Guy Kawasaki—author, educator, and Chief Evangelist of Canva—talks about his career in Silicon Valley and his experience working for Steve Jobs as Chief Evangelist of Apple.
Debbie Millman:
In our world, it’s not uncommon to have a job that didn’t even exist when we were much younger. Podcast host is one such example. Chief evangelist is another. Among the many hats that Guy Kawasaki has worn in his life. Author, entrepreneur, public speaker, teacher, and yes, podcast host. It’s his role as chief evangelist that really tells us something about his persona. He’s currently chief evangelist for the design website, Canva, and he was the chief evangelist for Apple back in the 1980s. Yes, that Apple, his career, reveals a lot about how the world has evolved and he’s here to talk all about it. Guy Kawasaki, welcome to Design Matters.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, thank you very much. First of all, a factual correction. Okay?
Debbie Millman:
Sure.
Guy Kawasaki:
There was Jesus before me, you could make the case that he was the first chief evangelist. Now, there was a 2000 year gap. That position was open for a while, but seriously, a lot of the principles of evangelism in secular sense were inspired at least by the evangelism in Christianity. Now, having said that, I want to make something perfectly clear, as Richard Nixon would say, which is we’re talking about evangelism as opposed to evangelicalism.
Debbie Millman:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
Which is a whole different category that’s gone off the rails in America.
Debbie Millman:
Yes. And if that were the case, we would not be having this conversation. Absolutely. For sure. Well, for some clarification as well, I’d like to ask you, is it true that you’re named after the great Italian American band leader, Guy Lombardo?
Guy Kawasaki:
It is true. But isn’t he Canadian?
Debbie Millman:
Yes. Let me say that again.
Guy Kawasaki:
No, you don’t. You don’t get to correct that.
Debbie Millman:
You’re absolutely right.
Guy Kawasaki:
You got to leave that.
Debbie Millman:
Okay. I’m going to. I was so nervous when you said you were going to correct the intro and it was about Jesus. And I didn’t think that there was anything wrong with that question. So I’m a little bit nervous now. But in any case, tell us about why Guy Lombardo?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, let’s just say that when you have me as a guest on your podcast, you have lost all control of your podcast. Just get rid of that delusion that you’re the host and you’re in control. Okay? You’ve lost control.
Debbie Millman:
Fair enough.
Guy Kawasaki:
No, I’m not going to smoke any marijuana on this or and go all Joe Rogan on you or Elon Musk on you. But.
Debbie Millman:
Thank you. Thank you.
Guy Kawasaki:
I guess if I were either of them, I wouldn’t be on the podcast either.
Debbie Millman:
Well, definitely not Joe Rogan, but maybe Elon, just to give him a hard time. So tell us about why your parents named you for the great Italian Canadian band leader, Guy Lombardo.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, my father was a musician. He played the piano, the sax, clarinet and flute, and he had his own big band. And so Guy Lombardo and Carmen Lombardo probably were his heroes. Now you could make the case that flip of a coin, I could be named Guy or Carmen. So I think I lucked out because I’d much rather be named Guy than Carmen.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Well, I think either name is actually rather nice. Guy, your great grandparents immigrated to Hawaii from Hiroshima, Japan.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
In order to pursue a better life for themselves and their children. And you’ve said that you’ve come from a long line of dreamers. What were your ancestors dreaming of?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, it’s not like I ever met them, but they left Japan. Well, there’s two versions to this story that I’ve heard. One is for the economic opportunity of America, and the second was to evade the draft and avoid going to fight in China for Japan. So I come from a long line of poor people who are draft evaders, is one way of looking at it.
Now, having said that, if you look at some of the theories of immigration reform in America today, that we only want highly professional, highly educated people who can add to the American society because of their expertise or their wealth or whatever. Let’s just say, if you apply that rule to, my great-grandparents guy would still be in Hiroshima and I’d be working at the Hiroshima Starbucks or something. You probably don’t want to go down the immigration hole, but I have great empathy for people who want to immigrate to United States because of economic opportunity and to better their lives because it’s not like my great-grandfather had a PhD in electrical engineering, and so that’s why America let him in. We came to pick sugarcane. Okay. It was labor.
Debbie Millman:
Well, in addition to playing music, your dad was also a fireman and a real estate agent, but he also ran for the Hawaii State Senate three times. Yes. He was eventually elected and after he won, he remained a senator for 20 years. So from picking sugarcane to becoming a senator is definitely a dream come true. I would imagine.
Guy Kawasaki:
I am where I am because of my great-grandparents, grandparents and father and mother really. And there’s no question, well, you could make that case for most people in America, quite frankly.
