| The Top 10 Guy Kawasaki Posts Of The Year
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Guy Kawasaki's blog, How to Change the World, provides tactical, practical information that attracts the early adopter, entrepreneurial, tech-loving audience. His blog consistently ranks in the Technorati top fifty.
Some of Guy's posts are also on our website (View Guy Kawasaki Posts) and I've been a fan of his from the first day I read his blog. Guy was actually one of the first authoritative authors who joined EvanCarmichael.com. We were then able to go out and create partnerships with Donald Trump, Tom Peters, Michael Gerber, and many other top entrepreneurial gurus. What follows are my favourite posts from Guy's blog in the past year. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! |
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| #1: By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09 |
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Why It Made The List
Guy gives a step by step breakdown of how he launched Truemors, his newest Web 2.0 company, on a budget of only $12,107.09. The biggest cost ($4,824.14) was actually legal fees. It goes to show that you don't need big budgets and venture capital funding in order to get a new company off the ground. As guy mentions "Life is simple when you can launch a company with a credit-card level debt." The result of his guerrilla marketing campaign? 261,214 page views on the first day and a website that is now in the top 90,000 sites in Alexa. |
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| #2: Financial Models for Underachievers: Two Years of the Real Numbers of a Startup |
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Why It Made The List
Always looking to provide case studies and real life examples, Guy engaged his friend Glenn Kelman for this post who shares his financial figures as well as his lessons for other entrepreneurs starting up. He shares his numbers such as rent per employee, monthly benefits per employee, quarterly bonus payouts, monthly travel costs, and much much more. It's an eye-opening account of what to expect in your first year of business. Some of his lessons include: Focus on headcount, Plan slow, run fast,
Run top-down sanity-checks,
Forget economies of scale,
Admit that revenues are a mystery, and
Keep market-share under 20%. |
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| #3: Ten Questions with Jeffrey Pfeffer |
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Why It Made The List
Guy regularly does interviews with top thought leaders. Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and is the author of 12 books. His latest is also the subject of the interview and is called "What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management." Guy asks questions like "Why do companies do stupid things?" and "What are the characteristics of a good incentive plan?" There are actually 16 questions instead of 10 but Pfeffer's insightful answers are worth the extra reading time. |
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| #4: The Art of Schmoozing II |
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Why It Made The List
What entrepreneur doesn't want to be a better schmoozer? Let's face it: networking with the right people can help close business and take your company to the next level. In this post Guy shares with us 10 (and one bonus) tips on how to schmooze. Some of them are very simple and practical such as "Approach the person standing alone" and "Just smile and say Hi or Hello." The post goes on to talk about how you can make small talk, how to listen to the people you are networking with, how to prepare a self-introduction about who you are and what you do, and how to have fun (gasp!) while schmoozing. |
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| #5: MBA in a Page |
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Why It Made The List
This post caused quite a commotion with Guy's readers. Always looking to provide practical, hands on information for his readers, Guy pointed out a site that provided many typical MBA theories all on one page including:
GE/McKinsey matrix, Kaizen philosophy, Capital Asset Pricing Model, Business Process Reengineering, and Scenario Planning. Guy then goes on to say that "You can use the page as a test: Anyone who knows all these theories is someone you shouldn’t hire." This upset a lot of his MBA readers and led them to unsubscribe from his RSS feed but it got people talking about the blog. |
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| #6: No Plan, No Capital, No Model...No Problem |
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Why It Made The List
This short post quickly tells the story of PlentyOfFish.com founder Marcus Frind who launched a free online dating website that is supporting through advertising revenues. He gets 12 billion page views per year, is the only employee at his company, is making $5-6 million from Google AdSense and spends only two hours working on the site per day. Guy also shares examples of four other web entrepreneurs who have made it without any significant up front capital investments. A Google video accompanies the post and it's a must watch for any entrepreneur who wants to start up an online business. |
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| #7: On the Other Hand: The Flip Side of Entrepreneurship by Glenn Kelman |
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Why It Made The List
This is the second Glenn Kelman post in the Top 10 but I enjoyed it so much that I had to put it in. It's a rebuttal to the number six post on this list about how "easy" it is to start up a successful Web 2.0 company. Glenn discusses how "Hard has gone out of fashion. Like college students bragging about how they barely studied, start-ups today take care to project a sense of ease." Glenn also goes on to offer practical advice for startup web entrepreneurs including: Big projects attract good people,
Start-ups are freak-catchers,
Good code takes time,
Fearless leaders are often terrified, and
It'll always be hard work. |
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| #8: You Know You're Old When: |
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Why It Made The List
This blog post celebrated Guy's 53rd birthday. It's a humorous post where Guy reflects on how old he feels. He shares examples of you know you're old when such as "You cancel your babysitter at summer camp because you’re too tired to go out at 9:00 pm." and "A cute blonde buys you a drink, and she’s your kids’ summer camp counselor." Guy then encouraged his readers to get in on the fun and share their "You know you're old when..." stories. The community had some fun with it and is sparked a lot of activity and link backs from related bloggers. |
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| #9: The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing |
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Why It Made The List
This blog post offers advice for pitching your company to investors, customers, partners, journalists, vendors, or employees. The theory is that if you don't use one of these nine lines then you probably have a problem. The nine lines include: Aspirations and beliefs, David vs. Goliath, Avalanche about to roll, Contrarian/counterintuitive/challenging assumptions, Anxieties, Personalities and personal stories, How-to stories and advice, Glitz and glam, and Seasonal/event-related. He finishes with a challenge to his readers: "Here’s a good exercise for your team: Have it read this posting and then answer the question: What story line does our marketing currently use? Then, if you’re brave enough, ask the question: What story line should our marketing use?" |
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| #10: How to Get a Job on Craigslist |
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Why It Made The List
Looking to find a photo editor for one of his websites, Guy posted a help-wanted ad on Craigslist - another great way to save money on recruiting costs. He then shares his experience with the Craigslist posting and offers advice for would-be job seekers on how to respond to such ads and land the position. Some of his advice included: Apply fast, Write a cover email that addresses the position, Rise to the occasion, Apply well, Apply really well, and Don’t be stupid. The result of the ad? The Craigslist posting cost Guy $75 and yielded 37 good candidates - that's an acquisition fee of only $2 per candidate. |
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Thank you Guy for continuing to provide valuable advice to entrepreneurs through your blog! You can read the rest of Guy's post at How to Change the World. I've also included a widget showing off Guy's latest venture, Truemors.
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