Guy Kawasaki Quotes - Page 8

I'm a lousy predictor of the future.

I have developed a Zen-like approach to the operating systems that people use: 'When you're ready, the right operating system will appear in your life.

A magnificent cause can overcome a prickly personality, but your ability to enchant people increases if they like you, so you should aspire to both. You’ll know that you’re likeable when you can communicate freely, casually, and comfortably with people.

Go APE: Author a great book, Publish it quickly, and Entrepreneur your way to success. Self-publishing isn’t easy, but it’s fun and sometimes even lucrative. Plus, your book could change the world.

I travel all the time.

Second, you need to spread the large amount of information knowledge that you've gained-pooping like an elephant. This means sharing information and discoveries with your fellow employees and occasionally even with your competitors.

"Patents make our product defensible." The optimal number of times to use the P word in a presentation is one. Just once, say, "We have filed patents for what we are doing." Done. The second time you say it, venture capitalists begin to suspect that you are depending too much on patents for defensibility. The third time you say it, you are holding a sign above your head that says, "I am clueless."

Great teams are usually small-under fifty in total head count. (There are few examples of a team made up of hundreds of people who created anything revolutionary.) Big teams aren't conducive to revolutionary products because such products require a high degree of single-mindedness, unity, and unreasonable passion.

You really can't spend money on social media unless you really try. Social media is really more about effort than expense.

"(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010." Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn't matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don't believe this type of forecast because it's the fifth one of this magnitude that they've heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms.

Most venture capitalists won't read a business plan unless the entrepreneur is introduced to them by a contact.

The first 90 percent of a revolution is creating the product or service; the second 90 percent is evangelizing it. At the beginning of a revolution, you need evangelists, not sales, because leverage spreads news.

The telephone operator has one of the biggest roles in creating your organization's image....indeed, many people may come into contact with no one except your operator.

What gets me up in the morning is either my daughter crawling into bed or my sons having to go to school. I love my family. They need a certain level of economic resources. They need my time. They need my attention. That's why I do what I do...and don't do what I don't do what I don't do.

I don't "need" the rush to be happy. I'd be perfectly happy without the attention and action.

Someone once said that death is God's way of telling you to slow down. I do enjoy what I do, and the secret of my success is the willingness to grind work out.

You know you're ready to write a book when you have a feeling that you should do it, no matter what anybody says. It's like falling in love or starting a company. When you're still wondering if you should get married or you're still wondering whether you should start a company that might be not the right person or the right idea. And writing is the same way. When you've locked on to the topic, you'll just write it.

Looking back on my own career, I've come to the conclusion that too much money is worse than too little.

When you give people too many choices it makes them hesitate and not buy stuff.

My real mantra for my life is "empower others".

Companies can add value and simultaneously promote themselves if their product or service truly improves the lives of their customers. I mean really improve lives, not wishful thinking, rationalization. That's the acid test.

Writing a book is as different from digital curation as night and day. Digital curation is a series of split-second decisions: good/no good. It can even be done algorithmically. Writing is process-intensive activity.

Look back to the old days: people bought an MS DOS machine and struggled with it for weeks to bring it up to speed. Then Apple created Macintosh, struggled a bit with it, but eventually succeeded. Then it went into other businesses. If your company truly wants to change the world, it would make these problems go away for customers.

My books are always tactical, bullet lists, this is what you need to do because I'm trying to appeal to people who are trying to change the world and they need checklists.

If you just enchanted one person per day, you would make a big dent in the universe.