Debbie Millman:
What was it like for you to have a senator for a father?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, we got a lot of free football tickets and basketball tickets, I’ll tell you that. It was living under a microscope a little bit. I mean, we’re talking state senator, we’re not talking Hunter Biden. It’s not like people were looking for my laptop in repair shops, although the laptop hadn’t been invented yet. So it was a little bit of a microscope. I definitely saw what it’s like to be a politician on call and everybody bringing their problems to you, which cured me of any desire to ever become a politician.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Now, your mother was born in Hawaii, but she went to school in Yokohama, Japan and returned to Hawaii on one of the last two ships before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
And you’ve said that she, and not your senator, father, taught you to not take crap from anyone. And I’m wondering how she did that. I’m always curious about how people have that sort of innate ferocity.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I don’t know. Innate ferocity is an overstatement. I’m not innately ferocious, but she definitely was tough. And I could make the case anybody who’s uprooting and well, she didn’t uproot because she was born in Hawaii, but it wasn’t easy. So she taught me. Really, she taught me not to take any crap from anybody. And let’s just say that lesson has proven valuable.
Debbie Millman:
You attended a public school, but because your sixth grade teacher told your parents you had too much potential to remain in the public school system, they enrolled you in a private college prep school. And there you were taught by two people that you have said changed your life. Harold Keeples and Trudy Akah? How did they change your life?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, Trudy Akah is the sixth grade teacher who told my parents to put me into this school, or get me into a private school track. And Harold Keeples was my English teacher. And with hindsight, he was probably the most difficult teacher I’ve ever had in high school, college, elementary, masters, anything he’s the most difficult teacher. And one of the things I learned is looking back, it’s the tough teachers and the tough bosses that add the most value to your life. Not the easy ones. No. When you’re in the middle of it, you want the easy teacher and the easy boss. And it may take you 20 years to figure this out, but in my case, it took 40 years. But I figured out, thank God for Harold Keeples and Steve Jobs, the two most difficult people I had to deal with.
Debbie Millman:
You said that going to this new school changed the entire course of your life. And if Trudy Akah had not convinced your parents to send you to this new school, you wouldn’t have gone on to Stanford met the person who first got you interested in computers and then ultimately hired you at Apple. And I was thinking about that as I was reading your memoir and listening to your podcasts and really going through your body of work that it’s sort of miraculous to look back and see the circuitous paths our lives have taken.
Guy Kawasaki:
No kidding.
Debbie Millman:
What do you imagine you would’ve done if you had stayed within the public school system?
Guy Kawasaki:
So if I had stayed in that public school system, I doubt that I would’ve ended up at Stanford. I would’ve ended up at the University of Hawaii, which is a fine institution, but because of Stanford, I met Mike Boche and that put me in the tech sector. So as I look back, Trudy Akah getting me into a different school system was definitely a humongous turning point. Now, if I had not done that, and let’s say I had remained in Hawaii, I didn’t go to college in the mainland. At that time, your horizons in Hawaii for success were probably, you manage the retail store or you manage the hotel, or you worked in some management position at the Dole Pineapple or Del Monte Pineapple Company. And that’s not to denigrate any of those positions, but that’s a very different arc than working in Silicon Valley. I would not be on your podcast now if I had gone down that road.
Debbie Millman:
Guy, you said when you first got to Stanford, the sky’s parted and the angels sang.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
What caused that reaction?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, when I got to Stanford, I kind of truly realized that there is more to managing a retail store or managing a hotel, that there are other paths to economic welfare and success. And you looked around and you saw these tech companies and the size and the impact they had, and frankly, the wealth of their employees. And you realize that this is a whole new ballgame and that opportunity to start something. The Hewlett Packard story was sort of life changing for me.
Debbie Millman:
Initially, you were considering a medical career, but apparently you had a fainting episode at the Stanford Medical Center. What happened? I couldn’t find the details of what actually happened.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I took a one credit class, which involved taking tours of the Stanford Medical Center going on doctor rounds. And I swear in first five minutes I fainted. That’s when I figured out, maybe you’re not cut out to be a doctor. I didn’t have to even go through organic chemistry to figure that out.
Debbie Millman:
I understand you also considered dentistry, but have written about how you didn’t want to spend your life.
Guy Kawasaki:
I never considered dentistry.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, no, no. This is what you said about it. You said, I didn’t want to spend my life sticking my hands in people’s mouths.
Guy Kawasaki:
Exactly.
Debbie Millman:
Eliminated that as an option. But is it true that you decided to major in psychology, because it was the easiest major you could find?
Guy Kawasaki:
God’s honest, that’s the truth. Yes. And I’m proud of it.
Debbie Millman:
It’s not that easy. It’s not that easy. It’s still a science.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, it’s easier than organic chemistry.
Debbie Millman:
No. Yeah, this is true. This is true.
Guy Kawasaki:
And the funny story is that by majoring in psychology, I came into contact with Phil Zimbardo and Phil Zimbardo, psychology professor at Stanford is a friend to this day. And in fact, I interviewed his wife this morning for my podcast. So if you want to ascribe more intentionality and intelligence to my career, you could say, “So Guy, you got a degree in psychology and you went into sales and marketing and evangelism? So you knew what you were doing back in college.” And that would be an absolute inaccuracy. I picked psychology because it was easy, not because I had this plan to go into sales and marketing.
