Guy Kawasaki | If I Knew Then What I Know Now | SXSWedu

good afternoon my name is Gabi DeLeon and I'm a member of the South by Southwest edu team we're all very excited to have you join us in learning from our next featured speaker Guy Kawasaki is currently the chief evangelist of canva a simple to use online graphic design tool formerly he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and chief evangelist of Apple he has also authored twelve books including the art of social media the art of the start and enchantment bringing more than 30 years of experience and insight into idea growth and empowering others our next speaker is sure to leave us inspired and prepared to empower today's students to be the leaders of tomorrow please join me in welcoming to the stage Guy Kawasaki hi hi thank you very much I'm going to take a little bit more about my background so you understand my context I am NOT an educator per se I worked for the Macintosh division of Apple from 1983 to 1987 as Apple's software evangelist so how many of you use Macintosh is on there yeah this is my kind of audience yeah so I worked in the Macintosh division which is probably the largest collection of egomaniacs in the history of California that's saying a lot if you know people from California and we work for Steve Jobs which is a very interesting experience to use the word interesting very loosely you know because we were christiev we had very special rules unlike any other part of Apple unlimited supplies of fresh orange juice this is you know back in the mid 80s so that fresh orange juice was a big deal today at Google you know they have like Tibetan monks raising oranges for you and we had a great travel policy that unlike any other part of Apple the Macintosh division employee could fly first-class for any flight over two hours my interpretation of that rule of course is the two hours begins at the moment you leave your apartment so I flew first classroom San Francisco to Monterey it was a great time back then the company had the Apple two division which was making all the money in the Macintosh division which was spending all the money because Macintosh was not yet shipping and we were such bad people we would not let Apple two division employees into the Macintosh division building so we can imagine working for an organization where you were not allowed in a building of the same organization and the Apple 2 people quickly figured out that they were paying for the building that they were not allowed into so they came up with a great joke about us which is how many Macintosh division employees to take to screw in a light bulb the answer is 1 because the Macintosh division employee holds up the light bulb and expects the entire universe to revolve around him because we're in such a homogenous highly-educated aware freedom of choice audience I'll tell you the Microsoft version of this joke so the Microsoft version of this joke is how many Microsoft employees does it take to screw in a light bulb and the answer to that is none because Bill Gates has declared darkness the new standard so now after the Macintosh division I started several software companies I became a writer and a speaker later I returned to Apple in 1995 when Apple was supposed to die every decade or so Apple goes through a period where all the experts say that Apple is going to die and so I chose to return to Apple when it was supposed to die in order to preserve the Macintosh cult in order to prevent apples death and then I left and I started some more companies a writer and a speaker recently I advised the CEO of Motorola for about a year and then I fell in love with this product called canva how many of you use canva already yeah all right we'll get to that and and I'm the chief evangelist of kin which is a Sydney based the graphics online graphics design service which you will love and Here I am and so I have never spoken for the edu part of it South by Southwest so this is like I'm losing my etu virginity today and I have to say I you know South by Southwest is my favorite conference of the year and I go to lots of conferences and this is by far my favorite and I have to tell you so lots of people ask me well what is an evangelist and evangelism if I have my Greek language correct comes from Greek words meaning bringing the good news and so as the evangelist for Apple as software evangelist and later chief evangelist my job was to bring the good news of Macintosh that Macintosh would make people more creative and productive especially visa vie windows because with Windows you have to fight Windows right it's you or Windows if the Wrestle windows to the ground and defeat Windows it doesn't become one with you and Macintosh makes people more creative and more productive it becomes one with you becomes an extension of you so the good news was Macintosh would increase people's creativity and productivity and canva I believe increases people's design ability and so that's what I am I'm an evangelist and I have to tell you that I think that people who are educators are probably the purest form of evangelism because you are constantly bringing the good news and I know you're not doing it for the money so in a sense or not in a sense I just want to thank you for all the work that you do from on behalf of the rest of society to thank you for the work that you do because I appreciate the good news that you bring I have four children so I understand what you do so thank you very much first of all so believe it or not I hope you don't believe it or not I'm 60 years old because I can't believe it and I'm 60 years old and when you get to be 60 I do some sort of different differences in your perspective let's say and one of the things that happens when you get to be about 60 is you just don't give a anymore you just let's see how you how do you do sign language for I've always wanted to that's a lot of gesturing for okay how do you say them okay now we know something all right so at 60 you know you kind of can let it rip there now and and so I approach South by Southwest edu and I said I want to give a speech about basically at sixty all the lessons that I've learned so the the title for this speech formally is you find you then what I know now so I'm going to tell you from a sixty year olds perspective who's you know been at Apple twice advised Google and Motorola and all this kind of thing I've written 13 books I'm going to say some things that with hindsight and with some foresight that I think would be useful for students be useful for young people entering the you know the workplace entering their latest ages in life but I also have to tell you I drove the people at South by Southwest eazy-e do crazy because this was the working title for weeks and weeks and weeks it's on the website its printed it's all that and and yesterday I said can I just change the title a little bit I want to have a slightly different emphasis so really the second title I wanted to do was you know skills that I think students should learn so based on what I know but really really what I want to tell you is this is what I wish my kids would believe when I tell them this because I have four children they are 10 13 19 and 21 and man you know it's much easier to be the keynote speaker