Guy Kawasaki

When I finally got a management position, I found out how hard it is to lead and manage people.

When you enchant people, your goal is not to make money from them or to get them to do what you want, but to fill them with great delight.

People are forgiving of v 1.0 of a product if it's truly innovative and useful. Then you can get away with a lot. But if you're merely marginally improving the status quo, then you better be rock solid.

When I was getting my education, I fell in love with the writings of Peter Drucker. He was my hero. I had a naive belief that when I became a manager, it was going to be like Peter Drucker's books. That is, I was going to be the effective executive. I was going to talk to people about their goals. I was going to help them actualize.

Good people hire people better than themselves. So A players hire A+ players. But others hire below their skills to make themselves look good. So B players hire C players. C players hire D players, etc.

If you make money, you might not make meaning.

If you have more money than brains you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing.

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

Don't worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test... Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap - but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.

I'm a lousy predictor of the future.

The good news about entrepreneurship is that your fate is in your hands. The bad news is that your fate is in your hands!

A large social-media presence is important because it's one of the last ways to conduct cost-effective marketing. Everything else involves buying eyeballs and ears. Social media enables a small business to earn eyeballs and ears.

Social media allows me to pick my times for social interaction.

Simple and to the point is always the best way to get your point across.

If you're an entrepreneur and you think that the president makes a difference to your business, you should stay at your current job.

The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning to create a product or service to make the world a better place.

If achieving success were easy, more people would do it.

Entrepreneur is not a job title. It is a state of mind of people who want to alter the future.

The most important thing is that you hire people who complement you and are better than you in specific areas. Good people hire people better than themselves. So A players hire A+ players.

I travel all the time.

You need to save some mental, physical, and emotional resources for enhancing your product after you ship. A revolution is a triathlon, not a hundred-yard dash-it requires long distance stamina and multiple skills such as creating, churning, and evangelizing.

Great companies start because the founders want to change the world... not make a fast buck.

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

I do have a peripatetic and active intellectual curiosity.

My recommendation for SEO is very simple. It's Write Good Stuff. In my mind, Google is in the business of finding good stuff. It has thousands of the smartest people in the world, spending billions of dollars to find the good stuff. All you have to do is write the good stuff; you don't need to trick it.

Most people who graduate from college think they have to make a perfect choice. Is it Goldman Sachs? Is it Google? Is it Apple? They think that their first job is going to determine their career, if not their life.

What I lack in talent, I compensate with my willingness to grind it out. That's the secret of my life.

If you want to make a good first impression smile at people. What does it cost to smile Nothing. What does it cost not to smile Everything if not smiling prevents you from enchanting people.

At the end of my life, is it better to say that I empowered people to make great stuff, or that I died with a net worth of $10 billion? Obviously I'm picking the former, although I would not mind both.

If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society's heroes.

Coming from the U.S., you tend to look at one homogeneous market with 350 million people. But in Europe, every country has its own customs and laws.

A 50 year old company can innovate as well as two guysgals in a garage.

The jewelry business is a very, very tough business - tougher than the computer business. You truly have to understand how to take care of your customers.

What you learn in school is the opposite of what happens in the real world. In school, you're always worried about minimums. You have to reach 20 pages or you have to have so many slides or whatever. Then you get out in the real world and you think, 'I have to have a minimum of 20 pages and 50 slides.'

Enchantment is the purest form of sales. Enchantment is all about changing peoples hearts minds and actions because you provide them a vision or a way to do things better. The difference between enchantment and simple sales is that with enchantment you have the other persons best interests at heart too.

Entitlement is the opposite of enchantment.

I don't want to make more friends. I have four kids, I have plenty of friends, and all the personal relationships I need.

If you look at my Twitter feed it is 99% links, but 1% is me responding and 1% of a big number is a big number.

It's easy to say that entrepreneurs will create jobs and big companies will create unemployment, but this is simplistic. The real question is who will innovate.

Evangelism is selling a dream.

A 50-year-old company can innovate as well as two guys/gals in a garage.

Companies in Europe should stop trying to do the U.S. version of a European idea.

A good idea is about ten percent and implementation and hard work, and luck is 90 percent.

I think that no one, or very few, are born as good presenters. It's a skill that you learn.

High achievers tend to have major weaknesses. People without major weaknesses tend to be mediocre.

Smart, well-meaning people get it wrong when they start believing that the world owes them something and that the rules are different for them.

If youre an entrepreneur and you think that the president makes a difference to your business you should stay at your current job.

Create something, sell it, make it better, sell it some more and then create something that obsoletes what you used to make.

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.'

Patience is the art of concealing your impatience.

The hardest thing about getting started is getting started.

Not many people agree with what I do.

I merely consider myself a father, and one role of a father is to provide financial resources for his family.

Ambitious failure, magnificent failure, is a very good thing.

When you enchant people your goal is not to make money from them or to get them to do what you want but to fill them with great delight.

I started my career counting diamonds and schlepping gold jewelry around the world. The jewelry business is a very, very tough business - tougher than the computer business. You truly have to understand how to take care of your customers.

The A-listers and the A+ listers, are reporting the news, they're not making it.

If you provide enough value, then you earn the right to promote your company in order to recruit new customers. The key is to always provide value.

Leverage your brand. You shouldn't let two guys in a garage eat your shorts.

My perspective is this: my allegiance is to the best product for my needs. For a computer, this means Macintosh. For phone and tablet, this means Android.

A crash is when your competitor's program dies. When your program dies, it is an 'idiosyncrasy'.

It doesn't matter whether the Dow is 5000 or 50,000. If you're an entrepreneur, there is no bad time to start a company.

Every social media post should have a beautiful graphic. If there are two identical stories, the one with the beautiful graphic will always win.

As communicators and marketers, people are so accustomed to thinking from the 'top down.' Finding the great analyst or the famous journalist who will endorse what you do and tell the rest of the world to go and buy your product.