Debbie Millman:
Well, after you graduated from Stanford, you went to law school at your father’s urging, but lasted about halfway through orientation week at UC Davis. What happened there?
Guy Kawasaki:
I just had a visceral reaction that I couldn’t take it. I mean that it was just the whole sort of Socratic method and the whole, “We’re going to destroy you and build you back up on.” At that point, I was too fragile to deal with that. So honestly, I just wimped out. I just couldn’t handle it. And I have never regretted that though.
Debbie Millman:
Well, when you quit, you felt that you had failed your parents, given how hard they’d worked and sacrificed so much so you could go to law school. How did they respond to the news that you had quit after about a week?
Guy Kawasaki:
Much to my amazement, my father said something to the effect of, “It’s okay to quit. Just make something of yourself. Don’t just wallow in the mire.” And he was very accepting. I did not expect that answer at all, but he was very accepting of my desire to quit.
Debbie Millman:
Well, you decided to get an MBA in marketing at UCLA instead. What made you decide that an MBA would be a better pass?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, we’re going back to the ’70s and the ’80s. At that time, the way the system worked was an MBA was necessary. It was a fence to get over. I mean, today, I would say you need an MBA if you want to go into finance or consulting or maybe investment banking, but you don’t need to show up at Google or Apple or a tech startup with an MBA. That that’s just not necessary. But back then, an MBA was a way to distinguish yourself from people who just had a BA and I loved business. And so I went for an MBA and loved it.
Debbie Millman:
During the first year of the program, you met a woman from Hawaii named Lynn Nakamura, who worked for the manufacturer, Nova Stylings.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
Who sold jewelry to retailers, including Tiffany’s and Cartier and Zales. And he began working there counting diamonds and left five years later as vice president of sales and marketing. And you’ve said that working for Novo was one of the best decisions you’ve ever made. And I’m wondering why was that so important to you?
Guy Kawasaki:
Because I have come to believe that in tech, and particularly in entrepreneurship in tech, there are only two fundamental roles. You’ve got to either make it or sell it. And I’m not an engineer, I’m not a programmer, so I could not make it. So I had to sell it. And working in the jewelry business where you’re selling to retailers, not to the consumer, but to retailers, very difficult business. If you think retailing, I suppose the same is true of fashion, but jewelry retailing, you may be dealing with very exotic things like golden diamonds, but fundamentally, you can get a spot price for gold anytime. And it’s such and such pronounce and diamonds all the romance, but it comes down to cut clarity and caretage, and that’s a commodity. So expensive commodities, but commodities nonetheless. So when you’re trying to get anything above scrap value, it is selling. It is hand-to-hand combat selling, and I think much of life is hand-to-hand combat selling. So you might as well learn how to sell if you can’t make.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, it’s a bit of a street fight. One of the lines that I really loved in your memoir was about how during your six years in the jewelry business, you never once heard the words partnership or strategic. On the other hand, you heard the phrase, “I can get the same design for 50% cheaper,” over and over. And I’m wondering how that might have impacted the way that you sell or the way that you try to create a sort of mutuality between what you want to give someone and what they want to take.
Guy Kawasaki:
What I was trying to get at there is that basically so much in tech today is BS, this kind of partnership, this all that. I mean, in jewelry, you either sell the guy a diamond or you don’t. There’s no strategic partnership. We didn’t have a quote strategic partnership with De Beers, you bought it at 400 bucks a carat and you sold it. I’m talking about small diamonds, not big diamonds. And so it was really sort of simple. And what I think it’s much more useful to be able to deal with an environment where you’re very quantitative, it’s per carat, it’s per ounce, as opposed to blowing smoke about, this is a strategic partnership. And I tell people now who want my entrepreneurial advice, if you form a partnership and it doesn’t require you changing your spreadsheet forecast, then the partnership is bullshit.
Debbie Millman:
Why?
Guy Kawasaki:
The whole purpose of a business is to create customers to generate revenue. Okay. That’s the bottom line. So if you form some partnership and it doesn’t either lower your cost or increase your sales, I don’t know, maybe it just makes you feel better. Maybe it buys you time, but it’s BS. I mean, you either reduce your cost or your increase your sales. That’s what a partnership should do. And unless it does either of those things, it’s BS.
Debbie Millman:
Since you mentioned De Beers, I was very impressed when De Beers launched the right hand ring because suddenly it was creating a new need state for everybody to fulfill. And while I think it’s kind of bullshit to create that need state when you don’t need another ring, it’s really conspicuous consumption. I was impressed at the way in which they executed it because suddenly everybody wanted a right hand ring for their birthday or anniversary or whatever. And I would imagine that their advertising agency approached De Beers as a strategic partner in trying to implement that campaign. But that’s just me.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, first of all, I was in the jewelry business, and this is the first time I’ve ever heard this concept of a right hand ring, so.
Debbie Millman:
Oh really? Oh.
