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Wise Guy: Lessons From a Life

Peter King (00:00):
You're listening to the PK experience podcast where I tap into the minds of today's impact players so that you too can learn from them, grow from them, and create a greater impact yourself. My name is Peter King. I'm the host of the show and I've a very special guest today on the show. His name is Guy Kawasaki guy is a venture capitalist, a world renowned speaker and bestselling author. He's most well known for being a brand evangelist, though in fact, he actually popularized the term evangelist, which comes from the Greek roots which means bringing the good news. And he brought the good news for Apple back in the day in the early eighties, when Steve Jobs first started the company. He's the author of many, many books some of which have made the New York times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers list. He's also a speaker at many top companies. He does about 50 keynote speeches per year for clients, including Apple, Nike, ADI, Google, Microsoft, etc., etc. He loves to talk about innovation, social media, evangelism, and entrepreneurship. And as I mentioned, I'm very honored and excited to share this talk with you today. Again, here I am with Guy Kawasaki.
Peter King (01:11):
All right. I am here with Guy Kawasaki Guy, thank you so much for taking the time today. I know you're busy. I appreciate it.
Guy Kawasaki (01:16):
Glad to do it.
Peter King (01:17):
I am a beyond excited to talk to you. You have a wealth of knowledge despite what you just told me. And you certainly made your mark, I know you're a big guy on making a dent in the world as Steve jobs once said. And so again, I appreciate it, but you know, every, I've asked a few people, I said, Hey, you know, what should I ask Guy Kawasaki? And they said, Oh, well I loved his book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Be sure to thank him for that. So this is not Robert Kiyosaki. Obviously there's a difference. Do you get that a lot? That's a lame first question, but....
Guy Kawasaki (01:54):
You know, once a week or so? So I tell people I'm poor dad, not rich dad.
Peter King (02:02):
I again, I would argue with you on that one, but I wanted to just take a little bit to understand a little bit about your background. I was watching some different videos on you and doing a little bit research, but I didn't get into sort of what your influences were growing up. I know you grew up in Hawaii and you had a, you know, some influences there, but walk us through a little bit of, of how did Guy Kawasaki come to be?
Guy Kawasaki (02:25):
Sure. Actually I just wrote a book about how Guy Kawasaki came to be called Wise Guy. Yes. I'm from Honolulu, Hawaii, lower middle class neighborhood and family. I'm third generation Japanese American. And luckily a sixth grade teacher told my parents to take me out of the public school system and put me in the private school system because I had more potential than could have been realized in the public school system. So I went to a great private school called Iolani. I went to Stanford. From Stanford, I went into law school for a mere two weeks and quit. And then I went into, believe it or not I returned to Hawaii. I worked for Lieutenant governor for a while, went back for UCLA MBA program. Then while I was there, I went into the jewelry business as a part time job counting diamonds. I stayed in that business after graduation. And then my friend from Apple, my college roommate plucked me and put me in the Macintosh division. And the rest is history.
Peter King (03:24):
Yes. So was that a, was that just kind of a, "Hey, you should talk to this guy?" I think he's up to some cool stuff. Or was there a strategic, you'd be a perfect fit for what they're trying to do over at Apple?
Guy Kawasaki (03:36):
I would say it was more, "I have a guy without the right academic background and the right work experience, but he's a great guy. I think we should hire him." And, and you know, Steve Jobs after interviewing me said, "Well, you can hire him, but it's your career if I have to fire him."
Peter King (03:55):
He didn't mince words, did he?
Guy Kawasaki (03:56):
No. And that's one thing you can say about Steve Jobs. Yeah. He minced people!
Peter King (04:04):
Right. Yes, he minced people. That's actually one of the questions I wanted to ask you. You've, you've touched on this certainly in your topics and your talks before, but like to look at the dent that that guy has made in the universe... And I've also heard from many people whether it's hearsay, or third person, or whatever, that he's clearly a very difficult person to have worked for... Do you have to be an asshole to make that big of a dent in the universe?
