966: Guy Kawasaki on How to Increase Your Impact and Become Remarkable

Pete Mockaitis

Guy, welcome. I’m excited to chat. Now you’re an experienced interviewer yourself. You’ve interviewed some remarkable people. Tell me, any particularly super memorable moments that you’d like to share with regard to that adventure?

Guy Kawasaki

Well, certainly, interviewing Jane Goodall, actually twice. Those are very memorable moments. I mean, if you had to pick someone that you wanted to interview, Jane Goodall would be right up there, right? And so, that’s the two Jane Goodall recordings. And then one of the funniest things that happened is that, believe it or not, of all people in the world, Margaret Atwood is the first person to drop an F-bomb on my podcast. Now, I thought for sure, I was like waiting for the Gary Vee episode. I figure he’s going to drop a few for sure, you know, just saying hello, but Margaret beat him to the punch. What can I say?

Pete Mockaitis

That’s fun. Well, I’m curious, what is it about Jane Goodall’s message, life, work, vibe that really resonate with you?

Guy Kawasaki

I mean, how can you not love Jane Goodall? She’s 90 years old. She travels 300 days a year, and her kind of travel is very difficult because she’s on deck from the time she wakes up to the time she goes to sleep. I know when I travel, I’m making a keynote speech. I really have to be on for about one hour. The rest of the time I can be like not so on, but Jane Goodall is on the whole time. And just the love and passion and empathy and concern she has for the welfare of people and the world is just so obvious. I mean, she’s truly a remarkable person.

Pete Mockaitis

Lovely. Well, I’m excited to hear about the wisdom you’ve got for us in your book, Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference. And you are a remarkable person yourself, Guy, with a remarkable title. And if you could actually indulge me for a couple of minutes, I’ve wondered about this for years, and now is my chance. All right.

Guy Kawasaki

Well, let’s end this problem for you.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. All right. So, you are the Chief Evangelist of Canva and formerly the Chief Evangelist of Apple.

Guy Kawasaki

Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Tell me, in some detail, I’ve got follow-ups, what does the role of Chief Evangelist truly mean?

Guy Kawasaki

The role of the Chief Evangelist, well, first of all, going back to Greece, the word evangelism comes from Greek roots, and it means bringing the good news. So, I bring the good news of Canva today, how it has democratized design and enables people to be better communicators.

Way back when I was the Chief Evangelist and software evangelist for Apple, so I was bringing the good news of Macintosh. So, what a chief evangelist does is he or she is kind of the person that’s the most visible as this is the person who truly believes it’s going to get you to believe in our dream as much as we do. And he’s bringing good news and it’s kind of a cheerleader marketing sales position. It’s the purest form of sales. And it’s the purest form of sales because an evangelist has not just his or her own interests at heart, but also the other person’s interests at heart.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, it sounds beautiful. And it’s, like, I think I want to be one. And I think maybe some of our listeners would like that as well. So, just very fundamentally, what is the nature of your relationship between, say, you and Canva or you and Apple? Are you, like, an investor advisor, a full-time employee, a contractor, a marketing affiliate, a customer and super fan? Like, what is that?

Guy Kawasaki

So, when I was software evangelists for the Macintosh division, you know, round one, I was an employee. When I was chief evangelist round two, I was also an employee, but also an Apple fellow. And that is not a line position. It’s more kind of an honorary kind of title fellow, but I was a working fellow. I had a real task to do, not just sit around thinking about the future. Most Apple fellows are engineering and tech visionaries. And I was just a marketing schlepper. So, that was unusual there.

Now for Canva, when I met Canva 10 years ago, they offered me this position, and I made a very wise decision. I said, “I don’t want a salary. I want everything in stock.” So, I took everything in stock and I was really the first person in the United States, so they really didn’t have like, you know, I guess there’s a bunch of legal things you have to do to legally employ a person.

So, I was not employed. I’ve been a contractor technically for all these years. And now they have hundreds of employees in America, but we just never did anything. And Canva is doing so well. I couldn’t hurt it if I tried. They don’t need to make me sign any piece of paper at this point.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And so, then when you interface with Apple or Canva, are you “reporting” to or working with, say, the VP of marketing or the CEO or the board or whoever wants to say, “Hey, Guy, spread some good news over here”?