than it is to be the parent let me tell you something so I want I'm going to give you a top ten of the things that I think students should learn based on what I learned and this is also pretty much what I wish my kids would believe when I tell them but that's wishful thinking so three alternate titles you can tweet all three titles if you like I'll try to fulfill that I've also watched high tech speakers for about 30 years now literally and I'll tell you something I learned two things about high tech speakers which if you're at South by Southwest you may agree and you may see some in action pretty much tech speakers suck that's number one tweet that and the second salient point about tech speakers is that they go long so they go beyond their official slot and I've seen this happen time and time again and I'll tell you something it's kind of ironic if you suck and you go short it's okay really and if you're great and you go long also okay but if you suck and go long that's just that's a bad combination you know that's like stupid and arrogant it's like hard to use and buggy I mean it's just not a good thing and so what I do is I always use a top ten format for my speeches this is so that in case you think I suck you can track progress through my speech because you know I have ten points so you know approximately how much longer I'll suck okay so top ten so these are the top ten things I wish my kids would listen to I wish the kids you know college coming out of college in high school would internalize and embrace and this is based on you know we find you then what I know now so number one my observation after 60 years of living is that I used to think that learning stopped when you went to school and I now think that that is totally wrong and that one of the lessons that I'd like to impart to my children and I hope that you impart to the kids that you educate is the process of learning it is a process it is not a sprint it is a marathon and to truly be successful in life you have to continue to learn one way of stating this goal is because of Google and YouTube and you know all the information that's been documented on the internet and Wikipedia I think the worthwhile goal is to figure out how to do anything without asking anybody and so you know when my kids ask me how do you do something I push them to the Internet I tell them go figure it out and I think that is a such a valuable skill of self-reliance to learn and to continue to learn and I have a somewhat facetious example this is a screenshot of it and I'll even show you the actual video so I have or we have two dogs one dog is a pug so that pug cannot counter Cerf just physically and just can't you know pug is pug is about this big the other dog is big enough to counter Cerf and that dog is always going through our trash always counter surfing so I said in the spirit of this keynote I should learn by myself without asking a vet without calling up a dog obedience trainer or you know whatever because it's Silicon Valley there's a tutor for everything right I should be able to learn how to train my dog not to eat food on the counter and so I did that to my astonishment so watch this video okay so that is a product I just in case you want to know because I bought four of them it's it's called snappy and it is a tiny little mousetrap that is connected to that big piece of red plastic it doesn't hurt the dog it just scares the crap out of the dog and and it said that you know after the dog does this once or twice the dog will no longer counter surf and it is by God absolutely true so this I'm so proud of myself that you know this is something that I continue to learn right I did I didn't ask anybody now if you're really astute you could say guy why are you switching between PowerPoint and Chrome to do that right how come you didn't learn how to embed YouTube in the PowerPoint that is a completely illogical question and I want you to know that I spent at least an hour watching videos and reading how to embed YouTube video into PowerPoint and it involves you have to bring up a special menu called a developer menu you have to scroll down and find this special kind of object called shockwave and then you have to do this in that and like I could not do it so I would say this principle applies to everything except Microsoft products okay so number two number two I think very important lesson for our kids and even ourselves is how to separate correlation from causation that so many things go wrong and so many assumptions are made and so many mistakes are made because people cannot separate correlation and causation and the example that I'm constantly faced with is Steve Jobs so Steve Jobs was a truly remarkable person okay fantastic visionary changed the world change the world several times I not beer I would not be here if it were not for Steve Jobs there's no question but one of the dangers is that people read the books they watch the movies and they look at what Steve Jobs does and did and they think oh so if I do that I will be like Steve Jobs I'll be brilliant I'll be visionary I'll be a billionaire you know all this kind of good stuff and they have a very hard time separating correlation from causation this is an example so Steve Jobs used to buy a Mercedes and before six months went up he would always trade the Mercedes in so he never registered his car I've never I never saw Steve Jobs in a car with a license plate he would constantly trade that in ah listen people like Steve Jobs they have a different operating system okay it's like explaining flying to you know a fish it's just so I okay I understand it and just to continue on these stories Steve Jobs believed that with one person in rush hour he could drive in the carpool lane okay and furthermore he believed that he could park in the handicap spot and he also wore New Balance shoes he wore blue jeans anymore mock turtleneck black mock turtleneck and I think many people say okay so I'm going to buy black mock turtleneck blue jeans New Balance shoes I want to drive a Mercedes not license it driving the carpool lane and park in the handicap slot and I will be the next Steve Jobs and really when they do all things they just are a clueless just like they were before right and so people have a really hard time separating that my god you know they look at Google and say well Google has volleyball and they have the chef and they have like massages on campus and they have free dry cleaning and their buses with Wi-Fi so let's take our crappy company with our crappy product and our crappy servers and we'll give people buses and sand volleyball and free shrimp and you know all this stuff and we'll be Google and it just doesn't happen so I think a very important lesson is to to teach people that correlation and causation are completely and utterly different the second lesson I'd like to pass on to my kids the third lesson is how to pitch I think no pun intended that life is a pitch that you are constantly pitching as an entrepreneur you're pitching for capital you may pitch for a sale you may be pitching an employee to leave a large company enjoying your underfunded startup you may be pitching a company to embrace your product while you know that your product is barely held together by wire and duct tape