to think before it delivers an answer, just like us humans; not to overly anthropomorphism AI though. His reason is that it will enable the AI to become more accurate.
Towards the end, he addresses ethical issues of AI, and how the breakers (shout out to my guy Joel Abercombie and the breakers in A Little Hatred) could take advantage of the opportunities of AI, but that the optimists also need to put in regulations in AI, but to still champion the positive use cases of AI; which is to accelerate HI – human intelligence!
Things I’ve Learned
That inertia is the bedfellow to procrastination. Every day I jump into what I need to do as soon as I awaken, which always starts with coffee!
The String I’m Pulling
Based on my last read, Newport’s ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’, and his amazing Deep Work, I am going back to deliberate practice after getting myself out of being perpetually busy, and not advancing much in any direction. I applied this first to my treading water technique of learning Indonesian, and this is how it was before and after:
- Before = 10 minutes every morning of Duolingo, no reflection or practice, trying to get through as many exercises as possible.
- After = Two sessions of 20 then 15 minutes every day, taking care to read out loud the words from Duolingo and record them in Quizlet so that I can practice in the second session.
Quote, I’m Pondering
“That procrastination inertia’s lazy cousin.” – David H
So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport
Four rules to finding a meaningful and engaging work-life.
Move from the right work to working right – the big idea of the book.
Rule 1
Newport challenges the so-called passion hypothesis which is the key to occupational happiness first figure out what you’re passionate about then find a job that matches this passion. Essentially he is saying that you should not pursue what you love as you may jump from job to career looking for it.
Passion is a side effect of mastery.
Motivation, self-determination theory, tells us that there are three parts. Part 1 is autonomy part 2 is competence and part 3 is relatedness open bracket relatedness is the feeling of connection to other people’s close bracket.
Rule 2
Craftsman approach – a focus on what value you can PRODUCE in your job. What can you give, not take? It offers you clarity and control. Or to put it simply, focus on getting good.
Passion mindset – a focus on what value your job offers you. A selfish and futile endeavour.
Newport argues that we should adopt a Craftsman approach, as this will enable us to love our work.
The quote ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you’ comes from Steve Martin. Focus on being better. Identity what this thing is ( skill, research etc) and practice with the intention of getting better at it. Focus on the quality of WHAT you produce.
After you adopt the craftsman approach, passion will evolve from it.
Career capital = skills that you create (rare and valuable). Create enough of this in your current position, and use this capital to buy yourself out of it.
When you are practicing something it’s important to stretch yourself and get instant feedback.
Identity area’s in your profession of when you can carry out the deliberate practice. One way of doing this is to take on many projects, as they will inevitably take you outside of your comfort zone. But, you also need to seek out feedback on this work and actually reflect on it. Pick tasks that you know will make you better. Create a spreadsheet with this information and then for the feedback piece, review it at the end of that week.
Teaching is in a so-called auction market. As such, you need to identify what you have that is valuable (capital) as well as being rare (echoes of VRIN resource-based view strategy). Newport calls it Open Gates; look for the areas you are already in. For me that would be working for ISTE, getting a master’s degree, completing coaching courses, creating content, AI and coding. Then define goals – this is essential. Ask yourself “What does good look like, in my industry?”.
Next up, you need to practice something that also pushes yourself out of your comfort zone – this will not be enjoyable or comfortable – and don’t forget to collect feedback!
Newport also suggests using a spreadsheet to track your progress on meaningful tasks.
Rule 3
In this section, Newport talks about having control over what you do and how you do it, is the most powerful trait. This is a recurring theme across a wide range of literature in everything from entrepreneurship to PLCs – See Paul Burns’s corporate entrepreneurship.
He introduces ROWE companies. Results-only work environment, where the focus is on what you price not how you produce it. Giving people control and autonomy increases productivity and satisfaction.
Don’t try to get too much autonomy before you have built up the required capital.
When asking for and receiving control, will result in some inevitable resistance. If you receive too much, Newport says that it could be because you don’t have enough capital built up yet. Conversely, it could also be that you do have enough capital built-up, but your boss does not want to give you control, for a host of reasons. To solve this conundrum ask yourself this question from Derek Shivers “Do what people are willing to pay for?”.
Rule 4
Develop a mission (unifying focus) for your career. This answers the question “What should I do with my life?”. Then channel your energy to get to your goal.
When developing your mission, look at the edge cases in your industry (echoes of Tim Ferris). For me that would almost certainly involve AI, and using it to personalize learning for kids. This could come from the development of niche skills (rare and vulnerable) thinking small (AI), and acting big (Using AI to alter learning).
Make little bets in what you think is the right direction. These bets should: be completed within a month; create new value; produce concrete products so that you can get feedback.
“Build something worth noticing” The Purple Cow by Seth Godin.
The law of remarkability period should be remarked upon by others and launched in a venue where it can get fast feedback eg. Twitter, Threads etc.
