One of the perks for blogging on Alltop, the online newsstand, is that I had the honor to receive an early copy of Guy Kawasaki’s new book.  Most of you are aware of Kawasaki’s background, but just as a quick reminder, he was the former chief evangelist of Apple.  He is a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures and has written a bunch of great stuff on startups, marketing and building strong businesses.

“Enchantment” is one of those books that is loaded with ideas that give you pause.  I read it while at a conference in Florida, so I was more predisposed than normal to running with some of his ideas.  Sitting around a pool drinking umbrella drinks can do that for you!  Although I kept thinking about that “South Pacific” song, “Some Enchanted Evening“.

Frankly,  the early chapters are a bit apple pie, but the more you reflect on them, the more you realize very few people engage in the behavior Guy is suggesting.  Yes, we want to be liked and trusted, but we meet so many people that never take concrete steps to change peoples (customers, employees, stakeholders) perceptions of them.  At our core, we all want to delight and fascinate people and Kawasaki grabs that basic principal and skillfully wrestles with it for 200 pages.

Kawasaki builds on the basics of likeability and trust with fun and amusing (he actually is very funny), ways to counter resistors and skeptics.  He reminds the reader over and over that you have to have the truth on your side.  In other words, your product or service has to have value and then enchantment builds on that basic truth.  You can only polish a turd so much!

The mid and later chapters are filled with great ideas on how to implement an enchantment strategy.  How to use push and pull technologies, how to enchant customers, bosses and employees.  Finally, Kawasaki shares the secrets for how not to fall for the unethical enchanter.

Overall, I enjoyed Enchantment.  It falls into that business book category of “tons of good stuff.”  If you implement 5% in your life or business, you’ll be better off and possibly even “enchanting.”