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Genuis can be described as looking at what everyone else is looking at but seeing something different. I remember reading a passage from Seth Godin (author, speaker, entrepreneur) describing the Purple Cow phenomenon. In a nutshell, he and his family were driving through the countryside, and his kids noticed cows grazing on the side of the road. Being from the city, they got excited by seeing the livestock. However, after driving for a brief period, the excitement dwindled, and his boys were no longer making comments about seeing the cows and how cool they were. So, he started to think, “Why?” What changed in that short period of time? The answer…the cows became ordinary. They were no longer new or unique. However, what if suddenly a purple cow appeared? Well, that would definitely grab attention.
I often think about this as a source for inspiration to seek out new innovative ideas and become an early adopter of trends. How can you take the ordinary and turn it into the extraordinary? Sometimes it’s not about finding a brand new idea out of the universe that’s never been discovered; rather, it can be about looking around but seeing something that no one else does.
We did this five years ago at the start of the pandemic. The demand for virtual and online training became immediately apparent. However, the delivery model of sharing a presentation and narrating over it in MS Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, or even WebEx became ordinary very quickly. Therefore, in an effort to become unique, we looked at what others were looking at but saw that people were captivated by news, sports, and talk shows. We thought to ourselves, “We could do that!” We can take that model and swap out the news of the day or topic of the hour with our programs, trainings, and workshops to provide clients with another option for delivery. So that’s what we did. We built a studio and started delivering sessions in a more interactive, engaging manner with various cameras, sets, backgrounds, and effects. We were early adopters (maybe even innovators) and found our Purple Cow.
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