that you have to pitch your supervisor your superintendent your principal your teacher you have to pitch your parents life is a pitch and I think it is such an important skill that I used to believe that you know the the hard part was coming up with the idea and the easy part was getting approval and I've kind of reversed that I think the easy part is coming over the idea the hard part is getting buy-in and so using the standard that most of us use I like to suggest it when you make a presentation whether it is in PowerPoint or in keynote the 10-20-30 rule of pitching which is that the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation is 10 10 many people break this rule very funny story is that you know I've written several books about startups and many people come in to a meeting with me and they say you know guy I am a big fan I have read all your books and I have you know I have addressed what you said I have followed your recommendations and then they boot PowerPoint and I see it's 60 slides and I like having this out-of-body experience you're telling me that you read my book you've internalized all my values how is it that you have 60 for 60 slides and what I found is that many people believe that I'm writing this rule of 10 slides for the great unwashed masses for the hoi polloi but for this person who has a patent-pending curve jumping paradigm shifting way to sell dog food online this person really needs 60 slides I've never met an entrepreneur who believed that he was the great unwashed mass she was the great unwashed high polloi everybody believed that 10 slides is good for everybody else but not my patent-pending curve jumping paradigm shifting enterprise scalable product or service now you'll see that throughout this presentation I'm going to use about 30 slides okay so like okay so like I want you to know I'm very self-aware right so I knew that in in recommendation number one where I said continue to learn you know well you're a hypocrite how come you can't learn to embed YouTube into PowerPoint if you so freakin smart guy so I realized that I pointed that out I flaunt that so now you may wonder well how come you're going to use 40 slides guy and you're telling us to use 10 and let me explain you are not to me okay okay the next part of the pitch recommendation is I wish you could convince my kids that you need to be able to pitch your tents lies in 20 minutes the normal unit of a meeting is 60 minutes that is true but so seldom do you get 60 minutes and in particular for the you know ninety five percent of the world who uses Windows laptops who's not in this room right now I know from firsthand experience that most people who use Windows laptop two of them are walking out right now most people who use Windows laptop need 40 minutes to make it work with the projector so if I knew that most of the world used Mackintosh's this would be the 1060 rule okay but I know that I have to dumb it down so that all the windows people don't feel left out and they have 40 minutes to make their laptop work with the projector and the 30 part of this rule is that I think the ideal size font is 30 points anything smaller eight ten or twelve people tend to put too much text and read the text it's not readable from a distance also when you have that much text you tend to read it verbatim and when you do that what happens is that you read verbatim and the audience figures out one slide into the presentation this bozo is reading verbatim I can read silently to myself faster than this bozo can read it to me I will just read ahead if this rule is too dogmatic for you may I suggest an algorithm the algorithm is figure out who the oldest person is in the audience divide his or her age by two 60-year old people divided by 2 30 50 year-old divided by 225 granted some day you may be pitching a 16 year old for something that they use the 8.4 okay but until that day 10 slides 20 minutes 30 point font now my next recommendation is that everybody should learn at least the basis of writing software and it's not because I want everybody to become a programmer I think writing software is a very good exercise in understanding product development understanding beginnings and ends understanding project management understanding all that kind of stuff looking back I really wish I had taken at least one programming class I have never taken a programming class in my life and I think that has left a hole in my capabilities and so I don't expect everybody to become a programmer but if you if you try to write at least a few programs you know as simple as an iOS kind of program at least you'll know when programmers are bullshitting you that's the goal to either be able to write software or to know when you're being bullshitted about software as a very worthy goal so I think everybody should learn to write software at least one class ok number 5 number 5 is just to date myself so I you know as I said I'm 60 years old so I went to school from I graduated high school 1972 I graduated college in 1976 which is many of you weren't born in so it is my recollection of those days is that I was always trying to reach a minimum right in high school you had to write a 20-page minimum report in college same thing 20 page minimum report and I struggled with that I mean I like I got the IBM Selectric typewriter and I found the largest font like 14-point or Thor font on that Selectric typewriter ball space and 1/2 I did everything to reach my minimums and then I graduate I go to work for Apple and I find out everybody at Apple has ADHD and so they cannot read anything 20 pages and so the standard at Apple that John Sculley set was one page and so my kids I think they need to understand that you have to be brief you have to be able to explain what you are what you do in 30 seconds the so-called elevator picture and I don't mean an elevator you know in a building in Dubai I mean you know like a four-story elevator and I tell you it goes to companies so many companies make mission statements many organizations make mission stavis many of you may have mission statements and the nature of mission statements is always like you know we aspire to create patent-pending curve jumping paradigm shifting products with a reasonable return to our shareholders who are enabling our employees to self actualize their life goals while killing as few dolphins as paw right at your typical mission statement and if you took out the name of the company you have no idea which company this is for I'll tell you why this happens so if you're not familiar with how businesses do it they do a 2-day executive off-site okay and usually this off-site is at a hotel with a golf course there's very high correlation not causation correlation golf course and mission statement so you take you take your top 50 or 60 employees to a hotel with a golf course in Silicon Valley the best place to do this is the ritz-carlton Half Moon Bay okay when you take your 50 or 60 employees for two days you hire an outside meeting facilitator you the reason why you need an outside meeting facilitator is because no one on your team can lead if you had a leader you wouldn't need the off-site by definition so the fact that you need the off-site means that you need someone to be the executive coach