Kawasaki Quotes

Pursuing your passions makes you more interesting, and interesting people are enchanting.

Steve [Jobs] proves that it's OK to be an asshole... He just has a different OS.

Steve Jobs has a saying that A players hire A players. But B players hire C players, and C players hire D players. It doesn't take long to get to F players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies.

The next time you think that there's something that you "can't live without", wait for a week and then see if you're still alive or not

Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.

Take my word for it: More people will like you if you believe that people are good until proven bad.

If you don't toot your own horn, don't complain that there's no music.

Writing is therapeutic. It helps you cope with issues that seem gargantuan at the time. The process of expressing yourself about a problem, editing your thoughts, and writing some more can help you control issues that you face.

The first good reason to write a book is to add value to people’s lives.

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.

A successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur—or APE.

Do you know what the difference is between PR and advertising? Advertising is when you say how great you are. PR is when other people say how great you are. PR is better.

There are two kinds of people: eaters and bakers. Eaters think the world is a zero-sum game: what someone else eats, they cannot eat. Bakers do not believe that the world is a zero-sum game because they can bake more and bigger pies.

Writing a book isn’t an easy process nor is it always enjoyable, but it is one of life’s most satisfying achievements.

You’ll learn that the key to a great book is editing — grinding, buffing, and polishing — not writing.

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.

While we're living, we need to get over ourselves and accept others if we want to enchant people.

• People deserve a break. The stressed and unorganized person who doesn’t have the same priorities as you may be dealing with an autistic child, abusive spouse, fading parents, or cancer. Don’t judge people until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Give them a break instead.

The self-edited author is as foolish as the self-medicated patient.

• Everyone is better than you at something. If you have a tough time accepting others, it’s probably because you think you’re superior to them. However, you’re not superior to every person in every way.

Defy the crowd. The crowd isn’t always wise. It can also lead you down a path of silliness, sub-optimal choices, and downright destruction. Enchantment is as necessary for people to diverge from a crowd as it is to get people to join one.

Many years ago Rudyard Kipling gave an address at McGill University in Montreal. He said one striking thing which deserves to be remembered. Warning the students against an over-concern for money, or position, or glory, he said: “Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.” —Halford E. Luccock

Do not write to impress others. Authors who write to impress people have difficulty remaining true to themselves. A better path is to write what pleases you and pray that there are others like you. Your first and most important reader is you. If you write a book that pleases you, at least you know one person will like it.

The purpose of a pitch is to stimulate interest, not to close a deal.

Let yourself be enchanted in small ways.

Organizations are successful because of good implementation,not good business plans.

Good blurbs are short, sweet, and limited to six. They answer the question “Why should I buy this book?

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. MARK TWAIN

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.

Want to change the world? Upset the status quo? This takes more than run-of-the-mill relationships. You need to make people dream the same dream that you do.

Remember that nobodies are the new somebodies.

Good enough is good enough. There is time for refinement later. It’s not how great you start—it’s how great you end up.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. —Oscar Wilde

¿Quién leería sobre la sosegada y poco agitada vida y muerte de un empleado de la Biblioteca Municipal de Kawasaki? En definitiva: lo que buscamos es una compensación de lo que no tenemos.

Starting your book is only the first five miles of a twenty-six-mile marathon that’s one-third of a triathlon (authoring, publishing, and entrepreneuring).

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

The first follower is what transforms the lone nut into a leader,” and in a startup, that first follower is usually a cofounder.

Trying to minimize weakness doesn’t produce strength.

The beauty of Goodreads is that you know you’re sowing in a field where everyone, by definition and self-selection, loves to read.

When you’ve worked hard and done well and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you.

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

Yes, Jobs could be overbearing. But as Guy Kawasaki (who worked for Steve Jobs twice) put it: "If you ask an employee of Apple why they put up with the challenges of working there, they will tell you: because Apple enables you to do the best work of your career.

A firm may achieve differentiation, yet this differentiation will usually sustain only so much of a price differential. Thus if a differentiated firm gets too far behind in cost due to technological change or simply inattention, the low cost firm may be in a position to make major inroads. For example, Kawasaki and other Japanese motorcycle producers have been able to successfully attack differentiated producers such as Harley-Davidson and Triumph in large motorcycles by offering major cost savings to buyers.

Suck up with subtlety.

Inertia. Guy’s law of enchantment: “People at rest will remain at rest, and people in motion will keep moving in the same direction unless an outside enchanter acts upon them.

Remember that you are influencing people who are watching you.

If you can’t describe your business model in ten words or fewer, you don’t have a business model.

