Tag: Guy Kawasaki

Your chance

Elton John had a song out a while ago. Your Song.

Newsweek, when it was still in print, had a page called My Turn (that had been before the Internet with immediate comments and re-tweet).

Now, the Art of the Start‘s author, Guy Kawasaki, asked readers what they want included in his next revision of the book.

Your chance.

Your 15-minutes of fame.

Smile, take the diploma and get off campus.

We all know that feeling of emptying out the space made for incoming replacement.

An office, a house or even a car with too many mileage on it.

We know we have had our chance, or exhausted it.

Others will see and seize the opportunity differently, from their angle and maybe the timing is better.

Tina Turner  said that she had sung Proud Mary a thousand times, but the way it was delivered was different each time (largely because of different venue and audience).

So we have had our chance. Or making ways for new ones.

As long as we don’t waste our talent pursuing second-best options.

At work or in life, natural selection will nudge us along the time continuum.

No way around it.

Something in the DNA combo that send out signals to the world.

I am here.

I exist in the now.

Come and get me. Find me. I want to be found, to be validated and to be heard.

Some need stroking more than others. But all of us need and deserve a chance to make our marks.

With current almost-bounced back economy, here is our chance. Once again, to “see the good side of the city… on the riverboat Queen”.

The fact that we are still here is a testimony to everyone’s resilience. I might not write as smoothly as Tom Clancy, look as husky as Paul Walker, or think as different as Steve Jobs. But I am still here, blogging along. So are you. Go celebrate life. Explore and exhaust all your chances. Chances are, there are still plenty , unexploited and begging to dance (to quote Jackson Browne ” Opportunity likes to dance with those who are already on the dance floor”). “I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind, I wrote down…these lines”.

Albert Einstein once said ” the saddest tragedy in life is a wasted talent”. Along that line, I would say, the most disappointed thing in life is to miss your Andy Warhol’s 15-minutes of fame. So walk up there, take your diploma, and smile at the camera. And one more for your mom. It’s a digital age now. Don’t worry about those wasted shots way back then, when each of us was rationed with only 36 shots on a roll or  the weekly My Turn. In Marketing class, we used to dream of inventing deodorant to sell to the billions in China. Now, we got 14 Billions eye balls ready to peruse our pitch, 24/7. Turns out that it’s not the lack of opportunity on the dance floor (or the floor itself for that matter). It’s our feet which are reluctant and us recluse. Frogs-in-slow-boiled state. Don’t know where to start? Tell Guy Kawasaki. Your chance to have input and insecurity dissipated.

Faustian bargain

Most of us don’t face life-and-death decision everyday (gaining the world but losing our soul). Leave that to Caligula or Gaddafi.

Yet, a less wealthy Syrian, whose background had been oblivious even to himself, still got some press. Steve Jobs can still sell some books.

Like you, I was curious. So I browsed his biography. One snippet about Steve: he lived for ideas and did not mind recruiting the best of talents, wherever they might be : foreign country or far-out competitor (Dropbox was an example). We all read his introduction in Guy Kawasaki’s Reality Check. Or about his last meal out (penchant for the Far East, relics from his early days seeking enlightenment). To this day, no one could explain why not once, but twice, some Beta versions of the I-phone managed to show up in Hanoi.

One man used his oil wealth to buy influence in Africa (calling himself King of Kings… the sun would never set on his Empire).

The other, used his sense of abandonment to “think different”.

Although both were ambitious, the market chose to follow Steve’s lead. We knew he would not settle. And he emphatically said so (Standford Address).

When I left my local Barnes and Nobles, I turned around and saw all those hard-cover books stacking up, all had Steve Job’s staring out the window.

As if to remind me not to settle.

I am sure people at Apple Inc and Apple stores still feel his midas touch. The book cover captures that magical feel, like the all-white room in John Lennon‘s “Imagine” video. Simplicity in life and in death.

Once in a thousand years, out of the abundant gene pool, emerged a few geniuses, in Physics (Einstein), in Arts (Van Gogh), in Music (Elvis), in Aviation (Wright brothers) or in Technology (Jobs).

Although we don’t face the Faustian bargain  on a daily basis, we have much to gain thanks to them. Now the burden is on us to make the most of this treasure trove. Go and invent your iNext.  Stay hungry and stay foolish.