I loved this book. As a regional director for an international telecom company and having worked in International Telecom for 16 years, I thoroughly enjoyed the candor and humor in the creative problem solving and risk taking stories. The fund raising world is foreign to me, I was intrigued by those chapters and found I have a lot to learn. The full and fabulous life Mr. Hanes is living is a great inspiration. He really makes it sound easy with his humility, confidence and charm and I am blessed to know from experience, when you love and have a passion for what you do, great accomplishments do feel easy.

There are many good books available that contain information that is about self motivation. This book is primarily a recollection of memories with a few good nuggets of information thrown in. While I do not dispute any of Hanes ideas, I found the constant walk down memory to be distracting from the good information that is available within the book.

If you are looking for fundraising ideas, this may be a good choice for you, as one-third of the book is about fund raising. There is also some good information about interviewing for high level positions in the appendix of the book.

If you are looking for a book about motivating yourself and others, I would highly recommend another book. If you are looking for insight about fund raising, and interested in preping for a tough job interview I would suggest this book. Information contained in the book is quality, and solid, but there are many long passages to read inbetween the nuggets of knowledge that were intended for you to grasp from this book.

The shared wisdom and experience of the author made this a valuable read. The fact that there are a number of varying examples from real life experience and success at getting people to do things for the arts or the environment among many other activities provided different scenerios to learn from and to apply.

I felt that the personal accounts or stories of his interesting experiences made it a good read in addition to useful advice.

I have chatted with the Author and he seems like a great guy. I went back and reread the book and it just isnt for me. He and I are from two different worlds and thats great because that is what makes the world go round. But try as I might the book and its advice didnt work for where I come from in life. Not sure those tips are applicable to most of us out here working in the world. It could be me but just didnt connect with the principles outlined in this work.

I have to agree with the last review. The priciples Hanes claims in the introduction he'll be expounding upon cannot be argued against (though fund-raising has very limited relevance when considering all applications of persuasion, and the concept of problem solving is trite, to say the least). But what in fact follows is a 200-page list of the rich and powerful that run in Hanes' circle and a pat on the back for each of the good deeds they have done together (which are noteworthy, admittedly). Even the jacket blurbs reek of people with attention-catching names or titles returning a favor.

As a how-to this book is a complete failure. But it does have value as a case study. After all, Hanes was able to get it published, and published with a misleading title, and was able through continual reinforcement to convince at least ten Amazon reviewers that he's a great man and quality writer. Anyone who can pull that off with this material is worthy of consideration in the field of persuasion.

In addition to Cialdini's work mentioned by the previous reviewer I'd recommend Bandler's work and Greene's "48 Laws of Power" for those interested in persuasion.