the meeting facilitator in California typically this is a woman is not sexism it's not massage ism it's a fact that most of the time these meeting facilitators are women these women they're driving Priuses they were Birkenstocks they're on a they're vegans they are on a can I piss off anybody else they're on a they're on a dual career path they are meeting facilitator executive coach and Lamaze instructor because if you think about it conceptually the process of getting on a mission statement is just like getting out a baby same thing you know breathe deep and push and so during the first day of this off-site moonbeam the meeting facilitator has you form cross-functional teams cross-functional team is business speak for teams with people you cannot stand inside your company okay so you form cross-functional teams with the people you can't stand and you do these exercises like okay so one of you come to the front of your team everybody stand behind hold out your arms shut your eyes now fall backwards learn to trust the people you cannot stand kumbaya right that's the first day the second day you're in a room like this there's a pad of paper and someone is like this meeting facilitator moonbeam is going to help you create this mission statement the mission statement is going to be good and and everybody in the room fifty of you figures Wow I gave two days of my life in this outdoor exercises crime climbing ropes and ladders together falling into the arms of people I can't stand I should at least get one word in the mission statement so that's why mission statements are always 50 words okay so I think you should instead make a mantra a mantra for why your organization exists two or three words some examples of potential mantras for Nike the mantra could be authentic athletic performance not just do it just do it as a slogan why does Nike exist authentic athletic performance why does eBay exist democratize Commerce why does Etsy exist democratize craft why does Google exists democratize information why does Apple exist democratize computing why does canva exist democratize design I'm not saying everything has to be democracy but it is two or three words if you were to ask me what's my mantra two words empower people I want to empower people with my writing my speaking my advising sometimes my investing so a mantra and the rubber really meets the road this is a screenshot or this is actually a cutting and pasting this is the tipping I can't read it I figured it would be so small you can't read it this is an actual copy and page of the typical email I get every day and I think that the ideal length for an email is five sentences five sentences this is about 50 sentences I never read a man I really hope you're taking a picture this but this I hope we don't get this person fired but this is a pitch for me to write about a company and it took that many sentences and I could tell you something I never read to the bottom of that first of all usually the first paragraph I already stopped because it you know whenever you get a pitch this is as you know if somebody writes me an email says as you know what if I know do you know it why are you telling me I know it you know and so I think it's five sentences I think the most important part of an email is the subject line you win or lose with the subject line the same thing is true with social media that you know in in two seconds or so someone makes a decision are you worth following or not it's because of your avatar first of all you know do you have a great avatar you have a great profile I like to tell people when it comes to social media that there's dating analogy and the dating analogy is that well there's a harmony right a harmony 29 fields of psychographic information are you open to adoption do you like to walk on the beach or walk in the mountains do you like white wine or red wine you like dogs or cats because any harmony you're going to find your soulmate and this soulmate then you you're going to hold hands and gaze into each other's eyes and complete each other sentences for the rest of your lives that's eHarmony right the other end of the extreme is tinder hot not hot not hot not in my humble opinion life is like tinder it's not like a harmony and so I think you need to teach kids teach people to be brief that's the nature of the business number six number six is I am a firm believer and I have backed this belief up by going to work for canva that you have to learn to use graphics it used to be a world where if you could just speak it was good enough you used to be a world where you could speak and write you're ahead of everybody but now I truly do believe you have to speak write and be able to use graphics because there's so much action there's so many emails so many posts so many tweets so many everything if you don't know how to use graphics you are at a significant disadvantage so I'll show you a little graph from my Twitter analytics so with Twitter believe it or not I tweet roughly 50 times a day okay well while standing here probably I've tweeted four times you're going to be like how did you do that guys it's a long story anyway so so this is a graph that shows you that we decided to use a piece of software that would take a take the picture from our blog posts and automatically add the picture to every tweet so I used to tweet without a picture and then that day right over well right over like the first fifth you see that the first low part then you see where it went bumped up that day that's the day we decided to add a picture to every tweet roughly engagement doubled doubled and this is a crucial crucial finding and so now almost every tweet that you see for me has a picture it doubles engagement and I don't think this is true in just social media I think you know if you want to send an effective email there's a graphic everything has a graphic and so this is why I went to work for this companies can but this is the candle home page and so what canva enables you to do is pick from all these designs and then you go here and we have these designs for this is in case you this is an example of making a restaurant menu so this is all it would take to do a menu and let me just show you quickly how it works so let's go to the this is the canva homepage and let's say that you wanted to make a social-media graphic so you click on the type of design and we bring in a bunch of designs on the left side that we've done in advance and you scroll down through these designs you say hmm I kind of like you know this design so you drag it over here and this is the start of your design and you then change the text you've changed the color you change the font you can do all that kind of stuff and of course you may not like these pictures so let's say you had a more I don't know summer beach theme so you type in beach and it comes up with a bunch of beach scenes and you drag in the beach scene oops and now you've changed from flowers to beach you could also use your own graphics so let's say that I wanted to use a graphic showing Steve Jobs with a Mac 128k so I would just drag this in and change it to this so all of this is done by pointing and clicking and dragging then you click on download and you create a graphic so literally in about 30 seconds you can