Guy Kawasaki
“Don’t expect people to do something you wouldn’t.”
We are thrilled to bring one of the most prolific and influential tech and business leaders in history, Guy Kawasaki, to one of our Women On IT Positivity Hack Delivered episodes! Guy joined us on a virtual chat and video interview by Women On IT Founder Beata Young, last 1st June 2022.
The conversation covered a variety of topics. Guy reflected on his career journey and life experiences and gave advice and insights for startups and entrepreneurs. He also talked about his role as Chief Evangelist for Canva and his Remarkable People podcast.
Guy Kawasaki
“Being an entrepreneur is a very difficult thing. If you were easy, more people would do it. So the thing to remember is that it’s going to be a very difficult time. The purpose of an entrepreneur is not to raise money, not to write business plans, not to make pitches – it’s to create customers.”
You can watch the full episode here:
YouTube: https://youtu.be/DNH-XQe_izk
Facebook: https://fb.watch/dnZWUoKe4R/
LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/dfz_557D
Or read the transcript below:
Beata Young:
Welcome to PHD with Women On IT, hack the future.
My name is Beata Young and today’s PHD (Positivity Hack Delivered) will be by our guest Guy Kawasaki.
Topic “Life lessons For Startups From The Wise Guy” Episode 65 – starts here!
Let me remind you this is a grassroot community that focuses on Women On IT – an inclusive forum of women in technology, startups and female leaders who are supported by men as well and I bring heart to that hustle because empathy is my mojo and empathy is critical when you are building a startup.
In today’s episode, we are going to learn life lessons for startups from the Wise Guy. This is the author himself joining us in the studio, who says “My real mantra for my life is to empower others”.
For our Positivity Hack Delivered Episode 65, we are lucky to have the opportunity to sit down with one of the most prolific, influential tech and business leaders in history: Guy Kawasaki. With over 5 million followers on social media and a long history of working with some of the largest global brands, he is a true icon, a legendary figure in the world of entrepreneurship, marketing and technology.
Guy is famous for his unique approach to success: success comes from empowering others. Great leaders don’t just look out for themselves—they make sure other people are taken care of as well. Ensure everyone has access to what they need to succeed and be happy. Focus on empowering people not just within – but also outside – the business world.
Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool and also a founding partner of Garage Technology Ventures, a VC firm that makes direct investments in startup tech companies. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google, served as Chief Evangelist of Apple for 4 years, and sat as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Guy gives motivational and insightful keynote speeches about innovation, enchantment, social media, evangelism, and entrepreneurship that truly empower his audiences in a wide range of industries and fields. He is the author of “Wise Guy”, “The Art of the Start 2.0”, “The Art of Social Media”, “Enchantment”, and eleven other books.
Guy, let’s start with a simple question. Where in the world are you today?
Guy Kawasaki:
Right now I am in Watsonville, California, which is a little bit outside of Santa Cruz, California.
Beata Young:
That’s a beautiful location I noticed by following your Instagram that just last week, you were in Hawaii. Can you tell us a little bit about the occasion?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes. Last week I was in Hawaii. My eldest son got married so they had a destination wedding at the Kualoa Ranch on Oahu.
Beata Young:
That’s beautiful, because I remember the “Art of the Start”. The front of the book says: “every child is like a startup”. So this is quite appropriate. It’s like an IPO. How is your view on your IPO going? Are you happy with the outcome?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes, yes. He definitely has a remarkable life. That’s for sure.
Beata Young:
That’s beautiful. I’m happy to say that today is Children’s Day in Poland. And I was lucky to have my daughter just a couple of days ago, visiting me here in Malta, a beautiful Mediterranean, small island.
So let’s go back to the startup world and let’s go to the real sweat and because I believe it’s quite more rewarding in the sense of business and making money if you want to look after your children, you need to make money somehow. So what should I look out for when setting up my own startup?
Guy Kawasaki:
How long have we got?
There are so many things to look out for. I think one of the mistakes that many entrepreneurs make is that they think that, well, from the outside looking in before you are an entrepreneur, you think it’s all fun, and you’re going to cocktail parties and you’re shucking and jiving, and you’re meeting with venture capitalists, and they’re throwing money at you, and then you get the money and you get this perfect office with perfect furniture, perfect MacBook Airs and you find this world class team and unlike any other team in the history of mankind, they deliver the product on time and on budget.
Then your biggest problem is scaling because people love your product so much. In that list of things I just said, basically, none of them are going to happen. So you know, being an entrepreneur is a very difficult thing. If it was easy, more people would do it. So the thing to remember is that it’s going to be a very difficult time. The purpose of an entrepreneur is not to raise money, not to write business plans, not to make pitches, it’s to create customers. The way you create customers is you have to ship something, duh. And so it’s all about shipping.
