Social

eTail West: Guy Kawasaki Keynote Speech About eCommerce Enchantment

By Tinuiti Team

For those of you who don’t already know, Guy Kawasaki is kind of a big deal. He is the author of 10 best selling books, he has over 600k followers on Twitter and over 1.3 million people have Guy Kawasaki in their Google+ circles!

I had been looking forward to his eTail West keynote all week and I obviously wasn’t the only one. This was not your typical 8am session on the final day of a conference with low attendence and even lower energy from the audience.

The room was PACKED. The energy was ELECTRIC. And the stage was set for some ENCHANTMENT.

Without further ado, here is my recap of the Guy Kawasaki eTail West 2012 Keynote Speech:

Guy Kawasaki 

CEO of Alltop.com 

Best Selling Author of Enchantment

Icon Icon Icon

Guy started the presentation by explaining why he was wearing a hat. He has Meniere’s disease and had a recent operation to restore the hearing in his right ear.  He made it very clear to the audience he was not  a Metrosexual (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and he was wearing the fedora to cover up his scar from the operation.

The 4 Pillars Of Enchantment

1. Achieve Likability 

-Have a great smile.

The best type of smile is called a duchenne smile. It requires you to use both your jaw and your eyes.

People who have a duchenne smile will often develop crow’s feet around their eyes. Guy showed this picture of Facebook expert Mari Smith to demonstrate what a great duchenne smile looks like:

-Default to “YES”.

Give people whatever it is that they want and constantly think about how you could help the person you are talking to. This philosophy will not only will make you a world class smoozer but the other person will almost always return the favor.

-Accept everyone.

If you want to be enchanting, you can’t judge other people. See the good in all people and accept them for who they are.

2. Achieve Trustworthiness

-You need to show trust FIRST.

The key to earning trust from others is to show your trust first. Examples of trusting first:


-Bake, don’t eat.

An eater sees the world as a zero sum game – GIVE ME YOUR PIECE OF THE PIE!

A baker just makes more pies. Look for new opportunities while everyone else in your industry fights over the same pie.

 -Agree on something.

You need to find common ground to build your relationships with people. Even during negotiations, you need to start with the issues you can agree on.

3. Do something DICEE

Great products and services are DICEE:

The new Ford Mustangs are DICEE.

Not only are they bad ass (4x the horsepower of a Prius) but Ford has a program called “MyKey” which lets you control the maximum stereo volume and top speed when somebody else is driving.

4. Enchant Employees

Your employees won’t be enchanting to your customers unless you are enchanting to them. If your employees hate what they do, there is no way they are going to make your customer happy.

Daniel Pink says that all employees want is a MAP which stands for: Mastery, Autonomy, Purpose.

-Empower action.

Give your employees the freedom to make their own decisions.

-Suck it up.

You have to be in the trenches with the people you are managing. You should never ask your employees to do something that you would not be willing to do.

Tactics For Becoming Enchanting

-Remove the speed bumps.

The best examples of speed bumps are those stupid captcha forms! Captcha forms not only reduce spam, they reduce your customer base.

Here is an ironic captcha form where the 2nd word is Hebrew for “obstacle”:

-Provide value.

The value should be in the form of your content. Your should try to make your content valuable through information, insights, or assistance.

Think of NPR as a business model.

They provide amazing free content throughout the year. Their content quality is so top notch that it’s easy to put up with the annoying pledge drives a couple times a year.

-Engage fast.

Guy showed a Google Ripple from one of his statues on Google+ to demonstrate how almost all of the sharing happens within the first 2 hours, then completely dies. When you post a new link, you need to be prepared to engage your audience quickly.

-Engage flat.

Guy used the same Google Ripple to show the amount of followers for each person who shared his post. Typically each person sharing his status has a very small following but you shouldn’t be concerned with how many followers a person has.

-Plant many seeds.

You obviously should suck up to A-Listers but make sure you don’t forget everyone else. You never know which people or businesses are going to blow up so you should plant as many seeds as you can.

-Provide social proof.

One of the keys to success of the iPod was the white earbuds. The more white earbuds people saw, the more they wanted an ipod.

Social proof plays a huge role on the perception of your business so make sure you are aware of it.

-Build an ecosystem.

You can’t do everything on your own so you need to empower your audience. Use things like Webinars & open APIs to build an ecosystem.

-Do what it takes.

Sometimes you just have to do whatever it takes. As an example of doing what it takes, Guy showed this picture of Richard Branson massaging his feet to get Guy to fly Virgin:

Questions From The Audience:

After the presentation was completed Guy received a few questions from the audience.

The first audience question was about Pinterest and here was Guy’s response (paraphrasing):

“Pinterest is one of those things you look at and think – How hard can that be?

From an investment standpoint I probably would have passed on Pinterest because it would have seemed like the barriers to competition were too low. Now I would love to invest in them so if anyone knows the founders, have them give me a call!

I also think their business model is sustainable because women are the true influencers. If you get women to like something, men will eventually follow.”

The second audience question was about innovation:

“At 57 it’s way too easy for me to come up with holes in any new idea. That’s why I leave the ideation to young people. They don’t know what they don’t know and that lack of conventional wisdom often leads to the best ideas.

Also the current love of my life is Google+. Google+ is to Mac what Facebook is to Windows. Google+ is like Santa Barbera while Facebook is like Downtown Los Angeles.

The Google+ design is more elegant. The audience is more intelligent and I love that I can edit my comments after I post them. I actually pay attention to my alerts from Google+ because they are so much more valuable than the 60+ mentions I get each day on Twitter.”

More Photos of Guy Kawasaki From The Presentation:

You Might Be Interested In

*By submitting your Email Address, you are agreeing to all conditions of our Privacy Policy.