The Science of Success Podcast

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(B) A Fireside Chat with Guy Kawasaki

Lace Gilger
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In this episode, we are joined by Guy Kawasaki for a casual discussion - what we are calling a “fireside chat” where we touch on life, business, and success, and many stories from the trenches of scaling companies.

Guy is the chief evangelist of Canva, a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz and an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He was the chief evangelist of Apple and one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He is also the author of Wise Guy, The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, and twelve other books.

  • The difference between thinkers, gurus, and podcasters vs DOERS

  • How to give a speech - 10 slides, 20 minutes, in 30 point font

  • “There’s no rocket science to being a DOER, you have to dive in."

  • Most investors and VC’s have not “done” - you should be a venture capitalist as your last job. 

  • When all the dust settles there are only 2 functions in a company - you gotta make it, and you gotta sell it. 

  • “Life is in the weeds."

  • The breakdown between big ideas and execution - how to we step into implementation?

  • “There was never a grand plan - the truth is that I just feel in love with stuff along the way."

  • “You can always hit the bullseye when you paint the bullseye retroactively on the wall."

  • VC Litmus Test

    • Proven Team

    • Proven Market

    • Proven Product 

  • Two conflicting truths

    • Quick to fail, pivot fast

    • Believe hard and stick it out

  • How do we improve the probability of success?

  • One of the richest veins for successful tech companies - a handful of founders making tech that they want to use, with no regard for the broader market. 

  • Sometimes you should hire people for things beyond just resume and background.

  • Does a lack of social skills correlate with success?

  • How do you “enable people to pay you back?"

  • If you’re gonna ask for something in return, you better really deliver for the person on the front end. 

  • Asking for someone to pay you back creates an upward spiral. 

  • Homework: Build the product that you would want to use. Never ask people to do something that you wouldn’t do. 

  • Homework: Hire people DIFFERENT than you. 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:12.0] MB: Hey, it’s Matt. I’m here in the studio with Austin and we’re excited to bring you another business episode of the Science of Success. We just launched Season 2 of our business episodes. If you want to learn more about what these are and why we’re doing them, be sure to check out the Season 2 teaser that we recently released. With that Austin, tell us a little bit about how these episodes are different than our traditional Science of Success episode.

[0:00:35.8] AF: Yeah. It's important to note that you're still going to get all the great content you've come to know and love from the Science of Success every Thursday. These are bonus episodes with added value, specifically centered around business. We've interviewed some true titans of business and multiple industries from multiple walks of life. What we're going to focus on are the habits, routines and mindsets that made them successful titans that they are today. That said, these are lessons, routines, stories, best practices that anyone can learn from and apply to their life. You don't have to be a business owner. You can be an employee. You can be a student, or you can of course be a business owner, but come check them out. You're going to come away with a ton of valuable takeaways, but we do have a bit of a business focus on these specific business episodes in Season 2.

[0:01:19.4] MB: With that, let's get into the episode.

Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than five million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

In this episode, we're joined by Guy Kawasaki for a casual discussion what we're calling a fireside chat, where we touch on life, business, success and many stories from the trenches of building companies.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

How do you stop being a victim, take responsibility and make your life the life you want it to be? In our previous episode, we uncovered the universal principles of success with one of the world's top success experts, Jack Canfield.

Now for our fireside chat with Guy.

Guy Kawasaki is the Chief Evangelist of Canva, a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz and an executive fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He was the Chief Evangelist of Apple and one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line back in 1984. He's also the author of Wise Guy, The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media and 12 other books.

[0:03:10.6] MB: Today, we have another legendary guest on the show, Guy Kawasaki. Guy is the Chief Evangelist of Canva, a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz and an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He was one of the Chief Evangelists of Apple and one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He is also the author of Wise Guy, The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media and 12 other books. Guy, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:03:41.7] GK: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[0:03:43.7] MB: Well, we're so excited to have you on the show today. Obviously, you're a tremendously successful entrepreneur and you've done so many different things in the business world. It's truly an honor to have you on the show.

[0:03:54.6] GK: The honor is all mine. Yeah, at least it's mutual. How's that?

[0:04:00.3] MB: The funny thing is I know one of the new projects that you've kicked off is that you recently launched a podcast of yourself. Funny enough, I don't know if you went back and looked at some of the archives of previous guests we've had, but we actually have a common guest already; Phil Zimbardo.

[0:04:14.8] GK: Oh, really? Oh, cool.

