The Entertainment of America is Business | The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for...

Great book if you are looking for a place to start! | The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything | Guy Kawasaki

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	• The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything Guy Kawasaki Portfolio Hardcover, 2004 - 226 pages average customer review:based on 181 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Worth Reading

This is a well organized book that uses a bit of humor to impart an important message of how to lay the ground work for a start-up. Although the book attempts to cover all the possible bases in the business community, its message is generic enough to apply to the basics of your unique business venture. This book is a good place to start in your efforts to become aware of the business start-up environment.

You may also want to read "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill and "The 17 Principles of Creating Wealth" by Phillip Collinsworth.

The Entertainment of America is Business

The business of America has always had moral imperative. As noted in my former history teacher Scott Sandage's "Born Losers", the word failure as conflated by personal and economic conditions is uniquely American. Popular notions of what business is for changes with the times. Fifty years ago, in the age of mass media and industrial boom, business principles in public consciousness can be summarized by Peter Drucker's "management by objectives": stern dictums issued from above. What then, are today's tipping point and the long tail about?

The latest development of the self-referential economy: business as entertainment. Now we demand our CEOs shed their anonymous pinstripes to don black turtlenecks. Sleek geeks. In an era where a theater-quality movie can reasonably be produced for less than the cost of a house, we are broaching an era where the entrepreneur and the creative class are the dominant cultural force. The motivations are to make customer's lives easier, rather than creating artificial demands as mass media tried. Netflix merely takes our desire for a hundred year old medium and makes it easier to select and get. Amazon works with an even older business.

Leading the way in the new era are mavens like Guy Kawasaki, who spells out his evangelism in "The Art of the Start". Forget the business plan, what's your mantra? Kawasaki brings us his insight from his twenty years as an entrepreneur to distill the essence of the art. We discover the entrepreneur is not some mythical hero, but rather an ordinary citizen equipped with one basic notion: get started on something that means something. One has the urge to almost throw down the book in shame of wasting time reading and run to our desks to get started. His energy is infectious, his examples crisp and memorable, and he does not belabor himself. Be clear, be brief, be seated.

Communication is at the heart of his mission. This means maintaining a clear idea of what the pursuit is for. If it can't be expressed in a handful of words, can it. If the competitors won't say the opposite (we're slow and customer-unfriendly) then you're not standing for anything meaningful. Once you've developed your own mantra, spread the good word. The decision makers are not always the customer per se, sometimes it's implicitly their parents or spouse. If they can't explain what it is, it's dead in the water. But ultimately, the customer is who you are appealing to, not your ego. The customer doesn't care that you want to "kill the competition" or "be the leader in ____", what can you do for them? Write a business plan to shore up the ideas you were already working on. Build a sales forecast from the bottom up (there's a global market of $5 billion, but right now I can reach $1 million). Use your competitors against themselves: copy their business model, partner up, brand against them.

Kawasaki succeeds in getting us to realize entrepreneurship is about going from the status quo to the hoi polloi's needs. But this book is far too enjoyable to be business literature. Truman was close, the entertainment of America is business.

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Great book if you are looking for a place to start!

My partners and I where looking for a good book to start looking for VC money, so we bought everything on Amazon that we could find. I must say this has been an eye opener!

Straight talk, and a great way to get off the ground and take ACTION!

If you are looking to "start" something worth the investment.

James (J.B.) Glossinger MBA, PhD
Author
Get Out of Neutral: Manifest the Life Experience You Desire
[...]

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Wish I Had This Book Ten Years Ago!

This is a wonderful book on starting things, not just companies, but also non-profits and new ventures within existing organizations. I wish I had this book 10 years ago!

I've been in three startups, intimately involved in two others, advised quite a few more, and read plenty of additional business plans. Guy has lots of words of wisdom, as well as some rather unorthodox thoughts. I often smiled while reading and thought, "yup we got that wrong."

From the very beginning there is (perhaps seemingly simple yet) profound advice.

"The hardest thing about starting is getting started" - I've had friends who have planned and schemed for years but never actually started.

"You should always be selling - not strategizing about selling." Yes, seen that done a lot.

Some of his unorthodox advice: On business models, "ask women - and only women. My theory is that deep in the DNA of men is a killer gene." He believes men are likely to have a business model which is "kill competitor XYZ" and women are not. I've certainly known companies whose business model was kill company XYZ, for example Sun Microsystem's desire to kill Microsoft. I find this advice bizarre, although thought provoking.

The entire book - every chapter - is useful. I've underlined many passages and written copious notes in the back. I've not only read the book, but also gone back and reread many parts as well as skimming it in its entirety.

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The most awsome book I have read for a long time

I really loved reading this book, and its organization really gave me alot since I am starting up my own business right now.
The book could be your own course on how to start, yeah just follow every chapter and step in the book and you will be ready to go ;)
No seriusly, this book is something you really should buy, and the first chapters are even online on the web to read. I'm reading it for the second time, and I't just keeps going better laying up a M.A.T. according to Guy Kawasaki.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, page 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

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