There are very few people who don’t become more interesting when they stop talking. —Mary Lowry

If you think that leadership is deciding what you want and telling people to do it, I feel sorry for you. Reality is going kick your ass so far that not even Google will find you.

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose. —Ludwig van Beethoven

You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do. —Henry Ford

not pray for an easy life; pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. —Reid Hoffman

Life is too short to work with people you don’t like—especially

Create like a god. Command like a king. Work like a slave. —Constantine Brancusi

Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.

This message is echoed by author Guy Kawasaki, who says it is better to “make meaning than to make money.”5

We have to think like Kill-Notch,” I told Declan, strutting back to the Kawasaki. “How do we do that?” he asked. “Pretend we have massive testicles and no tractability whatsoever.

Do you believe in God?" St. Kawasaki looked amused. "Hell of a question to ask a priest." [...] "I'm asking because I've been a cop most of my life, but I don't believe in justice anymore. I just wondered if the same was true in your work." "Why wouldn't it be? Priests are only human. We wuestion, doubt, even grow a little despondent at times because what the world shoves at us doesn't seem to bear much mark of the divine." [...] "But in the end I always come back to believing." "Why? Why believe in something that continues to let you down?" "Like justice, eh?" The priest drank and made a satified sound. "Sure hits the spot, Cork." He looked down where Cork sat on the folding canvas chair. "Everything disappoints us sometimes. Everybody disappoints us. Men let women down, women let men down, ideals don't hold water. And God doesn't seem to give a damn. I can't speak for God, Cork, but I'll tell you what I think. I think we expect too much. Simple as that. And the only thing that lets us down is our own expectaton. I used to pray God for an easy life. Now I pray to be a strong person.

Knowledge is great. Competence is great. But the combination of both encourages people to trust you and increases your powers of enchantment. And in this world, the combination is a breath of fresh air.

Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. DON MIGUEL RUIZ, THE FOUR AGREEMENTS: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO PERSONAL FREEDOM

​ Paranoyak bir girişimciden daha beteri, olsa olsa köpeğiyle konuşan paranoyak bir girişimcidir. Fikirlerini serbestçe anlatmakla kaybedeceğinden daha çok kazanacakların var - geribeslenim, bağlantılar, açılacak kapılar. Eğer fikrini yalın biçimde tartışman onu savunmasız kılıyorsa, o zaman gerçek anlamda bir fikrin yok demektir.

To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.

Doing, not learning to do, is the essence of entrepreneurship.

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than smart.

Çoğu girişimci, yalnızca pirinç ve soya sosu ile beslenir ve bir yandan da iğneyle kuyu kazarcasına kendi işini kurar.

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.   —Seneca

No hables al menos que puedas mejorar el silencio. (Don’t speak unless you can improve on the silence.) —Jorge Luis Borges

The genesis of great companies is answering simple questions that change the world, not the desire to become rich.

For example, how much do you think a senior vice president of Microsoft who came from McKinsey knows about starting a company?

when people believe in your product, they will help you succeed through credible, continuous, and cost-effective proselytization.

It’s not what you know or who you know, but who knows you. —Susan RoAne

Sometimes blissful ignorance is awfully empowering

Can we get a bank loan to start our business? Answer you’re looking for: “No,” assuming it’s a tech business. Tech businesses don’t have liquid assets to use as collateral.

Entrepreneurship is at its best when it alters the future, and it alters the future when it jumps curves

Entrepreneurship is about doing, not learning to do.

If you make meaning, you’ll probably also make money.

people may recognize one founder as the innovator, but it takes a team to make a new venture work.

Mission statements are long, dull, and forgettable.

You’ll learn that the key to a great book is editing—grinding, buffing, and polishing—not writing.

(The shortest mantra is the single Hindi word “Om.”)

all, leaders cannot have a bad day. No matter how scared and depressed you are, you cannot show fear, uncertainty, or doubt. You must exude optimism every day.

success may take a long time, so you’d better at least not hate what you’re doing.

La gente confía en ti cuando estás informado, eres competente, piensas en grande y creas situaciones de valor seguro.

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

So what?

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.

BE BRIEF. Brevity beats verbosity in social media. You’re competing with millions of posts every day. People make snap judgments and move right along if you don’t capture their interest at a glance. My experience is that the sweet spot for posts of curated content is two or three sentences on Google+ and Facebook and 100 characters on Twitter. The sweet spot for content that you create, such as blog posts, is 500 to 1,000 words.

