Be remarkable.

Each quarter our team takes the opportunity to collectively read a book designed to help us think about the approach to our roles, our organization, and our community and how we properly affect change with the work we do. This last quarter we dove into “Purple Cow” by Seth Godin, which I would highly recommend to anyone as a quick and easy read with highly applicable suggestions on how to grow your business, whatever your business.

The premise is simple enough in that the concept of a Purple Cow is something so remarkable that your audience cannot help but say yes to what you are selling. Concepts like “safe is risky” and “very good is bad” push us to the boundaries of the set or programs we do and ask us to think about how we would change our work to be on the cutting edge of supporting our business community.

For our team, we are afforded multiple “products” for us to consider what could be a Purple Cow. Within the Chamber world we think about what would catalyze so many of our members to scream from the rooftops about how necessary it is for businesses to join our organization. We think about and discuss who we should be targeting and what we should be doing that will be so remarkable that it would be unthinkable to not be affiliated with our organization.

On the inverse side we also get to think about the Purple Cow’s for our community, after all, we spend a lot of time and energy marketing Marshalltown and Marshall County. As our team reflected on this book and the lessons it aims to impart, we can clearly see the Purple Cows in Marshalltown, but present and future.

Things like the Marshalltown Arts & Civic Center, home to the Fisher Art Collection. This is something that we would spend hours and hours on trying to build in Marshalltown if we didn’t have something like this. I think a lot about the beauty of our Courthouse and how difficult it would be today to build something that grand and truly awe inspiring. I think about the future Water Plaza Project and the opportunity to do something different and unique and distinct and remarkable for our community.

Whether you are thinking about your products your business can offer that would be considered a purple cow or you are thinking about the “products” our community can offer, what is clear is that we should not strive to just be good enough. Remember, very good is bad. Let’s strive to be remarkable, let’s strive to bring to life our next purple cow.

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John Hall is the president and CEO of the

Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce.