Silicon Valley icon and best-selling author Guy Kawasaki shares the unlikely stories of his life and the lessons we can draw from them.
Guy Kawasaki has been a fixture in the tech world since he was part of Apple's original Macintosh team in the 1980s. He's widely respected as a source of wisdom about entrepreneurship, venture capital, marketing, and business evangelism, which he's shared in best-selling books such as The Art of the Start and Enchantment. But before all that, he was just a middle-class kid in Hawaii, a grandson of Japanese immigrants, who loved football and got a C+ in ninth-grade English.
Wise Guy, his most personal book, is about his surprising journey. It's not a traditional memoir but a series of vignettes. He toyed with calling it Miso Soup for the Soul, because these stories (like those in the Chicken Soup series) reflect a wide range of experiences that have enlightened and inspired him.
For instance, you'll follow Guy as he...
- Gets his first real job in the jewelry business - which turned out to be surprisingly useful training for the tech world.
- Disparages one of Apple's potential partners in front of that company's CEO, at the sneaky instigation of Steve Jobs.
- Blows up his Apple career with a single sentence, after Jobs withholds a pre-release copy of the Think Different ad campaign: "That's okay, Steve, I don't trust you either."
- Reevaluates his self-importance after being mistaken for Jackie Chan by four young women.
- Takes up surfing at age 62 - which teaches him that you can discover a new passion at any age, but younger is easier!
Guy covers everything from moral values to business skills to parenting. As he writes, "I hope my stories help you live a more joyous, productive, and meaningful life. If Wise Guy succeeds at this, then that's the best story of all."