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Silicon Valley Legend is a prized descriptor, and few fit the term as well as Guy Kawasaki.
A renowned author, marketing specialist, angel investor, and tech evangelist, Kawasaki has a storied career in the Valley - including a major role at Apple marketing Macintosh computers in 1984.
Today, Kawasaki is the chief evangelist for Canva, the Australian graphic design platform, and the host of his podcast and passion project, Remarkable People, speaking to the likes of Jane Goodall, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Marc Benioff and more.
In this special episode of the Entrepreneur Podcast, Kawasaki joins Eric Janssen to discuss his career, the importance of sales, how to be an effective employee in an early-stage start-up, and fatherhood.
The Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
Guy Kawasaki
Every day, you're selling something, everybody's selling something. You may be selling the person checking your bags to let you check in an extra surfboard, or an extra bag, or put you in a window seat or God bless you, upgrade you to first class. And you may be selling a waiter or waitress on giving you a free refill. Or you may be selling you know somebody at Home Depot to take a return even though you don't have the credit card or receipt that you use to buy this thing. Now, most people would not consider those things quote unquote sales. But let me tell you that sales that's it. Every day you are selling
Eric Morse
You are listening to The Entrepreneur Podcast from the Western Morissette Institute for Entrepreneurship, powered by Ivey. In this series Ivey entrepreneur and Ivey faculty member Eric Janssen will anchor the session.
Eric Janssen
Our next guest today is near and dear to my heart because he's been a mentor to me for a very long time. We have the one, the only Silicon Valley legend Guy Kawasaki. Guy is an entrepreneur and author of 15 books, speaker and an angel investor. He's most well known for his role as an evangelist at Apple, Mercedes and now Canva. But his most recent work on his podcast, Remarkable People, might just be his legacy. His professional life has been very well covered. So on this episode, we dig into guy's role as a father, a husband, and a teacher. Now being the sales geek that I am, of course Guy and I hit it off reminiscing about his first job out of college as a salesperson. But we also talk about what it means to be a great father, and what lessons he wants to teach his kids. He also offers advice on why you shouldn't stress out about your first job out of college, how to be an effective early stage employee at a startup. And prior to the interview guy challenged me; he threw down the gauntlet and he said that an interview is only as good as the questions asked by the interviewer. The pressure is on you folks will have to let me know how I did please enjoy this episode with Silicon Valley legend Guy Kawasaki. Well, Guy, thanks for making it happen. We really appreciate it. I want to say at the outset, this is a podcast not just for, you know, seasoned entrepreneurs but a lot of younger people just getting started. And often we talk a lot about life, not just entrepreneurship. So I have my own theory about Guy Kawasaki his life. And that is that you have three F's, you prioritize fun, flexibility, and family. So talk to me, I want to talk about family first,
Guy Kawasaki
I don't know if that's the right order. I, I would put family and fun as first and second. Flexibility, I'm assuming you refer not to my hamstrings but flexibility in what I can do day to day. (Correct) I must admit that that is not a conscious stated goal. So what happens for me is not so much that you know, I was stuck in a 60 hour a week, desk job and I want a greater flexibility on my time, etc, etc. because I've had that for years. It's been years since I work for a large company. And so that's not even on my radar, flexibility. I have a flexible life. What's on my radar is, you know, what do I fall in love with. And so I've fallen in love with many things in my life. And the current love is podcasting. And so I could make the case that the amount of money I make is inversely related to how much I love to do. In other words, I love to do podcasting and I make no money.
Eric Janssen
Well, it allows you to do interesting things like have conversations or gives you an excuse to have interesting conversations with people that you might not otherwise have. Correct?
Guy Kawasaki
Well, that is absolutely true. And, you know, I look at it as hopefully preventing dementia, because I have to read maybe 60 books a year and not just read for sort of enjoyment, but I need to read in order to find good questions. So if you looked at a slice of my life, next week, I'm interviewing Peter Sagal from Wait, wait, don't tell me. So I have to understand his life as an NPR radio host. He loves to run and he had bouts of depression. And he's fundamentally a comic, so I need to understand comedy. And then, in the next day or two after that, I have to interview a finance professor from the business school of MIT. And we're going to talk about crypto. And then right after that, I have to talk about a woman who has ALS. And then right after that, I have to interview a woman who is living overseas and she is all about women's reproductive rights. So in the span of three or four days, I have to understand four very different things. And now that happens to be a somewhat heavy week, but that's the nature of my life. So I cannot afford to have dementia.
