Enchantment

The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

By: Guy Kawasaki

Narrated by: Dan John Miller

Enchantment, as defined by best-selling business guru Guy Kawasaki, is not about manipulating people. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes the skeptics and cynics into the believers and the undecided into the loyal. Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it's more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.

Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions. For instance, enchantment is what enabled....

• A Peace Corps volunteer to finesse a potentially violent confrontation with armed guerrillas
• A small cable channel (E!) to win the TV broadcast rights to radio superstar Howard Stern
• A seemingly crazy new running shoe (Vibram Five Fingers) to methodically build a passionate customer base
• A Canadian crystal maker (Nova Scotian Crystal) to turn observers into buyers

This book explains all the tactics you need to prepare and launch an enchantment campaign; to get the most from both push and pull technologies; and to enchant your customers, your employees, and even your boss. It shows how enchantment can turn difficult decisions your way at times when intangibles mean more than hard facts. It will help you overcome other people's entrenched habits and defy the not-always- wise "wisdom of the crowd."

©2011 Guy Kawasaki (P)2011 Penguin Audiobooks

Actually pretty enchanting.

I truly enjoyed this listen more that I thought I would. I was expecting a snooty designer with Asian superiority complex. But as it turned out it was fun, inspiring, and enchanting. Good show!

A short book that's short on original insights.

I really admire Guy Kawasaki, but I could not offer up the fifth star for this book because too much of this book is recycled material. I've seen it or read much of it in other books. It's a worthwhile read if you are new to marketing or customer service. The term enchantment, may sound enchanting, but it's really just another way of talking about delivering positive experiences.

Excellent!

Would you listen to Enchantment again? Why?

This is a good book with specific steps and examples. It was entertaining to listen to with plenty of meat to apply to your business. Enjoy!

interesting

Interest look at human nature, and how we caputure attention, of people and or companies

A short version of another book.

Overall a good book. It has some connections to another book of the author: The Art of the Start.

impactful pragmatic recommendable

all those I recommended it to loved it
changed my life
great narration
engaging memorable
concrete
check it out

Not Kawasaki's Best

This is not Kawasaki's best. His "Selling the Dreams" has bee a huge influence on me, and while there are golden nuggets contained within this current text, it failed to capture the magic of his earlier work. The multiple narrators was more disorienting and jarring than anything else. (The author did the chapter introductions, the main narrator did most, and a second voice did stories.) A single voice would have been a more pleasant experience. Perhaps the greatest disappointment is that despite his stated goals not to limit his scope, this is really a book about high tech marketing for a start-up. The examples and the advice were often too limited, in my opinion, to that narrow context. I know that the author disagrees as he makes claims to the contrary in the text, but I think the fact that he has to claim a wider impact is telling. I know the adage is "write what you know," but Kawasaki did a better job in earlier work getting out of his comfort zone to know more to include. My work is about internal change efforts, and it is a stretch to apply what Kawasaki has here to that context. Yes, I have a cause, and I need to recruit others to it, but the techniques here are not a great set of tools for that purpose. Also, again despite Kawasaki's stated goals, the book feels like it will become dated with an empahasis on current technology. I think with more editing and craft, the ideas about using twitter, linkedin, and facebook could have been generalized to universal principles that were then explored in the context of these specific technologies.

Enchanting and well worth it but..

Enchantment is certainly worth the listen. In fact true to form Guy spews out info at the rate of a fire hose and this is good and bad. Good because he makes sure you get value for your hard earned dollar and good because you will walk away with a number of action items you can actually act on right away. However, it is bad because you will never remember all of them. For this reason (and Guy will love this advice) you might want to also buy the actual book for reference.

Having said that I fully understand Dan's review "A Meal of Cotton Candy" (love his title). Almost everything Dan says in the review is correct. But I think Guy does a great job serving up the Cotton Candy. He puts a lot of info into one place and as I said, I at least walked away saying, "I need to do that." OK to be more accurate I should say, "I forgot Cialdini had written about that, I need to go do it". So, while this is certainly negative in one respect it does speak to Dan's point that the book is a good jumping off point for ideas for further reading. The one point in Dan's review that I disagree with is that Guy only addresses the 'what to do' but not the critical 'how to do it'. In some cases Guy does talk about the "how" and in others the "how" is obvious but it is often hard to remember to do it. For example, "do no evil" or I think Guy also borrows the idea of "don't do anything you wouldn't want to see published in your local paper". Well, I suppose Guy could have advised posting this mantra on your desk.

Finally, I have to say that I got a huge chuckle out of the book having recently finished "The Six Figure Second Income" (Jonathan Rozek , David Lindahl) because Guy must have just finished it as well. Although Guy has been at it for awhile so I wouldn't be surprised if he was the inspiration for Rozek and Lindahl. I won't go into the details but if you do listen to "The Six Figure Second Income" you will quickly get my point as well as a good chuckle.

Top Shelf Read

Guy has a fun and interesting and humorous way of sharing how one can become an Enchanted Individual. One of my favorite reads for 2011. Highly recommended. Found this book on Facebook, took the test to soon, so I didn't score very well. Took it again and aced it. {sidebar] Follow Guy on Google Plus. His posts are unique and entertaining. I always like it when an author "walk his talk". Guy does this in spades. CTA, Click the Buy Button!

Interesting, but far from enchanting

What did you like best about Enchantment? What did you like least?

Solid ideas, but nothing innovative.

Would you recommend Enchantment to your friends? Why or why not?

Maybe if they were in marketing.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

I couldn't imagine this as a movie.