[0:04:17.3] MB: Yeah, that's right. Such an interesting guy and I mean, truly one of the luminaries of psychology and such an important foundational piece of psychology research that really transformed.

[0:04:29.1] GK: I have him. I also have Steven Pinker now scheduled.

[0:04:33.7] MB: Oh, that's awesome.

[0:04:34.7] GK: Yeah, but wait. It gets better. This Thursday, I’m interviewing Andrew Yang.

[0:04:40.3] MB: Oh, that's amazing. You've had some incredible people on the show. I mean, you have what, seven or eight episodes now?

[0:04:46.2] GK: Not even. I have five. Since you're into psychology, you'll also know tonight's guest. Tonight's guess is Bob Cialdini.

[0:04:53.7] MB: Oh, of course. Yeah, he's a previous guest on the show as well.

[0:04:56.3] GK: Oh, so there are two. Yeah.

[0:04:57.9] MB: Nice. We'll probably have some more, I know. One of the things actually that I think really this might be incorrect, but seems like really motivated you to create your podcast and I’ve seen you talk about this in TED Talks and write about this in some of your work is one of the things I really respect and enjoy about a lot of your thinking around business is that many of the things that you talk about and share around starting companies and entrepreneurship are really about a lot of these things, like growth mindset and grit and all of these what I’ll call soft skills, or things that a lot of business literature, a lot of business speakers and thinkers never even mention, or touch on, or bring into the conversation.

[0:05:37.4] GK: Well, I have a theory why that's true. It's because so many of these thinkers, speakers, podcasters, they come at it from they are thinkers, speakers, podcasters and gurus. They're not doers. My direction is I’m a doer who has a podcast, as opposed to a podcaster who's interviewing doers. It's a very different orientation.

When a podcaster or a guru says, “Well, you need to have vision and passion,” and everybody writes that down, that's like a, “Duh.” I’m like, “Oh, thank you God for telling me I need vision and passion. I thought I needed other things.” I think a lot of this stuff is just total bullshit. After you write it down, a week later you go back and you say, “Well, okay. So now what?” The nature of my writing and my information and hopefully my podcast is not you need vision and passion. It's more like, well, you need 10 slides and you need to be able to give those 10 slides in 20 minutes and your smallest font is 30 points. Now that is actionable.

[0:06:56.5] MB: I really like that. That's a 10-20-30. 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font.

[0:07:01.4] GK: There's no BS there, right? You're either 10-20-30 or you're not. It's not about oh, yeah. No entrepreneur ever said, “I’m not passionate. I don't believe. I don't work hard.” Everybody says that. It's meaningless.

[0:07:14.7] MB: I totally agree. There's so many platitudes out there in the business world and all the content that we see. Let's come back to this thing you talked about a second ago, this idea of being a doer. Tell me more. What does it mean to be a doer and how can we step more into doing and to taking action?

[0:07:31.6] GK: I don't think there's any rocket science there. I mean, you just have to dive in. You have to start companies. You have to ship products. I think that's one of the fundamental flaws of most venture capitalists and most venture capitalists are not or have not done. Many young people ask me, “So how do I become a venture capitalist? How do I join that career?” The answer is you should be a venture capitalist as the last job before you die, as opposed to the first job.

A good venture capitalist will have been there and done that and can actually advise from a position of experience. If you went to Yale as an undergraduate, went to Wharton for your MBA, worked at Goldman Sachs and now you're a venture capitalist. Where along in your career did you ever have to pitch a company, finish a product, introduce a product, beg for distribution, beg for sale, pray to the Apple Gods that your app is approved? Where in that Goldman Sachs, Wharton, Yale history of yours did you ever have to do any of that? Now you're going to be a venture capitalist and you're going to tell other people like you how to do it? I don't think so.

[0:08:49.8] MB: Such a good perspective. For someone who has that trajectory and they want to start to really build the specialized skills of shipping, of selling, etc., what of those skills would you say in your experience, and you have a tremendous background, would be the most valuable skill set? Do you think it's selling? Do you think it's shipping a product? Where across that would you focus?

[0:09:13.4] GK: When all the dust settles, a startup, there's only two functions. You got to make it and you got to sell it. That's it. If you are an engineer, then you have to find someone who can sell. If you can sell, you need to find an engineer to make. I mean, that describes Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Either one of them without the other could not have succeeded. It comes down to those two skills. If you look around the room and there's not somebody to make it and somebody to sell it, well you don't belong in the room.

