Guy Kawasaki epitomizes Silicon Valley cool – he’s a former Apple employee, now a venture capitalist.  He’s written books on entrepreneurship that eschew grand theories in favor of practical advice:  The Art of the Start (http://tinyurl.com/kqozzl) and Reality Check (http://tinyurl.com/nosjt4).  I recommend both highly if you’re an entrepreneur or you have those cravings.  Wearing my own entrepreneur’s hat for a moment, as the President of Public Words Inc, a communications company, I can vouch for the good advice in Guy’s writings. 

You can see Guy speak here: http://tinyurl.com/nbbnsv.  Guy is warm, unpretentious, straightforward and funny.  He warms up slowly in this particular speech, but once he’s cranking, he’s got the audience, he’s dishing out insight after insight, and cracking jokes as he goes.  It’s a great performance. 

 

In that speech, Kawasaki makes one minor mistake that I urge you to avoid.  He draws attention to the speech itself by giving a brief rant on how so many CEO speeches ‘suck’.  Not only that, he says, but sometimes you don’t know how long they’re going to go on – making the whole experience much worse.  So, Guy concludes, I’m going to let you know where we are in my speech at all times, so at least if you think I suck, you’ll know for how long. 

 

Funny, and self-deprecating, yes, but it also sends your audience down the road toward thinking about whether or not they like your speech rather than just paying attention to it.  Now, Guy gets the audience back with some well-timed, well-delivered jokes after that, but why take the chance?  Don’t tell your audience it might not like you.  Don’t tell your audience that you’re sick.  Don’t tell your audience members that if they weren’t here they could be watching Monday Night Football.  Don’t do any of that unless you’ve got an overwhelming reason to start your audience thinking about all the ways it could decide to check out, dislike you, or wish it were somewhere else. 

 

 

Comments

[Espen Andersen]

Great speech, though the stories are a bit dated (and the quote from Watson completely wrong).