Working with Steve Jobs & Becoming a Wiser Guy with Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist at Canva

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to legendary Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki about the time he stood up to Steve Jobs and other stories from his latest book, Wiser Guy. Thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring this episode. For simple cloud and powerful AI that's built to scale, visit digitalocean.com or just click the link in the show notes. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:28) You got to work with Steve Jobs. Is that right?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:00:31) Well, I got to work under Steve Jobs. That would be a more accurate statement.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:41) What project were you working on there?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:00:43) Well, I worked in the Macintosh division from '83 to '87—1983 to 1987—and then I came back to Apple in '95, and he came back, I think, in '96 or something. So we kind of overlapped twice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:01) My favorite part is when you're in this meeting with him and you tell him that "I don't trust you either." Can you tell me what that moment was like?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:01:07) So this is the second time I was at Apple. I was Apple's Chief Evangelist and an Apple Fellow. It was a meeting of all the marketing people of Apple, and Steve was in the room. This is just after Apple had bought NeXT, so he was on his way back in. And the creative director from Chiat/Day showed the Think Different television campaign. So he shows all the ads, and we all loved it. And at the end of the meeting, he says to Steve, "I have two copies of these ads. I'm going to give one to you and one to Guy." And Steve says, "Don't give one to Guy." And this is one of those man-or-mouse moments. Wimpass that I didn't come back at him? So I decided I wasn't going to be a wimpass. And so when he said that, I said, "What's the matter, Steve? Don't you trust me?" And Steve, as only Steve would, he said, "No, Guy. I don't trust you." So now here we have a second wimpass moment, and I decided that I would not wimpass again. So I said, "That's okay, Steve, because I don't trust you either." So that cost me probably $400 million. But, you know, $400 million here, $400 million there—pretty soon it's real money.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:33) That's hilarious.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:02:34) You know, $400 million here, $400 million there. Pretty soon it's real money.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:41) That's funny, man. That's tough. Oh, man. So if you were to sum up your entire experience working with Jobs, what would it be?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:02:49) Oh, I think it was an honor and a privilege. I am where I am because of him. He was an inspiration. He was a terror. I was afraid of him. And anybody in the Macintosh division who tells you they weren't afraid of him is lying. So I think he drove us to do the best work of our careers. I don't know anybody—I can't tell you it was always fun, but it was always exciting, and you knew you were changing the world. And, you know, I said I consider it an honor and a privilege to have worked for him.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:31) So how did you get there? How did you get to working at Apple? What was your early life like?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:03:35) This is another good story. So I wish I could tell you I was in the computer science program, PhD at Carnegie Mellon, and he saw how good I was with assembly language and how good I was with Pascal, so he recruited me into the Macintosh division. But that would be a total bullshit story. So the way I got my job in the Macintosh division is nepotism, because the person who was running the evangelism program in the Macintosh division was my college roommate. And so the reason why I got that job is because my buddy was hiring for that job. On paper, you would have never hired me. I majored in psychology because that was the easiest major I could find. I had an MBA in marketing, and I got to tell you something: having an MBA in marketing in Silicon Valley is something you have to overcome. It's not a feature. It's a bug. So I got it because of nepotism, and, you know, knock on wood, it worked out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:57) Nice. Well, at least you own it, and you figured out how to make it work.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:05:00) Yeah. Well, that's one version of the story.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:05) I want to hear the other.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:10) Were you born in the United States?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:05:12) No. I'm an illegal immigrant. At any moment, ICE is going to knock on that door. They're going to deport me, and we're going to have to continue this from El Salvador. I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:27) Okay.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:05:28) So I'm probably as American as you are, white boy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:33) I was going to make a joke about you learning to surf so you can escape ICE, but okay. We got it. We got it. We're having fun. No, I saw in the book you're talking about dodging drafts, immigrants from Japan, and so I didn't connect all those dots. Is that just your parents?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:05:47) Yeah. My grandparents moved from Japan to Hawaii because they were, quite frankly, seeking a better financial life. And also, the draft-dodging part comes in because around that time, Japan was in a war with China, and so there was mandatory draft. So my grandfather's generation was kind of drafted into the Japanese army to go fight the Chinese. And one explanation of why they moved to Hawaii was to get out of that draft. So, yeah, that's why I have a great appreciation for immigration. And, you know, if it wasn't for immigration, I would not be here. I would be—I don't know—I'd be a barista in Starbucks Tokyo or something. I don't know what I would be. I'd be sharpening sushi knives or something.