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Showing posts with label Sir Richard Branson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sir Richard Branson. Show all posts

Monday, December 15, 2008

Guy Kawasaki's New Book - 'Reality Check'




Hello Readers,

I just purchased Guy Kawasaki's latest book, Reality Check.

Guy has one of the best techniques for writing books about business! He not only makes them readable, he makes reading them fun and informative at the same time. This is something many business book authors fail to accomplish. Many authors are writing to an audience of other authors, and miss the point of the effort.

Unless your audience is made up exclusively of authors, you had better find another calling, because your book will not be read by anyone. Guy captures and narrates succinctly the start-up issues facing new companies. He provides a clear road-map to writing the 'business-plan', obtaining angel or venture capital financing, and most importantly exposes the things that will prevent you from succeeding at any of the above tasks.

He uses real-life examples of business foolishness, that really drives home his points completely. His writing style is brief, focused, and lively. Humor is a major component part of the book, and the 'dual-introductions' are hilarious, one 'final one' from "the fake Steve Jobs".

I met Guy Kawasaki at BlogWorld Expo 2008, after his lunchtime keynote with Steve Rubel. I mentioned that I had a copy of his earlier work, "The Macintosh Way". He paused and said, "oh, that's going back a few years!". Guy was so kind to hang out and answer questions after the keynote. He is accessible and puts his audience at ease. His knowledge of Silicon Valley is key to the depth and expanse of the information found in 'Reality Check'.

When I recently started following Guy's exploit's on www.Twitter.com and at www.alltop.com, I realized how multi-faceted he truly has become. He has a loyal following of former Apple Computer fans, who are now iPhone and Macbook users. Guy has stayed very current with Web 2.0 issues, and still pokes fun at the establishment, exhibiting an altruistic, helpful approach.

A recent photograph of Guy and Sir Richard Branson had Richard polishing Guy's shoes with his coat-jacket! Now that is truly customer service, and explains Richard Bransons considerable success with the Virgin Brand.

Please do go and find this book, buy it, read it and implement the steps Guy has defined. One day American business can return to the ethics, prosperity, and accomplishments that made it great.

I'm going to go and finish reading this book, and will post Part Two of my mini-review, in a few days. I purchased the book at a local Borders in California, and with my Borders discount the book was $25.00 + tax.

I would have been willing to pay twice that amount for the book, and plan on picking up a few more copies to send to ahem, companies that still don't 'get it'.

Please leave me a comment below, let's start a conversation and over on Twitter.com/nachase

Monday, November 17, 2008

Sir Richard Branson - Genius Marketing 101



Richard Branson, yes 'that' Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Books, Virgin Atlantic et al, has launched a unique method for advertising and promoting his latest book, 'Business Stripped Bare'. A link to the video can be found, at the end of this post.

The Strategy
OK, picture this, a group of men and women dressed as businessmen and women, except without pants, just undergarments and knee-socks, strolling the streets of London during commute hour to promote Richard's latest book, 'Business Stripped Bare'.

They were offering the first downloadable chapter of Richard's book using a business card handout scheme, and getting the attention of all! How easy this was to implement, no huge marketing campaign, no public relations and product launch headaches, just people to people, a proven technique for generating sales for hundreds of years!

How I Found Out About This...
Mr. Branson recently started 'following me' on Twitter (www.twitter.com) a free, live messaging / contact service that has received the attention of some major United States corporations. I have of course begun following him.

I read his previous 'tweets' by looking at his 'Profile' page. There was a tweet and the URL within to watch the hilarious video, but also hugely successful marketing efforts.

About Twitter
Twitter limits your messages to 140 characters, and URL's are shortened to permit fitting them into the space allotted. Twitter permits the ability to read other users 'tweets', their individual outbound messages to add to the publicly-viewable stream of messages, or with the option to privately 'direct-message' those you are 'following'.

Start Using Twitter Today!
If you are not using Twitter, I highly recommend you begin at once! I have made some very important contacts, and received inumerable value from using the service.

In a previous post, a contact made on Twitter led to my attending BlogWorld Expo 2008 and meeting Shoemoney, John Chow, Jim Kukral, Robert Scoble, Doc Searles, Laura Fitton and Zac Johnson, the current 'thought-leadership' in Affiliate Marketing.

Here is the link to Mr. Branson's video:
http://entrepreneur.virgin.com/2008/11/12/nearly-naked-business-people-take-over-london-2/

Please leave me a comment if you liked this post, and buy Mr. Branson's book here in America please, we need the economy to turn around quickly! Respectfully, Nicholas