Wise Guy--Lessons from a Life | Guy Kawasaki | TEDxPaloAltoSalon

Good evening. Good evening. Thank you very much for attending this TED Salon in Palo Alto. You know, for many people, myself included, Speaking at a TEDx is one of the high points of one's career. So this is a real pleasure for me. I am going to talk to you tonight about implementing anew as opposed to simply imagining and reimagining anew. You're going to hear from some great speakers about vision and passion and all these great things going forward. And I'm taking a different tack. I'm talking all about implementation and these are the techniques and wisdoms and knowledge that I gained. I've been in the Valley about 30 years. I've worked for Apple, I started some software companies, I've been a venture capitalist. Today I work for a company out of Australia. And so I just wanted to give you a different slant and I hope this is very tactical and practical so that in the words of Steve Jobs, you can dent the universe and you can make a difference. Okay, I always use a top 10 format. That's because honestly I've seen so many tech speakers and most of them A suck and B go long. So I like to give people a top 10 so that they know where I am in the speech in this form, you know, I only have 18 minutes so that solves one of the problems. But I have 10 key points and I want you to know where I am in my presentation. Okay, so this is my top 10 lessons, wisdoms about how to implement change, how to get to the next curve. So the first thing that I want to communicate to you is this, this technique, this strategy. This is a two by two matrix. The vertical axis measures uniqueness or differentiation. The horizontal axis and measures the value, valuableness, you know, the goodness of what you do. And it is a two by two matrix. If any of you have worked with some high end consulting firms, you know that they'll charge you about $5 million to tell you you need to be in the upper right hand corner. You're getting that free from TedX tonight. I want to just express that as you think about your products, your services, your not for profits, even your own positioning, your career, yourself. Use this as a model. You know, the value, the history, the denting of the universe, all that good stuff occurs in the upper right hand corner. That is when you are both valuable and unique. I'll go through all four corners. The bottom right corner is where you're valuable but not unique. In that corner you always have to compete on price. Michael Dell slaps the same operating system on the same hardware make billions of dollars there, but you have to compete on price. In the upper left hand corner, you are unique. You truly do something no one else does, but it is of no use. In that corner you are just plain stupid. In the bottom left corner you do something that's not useful and there's a lot of other stupid people doing the same stupid thing. That's the worst corner of all, the corner I want you to focus on when you design stuff, services, products, even positioning yourself. Upper right hand corner. How can you be valuable and unique? Think of the ipod. When it first came out valuable and unique, it was a way to buy music, a great breadth of music, inexpensively, easily, legally, with a user interface that a mere mortal could use that was unique and valuable. Explaining the success of ipod. So. So a great mental framework for you. Two by two matrix. Upper right hand corner number two. Some one of my favorite books from a Stanford professor, Carol Dweck. And I think that in order to dent the universe, to reimagine anew, you have to adopt a growth mindset. A growth mindset means that you don't accept things for what they are, including yourself, that you will make yourself better. So, so it's very obvious. People always talk about you have to improve yourself. You know, you have to overcome your weaknesses. So that's what you always hear. I would make the case that there's also another dangerous mindset which is when you are good at something, you adopt the mindset of you don't want to take any chances and risk your reputation and your self image by trying something and putting yourself at risk. You know, Carol Dweck has seriously influenced my child raising patterns and practices because one of the key tenets of this book is, you know, when you have children and they're good at something, you should not say, well you're really brilliant, you're really smart, you're really great at this. Instead of complimenting them about their smartness or their natural talent, you should compliment them about, about how hard they work. Because you tell someone you're really smart, then they won't take a risk. They'll have a limited mindset, they won't want to risk their self image that my God, I'm so good at math, I better not try anything else. I want to stay this smart person. Embrace a growth mindset. Number three is to embrace grit. I have to tell you that I've been working in the valley for about 35 years and to me, what separates