Eric Janssen
So let's go to the podcast for a second because I got a chance to listen to it before we scheduled the interview, but also leading up to our conversation. And you've interviewed by the title some remarkable people. I'm curious, who stands out that we may not have ever heard of that we should probably go listen to that episode. In other words, who's the one the most under the radar? Remarkable guest?
Guy Kawasaki
Sure, well, I've had a lot of over the radar, or through the radar, or on the radar guests like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Jane Goodall. And, Eric, I would argue that my guest lists, it may not be the best in all of podcasting but it's right up there. I mean, I would put my guest list up against anybody's. Now the title of my podcast is Remarkable People, which is not the rich people or famous people. Now, many remarkable people are rich and famous but that's not why I had them on. And so there are people who have done remarkable things, who are not rich and not famous, but are remarkable nonetheless. And I actually take greater pleasure out of giving them the publicity and the exposure so that, you know, maybe they can become more rich and famous if that they so desire. So I interviewed a woman who was smuggled across the US-Mexico border, and now works for Adobe, for example, right? So yeah, she doesn't work for Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, she doesn't, you know, she's not a billionaire. But her story is remarkable. To basically start from nothing, and now be an executive at Adobe. That is a great story.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, fantastic. I think the challenge is, a lot of the podcasts, even the ones that I've run, it's the big name guests that attach a lot of or grab a lot of the listenership. But some of the best insights, the best stories, are maybe some from some of the people whose names you may not have ever heard of.
Yeah, you know, listen, don't get me wrong. I also am a marketer. Right? So when people ask me who's been on your podcast, I tell them Jane Goodall and Neil deGrasse Tyson. So you need a few of those. But well, how many Neil deGrasse Tyson's and Jane Goodall's are there? There... That's a that's a 0.01% problem. But I guess it's just a matter of balance. That, you know, you need the marquee names for marketing. But you also need the content. And I would say that a marquee brand name is not necessarily 100% correlated with being remarkable. Let's just say that.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. Well understood. Well understood. If you haven't checked it out yet. Check out Guy's Remarkable People podcast, it is... even for the the names that you may not recognize... they're all worth listening to. Guy, I want to go two places. First one is, You talk a lot in your books. You talk a lot in some articles that I've read about you about the importance of or the title of being a father. And that being one that you may be relate more to, even more so than being a venture capitalist or a marketer or an entrepreneur. So maybe start there, talk about what Guy Kawasaki is like as a father.
Guy Kawasaki
Well, there may be a gap between what I tell you now and what my wife would tell you, my kids would tell you, Okay, well, let's start with that caveat. That said, I would promise you that the gap between what I will say is less than the gap between what Melania and Donald and Eric and Ivanka would say, (Sure). So no, I have four children. They range in age from 17 to 30, two of them are adopted, and two of them are biological. And of course well even adopted kids had biology you what I'm saying... you know what I mean, right? And they are just the light of my life. And I am not a tiger dad. I am not trying to make them take calculus in the fifth grade, or the or the fifth year, you know, I don't care if they go to an Ivy League school, well they're not going to go to Ivy League schools. Well especially I mean, I could make the case, if you look at Ivy League schools these days, not clear that they should be proud of their alumni, even if those alumni make it to the Supreme Court, or the US Senate. And so, you know, the good news is, I'm not a tiger dad. I'm not trying to force them to follow in my footsteps. You know, it's not like I'm Tiger Woods, that I'm making my kids play golf. Or I'm, I don't know, Neil deGrasse Tyson and making my kids become astrophysicist. You could view that as positive or negative, maybe I should take a stronger approach. But I don't know. Like, my observation is that life is so hard, is so unexpected, and also so opportunity laden, that it's very hard to predetermine these things. And so at the end of the day, if your children are honest, and contributing to society, and in healthy, happy relationships, I say frickin declare victory, man, that's as good as it gets.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, amen. I've mentioned to you I just had our fourth, Emily, who's now just over three weeks old, and (oh, my God.) Yeah, the lighting is not fair, right? I'm sure you can see under my eyes. You know, you we try to be intentional about the way that you are around them, the things that you might be teaching them, whether consciously or not. And I wonder, is there anything that you think your kids are learning from you, or things that you hope that they're learning from you?
Guy Kawasaki
Well, I hope they learn that you should treat people with kindness and respect. And not just when you need something from them, nor not when they're rich and famous and powerful. And that, you know, the waiter or the waitress, the flight attendant, the electrician, the gardener, they're all valuable and important people. And one thing I've learned in my life is that everybody you meet, literally, everybody you meet, can probably do something much better than you. Now, you may be a billionaire and create a Tesla or Microsoft. And so you have been rewarded astronomically, perhaps even unfairly. But for all, you know, your gardener may be the best longboard surfer in Santa Cruz, or your your cook - If you're a billionaire, you probably have a cook - your cook may make the best Tamales in all of California. Now, you might think, well, Frick, I'm a billionaire, I rule the world. But I'm telling you, everybody you meet can do something better than you. It may not be that society has chosen to reward that. But they do something better than you.
