Relationships Purposeful Passionate and Practical

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Guy Kawasaki, who is the cofounder of Alltop, an online magazine rack of popular topics on the web, a founding partner in Garage Technology Ventures, and previously—I think we all know you for this—the chief evangelist of Apple. Guy is the author of 10 books, including Enchantment, which we're going to talk about today; The Art of the Start, and The Macintosh Way.

Guy has a BA from Stanford and MBA from UCLA, and an honorary doctorate from Babson College. No surprise, it's all about entrepreneurship. And so are you. I love Enchantment. We had a lot of really good questions. This audience is a global audience of students and alumni in all parts of the world.

One of the things that comes up a lot is I know I should build relationships. I know it's the key to my success and happiness over time. I know all of that. It's time consuming. It's intimidating. How does Enchantment actually make that easier?

Guy Kawasaki: Enchantment makes that easier because it codifies what you need to do. It tries to remove the vagueness and the uncertainty of what you should do, at least from my point of view. You kind of have to make a bet that I'm right to do this. If I'm wrong, then we're both wrong. That wouldn't be good, though. Yeah. The books that shaped me, for example, like How to Win Friends and Influence People and Influence by Bob Cialdini.

There are certain principles. I can't tell you that Enchantment has anything earth-shatteringly new that people have never heard of, but it was written in a time where there already was social media. And, you know, we're at considerable advantages compared to Dale Carnegie, who could use a telegraph in a hotel ballroom in 1930. We have a few advantages over him.

Anita Brick: So tell us if you were going to—let's say there's someone that you wanted to meet, or let's say, someone you did meet. How would you transform it from a transaction to a long-term enchanting relationship?

Guy Kawasaki: In general on the professional side? First, the mental model is that we need three pillars to be happening, which is first of all, you have to be likable, then you have to be trustworthy, and then you have to be competent. And each sounds rather simple, but each is very difficult to do. And if you have those three things, then you're in good shape.

If I were advising people, I would say start with competence because that's the hardest one. I've tried to enchant people with great stuff and I've tried to enchant people with crap and it is a lot easier with great stuff. Separate competence and great stuff is to start. Likability is all about just awareness that in order to enchant people, they have to like you.

You know? Very seldom do you get enchanted by people you can't stand. And likability is all about simple things like a good smile, a handshake. Trustworthiness is similar. It's about trusting others before you expect them to trust you. It's thinking of the world not as a zero-sum game, but a world where everybody can win. As opposed to an eater who sees the world as a zero-sum game with limited pie, an enchanting person sees the world like a baker, where you can bake more pies and bigger pies, and everybody can have a piece of the pie.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right. When you look at it that way, I'm not competing with you. I'm looking to collaborate with you.

Guy Kawasaki: Yes, yes. It is a lot easier way to live life. Really. If you view life, everything, as if you get it, I don't, I mean you're going to have a miserable life, basically.

Anita Brick: There's no question. There are some really great questions that came in. One from an Executive MBA student and he said, what is the best way to build lasting relationships in networking events where you meet a lot of people in a short period of time? How do you be enchanting when it does feel like speed dating?

Guy Kawasaki: So start with a great smile—a great smile that, you know, you're not grinning and bearing it. You're not faking it. You really are sort of a positive person trying to meet people. A tip would be that great conversationalists are not great talkers. Great conversationalists are great listeners, and I think many people confuse the volume of talk with the quality of conversation. People will find you more interesting if you listen better than if you talk more. Kind of counterintuitive.

Anita Brick: Gives hope for introverts then, right?

Guy Kawasaki: Believe it or not, I consider myself an introvert. This role is thrust upon me because of what I do. I'm perfectly happy to be alone.

Anita Brick: I can appreciate that. It can be intimidating to meet people and build relationships and think about, OK, so there are all these people in the room. Do I talk to Guy or do I talk to someone else? How do I prioritize and all of that? Are there any things that when you've been in, like, a big-group environment, that you've seen work better than anything else?

Guy Kawasaki: The key thing is to ask a simple question like, what do you do? What you're trying to do is find some kind of commonality, some kind of point to talk about, to find out what the person does, try to relate that to some of your personal passions and interests. Make sure you find the other person interesting, not that the other person finds you interesting.

Stop selling and keep buying. If you just focus on finding points of commonality, whether it is children or a love of hockey or a love of reading, you know, whatever it is, don't try to go for the shock and awe, big score. Just go for something where you find some point of commonality so that when you exchange business cards, you actually do follow up with an email.