So raising money and all that other stuff is just a means to an end. And the end is a product, revenue. And as long as you keep that in mind, that’ll keep you on the right course, I think.
Beata Young:
I think judging from my history of working with many startups and mentoring and running the Mission To Run startup network, it’s always going back to the drawing board, meeting clients, meeting investors and back to the drawing board. So it’s always constant improvements. We have a couple of lovely audience here joining us today.
Agata Bellon: “Good evening Guy! Thanks for joining us”. Marcos Bravo: “Hi Beata, Hi, Guy”. Marcos is big in marketing and he used to be also on our show. Jane: “Hello, Beata & Guy”. Lovely to see you Jane. Olga Vasina: “Hello, Guy. What was the biggest thing you learned from your childhood in Hawaii that applied to your career?”
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow! So as you just heard, I was born and raised in Hawaii. and I came from a lower middle class family, I actually have a lot of lessons. So first, I would not be here were it not for an elementary school teacher, so I have great, great love for teaching. If you want to put any group of people on a pedestal, I suggest teachers, because clearly they’re not doing it for the money and they have such responsibility and there’s such huge factors in arguably our most valuable asset, which is young people.
Here in the United States, I think teachers are vastly underpaid, they’re underappreciated. If you want to go to an extreme, not to get dark for a moment, but you know, because of the list like mass shootings in schools, there’s some politicians who believe that teachers should be armed. I mean, that is just the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard. Then you combine that with, there’s some politicians who believe that teachers should not be able to pick textbooks because of critical race theory or something like that. So we have a situation in America where we have teachers who are underpaid, and they’re not trusted to pick books, but they should be carrying guns to defend the school, which just makes none of that makes sense to me.
So anyway, not to go around in a dark hole too long. So I learned the value of education, that’s for sure. Secondly, I learned that to be honest, when you ask people ‘what motivated you when you’re young?’ Yeah, well, what did you want to do? I think many, many successful people, they sort of retroactively remember it a little differently than reality. They talk about denting the universe, changing the world, decreasing poverty, ending climate change, all this kind of stuff. I will be very honest there are two factors that motivated me when I was young. Factor number 1 is that twice, catching public transportation in Hawaii and I was robbed. And so I kind of came to this conclusion that Guy, you have just got to work your ass off so that you don’t live in a place where you get robbed.
So that was motivation number one. Motivation number 2 is that both in high school and in college, someone let me not drive but I had a ride in a Porsche when I was in high school, and then in college, my college roommate came from a wealthy family and his mother let me drive her Ferrari Daytona. I will tell you that when I rode in the Porsche, and I drove the Ferrari, I said to myself, guy, here’s another reason to work your ass off, not only do you need to get away from someplace where you’re robbed, but you need to get a car like this.
So the lesson here is not that you should be robbed, or that you should love cars. The lesson here is that it doesn’t matter what motivates you. God bless you want to dent the universe, change the world, make people’s lives better, etc, and hallelujah or if you want to just get a better car, it doesn’t matter what motivates you. What matters is that you are somehow motivated. And the third thing is that, you know, I got my job at Apple because of nepotism, I got my job at Apple, because my best friend in college gave me a job.
There’s no way on paper that I was qualified for that job. I didn’t have the educational background nor the work experience. So there’s kind of 2 lessons there. One is be nice to people in college, because you never know where they’re going to end up and how they can help you. The second lesson, probably more serious is that you know what, it didn’t matter how I got my job at the Mac division, in my case, nepotism. What matters is what you do once you get the job. So if you get the job through family connections, whatever, however, fine, you got the job now, none of that matters anymore. Now, it’s up to you to add value to the operation.
Beata Young:
There’s quite a lot of questions coming. Thank you very much for joining our show. I wanted to play on this question Guy, because I wanted to also talk about what you talked in one of the interviews about the younger generation and talking about constantly jumping from greener looking pasture to greener looking pasture may not be optimal. What advice would you give to the young generation for the future?
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, this is one of those pieces of advice that when you’re young, you’re not going to listen to, I mean, by definition. When I was young, I wouldn’t listen to it. So I don’t expect anybody to listen to this. But I think if you enter the workforce now in the course of your career, you will probably get, I don’t know, 10-15 jobs and that just wasn’t true for my father’s generation. My father’s generation had one or two jobs ever and my generation, you know, maybe 3 or 4. This generation, I’m telling you, it’s 10 or 15 and it’s just in my personal case, I left Apple twice, I turned down Steve Jobs for a third job. So kind of, you know, I turned down Apple 3 times. If I had stayed at any point from those 3 times, let’s just say that it would have been extremely financially rewarding.