Eric Janssen
That's a great, great learning. Guy. When you you've got four kids, they're between the ages of 17 to around 28. Which, if my homework is right, when you had your first you were sort of in the middle of writing for Forbes, running a startup, maybe on the brink of returning back to Apple, so you had a lot on your plate. A lot of our entrepreneurs that listen are, you know, late 20s, early 30s, and trying to balance all got any advice to those people?
Guy Kawasaki
Well, one real piece of advice is marry well. But I would say that either during those years, my wife bore the brunt of the responsibility. And just, you know, knocked that out of the ballpark. That's number one. Number two is, I think this concept of a balanced life is fictional. That is, there are times in your life when you're going to just work your ass off, and not have fun. And there gonna be times in your life where you have a lot of fun and you don't work your ass off. There are going to be times in your life where you're overpaid. And there's going to be times in your life where you're underpaid. And over time, it all evens out. But if you think that you can lean in and have everything totally balanced at all points in your life, you are in for a big disappointment. So if you're an entrepreneur in your 20s or 30s, you know what, you're going to work your ass off, just decide you're going to work your ass off, and you're not going to be like taking two hours to have long strolls after you went to the coffee shop and had Jamaica Blue Mountain with your avocado toast okay? That's just bullshit. So get over it. If you believe you have to have that kind of lifestyle. Then don't start a company. But you cannot do both. And now everybody's like hanging up on this podcast. But I think you just have to make a choice. And there's going to be times you work your ass off, and there's going to be times you don't, but it's never going to be the place where you can do both.
Eric Janssen
That's good advice. You mentioned, Marry Well, and, again, from what my homework showed me, I think Beth had a successful career in her own right, she was a marketer. She actually started in sales, which we'll get to. She worked at P&G and Apple and Levi's. And then you said she maybe took over as primary caregiver for the kids? How did you navigate that? When a lot of the, again, a lot of the listeners that listen to the podcast, they are, they may have a partner, who also has ambitions just like they do. How did you navigate that?
Guy Kawasaki
You know, I think we're just blind dumbshit luck. The truth? You know, as they say, even a watch that stopped is right, twice a day. So you would have to interview my wife on that. I, I don't take much credit for that.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, that's fair, you know, having...
Guy Kawasaki
At least I know what I don't know.
Eric Janssen
That's fair. That's fair, having been through those conversations before. They're hard. You know, those are really challenging conversations for couples to have and I... letting people inside the fact that they're dirty, and they're challenging, and there are struggles behind the scenes is helpful.
Guy Kawasaki
One important thing to consider is that these things were happening to us in the 80s and 90s, 1980, and 90, not 1880 and 90. And those were different times. So today is a very different story. I'll watch my son who recently got married and his wife navigate that and tell you how it goes?
Eric Janssen
Challenging, right, challenging, and I think it can either divide you further apart as a couple or it can bring you closer together. But a lot of the students or listeners of this podcast that I talked to you they want to have conversations, not just about, you know, the next big thing, but about I found the thing I want to do, but how do I navigate this whole life piece and that's hard.
Guy Kawasaki
Well, to those people, I'll tell you that. I don't think there is a right or wrong way. And there's only what works and doesn't work for you. And you know listen, if you become the co-founder of the next Facebook, and your nanny has a personal assistant. And your nanny has a nanny. Okay! But you know, the odds on that aren't high. Now, it could be right for the co-founder of Facebook whose nanny has a nanny and personal assistant as a personal assistant to have a certain lifestyle, but that might not be right for you. That's not saying that you're wrong. And she's right or you're right and she's wrong. It's just different.
Eric Janssen
Yep. Right. Guy shift gears here a little bit. We originally connected because I teach a sales class at university, which is rare, less than 4% of universities teach sales. And yet, you started your career in sales Correct? Five years at a jewelry store?
Guy Kawasaki
Well, no, not a jewelry store, a jewelry manufacturer. (Sorry) So you want to know what the lesson is?
Eric Janssen
I want to know, you know, Guy Kawasaki is now Guy Kawasaki, but he's the started as you know, just quote unquote, just a sales guy.