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:47) That's funny. You've got a good sense of humor. Let's talk about your sense of humor for a second. We're going to deviate from the book. You have an unusually good sense of humor. Is this something that you—is this just who you are? Have you always been this way? Did you have a psychological break in your forties? How did this happen?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:07:04) The hell if I know. You know what? Okay, take me out of this equation. Take me out of this story. I have truly come to believe that a sense of humor is a sign of intelligence, and that if you know when to laugh, it is a sign of intelligence, and if you know how to use sarcasm and irony, it is a sign of intelligence. And I don't know what your political perspective is, but ask yourself: Have you ever laughed with some of these political leaders as opposed to at some of these political leaders? And so I think the sense of humor is a real strong indicator of intelligence, because if you're not intelligent, you don't understand when to laugh, and you don't know how to make people laugh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:06) Oh, I would fully agree. I don't know if you know this, but I tour as a stand-up comedian outside of the podcast.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:08:11) You do?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:13) Yeah. Yeah. So I get to meet a lot of—I've been doing it for about a year. I've done 70 shows in the past year. It's just a nights-and-weekends type thing. But I've gotten to make a lot of friends with comedians, and they're some of the smartest, most philosophical people off the stage.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:08:28) So can you make a living doing that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:31) Yeah. Oh, yeah. You can. If you get good, if you get in the—just like anything in life, if you get in the top 10%, you can definitely make a living.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:08:38) Wow. Is it too late for me?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:41) It is not, sir. There's an open mic in your town. Grab your surfboard. Head on down there.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:08:49) You know what? I have often thought about calling up that Moth recording line. You know, there's a Moth recording line. You call up, you tell your story, and then you see if you're good enough for the Moth. I wonder if I'm good enough for the Moth. I don't know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:05) Do it. Do it. Yeah. Just get on Joe Rogan's podcast and do something with him.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:09:13) I don't think I'm the right demographic for that. Well, first of all, I believe in vaccination, so that's the problem. I believe in women's rights. I believe in voting rights. I believe in LGBTQ+ rights. I'll never get on that show.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:28) He's surprisingly—he talks to all the sides, though. I'm not a listen-to-every-episode type person. The most common episodes I listen to of Joe Rogan's podcast are his science-and-technology—simulation hypothesis type, or Bostrom, or Neil deGrasse Tyson. You know, those are typically the episodes that I'm catching.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:09:49) I had Neil deGrasse Tyson on my podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:53) Oh, yeah?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:09:53) Yeah. I got to tell you a funny story. So I don't know if you realize this, but I am deaf. And the only reason why we can have this at all is I have a cochlear implant. And I had Mike—not Mike Tyson. Neil deGrasse Tyson. You know? You've seen one Tyson, you've seen them all. But, anyway, so I had Neil deGrasse Tyson coming on my show. And at that point, the only way I could hear what my guest was saying was to read the live transcription from Chrome. So I had to interview Neil deGrasse Tyson basically hearing very little of what he was saying, and I was trying to read the Chrome live transcription. And let me just say that Neil deGrasse Tyson has a very, very high level of intelligence and a very, very high level of concepts. So it's hard enough to follow Neil deGrasse Tyson or keep up with Neil deGrasse Tyson if you have good hearing. And trying to do that with a Chrome live transcription was very difficult, man. My head was exploding.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:09) That is wild. When did you get the implant?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:11:12) About three years ago, I think. I'm about to get another implant because I lost hearing in the other side. So basically, you know, I'm completely deaf when I travel. When I travel, you know, I don't necessarily sleep with an implant on. One of my great fears is that there's going to be a hotel fire, and I won't hear the alarm, and I'll burn up in the fire. That would be a bad way to end.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:42) Well, it's not the worst way to end your nineteenth book. We'll just write it in there.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:11:48) Yeah. All my books will be bestsellers because he died in a hotel fire.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:53) The title Burn After Reading is already taken, so we'll have to come up with something else.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:01) So what did you do for the—it's been three years since you've had the implant. Before that, lip reading, other technical devices?