Guy Kawasaki (04:36):
I don't think it's necessarily causative, right? So I don't think people listening to this, should say, alright, so to dent the universe, I have to be an asshole. Probably what you're going to end up is just being an asshole who doesn't dent the universe. So, you know, Jane Goodall dented the universe. She's not an asshole. I mean, you don't have to be an asshole. There seems to be high correlation that people who dent the universe are assholes, but I'm not sure that's causative. And I'll also tell you that I would not trade that time working for Steve and Apple for anything. So, you know, it, it may have been a challenging, difficult time, but it was formative and it taught me a lot and I'm here where I am because of it. I look in it too. When you look back on your education, probably the best teachers are the ones that were the hardest, not the easiest. It's true of Steve Jobs.
Peter King (05:40):
Did he, did you feel that he had a deeper care for, I mean, he had such a grandiose vision and I think that would be difficult to be surrounded by people who are constantly saying, eh, I don't know, Steve, you might want to pull the reins back a little bit, I can see that that would be frustrating. But did feel at least at a foundational level that he cared about the people or did he really mince them and just as long as the outcome?
Guy Kawasaki (06:05):
It's an interesting question. You know, I don't, I don't think he was a pathological kind of person. I think he was... It was neither here nor there. He wasn't warm and fuzzy, nor was he evil. He just had singular focus on making Macintosh successful or making Apple successful. And people were, and this is going to sound more negative than it should be, people were a means to an end. And so if you were a great, and you got Steve and Apple closer to the goal than you were, you know, good. And if you didn't, then you weren't then, you know, also, that's just the way it was decided upon. So is he warm and fuzzy mentoring people, you know, all that kind of stuff. No, but on the other hand look at what he accomplished, so I think in American business there's been Walt Disney and Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and I don't think any of those people were warm and fuzzy.
Peter King (07:09):
Right, right. I know despite the, the culture that Disney seems to have, I heard Walt it was not exactly the easiest person work with either. What would you say is something that people don't know about Steve that you wish they would?
Guy Kawasaki (07:23):
Oh, I think one thing is that he did not care about your race, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, anything like that. It was black or white with him. You were either good or you were shit. There's nothing else in between. And it didn't matter if you were you know, a white, Yale graduate whose great grandparents came over on the Mayflower or your parents came over, you know, 10 years ago in the last helicopter out of the U S embassy in South Vietnam. I mean, either you were great or you were shit. That's it. That's all he cared about. And that's the way to go. I mean, maybe if his direct reports were women way before, you know, having women at an executive level was a desirable, it was always desirable, but you know, desirable on paper and a good sort of optics.
Peter King (08:18):
Right. Well, I mean, I, I guess it's how you create something for the masses when you have all of these different perspectives and all of these different, you know, world views and energies.
Guy Kawasaki (08:27):
Well, no, no, don't go, don't get too warm and fuzzy on me. So it's not that Apple created these great products and services for people because we were such a diverse group basic, we executed on what Steve wanted. Okay. This has nothing to do with what we wanted and as Steve was just happened to be right more than he was wrong, much more than he was wrong. So
Peter King (08:54):
Did people ever change his mind? Could he be influenced?
Guy Kawasaki (08:56):
yes, yes, yes. He could be influenced, but you know, I mean, it's a lot like wing suiting. I mean, you're either going to have a great ride or you're going to die, you know, don't go in there on a whim saying, I think I'll go change Steve's mind. What could go wrong? I mean, you really have to have some conviction.
Peter King (09:18):
Yeah. That's interesting. As far as your time there, what exactly was your, you were the evangelist, but tell people what that actually meant and what did you do?
Guy Kawasaki (09:28):
So I worked for Apple twice the first time I was software evangelist and that meant I convince software and hardware companies to create products that were compatible with Macintosh. The second time I went was, and Apple was supposed to die. So at that point I was chief evangelist and my job was to maintain the Macintosh cult, you know, the Macintosh inner circle to not lose, faith in the religion.
Peter King (09:51):
Okay. Okay. One of the questions I had about what Apple has done and what you have since done too is like how do you create products that people don't even know that they want? I mean, every time I got a new Apple product, it was like, how did, how did they know that I needed that? How did they know that they needed that? Like I, it's integral in my life within the first week. Like, how do you know that?