Guy Kawasaki
Well, so I went to work after my MBA, well during the MBA and after the MBA for a fine jewelry manufacturer in downtown Los Angeles. So this company sold two jewelry stores, as opposed to retail jewelry. And selling to jewelry stores is hand-to-hand combat. It's about trust. It's about, you know, gold and diamonds are valuable, but they are commodities. Yeah, so you can tell how much a ring is worth by throwing it on a scale in terms of gold, design quality, all the other stuff is debatable, shall I say? So the lesson I learned really in life is that fundamentally in life, there are only two functions. You are either making something or selling something. And so if you cannot make anything, you better be good at sales. And if you cannot sell anything, you better be good at making it. And this is in this is really, really true for entrepreneurs. So as a startup, there's only two functions in your company, making it and selling it. Everything else is secondary. And people have to learn that. And so, you know, and I'm saying everything that you would attach the word strategic to, in a startup is probably bullshit. So if somebody says we have strategic partnerships, bullshit, we have strategic intellectual property, bullshit. It's all bullshit. Somebody's gonna make it, somebody's gonna sell it, you know? And then people, somebody has to collect it. Okay. But fundamentally, the two most valuable positions in a job or are the two most valuable positions in a company is the guy or gal who makes it and the guy or gal who sell it. And that's it. And if you have those things locked and loaded, everything else is easy. If you don't have it, everything else is a nightmare.
Eric Janssen
So you said your old boss, Marty said that people love to have the marketing title versus sales. Why is that? Why do people continue to gravitate towards marketing versus selling?
Guy Kawasaki
Well, in my case, I was not a commission sales rep schlepping a bag on the road. So I literally, no, I did do that. But that wasn't, you know, I didn't have a territory. And I was involved with things besides sales, like advertising and you know, PR and those kinds of things. So the natural title was, you know, marketing. Now, I think the underlying question you have is, you know, is sales kind of negative, greasy, you know, shuck and jive bullshit, whereas marketing is high end, strategic, they're the S word, you know, etc, etc. And, yes, there is that stigma. If you say you're a salesman for a car dealership, yeah, you know, not a lot of people will say, yeah, that's who I want my daughter or son to marry. But I gotta tell you, I mean, it's a skill. It's an it's, it's really, it's a skill No, no better or worse than engineering, or finance, or marketing or anything else. And a great salesperson is a beautiful thing to behold, I don't know, you know, people should not lose sleep over this. And I would also make the case that every day, you're selling something, everybody's selling something you may be selling, the person checking your bags to let you check in an extra surfboard, or an extra bag, or put you in a window seat, or God bless you - upgrade you to first class. And you may be selling a waiter or waitress on giving you a free refill. Or you may be selling you know, somebody at Home Depot to take a return even though you don't have the credit card or receipt that you use to buy this thing. And so, no, most people would not consider those things, quote, unquote, sales. But let me tell you that sales that's it... every day you are selling, And even the the actual sales function. People think about companies like Google, right? Google has more salespeople, maybe even then engineers, and it's Google. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, now, admittedly, some sales are more easy than others. Okay. But somebody is at Google trying to convince people to use AdWords, I guarantee you that this that doesn't just fall from the sky. So that's that was the beautiful thing about my background in jewelry in that I learned hand-to-hand combat selling. You know, today, I think many millennials think Oh, selling is when you decide whether you should use the blue background or the red background in an AB test on the homepage, that's sales. That's not sales. Sales is when you're looking in the eye of somebody again, they're about to throw you out after you took six months to get the appointment, that's sales.
Eric Janssen
Tell me about that guy, because in the people look at, for example, your background at Apple and say, you know, Apple like Google, my gosh, you know how how much of a blessing it would have been to sell Apple, but in the 80s selling developers on the Mac platform that maybe not the easiest job.
Guy Kawasaki
Well, it's a complex question. So I'll give you the easy side first, the easy side first is that Macintosh represented a very rich programming environment. So, developers liked the ability to create the software they always dreamed about. Macintosh was also opening up new markets to people who would have never bought a computer before. So it was expansive. And Macintosh enabled you to be on two platforms instead of just one the IBM PC. So arguably, it was safer to be on two horses than one. So don't get me wrong, it was not hard to get people to start. It was hard to get people to finish because it was hard to write software. And it was selling, now, I say, I hope if I were not as good a salesperson, and Evangelist, I would not have convinced people to believe in Macintosh enough to bet their company by writing Macintosh software. And so I mean, evangelism comes from a Greek word meaning bringing the good news. So I brought the good news of Macintosh. The good news of Macintosh was that it increases people's creativity and power and efficacy. That is very different than saying, Okay, here's my sales quota. Here's my commission structure. I need x new software products to get my bonus. That's not how it was. What we were trying to get people to do is believe if you get people to believe, selling is easy. Amen. And I love that's why I love your book Enchantment, you basically re rebranded or give a different perspective on what true selling actually is. I hope so. I love I mean, I love the process. It's, there's nothing wrong with being a salesperson.