And I can tell you I don't carry business cards anymore because I found that I've passed out thousands of business cards. Nobody ever follows up. I mean, literally nobody ever follows up, so why bother? And the same thing is true for me. On the recipient side, when people give me business cards, you know, I never follow up. And it's not because we have nothing to do or nothing in common.

It's just that I never learned of anything in common because the people just sort of thrust the business card upon you. Have you ever gone to conferences? You come back to your hotel room at night and you have like 50 business cards. You look at them, you know, why am I carrying this anymore? Maybe someone who wrote the book Enchantment should not be admitting to this.

Anita Brick: Pressing a business card in someone's face isn't enchantment.

Guy Kawasaki: It is not.

Anita Brick: Definitely not. And you just. It was another Exec MBA student. Instead of a follow-on to that, he goes, I worry about keeping score with my professional relationships. It's not that I actually count, but I notice that I want to make sure I get what I need and deserve. How do I do less of that and really focus on enchanting them?

Guy Kawasaki: Well, that guy's perspective is all wrong. The primary concern is not that you get what you need and you deserve. The primary concern should be that other people get what they need and they deserve. And if you take care of enough other people, trust me when I tell you, you will get taken care of and get what you deserve. But it's only by helping others that you do this, not by looking out for number one.

Anita Brick: Good point. Someone asked—which kind of goes along with this—how do I elevate or demote someone in my network?

Guy Kawasaki: What's that network?

Anita Brick: I think they probably mean who is valuable to spend time with, and how do I let them know? And who do I let fall off the face of the earth?

Guy Kawasaki: I hate to tell you, but there is no easy answer to this. My answer is you help everybody. And that sounds like, you know, mission impossible. But you'll find that most people don't require a lot of help. And it is only by helping everybody that you find out who truly is worth helping and who will help you back.

I would not go in with preconceived notions. Certainly you know the simplistic thoughts about, well, this person doesn't have a big title, cannot help me. That's a very dangerous option. I would prefer going the other way, which is the less the title, the more you should help the person.

Anita Brick: And you really never know who knows who and who finds ways to help you. Just because you've created that trust in showing your confidence and your likability. I think you're absolutely right. You just never know.

Guy Kawasaki: You never know. And you know, today's person with no title could be tomorrow's vice president. You know, who knows? Maybe his girlfriend or mother or boyfriend or, you know, whatever husband or wife, whatever is someone that is extremely influential. I believe you just help everybody. Just just help everybody. It'll sort itself out.

Anita Brick: I agree. I worked—this is my second job after business school. I worked for someone who was working to gain capital from a large multinational to launch his business, and he wanted to actually use the sales force of this firm. And he was getting nowhere. He was striking out. He knew exactly who he needed to get in touch with. That person was not accepting his calls. And then one of his best friends said, why don't you talk to my mom? And he was like, why would I talk to your mom? She's an assistant. And so his friend was like, you're an idiot. And he said, my mom is the assistant to the person you're trying to get in touch with.

And so he did. He completely opened the door for him, which allowed him to launch this entrepreneurial venture, remain independent, and get all the resources of the multinational. I think you're right. You have to be really open minded as to who could help. And another question that relates to this, which I thought was a really fascinating one, and it's one I struggle with myself, an alum said, what are your rules around exposing your relationships to other people who might benefit from interacting with them? When do you introduce versus broker the relationships?

Guy Kawasaki: What do you think they're getting at here?

Anita Brick: I think broker means that you're more—that you stay involved longer with me. The word broker implies that I'm expecting something in return, whether it's monetary or non-monetary. Introduce, I do that all the time. I introduce people and then I back away because I'm not needed there anymore. I did what I needed to do.

Guy Kawasaki: That would be my attitude. My attitude is you help everybody. If you have that attitude of helping everybody, almost by definition, it means you can't maintain a responsibility for everyone. I believe in, you know, a large numbers game, probably 80% of the value I bring is the first email introduction. That's it. Yes. You could make the case that I should hand-hold and make sure everything happens, but that's just not my style. I think of myself as a blue whale, where I take in 2,000 gallons of water to get one pound of krill.

Anita Brick: That's a great image. It's a wonderful image. In some ways, your philosophy is more “be open, see who you can help.” You know you're going to have your own filters on. If someone isn't trustworthy or likable or competent, you're probably not going to help them. But you might do a little bit until you figure that out, right?

Guy Kawasaki: Right.

Anita Brick: What about building that kind of enchanting relationship with someone who was a former manager, and that you left the company on good terms to pursue an MBA, but you left it? An evening student asked that question. But how do you go back after you've already cut those ties?

