Guy Kawasaki’s Talk in Charlotte

Guy Kawasaki, thanks to Network Solutions visited Charlotte this evening to talk about Small Business/Entrepreneurship.

In his talk, Guy discussed the Art of Innovative Solutions - meaning how to start a business that is innovative. I like how Guy started out by saying jokingly - define a niche that’s small enough and you will dominate it. While he was referring to him being the best Hawaiian, 53 year old hockey player that lived in Northern California, the message seemed to have some continuity to what he was saying through the rest of his presentation. Here’s a rundown of the major themes he talked about:

Make Meaning vs. Making Money

The idea here was that you want to make meaning instead of your business being all about money. When you make meaning, success follows. Which more than likely means you’re going to end up making money.

Once you decide you’re going to make meaning and change the world, you need a mantra on how you’re going to do that. Or rather a 3 or 4 word phrase as to why your business should exist. The problem with mission statements is that they are too long, use the same, typical words like strategic and partnership. He compared difficulty level of writing a mission statement to giving birth. How often do you sit down and read an entire mission statement? Even if you do how many people actually understand what is being said after they read it? It reminds me of the saying, “Keep it simple, stupid!” He used the example of Wendy’s mantra being “Healthy fast food” or Target as being “Democratize Design” So make meaning and find 3 or 4 words to communicate why your business should exist.

Jump Curbs & Don’t Worry Be Crappy

Innovation is about being different. So Guy suggests not trying to make the same thing better or bigger. Do something completely different. He said to jump curbs - so get off the worn and beaten path and leap frog over your competition. Create products that are Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Elegant and Emotive. There is so much stuff out there that not everyone is going to love everything you do. And that’s ok. Indifference to your product or business is worse than someone hating a product.

When your business is jumping curbs you’ll have moments of crappiness. He’s so right because in today’s business market with the websites coming and going so fast, you just have to act and then figure things out. Guy phrased it as shipping then testing. The point isn’t that you make a bunch of crappy products but that sometimes there will be parts of a product that you push out that need tweaking.

Adapt & Evolve

Sometimes when a product is sent out you’ll find that people you didn’t to buy your product will. These people then use it in unintended ways. He stresses that you should take the money. Instead of asking why your intended audience isn’t buying, ask the unintended customer why they saw value in your product and go with it. In this stage, go into denial. Guy talked a little about the recession and how a lot of people will say that now is a really bad time to start a business. Sure it’s hard but in reality you can really make a dent in down times with a small amount of marketing money. Decide to do it and go for it. But at some point you have to turn off the denial and ‘churn,’ as he put it. Meaning, you have to be flexible in your business so that you can evolve. The key is to find a happy medium between having a good valued product that is unique and at a good price point.

We did have a shortened Q&A time due to time constraints but someone asked him why it took him so long to get into blogging. I found interesting that he thought it was really self centered. But I guess he warmed up to it because people requested his thoughts.

You can follow Guy Kawasaki on Twitter or read his Blog.

Also some fellow Charlotte Twitterers who attended the post-event Tweetup (which by the way is how most of us heard about tonight’s event): Myself (@rosebeezy), Lauri (@UpsideUp), Scott (@capitalfellow), Lyell (@93octane), Joe (@pseudojoe), Justin (@jruckman), Shashi (@shashib), Ben (@budesigns), Matt (@mtyndall), and Katie (@kdfrankl). I hope that I didn’t miss anyone. If I did, I apologize and please feel free to give a shout out in the comments!

Thanks to Network Solutions for bringing Guy out and to Sonoma staff who did an awesome job taking care of us all.