I learned a lesson that this concept that you’re constantly optimizing every job position changing every 12 months, 15 months, 5 months. It may look like everybody’s doing that it may look like you know, yeah, the pasture is greener and greener and greener but I could build a case looking at my history that man, if I just stuck in one place, I would have done just fine, if not better. So I’m not saying you should just work for one company for the rest of your life. God no, no, that’s not true but I would be very careful about jumping. So right now, let’s say you’re working for I don’t know Netflix, and there’s layoffs or you’re working for some company where there’s layoffs and there’s all kinds of turmoil and you’re thinking oh, there must be a better place. You might want to think that the grass is not always greener, sometimes it’s just better to water the grass you’re standing on.
Beata Young:
Fabulous advice from Guy Kawasaki! Oh, let’s go into questions from our audience.
“Good evening Beata and Guy” from Nathalie. Ai Esmeralda: “Hi Beata, it’s so nice seeing Guy on the show, I’m a fan”
Good! I’m a fan as well.
In Love and In Pain: “Hi Beata & Guy. Guy who motivates you, who’s the man behind the Wise Guy?”
Guy Kawasaki:
There’s no man behind the ‘Wise Guy’. There’s a woman behind the wise guy, my wife but really I’m a driven person. I am, you could almost say obsessive compulsive. I enjoy working hard, I love working hard, actually and that has been the secret to my success.
I don’t consider myself particularly visionary or you know, definitely not technical. So I’m just driven by whatever interests me and a desire to, to do things. Well, that’s just in my DNA.
Beata Young:
Well, that goes back to your quote, I just made a note of, “What matters most is that you are motivated”
So we are talking about and you mentioned in a couple of your speeches about hard work. There is research that shows that women are working very hard, quite often 10% more work than men these days, and they have delivered better startups, yet they are not being recognized. So what would you say? Is the advice to women apart from working hard? What would get them this money? What could get them an investor for your startup?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I don’t know what it’s like in Poland. I mean, I’ve been to Poland, but I have no idea what it’s like there, in this business environment. It actually befuddles me, even in the United States, because it seems to me that finding a good team is probably the biggest challenge for a company or an investor.
So why you would eliminate your genetic pool, or reduce your genetic pool by 50%, by eliminating women is beyond me. I mean, that to me is just stupid because you should not care about the gender, race, religion, sexual orientation of an entrepreneur. All you care about is how they can create a great product and create a great company and that alone is so hard, you know, why are you throwing out these other externalities that really are meaningless? I think a lot of it is because frankly, men are stupid and men are just trying to, you know, men are threatened. Particularly in America, if you’re a white man, you are really threatened. So they are just trying to preserve the status quo but let’s just say the demographic trend is not their friend.
Listen, the CEO of Canva is about 34 year old, a woman, so I work for someone half my age, and a woman, and I’m proud of it.
Beata Young:
So let’s go to Canva. Why did you choose to be an evangelist and what is an evangelist?
Guy Kawasaki:
So evangelism is defined as a Greek word about bringing the good news. So as a Macintosh evangelist, I brought the good news of Macintosh, how it made creative and made people more creative and productive. As an evangelist for Canva, I’m bringing the good news of Canva, the Canva increases your ability to communicate, because it has democratized design. That’s the good news of Canva and that’s the good news of Macintosh.
Canva, if you believe that I looked at hundreds of companies and selected Canva, you know, after careful analysis, and you know, MBA spreadsheets and workflow, cashflows, et cetera, et cetera. I hate to burst your bubble. So the way it worked is about 9 years ago, I was active on Twitter, I worked with someone named Peg Fitzpatrick, who was doing many of my tweets and she, she and I came up with this rule that every tweet goes with a video or a graphic.
So she was using Canva to make our graphics and one day Canva noticed that I was using Canva and they reached out to me and I asked pig pig isn’t Canva the thing you’re using? She said, Yes, I do like it. She goes, Yes, I should help them. She said yes and Canva was coming to the United States. So I agreed to meet and the rest is history.
So there was no careful analysis. There was no you know, looking at hundreds of companies to pick one to work for. I was fat, dumb and happy and they reached out to me and luckily Peg Fitzpatrick told me you should help them and the rest is history.
Beata Young:
That’s beautiful, everybody uses Canva – who’s using Canva? Let’s hear back from our audience.
We have another comment from IPO-Vid none other than the man behind me. Patrick L. Young is the founder of a FinTech company and he’s got his own channel and he just commented because he can’t stop himself. “On the Ferrari Daytona -egad what a car! Unforgettable…tell me Guy, how do you manage to be so prolific in writing such readable, best selling books?”
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, you know that we have to delve a little deeper and data. So I started writing books in 1987. So that is 35 years ago. So in 35 years, I wrote 15 books. So, you could say, wow Guy, you’re averaging a book every two and a half or so years. That’s true.