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:12:10) No. I had—I have what's called Meniere's disease, which is a disease where you have three symptoms, which is tinnitus, which is a ringing in my ear. I have hearing loss and vertigo. So when you have those three things, it's called Meniere's. And I had that for about fifteen years. And gradually, my hearing got worse and worse and worse. And finally, it was gone on the right side, and now it's gone on the left side. So it's not like I was deaf the whole time, and finally I got a cochlear implant. When I got deaf, I had a cochlear implant. And so a cochlear implant takes you from being deaf to having lousy hearing. But lousy hearing is a lot better than deaf. But you know what? I have come to embrace the fact that I'm deaf, and there are some pretty good advantages actually to being deaf. And I got to tell you something: nobody ever died of hearing loss. Right? I mean, if you said to Steve, "Steve, you have a choice—you can be deaf or you can have pancreatic cancer," I'm pretty sure I know what his choice will be.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:21) That is right. Yeah. That's crazy. So, yeah, you've figured it out, though. You figured out how to navigate this.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:13:28) Well, I mean, you know, I tell many people it's better to be deaf than dumb, because if you're deaf, you get an implant. If you're dumb, you cannot do anything about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:39) That's true. Do you consider yourself a cyborg? You've got technology implanted inside of you. Are you a cyborg?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:13:49) You know something? Just even before you ask, Elon Musk is the last person in the world I'd let put something in my head. But, anyway, I—wait. You're too young to know, but there used to be this TV series with Lee Majors called The Six Million Dollar Man. Right? I'm the $60,000 Man, because that's how much an implant costs.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:16) You're 10% of the way there. I'm a positive, optimistic person.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:14:22) It's the first 10% that's the hardest.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:25) There you go. You've already gotten that done. You're about to go to 14% with the other.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:14:30) That's right. We're getting there. The trend is my friend.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:34) Real quick, before we continue, I wanted to give a special shout-out to DigitalOcean for sponsoring this episode. DigitalOcean is cloud infrastructure that's simple to spin up, complete with integrated AI dev tools, plus 99.99% uptime SLAs and industry-leading pricing on bandwidth. We all know DigitalOcean. It's super reliable. It's been around forever. And now with DigitalOcean's Gradient platform, developers can train, fine-tune, deploy, and scale AI workloads all in one place. DigitalOcean is reliable and affordable at any budget. Companies can save up to 30% on their cloud bill when they come to DigitalOcean. Use code DO25 and get $200 in free credits to get started. Simple cloud, powerful AI, built to scale. That's DigitalOcean.

(Intro Narrator at 00:15:23) Now, back to the episode.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:25) Let's talk about you not becoming Yahoo CEO. What happened there?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:15:30) Another big screw-up in my life. So at the time, my wife and I and our two-year-old son—we were living in San Francisco. And Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital calls me up and says, "We just funded a company, Stanford grads, and it's called Yahoo." And I said, "Well, where is this company located?" He said, "Stanford," or, you know, the South Bay anyway. And I said, "Well, you know what, Michael? It is at least a one-hour drive from my house to Menlo Park or Palo Alto. So that's two hours every day. I just had a kid. You know, one more is on the way. I just don't want to drive that far." And I knew a little bit about Yahoo, and it was David Filo and Jerry Yang's collection of their favorite websites. So I could not see a financial model. So, how are you going to make money collecting your favorite websites? And then the next question is, well, how is that defensible? Anybody can create a collection of their favorite websites. So if you go down the classic kind of test for a company, is there a world-class team? No. Two computer science guys from Stanford. Is there a world-class business model? No. Is it world-class defensibility? No. Well, other than that, Yahoo was a great idea. So I turned them down, and I calculated that—you know, let's say I would have gotten 5% of that company for being the first adult there, and then they go public, and, you know, they all have this high value—I figured that decision cost me $2 billion.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:28) So we're at $2.4 billion right now.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:17:30) We're at $2.4 billion. Can we stop? Education expense.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:35) No. No. We're going to finish this interview. We're going to get that number up.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:17:43) On the other hand, I work for Canva, and I am going to reduce that number with Canva. I guarantee you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:50) Are you currently with Canva?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:17:53) Yes. I am the Chief Evangelist of Canva.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:56) How long have you been doing that? Ten years?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:18:00) Canva is doing so well I couldn't hurt Canva if I tried.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:06) Don't go down that path. My engineering mind's kicking on. I'm like, well, hold on a second. No, Canva's great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:15) You know, my first experience with Canva was I was watching some interview about the founder, and I think it's a lady. Is that correct?