Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competit ion

"Q: How many bosses does it take to screw in a lightbulb?A: One. He holds up the lightbulb and expects the universe to revolve around him."Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki is arguably one of the most humourous business books around. Despite the fact that most contents in the book are from his blog, How To Change The World, "Reality Check" is full of great business "checklists" (hence, Reality Check). And those checklists cover lots of aspect in business (be warned, this book is huge, 461 pages before an index).Contents:- The Reality of StartingGuy starts with the checklist you need in starting a business or intrapreneurship (entrepreneurship inside a company) and how to construct a mantra (forget three paragraphs mission statement)- The Reality of Raising MoneyAs a venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki wrote on how to raise fund from annoying and moody venture capitalists.- The Reality of Planning and ExecutingBusiness plans, financial projections, etc; you've been there and done that but Guy told you how to hit a homerun from them.- The Reality of InnovatingBefore jumping into innovating-everything bandwagon, this chapter tells you the myths, sins, and art of innovation.- The Reality of MarketingA brief revision of branding and identity.- The Reality of Selling and EvangelizingFrom the world's top evangelist, he wrote about the art of selling, distribution, evangelism and PR.- The Reality of CommunicatingThis main chapter covers lots of ground from e-mailing, presentation, demo, blogging, and moderating a panel.- The Reality of BeguilingThere are lots of art (checklists and steps) of customer service, schmoozing, sucking up, sucking down (?!), and partnering.- The Reality of CompetingA short chapter saying about your company's defensibility and patents.- The Reality of Hiring and FiringGuy wrote about Silicon Valley hiring, how to hire, how to fire, craiglist, and linkedin, among other things.- The Reality of WorkingHow to prevent Bozo explosion? What are mavericks in the workplace? What's your EQ (Entrepreneurial Quotient)? This main chapter portrays the reality you face at work.- The Reality of Doing GoodIt is nice to end the book with philanthropy and how nonprofit organisations are changing the world...I'll humbly compare "Reality Check" to my ideal business book; the book that is "easy to understand, distinct, practical, reliable, insightful, and provides great reading experience."Ease of Understanding: 9/10: The book is simple, straightforward, jargon-free, and very informal (even slightly rude sometimes). Forget theories and models, you will only find simple checklists, steps, and occasional interviews which are put in the main chapters (The Reality of...). One point taken because they are blog-like which make stringing nearly impossible. Guy must have tried very hard to group them together but it is not perfect.Distinct: 6/10: From the contents, you will find nothing particularly new and we have seen and read all of them already. However, the distinct and unique characteristic of the book is its informality and straight-forwardness. It's honest and it's amusing. You won't find many authors who could make fun of those business ideas naturally like Guy.Practicality: 7/10: Despite the short chapters (96 chapters including intro and conclusion, 3-5 pages each), they are not just a bunch of pointless blog posts. The conclusion and call to action are in each chapter. There are three key themes within the book, 1) positive chapters (chapters starting with "The Art of..", and "How To"; there are 51 of them), 2) negative chapters ("Lies of", and chapters on a-holes; there are 14 of them), 3) interview chapters (with interesting authors like Chip and Dan Heath of "Made to Stick" or Garr Reynold of "The Presentation Zen"; there are 18 of them), and there are other 13 miscellaneous chapters.Reliability: 5/10: There is very little (if at all) supporting data. The book is from Guy's experience and rule of thumb. Complex statistics and formula might help but they will ruin the book. It is a worthy trade-off.Insight: 6/10: The chapters are extremely short but they are compensated simply by having lots of them which are directed to the similar key points of the book. The credit is also to the interview (Q&A) chapters that Guy interviewed other authors for the different aspects of the stories.Reading Experience: 10/10: This is, by far, the funniest (yet meaningful) business book I've read. The book make you feel like listening to Guy's rant on the business as usual. You won't get bored. Extra credit to the outrageous use of vocabularies; "bozosity", "bull shiitake" (shiitake is a japanese mushroom), "assholedom", "mediocracy" (mediocre + bureaucracy), and things like "karmic scoreboard".Overall: 7.2/10: Those who want to read something that "sounds" serious might not like the book. But beyond the casual and informal nature of Guy's writing, what we've learnt from the book is valuable. I highly recommend the book if you want to be "clueful" (as opposed to clueless) in business. And you will have fun reading it and also a good laugh; you can't say that to most business books.

