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| Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition | 
 enlarge | Author: Guy Kawasaki
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $18.35
You Save: $11.60 (39%)
New (29) Used (7) from $18.35
Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 1591842239
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9781591842231
Publication Date: October 30, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: P20081115113924G
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Product Description
More uncommon common sense from the bestselling author of The Art of the Start.
In Silicon Valley slang, a bozo explosion is what causes a lean, mean, fighting machine of a company to slide into mediocrity. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, If the two most popular words in your company are partner and strategic, and partner has become a verb, and strategic is used to describe decisions and activities that dont make sense . . . its time for a reality check.
For nearly three decades, Kawasaki has earned a stellar reputation as an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and irreverent pundit. His 2004 bestseller, The Art of the Start, has become the most acclaimed bible for small business. And his blog is consistently one of the fifty most popular in the world.
Now, Kawasaki has compiled his best wit, wisdom, and contrarian opinions in handy book form. From competition to customer service, innovation to marketing, he shows readers how to ignore fads and foolishness while sticking to commonsense practices. He explains, for instance:
How to get a standing ovation
The art of schmoozing
How to create a community
The top ten lies of entrepreneurs
Everything you wanted to know about getting a job in Silicon Valley but didnt know who to ask
Provocative, useful, and very funny, this no bull shiitake book will show you why readers around the world love Guy Kawasaki.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
Vintage Kawasaki November 9, 2008
Guy's intro says it all - [it] "is a tweaked, updated, edited, and supplemented compilation of the best of my writing."
And what a powerful compilation!
I began with the midpoint at Chap 45 and it's quick, instructional reading, bullet-pointed to be memorable and it's really, really useful. This book gets the motors revving and the brain whirling and warms you up to greater, and greater achievement, all while having fun!
Purified Kawasaki. That's my favorite term for this book. And you can read a few of the 475-plus pages over many days, months, or even years. It's all good, timely stuff.
This book kicks butt while building confidence so newbies to old sages can find something in Reality Check.
And you can take that kind of check to the bank!
Shirley de Rose
[...]
Enterpreneur, business coach, public speaker
Best stuffs form Guy Kawasaki November 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is best stuffs, heavy and condensed stuffs from Guy Kawasaki. I am a fan, since the day of "macintosh way", and all of his books. I bought all of Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters, and Peter Druckers' book. The 3 of them have their own way of seeing things in Business that complement each others.
It is still very easily read, funny, relevant and yet powerfully useful for all entrepreneurs and entrepreneur-to-be.
The well arranged materials come from Guy's blog and previous writings, reworked and arranged into 12 Sections with 94 Chapters!!!:
The Reality of Starting: This one will wake you up to the reality of strat up.
The Reality of Raising Money: Personally for start ups outside USA (or Silicon Valley) there is a bit difference we should know, but the essense is similarly important.
The Reality of Planning and Executing: Great Stuffs that works....
and on and on to the folowings.....
The Reality of INNOVATING; MARKETING ; SELLING and EVANGELIZING ; COMMUNICATING ; BEGUILING ; COMPETING, HIRING and FIRING ; WORKING ; and DOING GOOD.... So much to read, so much to absorb, it will be a week-long enjoyable read.
I got this book 3 days ago from amazon and halfway through, and I have the urge (after a long silence of doing review here at amazon) to RECOMMEND this book highly to any future (and working) Entrepreneurs.
I got back here at amazon to order more to GIVE AWAY TO FRIENDS, and here I am writing for you all that this is a GREAT BOOK to buy, read, re read, and re read again and again.
This is not a 4 hours flight and done book. This is more of a REFERENCE book on all aspects of business start ups, worthy of re reading and rethinking all the time.
I have personally started up many businesses of my own (google my name, Tanadi Santoso) and I always use THE ART OF THE START as my Best Recommended Book on Entrepreneurship for my public speaking audience. With one warning: you have to ajust if you are in Indonesia or other Developing Countries.
500 pages of condensed material, this book will be staying around and dog-eared and marked and used many times over. You should get your copy soon!
Tanadi Santoso, Surabaya, Indonesia
Sunday School, Business School and Reality School November 8, 2008
As you read through Reality Check, you will often mutter to yourself, "Well, that makes sense" or "Seems logical to me..." Problem is that not many entrepreneurs or even salaried professionals use the common sense that Guy Kawasaki has captured here. You may have heard it from your parents long ago, "Be nice to people and they will probably be nice to you", or as Guy has phrased it, "The Art of Sucking Up" but don't forget "The Art of Sucking Down." Or, maybe something you observed from sitting in too many boring presentations, "Entertain your audience... if your speech is deathly dull, no amount of information will make it a great speech."
