Pink Goldfish: Defy Normal Expectation, Exploit Imperfection and Captivate Your Customers

A very easy reading book, packed with real-company examples to prove the points around the idea that you do much better by being very good at what you’re good at than by trying to copy what the most venerated institution is able to afford to do (but usually doesn’t). For a small entity there are plenty enough potential customers to thrive by being great at your core offering and by turning less-effective elements into points of differentiation.

This book is descriptive, not a recipe. The businesses are categorized by what they have become successful doing. Except were revealed in the anecdotes, you don’t know how or whether they decided on this specialization,  and if it was intentional, how they came up with the idea and validated it before launching out on it. I suspect that in many cases it was accidental and the sheer authenticity of the approach is what sold a certain segment of the market on it. If that is correct, you can’t just pick something out of the book and do it, hoping to succeed; the authors are really telling you that it is OK to be who you are and go all in on it, attracting a certain set of raving fans, rather than trying to go vanilla in hopes of not annoying anyone. Not-annoyed people don’t spend a lot of money to get a bit more not-annoyed.

You can get it at Amazon via this link.