[0:09:50.6] MB: Yeah. Such a crystal clear distinction and really cuts through a lot of the BS that we hear about businesses. You're either on the making side or the selling side, right? You got to figure out how to really dig into the weeds on either one of those.

[0:10:04.7] GK: That's it, because life is in the weeds. I had a discussion today with an entrepreneur and she wanted to discuss, “Oh, the pillars of our company; sustainability and quality and this stuff,” which I don't disagree with. I’m not saying well, you should have low-quality, you should have sucky design and you should be socially irresponsible. That's not what I’m saying. I’m saying that when somebody gets up in the morning, I don't think they're saying to themselves, “Geez, if I just could find a socially responsible app to manage my time, or if I could find a socially responsible skateboard.” I don't think that's what goes through people's minds.

[0:10:47.6] MB: Definitely not.

[0:10:49.2] GK: It doesn't go through my mind, I’ll tell you that.

[0:10:51.4] MB: The upshot of that is that we really have to think about and frame when we're selling within what actually makes sense for whoever the end user is, who the buyer is. They're not thinking about it.

[0:11:04.4] GK: It's a matter of prioritization, right? Think something, you're starting a t-shirt business and you have great design t-shirts. That to me is 95% of the battle. Now if you have a great design t-shirt and you have a sustainable model that it uses hemp, or I don't know what it uses, eco-friendly dyes and all that. When somebody walks into the surf shop or the skateboard shop and sees your t-shirt, the first question is going to be, “Is it cool?” Not, “Are the dyes ecologically responsible?”

Again, I want to make this crystal clear. I’m not saying you should pollute the earth. I’m saying that you got to think about the customers’ unconscious or conscious top priorities. Everything else after that is cream.

[0:11:56.9] MB: That's a great example coming back to the quote you said earlier, I thought was so profound and yet really simple is this quote that life is in the weeds. So often, especially when you're thinking about starting a business or something like that, you create these big ideas and these pillars and all of this strategy and yet, really most often when a company or startup struggles or fails because there's a massive breakdown between the big idea and the execution or the strategy and the implementation.

[0:12:28.5] GK: I’m about to publish the interview with Steve Wozniak of Apple for my podcast. From the outside looking in in 2020, you could say, “Wow, the founders of Apple had a vision where they're going to have a personal computer that empowers people and then there'll be a handheld device, there'll be a phone, there'll be a music player and there'll be a tablet, there’ll be retail distribution, there’ll be an app store.” They had this vision of how they’re going to grow the company and achieve worldwide domination.

Well, nothing could be further than the truth. I mean, Woz fell in love with making computers, HP rejected the idea five times. He went to the Homebrew computing company and they loved all the fact that you can now do something with a computer. You didn’t have to work for NASA. The first order was something like $50,000 for Apple-1’s. I mean, that’s the nature.

Now 25 years later, you can reinvent history, especially if you're Apple and you can say, “Yeah, we always had this idea for this total ecosystem and all that.” God bless you. You can reinterpret history. Let's be honest. At the start, it's two guys in a garage, two gals in a garage, a guy and a gal in a garage. They're making something cool, or neat, or necessary, or fun. They don't have these grandiose plans.

[0:14:01.3] AF: What's up, everybody? This is Austin Fable, producer and co-host of the Science of Success. This episode of the science of success is brought to you by the mobile app Best Fiends. That's best friends, but without the R. Best Fiends is honestly one of the best mobile games I've ever played. If you're looking for a truly fun and engaging way to pass the time while enjoying a great story, some awesome visuals, Best Fiends is absolutely for you.

Guys, seriously. I'm already on level 120. Beat that. I've been having so much fun loving the visual design, the challenging problem-solving and more. The game is updated each month, so there's always a new look and feel. See, what I really love is as you progress, the levels require you to think differently and use new tactics to get to the next level.

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[0:15:43.5] MB: In the companies that you've worked with and you just shared an example from Apple, how have you seen people successfully start to step into execution and really bridge that gap between the grandiose vision that you see in the pitch deck and what the actual on-the-ground activities of the business look like?

[0:16:03.8] GK: Well, first of all, I don't think you should have a grandiose idea in the pitch deck. If you were pitching Apple, you would say, “We want to make a personal computer,” as opposed to, “We want to what? Revolutionize the Information Age?” Listen, after you’re a trillion dollar company, hallelujah. Say that you wanted to revolutionize the Information Age. But when you're trying to raise your first million bucks trying to make a computer, you're trying to sell cool t-shirts, you're trying to enable people to make graphics online, like Canva, that's what you're trying to do. Don't put grand visions in your pitch there. You will lose credibility.