Eric Janssen
If you were to wave your magic wand and you know bestow a new graduate of a business school or new graduate of any school with a few skills that would make them successful in selling, what would those skills, traits, abilities be?
Well, obviously, I'm gonna say the ability to sell, (of-course) that's 50% of the battle. But I mean, for example, my wife when she graduated from college, her first job out was working for Procter and Gamble in Field Sales. I know people whose job out of college was working for IBM in Field Sales. I'm telling you, you get the crap beat out of you in those kinds of positions, maybe more than selling jewelry. And it's very valuable experience. Now, by contrast, so you know, might some might, some might look down and say, Oh, so you're a P&G trainee, you're an IBM trainee. You know, I went to work for Goldman Sachs. Or I went to work for McKinsey, right. Or I became a private equity, or I became a venture capitalists, and you know what I would I tell people, that is the worst possible start to your career. You should do those kinds of things at the end of your career, but at the start of the career, you need to get the shit kicked out of you, because you need to appreciate what it takes to succeed. And now, it's not like I applied to Goldman Sachs, I got rejected. So I'm pissed off because it never occurred to me, i'll apply at Goldman Sachs. But I was just saying, well, so you go to work for Goldman Sachs. You know, you start at I don't know, $250,000 a year, you spend 12 hours a day cranking some partners Excel spreadsheet, and you fly around with that partner in a private jet. And you sit in board meetings where everybody sucking up to your boss? How does that prepare you for the rest of your life unless you become the boss, and everybody else is sucking up to you? So, you know, I mean, what did you just learn?
Eric Janssen
And guess what, if you stay in investment banking, or you stay in consulting long enough, and become partner, guess what your primary job is? Sales, you are selling? As the partner you are selling?
Guy Kawasaki
That is true. That's true. You got to make it rain. Yeah. But mean, but that's a that's the worst form of sales because you gotta go and sell like $5 million contracts, knowing that somebody who just graduated with a degree in Oriental Art History is not going to tell a company how to revamp their little logistical chain. I mean, he liked and, you know, my my bone to pick with consultants is that what I have learned over my career is the hard part is not figuring out what to do. The hard part is implementation. So when a consultant tells you, Oh, you need to be in the upper right Magic Quadrant. Well, shit, I can tell you that right now to anybody. Right? The question is, well, how do we get in that upper right quadrant? How do we develop an innovative product that is unique and valuable? How do we lower cost so that, you know, we can compete on price? How do we get in that upper right hand corner? Getting in the upper right hand corner? is not an aha, it's a duh-ism. The question is how, and you know what? Good ideas are easy, implementation is hard.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, absolutely agree. I agree. That's a tough business to be in. And I, for the same reasons, that sounds like you, either, because I didn't know it existed, or because the work frankly, just didn't sound like it was interesting. It's not the career path that I chose, or a lot of, frankly, our entrepreneurship students choose.
Guy Kawasaki
Probably not a lot of Goldman Sachs employees listen to our podcast.
Eric Janssen
That is, I don't think we're, I don't think we're alienating anybody by having this conversation, that's for sure. You mentioned, so on skills that you should be learning. I teach a sales course, I tried to have a little bit of fun with it. And one of the things that I do with our classes, I started the rejection Olympics. And I give them, you know, university students come to class, and they're playing bingo. But basically, I give them a card, I give them a bunch of unrealistic, ridiculous tasks that they need to perform. So they need to go order a pizza at the coffee at the Starbucks, they need to try to get on the bus without paying bus fare, not by lying, by trying to get on. And so the purpose is getting them comfortable with just straight up getting rejected. And by the end of it, they come back and realize that it's actually not that bad. So my question Guy, is, if we were to add maybe a few activities to the bingo card that were Guy's special activities, things that they could do that get them rejected and get them to overcome that fear of rejection; Is there anything that you think I can assign them?