the people who succeed from the people who fail? Is the willingness to work hard. There are lots of smart people. Grit is a rare quality. So if you want to truly reimagine and imagine anew, get ready to work hard. Grit counts. I would argue that grit is a more flexible, more achievable goal. I mean, you can only be so smart. I think, you know, within limits. But grit, anybody can be gritty. So embrace grit. Number four, is my recommendation that you go through life smiling? I mean, just smiling, being a pleasant person. Listen, I work for someone named Steve Jobs. He didn't smile all the time, okay? To put it mildly. In fact, you know, I should fulfill my moral obligation. I'll tell you a Steve Jobs story, I promise you, in this 18 minutes that I have. But my aspect here is that, God, you know, if you smile, you make life easier. There's no reason to be a tough guy. I think that many people, they look at some of the leaders in industry and the leaders in the government, they say, wow, those people are really cranky, angry, scary people. That's what it must take to succeed. And I would disagree. I think if you look at a Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, there are as many people who are very happy and can succeed. So smile. Do the world a favor. Smile number five. Number five is a recommendation that you always default to yes. That is, when you meet people, you should always be thinking, how can I help that person? I think a lot of people go through life thinking, well, my God, I don't want to be taken advantage of. My default is to know. And if you somehow bludgeon me into agreeing to yes, hallelujah. But generally speaking, the answer is no until you force me to change to yes. My experience in my career is that if you default to yes, it will lead to relationships, it will lead to deals, it will lead to such great upside. The upside of defaulting to yes far surpasses the downside of possibly being used. Default to yes, number six. Is to adopt the philosophy that the rising tide floats all boats. I think that many people, many institutions have this attitude that it is a zero sum game. You know, if Apple sells a computer, somebody else doesn't sell a computer. If Apple, Apple sells a phone, somebody else doesn't sell a phone. Somebody else sells a phone, Apple doesn't sell a phone. And I think that's wrong. I think that when you're instituting great changes, personal computing, Internet, IoT, artificial intelligence, the rising tide floats all boats. It's good for everybody. It's not about fighting for market share. It's to Legitimize the technology, legitimize the market. Legitimizer. What you all do. The rising tide floats all boats. Number seven. Number seven is an attitude very closely related to defaulting to yes, which is to have the perspective of I'll pay it forward. I think that there is a karmic scoreboard in the sky. And this scoreboard records what you're doing to help people. And you want that scoreboard to be hugely positive. And the way you do that is you pay it forward without the expectation of any reward. You simply do it for the intrinsic reward of paying it forward. And I think you will be surprised that all the goodness will flow back to you. That has been my experience. A very tactical example might be when I was at Apple. You know, we didn't exactly have the most press friendly relationship. And I was one of the few people at Apple who would just meet with anybody from the press. It could be the Milpitas Gazette. I could not care less. It didn't have to be BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, or Washington Post. I would meet with anybody. I would help them. And then for the rest of my career, guess what? The person who's the Milpitas Gazette assistant reporter suddenly became the Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau chief. Hmm. What a concept. I wish I could tell you I was so smart to have planned that. I'm giving you the benefit of my experience so that you pay it forward. Pay it forward. Number eight is, you know, the unlived life is not worth examining, but the unexamined life is not worth living. You need to examine everything. You need to be skeptical, not pessimistic, not a naysayer, but examine everything. Especially because of social media, examine everything. Number nine. Number nine. So Windows remote. I swear to God, I sort of got. I pressed it three times. Okay, so number nine, I hope you're covering for me. Number nine is a very pragmatic approach to honesty. And I suggest that if you want to change the world, you never lie and you seldom shade the truth. At a very pragmatic level, it's because it's much easier to always tell the truth, because as soon as you start lying, you have to keep track of how you lied. And so you can consistently lie. But if you tell the truth, usually there's only one truth. So it's much easier to remember the one truth than every lie that you've told. And there are going to be times where, you know there's a line between lying and