book club: Guy Kawasaki's Enchantment

From time to time I meet students, first jobbers and the like looking to make their way into the advertising world.

Why they come to me me for career advice is probably questionable, bearing in mind my chequered history but if there's anything I can impart of value it's along the lines of 'look at what i did, NOW DON'T DO THAT'.

Thankfully, I now have a get out of jail card to hand, in the form of Guy Kawasaki's new book Enchantment.

If you are familiar with Guy's previous works, Art of The Start and Reality Check in particular, then the concepts are broadly similar.

In typical GK self depreciation style he once remarked that he had written 9 business books, or perhaps written one business book nine times...

Enchantment is a kind of Greatest Hits, if you like.
But with exclusive bonus tracks and remixes.

Obviously Guy's key area of experience and expertise is in the Silicon Valley tech thing but Enchantment is the rare case of a 'business' book that's relevant for just about any person in any business anywhere.

In a nutshell the book is structured around ten or so key take-aways, each with a chapter, essential nuggets for anyone who wants to influence others, win them over and get them to buy in to an idea or project.

Likability, trustworthiness, having a cause, how to overcome resistance, enchanting your boss, enchanting your employees and, of course, the obilgatory practical application of social technologies to achieve those goals, are among them.

I was fortunate enough to receive a draft copy of the original manuscript a few months back to hack and return. Suffice to say there was very little I would have changed. I made the sum total of one edit and returned it.

It must have been a good edit though as he left it in...

There's no bull-shitake in the text, it's highly readable and entertaining, infused with Guy's own personality and wit, and peppered with other real-life examples of Enchantment in practice from other guest contributors.

In essence it's simply a tome of uncommon sense. One gets an experience of almost remembering things that have been buried away in the back of your mind that are brought back to the surface as the pages turn.

A must-read.

Thanks Guy.

Tweet

Add to: Digg | del.icio.us | Technorati | Yahoo | reddit

the macintosh way

The influence of Guy Kawasaki has been apparent through these pages for a long time. Alongside Seth, Tom Peters and intermittent bursts of Malcolm McLaren pretty much all of the notes in this blog have been touched by the output of those minds in some way.

This week I've been fortunate enough to receive, from Guy, the working manuscript of his forthcoming book, Enchantment, to both read and fiddle with.

That's newsworthy in itself, I can't reveal any of the content at the moment but suffice to say it's dynamite, and his legend status has only increased for me.

In other news, Guy's first book, The Macintosh Way is now available online for free, some 20 years after it was first published.

On perusal I was struck by two nuggets in the early chapters.
Remember, this is 1990, as Guy describes the Macintosh way with regard to marketing.

Evangelism is sales done right. It is the sharing of your
dream with the marketplace and the making of history with
your customer. Evangelism is the purest form of sales. A
Macintosh Way company doesn't sell; it evangelizes.

Giving information and support to [fans] is word-of-mouth
advertising done right. [fans] are a medium
like print or television, but you can't buy them. You have to
earn them.

As every planning deck in recent months seems to include the obligatory paid-owned-earned slide and every tom, dick and social media expert illuminates us with the notion of co-creating with customers as the way forward, it's worth noting that these are not new ideas - or social media ideas - but plain and simple business sense ideas, that have been around, if you knew where to look, for longer than you might first imagine.

Tweet

Add to: Digg | del.icio.us | Technorati | Yahoo | reddit