But Wiseguy is the last book that I wrote. And that seems like that’s like five or six years ago. And what has replaced writing books for me is podcasting. I think podcasting is faster. It’s more valuable. It can reach more people. Not that I necessarily have reached more people, but it can reach more people. And it’s just, there are more promotional abilities with a podcast than a book.
I will give you an example. So today, I released the podcast. That was an interview with an a medical doctor and OB-GYN from UCSF, and the whole episode was about abortion and the overturn of Roe versus Wade in the United States.
Okay. So that was recorded approximately 10 days ago. And it’s out today. If I had written a book about women’s reproductive rights, and the overturning of Roe versus Wade, best case, it would be out 12 months from now, and 12 months from now, the whole world could be different. It could be, I don’t know, the United States split into two countries, one with reproductive rights and one without, I mean, it’s hard to imagine it’s gonna happen.
But you just never know, who knew that Russia would break or USSR would break up, right. And so. I think writing a book is just so much less efficient. Because I don’t know if I’ll ever write a book again. If I write a 16th book, The 16th book would probably be based on my podcast, which is about the wisdom of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Steve Wozniak and Jane Goodall, and Arianna Huffington and Margaret Atwood. And, you know, I have 135 episodes right now. So I would distill their wisdom into a book. And the book would be called How To Be Remarkable. But I’m considering that but I just love podcasting so much.
Beata Young:
So that’s a good time to mention your podcasting, which is the Remarkable People Podcast, you’ve had quite a significant number of people who are changing the word, but also, you have a special tag for women in technology, I’ve noticed you have only two women in tech that shows that there is a big disparity of women versus men in technology. So I encourage you all our audience to go into tech because that’s the future and podcasting is also created with technology.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let me think about this. So it depends on how you define, “in tech.” So if you look at my podcast, I’m thinking who’s men in tech? Well, Steve Wozniak is definitely a man in tech. Who else is just hard core tech. So what I’m trying to point out to you is that my podcast is not a podcast for tech people. I take it to an extreme, I have the founder of PooPourri, an extremely successful product, which maybe you’ve heard of, you may laugh when you hear what it does, but it is a chemical that you pour on your toilet. So when you poop in your toilet, the smells don’t come out of your toilet and believe it or not, they do hundreds of millions of dollars like that.
So that’s a female entrepreneur. Another female entrepreneur is the woman who sells the most pumpkins in America. Another is the woman who started Hint, the flavored water. There’s a woman who started Business Chicks, the female networking organization in Australia.
So I have just a ton of female entrepreneurs in my podcast, more female entrepreneurs than male entrepreneurs. And for sure the mix if you’d looked at the 135 or so episodes. I think it’s roughly 50/50. It may be more women than men, actually. But, I seriously thought why don’t I just do remarkable women and not do any men.
Beata Young:
Sign me up for that Guy. I would love to do that with you. Let’s go back to our lovely audience. There are quite a lot of remarkable people waiting with their questions. Romina Farrugia: “Good evening, Beata and Guy. Lovely seeing you both, what are the books which helped you the most to reach your goals in life and your career?”
Guy Kawasaki:
So I think the book that helped me the most is a book called If You want To Write by Brenda Ueland. Now it sounds like it’s for writers and it is but you can substitute any creative act for the word “write.”
So if you want to make movies, if you want to play music, if you want to program, if you want to podcast, it is about unshackling yourself from the negativity around you and maybe even more important than negativity in your mind. So that’s one if you want to write.
Second one would be Influence, this is by Bob Cialdini. This is you know, I think it’s required reading if you want to know how to influence and persuade people you read the Bob Cialdini book Influence.
Third one probably is Grit by Angela Duckworth about the power of working hard, and how you do that. And if you really wanted a guide to the tactics of starting a company, I honestly, but not modestly will tell you that I think the best book you could read is The Art of the Start 2.0 which I just cover every topic there is about starting a company.
Beata Young:
Absolutely. I recommend it to everyone as well. It’s a great read. It goes really fast, because there was lots of stories from a guy’s experience. And we are bringing some of it today to you. Patrick is asking another question. Guy. You don’t evangelize Ferrari. But you do represent Mercedes Benz. How did that come about?
Guy Kawasaki:
I was a Mercedes Benz brand ambassador that has ended but I was a Mercedes Benz brand ambassador for Mercedes corporate as opposed to an individual country. And so it was people like me and Roger Federer and like the first female F1 Driver, big wave surfer Garrett McNamara, Decathlon gold medal winner, those kinds of people. So a lot of very highly competitive people. highly accomplished. And then there was me. So I got the Mercedes Benz brand ambassadorship because Mercedes invited me to their factory because I was a social media figure. And I went to their factory. We just got along so well. And I was one of the first people to see how the AMG GT was built.