Guy Kawasaki: It depends on the definition of cutting those ties. I mean, if you really cut it and you've gone dark, that could be a problem. But theoretically, if you had a good relationship, it would not have gone dark. It was just a change, right? Right. Good. Like some of this is sort of definitional or these questions are two black and white that it's not that black and white.

If you are such a transaction-oriented person that, you know, you have a relationship, but cut it off, you know, end of the relationship, and you go on to the next one, then guess what? You're not going to have many relationships. That's just the way it is.

Anita Brick: I agree with you. It's not an either/or. It is a continuum where you have a relationship. Sometimes they go a little bit more dormant and then you revitalize them. But it's his responsibility or her responsibility to rebuild or to expand that relationship. It isn't rocket science. It's just being generous and forthcoming with the things that you can offer.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, what a concept.

Anita Brick: I was listening to someone the other day on PBS, and she was like, there's a difference between common sense and common action. There are a lot of things we know, but do we act on them or not? Here's a question that I found fascinating. An alum said, amen, brother, I agree with your philosophy, Guy, of relationships completely.

Your message would also seem to be that any transaction would be better to present itself as an extension of an ongoing relationship as part of a continuing conversation. And yet, what happens when I or my company really needs a transaction to come from my most trusted, cultivated relationships? How is that urgency communicated without changing the terms of the relationship?

Do you think it's different? If I need something from you today and we have a strong relationship, does that really change the relationship?

Guy Kawasaki: Well, one would think it would be easier.

Anita Brick: I would think so too.

Guy Kawasaki: I mean, what are we missing? So maybe the relationship is not as strong as possible. At the baseline of my theory is that you should always default to yes; that is, always be thinking how can I help the other person? Always be thinking, you know, within reason, whatever that person wants, I'll do it by definition, by default. I'm thinking about yes, part of that attitude is just the sheer pleasure of helping people, and also a pragmatic level.

I do believe in paying it forward there. I think there are two levels of paying it forward. On one hand, there's a paid for, you owe me. You know, I do something for a— I expect to get something back. That's, you know, sort of the entry-level paying it forward karmic points. The higher-level karmic point is I default to yes, I'll do stuff for people.

I'll do stuff for a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h I j k l m n o p. I'll do it for all these people. Not necessarily because when I've done something for A, I get back for me. But just there's a karmic overall universal scoreboard. And so even though you help A, you may get something back from B, it's because the scoreboard is the totality of the scoreboard.

I truly do believe that this is just, help anybody and somebody else might help you back. It doesn't have to be you helping you, and it helps you best.

Anita Brick: Got it. I agree there was another Executive MBA student from the European campus who asked about that. Like, how do you transform your inner understanding that you need something or a person that you don't know and you want to know when you don't even know how you can help that person? But you're saying it doesn't matter. You figure out a way to connect to that person and know that you're going to be helping other people.

You don't have to worry about helping that specific person, as long as your overall perspective and your overall orientation is toward helping everyone, as long as it, you know, it totally makes sense.

Guy Kawasaki: A slight nuance, that is. I'm not exactly saying I don't know how to help A, so I'll help B instead. I'm saying there is a way to help A, there’s always a way.

Anita Brick: How do you identify that? I sit with people in my office and they say, I'm just starting out. I don't have tons of resources. How do I help someone who's been in that field for 10 years? What can I possibly offer that person?

Guy Kawasaki: OK, I'll give you a very simple and tangible and cheap and easy way. So OK, let's suppose that, you know, you meet some legendary person who could really do you a lot of good, but you're not quite sure what you could do for that person. So what specialty shall we make this person in? This legendary person who you think you cannot help?

Anita Brick: OK, so let's do one that is up your alley. And also a big passion of a lot of people here. Let's say the person is legendary in the VC world.

Guy Kawasaki: In the VC world. OK, you meet this person and you think, well, how can I possibly help this crazy billionaire venture capitalist, right? Now, you could do research in advance. You could do so by overhearing conversations. You could do it because of conversations. And I'll give you several angles. So one, you find out that he loves golf, which is not so unlikely with a gazillionaire, right?

Anita Brick: Right, right, right.

Guy Kawasaki: It happens that you find out that he loves golf and, you know, because you're with that kind of person, it happens that you learn that Callaway has just introduced some new super-duper driver that makes you have a drive that's 20% longer than before. Let's just pretend that happens. Callaway introduced it yesterday.

Anita Brick: OK. Fair enough.

