Grade: A-

[Please make sure to check out my Book Review Guidelines for what I look for in a book and how I evaluate same.] 

Author of small is the new big — and 183 other riffs, rants, and remarkable business ideas, Seth Godin is:

• Funny
• Witty
• Business-savvy
• Smart
• Interesting
• Enjoyable
• Easy-to-read
• Provocative

He’s a business thinker, an advocate for sanity in our work and personal lives, a consumate marketer (of himself, his ideas, and things he likes in others), and a challenger of all-things-ordinary.

I don’t know Seth personally, but I’m sure I’d like him — he’d certainly be a hoot to hang out with at Wal-Mart.

I’ve eaten up some of his earlier books (Permission Marketing and Unleashing the Idea Virus are my two favorites), and small is the new big is enjoyable and somewhat informative, but it’s not quite as innovative as these earlier books.

Here Godin offers up 184 (I didn’t count them, so I’ll take the publisher’s word for it) thoughts and ideas — with titles that range from Bon Jovi and the Pirates to Respect and the Fuller Brush Man — that he’s written over the years in his blog and at his website.

He challenges you and does make you think about your own business (if you have one) or your work within a business (if you don’t).

For example, he’s got this to say about socks:

I love this Web site:  LittleMissmatch.com

They sell mismatched socks for eleven-year-old girls.  Hundreds of varieties, four categories so you don’t clash.  Only sold in odd lots.  You can’t buy a pair.  There are 133 styles, and none of them match.

Think about how easy this was to do, and how remarkable it is.  Think about how many sock marketers thought of this and then got scared and didn’t go for it.  Realize how turning socks into a remarkable collectible is both obvious and satisfying and likely to succeed.

I wish they came in my size.

But why should you care about socks?  After all, you make something serious, you sell to big business, you have a factory, you deal in intangibles.

That’s exactly why you should care.  Socks used to be a low-margin, low-interest commodity.  Littlemissmatch.com changes that by creating a fashion.  Why, precisely, can’t you?

Hmm, why not indeed?

Or, take the following, which contains an awfully cool idea, actually . . .

The Soy Luck Club, my favorite place in New York, just announced the breakfast club.  Pay $40 or so and you get breakfast every day for a month.  “Grab and Go,” it’s called.  If Vivian sells one hundred memberships, it’s a home run.  With $4,000, she can certainly buy a lot of whole-wheat bagels and grapefruit, and she ends up creating a cadre of superloyal customers.  Best of all, she starts finding products for her customers instead of finding customers for her products.

Imagine a new chain of cafes that offers a coffee club.  For a flat fee, you get all the WiFi and lattes you can handle.  With the markup on both, the owner does great, and people would feel terrible every time they strayed.

They say to ignore sunk costs.  People are terrible at that, though.

I could go on . . . and on.  Lots of ideas here, well presented.  I wish there was a little more commentary from Seth that tied some of his thoughts together, and that’s really the only thing keeping this fun book from being an A in my book.

However, this one does make it into the Dream Jobs Dialog Bookshop, so check it out.

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