Guy Kawasaki (10:14):
Well, and that's, that's one of the great gifts of Steve Jobs. So you can look at him in either of two ways. One is that he knew what you needed, even though you didn't know. Right. That's one way. The other way of looking at it is he builds whatever the hell he wanted and he convinced you you wanted it too. And there's truth in both of those ways. But, I mean, that's why he, Walt Disney, and Elon Musk are in a different category than everybody else. You know, lots of people throw the visionary word around and they're not visionaries. I mean, you know, so you, you make a Tinder for old people and you call yourself a visionary in social media. I don't think so. You know, as Dan Quayle would be an example, you are know John Kennedy,
Peter King (11:05):
Right? We've already done that. Yeah. That's funny. So you said that you're third generation Japanese American. Yes. Your father fought for the US, correct?
Guy Kawasaki (11:15):
He was in the Army Corps of engineers, so he didn't, he didn't fight, he built.
Peter King (11:21):
Okay. How does that work during World War II?
Guy Kawasaki (11:26):
Well during World War II, if you're a Japanese American from Hawaii and the 442nd battalion, eh, you know, personifies this, that they want it to prove that they were Americans and they loved America. And so they kind of bent over backwards to show that, you know, they were Americans, they weren't Japanese living in a foreign land. And you know, I think, I think that the 442nd battalion was the most decorated the battalion and in all of the army in World War II, there's some, something like that.
Peter King (12:00):
Wow. Was, was he over there during for Pearl Harbor?
Guy Kawasaki (12:05):
Oh man. I don't know exactly where he was on December seventh. He could have been. Yeah.
Peter King (12:12):
Yeah. How big an influence did he have in your life? Was he around much or was he gone?
Guy Kawasaki (12:15):
No, no, he was around a lot. He was a huge influence. And I'll tell you a great story about him, so, this is many years later, I was living in San Francisco on Union Street in the Presidio. So it's right where Union Street, dead ends into the Presidio. And it's a very exclusive, so part of San Francisco. So one day I'm outside and I'm cutting the hedges and this older white woman comes up to me and says, do you do lawns too? And so I said to her while you, you know, I'm Japanese American, so you think I'm the yard man, right? She goes, no, no, no, it's just that you're doing such a great job that I was wondering if you do lawns. And so two weeks later my father visits me and I fully expect him to just go off on her, right? Like how dare you ask you Stanford graduate and work for Apple.
Guy Kawasaki (13:05):
At that point I probably wrote five books and to my amazement, he says, you know, son in Cow Hollow, which is the area in Cow Hollow, Japanese guy cutting hedges, most likely you were the yard man, get over it. Don't take it personally. Don't look for problems where they don't exist. Give people the benefit of the doubt, you know, except these things taken with humor, you know, don't make yourself great. And that was a pivotal moment in my life. I mean, you know, I said all right, so you're basically telling me "man up, don't look for problems that don't exist and don't have a chip on your shoulder." And that was a formative experience in my life.
Peter King (13:48):
Wow. That, yeah, that can that would put you on a completely different trajectory, I would think. Yes. Yes. Interesting. So you brought up the term man up. I'm, I'm curious cause a lot of what I see in our culture right now is just this masculine/feminine thing. What, how would you define what it is to be a man?
Guy Kawasaki (14:07):
Oh God, this is, this is treacherous territory I think. I think several things. So one is high sense of ethics that there is a clear, bright, dark, deep, obvious line between right and wrong and it's not situational. There are things that are right and there are things that are wrong, and that's not one. Number two is that you...
Guy Kawasaki (14:47):
Are a good parent and father and husband that the center of your focus is your family, not your job, not the company, not your political party. You know, none of that stuff. And, and that you, you know, do the right thing all the time. And I, you know, that would be hard enough to do right there.
Peter King (15:17):
Yeah. I mean, those are foundational. When you, for somebody who's done big things, who have had a big vision, who have implemented and made an impact already, how do you balance that? Your vision, not just your work or, you know, but the vision to make a better world versus being there as a father and being there as a husband and for your family.
Guy Kawasaki (15:38):
First of all, you're assuming that I did balance it. I do balance it. Well, that could be debated.
