My 7 lessons from Guy Kawasaki's talk at
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2025 3:57 am
Today kicked off the event of the year for inbound marketing practitioners around the world: The INBOUND 2014 conference . And what better way to start than with a speech by Guy Kawasaki , Chief Evangelist at Canva and previously at Apple.
This great marketing personality shared with the thousands of attendees at the opening conference the 10 lessons he learned from Steve Jobs when he worked with him at Apple.
MY 7 LESSONS:
In Guy Kawasaki's talk today, there were 10 lessons about Steve Jobs, but I was left with 7 that really resonated with me and I think they can resonate with you too:
1. Design counts. Maybe not for everyone, but for enough people.
As we all know, for Steve Jobs one of the most important points of product development was design. Although Guy said he couldn't imagine a person who would rather buy a fat black laptop than a slim silver vp technical email database Mac just because it's good, there are plenty of people who do. I include myself in that group: I'm definitely not an Apple fan. But I do appreciate design and aesthetics in other things, and on that point Guy Kawasaki is right: Things should not only be good but also visually pleasing to capture the market you're targeting .
2. The best presentations are those with large graphics and large letters
This lesson definitely helped me a lot. Making presentations with very graphic slides is good for the people who make them and also for those who see them because it allows them to quickly create mental images of concepts that are not so simple. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. So take your time in choosing the best graphics for your slides and add some big text to explain them.
3. Great people also make mistakes and change their minds
At first, Apple's ecosystem was closed, as Steve Jobs' vision was for it to develop only through the company. However, the ecosystem opened up a bit, allowing third parties to develop apps for iOS, and that changed everything. The lesson Guy Kawasaki learned from this was that the big players know how to recognize when they make mistakes and quickly correct their path.
The fight is not about price, it is about adding value
This lesson from Guy Kawasaki confirmed something I have always believed: The best way to compete is by adding value, not by lowering the price. If you compete on price you win little. But if you compete by adding value, price becomes secondary to your market and service becomes the protagonist. In this way, quality, excellence and customer satisfaction become priorities for the company. This is undoubtedly beneficial because companies do not have to fight for reduced margins in a scarce market.
This great marketing personality shared with the thousands of attendees at the opening conference the 10 lessons he learned from Steve Jobs when he worked with him at Apple.
MY 7 LESSONS:
In Guy Kawasaki's talk today, there were 10 lessons about Steve Jobs, but I was left with 7 that really resonated with me and I think they can resonate with you too:
1. Design counts. Maybe not for everyone, but for enough people.
As we all know, for Steve Jobs one of the most important points of product development was design. Although Guy said he couldn't imagine a person who would rather buy a fat black laptop than a slim silver vp technical email database Mac just because it's good, there are plenty of people who do. I include myself in that group: I'm definitely not an Apple fan. But I do appreciate design and aesthetics in other things, and on that point Guy Kawasaki is right: Things should not only be good but also visually pleasing to capture the market you're targeting .
2. The best presentations are those with large graphics and large letters
This lesson definitely helped me a lot. Making presentations with very graphic slides is good for the people who make them and also for those who see them because it allows them to quickly create mental images of concepts that are not so simple. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. So take your time in choosing the best graphics for your slides and add some big text to explain them.
3. Great people also make mistakes and change their minds
At first, Apple's ecosystem was closed, as Steve Jobs' vision was for it to develop only through the company. However, the ecosystem opened up a bit, allowing third parties to develop apps for iOS, and that changed everything. The lesson Guy Kawasaki learned from this was that the big players know how to recognize when they make mistakes and quickly correct their path.
The fight is not about price, it is about adding value
This lesson from Guy Kawasaki confirmed something I have always believed: The best way to compete is by adding value, not by lowering the price. If you compete on price you win little. But if you compete by adding value, price becomes secondary to your market and service becomes the protagonist. In this way, quality, excellence and customer satisfaction become priorities for the company. This is undoubtedly beneficial because companies do not have to fight for reduced margins in a scarce market.