When my friend Karen from The Media Mesh decided to start a business book club, I teased - mostly because I am one of the worst culprits of buying business books and then never actually getting through them. With the club as incentive I got through the first club book and am now happy to tell you what my take on the book was. If you’re interested in finding out about being a part of the book club, check out Karen’s site.
Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions - Guy Kawasaki
The book (as per its web site) ” explains how to influence what people will do while maintaining the highest standards of ethics. The book explains when and why enchantment is necessary and then the pillars of enchantment: likability, trustworthiness, and a great cause.”
My take
Be real
It’s a great book that reminds us to be real, genuine and helpful.
A lot of it seems like common sense, but sometimes I think it takes spelling things out obviously to remind us just how important these things are.
It’s the whole “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar” thing that I strongly believe in. You get much further in life by being kind and friendly than by being angry and pushy. Kawasaki simply outlines the how and why with some great examples.
Great practical tips
Kawasaki spends a lot of the second half of the book giving ideas on HOW you can be enchanting, sometimes bringing in specialists (like Mari Smith, a Facebook expert who I really enjoy) to talk about areas he realizes others know more about.
Again, a lot of what he said is common sense, but it’s nice to have what you’re doing reinforced, or to have a reminder to be doing it.
Conclusion
I enjoyed the book and was able to create a relatively easy to do list for myself from it. I like that I walked away feeling good about how I do things.
My one real criticism of the book were his case studies. He closes each chapter with a real life example of enchantment. For some reason I found the examples weak. I don’t know if he was going for something very attainable and realistic, but instead they felt to me like random examples pulled from a small sample selection.
Personal examples
That being said, here is an example of how I’ve been enchanted by a company.
Mabel’s Labels is a Canadian company that creates sticky labels “for the things kids lose”
In the summer of 2010 I attended a blogging conference in New York City. As I waited for my flight home I tweeted that I was sitting at the gate on my own killing time. One of the four founding partners of Mabel’s Labels saw my tweet, happened to be taking the same flight and found me at the gate and introduced herself to me (we had never met).
We sat and chatted for almost an hour, mostly not about business, and although I’d heard of the company before my estimation and personal feelings for the company sky rocketed after this interaction. Since then, I have interacted with this same partner on twitter many times, as well as other partners of the company and their social media representative (they are all very responsive!) and have seen just how fast and authentic they are at engaging with their customers online.
Do I think it’s realistic for the owner of a company to spend time with every potential customer? No. However, I have since become a big advocate of their company, use their labels exclusively for my kids, and brought them in as a sponsor of a conference that I ran in my own city. I believe in them and spread their word, and that came from someone responding in a really enchanting way to a tweet I sent out expecting no response.
Here is an example of how I WASN’T enchanted:
A few months ago I was planning a vacation. I put out a simple and general question on twitter about one of the decisions I needed to make about that vacation - one that anyone who had been on a similar type of vacation could answer. Someone referred me to a travel agent on twitter and when I asked her my question and told her I had already booked the vacation through another channel, she told me that I should then talk to that person for any answers to my question.
Her unwillingness to answer my question because I was not her client gave me such a bad feeling that I now have little desire to work with her in the future. In fact, when I needed further help with the same vacation I went through another agent despite probably having gone with her before the interaction. A little bit of “free” and “friendly” advice can go a long way to being enchanting.
I hope you check the book and Karen’s book club out - both are worth your time. There will also be a twitter chat on January 11 from 8-9 using #mediameshbbc.
I’d love to hear examples of how you’ve been enchanted!
“You catch more flies with honey than vinegar”,
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Catch_more_bees_with_honey_what_does_that_mean#ixzz1iyLXLiz1