Guy Kawasaki

Well, when I was the Apple Chief Evangelist, I reported to a vice president of R&D, I think his title was. This was Don Norman. And then later on, I moved over to the marketing department. So, they shoved me into the functional area. Now, when I started with Canva, there were only, I don’t know, 10 people, so it was kind of dealing directly with the co-founders.

Now in the 10th year, I’m just kind of hanging out there and I’m just doing very high-level stuff and I speak for them and I continue to carry the flag, but it’s not like I’m punching a clock, and it’s not like I’m issuing monthly progress reports or anything like that.

Pete Mockaitis

Understood. Now, Guy, if I or a listener aspire to become a chief evangelist, what does that path look like?

Guy Kawasaki

Okay, so I think the path for an evangelist is that you truly, truly love the product. And that’s the start. And for you to love the product, the product has to be really great. So, the key to evangelism is you evangelize or you create or you affiliate with something great because it is really hard to evangelize shit. Trust me, I have tried a few times in my life. So, that’s the key.

Now, many companies have not yet understood or embraced the concept of hiring an evangelist. It seems like focus mostly in tech because they kind of copied what Apple did. But the function of bringing the good news and getting people to believe in your dream as much as possible, that’s what it does. I wouldn’t worry about the title so much.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Thank you. So, this is clear. I’ve wondered about this for more than a decade, “What does it mean when Guy Kawasaki says he’s a chief evangelist?” That is settled.

Guy Kawasaki

Well, you should have contacted me earlier. You didn’t have to think about this for 10 years.

Pete Mockaitis

I can rest easy. Well, I mean, I just sort of heard, it’s, “Oh, yeah, Guy Kawasaki…” Okay, sure. Well, now, so there’s that. Let’s talk about your book, Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference. What’s the main thesis, core idea here?

Guy Kawasaki

I think the main core or the thesis here is that if you make a difference, if you make the world a better place, people will have no choice but to think you are remarkable. So, basically, the book, I would not characterize this book as a self-help book that, it’s like, “Okay, you’ve decided to be remarkable. Day one, when you wake up, this is what you do.” You’re like, I don’t know, you change your LinkedIn profile. You write a white paper. You start talking at TEDx or something like that. That’s not it at all.

The assumption is that if you make a difference, people will have no choice but to think you are remarkable. And I want people to be empowered to make a difference. That’s the key to me.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, could you kick us off with a cool story of someone who followed a path that looks a lot like what you’ve laid out in the book and what unfolded for them?

Guy Kawasaki

Well, I would not say that there is no single path, right? I mean, Jane Goodall from the time she was a kid till today, she loves animals and she loves nature, so she’s stuck with that the whole life. Julia Child is another example. Until her mid-30s, she was a spook, and then she got married and she moved to France, fell in love with French cooking, and she became the French chef. So, you can make big changes in your life too.

But what I noticed after interviewing 250 of these people is that they all go through this phase of growth where, Julia Child acquires new skills in French cooking, Jane Goodall started in secretarial school, went to Africa, and she studied the chimps, and then she went back and got a PhD after she did all that. And, yeah, that’s a completely different path but that also showed growth. And the flip side of growth is grit. Because if you’re growing, if you’re learning new things, you’re not going to be instantly successful. You have to have perseverance and passion.

And then the third phase, I think, and the phase that not everybody makes it to, is that you have to become gracious, which is you realize that you’re lucky, you’re fortunate, people have helped you. It’s not just your own growth and grit, but good fortune, good people have helped you, so you owe it back to the universe to help others succeed too. And Jane Goodall is a great example of that.

I’ll give you a negative example. So, until three or four years ago, I would have told you that Elon Musk is the closest person there is to Steve Jobs in terms of world-changing ideas in technology. But I think that he has totally flunked the third chapter, which is grace and graciousness, right? So, I mean, you would not say that Elon Musk is gracious. Well, not the new Elon Musk, anyway.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, I hear you, growth, grit, grace, three components. And it sounds like super achievers may not always exhibit all three of the stages, but they probably have growth and grit, and whether they choose to use their progress and stature for good or evil can go either way. Is that fair to say as a summary?

Guy Kawasaki

Yes, that is fair. And, listen, I’m a very optimistic guy despite my criticisms of various systems and things. But I think with a life of growth and grit, where you’re making a difference and you’re making the world a better place for people, you’re probably going to end up being graceful and gracious. Maybe Elon is an outlier there because, I mean, you cannot debate that Elon Musk, more or less, single-handedly made the automotive industry go electric, and you cannot debate that the automotive industry going electric is not a good thing for the world. It is a good thing for the world, right? So, he has made a difference. He’s made the world a better place. I just wish he would embrace some grace and graciousness.