Guy Kawasaki:
Maybe I’m totally out of it, but-
Debbie Millman:
I think you were out of it well before that happened.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, but you know what? Going even further back in history, you could make the case that De Beers invented the desire to want a diamond at all.
Debbie Millman:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Guy Kawasaki:
Much less on your right hand.
Debbie Millman:
Correct.
Guy Kawasaki:
And so how did we come to decide that we wanted a little piece of clear looking glass that’s compressed carbon? I mean, does it serve any other purpose? I guess you could use it as a very sharp material to cut things or engrave things, but truly, what purpose does a diamond serve? You know what? You could make the case that a diamond is an invented demand just like tulips in the 1600s. And now I would make the case just like crypto today, there’s no fundamental use for those things, except if you believe in the greater fool theory, which is there’s somebody dumber than me who’s going to pay more for Bitcoin than what I’m paying right now.
Debbie Millman:
Let’s go back a bunch of decades. When you first saw the Apple II, what was your sense of seeing that? Did you have an immediate sense that who cares?
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Or that this was going to be the, what’s the difference between how you’re viewing Bitcoin versus the Apple two at that moment in time?
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, so when I was in college, the state of the art for writing term papers was an IBM Selectric Typewriter. And if you were really cool, you had access to an IBM Selectric Typewriter with the white liftoff sticky tape. You are too young to know all of this.
Debbie Millman:
No, no, no. I’m five years younger than you-
Guy Kawasaki:
With the white sticky. You could backspace over an error, remove it, and then type the right thing. That was the state of the art, and you actually paid typist to type your term papers or you had a typewriter and now you see an Apple II. And there is a word processor and there is a database. So instead of having a Rolodex that you wrote in, you had a database that organized your contacts, and then there was this whole new category of spreadsheet, which means that you could just change your financial assumptions and it would ripple through the spreadsheet and show you what has changed. So that is going from running very fast to flying. It’s a different experience. So the utility for an Apple II, word processing spreadsheet, database, graphics, all that, it’s not too hard to comprehend the use and utility for those functions.
By contrast, I mean honestly, let’s just like lay it out there. The reason why people bought Bitcoin is because they thought it would get morrhuic valuable, not because it did anything for them. So that was pure speculation, which is okay, God bless you. You can speculate on diamond, tulips, Bitcoin, gold, platinum, copper, whatever you want.
Debbie Millman:
Stock market.
Guy Kawasaki:
But don’t tell me it’s because of some fundamental economic use for it.
Debbie Millman:
Your love affair with the computer. Because I think it’s fair to say that you saw the Apple II and fell in love.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
And your love affair with the computer inspired you to try to get a job in the industry in the tech industry. And shortly thereafter, one of your Stanford classmates that you mentioned earlier, Mike told you there was a position available in the McIntosh division at Apple. What kind of job was it and what happened when you tried to go get it?
Guy Kawasaki:
The first time Mike contacted me, it was to work in the Apple University Consortium. And the Apple University Consortium was based on the theory that we should get Macintosh’s into colleges so that college students would be frankly addicted to using a Macintosh. So when they graduated and they went to work in the real world, they would take their Macintosh’s with them or demand that the companies buy Macintosh’s. So it was a form of seeding the market. I didn’t get that job, nor do I believe I was well suited to that job. So about six months later, he said, “Okay, now we have another job.” And this job is called software evangelists. So the position involves going to software companies and selling them the Macintosh dream that they could create software they’re always dreamed about to reach new markets. And now this doesn’t sound like it’s jewelry either, but it’s a lot closer than the other position.
And so you had to buy into the fact that Macintosh was good news, which is kind of the definition of evangelism, bringing the good news. And so I loved it because just like when I saw the Apple II and the scales were removed from my eyes when I first saw Macintosh. So now you have to understand, so we went from typewriter with white tape removing errors to spreadsheet, database, word processor, and now we go to Macintosh, which is graphical user interface, mouse based, not cursor based. And you could draw and you could have patterns of fills, so you could use Mac Paint and Mac Draw and PageMaker. Well, that came later. But all this kind of stuff you could never do with an Apple II that was as big a leap as going from typewriter to Apple II, Apple II to Macintosh was that kind of leap. You can tell that it was a religious experience for me then too.
Debbie Millman:
Well, apparently Steve Jobs was not all that excited about hiring you. In fact, I believe he told Mike that Mike could hire you, but he would be betting his job on your success. Well, what made him say that? Why did he have that impression of you?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, not even Steve Jobs is perfect, right? Well, I mean, this comes to the theory of proxies in Silicon Valley. So one proxy in how it works in Silicon Valley is that you are a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon in computer science. You’re a PhD candidate in computer science at Stanford, or you are a Apple II programming wiz. So you take that kind of data and you, you’re extrapolating and you say, okay, you’ll be great working on a new computer, a new operating system, which is perfectly rational. Another proxy is you worked for Hewlett Packard working with Hewlett Packard software developers. So you had to have this logic of working in the business or having the right educational background of which I had neither because I majored in psychology and I came from the jewelry business. Besides that, I was the perfect candidate for this job.