create a graphic and it's it's not just for social media it's for all these design types so let's say that you are you have written a book and you want to create a cover for your book so this is the kindle designs same scenario you look down through all these designs you pick one the design comes in over here on the right side eventually and then you drag in your photo you drag in your graphic and you know boom you're done again you change the text I'll go and grab another graphic here let's say you know your this is your Auto this is your autobiography so you want to put your face there and that's what it would take the designer book cover so that's canva and just trust me if you would try canva it would make me really happy can I think can I tell you the story of the how many of you already know the story of the Scorpion and the Frog so not too many okay so the gist of the story of the Scorpion and the Frog is scorpion in the Frog there on the side of a river scorpion wants to get to the other side of the river scorpion says to frog take me to the other side of the river frog says I'm not going to let you get on my back if I let you on my back and gonna sting me and I'm going to die scorpion says the Frog well that's stupid if I get on your back and we're in the middle of the river and I sting you you die and I die because I cannot swim that's why I need you to take me to the other side of river so frogs is okay make sense scorpion jumps on frogs back frog and scorpion jump start swimming across in the middle of the river scorpion stings the Frog frog is about to die for all gain last breaths is why did you sting me I'm going to die and now you're going to die and the scorpion says I'm a scorpion that's what scorpions do now you're wanting what the hell does this have to do with anything right okay so let me tell you I am an evangelist I evangelized that's what I have to do that's why I showed you canva next thing what can I say next thing is believe it or not I think it's going to be a common skill that's necessary is to how to make a video I really do believe that that the skill of making a you know 2 second bumper and then a 60 second video I went through the exercise recently for a new book of making this that I had no idea how to make a bumper I had no idea how to edit video I had not adair to make the ending it's a very important skill I read I read a study last week that said that they did a test where job applicants could apply with three things everybody had the written form right but there are also people who could enclose a audio of them pitching themselves and then you could also include a video pitching themselves and they found that the people who used an audio we're about 50% higher or perceived about 50% more competent and smarter because the HR person could hear the person's voice could hear the pitch interestingly video made it slightly better not that much better but I think that going forward making a video is going to be a key key skill basically it's not enough to just write I think it's writing and graphics and video that's what it's going to take the a thing is how to work social media you know every time I read these things about how we need to caution our children about using social media don't put stupid pictures up because the college is going to look at it and you know god forbid you have a 4.2 average you have 2400 SATs and Dartmouth's going to see you that you were drunk on Facebook you know that's why you're going to get rejected by Dartmouth and so it that just to me that's just like short-sighted I think if you're a company now and if you have some kind of policy that we're going to check people social media and if they did anything stupid when they were young we will not hire them pretty soon that company will fail because they're going to hire all the boring stupid people because if you I mean I don't know about you but man I did some really stupid things and I was 18 and I turned out okay so I'm not encouraging to encourage stupidity but I'm saying that man if we help if we help our kids to the standards that we think we should if we held ourselves to that standard we would not hire ourselves so I think the better way to approach social media is this which is this is marketing driven social media if I told you that a recruiter or a college admissions officer was going to look at Facebook or Pinterest or LinkedIn or whatever that is a very positive thing because now if I were a student and I'll tell my kids that I do tell my kids that you know if you know that Virgin America is looking at your LinkedIn profile is looking at your Facebook profile if you know that Dartmouth and Harvard and Stanford and Carnegie Mellon San Jose State and you know every college maybe even USC if everybody's being at your Facebook then market yourself through Facebook this is a good thing show in facebook that oh here I am winning the physics award Here I am capting the soccer T Here I am in Guatemala building a church right you can work social media now just to show you the reality between keynote speech and life so my son is right now in the process of applying for internships and I looked at his let his LinkedIn profile in our family hey sue is kind of a family thing for let's just say it is a shorthand for oh my god kind of thing okay so the stuff in white on the left is what my son said stuff and right is what I said so I said go fix your LinkedIn profile it's not up to date the picture you have in your LinkedIn profile was taken from your Winter Formal you and your girlfriend and I could see that you cropped your face out of this big photo so when people look at it it's all out of focus and go fix that and so my son you know think of this like my son the son of someone who's worth 13 books has worked for Google and Apple right software evangelist think of my cred right my son tells me well I don't even use LinkedIn so why should I fix it and you see my response well doofus it's not what you use it's what recruiters look at this is a huge difference so I'm just telling you this is a moment of humility I'm telling you that I'm telling you kids should learn to work social media I can't even convince my kids to do that just so you know ok number 9 I think that one of the key skills in life if you really want to get ahead is you need to learn how to reciprocate in advance which is kind of a mind twister you know how to resit how do you pay for something back when it haven't even happened and and I have to tell you that throughout my career this has happened so many times if there's two secrets to my career it is I worked hard because I love to work I love to grind it out and secondly I helped people before they could help me and I help people for the sheer pleasure of helping people and with hindsight it paid off but I really get great pleasure I kind of default to yes you know I think in the world there are two kinds of people they're bakers and eaters right so an eater sees the world as well there's this limited apple pie and if somebody else eats the pie I eat less pie Baker's say I can bake more pies I can bake cookies I can make cakes everybody can get more dessert I think that bakers succeed more than eaters because Baker's do not see the world as a zero-sum game so the