Genuine influence is everything

Guy Kawasaki, author of several books, and chief evangelist at Canva, gave an engaging talk on influence, or it could be called, presentation skills for today’s world.

He referenced the works of several authors including:

• Influence, by Robert Cialdini
• Drive, by – Daniel Pink

Guy began by describing the difference between the “Pan Am” smile and the “Richard Branson” (or Duchenne) smile, the former is fake and the latter is real, and is market by crows feet, and not botox.

Accept others if you want to be liked. Set your default response to “yes” – think how can I help the other person. By saying yes, you never know what may happen. If you say “no” you stop right there. Generally people don’t try to take advantage of you.

Nordstrom defaults to “yes”

2) Achieve Trustworthiness

Trust and liking are not the same thing.

Examples:

We may like Brad Pitt, Justin Bieber, or Paris Hilton, but it does not mean we trust them.

• Trust – Amazon 7 day book policy
• zappos.com – (part of Amazon) – women buying shoes – people trust Zappos – pays shipping both ways…
• Nordstrom – took back a tyre from a customer even though they don’t sell tyres…

Difference between an eater and a baker:

• Eater says wow – only a limited pie, if some eats I get less … your gain is their loss.
• Baker says I can bake another pie, or a bigger pie. Bakers are more trust worthy than eaters.

Agree on something … anything

• Latin American diplomats, who’s respective countries where engaged in conflict, agreed on their mutual dislike of opera, and where then able to open dialog to resolve their differences.
• find something to start your relationship … anything.

3) Perfect (DICEE)

• It’s harder to enchant people with crap
• 5 qualities of good products / services
• 1) Deep – lots of features, functionality, content
• 2) Intelligent – this company understands my need / pain
  • Ford – MyKey – program the top speed of the car into the key
• 3) Clean – moral responsibility to have clean products / green
• 4) Empowering
  • You or Windows – Mac empowers people
• 5) Elegant – someone cared about the user experience / design

Tell a Story

• why you created this portal / services / product
• two guys in a garage / frustrated only place to use a computer is a uni
• started apple
• eBay: my girlfriend wanted to collect Pez (candy) dispensers – so he built eBay.

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Plant Many Seeds

• old: suck up to a major journalist at the WSJ
• new: social media – nobodies are the new somebody
• Social media is everywhere, free, ubiquitous
• Twitter: new kind of micro-communications, un-doing autocracies … just starting … are there any articles from experts (10 years ago) exposing the future of communications
  • Got popular at SXSW with people looking for parties / events

Use Salient points

• Calories vs. Miles
  • Bag of chips has 500 calorie
    • vs. if you eat this bag of chips you have to run 20 miles
• Dollars vs. Months of food
  • Non-profite ( donars don’t care about $$$ they care about number of months of food)
• Gigabytes vs. Number of Songs

5) Overcome

• Nindendo 1980’s:
  • Game to shoot stuff up vs. Educational toy to learn robotics
• Provide social proof
  • Apple – white ear bud
    • the more you see … the more comfortable people are with white ear buds … more iPod sales
• Use a dataset to overcome a mindset
  • GapMinder.org
  • Change a belief
    • 1950 – US / Europe | Long life and few kids
      • ROW: opposite
    • Now: more alike
• Enchant the Influencers
  • Father? Mother? Daughter?
    • Guy’s been to two Justin Bieber concerts (yikes)

6) Endure

• Grateful Dead
  • Encourages piracy of their concerts
  • Hardest core fans are at the concert
• Build an Ecosystem
  • See slide
  • Apple / Google with lots of developers in ecosystem
  • Restaurant: waiters / valet service / organic farm / yelp / etc (make up ecosystem)
  • Invoke reciprocation
    • Ethiopia was aided by Mexico agains Italy
      • years later Ethiopia (in the midst of Famine) sent money to Mexico

I know you’ll do the same for me. Instead of: “You’re welcome”

• tell them how to pay you back.
• enable them to pay you back
• Don’t rely on money
  • Apple evangelist believe in their products

7) Present

• Great presenters are great enchanters
• 1) Customize the introduction
  • show you know where you are / who you are with
• 2) Sell your dream
  • iPhone ≠ $188 of parts
    • Pitch: cool thing and beautiful, will make you productive
• 3) 10 slides in PPT
  • 20 minutes
    • most presentations are 60 minutes
    • 30-point font
    • divied age of oldest person / 2

8) Use Technology

• remove the speed bumps
  • captcha – reduce the number of speed bumps you have
  • Sungevity – installs residential solar panel
    • uses satellite photos to survey your house / roof
  • provide value
    • information
    • Guy has 8 million followers
    • NPR has a spring telethon (fund raising)
      • provides great content 365 days
      • Information / Insights / Assistance
    • Value = earn the right to promote be there
    • Tweet / respond within 2 hours
    • Email – 48 hours

9) Engage the boss (uP)

• drop everything else
  • wife wants something – drop everything else
• prototype fast
• deliver bad news early
  • more chance to truly prevent bad news

10) Enchant down

– drive by Daniel Pink

• enchant
• Provide a Map
• Mastery
• Autonomy
• Purpose
• make the decision, don’t tell us everything
• Dirty Jobs – Mike Rowe – Suck it up (be a boss that will do – don’t ask you employees to do something you won’t)

Conclusion

• 3 pillars of enchantment
  • Likeability
  • Trustworthiness
  • DICEE (enchant with great stuff instead of crap)
    • Guy’s golden touch – whatever is gold Guy touches

APE – Author Publisher Entrepreneur

• Guy Kawasaki
• Democratise publishing

(There is also a version of this talk on Guy’s blog).