Inspiration for entrepreneur wannabes – Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything.

Attention entrepreneurs: Meet your new best friend, Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything.

He challenges — and inspires — entrepreneurs to start businesses that will make the world better.

By Bruce Rosenstein, USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/money/books/reviews/2004-10-11-inspiration_x.htm

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The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

By Guy Kawasaki
Portfolio, 226 pages, $26.95

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Kawasaki is the managing director and chairman of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures (with the ultra-cool domain name garage.com), and the author of business how-to books such as Rules for Revolutionaries. He made his name 20 years ago as an "evangelist" for Apple’s Macintosh computer.

He knows entrepreneurs are time-pressed and just want the facts. That’s why his book is filled with lists, bullet points, boxes, charts, exercises and a section of FAQs at the end of each chapter.

Chapters begin with the GIST (Great Ideas for Starting Things). The GIST of Chapter One sets out the framework for getting going.

Top five points to remember:

•Meaning. How are you going to create a product or service that will make the world a better place?

•Mantra. Replace mission statements ("long, boring and irrelevant") with a mantra, a few words in the form of a "sacred verbal formula" that are derived from your organization’s meaning. His examples aren’t formally mantras, but you’ll get the idea: Rewarding Everyday Moments (Starbucks) and Fun Family Entertainment (Disney).

•Get going. Create and deliver your product or service before you get into detailed business plans or make pitches for funding.

•Define your business model. Who is your customer? How are you going to make money from that customer, so that revenue exceeds costs?

•Weave a MAT (milestones, assumptions, tasks). Develop lists that will provide an outline for growth. These are composed of milestones (raising capital, shipping testable and final versions of your product), assumptions (defining market size, prices of parts and supplies, compensation) and tasks (finding vendors, filing legal documents and setting up accounting and payroll systems).

He covers most areas an entrepreneur will want to learn about, such as positioning, branding, recruiting, raising capital and writing a business plan.

One of the most valuable sections is on "pitching," selling your idea to investors, customers, potential partners and others. He says to use the 10/20/30 rule in presentations: 10 slides for 20 minutes using 30-point font size.

Above all, in your presentations, remember: "Never dismiss your competition. Everyone — customers, investors, employees — wants to hear why you’re good, not why the competition is bad."

The final chapter may ultimately be the most rewarding. It discusses the art of being a mensch, "the Yiddish term for a person who is ethical, decent and admirable." Be a role model for your employees by doing something because it is the right thing to do, not because it will provide immediate personal gratification. It’s paying back society for its abundant gifts, not "paying forward in expectation of return."

Kawasaki is a genial guide for a tough subject. He’s encouraging and often humorous, but never minimizes the hard work involved.

Of the qualities needed to be an entrepreneur, he says: "It’s confidence; it’s also a little bit of denial. Part of being an entrepreneur is ignoring things too, because if you listen to all the naysayers, no one would ever start a company."

For people who think they don’t have the right background, consider Kawasaki’s list of 10 stellar names, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Apple’s Steve Jobs, Dell’s Michael Dell and eBay’s Pierre Omidyar. Investigate their backgrounds, he advises, and, "You will see that ‘on paper,’ none of them had the ‘right’ background to create a multibillion-dollar company."

The Art of the Start will prove instructive, but at some point you have to put the book down and take action. "The bottom line," Kawasaki says, "is … an entrepreneur is trying to start a company."