Tech Brew Ride Home - (Bonus) Guy Kawasaki On His New Book And Learning From Steve Jobs

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

Guy Kawasaki shares key insights on how to have a successful career, found in his new book: Think Remarkable. Also, some fun Apple and Steve Jobs story, such as: what kind of a***ole boss WAS Steve Jobs, exactly. The kind you want, Guy says. Buy the book: Think Remarkable Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. One more thing here. All right. I'm going to include your laughing at the beginning of this.

I love it when I'm not the host. I'm the guest. And like all these are your problems. I know. I know. I know. All right. Three, two, one.

Welcome to another weekend bonus episode of the TechMeme Ride Home podcast. If I left this part in in the edit, you're hearing a little behind the scenes as we've got an amazing special guest this week. Guy Kawasaki, welcome to the TechMeme Right Home Podcast for the first time. Yes, thank you very much for having me. So we're going to talk about your latest book, which is Think Remarkable, Nine Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference. But folks should note that Guy is also a very prominent podcaster. So why don't you mention that right now up top two? Maybe give me a couple tips about how not to screw up the audio.

Step one, don't use AirPods. That's right. Well, that's my backup right now, but yes. What's your podcast guy? My podcast name is Remarkable People. And guess what I have. I have remarkable people on it, like Jane Goodall, Steve Woznih, Angela Duckworth, Margaret Atwood, those kind of people.

Well, and these people are in the book as well. So look up the podcast, buy the book, Think Remarkable. Let's talk about the book. It's in the title. It says, Think Remarkable, Nine Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference. So how would you describe this book? It's not a business book like we mostly have on this show when people come on to talk about their books. But more of what?

How would you describe this book to a potential reader? I would say that it is kind of a manual for life because my podcast is not just about business people. So, you know, I have Margaret Atwood and Stacey Abrams and Christy Yamaguchi and Roy Yamaguchi, Andrew Zimmer. So I have cooks and politicians, cooks, not crooks, cooks and politicians and artists. and they all talk about, you know, what they do, how they do it, how they became remarkable. And so I have about 225 episodes, which is 225 hours, 4,000 pages of transcripts. And I looked at that. I said, you know, people are not going to listen to that from beginning to end or read the transcripts beginning to end.

And so I thought I had a like of duty to distill it, and it's now distilled down to 170 pages. Why use the, you know, Apple's think different campaign as a framing device for this idea? Well, there's two kinds of answers for that. So one answer is the tactics and the practical. And that is, I don't know about you, but finding. a title for a book is one of the hardest things. I mean, arguably, it's harder than writing the book. And so I was going through all this, you know, gyrations about how to be remarkable, the remarkable you, you know, insider's guide to remarkableness. And then somebody said, one of my friends,

who's a lawyer, which is amazing. But anyway, in 1997, Apple had an ad campaign called Think Different. And back in 1997, Apple was not the trillion dollar success. It is now everybody thought it was going to die. And so when Steve came back, he started out with those beautiful IMAX, those teardrop shape IMAX. And he started this ad campaign. And the basic positioning was, if you want to be innovative and cool and separate yourself from the pack, you have to think this. different like Pablo Picasso, like, who else, Amelia Earhart, Einstein, you know, Richard Branson. So believe me, back in 97, you had to think different to be a Mac user.

And now I wanted to play on that framework and call it Think Remarkable, because I think it's no longer enough to think different. Now you have to think remarkable. You've got to up your game. a little reductive, but if I want to think remarkable, someone that wants to make a difference and become remarkable, what would you say is the ground level? This is how you have to start thinking to start activating that in your life. Okay.

So I want to make something clear that this is not your typical self-help book that after you read it and then you attend my $5,000 weekend seminar, you're going to be remarkable. Because that's bullshit. It's not that easy. So I just want to be clear that the sequence of events is that you make a difference, and then people will think you're remarkable. It's not because you woke up one day, decided to be remarkable, or you hired a PR firm, or you hired a communication strategist or something.

So the way you be remarkable is to make a difference, to make the world better for people. And you don't need to be Steve Jobs. You can make the world better for one team, one classroom, really, one person, one restaurant. And so that's the sequence of events. You even say in the book that becoming remarkable is not the objective for people who are remarkable. It's almost like the byproduct. Yes, yes. It's kind of like, you know, when you look at truly great companies, they didn't start just to make a buck.

You know, they started to improve people's creativity or productivity. And guess what? If you make that kind of difference, you probably also will make a buck. But if you, you know, if you just want to make a buck, just go into private equity or hedge funds or, you know, go work for Goldman Sachs. this book is not for them. The book is for, and you were starting to mention this, the book is like a multi-step thing. It's not like a narrative. It's almost broken down into bite-sized pieces like you were talking about.

So would you say that this is almost sort of like not a roadmap because, again, that would be a narrative thing, but like that sort of dip in and out and learn sort of like cones about like this is what you could do. Yes, absolutely. So, listen, I've written books. This is my 16th. I read a lot of books because as a podcaster, almost every guest who comes on has a book, just like I have a book and I'm on your podcast. So I read 50 books a year. And most books are 300 pages about one topic. Right. And I'll tell you something. Most people don't need 300 people, excuse me, most people don't need 300 pages. to understand one topic. And so I have 170 pages. There are 88 tactics in this book. So each tactic is roughly two pages each.