Okay, if you really want to talk about cars, I have been to the Ferrari factory but believe it or not, I went to the Ferrari factory as a guest, the Porsche. So I was at a Porsche event and the Porsche event took us to the Ferrari factory, which is kind of bizarre. But I have to tell you, I can tell you one Ferrari story, and this is 20 years ago. So you know, it’s probably not true anymore. But when we were at the Ferrari factory, I swear that we were walking through the factory when he was on break. And there were people, you know, mechanics or production people on the production line, and they were on break, and they were smoking. So like, you’re telling me that my half million dollar Ferrari is being made by people smoking cigarettes on break, I just cannot imagine. And so I have never owned a Ferrari. I probably never will own a Ferrari. Now, since we’re talking about car. So right now. I love Mercedes. I have a Mercedes Metrus and I have a Porsche 911. And I have a 911 because since I was about 14, I have just loved 911s. And so I decided to buy it before I die.
Beata Young:
It’s a little bit of segue, we know that there has been quite a lot of innovation going at Ferrari. And we know this story of that startup, it was very successful. Let’s go back to starting the company. How do you get funding for an investment? And how do you build that relationship with potential investors? What would be your advice?
Guy Kawasaki:
So first of all, this concept that everybody has to get venture capital to succeed is false. And I think venture capitalists fund 2-3-4-5 thousand companies a year, a year. So this is a very, very specific game. And this game is for companies that could become the next Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, and Nvidia.
So it’s that kind of game. And so venture capitalists are trying to create billion dollar companies Canva, is a venture capital deal, its latest round valuation was $40 billion. So the venture capital game is for companies that could be 40-50, at least unicorn level a billion, that’s a billion dollar game. And so there are many, many, many, like, basically 99.9% of the companies that are not in that game, a restaurant is not in that game, probably a fashion line is not in that game, there are fashion lines that have reached a billion dollars. But if you’re just going to try to make cool clothes, the odds of you being a billion dollar company are not very good. The odds of being a billion dollar tech company are not very good, but a fashion company is even worse. So first of all, you have to ask yourself, are you in that game, a consultancy is not in that game. And so don’t make yourself crazy trying to raise venture capital for a company that’s not appropriate. If you can’t be a several billion dollar company, don’t do it. Seek other forms of funding, self funding, bootstrapping, whatever it is.
Now, let’s suppose that you are one of these 5000 companies in the world that are properly in that game. I think the key is the demo that you show people a product or service that just makes them excited. And if I had a choice between a great demo or a great pitch, I would create a great demo all the time. Because pitches are just words on, it’s not even a piece of paper, pitches are just words on a document. And a product is for real. So I would put 99% of my effort into making a great prototype and 1% into the pitch. And if you’re now you have to do a pitch in the venture capital raising game. So, that’s where I have you know, if you Google Guy Kawasaki, and the only 10 slides you need in a pitch, you’ll find my list of the 10 slides that you need. And that’s all you need.
Beata Young:
Absolutely, we have the link to your pitch deck ready right now. I definitely checked it Guy, I’m well prepared for this pitching competition. Now, that’s very interesting. So you say that it’s much better to focus on your MVP, rather than the great pitch because you really want to start marketing your product.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, in a perfect world. Somehow from friends and family, you scrape together enough money to get a prototype out. And I tell you the most compelling pitch is we are growing so fast that we don’t have the capital to sustain our growth. That’s pitch haften a venture capitalist wants to know that your biggest problem is scaling fast enough, which is very different than I have this idea if you give me 5 million bucks. I’m gonna try it – that is just so much less convincing.
Beata Young:
Oh, excellent advice from the Wise Guy today. And now, let’s imagine that you build your startup. What’s the best way to hire people and get them motivated?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I think the best people, there’s three characters, classically two characteristics. The two characteristics are education and work experience, I would add a third. The third is does the person get it? Do they love what we do? Can they understand what they do? Do they appreciate what they do?
And so I think most organizations, they’re too stuck on the first two, which is, you know, do you have the right education? And do you have the right work experience? And if you look at my background, I had a degree in Psych because that was the easiest major I could find. And I was working in the jewellery business. So I had no work experience and no educational background to be Apple’s software evangelist, it makes no sense. It was just nepotism. So I think you look for people who get it. And if they get it, and they have education, and work experience so much, the better. And I also encourage you to hire for diversity, don’t just, you know, if you’re an ivy league educated white male, do not just hire other Ivy League educated white males, because you don’t need that kind of consistency and identical thinking you need diversity.