skill to reciprocate in particularly in advance is a very powerful skill this is an example this is a rug that depicts the war between Ethiopia and Italy Italy invaded Ethiopia when Italy invaded Ethiopia the whole world stood by and did not help Ethiopia except for one country Mexico Mexico helped Ethiopia against Italy okay we fast forward about 90 years Mexico has this huge earthquake thousands of Mexican people died in this earthquake Ethiopia collected money and sent money to Mexico about 70 or 80 years later even though Ethiopia was in the middle of a famine so people in Ethiopia literally could not eat but they felt they had to reciprocate for what Mexico did when the Italians invaded Ethiopia that's how strong reciprocation is another examples are right after the Civil War the people of New York the north bought the people of Columbia South Carolina the south a fire truck because they heard Columbia was using a bucket brigade the first fire truck was on a ship that sank so the people of New York none north but the people of the south a second fire truck 150 years ago by guess what 9/11 what do the people of Columbia do after 9/11 they buy the people of New York a fire truck they raised half a million dollars to reciprocate for something that New York did a hundred and fifty years or that's how powerful reciprocation is so I recommend a book for you about reciprocation and influence and persuasion it's a book called influence by Bob shell Dini CIA LD ini when an author tells you to read somebody else's book that is there's no more powerful recommendation let me tell you Bob chill genie is the man when it comes to social psychology and influence I'll give you two power tips for this so reciprocation let's say I ID fall - yes I think like a baker not an eater and I do something for you okay I do something for you I whatever and you thank me all right so now the question is what is the optimal response to her when she thanks me for doing something I did for her so you may think it's you're welcome it's not you're welcome it's I know you would do the same for me I know you would do the same for me I'm telling her she is a good person she has class I know you would do the same for me right but you know what else I'm telling her I'm telling her I know you will do the same for me that's the optimal response second power tip when someone who is you you may think the best thing to do is to forgive the debt forget about don't worry about it you don't owe me anything I was just kidding but that's not the optimal response the optimal response is to tell her how she can pay me back because she might want me to do more and I am happy to do more because I default to yes I'm a baker not an eater but I am not clairvoyant I don't know what I can do more for her she's hesitant to ask me for more because she figures she's already owing me I am happy to do more but I don't know what she does so we're stuck so the best thing I can do for our relationship is for me to tell her how to pay me back like you could tell your school system to use canva I'll do even more for you so the key point here is I know you would do the same for me here's how you can pay me back to power tips on reciprocation for you number 10 number 10 maybe the most important hindsight that I have so this is about sucking it up and I have a hero everybody has heroes my hero is this guy this guy is Mike Rowe he used to have a show called dirty jobs how many used to watch dirty jobs like his dirty jobs not the best show ever right so for those of you not familiar Mike Rowe used to go and do all the dirty jobs in America collect trash in San Francisco Chinatown working the pain fracture he went to Hawaii worked in the poi factory clean the outside of a hotel he goes into the sewer gets out the dead rats he perform artificial insemination on chickens turkeys pigs llamas micro does the dirty job he will do whatever it takes and my lesson in life is that's how you succeed I think a lot of it I was influenced by a book called mindset by a woman named Carol Dweck and that is just a fantastic book the gist of that book is that there are two kinds of mindsets there's sort of a growth mindset that you can do more anything is possible and there's sort of a little anti growth mindset that you have to jealously guard what you have and you can't do more so Carol Dweck one of her recommendations is you know instead of instead of telling your precious little jewel that oh you're so smart and you know you're so talented that that actually has a negative effect and what you should tell your kids is that the people who succeed work the hardest because if you tell someone who's smart and naturally talented that you are smart and naturally talented then they become risk-averse because they don't want to risk that image that self impression that they must be smart and natural talent so they don't want to take chances but if you tell your kids that they will succeed if they work hard if they will do the dirty job if they will suck it up those are the people who succeed I think that is a very valuable lesson learning how to suck it up and those are my 10 lessons in life 10 hindsight's 10 things I wish that I knew when I started in my career and 10 things that I wish that you communicate to the next generation of entrepreneurs and citizens in this world thank you very much thank you I would be happy to take questions I love taking questions so fire away okay no question I see you later than one yeah be sure you get some Franklin barbecue before you leave although I have to tell you this morning I had loved barbecue and the story I heard is luck I'm not pronouncing it right I don't even know can't be late barbecue that would make no said why so love barbecue the story I heard is that what's the name of the guy who like is it the smoker or the pit boss or whatever the guy who cooks yeah he started a barbecue and he was from Franklin right I gotta tell you man I've had Franklin barbecue is to die for and this morning I had la-la barbecue and it is also to die for I had barbecue at 9 o'clock this morning yeah so I love Austin I love Allen's booth these are my ostrich boots I love ostrich boots although you know in California you can't wear ostrich boots because God Nena god help us you killed something right once I thought once I was in Oslo Norway and I went to the sushi bar whoever in Oslo you have to try the sushi bar called Alex okay and they serve whale there are whale sushi so I tweeted a picture of my whale sushi oh my god you know I'm never gonna follow you freaking cold-blooded murderer of little whales is like whatever I mean you know meanwhile you're eating raw steak what can I say so I know how I got on that started well as the squall as a question I haven't asked you yet okay good I thought I forgot it already yeah but since you kill whales I don't want to ask my question yeah oh you must be from California huh how's that Prius you you said something cook real enjoy middle name is Moonbeam yeah real all right Mustang where's your Birkenstock my question yeah uh we should get to it be green yeah just be brie I'm trying ha ha ha you said how to work social media I noticed you've got a couple what looked like pre-planned tweets like things that were going out there