exaggerating. And Being, shall I say, sly, shading the truth slightly. So this is where the Steve Jobs story comes in. So one day I'm in my cubicle and Steve Jobs shows up with someone I'd never met in my life. And he asked me, guy, what do you think of this company called Nowhere K N O W A R E? It was an educational software company. Knowledge software chunk rated to knowhere. I said, well, Steve, I gotta tell you, Steve, it's kind of a mediocre company with a mediocre product. Doesn't take real advantage of the Macintosh graphics WYSIWYG Display. Display. Color two plus two equals four. Simple arithmetic, Steve. Not a strategic product, not a strategic company for us. The next thing Steve says is, I want you to meet the CEO of Nowhere. Now, the lesson that I learned from that story is tell the truth. Because if I had lied or even shaded the truth, let me tell you something. Steve Jobs probably knew that that product sucked. And if I had said, steve, it's insanely great. We ought to do something. It's a great product. We really love this thing. I would have flunked the Steve Jobs IQ test. And you can only flunk that test once. So that's the day I learned, you know, never lie, never shade the truth. Just tell the truth. Number 10. Number 10 is something that's very counterintuitive. And I'll give you two little tips because I'm running fast. I have 4 minutes and 46 seconds. I didn't even know I could do this so fast. So another author that I truly admire is an author named Robert Cialdini. Now, when an Author I've written 14 books tells you to buy another author's book, there is no higher form of praise. Okay? So I'm telling you to buy two books. Carol Dweck and Bob Tialdini. He has a book called Influence. It's the social psychology of influencing people. And so power tip number one is, let's say that I default to yes, I do something for you, I pay it forward, and so you thank me. Now, here's the question. What is the optimal response when you thank me? It is not simply your welcome. It is, I know you would do the same for me. I'm telling her she's a good person. I know you will do the same for me. You know what else I'm telling her? I know you will do the same for me. That's the optimal response. Now, Cialdini also has this message, which is, you may think. You may think that when somebody does owe you, you should let them off the hook. To say to her, you know, I know you would do the same for me, but don't worry about it. Forget about it. That's not optimal. What you should, in fact do is you should tell her how she can pay you back. Because as a defaulter to. Yes, as someone who believes in the karmic scoreboard, I'm willing to do more for you, but I am not clairvoyant. I have no idea what else I can do for you. You being a good person, you're hesitant to tell me what you want because you know you already owe me. So if I could just tell you, this is how you can pay me back. We can clear the decks and she can ask me to do more stuff, and we can have a stronger relationship. So contrary to what you might think, you should enable people to pay you back. And now, in my last 2 minutes and 41 seconds, I'm going to tell you one last story. So my wife and I were living in San Francisco on Union street, right near the Presidio, So a very nice part of San Francisco. And one day, I'm in front of our house and I'm clipping the bougainvilleas, okay? And this older white woman comes up to me and says, do you do lawns, too? And I said to her, you know, I'm Japanese, so you assume I'm the yardman, right? She goes, no, no, you're just doing a great job cutting your bougainvilleas. I wanted to know if you do yards. So that's kind of a good story in and of itself about racial profiling and stuff like that. But wait, it gets better. Two weeks later, my father comes, visits me from Hawaii, comes to San Francisco. I'm third generation Japanese American, so he's second. He served in the US army, the whole thing. And I tell him this story, and I fully expect him to go off and just say, my God, this woman, just because you're Japanese, she thought you were a yardman. She didn't know you went to Stanford, you worked for Apple. You bought this house, right? I fully expect. I expected that. And listen, to my utter amazement, you know what he tells me? He says, guy, son in this neighborhood, a Japanese man cutting the hedge. Logically, mathematically probability. You were the yardman. So get over it. Don't look for problems. Don't look for prejudice. Don't complicate everything. You can't go through life if you're always looking for a problem. And that's the message I want to leave with you. If you want to reimagine or imagine anew, you can't go through life angry and negative and assuming people have the worst intentions. The rising tide floats all boats. Okay? Pay it forward. And above all, get into that upper right hand corner where you are unique and valuable. And then you truly will imagine and reimagine anew and change the world. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.