Guy Kawasaki: OK, so you send an email to the super-duper venture capital and say, you know, I met you last night and I learned that you like golf. Did you know that Callaway just introduced this new driver that's supposed to make it super duper, and it's endorsed by Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods or I mean, whatever. Right. So you send them a link to a story from Golf Digest.

So now this venture capitalist gets this email. This venture capitalist is getting 200 emails a day. 199 are saying we're a patent-pending curve-jumping paradigm-shifting, proven team with a proven motto in a huge market. And we would like to meet you to pitch. OK. One of them comes in and says, I met you last night. I found out you like golf. I just found out about this Callaway driver. Isn't this cool? That's the one that kind of gets answered.

Anita Brick: You're right.

Guy Kawasaki: That's the one the guys go see. Yeah. You know, I do love golf. Thank you very much for sending me that article. I didn't know Callaway introduced this. And by the way, what do you do? That's your opening.

Anita Brick: That's great. It goes back to what you said earlier, that you have to listen, because if you're trying to think of the next brilliant thing you're going to say, you're going to miss those nuances.

Guy Kawasaki: It's a matter of listening. And it's also a matter of doing research because, yeah, if you really wanted to get to that guy, you would type in his name into Google and you would look at his LinkedIn profile, you would do all these things. And somewhere along the line, you—maybe he has a public Flickr feed, maybe he's on Google+ or Twitter tweeting about his last round of golf. You know, whatever you want, it can be done.

Anita Brick: That leads you to another question, which I thought was a good one. One of the evening students said, I so agree that each of us should add value to relationships, which is just what you were talking about. Yet how can I enchant others when I'm a software architect pursuing an MBA and there are a bazillion people just like me running around out in the world? What leverage do I have?

Guy Kawasaki: First of all, you cannot believe in your heart that there are a bazillion people just like you. If you do believe that, you're dead already. You have to believe …

Anita Brick: You're right.

Guy Kawasaki: … that you're unique somehow. I mean, it cannot be that everybody is the same. You grew up someplace different, you were adopted and other people weren’t. And I mean, you worked summers at a golf course. You have to believe that somehow you're different and you add value.

Anita Brick: You've got a really good point, because clearly, if you don't see how you're different, you're not going to be able to communicate that, and you probably won't be able to add value to others. But there's so many ways. I mean, you listed a whole string of them, and any of those could make you different and interesting. Maybe not to everybody, but certainly to somebody.

And that becomes a link. You know, it always goes back—at least, and correct me if I'm wrong—and I know this is a very nontechnical, non-MBA way of looking at it, but it always goes back to the heart. So it's in your heart. You feel that there is something—that you can add value, or that you just don't even know what it is, but you want to add value and that gives you some momentum to get started.

Guy Kawasaki: Well, you know, wanting to add value is the start.

Anita Brick: That's right. You're right. You're right. I think a lot of people, like you said, like we talked about at the beginning there, there's a whole group of people out there who feel that it is a zero-sum game, and that mind shift is sometimes really hard. How do you guide people to shift from being the eater to the baker?

Guy Kawasaki: 80% of it is just realizing that, yeah, you know, there really are two conceptual models, come to think of it. Just removing the scales from people's eyes is half the battle, 80% of the battle. And if you think about it, there are bakers and there are eaters. Now that you know that there's this bifurcation, pick one, and pick the one that I think you should, which is a baker should always be baking. You should seldom be eating.

Anita Brick: Good point. How do you sustain this? You personally—being an evangelist is not necessarily an easy thing to do. And yet you keep doing it. You keep expanding your reach. Clearly your energy and enthusiasm and commitment to all this is very high. How do you personally sustain that?

Guy Kawasaki: I am a driven person, really. Not in an obsessive-compulsive way; I just have a high need to do things. I have a high need, like I'm a grinder. There are personal deities who are big visionaries, a 50,000-foot view. I'm at the 500-foot view. The secret to my success is the willingness to grind it out, not broad-brush, 50,000-foot strategic directions.

Like writing for me, I am willing to grind out a book and I will edit and edit and edit where most authors would have long ago given up. I'll tell you a story. Right now, like literally today I'm finishing a book. Yeah, in 60,000 words. 50—literally five zero—people have beta tested this book and turned in hundreds of errors, and I have read it between 5 and 10 times more, and my coauthors read it between 5 and 10 times before we sent a manuscript.