Guy Kawasaki (15:46):
I don't, I mean, you just make time. I don't, I don't have any magic, you know, be a vegetarian, wear Birkenstocks and, you know, do yoga. I don't know. I don't have a magic formula. I, mean, I just work my ass off. That's what I do.
Peter King (16:00):
So let the chips fall where they may.
Guy Kawasaki (16:02):
Well, I don't let the chips fall where they may that, that's a little too, like, you know, whatever. I'm not a whatever person. I'm, I believe that, you know, you can accomplish whatever you want. If you work hard. I mean,
Peter King (16:15):
Plant the flag, Cease the Hill.
Guy Kawasaki (16:16):
Yeah. It, no matter how hard I try, it will never be a professional surfer. But I mean, it doesn't mean I can't learn to surf.
Peter King (16:24):
You, you are a Hawaiian guy that plays ice hockey, so I wouldn't, yeah. How do you get into ice hockey and not surfing growing up?
Guy Kawasaki (16:32):
Well, first of all, my kids took up, my kids wanted to take up hockey, so I took up hockey and my mother, my mother, my wife said, I want you to be a... Oh, I said this all wrong. So my kids said they wanted to take up hockey. So my wife said, I don't want you to just on the sideline on your Blackberry, I want you participating in their lives, so you take up hockey too. So I took up hockey and I loved hockey and I did that for about 14 years. And then my daughter took up surfing. So I took up surfing and now I've given up hockey for surfing. I love surfing, man.
Peter King (17:07):
I, yeah, I mean how do you, how do you live that close to those waves and not get out there?
Guy Kawasaki (17:11):
And I go surfing three, four times a week.
Guy Kawasaki (17:17):
Okay. I love to go surfing.
Peter King (17:19):
Oh that's great. What do you love about it?
Guy Kawasaki (17:21):
I just loved that it's the hardest thing I've ever tried to learn. I thought hockey was hard, but yeah, I think surfing is harder. Huh? Cause with hockey well, you know, after the Zamboni cuts the ice, the ice is the eye. I mean, you know, whereas every wave is different and there I think are more variables in surfing because every wave is different. The tide is different, the wind is different. The people on the break with you are different. And so there's more of, air. Hockey is a very complex sport, but I would say surfing is a more complex sport than hockey.
Peter King (18:04):
But some people relate surfing to women and just the romanticism of that and how we're all the reasons that you just said, it's unpredictable. You don't know how big the wife is going to be. Am I going to get smashed by it? Like, so that, that might be part of the Allura thing. I never thought of it that way. The oceans mean is very feminine energy. It's better respect it or it's gonna it's gonna pound you, you know, gonna kill you. Yes. So I, I'm curious to know what your sort of vision is for the next 10, 15, 20 years with being in the tech space around a lot of these innovators. Where do you see things going for us right now
Guy Kawasaki (18:45):
In a rare moment of humility? Let me tell you, I have no idea. I, I don't think if anybody tells you they notice, I, nobody can predict 10 years out, 10 months maybe, but not 10 years. You know, we all thought that my space would be the operating system of the inner right, that my space would dominate everything. And an Amazon would be a little corner store and Apple would be a little corner store and Microsoft would have this little corner store. And now my space is gone and it's Facebook and you know, five years from now we may say, Oh, remember Facebook, they were just like my space. Or they could be dominating. I mean, who knows? Nobody knows. Yeah.
Peter King (19:24):
Where do you fall on the artificial intelligence debate? Do you think it's going to be something that will dramatically impact us for good or is it going to be
Guy Kawasaki (19:32):
Okay? Yes, I think net good. I mean, Mercedes-Benz brand ambassadors. So, you know, I particularly appreciate artificial intelligence in terms of cars. So in a future where a cars are electric, artificial intelligence, you know, better digital mapping machine learning, all this kind of stuff where you don't necessarily own a car, you call a car, it comes, gets you, you know, you get in the car, you get off, you walk out of it, boom, you're done. There's nobody driving it. Cars use 24 by seven. I don't have to have a garage at my house anymore. My company does have a parking lot. I mean, that's a game changer. Think about the consequences of, we use renewable energy to generate electricity that runs our cars. So now we don't care about oil. This means that CLO climate change hopefully gets under control. Even though some people think that climate change doesn't exist, and I mean,
Peter King (20:39):
Well just geo politically how that would impact, you know, the U S and, and you know, Saudi Arabia and [inaudible].
