Marketing: Where is that Purple Cow without the Hay?

                    
Marketing: Where is that Purple Cow without the Hay?

I have been thinking a lot this week about my cream puff business. I need to get orders but to get orders I need flyers and/or pictures of my product to market. If I market this way that means I will spend $20. I found it fitting that this week I read about Marketing. I am trying to think of some disruptive means to market my product for the $100 challenge. I have contacted my mother for pictures (if she has any) seeing that the cream puff recipe I am using is hers. Up to this point I have not got anything or heard anything back from her. I started thinking about the Seth Godin article about the purple cow. I thought specifically about how there are not very many 'Purple Cows.' I thought to myself "If there are not very many purple cows because people are AFRAID then what am I afraid of with this start-up that is preventing my $20 Start-Up from being a successful purple cow?"

So, with no further adieu I made a list of my current fears that I need to over-come to win and be successful not only in this effort (and getting the extra credit) but also in building myself so that no matter what challenge I step into in the future I will be successful.

My Fears: Looking stupid, Not selling, Not getting extra credit, not being the best, not being able to follow the recipe, not being able to prove to my wife that I can run a business/ start-up, not being able to prove to myself that I can do any of this.

I made the fears section small because I do not want it to be the focus. As we learn in faith if we fear it will cripple us from acting and I have a habit of being afraid. It may or may not be a coincidence that I just got through watching "Rudy" while I was trying to develop this blog post. I thought to myself about how this young man had everything in the world to be "afraid" of and every reason to go sit down or never even start. I thought of how so many people in my own life tell me I look like the actor from this movie (I can't see it) but I started the process of likening this look-a-like to myself. How can I be more like Rudy? How could I in my life and my business life and future be like Rudy?



I thought back on my own life of playing football. I thought to myself of how good I used to be and my own story playing football. I was a young boy who started to like football simply because he was not liked and had no friends and it was the "cool" thing when I was in elementary school to be good at sports. My 6th grade year I joined a football team being a chubby nonathletic kid who knew nothing about football only to quit after the first practice because it was "Hard." I was not ready mentally, physically, and most of all emotionally. After the embarrassment and more importantly the despair of failing had passed somewhat I told myself that I was going to get into shape and play again. I had all winter to think about it. By spring I was roller blading every day and throwing a racquetball ball against our carport wall because I assumed if I could catch that I could catch a football or basketball. I grew up in a single parent home and I was the oldest boy so I was on my own. To spare the internet from my personal story I want to sum up what happened next. I convinced my financially struggling mother I wasn't going to waste her money again by quitting. I played this next season and was one of the fastest kids on the team. I hardly played at all (though the coaches wanted me to start) because I simply did not understand the game or the rules. Again, I could have quit but something had changed. Me. I had a desire. I had hope. I had a challenge like Rudy. By the next year I didn't come off the field and was the highest scoring defensive and offensive player in the league I led the league in every humanly possible statistic within my realm of influence. My the following year I was a freshmen in high school and dressing with the varsity. I quickly began to play with the varsity and became a 4-year lettering football player.

So who am I going to be the rest of my life? In business? In my marriage? With my talent? The young man who was ignorant and had every reason to quit and be scared and did? or the same kid who did something about it? Is that not what business and life is all about? Is my good or service the purple cow? Or am I? I need to feed the cow right? Why is it everyone always says in the self-help and personal motivation world that you should read or listen to positive materials daily? Because there is no Purple Cow there is no ME if I am to scared to do anything and I am busy convincing myself why I can or can't do something in the depths of fear hiding my LIGHT under the bushels of life. Be the purple Cow.

Total raised money: $0