[0:16:38.8] MB: Great insight. I want to come back to your journey at Apple, because it's such an amazing story. It's such a fantastic time and place and in the history of our society in many ways have been – it’s a incredibly novel event and experience. For you personally, what was the inflection point in your career that you went from being average Guy to Guy Kawasaki?

[0:17:05.6] GK: First of all, I hardly put myself into the category I think you just put me in. In my estimation, the people who are that lofty are maybe Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Elon Musk. That's four. I would be hard-pressed to come up with many more. I'm not in that category. I just told somebody the other day. It's funny. Now I have this podcast called Remarkable People and I have people like Margaret Atwood, Jane Goodall, Wozniak, Andrew Yang is going to be later this week. I have people like that quality. All of a sudden, as my podcast is getting more popular, the funniest thing is happening, which is people are saying, “You know, I listened to your pocket with Jane Goodall and I think I'm remarkable too. Can I be on your podcast?”

This is not Richard Branson asking this question, okay. This is Joe Blow from Blow Industries who wrote the Blow Away, self-published by Blow Publishing. I don't even know what to say. I mean, for someone to think that they are in the category of Jane Goodall, or Margaret Atwood, or Steve Wozniak, you  know the old saying that you wouldn't want the club that would have you? You ask the question, when did I tip and become this amazing person? It's not clear to me that I've tipped.

I don't consider myself remarkable enough to be on the Remarkable People Podcast, except as the host, as a post-guest, okay? There has not been that event. One could make the case for me that I was successful, invisible, evangelizing Macintosh. This is back in the 80s. Very sarcastically, perhaps for even realistically, I am living proof that if you do one thing right, you can coast for a long time.

[0:19:05.3] MB: That's a great perspective. I mean, you've obviously done, in many ways, you did a tremendous job of leveraging your experience at Apple and taking that to a much larger stage. How did you, even especially after you left Apple, how did you think about the transition from that and how did you capitalize on your experience there to get springboard?

[0:19:26.6] GK: You might not want to actually publish this podcast after I tell you all these things.

[0:19:31.2] MB: Oh, we want the nitty-gritty stuff.

[0:19:32.6] GK: Okay. I will tell you the nitty-gritty. There was never a grand plan. It's not like I had this architecture and vision for my career that said, “Okay. You're going to start off in Hawaii. You're going to get into Stanford. From Stanford, you're going to meet somebody and because of nepotism, he's going to give you a job at Apple not because you're qualified. Oh and by the way, before you join Apple because of nepotism, you're going to spend a time in law school where you drop out and then you're going to go get an MBA. While you're getting an MBA, you're going to work for a jewelry manufacturer schlepping gold and diamonds and that's going to prepare you for your Apple evangelism career.” That's a major disconnect right there.

“Then now that you're in Apple, you're going to leverage your visibility at Apple as an evangelist to become a tech entrepreneur. Once you become a tech entrepreneur, then you're going to become a writer and a speaker and then you're going to go back and try to become a venture capitalist and then you're going to do some more tech entrepreneurship and then you're going to do more writing and speaking. Then some people from Sydney, Australia are going to reach out to you out of the blue because they saw you using their product and they're going to ask you to join Canva. Because you're omniscient and omnipotent, you knew that Canva would be a success and today Canva is one of two or three Australian unicorns. You knew that was going to happen, so you pick Canva.”

If you want to believe that's the trajectory of my life, God bless you. The truth is I just fell in love with stuff along the way. I fell in love with Macintosh. I was desperate for spending cash when I was at UCLA, so I started counting golden diamonds. Then nepotism, I got hired at Apple and I fell in love with the database and I got pissed off at Apple, so I left Apple to start a database company. Then I fell in love with social media. Along the way, I got frustrated so I wrote a book that was cathartic. Then these people reached out to me via Twitter about Canva. Then I wrote a book called Wise Guy. In my interviews with Wise Guy, where I was the interviewee, as opposed to the interviewer, I talked to many people who ran business podcasts.

I said, “So what's your model?” They said, “Well, my model is I sail six ads per podcast. Two in the front, two in the middle, two in behind.” I said, “Okay. How much do you make per ad?” He said, “Well, the one at the beginning 15 to 20. The one in the middle 10 to 15. The one at the end, 5.” I'm doing the math and I said, “Okay. There's 15 and 15, 10 and 10, 5 and 5.” We're talking 40, 50 grand. I said, “You're telling me you're making 50 grand per episode times 52 episode, you're doing 2 and a half million a year?” They said, “Well, yeah. Kind of.” I said, “Why am I writing books? I should be a podcaster.” “God bless you. I hope you get that numbers too.” I don't have those numbers hitting podcasting. I don't have any revenue from podcasting yet.