And really, it was meant for a generation, Gen Z, that is used to reading 500, 750 word essays with four or five bullet points. I think that's what the market demands. I mean, that's the kind of attention span, and actually, that's the kind of intelligent people we're dealing with today. You don't need to hammer them into the ground with 300 pages. Can I hit a bullet point that spoke to me? Listeners of the show know that I love the concept of noblesse oblige. And you have a term in here called success oblige.

Yes. And so can you elaborate on that in terms of how that differs in your mind from Nobles. Sure. So when I was in high school, my father gave me a speech one day about Noblesse oblige. But first of all, we came from a lower middle class family. So it wasn't like, you know, we were the trumps of Hawaii. But still, we were more fortunate than many other people. And I was able to go to a private school and then college.

And he said, you know, son, there's such a thing as noblesse oblige, which is the obligations of the nobility. And I understood that concept, but I have come to not like the word nobility because it implies that, you know, I'm noble. I'm, you know, I'm Prince Harry. I'm Megan Marco and I'm such a wonderful person. I'm hired than you in some way. Yes, right. Yeah. I'm hired than you.

And I'm going to help you peons because I'm such a good person. So rather than noblesse oblige, I think it's success oblige. And that means that when you are successful, I'm sure you worked hard. I'm sure that you deserved it. But lots of things had to fall into place, including luck and the work of your employees and many other people. So because your success is built on other people's help, you have an obligation to help other people in return. So you went through a door. You need to leave that door open or even better make the door bigger. And so, you know, I think that's the key to graciousness that you feel you have to help

because you've been successful. This is obviously a tech podcast. Tons of folks in Silicon Valley working in Silicon Valley listen to the show. So I have to talk about some of the lessons that you learn from Apple that are in this book. Sure. You actually make a point of citing forgettable Apple products. I mean, the Newton is not forgettable to me, but that would be, or some of the mid-90s desktops and laptops. But what is the core difference you think that allowed the successful Apple products?

The Macintosh, the iPhone, the iPod, what do you think allows? them to be successful and revolutionary as opposed to just this year's model. Well, I mean, as Steve Jobs himself said, the only way you can connect the dots is looking backwards, right? So it's easy for us to say, well, of course, Apple 3 was a failure. Newton was a failure. You know, Macintosh TV was a failure. But Macintosh was successful. The first laptop was a failure. but the MacBooks are successful.

And when you have the benefit of looking at what happened, it's easy to explain why it happened. That's like every day on CNBC, at noon, an expert comes on. It says, well, the market went down today because the labor department announced results that was 5% lower than what they anticipated. Well, if you're so freaking smart, how about you predict what's going to happen tomorrow? Now, tell me what happened today. So I think that when a product is successful, well, let me do it this way.

If you're a tech person and you're interested in creating successful products, let me give you some techniques in the book. So number one is create the product that you want to use. Not some theoretical, you know, boomer driving a Volvo with two grandkids. I mean, what is it that you want to use? And that's the Steve Wozniak test. He built an Apple one because he wanted to use it. Not because Goldman Sachs predicted a large market for personal computers.

So number one, build something you want to use and just hope that you're not the only nutcase that wants it. Number two is to work backwards from customers, not forward from what you like to do or can do. A negative example of this is Kodak. They love to put chemicals on film, but they invented digital photography in 1975 and did not take advantage of it. Because they were working forward. We are a chemical company. If they were working backwards, they would understand that their customers are not interested. and in buying chemicals, they're interested in preserving memories.

So look at your customers. What do they really want to do? Preserve memories. Oh, we can sell them chemicals now, but my God, digital camera would be so much better to preserve memories. A third way is to go and see or go and be. So rather than just looking at summaries and reading the prognostications of venture capitalists and, you know, experts. Go and see what people are doing. Go and see their pain. And I would say

even better than going and seeing is actually going and being. So, you know, let me use a car example. It's one thing to read a report that says people with kids need larger cars. Okay, then you go watch people with kids, use larger cars. But then, let's say you have two kids. So all of a sudden, it's you and your spouse, you have two kids, two strollers, two baby bags, and two baby seats. Now, when you are that person, you would truly understand how to make a great minivan. And you use those three techniques. Oh, okay, one more technique is you just get totally lucky and you get the black swan, purple cow, unicorn farting pixie dust, named Steve Jobs as your CEO. That strategy works too, except there are very few Steve Jobs.

That's funny that you say that. One of the things I also wanted to ask you about is there's a point in the book where you talk about envy as like, you know, people don't want to admit that they're envious of other people, other people's success or whatever. But you actually claim that that's a good thing. I guess if you don't use it for evil, but explain to me why being envious is actually a positive. Okay, so just in the spirit of transparency, you know, when you ask people why they created this company or product, many times they say I wanted to improve life for people, blah, blah, blah, right? But I got to tell you, when I was in high school growing up, I was robbed on the bus twice.