Guy Kawasaki (20:46):
Yeah. Maybe we don't have,
Peter King (20:48):
We won't have to invade some countries and we won't have to suck up to other countries. That's all, you know what, in that world, I could make the case that ultimately water will be more valuable than oil. Huh? Right. 100%. Yeah. I think, who was it that talked about that? I know Peter Diamandis is really big on the abundant future that AI is going to bring and technology and whatnot.
Guy Kawasaki (21:16):
So imagine, imagine a world where a auditor is the most valuable commodity. Right? And so United States and Canada will fi we'll form the, the w pack or something, the, you know, instead of OPEC, it would be the wall. Right. And so we'll have this meeting, you know, like prisoner, United States, president of Canada, and then we get together, wow, should water be $100 a barrel or $150 a barrel? Should we restrict water this year or not? And then then, you know, this is, I'm really making up stuff on the fly here. So now, you know, let's say there's political unrest in America, right? And so the world's water supply is threatened. So using American logic countries that need water would say, Oh, the political suit [inaudible] in America is unstable. We need to invade America to establish stability, to ensure the supply of water. Because have we not done that for oil? Did we not say countries are unstable? We need to invade them or we need to, you know, whatever changed their political structure to maintain oil supply. So why wouldn't people do that to the United States if they thought that the United States was unstable and their primary source of water? Man, think of ramifications of that. Right? So, you know,
Peter King (22:46):
It's hard to say. I mean, yeah. Talk about not knowing what the future is going to bring. Who knows? That might very well be the, you know, maybe, maybe we all gotta we've got to get to Mars somehow and eat lunch.
Guy Kawasaki (22:58):
Elon Musk.
Peter King (22:59):
Well he's, I mean he's, he's down on technology. Like, I mean, he's a doomsday or w it's scary to hear him talk about artificial intelligence. I mean, he thinks we're [inaudible]
Guy Kawasaki (23:09):
Well, I, you know, I, I don't know how, I don't know him personally. I don't know how you can be bullish on Tesla electric cars and not be bullish on AI because for electric cars to succeed, you need machine learning and AI and a lot of digital stuff, right? It's, it's a [inaudible]
Peter King (23:30):
I think. I think he would say something that, you know, the, the, the, the AI in a vehicle is more narrow AI versus the, the singularity and the artificial intelligence where it's creating more artificial intelligence and it has a of its own and it's
Guy Kawasaki (23:45):
Decisive. And who the hell knows where it goes from there? I dunno. Well, yeah, it's crazy. Some of the stuff that Boston dynamics is putting out right now is, I mean, it looks like right out of Hollywood, you know, but the Boston dynamics stuff is creepy because it looks like this creature that's opening doors and jumping over buildings. It's Robocop, right? It is Robocop. And that's what freaked me out. Yeah. But I mean you don't think one of those things is going to come to your door one day and say, here's your Amazon package and the next thing you know, it's like, you know, change you up against the wall or stuff. Nope. Nope.
Guy Kawasaki (24:22):
I mean, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not a naysayer or a doomsayer either, but you just don't know. I mean, that's, yeah. You don't know what, what are some of the big opportunities that you see right now with the different companies that you're involved with? What are some of the cool stuff that you guys are working on that you're excited about? Well, I'm chasing Vangelis for company called Canva out of Sydney, Australia. We're in the online graphics design service business. So you know, we, we sign up more than a, a thousand new customers a day and we make about 3 million graphics a day. We wait, you cut out for a second. Did you say 100,000 per day? Yeah, we have new signups of about a hundred thousand per day and our customers currently create about 3 million designs a day. Wow. And so yeah, that's pretty exciting.
Guy Kawasaki (25:14):
So I started my career democratizing computing with Macintosh and I'm ending my career democratize it design because basically by using Canva, almost anybody can create beautiful and useful designs. I have a background in design, so I do Photoshop and stuff like that, but, but I jumped into Canva all the time and knock stuff out in a fraction of the time that would take me to do in Photoshop, creating stuff from scratch. I mean, if your parents said, Hey son, you know, I need to make a, a flyer for my meeting or you know, something like that, are you going to tell me, Oh yeah, dad, a mom, go, go buy Photoshop and knock yourself out. I don't think so. Yeah, I mean you may be a good son, but you're not that good. No, exactly. I've, I've been down that road before. I tried to teach my grandma one time, this is several years ago now.