I'm trying to tell you that I fell in love, because I love the medium. Unlike a book; you work on a book for a year, it takes another year to get it published. Two years later, you have something that's static. You get one advanced. If you're really lucky, you might get more than the advance, but most likely you only get the advance. For two years you work and you get your advance.

Or with podcasting, I mean, you can sell advertising 52 times a year, every year. Like two years ago, would I have written a book that included an interview with Andrew Yang? I don't think so. Who was Andrew Yang two years ago? With podcasting, I'm going to interview him on Thursday, the podcast will be out next Tuesday. What can you turn around that fast? I'm giving this 15-minute explanation of why there was no plan to my career. I just fell in love with stuff and did it.

[0:23:36.6] MB: Well, I think that's a really important lesson, right? Many people think that there's a grand plan, or there's a narrative, but the truth is and Steve Jobs said this in his famous commencement speech that the dots only makes sense in reverse. You can only connect them looking back. The lesson of that is fall in love with things and pursue them and find what's interesting to you and spend time on it.

[0:23:57.8] GK: Yeah, but to be fair, the career strategy of get lucky is not exactly too useful. I think in Silicon Valley, the way we work is we throw a lot of stuff up against the wall. A few of them stick, then we go up to the wall and we paint the bullseye around that and we declare victory. We say, “Oh, I hit the bull's eye.” You can always hit the bull's eye if you paint the bullseye after you see what's stuck in the wall.

Listen, when Canva has a liquidity event, knock on wood, it'll be highly successful and I'll make a boatload of money. I'm going to retroactively tell the story that I knew Canva would be successful. I knew. I knew it. I knew the team was good. I knew the market was good. I knew the technology was good. The truth is they reached out to me and I got lucky.

[0:24:49.7] MB: Do you think that people can manufacture their own luck?

[0:24:53.0] GK: Depends how you define the word manufacture. Let's take the case of Canva. Lots of factors happen there. One is my social media person was using Canva. Thank God, I had a social media person who knew what she was doing, who had the good sense and judgment and taste to use Canva. What do you call that? You call that luck or skill in having a good social media person, recognizing talent?

Then I had to be open enough where if you use the traditional test, you'd say, “Well, is this a proven team? The Canva team six years ago, not proven. Was it a proven market? No. Was there proven technology? No. Were there a huge competitor that could scare the crap out of you? Yes, Adobe. If you look at all of those things, you would’ve said, “There's no way you should do Canva.” Yet, here we are. I think as I get older, I’ve come to the belief that it's better to be lucky than smart.

[0:25:52.4] MB: Very interesting. The flip side of that though is that Canva didn't reach out to me and asked me to be their chief brand evangelist. Through serendipity, through hard work, through random chance, through a combination of all those things you built a platform over time that made you an attractive candidate for that.

[0:26:11.2] GK: Yes, that is true. I don't want you to think that 20 or 30 years I sat down and I said, “I have to make myself into a brand and be visible, so that opportunities will find me.” Maybe some people are that cogent and smart, but not me. I just did what I had to do to make a living and enjoy myself.

[0:26:34.5] MB: I think there's some really interesting lessons that come out of that. It's a great perspective and it's contra to a lot of what you hear people talking about and sharing.

[0:26:42.6] GK: One of the dangers, I will tell you about listening to a podcast like this with a person like me, but really any podcast with any person is it's very tricky to understand the difference between a good story and the truth and probability and whatever, right? To give you a very cogent choice that many entrepreneurs have to pick, there's two streams of thought. One is you're quick to fail, you pivot fast. The other theory is you believe and you gut it out. People tell you, it'll never work, it can't be done, but you believe that you stuck it out. Or you try this, it didn’t work, you pivot it quickly.

Now those two things are 180 degrees apart. Which one is the right way? Well, it depends on which story you heard, right? It's very difficult to do anything scientific, where you're controlling all the variables and testing a hypothesis. Equal T, equal technology, equal market, equal everything, one team pivots, one team sticks it out, let's see what happens. You cannot conduct that experiment.