As part of my continuing education in the world of venture capital, I'm reading Guy Kawasaki's various works. His Art of the Start is still widely referenced as a must-read for anyone in a start-up, and in particular anyone considering raising venture capital. I've previously reviewed it here. There is clearly some overlap in the content between Reality Check and Art of the Start.. Reality Check is larger and more fulsome, covering more aspects of starting and growing a business, while continuing to develop and update the topic of meeting, "beguiling" and working with venture capitalists and associated professionals. Some of the content was previously included in his blog. If you were a loyal follower of his blog, you might have already seen some of this material.Kawasaki writes with a great sense of humor, much of which is self-deprecating. Like his previous book, he frequently uses humor with light touches of sarcasm ("the Top 16 Lies Lawyers Tell") to make his points.Each chapter is much like a blog post: it is likely to be a brief, a quick read, direct and to the point. Despite some overlap with his previous works, the new content makes this book clearly worth the price. I would argue that the chapter on presentations alone is worth much more than the price of the book. Like a stock that is valued less than the per share value of cash held by the company, this makes the rest of the book free -and there is plenty of valuable content in the rest. His broad coverage of tech-space start-ups includes chapters on recruiting, interviewing, laying- off, firing, building positive PR (including how to suck-up to bloggers), and how and when to "partner". (if you are considering opening, say, a jewelry store or a dry cleaners, there probably isn't too much here for you - it really is aimed at tech businesses).There is also some content for the recent grad about getting a job, and a little philosophy of life for all us.Since Mr. Kawasaki is a sought-after speaker, his point-of-view on public speaking, PowerPoint and story- telling has more credibility than most. In addition to his informed view, he also strives to be a good guy, and encourages the readers to be good guys too. He believes that nice guys do win.Highly recommended if you are considering starting a tech business.

Its a book that you will have to underline or highlight for its insights/ideas, according to your own interests. This book is full of nuggets and practical advice for Business People/Entrepreneurs from experienced Guy Kawasaki. He offers the benefit of his experience on blogging dos and donts and even how to suck up to a blogger in his own humorous style and cuts out the BS.

It makes you understand how do entrepreneurship processes work, why does it work, what lies should we avoid. It's a guide to success and to a larger understanding of all the spheres behind a start-up, which we can apply to several phases of the management and creation processes. Amazing!

Mit diesem Buch können Sie gesammelte Weisheit erwerben! Zwar geht es um das Thema Startup und Venture Capital basierte Firmen, aber das worüber Guy Kawasaki schreibt, taugt auch als umfangreiche und auf Erfahrung basierende Sammlung von Ratschlägen für alle, die im Berufsleben erfolgreich sein wollen.Er gibt gute und praxisrelevante Tipps und ist auch sehr direkt und ehrlich in Bezug auf alle möglichen Illusionen, die man so haben könnte (und hier heißt es ehrlich zu sich selbst sein :-)) - Don't be boring, don't waste peoples time, be nice, be brief, present solutions not problems, don't bullshitake people usw.Gutes Buch, gut zu lesen, viel interessantes und relevantes Wissen von jemandem der im eigenen Berufsleben viele Erfahrungen gesammelt hat.

After having read other books by Kawasaki, such as Enchantment, this book seems a bit redundant. The level of insight is not always at the top, but some hints are certaintly worth reading. I believe this book appeals more to wannabe entrepreneurs, and can be used mostly as a sort of "manual", and opened at need.Probably longer than needed.Yet, it is still a product of one of the greatest minds of Silicon Valley, and I think it still is a book worth having a look at.

This is one of the most outta world books that one can purchase, the introduction itself will tell a tale so enchanting that you will be hooked forever.