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:18:24) Melanie Perkins.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:24) And she was talking about why she created it, and I was experiencing that same headache in my business. I was like, this is brilliant. We've been a customer at the podcast here for, you know, I think almost ten years now. But yeah, it's super useful, very intuitive.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:43) The Photoshoppers will scoff at it. That's what I saw happening a lot. A lot of the engineering people were all scoffing at it, but then all the small business people were like, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:18:52) Yeah. You know, when Photoshoppers scoff at that, that's kind of like when MIS and IT professionals scoffed at Macintosh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:04) Absolutely parallel. Yeah. So what's your main goal? I don't know a whole lot about chief evangelism, especially at Canva. What's your day to day like?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:19:14) Well, basically, evangelism comes from a Greek word that means bringing the good news. So what a chief evangelist does is spread the good news. So at the start of my career, I spread the good news of Macintosh, how it would make people more creative and productive. Now at the end of my career, I'm spreading the good news of Canva, how Canva has democratized design and enabled everybody to be a better communicator. So that's what I did, and that's what I do.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:19:49) It's also a little bit of Silicon Valley selective memory, because when people ask me about my background, I say, yeah, I work for Canva. I work for Apple. I was on Wikipedia's board of trustees. I was a Mercedes-Benz brand ambassador.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:20:06) And then I stop, because you only have to mention your success stories. You don't have to mention all your failures. And that's one of the great things we know in Silicon Valley, which is you throw a lot of shit up against the wall. Some of it sticks. You go up to the wall, you paint the bullseye around it, and you declare victory. You say, I hit the bullseye. You can always hit the bullseye if you paint it on the wall afterwards.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:34) You just described comedy. That's what you do. You record your set. You go up there. You say a bunch of stuff.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:20:40) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:40) And then two or three things people laugh at. You're like, yep. And you keep those, and you get rid of everything else.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:20:45) Oh, shit.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:45) I can be a comedian then.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:20:46) I know how to do that already. You know, there's a great line about, what's the difference between a great photographer and a lousy photographer? And the answer is the great photographer knows what to throw away.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:01) That is true. Well, that is very true. I actually, my brother-in-law is a famous music producer guy. And I asked him once, we were all hanging out, and I was like, hey, how do you know, when you're making these songs, you're adding all these instruments in, you're adding all these different things into the song. I go, how do you know? He goes, the art is you add a bunch of stuff that you think sounds good, and then all the art is is knowing when to stop deleting stuff. And I said, wow. He's like, yeah. You remove just enough to where it's perfect, and that's what you do. Because adding stuff's the easy part. You add a bunch of stuff that you think might work, and then you start eliminating it all.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:21:33) That's like writing a book too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:36) Yeah. Yeah. Mercedes is the only one that seems fish out of water. How did that happen?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:21:41) Well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:44) Evangelism part two?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:21:46) No, no, no, no. You're gonna have to go deep into my psyche to understand this. So, you know, when you talk to a lot of people, especially visible successful people, you ask them, what motivated you? Why did you decide to start a car company or computer company? Why did you become a writer or whatever? The kind of answer everybody gives is I wanted to make the world a better place. I wanted to end poverty. I wanted to ensure economic opportunity for everybody. I wanted to make sure everybody had an educational level. And then you come to Guy. You say, Guy, what motivated you?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:22:27) And let me tell you the stories. So I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. I came from a very poor part of Honolulu. Luckily, a public school teacher convinced my parents to put me in a private school, which was on the other side of town, not only physically, but financially. So I had to catch the bus from the bad side of town to the good side of town.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:22:52) And twice on that bus, I was robbed. I was hijacked. That's two stories. A third story is that in high school, somehow, some family friend had a Porsche 911, and he gave me a ride in that Porsche. And one more story, the last story is that in college, my college roommate, who actually got me the job at Apple, he came from a very wealthy family.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:23:17) And one year, I went home with him for Thanksgiving or something. And we went out to dinner with his family. And at the end of the dinner, his mother was tired, so she asked me to drive her home in her car. And the car was a Ferrari Daytona.