Guy Kawasaki
You could try to apply for a job at Apple? Good thing, the standards were much lower when I am I applied? You know, and I don't? I'm not suggesting that you should purposely get your ass rejected, so you have the sense of being rejected. But I think you just have to understand that. The question is not whether you ever get rejected. The question is, what do you do after you're rejected? And this, this is a matter of well, there's two factors. One is good luck. And the other is grit. Which you could make the case of luck and grit are two sides of the same coin. And I attribute a lot of my success to both factors. I was lucky that my parents emphasized education. They made a sacrifice to put me into a private school that private school led to Stanford, Stanford led to meeting Mike Boich, the first evangelist. He brought me to Apple and the rest is history. It all started because a sixth grade teacher told my parents to take me out of the public school system and put me in a private prep school. That is just, you know, complete utter luck, that she told my parents that and they made the sacrifice. Now on the other hand, it's not like I squandered that, right. It's not like I... I didn't have a silver platter. Don't get me wrong. You know, my story is not one of overcoming tremendous challenges and somehow persevering. You know, they're not gonna make a movie of my life, I had a very, very good life, not in the sense that I lived in Trump Tower, but in the sense that I'm healthy, and I have dodged many bullets. And I've been in the right place at the right time. So I do not underestimate luck. And the person who's living penniless on the streets in Calcutta is not that different from me. It's just where we were born. And I didn't have anything to do with that. Having said that, you know, then what do you do with the blessings you are given? That I had a lot to do with.
Eric Janssen
You made the most of the situation, the good situation, the good fortune that you had?
Guy Kawasaki
Yes, that is definitely true. No one can say that. I squandered everything. That's for damn sure.
Eric Janssen
So guy, we've got a bunch of new grads coming out in a bit of a time of uncertainty. Kind of when I graduated back in 2008, the world was a little bit uncertain, and a lot of the students that I just taught this this semester, this past semester, entering a world is a little bit uncertain, you know? job market is shifting those sorts of things. Any advice that you'd have to the people that are just getting started just hitting the world after.
Guy Kawasaki
So, I think the first piece of advice is, over the course of your career, I think someone who graduates now is going to probably work for 15 or 20 companies. That's very different from my day. And so you need to chillax about your first job. Second job, maybe even third, fourth, fifth job. So trying to thread the needle and find that perfect first job is a waste of your time. And it's because you're not going to stay in that job very long. And I don't know how you define a first perfect job. I mean, many people might define the first perfect job as management trainee, Goldman Sachs or McKinsey or Bain or BCG. Okay? I mean, okay, so now you think you have the perfect job, to what learn how to suck up to rich people, okay? Not clear to me that's the best live training, but okay. Now, on the other hand, maybe your first job is working at Starbucks, okay. And maybe at Starbucks, you'll learn shit, physical labor is hard. And shit, people are abusive. On the other hand, you know, you enjoy your work, you're enjoy the face to face, you worked up your way to managing a Starbucks store. I gotta tell you, somebody who makes it in Starbucks, somebody who makes it in retail has my respect. Because I know how hard it is particularly now to be a frontline worker. That's a lot better than schlepping a bag on a gulf stream, cranking Excel spreadsheets all day. So So number one is, you know, don't sweat the perfect job, first job. Number two is get in any way you can. I think a lot of people have this thought that, you know, they gotta get in the right way. It's because I don't know they had the highest GPA, the best pedigree, they had, you know, whatever, I got my job at Apple purely because of nepotism. I didn't have the right background, I didn't have the right GPA, I didn't have the right anything. I got in because I was the friend of the guy who hired me. So don't be proud how you got in. What matters, the day after you get in is what you do. Because nobody gives a shit how you got in - what they give a shit about is what you do once you're in. And that's what you need to focus on. So to take both extremes, if you have a really crappy background, but you're very valuable employee, hallelujah, if you have a great background, but you're not a great employee. Nobody gives a shit about your great background, you cannot live on that. So just get in. And don't be proud. And when I say just get in, I mean, you know, everybody would love to have that product manager, regional sales manager, you know, highfalutin title, in particular, I think in a tech firm, basically just take any job they offer you. I mean, seriously, I mean, you gotta go to work for a temp agency that places you in night security at a high tech start-up. I'm taking an extreme, I wouldn't say this is ideal. But so let's say that, you know, you take that job and working in night security, you become friends with the programmers, or the marketing people, or the salespeople, and they figure out that, wow, this person is bright, this person is intelligent, honest, empathetic, etc, etc. What's he or she doing in security? This person has more potential, and they recruit you out of the security temp agency, and put you in that company, as you know, Assistant sales schleper. And then that becomes the next Google and pretty soon, you'll be owning the San Francisco Giants. So it doesn't matter where you start, it matters where you end up. Now, if you go to work for a company that is 200 years old, and has this very rigid structure and career paths, throw that advice out the window. But I'll tell you something. If you were the first person to run the Google fitness centers, you would be a very happy person today.
Eric Janssen
Agreed. Agreed. Great advice. Guy, I want to ask you a few more questions before we close but one is about your personal habits. You've been writing very consistently for decades now. Many books, podcasts, blog posts, what is your personal schedule? Is this something that you do every day at a certain time?