So honestly, I owe it completely to nepotism that Mike Boich hired me. There is no other explanation. Now, this yields several important lessons. Lesson number one is be nice to people in college because you just never know who’s going to get you into the Macintosh division. And it’s probably not the all-American quarterback you’re hanging around. Okay? So that’s one.
And number two is it really didn’t matter how I got into the Macintosh division. You could get into the Macintosh division because you’re a computer science PhD candidate, or because you worked in another computer company or you’re Mike Boich’s friend. All three obviously could work, but the day after you start, nobody cares if you have a PhD. Nobody cares if you work for Hewlett Packard. Nobody cares if you are Mike Boich’s college roommate. All they care about is can you do the job? And that is a very important lesson, both ways that is without the quote, right background, can you do the job. The flip side is also true. What if you had the perfect background, PhD, computer science, worked in Hewlett Packard, but you didn’t understand and love and get Macintosh, you still couldn’t do the job. So this means that, you know what? I think basically you need to ignore people’s backgrounds.
Debbie Millman:
Well, I think people do say don’t hire for skill, hire for attitude, which I think makes a lot of sense, especially at the beginning of someone’s career.
Guy Kawasaki:
That makes a lot of sense. But not if you’re Kaiser Medical Foundation.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
If you’re hiring an oncologist, let’s just say that you should hire for skill.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Yeah. You said two things about working at Apple that I wanted to sort of juxtapose. You said that working at Apple was going to Disneyland every day and getting paid for it, but you also described it as a place that had the largest collection of egomaniacs in history. And so talk about what that was like. There’s so few people that really go on the record to say very much about it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Those two statements are not necessarily in conflict. Yeah. Now, the going to Disneyland part was that it was so exciting. It was going on the, I’m going to date myself a little bit, but the last time I was at Disneyland, I was about four years ago, but it’s going on the Cars ride. And so you know, weren’t going to work for a mainframe computer company supporting a bank with software that is two million lines of Fortran. So this was your mother and father and sister and brother and boyfriend and girlfriend. They could use Macintosh to make Mac Paint, they could create beautiful documents. They could do things they could never do before. It’s not for an accounts payable clerk working at B of A. So that’s the Disneyland aspect.
Now, as far as egomaniacs, Steve Jobs, who is right up there, and I say that positively, he did not suffer fools. And there was a theory at the Macintosh division that A players hire A players, or I have come to believe A players hire A plus players. So there was a sort of real prejudice against hiring people who were B players or bozos or anything. So it was a very high bar. I don’t know how I passed it in some sense, but thank you Mike Boich. But somehow I got past that, and clearly I was competent. So I passed it once and remained in good graces. But to use a sports analogy, and I’m going to date myself again and make my analogies irrelevant to many people, but if you look at someone like Bobby Knight, basketball coach Indiana or Vince Lombardi football coach.
Debbie Millman:
I was actually, that’s where I thought you were going.
Guy Kawasaki:
So when you look at them and what they did, and from the outside looking in, you say, “Well, these are mean people.” That it’s not a lot of positive psychology. “Let’s get together and discuss your life goals. And I am focusing on the positive and how can we improve our relationship?” These people were throwing chairs at people. And yet I think if you talk to many of the Green Bay Packers or the Indiana Players, they loved being coached by Bobby Knight or Vince Lombardi. And I would say the same thing is true of Steve Jobs. But don’t get me wrong, he was an intimidating person, scared the shit out of me, got the best work of my life out of me because I was intimidated. I make no bones about it. He was an intimidating person, but that drove me to do some of the best work of my life.
Now, I can’t tell you that his style is for everybody. I can’t tell you that Elon Musk style is for everybody, but there are some people where they rise to the occasion or they like that kind of challenge or that kind of environment. And again, it’s not for everybody, but for some people it is life changing.
Debbie Millman:
You said that Steve Jobs drove most of the people at Apple to do their finest work. You just said that you did the finest work of your career.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, don’t tell people at Canva that, but…
Debbie Millman:
Well, some of the most, let’s say some of the most or certainly a foundation of great work, but I can’t imagine that that motivation strictly came from intimidation. There had to be something more… Like with Vince Lombardi, one of the great stories that I love about Vince Lombardi was that he would always say he never lost a game. And people would be like, “Coach Lombardi. There were a few.” And he is like, “No, no. I never lost a game. I just ran out of time.”
Guy Kawasaki:
Time ran out.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Yes. And I love that sort of philosophy as if I just had a little bit more time, I would’ve recovered and grabbed the ball and run with it. So there had to be something beyond intimidation that inspired you to do that best work.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes. So part of it is that you want someone who has ability to inspire you. And in Steve’s case, the inspiration was, we are going to create a computer that is going to change the world. We’re going to send IBM back to the typewriter business, and we’re going to make people more creative and productive. And that’s without a computer science degree. So this is the computer for the rest of us. And how can you not buy into something like that? Right?