Beata Young:
Absolutely. And we speak about diversity of age, ethnicity, background, not just, you know, females versus males. We are all about pro technology, pro men, pro women. And we are all about empowering people. With the Wise Guy, Guy Kawasaki, we’ve got a couple of more questions. Jane is asking, hello, Guy, what mistakes have you made in your journey and how do you push through your worst time?
Guy Kawasaki:
You know, we only have about seven minutes, I don’t know if I can list all the mistakes I’ve made. So I quit Apple twice, I turned Steve Jobs down for a job. That’s three, I turned down the opportunity to interview for the CEO of Yahoo. That’s four. On the other hand, I did work at Apple and I did work at Canva. So you know, let’s say that in big decisions there.
Well, and I started a few startups that were moderate successes, not huge successes, you had to use a baseball analogy. They were singles, not doubles, triples, or homeruns. So we’ll just put those aside. So you know, I’m probably 2 for 10, which is not a high percentage. But, one thing you learn in Silicon Valley is you have to learn how to position your past. And so, you know, when I explained myself, I say, listen, you know, I worked at Apple, I also worked at Google in the Motorola division. So I tell people, I worked at Apple. I worked at Google and now I work at Canva. And if you just hear that you think, Oh, My God, you are so friggin smart man, you make three for three. Well, I’m really, you know, 3 for 10.
Beata Young:
Oh, absolutely. It’s an amazing journey, Guy. And I am wondering, what does success mean to you? Because so many people are still going through the concept of how much money you made?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, now I’m 67 years old. So at 67 years old, you define success very differently than at 20, 30, 40 or 50. At this point, I guess my greatest success is my family life. And so that’s what I value the most. In terms of my career. I would say I’m most proud of the work that I’ve done as a podcaster. The podcast is my best work of my career. So there’s that and you know, when I die, I just want people to remember me, not for owning a 911 and not for owning a yacht. Not for giving a building to Stanford. I want people to remember me for empowering people and I empowered people with my writing, my speaking, my appearances on your livestream, my investment, my advising, you know, I empowered people.
Beata Young:
That’s beautiful. And thank you very much for empowering us tonight. We’ve got another question from Marianne: “Hello Guy, can you tell us how to properly democratize education? Hopefully, teachers will use podcasts as additional learning material. BTW, just curious how long did you learn to surf?” Oh my goodness, so many questions Marianne. So let’s start with democratizing education.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I think democratizing education is all about using the technology that is now available and you see that right? You see all these online courses that universities put out and arguably, do you have to go to a university anymore? Do you have to?
Well, two questions there. Do you have to go at all? And secondly, do you have to go physically now? I must admit that if you can say you went to Stanford or Harvard, or MIT, that definitely does not hurt. Is that worth a quarter million, probably, yes.
Is every other school worth a quarter million, that might be debatable? So there’s the kind of the return on investment, just like anything else. So there’s that. But I think by democratizing education, when you put education out, so you record the lecture, put it out. So what if somebody’s got into Harvard, they’re not going to say, “well, I’m just gonna watch the Harvard online courses.” And, 90% of the value of going to Harvard as being able to say you went to Harvard. So that’s how I would democratize it, and then it’s being done. It truly is being done. And that may take more connectivity in some places, but I think it’s mostly a mental thing that, you know, yes, we should open this up. I’m a big evangelist for education, obviously. Now, your second question about surfing. I started surfing in about 2016. So seven years ago.
Beata Young:
That’s amazing. It was never too late to learn new skills.
Guy Kawasaki:
It may have been too late.
Beata Young:
Well, I’d love to see you surf. Maybe one day you can visit me because I’m planning to move to TCI. Turks and Caicos Islands, it has beautiful places to surf.
Guy Kawasaki:
Where?
Beata Young:
Turks and Caicos.
Guy Kawasaki:
Where is that?
Beata Young
Beautiful by nature, there you go. You heard it from me first. I’m gonna send you an invitation to Providenciales. It’s a beautiful, stunning location. Not spoiled. Still coral reefs are beautiful throughout.
Guy Kawasaki:
They have surf?
Beata Young
Oh, absolutely. I’m gonna tell you. I’ve never surfed. So there is a new challenge, a mission there to do a little bit of surfing. Let’s go back to startups. Now, you are a big fan of a book, The Innovators Dilemma. You spoke a lot about innovation and what’s the future for technology and future for innovation? Can you tell us what you see? What is the gap? Where is the missing link in startups? Where should we start?
Guy Kawasaki:
Listen, if I knew that, it’s not clear to me, I would tell you and your audience so I think that’s going to be answered by two guys in a garage, two gals in a garage, a guy and a gal in a garage. It’s Melanie Perkins and Cliff Oberg in her mother’s spare bedroom in Perth, Australia. It’s not Guy Kawasaki, 67 years old, sitting in Watsonville, California.