Guy Kawasaki (26:06):
I tried to teach her how to use the internet. All that's all I was trying to get her to do so that she could send and receive emails. She was so mind blown by the mouse moving her hand around, could you move the little? And she just sat there and laughed and I was like, I don't think we're going to get much beyond this. So have a, you know, the thing is that, I don't know, 30 40 years from now, your grandson is going to see my grandfather. Oh, a hundred all amazed that all I had to do was think about something and it appeared as a hologram. He just can't even wrap his mind around that. And he's doing this mechanical thing called a allows for a spouse or a mouse or something like that. So a hundred percent I tell my kids all the time that they will tell their kid or their kids are going to say, you drove a car, your car had a garage, you owned it.
Guy Kawasaki (27:01):
It didn't just show up whenever you wanted it and there was gas. What's gas. Exactly. And then that'll be a good day. So for the entrepreneurs in my audience, I'd love to get, pick your brain a little bit on what obviously is a VC, is somebody that's helping grow these other ideas. What is something that entrepreneur, let me take a step back. What's the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make? Where, where are we just running into brick walls and not really realizing? I think most entrepreneurs, there's, right, I can't narrow it down to one. Okay. So number one, I think entrepreneurs put way too much attention into the pitch and the plan and, and you know, Excel, PowerPoint or Canva because Canva creates designs and word and they lose sight of the fact that the purpose of a company is to creak summers not pitches to raise money.
Guy Kawasaki (27:55):
And so that's number one. Number two is the flip side of that is they don't spend nearly enough time to finish the prototype. I mean, the prototype is the most important thing because with a great prototype, you don't need to pitch because you'll have traction or you'll be able to demo what you're going to do as opposed to, you know, blow smoke with a presentation. And the third thing is that they vastly underestimate how hard it is to make a sale. Oh, how hard it is to complete a product and make a sale. So I think, you know, that's a good rule of thumb. Whenever an entrepreneur tells you it'll be ready in X, you just multiply that by 12. So if they a month, it's a year and then, or whatever they say in terms of their revenue, you divide by a hundred. So, so multiply 12 divided by a hundred and that's what's going to happen.
Guy Kawasaki (28:44):
Your formulas are legendary. I, one of my favorites, one of my favorite ones is, is if you're doing a PowerPoint, take the average age of your audience and divide by two. And that's the point size of your font. Yeah. Which is so true. And I love your stuff on, on PowerPoints because Steve jobs, Steve jobs, he had texts that's 200 points, right? The small font and a Steve jobs slide was 90 points. Now we're not Steve jobs, but I think the, the point, no pun intended is that the bigger the font, the better the slide and the better the speaker. Well it forces you to be precise and to not act on it. Right. So, all right. What a concept. What a concept. One more formula since you love formulas. So lots of people that are figuring out the pre money valuation of a company when they seek funding. So I'll give you how you do that. So with every engineer or engineer on your staff is worth half a million dollars in company valuation. Every MBA you subtract 250,000.
Peter King (29:51):
Yeah. You as somebody who actually has an MBA. That's right. No, I'm not talking about yoga. Yeah. I mean that's, that's a pretty shocking statement. So is it that, I mean, it's actually good advice though. So for, there's a lot of young people out there, how many people get seduced into, Oh, once I get that MBA and it's like I'm, I'm in alignment with you. I think education can, can derail somebody if they're not getting a specific, but let's be specific, right?
Guy Kawasaki (30:20):
Well, we're talking about tech startups. So for a tech startup, an MBA is neither necessary nor sufficient. Now, if you want to work for Goldman Sachs, if you want to work for McKinsey, Accenture, God bless you. You may need an MBA. All right? If you want to create the next Google, Apple, Cisco, Yahoo, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, you don't need an MBA, right? You don't need an MBA.
Peter King (30:52):
It almost seems like it. It hinders you. I mean, it kind of puts you in a box.