It was pretty much perfect. 50 sets of eyes have looked at it, and I just got it back yesterday and there were 1,500 corrections. 1,500. So now some people would say, oh no, I have 1,500 things, you know, that were wrong. I look at it like, Hallelujah, man. That's just—I'm trying to get perfection. And if somebody finds 1,500 imperfections in something that I did, Hallelujah. Now, today I'm going to fix what I have to fix.

Anita Brick: It's good. What's the topic of the new book?

Guy Kawasaki: The book is called APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur and explains how to self-publish a book.

Anita Brick: Do you have time for like two more questions? One of these is a little off topic, but I wanted to at least honor the person who sent in the question. And this was an Exec MBA student. He asked, could you tell us your best Steve Jobs story?

Guy Kawasaki: My best Steve Jobs story is, one day I'm working in my cube. Steve shows up with a guy I've never met, and he asks me about a company named Knoware, which stands for Knowledge Software. So he says, what do you think of this company? I said, well, software's not that good. It's character based, not that interesting, doesn't take advantage of graphics. I mean, it's not really important for us. And he turns to the other guy and he turns to me and he says, Guy, I want you to meet the CEO of Knoware.

Anita Brick: Okey dokey.

Guy Kawasaki: Tell you the truth, if I had said to Steve, oh, it's a great piece of software, great company, beautiful stuff—in other words, if I had lied, or if I had not known the truth, I would have failed the IQ test, right? You would have believed there was only one right answer in that question.

Anita Brick: And in the end, it sort of helped everybody, I guess, except for the CEO of the company.

Guy Kawasaki: Well, maybe it helped him too.

Anita Brick: One final question. I know you like to be super practical, so what are 3 or 4 things that you would advise someone to do, or resources that you would recommend, to develop and sustain enchanting relationships?

Guy Kawasaki: Number one is learn how to use the internet as a research tool. There is no more excuse for not being prepared when you meet someone. Between LinkedIn, the person's website, the person's Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+ account, you should be able to figure out a lot about that person. It is one of the most sincere forms of flattery to go up to a person and say, oh, I read your post about XYZ on Google+, I thought that was pretty interesting. If you said that to most people—I read your post about blank on Google+, Pinterest or LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter—you would break through the noise because not many people will go through that effort. I know it would absolutely work for me. That would be tip number one.

Tip number two is like I said, always default to yes. Always be wondering. For example, I was at a venture capital conference, and I met a woman, and she was a social media marketing person and she said that one of her clients is this cupcake company, one of these high-end, you know, $5-a-cupcake companies. And I said, yeah, you know, I've been to that cupcake store in the Stanford Mall.

But every time I go there, there's a really long line and you have to, like, wait in line to get a cupcake. So she tells me, well, they just came out with an iPhone app. With the iPhone app, you can order it online, and then if you have ordered it online via iPhone, you can cut to the front of the line, which is a significant advantage if you really want a cupcake.

So, you know, this is a perfect example of defaulting to yes. Most people would say, oh, that's interesting, I'll go download the iOS app. Right. So if you're an enchanter and you're defaulting to yes, and you're thinking how you can help the other person, what did I do? I went out and, you know, told 3 million of my closest friends, hey, did you know that there is an iPhone app to order cupcakes so you can skip the line at Carol's Cupcakes?

And so I did this person this enormous favor because that's her client. So she got to say that, you know, I met Guy Kawasaki. He tweeted, or Facebook or Google-plus your app because I mentioned it to him. So it makes her look good. It makes the client happy. And I defaulted to yes. Now, obviously everybody doesn't have 3 million followers or whatever, right?

But the spirit is the same. You may not have that many followers, but you could have done that. Anybody could have done that. Yeah, it does matter that I have 3 million followers, but the concept of, well, at least this person was defaulting to yes and thought of a way to help me, even if it was only to 100 followers, even if the person just went to, you know, their 100 followers and told them about this, it's something, right?

Anita Brick: Right. Yeah, it's definitely paying it forward.

Guy Kawasaki: And that's the second recommendation. And the third recommendation is to always be thinking about the bigger picture. It is not tit for tat; it is not a zero-sum game; there's a karmic scoreboard someplace. Think generously, think positively.

Anita Brick: Absolutely. And I really, really appreciate your approach to this because what it does is it creates a collaborative environment. It also creates a generosity that makes life more fun, and it creates opportunities for greater success. So thank you for having this approach. Thank you for sharing it as broadly as you do and the generosity with which you do it.

Guy Kawasaki: Thank you.

Anita Brick: Thanks for doing this. And by the way, there's some fabulous stuff on Guy’s site. So it is www.GuyKawasaki.com. Thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.