So that is, in a sense, not knowing what you don’t know. It can be bad, but it can also be very good because you don’t know how hard it is to start a company. You don’t know what it takes you, you try and you succeed. So I cannot predict where that will happen. If anybody can tell you, if anybody tries to tell you they know exactly. You know what technology, what innovation will happen. I suggest you run from that person, that person is lying to you.
Beata Young:
Right, let’s go to Romina. She’s got another question. “What is the value you put on being surrounded by the right people in your life from your experience?”
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I don’t know how you answer that. I would like you to think of the opposite. So you know, what’s the impact of being surrounded by the wrong people in your life? You could end up in jail. Basically, you could end up dead. You certainly could end up not accomplishing and denting the universe like you could have, you probably will not end up in a good car either. So I think that’s key that the cream rises to the top. And if you are among people who are low achievers, for whatever reason, I think that the probability that they will bring you down, not that you will raise them up. And so I think that you should hang out with people who are trying.
Beata Young:
Or surround yourself with different networks. And now that we can travel anywhere in the world, it’s much easier. What advice would you give Guy, to someone inspiring to follow your footsteps?
Guy Kawasaki:
Don’t, you should not follow somebody else’s footsteps, you should make your own footsteps. And you know, my path is from Honolulu, Hawaii to Stanford undergraduate in Psych, go to law school drop out, after two weeks, go into the jewellery business. Go work for Apple, start some companies, return to Apple. Leave Apple, start a venture capital firm and get discovered by Canva just by accident, discover podcasting. Yeah, it’s hard to look at my career and say, okay, so Guy, let’s replicate your algorithm. There was no algorithm. So I just happen to fall in love with some stuff. And I pursued it. And luckily, luckily, truly Luckily, they worked out. Do not fashion your life after mine. Except if you want to make the case that my eyes were always wide open. And when I found things interesting, I pursued them. I looked at them. I didn’t put my blinders on.
Beata Young:
Curiosity is key when you want to make your impact in the startup world. When did you realize that you have the power of influence, Guy?
Guy Kawasaki:
It’s not clear that I have, so I don’t know. Listen, I’ll tell you something. So you mentioned that I have 5 or 6 million followers, right? So you would think that 5 or 6 million followers, if I said to somebody, before I said to my followers, buy my book, or use Canva, or listen to my podcast, let’s take that listen to my podcast. So if I were using social media, every Wednesday, I would tell 5 or 6 million people: Listen to my podcast, and about 10,000-25,000 people listen to it. So if you assume that every one of those people came because of my following on social media, it’s still a miniscule percentage. So you know, I’m not Kim Kardashian. If Kim Kardashian says buy this makeup, millions of people buy the makeup, but if Guy Kawasaki says listen to his podcast or buy his book, it doesn’t happen. So I’m not as influential as you may think.
Beata Young:
So how do you stay motivated Guy, even if you see that there is such a small percentage doing what you tell them to do?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, partially I still have two kids that have tuition. So I have to work, that’s number one. Number two is I just want to leave a reputation that I empowered people. And like this podcast of mine, there’s no financial model, it costs me, you don’t want to know how much it costs me every month, negative cash flow to do my podcast, on a rational basis, it makes no sense to do my podcast, except that I love doing my podcast. I think it’s very important work. And I have told many people that I don’t think people will appreciate the quality of my podcast because of the quality of my guests until I’m dead. So that’s just the way it is.
Beata Young:
That’s just the way it is. It’s like an artist’s world. You are being appreciated after you die. And you’re being sold at auction for a million dollars, that may happen. But still you have to keep doing and digging these holes to get some oil from it. Guy, we are heading towards the end of our shore show. How has taking risks led you to who and where you are today?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I don’t know if I’ve taken these monumental risks. It’s not like I left my house in Japan. And I got on a freighter and I landed in Hawaii with just a suitcase and I went to work for a sugarcane plantation, and all that? No, my grandparents did that. I did not do that.
So, I guess looking back in hindsight, I took a risk by leaving Apple twice. But I didn’t see it that way, I looked at it as not not taking a risk by leaving Apple as much as embracing a risk by starting a company. So if you’re looking for that really inspiring story of overcoming, I don’t know drugs or abuse or extreme poverty or anything like that. Honestly, I am not your Guy. I have lived a charmed life. Maybe not as charming as a billionaire, but I have lived a charmed life. And so I think the key is that I at least realize, I have lived a charmed life, there are people who have lived a charmed life, who are so freaking deluded. They think that they somehow earned it and deserved it, as opposed to they just lucked into it.
Beata Young:
Let’s go back to your experience . You mentioned Apple a couple of times, and you famously said to Steve Jobs, I don’t trust you, either, when he said he doesn’t trust you.