Well, this is where you should not ask me to question because, listen, I know the concept. I know the Julia Cameron concept if you wake up every morning and you do your, you know, your personal writing thing, and I know the concept that you should prioritize your writing that, you know, as soon as you get up, write your two or three or four or five pages for the day, and then do everything else. Okay? I know all those concepts, prioritize, you know, the story of the professor who stands up in front of the class and has a has a jar and he puts in the golf balls. And he asked the class is the jar full? And the classes? Yes. So then he puts in pebbles. And then he says, Okay, now is the jar full? And the class says yes. And so he puts it in the sand and he says, Okay, now is the jar full? And they say yes. And then he puts in water. And the lesson is, if you put the big things in the jar first, everything else can come after. But if you were to put the sand and the pebbles in the water first, you cannot put the golf balls in, right? So I understand that concept completely. I will tell you, I am the worst. First thing I do in the morning is I check text messages. And then I check. (I know this, I know this) I check social media. And after I do that, no, it's like 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock, right. And that's when I start. Like, just yesterday. I'm interviewing next week, Peter Sagal of Wait, Wait... don't tell me on NPR. The most important thing I could do right now, let's figure out the best questions to ask Peter Sagal, because Peter Sagal is a great, great comic and interviewer on NPR. So this is, this is not something you you take your B-game to this is not something that you look up his Wikipedia entry, and then you try to bullshit your way through the interview. You really better be on your game, when you interview Peter Sagal. So theoretically, what I should have done at 7am, is dive into Peter Sagal's life. Okay. I could tell you with total certainty, I went to a coffee shop at 730. I started working on Peter Sagal at 10. Because for the first two and a half hours, I was answering email, and I was text messaging with my friends about surfing. And I was doing everything except preparing for that interview. So the short answer to this question is, do the opposite of me. (Do what works for you) Now the reason why I can get away with it and still be hopefully in your eyes successful, is that two things: one is, I'm willing to work longer and harder once I get going. And second, after 40-45 years of doing this, I can do it very quickly. So this is the concept of Malcolm Gladwell of Blink. That, you know, after you do something for a long time, you become so good at it that, you know, maybe other people will take hours and hours and days and days, but for you, it's like falling off a log. This is not really actionable advice for most of your audience, because the ability to do that comes when you're 67 years old.
Guy Kawasaki
But early days Guy, we're talking back to what when you first started writing for Forbes in 1994. I don't even remember when I started writing for Forbes.
Eric Janssen
You had some habits. You had some habits that seemed to be working because you wrote a lot for them?
Guy Kawasaki
Well, I think a lot of it, to be honest, is retro actively reinventing your past. Which is to say something like, oh, yeah, when I was young, unlike you. I didn't screw around. I didn't waste my time. I was focused. I was diligent. I was hard working. Bullshit. You know, like, you know, people will say, Oh, yeah, you know, like today's millennials. What are they? Do they go to work at Google? What's the first thing they do? Oh, they stop and they get their flattened whites. So now they're getting their flat whites. And then what do they do? Oh, they go to the they start their laundry in the free laundry and a washing machine. And then what do they do? Oh, they go to like, there's a mid morning employee yoga session for team building. And then what do they do? Oh, then they pick their lunch. Should it be the free barbecue, the free sushi, the free falafel, the free hummus, the free vegan, the free, you know, steak and then what did they do? Then they you know? So I think people my age look at millennials and say that. Well I'll tell you something, when I worked for the Macintosh division. And this is 84, we spent a lot of time shooting this shit too. Don't get me wrong. And so every generation thinks that when they were young, they were much more disciplined and hardworking. And these young kids these days, they just don't know the meaning of work. Total bullshit, we all screwed around.
Eric Janssen
This is I mean, I love that you're just being real with it Guy because you're right, you retroactively label your whatever success as a certain way, and people maybe aspire to be that or give themselves shit because they don't live up to whatever Guy Kawasaki said is the right way to do it. So I appreciate you being honest about it.
Guy Kawasaki
iThank you. Thank you.
Eric Janssen
Guy, what are you most proud of?
Guy Kawasaki
Most proud of? Well, my kids. And although maybe that's false pride, because my wife should be most proud of that, not me. But anyway, I was there at least. I think that the best work I have ever done in my career, and just to recap my career, I worked in the jewelry business, I evangelize Macintosh. I started several companies, I started a venture capital firm, I wrote for Forbes, Macworld, Mac User, I wrote 15 books, I've given hundreds of speeches all around the world. If you would have said, Guy, in all the things that you did, what are you most proud of? And what do you think add or adds, or will add the most value to the world? I will tell you without a doubt, it's my podcast, by far, because I think I've been preparing my whole life to be a podcaster. Not that I planned it that way.