Cache and Carry – My Week In International Education – Entry 10 – Motivation
Ed Tech I’m Using
Busy shapes – I was checking out for my brother’s kid, who is 3 years old. The point of the app is to teach about shapes. You click and drag on different shapes and then drop them on top of the same shaped hole. If you get it right, it says the name of the shape! There is a free and paid version of the app, I did not splash the £3 for the paid version though 🙂
AI I’m Exploring
I came across Perplexity AI after listening to This Week in Startups.
Perplexity AI looks like other chat agents, so I asked it to summarize what sets it apart from POE and GPT, and this is what it came up with.
| Feature | Perplexity AI | POE | ChatGPT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Training Data | Large language model | Multiple text-generating AI models | Large language model |
| Platform | Standalone platform | iOS app and desktop platform | Available through Quora’s Poe platform |
| Integration | Not integrated with other AI models | Integrated with multiple AI bots, including ChatGPT | Integrated with Quora’s Poe platform |
I did let it know that POE is also now available as an Android app!
Teaching Practice I’m Trying
It’s the summer vacay but just finished reading High Impact Instruction by Jim Knight (legend), and I fully intend to use a bunch of his community-building instructional strategies – see my previous post on Knight’s work, with some infographics that you can use for free.
Media I’m Consuming
Dan Pinks’ Ted Talk back in 2009 – In this short Ted talk from Dan Pink, he discusses intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Too many current business practices are built around extrinsic motivation tools (e.g. financial incentives), and not intrinsic ones. The extrinsic motivators do not work for complex work, or even tasks requiring ‘rudimentary’ cognitive tasks. However, extrinsic motivation tools are shown to be beneficial for straightforward, often mechanical skill-based tasks that have easy-to-follow instructions or steps, with a clearly defined outcome.
The best way to motivate your people involved with complex knowledge work is through Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose (AMP).
Pink points out that management is good for compliance. Self-direction is necessary for engagement.
To great the conditions for autonomy you need to build in skunkworks time for your team to work on their interests, e.g. Atlassian, Googles 20% rule, or 3M’s 15%. The case he brings up about Atlassian is fascinating. They give their people 20% of their time to complete tasks that are outside of the remit of their jobs (satisfying the need for autonomy), but, they must present on what they have learned the very next day (accountability). In my opinion, this is an excellent way to build autonomy with accountability. Moreover, he says that financially incentivising people to work in complex industries i.e. financial services, has a most detrimental impact on the outcome. He references the encyclopedic endeavour Encarta, hugely invested in my Microsoft, only to be replaced by a Wikipedia, that was run and moderated for free by the public.
Things I’ve Learned
Threads is a bunch of fun!
The String I’m Pulling
I have not started by independent research project, which is a ton of work. Big shout out to Andy Stapleton and his amazing tips on some research AI-assisted websites such as:
- Elicit – it can find relevant papers based on your input.
- Litmaps – creates maps connecting other pieces of research.
Thanks to Litmaps, I was able to identify and trace some of the seminal papers on collaboration amongst teachers aka J Little.
Quote, I’m Pondering
There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does – Dan Pink.
My Educational Philosophy
I believe that learning is a lifelong journey and that our learners, educators, classrooms and learning material are constantly present all around us, in many different shapes and forms. Everyone is an expert in something and when we take a moment to listen, we open up ourselves to learn from others.
Collaboration is at the heart of education. When we (educators) work together towards a common goal, developed through shared meaning, we can really achieve something special for our learners. When we collaborate with educators and learners, we create an opportunity to learn from one another and to realize our full potential.
Some of the greatest teams I have worked in were made up of a diverse set of individuals. It is diversity that brings new perspectives to a team, and new perspectives allow us to consider the feelings and needs of everybody involved. When we have this knowledge, we can allow ourselves to be innovative and take risks with learning, and follow lines of inquiry for learning. If we model our innovative and can-do approach to education to our learners, it gives them permission to do the same and to jump head-first into learning.
Enthusiasm is what has kept me going back to the classroom time and again. Working with passionate learners and educators has kept me young. It encourages me to bring the latest ed-technology into the classroom and to meet my learners where they are. Enthusiasm is what drove me to become a robotics coach, and yearbook editor, to start teaching media to a grade 10 class and to go back to the homeroom after 7 years. It has also pushed me to pursue a Master’s degree, start an instructional coaching course and start working part-time for ISTE.
Autonomy for both educators and learners is incredibly important, but so is accountability. Take away our autonomy, and we can lose interest. However, without accountability, we can sometimes lose track of what is important. Finding the balance between both autonomy and accountability is not a one-time thing. I believe that it is something that we all constantly strive to find. I do not have an answer for this, but I do know that being open, approachable and above all, being a good listener, is critical. Having said that, so too is being consistent, reliable and genuine.
Finally, empowering learners to design their own learning path is essential. There is no one size fits all education model. Learning needs to suit the learner, rather than the other way around. Having an inquiry focussed curriculum does not give us all of the answers, but it moves us towards more genuine learning opportunities for our learners. It keeps our learners eager as inquiry learning is more in line with what they find interesting.
Throughout my own educational journey, the most important aspect that I have found is to realise the potential in the adults and children that I have worked with. And if they have yet to see this for themselves, then help them get there.
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