We would be thrilled to have you as a guest on our show, EntrepreneurOnFire, a top ranked Business, averaging over 1 million unique listens each month in over 145 countries. We understand you have a busy schedule, and that's why we've developed an efficient, 30-minute audio interview over Skype. We have an awesome lineup thus far, including Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Barbara Corcoran, Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Eric Ries, and Tim Ferriss... just to name a few.

Hiring better than yourself means that you hire for strengths as opposed to hiring on the basis of the lack of weaknesses. A great leader hires people for their strengths and then assigns them tasks that take advantage of those strengths.

It’s easy to imagine a young person asking his parents if he should go to work for a startup and being told, “Don’t. It’s too risky. Get a job in a nice, safe company that will be around a long time—like Lehman Brothers, Arthur Andersen, or Enron.

The wisest course of action is to take your best shot with a prototype, immediately get it to market, and iterate quickly. If you wait for ideal circumstances in which you have all the information you need (which is impossible), the market will pass you by.

40. Be Defiant In our opinion, most search engine optimization (SEO) is bullshit. It involves trying to read Google’s mind and then gaming the system to make Google find crap. There are three thousand computer science PhDs at Google trying to make each search relevant, and then there’s you trying to fool them. Who’s going to win? Tricking Google is futile. Instead, you should let Google do what it does best: find great content. So defy all the SEO witchcraft out there and focus on creating, curating, and sharing great content. This is what’s called SMO: social-media optimization.

If you think that leadership is deciding what you want and telling people to do it, I feel sorry for you. Reality is going kick your ass so far that not even Google will find you. The goal of this chapter is to help you become such a great leader that you’ll appear on the first page of a Google search for “leader.

Q: I admit it: I’m scared. I can’t afford to quit my current job. Is this a sign that I don’t have what it takes to succeed? A: It doesn’t mean anything. You should be scared. If you aren’t scared, something is wrong with you, and your fears are not a sign that you don’t have the right stuff. In the beginning, every entrepreneur is scared. It’s just that some deceive themselves about it, and others don’t. You can overcome these fears in two ways. First, the kamikaze method is to dive into the business and try to make a little progress every day. One day you’ll wake up and you won’t be afraid anymore—or at least you’ll have a whole new set of fears.

You should always be selling—not strategizing about selling. Don’t test, test, test—that’s a game for big companies. Don’t worry about being embarrassed. Don’t wait to develop the perfect product or service. Good enough is good enough. There will be plenty of time for refinement later. It’s not how great you start—it’s how great you end up.

I have a hardcore attitude: a “self-published, ghost-written book” is wrong because the concept behind self publishing is that you have knowledge or emotions that you want to express. When people read a book—particularly a self-published one—they have the right to expect that it’s the person’s writing, not cleaned-up dictation or slapping a name on a book that someone else wrote.

His idea is to get your team together and pretend that your product has failed. That’s right: failed, cratered, imploded, or “went aloha oe,” as we say in Hawaii. You ask the team to come up with all the reasons why the failure occurred. Then each member has to state one reason until every reason is on a list. The next step is to figure out ways to prevent every reason from occurring.

Albert Einstein trendedir. Bütün ceplerini ve çantalarını araştırmasına karşın biletini bulamaz. Bu arada kontrolör yaklaşır ve şöyle bir şeyler söyler: "Dr. Einstein, sizi herkes tanır. Princeton'un size başka bir tren bileti alacak parası olduğunu da biliyoruz." Einstein'in yanıtı da şöyle olur: "Benim endişem para değil. Bileti bulmak zorundayım, çünkü nereye gittiğimi unuttum." Tıpkı Einstein gibi, sizler de para için değil, nereye gittiğiniz için endişelenmelisiniz. Nereye gittiğinizi keşfederseniz, para da zaten gelir.

Girişim sermayederi bir kadın, bir akşam babasını otopark servisi olan şık bir restorana yemeğe götürüyor. Yolda giderlerken, babası, gösterişli bir BMW aldığı için kızını azarlıyor. Kadın, restoranın önünde duruyor ve inip içeri giriyorlar. Birkaç saat sonra baba kız restorandan çıktıklarında, otomobilin hâlâ park ettikleri yerde durduğunu görüyorlar. Fırsatı kaçırmayan kadın, babasına dönüp şöyle diyor: "Şimdi anladın mı? Restoranlar, gösterişli otomobilleri kapının önüne bırakırlar, çıkınca getirilmesini beklemek zorunda kalmazsın!" O anda otoparkçı kadının yanına yaklaşıp "Hanımefendi," diyor, "anahtarları vermemişsiniz. Otomobilinizi parka çekemedik.