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
I guess you need to draw a vin diagram of there’s like intimidation or inspiration, if you will. And then there is this cause of how it’s going to change the world. And then the third thing is it’s real. So you want the intersection of something that’s inspiring, world changing, and real. And that was Macintosh.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. David Foster Wallace talked about what a real leader does, and I’m going to paraphrase here. He says something like, “You get people to overcome their laziness and their fear and do something better than they could ever do on their own.” And I think that’s something really interesting there.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I mean, let me push back on that. All right, so first that implies that people are scared and lazy. I don’t agree with that. I would say a much more positive way of saying what he said was that you enable people to do the best work of their lives, which is different than saying, “You wimp and you idiot, and you lazy bum. I’m going to lead you out of your mediocrity.”
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Yeah. I actually think that’s a much more optimistic way of looking at it. You left Apple in 1987, but came back in ’95. Why did you come back and what were you doing that second time around?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I came back because in the 1995 timeframe, that was when Apple was supposed to die again. And this is the whole fire John Scully, fire Steve Jobs, fire everybody bringing these new CEOs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I came back because I loved Apple. And as an Apple fellow and chief evangelist, my job was to maintain the Macintosh cult and developer community. So it was my job to ensure that they stuck with it and were appreciated and supported. And arguably that was one of the big factors that enabled Apple to succeed. So that was my job. That’s what I did.
Debbie Millman:
So you’re currently an evangelist for Canva, which I want to talk about in a bit, but that word is a common denominator in both of thief’s jobs.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
The evangelist. What does an evangelist do? How do you become one? What is an evangelist actually?
Guy Kawasaki:
So an evangelist, first of all, evangelism, the word comes from Greeks, and it means bringing the good news. So the good news of Macintosh was that it made people more creative and productive. The good news of Canva is that it makes you into a better communicator because it has democratized design. And so what an evangelist does is basically spread the good news.
Now, this is different from sales, or you could make the case, it’s the purest form of sales because a salesperson typically has his or her best interest at heart. My quota, my bonus, my income. An evangelist has the other person’s best interest at heart, I won’t say solely, but equally. So when I tell you that you should use Canva to make your graphics, don’t get me wrong, it’s good for me, but I also truly believe that it’ll make you a better communicator, it’ll make you a better designer, a better speaker with your presentations. And so it’s not just good for me, it’s good for you too. And I think that’s the core of evangelism. It’s good news that’s good for both of us.
Debbie Millman:
You stated Apple several more years and left again for the second time. A few years after that, you saw Steve Jobs at a tech conference and he asked you to return to run Apple University, the internal training curriculum for Apple employees, and you turned it down too. So you were someone that quit Apple twice, turned down a job offer to return for a third stint, but have said that in many ways, you are who you are and where you are because of the work you did at Apple. Any regrets it not going back that third time, you said that it cost you tens of millions of dollars.
Guy Kawasaki:
I’m glad you brought this up at the end of the podcast, because one would make the case if you brought that up early, people might listen to this and say, “Why would I listen to someone who’s such a dumb ass who quit Apple twice and turned Steve down the third time? If he was not such a dumb ass, he would’ve stayed any of those three times and he would be worth, I don’t know, about hundreds of millions, but at least tens of millions.” To which I respond, “That’s a perfectly reasonable way of looking at what I did.” But if I had stayed at Apple from then till now, I don’t know if I would beat Tim Cook. I kind of doubt it, but I might be CMO or something.
And yet, look at the experiences I’ve had. So I tried to start companies, I funded companies, I supported companies. I could make the case that if I had been at Apple from 1983 when I first started till today, my life would not be nearly as rich. And I don’t mean money, I mean experientially. And for all that time, I would’ve had to tow the company storyline. And frankly, I can’t imagine having the kind of freedom that I have now. They would probably have a PR person sitting in on this interview and saying, “You know, Guy, you can’t say that about Steve. Or You can’t say that about Apple II or whatever.” I mean, if I had stayed at Apple, I would be richer financially, but I would be poorer in terms of who I am and what I am today. Frankly, I might just be a self-righteous asshole if I had stayed. But a rich one.
Debbie Millman:
You also turn down. Well, you also turned down the CEO job for of Yahoo. Well, you were offered that job when it was nothing more than a collection [inaudible 00:43:21]-
Guy Kawasaki:
No, no. There’s a little. Let’s get that accurate. I turned down the opportunity to interview for that job. It’s not clear I would’ve gotten that job, but honestly, when the lead investor of a company asks you to interview for the job, unless you really, really blow it, you’re going to get the job. So yeah, I could have been the first sort of external CEO of Yahoo, which I figure cost me two billion, two billion here, two billion there. It adds up to real money after a while. So yeah, I quit Apple twice. I turned Steve Jobs down. I turned down Mike Marritz of Sequoia, interviewing at Yahoo. But thank God I became the chief evangelist of Canva, because that’s going to erase all those errors. I hope.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, this is true. This is true. I want to get to that in a minute. But you’ve been part of several really successful startups. You’ve invested in many successful companies. They include garage.com where you created an introduced alltop.com Holy Car, Evernote, Enthrill Paper, Sends, Ticket Leap, USstream, Visible Measure, among others. Do you have a spidey sense about what to invest in? Or do you strictly look at numbers?