Pete Mockaitis

Understood. Well, then can you walk us through a little bit? So, within the growth, grit, and grace, each has three subcomponents. Could you give us a quick overview of these nine chapters?

Guy Kawasaki

The quick overview of the nine chapters is growth, grit, and grace. So, growth is, I’m a big fan of Carol Dweck, the Stanford University psychology professor. And she basically makes this dichotomy that if you have a growth mindset, you believe you can acquire new skills, you can do new things. If you have a fixed mindset, you believe you cannot. And you, also, if you are successful and you have a fixed mindset, you believe you don’t have to grow, which is arguably even worse.

The grit mindset is Angela Duckworth’s. She’s the mother of grit. And it’s about persevering when things don’t go right and learning from failure. And the grace mindset, I think it’s mostly this understanding that when you are successful, you have an obligation to society. And there’s 188 tactics in this book. This book is extremely, extremely tactical and practical.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, cool. Well, let’s dig into some of them then. So, under stage one, growth, talk about the growth mindset. We’ve had a few guests discuss that concept. Tell us, are there any misconceptions about the growth mindset? Or are there times where you yourself find you’re drifting into some fixed mindset type thinking? And what do you do when you find yourself there?

Guy Kawasaki

Yeah. So, one of the things that I learned after the book was done, there’s a protege of Carol Dweck, her name is Mary Murphy, and she made the brilliant observation that the growth mindset is primarily in your head, right? So, in your head, you believe you can grow or you believe you cannot. But she says that, as important is the environment that you’re in, because if you have a growth mindset, but you’re in a fixed mindset organization, you’re going to be very unhappy. And if you have a fixed mindset, and you are in a growth mindset organization, where this organization wants you to learn new things and you cannot rest on your laurels, you are also going to be very unhappy. So, that’s something that, if I could do it all over again, I would include that. And I pride myself on having a growth mindset, and it’s because of Carol Dweck’s book. And, like, at 44, I took up ice hockey, having never skated before. At 60, I took up surfing, having never surfed before. And let’s just say that when you take up hockey or surfing that late in life, you pretty much have a growth mindset. You cannot not have a growth mindset and do those things.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, then chapter three, under growth, you say plant many seeds. Can you unpack this idea for us and some of your favorite tactics?

Guy Kawasaki

Yes, yes, yes. So, planting many seeds means that in order to grow, you have to collect a lot of data. You have to do a lot of sampling. You have to take a lot of shots. And I bring in this example of I cut down these eucalyptus trees in my backyard, and I wanted to replant the hill. And so, I wanted to put it in native oaks. And I learned that with native oaks, you got to put in a lot of acorns, and you have no idea which acorn is going to be a seedling, then a sapling, then a tree. And it actually takes 20 years to get from acorn to tree.

So, I mean, that’s a metaphor for life. You gather a lot of acorns, you put them in water. The ones that float are dead. You throw those out. Then you put them in this preparation stage where you cover them with a cloth and moisture, and you put them in your refrigerator and you simulate winter for the acorn. Then come spring, you stick it in the ground and you put a lot of them out because not everyone is going to take root, and then you wait 20 years. You need to collect a lot of samples, and you need to plant a lot of acorns to figure it out.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, what I’m noticing about the metaphor, which is rather beautiful and practical, is that along the way, with each of the steps or phases, you’re getting some information and you’re saying, “Oh, okay, don’t pursue these, the floaters versus the sinkers. All right.” And then you get the refrigerator situation like, “Oh, okay, don’t pursue these.” And so, you’re already sort of whittling it down to “This is the most promising thing that looks like it might really take off.”

Guy Kawasaki

Yeah. And then, so you plant a lot of acorns after those first couple processes and then some of them take root, so you’ve got to protect those from the deer. And then you got to be patient. It’s a very good metaphor for life.

Pete Mockaitis

I hear you. All right. Well, I guess with all the tactics, any particular tactics you recommend in the planting seeds department?

Guy Kawasaki

Well, I think the most important tactic is it’s a numbers game. You’ve got to plant a lot of seeds. And going back to my Macintosh history, we evangelize hundreds of companies to create Macintosh software, and we thought, initially, and we thought we had it all figured out, right? You need spreadsheet, you need database, and you need word processor. But lucky for us, there was this acorn called Aldus PageMaker.