Unfortunately, we don't often practice what we we've been taught. Guy breaks it down into bite-sized morsels that can be pulled out for a pick-me-up snack when the start-up world is beating you down. Great book... go buy it!
 A mere compilation of blog entries with some good nuggets of advice for wanta-be or floundering entrepreneurs. An easy read! November 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found this book to be a "reality check" for anyone thinking of starting a business or anyone who has started one and isn't doing so well at it. I kind of liked it. It was an easy read. It felt like I was reading a bunch of blog entries (94 to be exact) that had been grouped into the following 12 chapters:
1. The reality of starting [1-5]
2. The reality of raising money [6-15]
3. The reality of planning and executing [16-24]
4. The reality of innovation [25-31]
5. The reality of marketing [32-37]
6. The reality of selling and evangelizing [38-43]
7. The reality of communicating [44-52]
8. The reality of beguiling [53-63]
9. The reality of competing [64-67]
10. The reality of hiring and firing [68-78]
11. The reality of working [79-89]
12. The reality of doing good [90-94]
13. The reality checklist
Chapter 13 was just a conclusion with a short checklist of key points made earlier in the book. The author admits nobody can incorporate all the points made earlier in the book into their entrepreneurial efforts.
I like a lot of what the author preaches. However, he is a product of Silicon Valley and the venture capital mentality. I'm not a fan of that way of doing things. Not all businesses need either angel investors or venture capital firms to help them along. And I certainly do not buy into the author's take on business plans. He says they should be short, simple, and no longer than 20 typed pages total if they need be written at all. I think this is just plain bunk! An entrepreneur needs to fully understand what she is going to do when she starts a business BEFORE SHE DOES IT. She needs to know how much things are going to cost to get the business running. She needs to know how she is going to do them. By writing a 25-35 page typed business plan with financials she will know exactly about cash flow and breakeven analysis. By winging it she won't. And a failure to plan by not writing a sound business plan is a plan to fail!
Maybe an entrepreneur who plans to give their company away to angel investors or venture capital firms can get away with not creating a business plan. In fact, the less they write the easier it will be for the company to be swiped out from under them. But lets get one thing straight: business plans are a tool for an entrepreneur to use to master their business in order to avoid losing their shirt by starting it on the fly. Business plans are not primarily created merely to qualify for loans or investment dollars. This point is so critical to startups (except for the very few that qualify for venture capital funds) that the credibility of the entire book is tainted to a degree in my view. 4 stars!
Getting to the realities of your business success November 6, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Guy Kawasaki is one of those business Zen masters who is full of wonderful insights and observations that provide us with those flashes of insight that cause us to say, "A ha!". His books don't provide a systematic guide to business, but he never claims they do. He is at his best in the short form thought rather than the extended exposition of ideas. This substantial book is 474 pages long. He groups its 94 chapters (plus introduction, conclusion, and index) under 12 headings. Now, you or I might see this as 12 chapters and a bunch of sub-headings or bullet points within each chapter, but we don't see things as Guy does. Each tiny chapter is its own insight and is meant to be thought about on its own rather than pushed through to finish the larger "chapter".
The idea of this book is that the reality of business is usually very different than what we think it is supposed to be. We too often behave and act as if these illusions in our minds were reality and this causes us to put our business into jeopardy unnecessarily. The twelve headings deal with the actual realities of starting, raising money, planning and executing, innovating, marketing, evangelizing, communicating, beguiling, competing, hiring and firing, working, and doing good.
This book is amazingly frank about the realities of being an entrepreneur. For example, chapter 10 provides a few pages on the top 10 lies of venture capitalists. What a refreshing read that was! On the other hand, to show you the kind of statements I refer to as Zen just look at the checklist in the conclusion: 1) Are you making meaning? 2) Does your product jump to, or create, the next curve? 3) Is your product Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Elegant, and Emotive? 4) Do you have a mantra for what you do? 5) Do you have a 10-slide pitch with no font smaller than 30 points that you can give in 20 minutes? 6) Have you figured out a way to take your product to market with no budget? 7) Are you helping people who cannot help you? 8) Can you blow away an audience with a demonstration of your product? 9) Would you hire `imperfect' job candidates who love what you would do, as well as people who are better than you? 10) Are you only asking people to do things that you would to, too?
I also enjoyed chapter 66 on "The art of driving your competition crazy". Well, I enjoyed a great many of the chapters, but some resonated with my own experiences in business more than others.
This is a very interesting book and I am sure that you will find ideas and insights here that you can use. More than that, I think that you can find ideas here that will fire you up and allow you to work with greater motivation, focus, and purpose. No, this is not a recipe for success book. Instead, it is a book that helps you see what reality is asking you to do to find success. And that is what we are all after.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
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