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:23:33) And so now I had been in a Ferrari Daytona, a 911, and I've been robbed twice. And I said to myself, Guy, this is why you need to study, and this is why you need to work hard. It's not about changing the world. It's about changing the car. So the lesson that I learned is it doesn't matter what motivates you as long as you get motivated.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:01) I found that to be true as well with doing all of these interviews. Everyone's like, the interview questions, what's the secret sauce? How do you become successful? And what I found after a thousand of these is that, basically, it seems the trend is everyone just has something. They have this thing that they settle on. They're like, that's the thing. And then they just do it repeatedly.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:24:22) It's grit.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:23) And it works. And it's like, okay. You don't need to just say, oh, what's Guy's thing today? Or what's Jocko's or this other individual person? What's their thing? You just need to find your thing and just stick with it.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:24:35) Yeah. This is the myth of the instant success. Right? I mean, I think it's total bullshit. I don't know anybody who's an instant success.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:24:47) And, do you know Mark Manson? He wrote the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:59) Yeah.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:25:00) It's Mark Manson, right? I don't want to confuse Mark Manson with Charlie Manson. Just like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Mike Tyson.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:25:10) But anyway, so I interviewed Mark Manson, and we got into a discussion. And he said, you know, Guy, you will know that you have found your calling when your calling involves a shit sandwich that you love. And everybody's asking you, Guy, why do you do that shit? And you say, I love that shit. So with podcasting, it's probably the amount of research that it takes to interview a guest, or it could be the editing of the audio or the editing of the transcript.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:25:46) There's a lot of shit in podcasting. But when you find out that you love the preparation for the interview, when you love the audio editing, when you love the transcribing, you know you found what you love.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:00) I love the sales process of selling podcast sponsorships, and I love the conversations with the guests, like, prepping for the show and then talking to them. This is my favorite. The fact that I get paid to do this is mind boggling. I feel like I'm in the Matrix. I found some little loophole, and it's like, this is great. This is great.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:26:19) We're living in a simulation. So yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:21) Yeah. When you were talking about Mercedes and why you went there and some people do it for changing the world, I thought you were gonna say that you wanted a free car for the unreleased car.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:26:32) So I love cars. And, you know, so I love cars. That's what motivated me to work so hard and study so hard. So eventually, I achieved some success.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:26:47) So I had these cars. So I became friends with a lot of car executives at Porsche and Mercedes. And then I was in Germany, so they invited me to see the factory where they were making the AMG. And I just got along very well with them. And, you know, at the time, there was a Mercedes-Benz brand ambassador program.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:27:10) And, basically, the thinking was we get Roger Federer. We get the famous surfers. We get famous athletes and famous whatevers. And because they're Mercedes-Benz brand ambassadors, they're opinion leaders and other people will buy Mercedes. I don't know if that theory is accurate, but I sure as hell wasn't gonna argue against it.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:27:36) So then for a while, I could have any Mercedes I want. I'm like, yeah, I want an S-Class right now. I want this. I want that. When you're a Mercedes-Benz brand ambassador, and something goes wrong with the car, you take it to the dealer. You give them the key. The following week, they deliver you a new car. I mean, life is good. Life was good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:03) So you were like, I'm tired of this? You had your fill of all the cars?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:28:09) No. Prius.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:15) You like the patina paint jobs? Yeah. That's fun. Oh, man. Alright.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:22) So surfing at 60. You're from Honolulu, but you didn't learn to surf as a child. You learned to surf at 60?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:28:27) No. Because I was so busy riding Porsches and getting robbed, I had no chance to surf. Yeah. I took up surfing at 60, which is roughly fifty years too late. I took it up because my daughter loves it so much. And my daughter and I surf almost every day. We're gonna surf in a couple hours. And I am so glad that I discovered surfing at the age of 60. Because if I had discovered it at the age of 10, I would not be on your podcast right now.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:28:59) I would be applying for the barista job in Tokyo right now. But, yeah, surfing is truly, I think, the most fun you can have legally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:15) Wow. You would have become a pro surfer and crushed it. That's what would have happened. With your work ethic and your background.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:29:20) I doubt that. But, you know, if I would have become a surfer at a young age and not studied hard and not worked hard. Yeah. That's what I mean.