And Aldus PageMaker became a mighty oak called desktop publishing. But I got to tell you, we did not plan desktop publishing. It’s not like we said, “We’re so insightful. This computer is great for desktop publishing.” Nobody knew what desktop publishing was. People were still setting hot type, melting lead. And that is a great example of, “Thank you, God, that we’re planting many seeds.” And one of them was Aldus PageMaker.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And then in stage two, grit, your chapter, “Sell your dream,” I mean, you’ve been evangelizing for a long time. Any favorite tactics in the realm of selling dreams?

Guy Kawasaki

Yeah, my favorite tactic in the realm of selling dreams is a demo. I believe that a demo is worth a thousand slides. Well, actually it’s not completely geared towards tech. Now, in tech, obviously, you can have alpha software, you can have a rough website, you can have a hardware prototype. So, it’s easy to see how you can create this demo.

But to take an extreme example, if you were trying to create a new restaurant and you want it to evangelize your restaurant, maybe you start with a food truck serving that kind of food, or you start out with a pop-up restaurant, or something like that. There are people who serve meals at their houses. So, there’s always a way to figure out like, “How do you prove the concept? How do you test the concept?” Not just cogitate it, not just talk about it, but actually let people touch and feel and eat your concept. I love the demo.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And then any clever ways you recommend we go about doing the demonstrations? So, we got a food truck, we got a pop-up and software. It’s like, “Hey, look at it, and see how it does the thing you like.” So, any other clever ways you recommend we do the demo to sell the dream?

Guy Kawasaki

Well, in software, where probably this may be the most obvious to people, in software, I think the key to demo is not to show what it can do, but to show how you can do it. And let me use Canva as an example. So, yes, I could have all these finished graphics in Canva, and just go from page to page and show beautiful PowerPoint, beautiful Instagram, beautiful Etsy, beautiful infographic, beautiful resume, beautiful, you know, etc. but I don’t think that’s that effective a demo.

I think the effective demo is, “Okay, so let’s start with your photo, and let’s make this into a book cover. So, here’s the collection of Canva book cover templates. Now let’s scroll down here. Oh, we like this template. Let’s click on this template. Now let’s upload our cover photo and let’s change the text from the generic text on the template to your book’s title.” And in five minutes you would have a very nice book cover design in Canva. So, you showed how not what, and I think that’s the best demo.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense because, in that context, that really delivers the, “Oh, wow,” kind of a moment, like, “That was five minutes, and this looks just about ready to go. That’s amazing. Holy crap, I got to buy this.”

Guy Kawasaki

Let me tell you something, in five minutes, in Photoshop, you may just barely be finished installing it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, when it comes to grace, what do you mean by turn and burn?

Guy Kawasaki

Well, turn and burn is actually at the conclusion of the book. It’s not grace per se, but turn and burn is a surfing metaphor. So, I can explain a lot of life in surfing. So, most of surfing is spent waiting in the water, hoping you’re in the right place for the wave to come to you and to break at the right time, etc. But, as a lesson in life, if you are always looking for the perfect wave, the perfect product, the perfect service, the perfect book, the perfect photo, the perfect movie, the perfect project, the perfect, you know, whatever, you’re never going to accomplish anything.

At some point, you just have to turn and burn and start paddling. And that’s a very important lesson. There are many entrepreneurs, they spend just years and years thinking about, “Yeah, this is what I’d like to do, and I’m doing research.” At some point, as Steve Jobs once said, real entrepreneurship, I mean, and there’s no truer words than that.

Now, after turn and burn, my last recommendation in the book is that, rather than focusing on, “Did I make the right decision or not?” Instead, you focus on making your decision right, because making the perfect decision is very difficult, if not impossible. You just cannot know everything and predict the future. So, at some point you take your best shot, and you paddle and then you make that wave work.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. All right. Guy, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Guy Kawasaki

No, that’s good. I just want people to know that, man, I think I’ve created the best book ever for how to make a difference and how to be remarkable.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Guy Kawasaki

Okay, my favorite quote is a Chinese proverb. And the Chinese proverb is, “You have to stand by the side of a river a very long time before the Peking duck will fly in your mouth.” In other words, Peking ducks don’t fly in your mouth. You got to go out and kill the duck and cook it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Guy Kawasaki

Ah, my favorite study or a bit of research is probably the video by Dan Simon. And he did this research where he showed, it’s called the invisible gorilla. So, in invisible gorilla, they have these college students wearing black and white T-shirts, and you’re instructed to count how many times the kids in the black T-shirts are tossing the beach ball.

