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Guy Kawasaki Learned These 3 Counter Intuitive Principles From His Time Working With Steve Jobs

This article is more than 5 years old.

Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki had the opportunity to work directly with Steve Jobs. He has gone on to be a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, author, startup advisor and evangelist for many great brands and a serial founder himself. I recently had the honor of hosting Guy in an exclusive interview on the DealMakers Podcast.

In this episode he revealed his take on making it as an entrepreneur, American visionaries, and his biggest regret (listen to the full episode here).

It’s Tougher to Quit

After attending Stanford Guy Kawasaki entered law school. He only lasted about a week. Most of us who have benefited from his experience through his books and articles are probably really glad he did drop out.

Guy’s take on this is that just because you quit something once, it doesn’t make you a quitter for the rest of your life. In fact, he believes that “sometimes it takes more courage to quit than to stick it out.” That can definitely be true in startup life. Sometimes it is smarter to pivot or move onto the next thing. They key is knowing when the time is right.

The Most Important Life Skill

Next Guy went onto getting his MBA. It is here he says he learned one of the most vital things in his career - selling. Guy told listeners that “in the real world, not the internet world where everything is an AB test, if you're breathing, you are selling. You have to sell the person who's checking you into the airline to let your extra bag be free, and put you in first class in an aisle seat. You have to sell when you apply for a job. When you want a promotion, you have to sell your product or your service. You're either making or selling every day of your life.

Apple Shares for 50 Cents

Guy Kawasaki got a job at Apple, when it was selling for around 50 cents a share. Can you imagine getting that deal today?

He eventually was offered three jobs at Apple. He quit twice. The last time he turned down Steve Jobs. If you can believe it, Guy says the one piece of advice he’d go back in time to give himself before launching his own ventures would be to stay at Apple!

Despite that he would have had it made with some stock options, and could be retired on the beaches of Tahiti, and know one really thought the company would become worth trillions, I’m sure the world might be a slightly less great place than with the path that created the Guy Kawasaki we know.

Wise Guy

Guy just launched his latest book, ‘Wise Guy’. It’s his 15th book. A pretty amazing feat. It’s a collection of personal and business stories, exploring his own experiences and the lessons and wisdom he gained from them. That covers everything from business innovation to working at Apple, selling, brand evangelism, social media and speaking. As well as values, parenting, sports and children.

All of his books are recommended reading for startup founders. I’m a big fan. The Art of the Start being one of my favorites.

The Only 3 Visionaries in America’s History

Guy has worked with a lot of entrepreneurs on all sides of the table, and has started a fair number of ventures himself. That includes ACIUS, Claris and Fog City Software. Some of which were bought by Apple.

Yet, despite meeting his cofounders (and wife) at Apple, Guy says he only believes there are three true visionaries in the history of American business.

  1. Steve Jobs
  2. Walt Disney
  3. Elon Musk

Though Guy admits Jobs could be difficult to work for, due to being such a perfectionist, he respects him as truly being a remarkable individual. One who could really anticipate what people would come to want or he made whatever he wanted and made people desire them.

3 Principles Learned from Working with Steve Jobs

On our podcast Guy says he wishes everyone could have the opportunity to work with someone of Jobs’ calibre. Here are the three counter intuitive principles learned from his time at Apple.

1) Your current customers can't tell you how to create a revolution. They're just going to tell you how to make better, cheaper, faster, whatever they have from you already.

2) Design counts. It's not just functionality. People care about design.

3) You should hire people who are better than you at the job because it should be a source of pride when you look around the room, and the people you've hired are all better than you at what they do.

Guy’s own advice for hiring is “ hire people who are better than you, not worse than you, and people who have different skill sets, not the same skill set because you need people to compliment you, not duplicate you.”

Patterns of Successful Entrepreneurs

On the signals that suggest potential success for founders and their tech startup ventures, Guy sees the richest vein are people who are creating products that they want to use. While that sounds completely counterintuitive. Because you're supposed to create the product that has a large and growing market.

His observation is that the great tech companies started because two guys in a garage, or a guy and a gal in a garage, or two gals in a garage, they created the personal computer they wanted, the website they wanted, and come to find out, they're not the only two people in the world that wanted it. Specifically, the richest vein is not marketing-driven where they read some report that says, "IoT is going to be big." So, they start an IoT company even though they could care less about IoT. Basically “you ship, and pray.”

Also more than a marathon, Kawasaki describes startup life like a decathlon. You have to master multiple things at once, and have the stamina to see them through.

Getting in Touch with Guy Kawasaki

Want to get in touch with Guy? He reveals his two favorite social media networks and how to guarantee he’ll open and read your email towards the end of this podcast episode. Listen in to the DealMakers Podcast to find out, and get his personal email address (listen to the full episode here).

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