Top 240 Quotes & Sayings by Guy Kawasaki
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American businessman Guy Kawasaki.
Last updated on November 25, 2024.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most venture capitalists won't read a business plan unless the entrepreneur is introduced to them by a contact.
A good idea is about ten percent and implementation and hard work, and luck is 90 percent.
Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.
The good news about entrepreneurship is that your fate is in your hands. The bad news is that your fate is in your hands!
Not many people agree with what I do.
The A-listers and the A+ listers, are reporting the news, they're not making it.
When I finally got a management position, I found out how hard it is to lead and manage people.
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're an entrepreneur and you think that the president makes a difference to your business, you should stay at your current job.
A company should search for every instance of the use of its name and zoom in when there are issues - both good and bad.
I don't want to make more friends. I have four kids, I have plenty of friends, and all the personal relationships I need.
Ambitious failure, magnificent failure, is a very good thing.
I think that no one, or very few, are born as good presenters. It's a skill that you learn.
I merely consider myself a father, and one role of a father is to provide financial resources for his family.
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.
Evangelism is selling a dream.
A crash is when your competitor's program dies. When your program dies, it is an 'idiosyncrasy'.
My mother taught me not to take any crap from anyone and to stand up for my rights. You might not believe this lesson came from a tiny Japanese woman, but it's true.
Great companies start because the founders want to change the world... not make a fast buck. Call me a romantic, but I think entrepreneurs should try to change the world. This comes from working at Apple... old habits die hard.
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.
Great companies start because the founders want to change the world... not make a fast buck.
If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society's heroes.
Leverage your brand. You shouldn't let two guys in a garage eat your shorts.
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.
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.
I think that no one, or very few, are born as good presenters. It's a skill that you learn. The key is the 10/20/30 rule: 10 slides given in 20 minutes using no font smaller than 30 points. If people just adhered to this rule, they would double or triple the quality of their presentations.
I do have a peripatetic and active intellectual curiosity.
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.
Social media allows me to pick my times for social interaction.
There are two ways to approach the application process: trying to hit a home run by getting an immediate 'Yes, here's an offer' or trying not to be eliminated. I recommend the second approach.
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.'
Every day, I get five pieces of hate mail: Tweets or hate emails.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
I don't take myself that seriously. I'm a pragmatist.
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.
It's hard to name a person who is unpopular who has influence.
Patience is the art of concealing your impatience.
Simple and to the point is always the best way to get your point across.
Entitlement is the opposite of enchantment.
A 50-year-old company can innovate as well as two guys/gals in a garage.
Create something, sell it, make it better, sell it some more and then create something that obsoletes what you used to make.
I'm a lousy predictor of the future.
I would like my kids to inherit a world where people succeed because of merit and hard work, not entitlement, and where people accept others for what they are and not try to change them.
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.
Companies in Europe should stop trying to do the U.S. version of a European idea.
Many Android users aren't aware of some the things that Android can already do such as supporting the enforcement of companywide security policies, encrypting phone data and providing e-mail and calendar widgets that update in real-time. Our job is to help people and businesses discover and use these features.
If you make money, you might not make meaning.
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.
What I lack in talent, I compensate with my willingness to grind it out. That's the secret of my life.
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.
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.
I travel all the time.
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.
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