It’s been over two months since my last post summarizing Guy Kawasaki’s presentation at the Inc. 500/5000 conference I attended last October, during which he offered an informative session about cultivating and maintaining “enchantment” in your customers or clients. I have been discussing how his concepts are applicable for us at Outskirts Press so perhaps they can also help you apply the information to your own entrepreneurial efforts (starting a business, running a company or yes, even marketing a published book). Thankfully, one of Guy’s tips toward enchantment did NOT include being more timely in completing a blog series…
Step 9 is to enchant up.
Guy summarized this step pretty rapidly with “Deliver bad news early.”
Step 10 is to enchant down.
Here, the gist of the step was to empower the employees of the company, help them master new skills, give them autonomy, and empower them to take action.
Admittedly, these last two steps (and even 7 & 8 to a lesser degree) are shorter on information than the first steps in this blog series, but that’s not entirely my fault. Certainly, I’m guilty of waiting too long to write this, and have not retained as much information in memory as I could have, but the first 5-6 steps were also given much more time and attention in Guy’s presentation by Guy himself. By the time we got to step 7, he realized he was nearly out of time and quickly glossed over steps 8, 9, and 10.
Even so, it was still the best presentation at the conference, in my opinion. And if such a celebrated speaker can experience a moment of mis-timing, perhaps there is hope for the rest of us as we speak and present.
Here’s hoping I attend the upcoming Inc. 500/5000 conference this year in Washington D.C. to see if another presenter reaches or surpasses the bar set by Guy last October. I’ll go if Outskirts Press wins its 5th placement on the Inc. 500/5000 list in a row, something less than 1,000 total companies have ever accomplished. We’ve applied and now we simply have to wait until August to learn of the results. 2012 was our best year ever, thanks to our wonderful, supportive authors our talented personnel, and the continued explosive growth of self publishing in general, so I’m cautiously optimistic…
President of Outskirts Press 