Enchanted With Guy Kawasaki

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By  Dayna Steele  on   Dec, 8 2011
guykawasaki4v3One of the stand-out business books of 2011 is Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by venture capitalist, bestselling author, and Apple Fellow Guy Kawasaki. I had an opportunity to sit across a dinner table from this amazing man at SXSW in 2010. I’ve hung on his every rock star word since….
STEELE: You enchant me 100%. Who or what made you the man you are today?
KAWASAKI: After fifty-seven years, there are certainly many factors—too many to discuss, probably. The big influences were my parents, two football coaches, a high-school English teacher, my first real boss (in the jewelry business), my wife, Steve Jobs, and my kids.
STEELE: Your most recent book has added the word "enchantment" into business lexicon. How does enchantment give someone an edge over the competition?
KAWASAKI: If you succeed in enchanting your customers, you will have a deep, long-lasting, mutually beneficial, and voluntary relationship with them. This means that they are more likely to buy more products from you, and they are more likely to accept your shortcomings. Enchantment takes a relationship beyond "transactions" to "sharing visions."
STEELE: You are the co-founder of Alltop.com, called an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web. How can a business or entrepreneur use Alltop in their success activities?
KAWASAKI: There are two main uses for Alltop for a business owner or entrepreneur. First, to stay on top of "all the topics." It's a very quick way to scan all the news of over 900 topics. Second, it is a great source of good stories to use for tweets, wall postings, and updates. Posting these stories can help position you as a sector expert.
STEELE: You tweet 24/7. What do you get from Twitter?
KAWASAKI: Twitter has been a way to drive millions of page views to Alltop and a make hundreds of new friends. Are you asking if I'm paid by Twitter? Not a cent. In fact, I would be happy to pay Twitter for what I've derived from using its service.
*Author note: I did not mean pay but rather what benefits did he see from using Twitter so much. I believe he answered that!
STEELE: You recently wrote a blog on the lessons you learned from Steve Jobs. If you had to narrow it down to one, what would it be?
KAWASAKI: The most important lesson is probably that design counts. Maybe design count to everyone all the time, but there are enough people who care about design to make it a competitive advantage.
STEELE: You say 'default to yes." What comes from that position?
guykawasaki3v2KAWASAKI: This means that when you interact with people, you should always be thinking about how you can help them—that if they ask for help, the default answer is "yes." This makes you more likable and trustworthy—and therefore more enchanting. If you're worried about people taking advantage of you—which is a reasonable concern—this has never been an issue for me.
STEELE: What do you consider to be one of the biggest mistakes most people make in business?
KAWASAKI: In tech startups, the biggest mistake is scaling up too fast. Tech entrepreneurs have delusions of instant success and build infrastructure long before they need it. When the "conservative, worst-case sales" don't come in, the company is stuck with too high an expense structure, and the company runs out of money.
STEELE: Many are on the fence about Google+ - if not avoiding it all together. You are quite prolific on the platform. Give me a Google+ pitch!
KAWASAKI: Google Plus is a better way for me to interact and engage people than Twitter or Facebook. It's better than Twitter because conversations are organized and threaded. It's better than Facebook because everyone who follows me on Google Plus can see my updates as opposed to the secret formula that Facebook uses to determine who sees my updates.
People should approach Google Plus differently from Facebook. Facebook is for your existing relationships such as friends and family. Google Plus is to meet new people who share the same passions as you. For example, I now have relationships with photographers that I didn't know and met because of Google Plus.
STEELE: You appear to be an open book. What is the one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?
KAWASAKI: Not much really. What you see is what you get with me—for better or worse. One of the main reasons I'm so open is that I can no longer remember what I hid from people, so it's just an easier way to live!
STEELE: Please tell me you destroyed the pictures you took of our dinner at SXSW.
KAWASAKI: I was just about to make one of the pictures the background of my Twitter profile. :-)
Guy Kawasaki is the author of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple.
Kawasaki is the author of nine other books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. Follow him on Twitter @GuyKawasaki or interact with him on Google+ @ http://gplus.to/kawasaki.
steelecasualv2Dayna Steele is a Hall of Fame radio personality, successful entrepreneur, the best-selling business author of Rock to the Top: What I Learned about Success from the World’s Greatest Rock Stars, sought-after speaker and in-demand business consultant and media strategist. Readers’ Digest Magazine has called her one of the “35 People Who Inspire Us.”
Successful Meetings Magazine calls her presentations “a pep talk from the deejay booth.” Talkers Magazine said she was one of the “100 Most Important Talk Radio Show Hosts.” And, AOL Business named her “one of the foremost experts on career networking.” Follow her on Twitter @daynasteele or visit http://www.daynasteele.com/.
Coming January 2012: A Rock Star Conversation with Financial Guru Dave Ramsey!

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