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:30) Yeah. Just every day after school, you're like, I'm not doing homework. I am surfing.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:29:34) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:37) You have a section in the book about being a mission-driven asshole. Can you explain that?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:29:41) Yes. So listen. I'm from Silicon Valley, so I'm an expert in assholes. And I don't mean in the proctological, gastrointestinal, colonoscopy sense. And I gotta tell you something. Like, if anything else, in the last three or four years, we've seen an explosion of assholes, and I don't mean that in the sense of defecation everywhere. I mean, in terms of there's a lot more tech bro assholes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:14) Like Sam Altman? I'm not naming anything. We gotta edit that out, Josh. I saw him driving his $10 million car, and he got out of it. I was just like, something about that strikes me. My discernment meter is kicking in. Like, I don't know about him.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:30:29) $10 million car.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:33) I don't know. Some crazy number, man. There was just some picture. I never even met him, or I don't know any of that. I'm a simple guy.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:30:41) Yeah. I'll keep the cars under 150,000.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:48) Wow. How modest of you. I thought you were gonna say a million. Back to assholes.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:30:53) Fundamentally, I believe that there are two kinds of assholes. So one asshole, this is the egomaniac asshole that this company exists for me. It's my platform. I'm the CEO. I'm omnipotent. I'm omniscient. I'm whatever. This is all about me. That's the typical asshole. Now a mission-driven asshole is not about him.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:31:22) The mission-driven asshole, for example, is about making the best computer that's possible. And so if you're a mission-driven asshole trying to make the best computer possible, anybody who gets in your way, you run over. Right? That's Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was an asshole, but he wasn't a Steve Jobs egomaniac asshole.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:31:46) He was all about making the best computer possible, and that's why Apple is Apple.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:53) And I believe that when I watch the documentaries, there's two or three different ones about him. And when I watch that, that's the vibe that I get from him too.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:32:02) Yeah. You know what the problem is with people who watch those things is that they pick up the asshole part. They don't pick up the visionary, hardworking, passionate part. So, you know, believe me, there are people, you look at Steve Jobs. You say, okay. I'm gonna wear jeans. I'm gonna wear New Balance running shoes. I'm gonna wear black mock turtleneck. I'm gonna buy a Porsche 911 in black cabriolet and never license it.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:32:40) And then I'm gonna be the next Steve Jobs because I got the car. I got the jeans. I got the shoes. I got the black mock turtleneck. And the answer is no. You won't be the next Steve Jobs. You'll just be an asshole.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:53) Oh my goodness. I believe that. So how do you balance, okay, let's say that you've got some mission-driven assholeness inside of you, correct? So when you're leading and then you hear, you know, all the popular management books about empathy and being all gentle, how do you balance that? Do you just say no? Or what do you do?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:33:15) I don't know. I'm not a mission-driven asshole.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:20) I thought this was the art of assholishness. I thought that was the book.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:33:22) No. I'm on the outside looking in here. Let me just say that, as I said, the easy part is being the asshole. The hard part is, you know, what makes a Macintosh a Macintosh? What makes an iPhone an iPhone? What makes an iPod an iPod? What makes a Genius Bar a Genius Bar? What makes an Apple Store an Apple Store? That's the hard part. Anybody can be an asshole.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:33:52) You don't need training to be an asshole. It's knowing what kind of products and services to create. And I would make the case that Melanie Perkins proves that you don't have to be a mission-driven asshole. You can be a mission-driven nice person and succeed. The key is not the asshole part. It's the product or the service.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:18) It's the value you're bringing to the marketplace. Right?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:34:21) Yeah. It's a deep philosophical question that I've been wondering about for decades, which is, you know, does being an asshole make you successful? Or when you are successful, people tolerate your assholeness. So which one came first? I'm still thinking about that.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:34:49) I don't know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:51) That's a good question.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:34:52) Right? You think about that. You get back to me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:55) I mean, I've met unsuccessful people that are nice and unsuccessful people that are assholes. And so you scale that up. I mean, there's gonna be assholes that are successful and assholes that are unsuccessful. So I guess you just have to choose.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:07) The real question, the real philosophical question is, which asshole do you wanna be?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:35:15) Well...

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:16) Classic Ramon. So...