Guy Kawasaki (30:57):
Well, it puts you in a box. Especially if you're, if you're the founder, while you can have any background you want, but you know, if you're one of the, if you're trying to interview for a company that has start, typically it has started because of engineers. I can't honestly tell you that an engineering focused startup is going to say, Oh, that guy has a Harvard MBA. We should hire him. I have a hard time wrapping my Ryan around that conversation. Because I, I think at some level they're going to say, well, you know, we just got to build it and sell it. Why do we need an MBA? And another thing they're going to say as well, who has, who has two years of their life to spare, getting an advanced degree, you know, none of us on the founding team even finished college and this guy finished college or this gal finished college and then spent two more years like, what's wrong with Apres?
Peter King (32:00):
Yeah. one of the other really awesome pieces of advice that I love that you give for entrepreneurs is don't worry, be crappy. I think that's one of the most integral pieces of advice for entrepreneurs is to ship, get it out the door. What a concept. So w did you learn that one the hard way or do seeing the pattern of all these entrepreneurs come in?
Guy Kawasaki (32:22):
Well, I, I, I S I started Apple, right? So, you know, when we ship Mac one 28 K, I can't take with hindsight that was a perfect product. But it was time to ship. And when you ship, you learn so much, much more than cogitating internally. You learn where laws are much faster. And you know, you really will see if the dogs will eat the food, which is after all the most important thing. I don't only will you see if the dogs will eat the food, you'll see which kind of dog eats the food because you know, you may be thinking you're making something for two hours and only pitbulls like it. Well, okay, so you need to change the packaging. Stop showing two hours if pitbulls like it. So it's a very different world. And I think many people lose sight of that. Yeah. Yeah. Reed Reed Hastings of LinkedIn fame has a saying that if you don't create, when you look at your first version of your product, you didn't ship it fast enough, you shouldn't cringe.
Peter King (33:28):
Cringe. That's good. That's a good metric. Looking for the curtains. Have you you talked about engineering your career with Canva. Is there another step or is this, you're going to ride that one into the sunset?
Guy Kawasaki (33:41):
This is it. This is it. I am going to I in this, I am going to disappear into the sunset. I don't need the attention. I don't need the visibility, whatever, when, when I this is it. I just want to surf and be with my kid.
Peter King (34:01):
I love that. That's cool. Well this maybe makes this next question move, but have you ever thought about being a guest on shark tank?
Guy Kawasaki (34:16):
Or they asked you, listen, in my humble opinion, you mean as a person pitching a company or as a shark? You'd be a, you'd be an author. I, I've told Mark Cuban and Damon, you know, several times, well, let me go on that show because you know what, what's bizarre about that, Joe, is they don't have anybody from Silicon Valley. So how can you see your, about startups and all that if you don't have any Silicon Valley feet? So, you know, Mark Cuban is obviously tech and obviously successful, but he's not Silicon Valley. Right. And so yeah, I wish they would ask me. I would do it in a second.
Peter King (34:49):
I think we need to make that happen. You'd be [inaudible]
Guy Kawasaki (34:53):
Are you ask them, but you know, I have to say that it's not clear to me and they would know better because maybe that's, people enjoy this, but you know the part where one guy says, yeah, well I'll give you half a million for 10% and then I want a 2% royalty and the other person, well I'll give you 1 million but I want 50% and no royalty. And you know, they got all these deals going on and the entrepreneurs thinking, why should I take Damon's money or should take Mark's money or whatever. I think that part is totally artificial that, you know, that's not how the real world works. And so really it's not like I got a way, well should I X and give up X or should I take Y and get a royalty and less sex? Ain't that, I think it should be, they come to conclusion this is viable or not. And it's not about, well I got a better deal from Mark than Damon. I mean it should be, you know, every show has winners and losers and electric skateboard company was a winter, but the, you know, the guy who teaches you how to lose weight by doing yoga is a loser. I know we don't fund a yoga school, but we fund the electric skateboard and it should kind of that simple in my mind. But anyway, I mean, what do I know it's a successful show.