I just caution listeners of this podcast and really any podcast is don't believe that a good story is necessarily scientifically sound. On the other hand, every once in a while there is a Black Swan. There is a unicorn. It happens. Just be cognizant of the difference between correlation and causation and the self-selection. You only hear about successful people on podcast, because guess what? People like you don't ask failures to come on your podcast.

[0:28:36.9] MB: Again, I think that's such an interesting take on it and the survivorship bias is obviously true. There's so many factors out there when you're trying to evaluate why was someone successful. How did they achieve what they achieve? Was it luck? Was it skill? Was it chance? Was it hard work? I mean, in many ways, all of these questions and thoughts have formed the foundation for this podcast. That's why we embarked on the journey and tried to figure out if we look across a wide array of phenomenon, everything from athletics, to neuroscience, to psychology, to business, can we pull out some commonalities? Can we find a few threads that in some ways, even in hindsight, connect the dots? Is science a perfect guide? Certainly not. I try to get the ground as firm as I can get it to take another step and then figure out where the next step is going to go from there.

[0:29:28.8] GK: I think I can offer some insights in how to at least improve the probability of success. I think that one of the richest veins for successful tech companies is a guy, a gal, two guys, two gals, a guy and a gal who are making the product that they want to use without any indication that it's any more than those people who want to use it. Now that sounds completely anti-MBA market research, etc., etc. I realize what I’m saying.

I think if you look at history, that's one of the richest veins that two people created something they wanted to use and come to find out they weren't the only two people. You could make the case that that describes Apple. That is very different from, or let's read the latest edition of Wired and Wired says, “The Internet of Things will be big, so let's go make an Internet of Things company.”

I also think that in terms of hiring people and finding people, the common wisdom is you look for people with the relevant work experience and the relevant educational degree. I would make the case that if you do that, you're going to shut yourself off from some of the most talented people in the world, who on paper don't have a PhD from Yale or Carnegie, Mellon or Stanford, haven't worked in the industry, aren't so-called proven. I think you look for people who get it and love it and want to dent the universe and want to change history and want to create a device they want to use. That should be at least a third quality. If you were to ask me, will stack rank the qualities? Let's call that quality in general passion, or love of what you do. I would rank that above education and work experience.

[0:31:30.8] MB: Both of those are great pieces of advice. Obviously, you have come from the trenches of many Silicon Valley startups and seen what has really worked, what hasn't worked. I’m curious, do you think that for example, the two founders, or handful of founders building something for themselves, do you think that there's almost a selection bias inherent in that model in the sense that a number of massively successful companies have followed that, but maybe the proportion of companies that pursue that that succeed might actually be lower than the companies that would say, or the cold capitalist MBAs that go after whatever the hot new market segment is?

[0:32:10.4] GK: If I had the bandwidth, you could probably test that theory. I don't know the answer to that theory. This gets back to what I said a few minutes ago. If you look at Silicon Valley, or you say well, two guys started Apple, two guys started Google, two guys started Yahoo, we're seeing a pattern here. Not that it's two men, because I wish that were true. I wish I could cite as many examples of two women starting. It's not the gender necessarily, as much as it's two people, one maker, one seller, creating the product they want to use, they were an unproven team in an unproven market with an unproven technology.

Besides that, it was guaranteed that they would succeed and that's the richest vein. I’m not saying it's a 100% vein, but I think for entrepreneurships or entrepreneurship, it's all about increasing the probability. I’m not suggesting you just randomly drill a hole wherever you can.

[0:33:20.4] AF: This episode of the Science of Success is brought to you once again by our incredible sponsors at Brilliant. Go to www.brilliant.org/scienceofsuccess to learn more. For a limited time, the first 200 of our listeners to sign up get 20% off an annual premium subscription. Brilliant is a math and science learning platform and their mission is to inspire and develop people to achieve their goals in STEM learning. I love it.

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[0:34:47.9] MB: Coming back to one of the opposing mental models that you shared earlier on, whether we should pivot quickly or whether we should stick it out and be die-hard believers, where do you fall on that spectrum and where have you seen companies be the most successful?

[0:34:47.9] GK: I am completely confused by what one should do, because for every example of one, I can find another example. A mini-example, when Apple started the Apple Retail Store, every expert in the world said there's no freaking way that Apple can be successful paying those shopping mall rents for a single product company, or a single brand company. Apple believed and stuck it out and here we are today.

On the other hand, Google started as a IT consulting company, not a search engine. That's an example of pivoting. I don't know if there's a right answer that you should pivot or you should stick it out. The only way you're going to know is experimentation. The problem is that you and I are only going to hear about the successes. That's going to color our judgment. It could be that the only company that ever pivoted succeeded, so why are we telling everybody, “Well, look at that company. See why pivoting is the right way to go?”

