Who in the world is Guy Kawasaki?

Does anybody know? Honestly, I had no idea until tonight and before tonight, I only knew bits and pieces from Dwight Silverman through email chains. Tonight, I went to check out Guy Kawasaki speak on the Art of the Start and that is when I confessed, in my head, that I would follow him... on Twitter. I've heard a lot of people speak in my short life and he is by far the most hilarious presenter. He seemed so real... must be the Cali in him but I could be wrong (I could be wrong???). In short, he looks like an Asian guy with a Hawaiin shirt that used to be an Apple Fellow, passed up the interview for Yahoo's first CEO and came up with Alltop.com. It's best to experience him in real life else you just don't get it.

So what can you learn if you didn't go to the event tonight? Here are some tips from Guy:

1. make meaning - what need are you fulfilling?
2. make mantra - why do you exist.... make a mantra instead of a mission
3. get going - polarize people --- if you get people to either love or hate your product, you'll have more success versus if you just make a site for everyone which makes your product mediocre and you'll have evangelists that will promote your site for free
   
4. define business model - be specific. KIS. Ask women before you go through with it (women don't have that natural tendency to "kill" everything).
5. weave a mat - milestones, assumptions, tasks; Milestones like "finish design", Assumptions like "how many sales/day", Tasks like "rent office"
6. niche thyself - think of a graph. the vertical axis is the ability to provide a unique product - horizontal axis is the value to customer -- you want to be up high and to the right
   
7. follow the 10/20/30 rule - 10 slides in 20 min with 30 point font
   
8. hire infected people (aka people with the same passion for what you are trying to do)
9. lower barrier to adoption - the plug it in and it should work mentality
   
10. seed the cloud - sales fixes everything
    
11. bonus point: don't listen to the bozos (the people who say you can't do it, the negative boobs)

Another reason why I've confessed to follow Guy, he admitted to being A.D.D. I'm so glad he is A.D.D. too, just like me and every other Jo Schmo out there. I've been known to be direct and sometimes misunderstood but I like to get things done in the shortest amount of time. Tell me fast and tell me true or CYA, I got other things to do.

The one thing I didn't ask him, which I am most curious about was how in the world does he keep his sanity? He seems extremely busy: father, husband, Alltop.com, garage, VCs, etc. How do you find time to do what you like (hockey) and have fun with your family all the while staying on top of twitter, blogging, speeches and whatever else is going on in the industry? What does your house look like???

Random - If I could afford a maid maybe my house wouldn't look like a tornado sucked it up and vomited.

Audience "Final" - Be Honest

Tell your audience honestly what you want them to do and why. Then they won't feel like you're trying to pull a fast one and why should you? If you feel like you need to, maybe that isn't the audience you need to be talking to. I'm speaking mostly about campaigns and promotions of course but with all marketing (any kind) there is always a call to action (CTA). If you promote something that isn't really clear as far as what your audience is expecting, they will be dissappointed and probably won't come back to your site or look at your product again. It will just give them a negative experience and that's hard to recover from depending on the product or website or how negative that experience is.

Now that I've covered audience, I'll move on to other interesting things I have read that you may be interested in as well. Just remember - if your marketing campaign doesn't work on you, it probably won't work on someone else but then again, are you talking to the right audience???

Audience Part III: A.D.D.

I'm busy - tell me quick:

• something I want/need
• something that makes me think
• something that makes me laugh
• something I can relate to

or don't bother because my time is precious and I gotta go.