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, I have a spidey sense. I really don’t look at numbers because when entrepreneurs give you forecast, they’re all the same. They all say they’re going to do 75 million in year three. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling hardware, software, websites, social media, the way you make that spreadsheet is you come up with a number that doesn’t mean or doesn’t indicate that you’re hallucinating. So it’s not too high, but it’s not so low that people will say it’s not worth the trouble. So that number is 75 million in year three or four.
Now, before we get too far down the road, let me tell you something. So I have never created a humongous success along the lines of Apple, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, et cetera, et cetera. In all my entrepreneurship efforts and all my investing, I cannot claim to be successful like that. I’m not Bill Gates, I’m not Steve Jobs, I’m not Elon Musk, and I’m also not Mike Moritz or John Doerr in the venture capital sense.
I’ve hit singles maybe every once, and I hit a double. Now, Canva is a home run, but I can’t tell you that I believe I’m like this total rockstar, entrepreneur, investor. It is not factually true. Having said that, I don’t exactly start off a conversation by saying, “I’m a failure, but now I’m at Canva.” That’s not how I position myself. The way I position myself is, listen, I’ve worked for Apple, I’ve worked for Google, I’ve worked for Mercedes-Benz, and I’ve worked for now Canva. And I have a very successful podcast with remarkable people like Jane Goodall, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Steve Wosniak, Ariana Huffington, Margaret Atwood, Christie Yamaguchi. And when you position yourself that way, you pretty much convince people you’re successful. The way it works in Silicon Valley is you throw a lot of stuff up against the wall. One or two of them stick. You go up, you paint the bullseye around what’s stuck on the wall, and you say, I hit the bullseye. You don’t talk about all the stuff that hit the wall and fell off.
Debbie Millman:
The founders of Canva are trying to democratize design. And you mentioned that democratization of design. How involved are you with their efforts to do that?
Guy Kawasaki:
Originally, I was very involved. So I was convincing at the very highest and lowest levels of why you would use Canva instead of Photoshop and why it democratized design. But that was eight years ago. Honestly, now, I couldn’t hurt Canva if I tried. Canva is a tsunami. The credit goes to the three founders. It goes to Cliff and Melanie and Cameron, not Guy. This is what’s called Guy’s Golden Touch. And Guy’s Golden Touch is not what I touch turns to Gold. Guy Golden Touch is whatever is gold Guy touches.
Debbie Millman:
Adobe bought Figma for two billion. Do you think that they’re going to make a bid for Canva?
Guy Kawasaki:
No, it wasn’t more than two billion. It was 20 billion. Wasn’t it?
Debbie Millman:
20 billion? Oh, I made a mistake with the decimal point. 20 billion, 20 billion.
Guy Kawasaki:
18 billion here, 18 billion there. It adds up. Okay.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All those two billion chunks that we were talking about before, you think that you think that they’re going to try to make a pitch for Canva?
Guy Kawasaki:
I have no idea. I’m not involved in those kind of conversations. I don’t want to be involved in those kind of conversations. I think Canva is on a trajectory to just truly democratize all forms of design from not just sort of photography and graphics, but websites and documents and presentations. Hard to imagine that the fate is to become part of Adobe. I think it’s to be a standalone humongous success. That’s the dream.
Debbie Millman:
The last thing I want to talk to you about is your podcast.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
What motivated you to start a podcast?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, there’s two stories. Everything you asked me has a complications, if you want the usual PR. Well, I wanted to empower the people with my PR flax sitting next to me saying, “Guy, yeah, you said it right.” So there are two stories.
Debbie Millman:
Tell me the good one, the real one.
Guy Kawasaki:
Story number one is I had just finished my book Wise Guy, which you refer to as a memoir. It is not a memoir. It is not a memoir, because I don’t believe my life merits a memoir. I’m not Jane Goodall. Jane Goodall has a memoir, Guy Kawasaki has a bunch of stories that affected his life. Anyway, that’s an aside. So I was on the book tour for Wise Guy and a bunch of podcasters had me on their podcast. And as an author doing your book tour, you basically say yes to any podcaster because you can reach thousands of people on a podcast, and you can’t get thousands of people into your local Barnes and Noble. Okay? So I got in these conversations with this podcaster, I said, “So how do you make money?” I said, “Well, I sell an ad pre roll, mid roll, and post roll.” And I said, “Well, how much do you sell those for?”