I'm sorry yeah well yeah that's not being I'm being briefed with that yeah um so what are your thoughts on that okay on scheduled vs. obviously you're for it yeah some people are like no I would never do it I'd like to hear that okay so I believe that my social media for me is a marketing platform okay I'm not trying to be warm and fuzzy I'm not trying to make new friends I have four children one wife wife 1.0 I have two dogs for guinea pigs one chicken about twelve fish but every day that goes down by one so good so in other words I'm a busy boy I got lots of thing I'm not looking for more friends on social media for me social media is a platform and my approach to social media I call the NPR model so for me NPR provides great content 365 days a year wait wait don't tell me this American life you know all this kind of stuff technician fresh air I love a love NPR and every once in a while NPR runs the pledge dry right now who among us likes to listen to a pleasure I know buddy but do we tolerate that yes and the better people among us we not only tolerated we give money and how is it that NPR can get away with running a fundraising pledge drive every once in awhile it's because NPR has earned that right by curating and creating great content so that's my approach I am constantly trying to curate great content I have people who are also helping me curate great content and there's a part I have a website called all Top ALL t.o.p which aggregates news by topics for example there's education all top comm all the education blogs are aggregated there so you don't need to go to 50 sites you go to just one so what happens is that part of all top is a site called holy cow k aw because ko de ce o-- w was taken so holy cow like kawasaki so holy cow has about ten human interest stories per day and those headlines the title of those holy cow stories are automatically created into tweets so they tweet out automatically and I tweet those things out or that the software tweets it out three times eight hours apart and I can tell you with total certainty that tweet number one no matter what time of day gets X clicks tweet number two x clicks tweet number three x clicks so I can either have three x clicks or one x clicks and I make the choice to have three times the clicks with total certainty so so you know one thing you can take away from this session is if you want to increase your engagement on social media by 6 X repeat your tweets 3 times 8 hours apart and add a picture six times you know SEO experts say like jump up and down when they get 10% improvement I have given you six hundred percent improvement free okay now you're going to try camera so so to get to this person's question so I believe that you know I listen to NPR and I know that you know fresh air comes on twice a day right and I watch ESPN and ESPN shows the top ten hits the top ten plays the top ten goalie saves four times a day right five times maybe ten times a day and the calculation here is that everybody who is interested in your tweet is not up and watching Twitter at the same time duh and if you believe that your tweet is so compelling that people will scroll back twelve hours through tweet deck to find your tweet you are hallucinating so I believe that I have to push it out have to push it out constantly to reach everybody and now yes there are a few people I have 1.5 million followers on Twitter and there are two or three people every day who say you're spamming me I don't know how I could be spamming you when you voluntarily follow me but that's a different discussion okay I'm spamming you you tweet too much my response to that is listen if you notice that I sent out the same tweet three times in 24 hours you need a life because it is not possible that you have a life if you can notice three tweets identical 24 hours apart in a sense it's like if you go to Best Buy and you buy a TV and you don't buy cable you go home and you can only get you know ABC NBC CBS and QVC so every time you turn on the TV it's QVC they're always selling Tourmaline bracelets terminally necklace sterling silver charms right so you call up the FCC you say QVC is always on my TV I can't stand it shut down QVC that's like are you an idiot change the channel get cable TV follow more people this is not my fault so I'm telling you when it comes to social media man like all my arrogance is going to come out today like I said when you're 68 I ever notice the William Shatner just let it rip and no more right that's how I feel like Leonard Lemoore is dead only go we gotta let it rip while we can so anyway so so I truly do believe when it comes to social media if you're not pissing off a few people you are not using it right you should be pissing off I'm not saying you should intentionally go and piss a lot of people off but one of the consequences of the good use of social media is you will piss some people off that's just the way it is man up and live with it so what else uh I'm from Los Angeles and I Drive a bolt you know man yes yeah but that's not my question um I wouldn't brag about that's a great attribute is a great car it's a great car and the next bolt is even better yeah it is yeah right um anyway I would advise investment advice would you give to a young person that has a good income around 24 25 yeah just graduated college or is just getting established that rear what investment advice yeah I mean you're you're famous for Rich Dad Poor Dad all right see oh that I could not have scripted this better Rich Dad Poor Dad is Ralph Kiyosaki I am I am Guy Kawasaki my bad I know you know I know we all look alike we sound alike it's okay it's okay you know like okay can I just point out where else but in America can a black man till an Asian man he's the wrong person this is alright scratch my Rajat first in a fantastic country army okay so okay so okay as you noticed I have fun in my sessions so I'm going to tell you a story it's the best story about Guy Kawasaki ever it's going to mean I might not get to you guys is there another session in here like immediately this is it for the day so we can just keep going on yes or no no oh yeah god forbid I go too long South by Southwest won't invite me back yeah so so one day this is God's honest truth one day this is like 15 years ago when I was younger and dumber I had a Porsche 911 okay so I'm driving down El Camino which is the main street in in Silicon Valley and I pull through this stoplight yeah right in my in my Porsche right and I look over to the left and there's this car with like five teenage girls in it and they're all looking at me and they're smiling at me making eye contact giggling and all that right so I think I got you truly have arrived man like even teenage girls know who you are miss like before Justin Bieber right so you know they know you for your work at Apple or your writing your speaking guy you have arrived teenage girls know who you are so one of the girls says roll down your window obviously not a Porsche driver could you don't roll down a portion we know you press a button anyway so I press the button the window goes down she sticks her head out of the car she says are you Jackie Chan yeah is it true story so ever since that day because you need goals in your life okay ever since that day my goal