Peter King (36:14):
Well, I, it is a successful show. Mark Burnett is obviously figured a few things out in that stage, but yeah, I think you'd be a hell of ish in addition to that. Cause yeah, you're, you're advice is often very refreshing. And what advice do you have? I've got two kids. One's 13 one's 11 and my son is very much into technology and of course video games and all that kind of stuff. We were just thinking, what's that? Fortnite of course. Yup. That's part of it. W I'm trying to, you know, taper it out and not let them get too seduced and all that. But I also love technology too. And I know there's a lot of opportunity there, but we were just looking at a, some, some online university or some university. We were looking online at some universities that were tech oriented and whatnot. But what advice do you have for upcoming generation in, in a world where we don't, like you said, we don't even know where we're going to be in 10 months. What advice do you have for young people?
Guy Kawasaki (37:13):
I mean, no, I, first of all job that he's going to work in probably hasn't been invented yet or so. Yeah, I think at the end of the day,
Guy Kawasaki (37:29):
But he needs how to write and everybody needs how to needs. Everybody needs to know how to communicate. So that includes writing, you know, speaking, understanding to perform analysis to be the goal. Especially with social media. You know, don't believe anything you read. Get second sources, check it out. I would think you would take a programming class, not necessarily because you become a pro, but you need to at least be able to tell when programmers are lying to you, which is, you know, kind of constantly. So those kind of basic things you know, I must admit that there's so much emphasis on like I see it now, you know, so much emphasis on math and calculus and all that. And I understand the emphasis on math and calculus and that kind of stuff in the sense that it teaches you a way of problem solving. But I also don't understand that I had, how often do you use calculus? I mean,
Peter King (38:36):
I was asking that myself all through calculus. Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki (38:40):
Basically, you know, all you need to know is how to balance your checkbook. And you know, when, when you go to Safeway, you look at the tag and you say, all right, so you know, this bag of toilet paper has 20 rolls and this one has five roles. And there's a Le print that says per sheet unit costs and per sheet. This is so even though the 20 roll looks better deal than the, or though, even though the five role looks better than the 20 roll deal on a unit cost, the 20 roll is better than the five role. I mean, you know, calculus for that.
Peter King (39:21):
Yeah, agreed.
Guy Kawasaki (39:24):
But I, I don't think you can ever get away from writing, speaking and those kinds of communication skills and analysis, you know, how to do research, how to, how to find the truth for yourself.
Peter King (39:41):
Hold up. What would you say is the biggest mistake that you've made? Well, I quit Apple twice and I turned Steve down once, so that's probably two, 300 million right there. I was going to say, did you? Yeah. Did, did you get stock options on that, that you missed out on or Oh, yeah. If I wouldn't be on his podcast if I had stayed at Apple. Yeah. Well, hopefully I can help you out a little help people to buy my book. I think you said on your bio, on your website it says you've written 15 books or you've written one book 15 different ways.
Peter King (40:24):
I'm a transparent guy. Yeah, exactly. It's what we love about you. Let's see. I know you don't have a ton of time, so let me sort of wrap this up a little bit. Let me ask you, what are the, what are the, actually, I can't remember. You might've actually been the one that taught me this now that I think about it, but one of the best questions that I think of when I think of legacy and how to help somebody solidify what they want their legacy to be is in what ways do you want to be remembered? Not necessarily just after we let you know that we die, but like an interaction with your product or your company. What are the three words that you would like people to use to describe [inaudible]?
Guy Kawasaki (41:00):
I don't even need three. I need empowered people. I want to empower people with my writing, my speaking, my investing, my advising, whatever it takes. And a secondary or maybe equal, not secondary is I want to be remembered for as being a great father. So I want to be a father who empowered people. So three words. Okay.
Peter King (41:23):
I love that. I love that. Well given the time that you've shared with us today, really appreciate it and know you could be out surfing right now, so we'll let you run. But guy, thank you so much for the thank you. Thank you.
Guy Kawasaki (41:34):
And if you could please use a graphic, the cover or something of Wiseco and link to it and that'll be helpful for all of this wisdom is in that book, where can people go to find that out? Amazon of course, or with Amazon or they can go to guy kawasaki.com and have a whole explanation of the book and all that. But yeah. Excellent. Cause we covered everything. Everything we covered is covered in the book. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.