[0:36:06.8] MB: I really like the point about embracing experimentation and figuring things out. To me, even you cited earlier Thomas Edison as an example of a truly luminary thinker and achiever. One of my favorite psychology studies is the research from Dean Keith Simonton that Adam Grant really popularized in the book Originals, around the output of creatives and it comes back to what you said earlier about how startups and successful startups in Silicon Valley really are just throwing things against the wall and then painting the bull's eye afterwards.

In many ways, a lot of the research around whether its patent grants, or musical compositions, or famous art, the most successful, most well-known, most eminent creators is the term they use in the research, were people who had an insane amount of output; thousands or tens of thousands of pieces of work. A handful of those happen to be really successful. Even amongst those great creators, another really interesting thing that I found was that they didn't have any ability to foresee in advance whether their work would be the success.

Even if they hit a homerun, even a Mozart would put out a piece and say, “This is my magnum opus,” and then it would flop and he would have some composition he wrote in 15 minutes that was a throwaway that ended up becoming a masterpiece.

[0:37:23.0] GK: Well, and it could also take a hundred years before the masterpiece is recognized, right?

[0:37:27.1] MB: That's totally true.

[0:37:28.6] GK: I thought of another thing. I thought of another indicator of the potential for success, which is poor social skills. I would make the case that entrepreneurs who are not the shuck and jive popular high school quarterback, prom queen are the successful ones. I think it's the nerds with dyslexia, ADHD and Asperger's who build great companies.

Another thing you could look for is that they come from poor families. I think there's a logic to be said that the great companies are started by first or second-generation immigrants. By the time you get to the third or fourth generation, those people are silver platter kids. I’m not saying that I’m not guilty of this, okay? I’m just telling you that if you look at it, well the first or second generation are the ones who've really built the business. By the third generation, they were in the right preschool, they were right in the private school, they were choosing between Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale and Brown and then they were choosing between Carnegie Mellon and University of Chicago and Wharton for their MBA. Then they had offers from Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley and Accenture and McKinsey. That's the third and fourth generation.

I guess I’m telling you to look for the downtrodden masses who are socially not as accepted. Having said all that, one of the ramifications of today's political system is it's completely geared against preventing those immigrants, which is going to bite us in the ass.

[0:39:20.2] MB: I want to change gears a little bit and come back to something that you said in a TED Talk of yours that I found really interesting that I wanted to explore a little bit more, which was the idea of enabling people to pay you back. Tell me a little bit more about that, because I thought it was really insightful.

[0:39:36.7] GK: Well first of all, that idea, I stole from Bob Cialdini. I want to give credit where credit is due. Bob Cialdini’s theory is that society is built upon reciprocation. I don't mean the quid pro quo, tit-for-tat, you find dirt on Biden, I’ll send you military aid. I’m not talking about that reciprocation. I’m talking about karmic, good, do good in advance, you show appreciation reciprocation.

A lot of people believe that the ultimate form of the highroad is you did a favor for me, I want to thank you and that's it. Then the person you're thanking says, “Oh, yeah. You're welcome, but forget about it. There’s no problem. It was my pleasure.” That's not the optimal situation. The optimal situation is the person that has received the favor tells you how to pay you back, so that you can pay the person back, clear the decks and then you can do more for each other.

Here's a real-world example. Let's say that you thank me for appearing on your podcast. I say, “Hey, no problem. It was only an hour. I enjoyed myself. It was a good opportunity for me too.” Okay, that's one answer. The better answer is, “You know what? Yeah. I was glad to be on there. I hope I provided information for your listeners. By the way, I just started my podcast. How about in your podcast, you tell people to listen to my podcast.” That's a better answer. It's a better answer for me, because well obviously, I get more promotion. It's a better answer for you too, because now you can say, “Huh, I can help Guy back.” Then the next time you contact me I’ll say, “Huh, that guy reciprocated. I should help him again.”

[0:41:29.5] MB: I love that. Yeah, starting off a positive chain of reciprocal helping each other. It reminds me of, I don't know if you've ever heard of kidney chains, or when people go to a coffee shop and they buy the coffee for the person in front of them and then a similar, creates a chain of positive sentiment and paying it forward essentially.

[0:41:48.6] GK: I like that theory. I think it's a very cute story, but that's not exactly what I’m saying. I’m saying that if somebody does something for you, it's okay for you to tell them how to pay you back. You are doing them a favor. That's different than I buy coffee for the next person in the Starbucks line.