Eric Janssen
Why is that I was that you can't leave me hanging. Why?
Guy Kawasaki
Well, because I think that, first of all, I think the quality of my podcast will not be appreciated until I'm dead. But that's a whole different discussion. I think that what's hard, this is what's hard about being a podcaster. First, you have to have the ability to get guests. And the way you get guests is not that you know everybody, but they know of you. Right? So the reason why I got Jane Goodall is because the woman who runs TEDx For Palo Alto, knew of me and thought I would be a great interviewer of Jane Goodall. It's not because Jane used the Macintosh, I was familiar with my work. So it's taken decades for lots of people to know of me. So that gives me a door that most people do not have. So that's one aspect. The next aspect is, let's say you're on stage with Jane Goodall. Now, you got to know what to ask her. And that is a very, very difficult thing to do. And I wish I could describe it, but you have to like it, you just have to see things where other people may not see things. And you have to pick up perceptions. And you have to like have insights. It's almost as if things just, you know, come out of the universe and enter your brain. And so I'll give you an example. So with Jane Goodall, my insight from her is that were not for her mother, who enabled her as a young girl to go live in Africa, Jane Goodall might not be Jane Goodall. And so I asked her about her relationship with her mother, how the hell did your mother let you go to Africa? At I don't know, 20 or whatever. And, and, you know, back then you didn't just fly into blocos and get off the plane and you know, you you took out a 30 day steamer or something, right. So so it's, it's that kind of thing. And I tell you, what are the one of the goals I strive for in every podcast is that at least once, and the more they do it, the happier I am, is, the person says to me, oh my god, Guy, you really did a lot of research on me. I mean, with Angela Duckworth, I asked her if her daughter was still playing the cello, because she went into a whole thing about you know, I'm not letting her daughter quit the cello. So when I started a podcast, it's not like a producer handed me Angela Duckworth or Jane Goodall's Wikipedia entry, and said, Okay, go have at it - She's on and five. And so so when your, your guest says, Oh my God, you really did a lot of research on me. And the second thing that I strive for in an interview, is when the guest says, no one has ever asked me that before. So I'll give you an example with Neil deGrasse Tyson. I believe he has three children. And I cannot exactly remember their names now. But I think of the three children, two were named after the moons around Jupiter or something like that. So one of my questions to him was, well, how come you didn't name your third child after a moon around Jupiter? Because Jupiter has five moons, so you can or you could have had two more kids? And let's just say that probably nobody has ever asked him that question before. So I love to do that. And to do that, it takes a lot of prep. You've been very well prepared for this. So you know how many how many times if I've been on a podcast, and the interviewer asked me about my wife's experience at Procter and Gamble. I cannot remember ever happening before.
Eric Janssen
I was worried you were gonna say everybody, but yeah, I was. When I saw that she started in sales, I was excited.
Guy Kawasaki
Well, you know, the mark of a good salesperson is preparation, right? And you know what, I'll tell you something, a very tactical piece of advice is God's gift to sales and God's gift to marketing. And God's gift to entrepreneurs pitching for money or sale is LinkedIn. Oh, my God. I mean, if you're meeting with Guy Kawasaki, and you don't look at his background on LinkedIn, and find out that he worked at Apple, or he worked at Motorola, or he was in the jewelry business, or he loves to surf. If you don't know those things, when you meet with me, you don't deserve to succeed.
Eric Janssen
You're right, right. I agree. I agree. Guy, I want to I want to wind this down and be respectful of your time. Again, primarily young entrepreneurial audience, I want to end with any, any advice to, call it your 22 year old self. Or I know your son is I'll say recently graduated, but you had a son graduate recently. Any advice that you'd give us people are just getting going here things that you wish you would have learned at 22?
Guy Kawasaki
Well, at 22 I wish somebody had told me don't quit Apple twice. That's a few 100 million right there. Ah...
Eric Janssen
Would that change anything though, Guy? I mean...
Guy Kawasaki
Well I'll probably be an insufferable asshole. So arguably, I dodged the bullet. At 22, like I said, you know, don't sweat the first job. Don't be proud. Take any job. Any position you can if you're interested in what the company does, or the industry is. Don't worry about how you got the job. Just do well in the job. Don't get married too early. Because you it's very difficult to have a life work balance that's an oxymoron in my opinion. And finally, understand that probably over the course of your lifetime, your kids will bring you your your greatest joy. Not your car, not your house, not your option package. It's going to be your kids.
Eric Janssen
That's great advice.
Eric Morse
The Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Quantumshift 2008 alum Connie Clerici and Closing the Gap Healthcare group. To ensure you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player or visit entrepreneurship.uwo.ca/podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time,