in life is it someday Jackie Chan is in his rolls-royce in Hong Kong pulls up to a stoplight a bunch of teenage girls giggle smile at Jackie Chan ask Jackie Chan to roll down his rolls-royce window and says to Jackie Chan are you guy kawasaki it's my goal in life okay question alright wise man told me wants to be very brief so here goes two questions yeah one is how did you come to earn such an awesome position at Apple at a young age okay and I'll tell you what toughest thing about writing your first book okay first answer is nepotism my friend my classmate from Stanford got me the job at Apple I was not qualified for it I came from the jewelry business no computer background you heard I never took a computer class no computer background no work experience is purely unequivocally nepotism and the important lesson to learn there is it's not how you get in the company it's what you do once you get in okay appreciate the honest second question was what what was the toughest thing about writing your first book Oh first book was so tough because I had never written a book and so I did not have the discipline I didn't know how to do it it was just basically I vomited the book out to use a powerful verb I vomited the book out and then I spent about six months picking out the undigested particles of food that's called editing and so that's what it took and you know in nineteen that's when I wrote it in 1987 I had never written a book before I wrote it because I was frustrated in the job that I was in and the most powerful force in my education was my high school English teacher so I had a high school English teacher and he yeah he was a pain in the ass he we had high school composition where we'd have to write essays he would find mistakes in the essay like you know lack of serial comma passive voice split infinitive whatever so we would have to write the sentence incorrectly we'd have to cite the rule in this grammar book write the rule down and then write the sentence correctly and that's a major pain this is before word processors okay this is you know this is like right after electricity was invented I was doing it and so that was he taught me how to write and I'll tell you he died a few years ago and he's in heaven right now and he's laughing because up there he I'm the least likely of his students to have written 13 books so speaking of heaven I can also tell you that Steve Jobs is in heaven right now telling God what to do okay next question I'm going to finish this and what you guys not look at you happy it's okay okay you wouldn't take two more and I'm never going to be invited back to South by Southwest edu but yes yeah Paul I'll from slide oh so you've given us some great insights into content and presentations but obviously you're an expert on humor and storytelling well he's gonna be funny when somebody thinks you're Ralph Kiyosaki so so okay so so could you just give us some insights into that because non of all of us might see be so natural so when it comes to presentations and implementing storytelling and yeah obviously humor I think the key to great presentations literally is telling stories that you never use adjectives that you know every text seals is patent-pending curb jumping paradigm shifting you know scalable high quality bug free fast easy to use product and it's because most companies assume that their competition is saying well have a slow buggy piece-of-crap software that can't scale so you come up and say oh I have high quality easy to use bug free scalable product oh you're different everybody else did they have a piece of crap well everybody says they have great software this is called the opposite test so the way the opposite test works is are you saying something that's the opposite of your competition so if your competition is saying my software is crap and you say your software is great you're different chances are your competition saying my software is great so you're saying your software is great you're not saying anything so it's the opposite test okay yes last question I'll let you guys go yes I need to help as a father there's a blind lead of line here but honesty today but your honesty event today about your own kids has been very refreshing I'm helping my kids start a business but they don't listen to a thing I say yeah and actually we took a picture with you this morning when we found you wandering alone in the halls for the information chips did a presentation here they don't listen to that much so if you put a number 11 on your top ten top ten that said how to teach kids to do a startup or how to teach kids entrepreneurship what would your you know just off the top of your head neither cyber besides by my book give me besides what by my book yeah right you know I would tell you the most important thing for entrepreneurship today is to get a prototype that it's not about not about Excel or Word or PowerPoint it is to get a prototype that's easy in software right so you know work on the prototype get it in the hands of people you learn more in one week in the hands of people then you will sitting around cogitating you know with your buddies so get a prototype to use a more analogue example you know if your goal is to start a restaurant I could make the case that you know maybe the prototype for your restaurant is a is a truck you know you want to prototype your restaurant start with a street food truck I mean that's you know that's a hundred thousand dollars but if you know restaurants cost millions to start right so my whole thing is Eric Ries the author is coming here and he's talking about the MVP which is minimum what minimal Minimum Viable products very good concept which is basically get the prototype out or what I say don't worry be crappy but I have I just came out with a new book called the art of the start 2.0 and in that I say well it should be M vvvp so it's minimum it's viable viable means you know you can make a buck with it you know revenues can exceed cost but the next two V's first V stands for valuable that even if it's something very viable it may not be valuable it may not change the world and then the lastly is validating that it should validate your vision for the world so let me use an anti example let's say your Apple you wake up tomorrow and you say well why don't we sell Apple label printers is it viable yes Apple could slap an Apple logo on a canon engine and people would buy it is viable they could do it right so that's viable it passes the viable test is it valuable does the world need another laser printer with an Apple logo not really not really and is it validating Apple selling a printer what does it validate about Apple's vision of empowering people making people more creative and productive doesn't validate so ask your kids to make a prototype and ask themselves is it the minimum viable valuable and validating product thank you very much thank you very much thank you

Channel: SXSW EDU

Views: 80,485

Rating: 4.8104577 out of 5

Keywords: SXSW, SXSWedu, South by Southwest, South by Southwest edu, edu, education, Conference, Austin, Texas, Emerging, Event, Guy Kawasaki (Organization Leader), Social Media, Canva, Social Good

Id: eF3ETXzVm-g

Length: 69min 23sec (4163 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2015