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:35:18) People are gonna listen to this podcast and their spouses are gonna say, "So what'd you learn on that podcast?" And it's, "Oh yeah, I learned I gotta decide what kind of asshole I'm gonna be." Yeah, another value-add podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:34) And the wife will be like, "I know what type you are. A big one." Alright, alright. Stupid joke. Who's Nigel? We gotta talk about Nigel. Who is this Nigel character?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:35:46) Nigel is this imaginary character that Julia Cameron, who is the queen of creativity... So Julia Cameron has this imaginary character called Nigel, who is the pessimist and who is the naysayer and is constantly telling her, "No, Julia. Bad idea. That's not good. Blah blah blah." So she is, or Nigel is, kind of the devil's advocate in Julia Cameron's life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:17) Okay. Was that useful to you at all?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:36:22) I think it's a very good idea to have someone pushing back on you and telling you that you're naked when you have no clothes on. Let's just say there's not a lot of that going on right now where people are being told that they have no clothes on when they have no clothes on.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:39) So is this just at its core self-awareness?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:36:42) Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's a very good summation of that. Nigel is the embodiment of self-awareness.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:52) Only if we could bottle pharmaceutically anxiety and give it to people. Here you go. Here's some self-awareness.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:36:59) A lot of people could use some self-doubt.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:03) Oh, that is great. Okay, let's talk a little bit about your implants and your progression dealing with that. Because you said it happened over a long period of time. As this progressed, has this had an impact on how you view life or your perspective of life?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:37:24) Well, I mean, in many ways, often contradictory. So, you know, at one point you ask yourself, "Why me? What did I do? Why am I deaf? Everybody else I know can hear. Why am I deaf?" So first, you feel like a victim. You have anger. But then if you really are a remarkable person, which I strive to be, you look at things relatively, right? So I have a podcast, and I've interviewed people who served twenty-two years in federal prison. I have people on my podcast who have ALS, and they're now eleven years into ALS. And usually ALS kills you after two years. I knew Steve Jobs. He had pancreatic cancer and died. I know people on my podcast who had two crack addict parents. And when you understand that everybody's dealing with something, at some point you say, "You know what?" As I say to myself, "Listen. Nobody ever died from hearing loss. There is no pain. There's no physical pain for hearing loss." And with a cochlear implant, you kind of fix that. Not completely, but you kind of fix that. So, now do I wish I was deaf? No. I wish I did not have to deal with implants and stuff. But if somebody, if God said to me, "Guy, here's the deal. I'm gonna make you deaf, but then that's it. When I decide that it's the end of your life, you're just gonna go boom and you're gone. But until then, you're deaf." I would make that deal all day long. That is a deal. Compared to what? Suffering with cancer, compared to poverty, compared to... A lot of stuff could happen to you. And if deafness is the worst thing that happens before I die, you show me where to sign.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:37) What's been the most difficult thing that you've experienced in life?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:39:42) The questions on this podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:45) We can edit it out, or we can skip it all up. "The questions on this podcast..." Hey, okay. Clever asshole. That's who you've chosen to be. Alright.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:39:55) I told you it takes intelligence to be funny.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:58) There we go.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:40:01) Okay, let me be honest again here. So yeah, deafness is a big pain in the ass. Okay. But I cannot hold myself out as this really brave person who has overcome a lethal disease, that I have ALS and I'm losing bodily function, or I have brain cancer or pancreatic cancer, or I came from an abusive family, or I'm a political victim or... I don't have this... I mean, there should never be a movie about me because there's nothing that dramatic about me, right? I have absolutely led a charmed life. Very fortunate. I have four kids. I have wife 1.0. I mean, life is very good. And in all of that, you're deaf. Tough shit, Guy. Man up. But, you know, don't cry for me, Argentina. I am very lucky, and I feel a great, great responsibility to helping people enjoy life, become leaders, start companies, and do that. I feel I have a very high moral obligation to pay back all the good fortune that has come my way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:35) I love that. I love "wife 1.0." That's a funny way to... I might steal that. I might do that on stage. I'm sorry. I'll credit you. I'll credit you.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:41:43) You can go on stage and say, "You know, I talked to this guy from Silicon Valley, and everybody thinks he's Robert Kiyosaki, but he's Guy Kawasaki. And then he was at a stop sign one day, and these teenage girls were giggling and making eye contact with him. And he thought that, yeah, they all knew who I am. And then the girl rolled down the window and said, 'Are you Jackie Chan?'" And so, "I was interviewing this guy, and then he said, yeah, he was talking about his good fortune in life and how he's still on wife 1.0."