Guy Kawasaki:
So it’s a long story. Yeah, we were in a meeting with all the marketing people. This is after he had sold NExt to Apple, and he was kind of on the fringes of returning to Apple. And we were in a marketing meeting. And all the marketing people in the agency showed the new Think Different ad campaign. And we love that. And the guy who showed the sets to Steve, I have two copies of the videos, I’ll give one to you and one to Guy. And Steve said don’t give it to Guy. And this is in front of 20 people and I said Steve, so you don’t trust me? And he said, yeah, Guy I don’t trust you/ I just like shot back and I said, Steve, that’s okay. I don’t trust you either.
Beata Young:
That’s very inspiring. And that was the turning point when they decided to fire you?
Guy Kawasaki:
No, they didn’t fire me. I quit. Don’t worry..
Beata Young:
Okay, I stand corrected, Guy. We have a couple of questions/comments. I’m just going to say, maybe you’re not as exponential as you think, Guy. But you are totally inspiring us today. Thank you for empowering us. Nathalie says: “I could listen to Guy talk for hours.” Now let’s go back to some of the questions that we always ask our lovely guests. What advice would you give to females to help them with their startups?
Guy Kawasaki:
To help with their startups?
Beata Young:
Yes, what advice when they are pitching to VC to investors, or they are trying to get clients? What are the most common mistakes we make that you think are critical moments of making all the breaking it?
Guy Kawasaki:
So when you are pitching to investors, first of all, think of yourself as if you’re familiar with TopGun, and FAAT, that is you are getting off the tarmac, in a matter of 150 to 200 meters, whatever it is, like you’re flying off an aircraft carrier, you’re not a 747 with two miles or an Airbus A380. You got to get off the ground fast, which means in the first 30 or 45 seconds, you explain what the hell you do.
Don’t talk about your world class team, your patent pending technology, how you work hard, how you love what you do, how you’re so happy to be here, blah, blah, blah, just come out and say, I work for Canva. Canva is an online graphics design service. Think of it as Photoshop for the rest of us, Photoshop for poor people. That’s it. There are five seconds I explain what Canva does. So get off to a fast start. explain exactly what you do. And honestly, the faster you get to a demo, assuming you have a good demo, the better it is for a pitch. So get to the demo. And the best thing you can say is we’ve already bootstrapped our company. We have a working prototype, people are signing up for it already. And we’re looking for expansion capital. That’s the magic word.
Beata Young:
That’s the magic word. That’s beautiful. Thank you very much Guy. You said that your life lesson quote is “Don’t expect people to do something you wouldn’t do.” Why is that your life lesson quote?
Guy Kawasaki:
Because I think that is a good moral compass, that if you are doing things that you will do, and you’re not asking people to do things that you wouldn’t do. That’s a good moral compass. This assumes you’re not a psychopath, of course. But so yeah, I think that as a good moral compass. It prevents you from being a hypocrite and having a double standard
Beata Young:
Guy, the last question, imagine the pandemic is over and you can invite any person in the world to have private breakfast anywhere in the world, who would it be and where would you go to?
Guy Kawasaki:
Stacey Abrams and it would be in Balmoral beach in Australia
Beata Young:
That’s beautiful appearance. Thank you very much, Guy.
Guy Kawasaki:
Don’t forget my podcast. Listen to my podcast.
Beata Young:
The link to the podcast is in the comments below. Follow this man, he’s great and subscribe to Guy’s podcast, thank you so much Guy. It’s been a pleasure and thank you very much to our lovely audience. It’s lovely to see you and all the best with your skills on whichever way if you are taking. And also great to see our lovely audience Laura Mercurio, Agata Bellon, Marcus Bravo, Jane, Olga Vasina, Nathalie Llanto, Ai Esmeralda, In Love & In Pain, Romina Farrugia, IPO-Vid In Patrick’s Opinion, Marianne Madera.
Next week, we are going to have lovely ladies from Africa: Girl! You Know, I Matter Women’s Conference is happening this year after a little break during the pandemic and we are going to have Natalie Abrams and Nicola Comninos. Natalie wrote a book which is just a combination of interviews with different females from all over the world. And Natalie Abrahams, is also the author of the conference. She’s the founder of the conference that she would like to invite us all to join next week at 6pm CET.
I hope you take the advice from Guy Kawasaki, the wise man who provided us with his life lesson quotes, and also his insight into the VC world and Silicon Valley startup world. “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard” as Guy Kawasaki says.
When you focus on positives, the positives get more positive. As always, our positivity quote comes from positive thinking only and goes, look for something positive in each day. Even if some days you have to look harder. Today is your day to hack the future. Hack the positivity you want. Thank you very much. My name is Beata Young. It’s been a pleasure to host you in today’s show.