Guy Kawasaki, a favorite at any time and now with his new book that I reviewed (also here on Blogcritics), The Art of the Start, gave generously of his time and sat down for our virtual interview. Guy approached the interview relaxed, as I had asked, because he told me, that’s pretty much his natural state, and after reading through his answers, that relaxed and easy-going demeanor come across clearly, but I also see that je ne sais quoi or thing (in plain English) that has made Kawasaki such a tremendous success, to be specific his incredible candor and forthrightness combined with his wit, wisdom, and charm, all of which he shared with me so that I may now share it with you. Tune in for a casual conversation with Guy Kawasaki and when you’re done, rush out and buy his books because not only are they well-written and smart, but the writing conveys the same straight-forwardness and no nonsense attitude with which he approached this interview. Here, at last, are books from someone who has made it to the top and unlike so many, is not threatened by new or smarter talent, but indeed welcomes it. It’s about time someone like Guy Kawasaki came along, and thank god, because he came just in time. Read this, check out his new book The Art of the Start and his other, Rules for Revolutionaries (you can buy them at the bottom here) and get out there and take on the world with the verve and spirit you know you have. My questions are in bold, answers below. Welcome to the world as seen by Guy Kawasaki.
Sadi H. Ranson-Polizzotti
Tell me what you were like as a child - what I want to know is this: did you always think of yourself as different as kid and have some sense of what you would do, and if so, what was it you envisioned yourself doing?
As I recall, I was a pain in the ass. I wish I had given my mother fewer problems. I never got into serious trouble, but I was, shall I say, "extremely outgoing."
If you had some sense of what it was, how did you set about becoming that person or achieving that goal?
There was nothing dramatic about my early years. I grew up in a lower-middle class family in a tough part of Hawaii. I was just a normal kid who blew up firecrackers, played in the ditch, shot birds with a bb gun, and loved to eat sweets. I didn't have a lemonade stand at 8, didn't have a paper route, nothing, nada. There was certainly no foreshadowing of things to come.
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Article comments
1 - Steve Rucinski
Great questions and great answers Guy, I am almost done with your book and think it is terrific. Thanks for writing it!
I also like how all of the alternative covers are on the inside of the jacket.
2 - sadi
guy was a terrific interview subject and gave straight and honest answers. i see some problems in here with the line breaks, damn. i'll get back in there and fix those. that is frustrating. they aren't showing up in MT -- ERic, can you figure out what's going on here? they didn't show up in the MT - so i'm not sure...
thanks....if not, i'll try to get in there tomorrow. need to rest now, but will do asap.
cheers - and do read this book, as you said, it's terrific and i'm looking forward to reading Rules for Revolutionaries...
sadi
3 - sadi
okay; think i fixed the spacing issues... s.
4 - sadi
Had a minute to read your Kawasaki review. Haven't read his book, but he's
definitely onto something.
Kawasaki's success is due not merely to good ideas, but to the culture
behind him that allows him to invent, to toss out weak ideas, and to pursue
good ones wholeheartedly. I can't count the number of times something I've
wanted to do was scuttled by some middle manager who simply couldn't (or
wouldn't) get it, and by the upper manager who knuckled under for fear of
giving offense. Second guessing is going to be the death of American
ingenuity. It has already brought us the wonders management by consensus and
outsourcing (and John Kerry, but that's another story). Lack of courage has
brought us Enron and George W. Bush.
How easy it is to evade the need for meaning. I watch a tremendous amount of
television - too much really - and every evening I see at least one new
commercial that falls squarely in the realm I call 'Badvertising", that is,
advertising that is so devoid of meaning, so repellent, so ineffective, so
plain awful that, if I were the advertiser in question, I would fire my ad
agency and my marketing department, and seriously consider a career change.
Night after night I see commercials that seek - aggressively - to associate
products with ugliness, stupidity, and rankly immoral behavior.
Why make your spokesperson look like a geek or a moron? It certainly doesn't
entice me to pay attention to anything he has to say. Why shoot your product
so it looks like a dingy relic from the disco days? It seems to me that
consumer goods sell best when they appear desirable, especially when the
differences from manufacturer to manufacturer are nearly negligible. Why
shout at the audience? Nothing sends me to the remote (or the kitchen)
faster than the amp-up at the beginning of a car commercial. (Lest you think
me a total crank, I have to admit that I love the iPod tv campaign: no
matter frequently I see them, I watch every second at full volume.)
Look at (gad!) Paris Hilton. There's no there THERE. Why any company would
want to associate itself with a mindless, disaffected, pseudo-cool waif
whose imprimatur of quality is a dreary 'That's hot' is beyond me. Her
boundless cheapness (Jimmy Choo shoes or no Jimmy Choo shoes) gives me the
creeps. Imagine her with black hair and dark skin and you have Donna Summer
at the depths of her career ca. 1983. I feel sorry for the young women who
have bought into her as some form of aspirational model.
One of the most useful ideas I picked up in college was that photography
(and, by extension, advertising), if it is to be successful, has to convince
the viewer that he would be better off if he owned (or ate or wore) the
product. I spend far more time watching James Earl Jones's eyes change color
(blue to brown and back over the course of a single 60-second spot) than I
do listening to his pitch. And there are plenty of advertisements I
recognize and tune out on the spot - so quickly that I often can not
remember the advertiser once the spot is off the air. Imagine what any one
of us could do with the airtime fee for one day's national broadcast Verizon
budget.
Truth is, most 'creatives' in the advertising business have no sense of
meaning and no idea of how to create it. They substitute spurious notions of
hip or cool or 'edgy' that are frequently watered-down rehashes of things
that weren't all that good the first go-round. They never come close to
realizing that hipness is unattainable to those who set out to attain it.
It's easy to sell a client on a retread of last year's Clio winners.
Talk about a relic of the 60s! The ad game is still running down to the
street to "see what the young people are thinking." As if focus groups and
target marketing will in any way save a mediocre, outdated, or fraudulent
product. They tow their clients in their wake - bloated (cash) cows awash in
a flood of accounting tricks and doubletalk, too meek to say, 'I want
something better."
Not that the ad-folk are solely to blame, of course. How many products, new
or old, are invested with meaning (for which I read 'significance')in the
first place? It says a lot to me that I want an iPod, when I don't even
listen to my portable CD player that frequently. (Not simply because it's
awkward or bulky or eats up batteries, but because I worry about being too
disconnected from my surroundings as I walk to work. That's why I don't want
a cell phone, either.)
As Hart Crane wrote, 'God DAMN this nostalgia always for something new.'
Every day we wake up to a flood of banality designed to make us forget
yesterday's banality and make tomorrow's banality look like the next great
thing. Sadly the average American is so ill educated or disconnected or
self-absorbed that he has no clue that he's being taken advantage of. How
else do you explain Wal-Mart?
I think I'm becoming an anarchist in my dotage....
C.S.
(note: i posted this with permission; it came by email from a friend of mine who said it was okay to post it to the article, and i thought there were some interesting thoughts in here. AFter this, i'm sure he'll register to comment... but for now... i wanted to share. i thought some of his comments were interesting and at the end, he is self-effacing enough that he leaves the option that he could be wrong... Hope it's okay to share. thx. for reading. srp.)
5 - Aaman
Just to let you know, this interview has been cross-posted to Desicritics.org, a Blogcritics network site - check there for more comments