And then in high school, some family friend gave me a ride in his Porsche 9-11. And I'm telling you, those three things really affected me. And I said to myself, guy, you got to be successful enough for you, you don't have to catch the bus and get robbed. And you want to drive a really great car like a Porsche. And that's why I studied it. And that's why I worked hard. And some people talk about how they want to change the world.

I just wanted to change the car. Now, okay, so I'm shallow. I'm insipid. But the message here is that it's not what motivated you. It's the fact that you got motivated. Because once you get motivated and you study and you work, well, then you can raise your expectations. And I would also say this is true of, like take a real analog thing like envy, right? So let's say you're watching Christy Yamaguchi skate in the Olympics and you're a young girl and you envy that she can do a triple axle.

Or you're an old guy like me and I love to surf and I envy the fact that people can pop up on a surfboard, walk to the nose and hang 10. I'm telling you, I envy that person. Now, you can take that envy and turn it into evil where you want to destroy the person who can do something better than you. Or you can say to yourself, man, I want to cross step like that person. I want a triple axle like that person. I want to build a company like that person. And that can drive you to do good things. So I'm telling you, don't be ashamed of your envy.

envy could just be another word for motivation, ambition. It all depends on what you do with it. A few more. Real quickly, you used AI to a degree to write this book? That's a timely question for this show. Tell me about using AI for this, how and why. Okay. So lots of writers want to hide the fact that they use the AI or they're embarrassed or

something. I am freaking proud. I used chat GPT. I use Bard. I use Claude. I use Quillbot. I use, and at a highest level, let me explain, I believe that my moral responsibility as a writer and someone who paid 28 bucks for my book, they want the best book they can get. And I'm supposed to give them the best book they can get. Not the best book they can get that nobody helped write or nothing helped write. It doesn't matter to them why the book is good, only that it's good. So I use chat GPT to supplement my research. I use QuilBot to tighten up my text. But I mean, but if you're wondering, Guy, did you just go to chat GPT and say, enter a prompt like, give me 50,000 words about how to be remarkable, organize it into nine chapters, and cite tech examples,

and chat GPT spit out this book. I sent it to the publisher, got my advance, and cashed it. That's not at all how it went. Not at all. But, you know, I seriously think that chat GPT has made me two or three times better writer. No doubt in my mind. The tools are the tools, The tools are the tools if you create a better product. Like if you're just using the tools to shortcut, you're not going to create a better product. But if you're using the tools to create a better product, then God bless. Can I give you a real tangible example about that? Sure.

Okay. So one of the concepts is that with a growth mindset, many people change careers and they make, you know, really dramatic career changes. So I wanted more examples of that. So I asked chat GPT that. And chat GPT gives me five examples like Jeff Bezos, you know, went from investment banker to schlepping books. But one of the examples I never knew before, which is Julia Child, the French chef started as a spook. She worked for the OSS, which became the CIA. CIA. And in her 30s, she moved to France, and that's how she got exposed to French cooking and became the French chef.

So I looked at that. I said, I never heard that. I kind of assumed Julia Child grew up in a French family or had a French au pair or something. Now, Chad GPT makes shit up. So then I had my co-author, Madison, Madison GPT, verify that that story is true. But that story would not be in my book, were it not for chat, GPT. Last one, I'm bringing it back to Steve Jobs again. Forgive me, but you talk about the concept of asshole leaders in the book. If you want to blend it, whatever, but it's kind of a two-part. What is your idea of asshole leaders as being good or bad? And then, or combined, what sort of

an asshole leader was Steve. Okay. This is an easy question to combine. Steve Jobs, without question, was a mission-driven asshole. So I think many things in life can be explained with a two-by-two matrix. So there's asshole, not asshole. There's mission-driven and ego-driven. So all you people listening out there, if you're the leader, I'm not saying you should aspire to be an asshole, but if you have to be an asshole, be a mission-driven asshole.

A mission-driven asshole is driven by the need and the desire to make customers happy and to create new ones. I want to make customers happy by increasing their creativity and productivity. That's my mission, and I'm not going to let anything stop me from making this great product or service. The ego-driven asshole is always, it's about me. Aren't I brilliant? Aren't I wonderful? You know, am I not amazing? People are sucking up to me. That's the ego-driven asshole. That's the asshole not to be. Now, so Steve Jobs, I think, is a shining example of the mission-driven asshole, and I loved working for him. I am where I am because of him. That was a at the beginning of my career.

Knock on wood, I'm at the end of my career. And now I work for a terrifically kind, mission-driven asshole. And excuse me, well, I terrifically kind, mission-driven person, not an asshole. And that is Melanie Perkins. Melanie Perkins, the CEO of Canva, is totally mission-driven and not at all an asshole. She's truly a wonderful person. So that's possible. So all of you listening out there, you know, make that two-by-two matrix and aspire to be in the corner that's mission-driven and a kind and gentle person.

Guy Kavasaki, thanks for coming on. The book again is Think Remarkable, Nine Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference. It's an exceptional book that I was lucky enough to get a copy of before it's published. I encourage everyone to get it. Guy, thank you so much for sharing all that with us. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.