And in the middle of that, this guy comes out dressed as a gorilla goes, “Hoo, hoo, hoo,” and only half of the people noticed the gorilla because they’re so focused on counting the beach balls. I think that’s a very important thing about making things noticeable and what could be on, how can something be so obvious and people not see it. Half the people didn’t see the gorilla, which is, to me, just amazing. And I hope I always see the gorilla.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite book?

Guy Kawasaki

My favorite book is a book called If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland. Now, obviously it’s for writers. But if you substitute any creative endeavor for the word “write,” it’ll work for you. If you want to paint, if you want to play music, if you want to make movies, if you want to be an entrepreneur, this book is about empowerment.

And the gist of the book is if you want to write, don’t wait for permission. That permission could come externally like, “Oh, you passed the creative writing course,” or, “You have a Master’s in English,” or, it could be internal, “I took the creative course. I have a Master’s in English. Now I can be a writer.” Brenda Ueland is saying, “If you want to write, write. If you want to program, program. If you want to be an entrepreneur, start a company. You don’t need permission. You don’t need certification. You don’t need to do anything. Just do it.”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite tool you use that helps you be awesome at your job?

Guy Kawasaki

By far, the center of my universe is a Macintosh. I could not function without a Macintosh. And then I have a second favorite tool, which is, I don’t know if you know this, but I am deaf. And I am deaf so I can hear because of a cochlear implant. And I became deaf about three years ago. And I’ll tell you that cochlear implant has made a huge difference in the quality of my life because it enables me to go from being deaf to just having really lousy hearing. So, that’s a big deal. And, oh, you wanted a digital tool, right?

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, well, I guess you said Macintosh, but if you got another one, I’ll take it.

Guy Kawasaki

Well, okay. I mean, I guess you could say Macintosh is a digital tool, but also you may find this astounding, but I am a hardcore Microsoft Word user. I use Microsoft Word to write my books. I use style sheets for every paragraph of my manuscript. And I constantly flip between the outline view and the print view. And I’m a hardcore user of Microsoft Word.

Pete Mockaitis

Microsoft Word on Mac and not a PC?

Guy Kawasaki

Yes. No, I never touch a PC. There are two things I will not use, a PC and a Tesla.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite habit?

Guy Kawasaki

I always clean the filter in our dryer from lint after drying clothes. Every time I always clean the lint filter.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Wise words. Wise words. And is there a particular nugget you share that people tend to quote back to you often and you’re known for?

Guy Kawasaki

Well, I tell the Peking ducks quote a lot, so I get fed back that. I also tell people that you should never ask people to do something that you yourself would not do. Now, this assumes that you’re not some kind of psychopath, but assuming that, that’s a very good way to go through life. Just don’t ask people to do something you yourself would not do.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Guy Kawasaki

Ah, it’s hard to avoid me. I mean, if you use Google, you just type Guy Kawasaki and you’ll get more responses than you possibly want, but there is GuyKawasaki.com. That’s my website. That’s primarily brochure where, if you really wanted it to interact with me, the best way is email. So, I’m GuyKawasaki@gmail. That’s hard to remember, right? My name at Gmail. And, yeah, that’s it. I’m like an open book.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Guy Kawasaki

I may lose a lot of readers when I tell you this, but this is the truth. I think that one of the most important things you can realize to be awesome at your job is to understand that you should try to make your boss look good. I think many people think, “Oh, my job, I want to get ahead. I’m going to make my boss look bad. I want to show that I’m better than my boss, and they’re going to fire my boss and give me the promotion.” I have never seen that happen.

I think the much more mature, productive, and remarkable perspective is, “My job is to make my boss look good. And if my boss looks good, he or she is going to get promoted, and I’m going to be drafting along. And then, finally, that my boss is going to be so good that I’m going to have such a halo effect on me that it’s going to enable me to branch out and take a new job, get funding, whatever.” But it’s all based on make your boss look good. Don’t try to make your boss look bad. There’s very little upside in that.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Guy, this has been fun. I wish you many more remarkable conversations and adventures.

Guy Kawasaki

Thank you very much. Thank you. All the best to you.