TED Talk Tuesday: The 12 Lessons I Learned from Steve Jobs by Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki is just rad.  He's a venture capitalist who was born and raised right here in Hawaii (yay!).  He was Apple's chief evangelist for four years before starting his own business, Garage Technology Ventures.  He is the author of 10 books, and the co-founder of Alltop.com, an "online magazine rack."


He credits Steve Jobs as having a monumental impact on his life, and in this incredible TED talk, he talks about what he personally learned from Steve Jobs.

Here are the 12 lessons Guy Kawasaki learned from Steve Jobs:

1.  "Experts" are clueless.  If there's anything that Apple has proven is that experts are often wrong.  Learn to ignore experts.  Experts usually define things within established limits.  Break those limits.

2.  Customers cannot tell you what they need.  They can only describe things in terms of products or services they already have.  If you truly want to change the world, you need to ignore your customers.

3.  Jump to the next curve.  Don't stay on the same curve.   Great innovation occurs when you jump to the next curve.

4.  Biggest challenges beget the best work.  Steve Jobs had such great expectations of his people and his people tried to rise to his expectations.

5.  Design counts.  Many companies can say they care about design, but Apple is one of the few companies that truly cares about the design.  

6.  Use big graphics and big font.  When doing a presentation, If you just do this, your presentation will be better 9/10ths of those in the world.  The rule of thumb for font size:  find out who the oldest person in your audience, and then divide that number by 2.  That should be your font size.

7.  Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence.  If you change your mind, if you change the way you do things in response to how customers actually consider you, it is a sign of intelligence and it will lead to success.

8.  "Value" is not the same as "price."  It's not that you need to have the lowest price, you have to have the best value.

9.  A-players hire A+ players.  When you are in the position of hiring, hire people who are better than you.

10.  Real CEO's demo.  Steve Jobs proved the CEO can do the demo.  Because to be a good demonstrator of your product or service, you truly have to understand your product or service, you also have to understand your audience.

11.  Real entrepreneurs ship.  You don't have to worry about getting to a state where things are perfect, you have to ship.

12.  Marketing = unique value.  Marketing is all about finding unique value.

BONUS:  Some things need to be believed to be seen.  If you want to change the world, you have to believe in things before you'll see them.