Guy Kawasaki enjoys speaking to organizations that want to change the world. Guy is a good speaker and enjoys speaking, two important things set him apart as a speaker. One, he is a business person who happens to speak, not a “professional speaker,” a “motivational speaker,” or a “guru”. Two, he customizes each speech for the audience based on a pre-speech meeting where he develops an understanding of the business.

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Guy’s “Real Story” in His Own Words

I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1954. My family lived in a tough part of Honolulu called Kalihi Valley. We weren’t rich, but I never felt poor-because my mother and father made many sacrifices for my sister and me. My mother was a housewife, and my father was a fireman, real estate broker, state senator, and government official during his long, distinguished career.

I attended Iolani School where I graduated in 1972. Iolani is not as well-known as its rival, Punahou because no presidents of the U.S. went there, but I got a fantastic and formative education there. (Punahou is “USC,” and Iolani is “Stanford”—but I digress.) I pay special tribute to Harold Keables, my AP English teacher. He taught me that the key to writing is editing. No one in the universe would be more shocked that I have written ten books (or one book ten times) than Harold Keables.

After Iolani, I matriculated to Stanford; I graduated in 1976 with a major in psychology—which was the easiest major I could find. I loved Stanford. I sometimes wish I could go back in time to my undergraduate days “on the farm.”

After Stanford, I attended the law school at U.C. Davis because, like all Asian-American parents, my folks wanted me to be a “doctor, lawyer, or dentist.” I only lasted one week because I couldn’t deal with the law school teachers telling me that I was crap and that they were going to remake me.

The following year I entered the MBA program at UCLA. I liked this curriculum much better. While there, I worked for a fine-jewelry manufacturer called Nova Stylings; hence, my first real job was literally counting diamonds. From Nova, its CEO Marty Gruber, and my Jewish colleagues in the jewelry business, I learned how to sell, and this skill was vital to my entire career.

I remained at Nova for a few years until the the Apple II removed the scales from my eyes. Then I went to work for an educational software company called EduWare Services. However, Peachtree Software acquired the company and wanted me to move to Atlanta. “I don’t think so.” I can’t live in a city where people call sushi “bait.”

Luckily, my Stanford roommate, Mike Boich, got me a job at Apple; for giving me my chance at Apple, I owe Mike a great debt. When I saw what a Macintosh could do, the clouds parted and the angels started singing. For four years I evangelized Macintosh to software and hardware developers and led the charge against world-wide domination by IBM. I also met my wife Beth at Apple during this timeframe—Apple has been very good to me.

Around 1987, my job at Apple was done. Macintosh had plenty of software by then, so I left to start a Macintosh database company called ACIUS. It published a product called 4th Dimension. To this day, 4th Dimension remains a great database.

I ran ACIUS for two years and then left to pursue my bliss of writing, speaking, and consulting. I’ve written for Macuser, Macworld, and Forbes. I call these the “Wonder Years” as in “I wonder how I came to deserve such a good life.”

In 1989, I started another software company called Fog City Software with three of the best co-founders in the world: Will Mayall, Kathryn Henkens, and Jud Spencer. We created an email product called Emailer which we sold to Claris and then a list server product called LetterRip.

In 1995 I returned to Apple as an Apple fellow. At the time, according to the pundits, Apple was supposed to die. (Apple should have died about ten times in the past twenty years according to the pundits.) My job on this tour of duty was to maintain and rejuvenate the Macintosh cult.

A couple years later, I left Apple to start an angel investor matchmaking service called Garage.com with Craig Johnson of Venture Law Group and Rich Karlgaard of Forbes. Version 2.0 of Garage.com was an investment bank for helping entrepreneurs raise money from venture capitalists. Today, version 3.0 of Garage.com is called Garage Technology Ventures; it is a venture capital firm and makes direct investments in early-stage technology companies.

Currently, I’m a founding partner at Garage and co-founder of Alltop as well as a husband, father, author, speaker, and hockey addict. Alltop is an online magazine rack that I hope you’ll check out—you’ll probably enjoy Innovation.alltop, for example. I’ve also written ten books. My latest is Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions.

These are Guy’s favorite topics:

Enchantment. This speech explains how to influence people’s hearts, minds, and actions. The goal is not to get your own way but to bring about voluntary, enduring, and delightful change. The power of enchantment enables you to maneuver through difficult decisions, break entrenched habits, defy the wisdom of crowds, and get colleagues to work for long-term, mutually beneficial goals. Based on: Enchantment.

Innovation and product development. This speech inspires and informs companies to innovate. Guy lays out the strategic steps to create new products and services by calling upon his experience with Apple as well as his study of dozens of world-class companies. This speech is ideally suited for events whose underlying purpose is to set new standards of innovation and change the world. Based on: Rules for Revolutionaries.

Entrepreneurship. This speech provides the fundamental knowledge needed to start a new organization. It covers topics such as fund raising, positioning, branding, recruiting, rainmaking, and business planning. The intended audience is anyone starting anything-from two guys starting the next Google to social activists. Based on: The Art of the Start.

Intrapreneurship. This speech illustrates the benefits of treating every company as a startup. It inspires managers to unleash entrepreneurial thinking at established companies while compensating for the unique challenges an internal entrepreneur faces. It fosters the pluck and creativity companies need to stay ahead of the pack. Based on: The Art of the Start.

Evangelism, sales, and marketing. This speech enables companies to use secular evangelism to get customers, employees, and partners to believe in a product or service. I chart a complete course for the beginning evangelist that covers such topics as how to define a cause, how to identify good and bad enemies, how to deliver an effective presentation, and how to find, train, and recruit new evangelists. Based on: Selling the Dream.

Technology trends. This speech explains the difference between building a business at the height of exuberance, and the depths of depression, in the recent business cycles. It features practical lessons to accelerate the success of companies in current conditions, and is based on my experience as an investment banker and venture capitalist. Based on: years of suffering.

Competition. This speech provides companies with a blueprint for competing with other organizations for customer attention, dollars, and loyalty. It draws upon dozens of examples from technology and consumer companies to teach the audience how to ethically and effectively defeat their competition. Based on: How to Drive Your Competition Crazy