I was given the opportunity to read Guy Kawasaki’s new book before it’s release today so I could review it for my blog. My expectations for the book were high and I am excited to say that the contents far exceeded them! The full title of the book is Enchantment: The Art of Chaning Hearts, Minds, and Actions.
I have decided to do both a video and text review of the book. You can watch the video below or just skip to the text review directly below it:
Enchantment is about creating an innovative and magical company, names like Apple, Disney, and Google come to mind when I think about these kinds of companies. Guy Kawasaki begins with his story of getting started with Apple and the incredible rise that Apple had through the creation of an incredible computer, company, and most importantly – experience.
The book continues by discussing the concept of Likability and how people that are unlikable don’t enchant you. You’ll hear this concept a lot in the book, the idea of being enchanted. While it may sound like a fairy tale enchanting is a real thing and for those who have seen Steve Jobs speak or even your favorite musician, you know what it is.
Next the book launches into a full step-by-step guide for preparing for, launching, and running an company that enchants and inspires. One of my favorite sections of the book was Chapter 6 which talked about How to Overcome Resistance. In this Chapter Guy says, “Enchantment requires understanding why people are reluctant to support your cause. In Nintendo’s case, Americans had written off the video game segment.” (Enchantment, P.71) He then goes on to explain the five common sources of resistance.
I thought this was especially pertinent to the Domaining space where we all receive resistance every day from people or businesses that don’t understand our business or industry. It is our job to be enchanting and show end-users why Domain Names are such an incredible asset.
Kawasaki ends by explaining how to translate this enchantment into your employees and your own boss. The book ends with a Chapter about How to Resist Enchantment. While this may seem like a counter-intuitive way to end the book it’s actually brilliant. The book ends by bringing everything full circle and expressing the value of being able to think long-term and look at the big picture.
Of course it’s the job of a reviewer to sum-up the book or their recommendation in one sentence right? So here’s my sentence, “If there is one book every aspiring Internet entrepreneur with a dream should read this year, this is the one!” I highly suggest you read this book and get inspired just like I did!