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:19) I love it.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:42:20) I think maybe we should go on the road together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:22) We should. And they should make a movie about your life.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:42:29) We can... It can be like Twins. You're Schwarzenegger, and I'm Danny DeVito.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:35) I'm loving it. That is so cool. Did your neighbor assume you were the gardener? Tell me about that.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:42:44) Okay. Man, I love when it's clear that the interviewer at least read the freaking book, as opposed to just got the Wikipedia entry handed to him by the producer. So this is a very valuable lesson, and I think it actually contributed to my attitude about being funny and joyful. So my wife, 1.0, as we've established, and I... We were living in San Francisco on Union Street, where it dead-ends into the Presidio. And so if you're familiar with San Francisco, Union Street near the Presidio is a very, very nice area. Not an area you would get robbed on the bus, but anyway. So I've come a long way from Kalihi Valley. So anyway, I'm out there one day in my Presidio home, and I'm cutting the bougainvillea bush in front of my house. And this older white woman comes up to me and says, "Do you do lawns also?" And now you might think, "Okay, so this is a story about racial profiling. Yard man. Why don't I ask him if he can do lawns?" But that's not the punchline. The punchline is even more funny and arguably more valuable. So a few weeks later, my father comes to visit me, and I'm Sansei, meaning third generation. He's Nisei, second generation. And, you know, he served in the US Army, the whole thing. So I tell him this story, and I fully expect him to just go off the wall, head explode, you know, "How dare this white woman ask my son who went to Stanford, has an MBA, worked at Apple, is an author... How dare she ask my son if he's the yard man?" But to my utter amazement, my father says to me, "You know, son, a Japanese guy where you live cutting the hedge in front of the house, most likely you were the yard man. So statistically, she was right in asking you, so get over it." And that's the day I learned that, you know, don't look for problems where they don't necessarily exist. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she just wanted to know if you do lawns. She wasn't saying, "Hey, you little Jap, do you do lawns?" She was just asking me if I do lawns. I don't know if she would have gone... If I was a white guy cutting the bougainvillea, she might have gone up to the white guy and said, "Do you do lawns?" And, you know, it wouldn't be a story here, right? So that's the day I learned to take the high road, don't look for trouble, you know, give people the benefit of the doubt.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:47) I did that. I saw a neighbor... We moved like three months ago. And so new house, new lawn service. Well, I was out the first week. This white dude was cutting the neighbor's lawn. I walked up. I was like, "Hey, do you do lawns?" He's like, "Yeah." It's like, see, you're doing the job. You're out there doing the job. So there's some logic there, you know? And she was trying to give you business.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:46:10) Well...

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:10) You could've started a... You might have missed your greatest calling, Guy. You might have made up those $2.4 billion in lawn care.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:46:16) If I just did 1% of the lawns in America, do you know how rich I would be?

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:22) You've been in Silicon Valley too long.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:46:25) You know, I forget who told me. It may have even been Neil deGrasse Tyson, but somebody said, "Guy, what you should have told her is, 'I do lawns, and in exchange, the woman in this house sleeps with me.'"

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:47) Now let's work out a deal. You know? It's the currency we accept here at Guy Enterprises, and it's the oldest currency. So you're welcome. Okay, let's plug. As we wrap up, we gotta do some work. Let's plug the book: Guy Kawasaki, "Wiser Guy." They can get it on Amazon, everywhere books are sold. And then the podcast.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:47:11) Basically, first of all, I wanna clarify, it is not a memoir because, as I alluded to before, my life is not memoirable. You're not gonna see a movie about my life. There shouldn't be a movie about my life. There's not a memoir about how I did everything right and I changed the world and became president of the United States or whatever. So this is simply a collection of stories of my life and from my podcast. And the purpose of any story in the book is to communicate a lesson. So, you know, your father tells you, "Get over it. She wasn't accusing you of being a Japanese yard man." There's a lesson there. When somebody confuses you for Jackie Chan, there's a lesson there. You know, all these things have lessons. And so that's what the story is. It's kind of like Guy's Fables. I'm really trying to pass on lessons. I'm not trying to glorify myself. I'm a mission-driven asshole, not an ego-driven asshole.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:20) And then let's do a shout-out for the podcast, the Remarkable People podcast. Is that what it's called?

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:48:25) Okay. So I have this podcast called Remarkable People, and I am telling you quite modestly, I think I may have one of the finest guest lists in all of podcasting. So for example, I have Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Wolfram, MacArthur Award winner. I have Stacey Abrams, Vivek Murthy, Tony Fauci, Julia Cameron, Margaret Atwood, Jane Goodall. You may have heard of her. I have really, really remarkable people explaining how they became remarkable, what they learned, and how to be remarkable too. And if you listen to my podcast, unlike this podcast, on my podcast I act like a host like you do, right? So on this podcast, 90% of the time I'm talking. 10% of the time you're talking. And the ratio is the same for me because I believe that my podcast is about my guest. It's not about me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:30) Absolutely. Yeah. I love that dynamic too. This morning I got to be on a comedian's podcast, so I was the guest. And then I get to come here, and I get to hang out. And this is great. Guy, this is fantastic.

(Guy Kawasaki at 00:49:44) Alright.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:45) We're new friends now. So I don't know if you like it or not, but we are. Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email: [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.