Episode 194 - Guy Kawasaki on Marketing Enchantment

Transcript

Susan Bratton: Welcome to DishyMix. I'm your host, Susan Bratton, and on today's show I have live in the studio with me Guy Kawasaki. Guy has yet another book out, another awesome book. It's his 10th book. That's a real accomplishment; not only 10th but he writes about things that are so wonderfully about things that are so topically interesting. And it's great to have you here Guy. Welcome to DishyMix again. You've been on here a few times I think by now.

Guy Kawasaki: It's an honor and a privilege.

Susan Bratton: Thank you. It's nice for you to say that. All right, well lets just dive right into your latest book. It's coming out the day this show debuts, so you don't even have to preorder it with one click on Amazon. You can just go get her.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, we look for when your show was coming out and we said lets make it happen that day.

Susan Bratton: You're a big liar. We're prerecording this. We know what we're doing. So Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions. Talk to us about what it is that motivated you to write a book about enchantment.

Guy Kawasaki: Well, there's a sarcastic answer.

Susan Bratton: I want that one first, always. Always.

Guy Kawasaki: The sarcastic answer is a big advance.

Susan Bratton: But did they come to you and say, did Penguin come to you and say, "We want you to write a book on enchantment" or did they say, "We want you to write another book and here's the money."

Guy Kawasaki: It was more the latter than the former.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki: I was in a two-book deal...

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Guy Kawasaki: and the first deal, first book of that deal was Reality Check.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki: And so now it was time for another one.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Guy Kawasaki: And I told them that I was a big fan of Robert Cialdini...

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki: with his Persuasion book.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki: And Dale Carnegie with How To Win Friends and Influence People, and I wanted to bring those up to date for this more digital age, and I also wanted to apply it more tactically. Their orientation, well one orientation is from 1930's right, Dale Carnegie's, and Robert Cialdini, he is an academic. He's a professor. And so I...

Susan Bratton: I've interviewed him. I know him.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, he's great.

Susan Bratton: As a matter of fact, he and his wife support the charity that my daughter and I are helping with. So they're very good to us.

Guy Kawasaki: So he, but he has a social psychology bent, right.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki: And I'm trying to use his theories and apply it to business. In the same sense, when you read Malcolm Gladwell, like you learn that you have to tip, right, but he doesn't really tell you how to tip. And so this book is about how to enchant. The presumption is you figured out you need to enchant.

Susan Bratton: Well you've always been an amazing storyteller, and Enchantment really is in most cases at it's core about telling your story. I think one of the things that you talk about is convincing others to dream your dream, and Enchantment is almost a reconstruction of what it takes to enchant people to dream your dream, right. So one of the things that I noticed about Enchantment is that it's both how to be an enchanting person yourself, as well as how to have an enchanting business. And you wrote this a lot for entrepreneurs, although I think it could be applied to any business, that we need to be enchanting. What are the basic tenets of something that is enchanting, captivating, persuading, whatever it might be?

Guy Kawasaki: Well for the person or for the thing?

Susan Bratton: Divide it out if it's different.

Guy Kawasaki: Okay.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki: So for the person the three pillars of enchantment are that you're likeable, that you're trustworthy and that you have a great product or service. For the product or service the fundamentals create an acronym called Dicey, which is that it is deep, has lots of features, that it is intelligent, it is anticipated, what people need to do with something, it solves a problem. It is complete; that is it's not simply a software download, it's not simply a physical thing. It's the totality of the experience, the community upgrades, the online supports, the manuals. You know, great software is more than a download. It is also empowering. It makes you more productive, more creative, and it's also elegant that someone has cared about the user interface. So the totality of this is that you need people who are likeable and trustworthy with a product that's dicey.

Susan Bratton: So I know you use a lot of examples in the book of people and/or businesses that are dicey. You use Apple a lot. You talk about when mistakes were made, like the launching of the McIntosh into the business market and things like that. But right now in this moment what comes to your mind when you think about an enchanting person and why is that?

Guy Kawasaki: Well one enchanting person is...

Susan Bratton: Besides you, by the way. You are, you're very enchanting.

Guy Kawasaki: You know what, as an aside no enchanting person would claim they're enchanting.

Susan Bratton: Of course.

Guy Kawasaki: It's like saying, you know...

Susan Bratton: But I can say it.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, well you can say it all you want.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, you're so enchanting.

Guy Kawasaki: So some enchanting people currently...

Susan Bratton: Yup.

Guy Kawasaki: Richard Branson is one.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, he's very enchanting.

Guy Kawasaki: There is, I think Queen Latifah...

Susan Bratton: Oh me too, I love her.

Guy Kawasaki: is very enchanting. I think Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs is also enchanting. He's enchanting because he will suck it up, he'll do any dirty job.

Susan Bratton: Oh, the guy on TV.

Guy Kawasaki: Yes.

Susan Bratton: Yes, yes, I know. Yeah, I've seen him.

Guy Kawasaki: So those are three examples of people I consider enchanting. Some products that I consider enchanting; 1964