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Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition | 
| Author: Guy Kawasaki
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $17.67
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New (34) Used (6) from $17.67
Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 1121
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
ASIN: 1591842239
Publication Date: October 30, 2008
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Condition: Brand new Book, ALL days Low Price !
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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 26 more reviews...
 Everything the entrepreneur needs to know in one book January 8, 2009
This is a brilliant book. My particular interest is in public speaking, and the chapters on pitching and presentations are excellent. But I learned something on every page. Guy has distilled an enormous amount of hard-won wisdom and experience into these pages. Anyone who is starting a business -- or even if you've been running one for a while -- will benefit from reading this book.
 Interesting and Pleasant Reading About Business and Life January 5, 2009
Guy Kawasaki addresses in a fun and entertaining way several issues that range from how to start and run a company to how to communicate and how to find meaning in life. The style varies a lot from story telling, advice lists, digressions and interviews. The reason I'm only giving it three stars it's because the book is rather long (over 450 pages) and unfocused - at the end of the book you wonder what the book is really about. It provides an interesting reading nevertheless.
A Breath of Fresh Air. This is the most realistically inspriational book I've read. January 5, 2009
Reality Check is fun to read, and I was inspired while I was laughing. Seriously. What a fantastic, no-nonsense, to-the-point guide to building an idea or an organization. As a founder of a start-up, I found that reading it gave me great ideas, smart insights, and the courage to have a sense of humor about it all. As far as I'm concerned, this is a must-read and a great gift to someone starting a new venture or adventure.
Old fluff put in an entertaining format. December 28, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Guy Kawasaki is a genuinely warm, engaging, intelligent and articulate man. I've had the pleasure of meeting him several times at MacWorld trade shows.
However, Guy Kawasaki is a career self-promoter. He has made a living for many years repackaging standard business advice in an entertaining format and peddling it as new to the legions of people seeking a business success formula.
More power to Guy for making a living at it, but it doesn't alter the nature of what is between the covers here: old advice, with a lot of it being nothing more than commensense.
Two irritating things about Guy's otherwise excellent writing style. He has a real problem with gender pronouns. Even in academic writing that tends to be excruciatingly politically correct, I've never seen anyone go to such extremes in using "she", "her" and other feminine pronouns. It's creepy, weird and utterly unnecessary. Certainly She would understand if Guy backed off a bit. Then there is Guy's cuteness with a couple of euphemisms: for example, he takes the common expletive for bull manure and adds "-takke" to it. Once may cute, especially among your 4th grade classmates. A couple of dozen times and it is truly annoying and leads you to believe the author may be a fourth grader.
As for Guy's advice . . . well, there's a reason why so many self-help and business success books are perennial bestsellers: people want guidance and advice And guy provides it in a witty, entertaining manner.
But virtually all of it has been served up hundreds, if not thousands, of times before by other authors. Some of what Guy offers up is pure nonsense without a shred of evidence to support it: it is just politically correct, like his overuse of the feminine. For example, he directs that companies "diversify" in their hiring, implying that if your workforce isn't statistically proportionate, you are doomed to an early end in a "Bozo Explosion". While it may be politically correct, the proposition is not supported by evidence.
Straining for material, Kawasaki resorts to interviews with other authors and academics, not a few of whom are cranks. One parses a conspiracy theory that would give a tinfoil hat wearer a run for their money.
Finally, Kawasaki tries to cover the waterfront with his advice. And the plains. And the mountains too. And the oceans. Everything. If you're looking for millions to start your company, Kawasaki has advice. If you're looking for a job, Kawasaki has advice. If you're the boss of a successful company, Kawasaki has advice.
The quality of the advice in every area, however, is suspect. First, much of it is common sense. If you have to buy as book to learn common sense, you have a problem. A lot of what Guy writes has been written about a zillion times before.
Take, for example, some of his advice about getting a job in Silicon Valley. Show up early, Guy says. "Get to your interview at least thirty minutes early because (a) you might hit traffic . . ." Actually, I think Guy means to say leave for your interview early because you might hit traffic, if She is not watching over you. Point is, who needs to buy a book to learn this? I love this line: "Answer the first question "How are you?" with a great response. For example, a great response is, "I feel great. I'm really anxious to learn more about this job and tell you about myself, so that we can determine if we're a good match". Very impressive: I'm sure the interviewer will be bowled over by your sincerity.
As one of his later chapters, Guy has one entitled "Are You an Egomaniac?" I think Guy is - and he appears to make a good living from it.
On the whole, 'Reality Check" is no worse than then some advice books and perhaps is valuable to simply reassure people that common sense is still a valuable commodity. But for business success tips, Guy doesn't offer anything you haven't seen before. I'd suggest holding off on this one until it is remaindered or just get it from the library.
Jerry
Truth, Wisdom and Humor - Guy Kawasaki's Best Book Yet December 13, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Rare is the time I pick up a nearly 500 page book on business that's keeps me up reading after everyone in the house has already gone to bed. But, with Reality Check, Guy's hit a home run.
Truth - I've read hundreds of books on entrepreneurship, marketing, careers, yadda, yadda, yadda. Heck, I've even written one of my own (Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love). And, you can pretty much tell within the first 20 pages the difference between books written by people who've "studied" entrepreneurship and those written by people who've "lived" it.
The first offer great advice...that works in a vacuum. The latter reveal what it's really all about. They speak the truth, based on what the writer has lived and breathed. As a lifetime entrepreneur and writer, that's the book I want to read. And, that's the book Guy has delivered.
Wisdom - 461 friggin' pages of it...and it's not 300 pages of juicy stuff and 161 pages of self-serving fluff. It's ALL juice! What do I mean by that? It's not about theory. Reality Check delivers you into the conversations, presentations, strategy sessions, critical decisions and actions that nearly every budding entrepreneur wrestles with.
Then, Guy serves up actionable, specific, aggressive do's, don'ts, tips, tasks, strategies and scripts based on real live experience sitting on both sides of the funding table, the boardroom table, the podium...and the plywood garage table.
I stopped taking notes and dog-earing pages when I realized I was doing it on every page!
Style & Humor - If you're looking for dry, professorial, textbook style writing...go away, that's not Guy's style. And thank God for that. Like all of Guy's books, this one is irreverent, edgy and engaging. And, Guy sense humor really comes through in this one, too. Enough to keep a 500 page tome fresh to the end. In fact, the Foreword 2.0, written by Dan Lyons a/k/a Fake Steve Jobs, had me laughing out loud and e-mailing people to strong-arm them into buying the book just to read the intro.
Look, you can keep reading reviews or you can just buy the darn book now. Which you choose will very likely determine whether you're a real entrepreneur...or you just like reading what people who write about them think.
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