“I get 25,000 for the first one, 15,000 for the second one, 10,000 for the third one.” So I can do the math. That’s like 40, 50 grand per episode. How many episodes do you do a year? I don’t know, 50, 52. So I said, 52 times 50. That’s two and a half million bucks. You’re telling me that’s what you make? I say, “Yeah, more or less.” I said to myself, “Well, why am I writing books? Why I’m an idiot? Why am I writing books? I can just do a podcast.” So that was motivation number one, that I think it’s a better medium, easier, more sponsors, et cetera, et cetera. That was number one.
Number two is I dislike travel. And to be an author and a speaker, I was traveling 75 times a year. I do not want to travel anymore. So that’s motivation number two.
And motivation number three, which maybe is the one I should have started off with, is that I look at my life, and if you were to draw a Venn diagram, there’s one circle that says, “Who has the ability to get to Jane Goodall and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Steve Wozniak, not necessarily BFFs, but at least can get them credibly to accept an invitation. So there’s one circle.
Second circle is, “Well, who has the background to know what to ask Jane Goodall and Steve Wazniak, because of years of experience, not just because I was a summer intern at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey last year, and I’m 21 years old, and I think that I’m on the trajectory to be the next Elon Musk.” So I’ve had 40 years of getting the kicked out of me. So there’s that circle.
And then the third circle is, well, who has the ability to get Jane Goodall and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Steve Wassick and Kristi Yamaguchi and Margaret Atwood to answer the question that you should ask. So if you draw those three circles, I’m one of the few people in the middle of those three circles. So I felt that I had this ability and access and good fortune to get this kind of conversations going that I could bring to other people. Because the probability of someone listening to my podcast, being able to send an email to Jane Goodall and say, “Jane, would you like to hang out for an hour?” And she accepting is zero. Thank you. God. I have that ability. And Jane has blessed me with her presence on my podcast several times now. So I think I almost have a moral obligation to help get the Jane Goodall story out.
Debbie Millman:
I understand that.
Guy Kawasaki:
That’s a long answer to a short question.
Debbie Millman:
That’s a great answer. It’s a great answer. I understand. Think the name of the show went through several iterations before you settled on Remarkable People. And I think you considered the name Wise Guy, which because the podcast was coming out around the same time as your book.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
I also read that you considered calling the show. Duh.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
D-U-H duh. Why?
Guy Kawasaki:
First, let me tell you why I rejected Wise Guy. I rejected Wise Guy, because the implication of Wise Guy is that it’s all about Guy and his wisdom, right? It’s like the Gospel according to Jack Welch or the Gospel according to Peter Drucker. And my podcast is not the Gospel according to Guy. This is the gospel according to Jane and Neil and Steve and Christie and Margaret, not Guy. So that’s why Wise Guy was rejected. I considered naming it, Duh, because I thought that what I was trying to do is bring out all the wisdom and expertise and knowledge of people that’s duhisms, right?
So Jane Goodall got her opportunity in Africa, not because she had a PhD in biology from Oxford. She got her opportunity in Africa because she happened to have secretarial skills, and the Leaky organization lost a secretary and needed a secretary. So the lesson there is don’t be proud, just get your foot in the door. Duh. And so my podcast is full of duh-isms and I’m writing a book based on all these interviews about how to be remarkable, which at one level, if you’re some highfalutin New York Times, you book critic, you would say, well, it’s just a collection of insipid obvious duhism. Well, on the other hand, it’s insipid duhism from people who are truly remarkable. So if you want to call it a duhism and insipid and shallow and worn out, God bless you. But I’m telling you, when Jane Goodall gives you advice, you should listen.
Debbie Millman:
What has the experience of being the interviewer been like for you thus far? Because usually you were the one being interviewed.
Guy Kawasaki:
I like it much more because as the interviewee, I always have to, in a sense, recreate what we did today. What was it like to work for Steve Jobs? So with the interviewer, if nothing else, my podcast is going to stave off my inevitable intellectual decline because 52 times a year I have to really understand a new area. Today I interviewed Christine Maslach. She is an expert in burnout in career, so I had to understand consequences and causes of career burnout. Yesterday I interviewed Julia Cameron. Julia Cameron talked about creativity and writing. So yesterday I had to understand writing. Today I have to understand burnout. Last week, I had to understand how the Theranos case worked because I in interviewed the person who blew the whistle, Tyler Schultz. Previous to that, I interviewed a woman who has run in a marathon in all 50 states. So I had to understand what makes her remarkable is that she has Lou Gehrig’s disease. So now I had to understand Lou Gehrig’s disease, writing, Theranos whistle blowing and career burnout. Every day is like that. And so if you believe the theory that you can prevent or delay dementia and intellectual decline by constantly learning, I’m going to be sharp for a long time.
Debbie Millman:
Guy, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for making so much work that matters. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Guy Kawasaki:
Design does matter. If there’s anybody who believes that design matters, the chief evangelist of Canva is one of them.
Debbie Millman:
You can see lots more about Guy Kawasaki. Listen to his terrific podcast and read more about the 15 books he’s written at guykawasaki.com. This is the 18th year we’ve been Podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.