[0:42:08.4] MB: Yeah. I totally get what you're saying. I think that's a great perspective. In many ways, I feel in our society, it's so hard to ask, right? To ask for a favor, to ask for something. There's almost a little bit of a social taboo against doing that. How have you pushed yourself through that, or made it so been able to get yourself to ask for something when the social convention prevents you from doing that?

[0:42:31.1] GK: Sometimes it drives my wife crazy that I do this, but I don't know. I mean, I’ve never had somebody say, “How dare you ask?” I’ll tell you one thing one, of the ramifications of having this attitude is that if you know you're going to tell the person how to pay you back, I think it encourages you to help more at the front, because if you're going to ask for something in return, then you say, “I know I’m going to ask for something in return. I better really deliver now.” Maybe it's an upward spiral. It makes everything better. You do more, you get more.

Let's paint the other position, right? Let's say that you never listen to this podcast, it's never occurred to you to tell people how to pay you back. You're sitting there and you're a zero-sum game, closed mindset, a non-growth mindset. You think, “Huh, why should I do this asshole a favor? I mean, I’m never going to get anything back. It's never going to help me.” Or you can say, “Hey, I’m going to ask them to help me so sheez, I should do something really great for him, so he does something really great for me.” I mean, you could say I’m being manipulative and all that, but I don't know. I mean, I’ve developed a lot of close relationships because of that attitude, I have to tell you.

[0:43:53.5] MB: I think categorizing it as an upward spiral is a really thoughtful way to think about it. I also really like the perspective of if you know you're going to ask for something on the back-end, it really drives you to make sure you're delivering as much value as possible in the front-end.

[0:44:08.4] GK: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a good outcome.

[0:44:11.5] MB: That's a great outcome.

[0:44:13.0] GK: Canva has broader terms as customer service. If you know you're going to ask for something back, you probably would do something good in the front. I don't have a problem with that. I hope that's the worst thing people ever figure out.

[0:44:25.4] MB: For somebody who's listened to this conversation and maybe either an entrepreneur, an aspiring entrepreneur, what would be one piece of homework that you would give them as an action step to implement some of the things that we've talked about today?

[0:44:40.8] GK: Is this person who's listening an entrepreneur in a startup? Who is this person?

[0:44:47.1] MB: Yeah, I would say either somebody who wants to become an entrepreneur, or someone who's maybe early in their career and has just started a company, or has an early stage company and is looking to grow it.

[0:44:59.5] GK: Number one, consider the development philosophy you're building the product that you want to use. I think that's as I said, the richest vein, I would be very susceptible where you're saying, “I’m going to build a product that I would never buy.” I can't wrap my mind around that. “I’m going to help Canva create a product I would never use.” How can you evangelize something that you know you wouldn't use?

Build something that you would use, or even better, you would love. I also think that you should never ask people to do something that you would not do. If you're saying, “Well, we have a free product, but you have to give us 25 fields of information and your credit card number, just so we can verify your identity.” Who among us would do that for something free? Don't ask anybody to do that.

When I go to a website and they say, “Well, you got 30-day free trial, but give us your credit card now.” It's like, “Oh, God. You‘re telling me I’m going to give you my credit card now, on the 31st day you're going to bill me and then you're going to make it impossible for me to get the refund and to stop your billing.” I have to report the card lost. A third piece of advice is you should hire people who are different from you, not the same. If you're all male, white, tall, Ivy league-educated from trust funds in your company, you are going to fail. You need people who are from different walks of life, different perspectives, different experiences, somebody's good at making, somebody's good at selling. There should be a great deal of heterogeneity in a company, not homogeneity.

[0:46:43.0] MB: Great advice. Really, really good perspective. For listeners who want to find out more about you, about the awesome new podcast that you just released and all the exciting people on there, where can people find you and your work online?

[0:46:56.3] GK: Guykawasaki.com is where much of the information about me is, but that's brochure ware. If you really want to find out on a very personal, non-professional level what I’m doing, it's Instagram. If you really want to find out what I’m feeling passionate about and right now I’m highly political, it’s LinkedIn. If you want to tap into my ability to connect to people and get them to do interviews, which I don't know how I do it, but somehow I’ve done it, and to find interesting people, then my podcast. I would say the bulk of my intellectual effort right now is my podcast. For that, people should go to remarkablepeople.com.

[0:47:46.6] MB: Awesome. Well, Guy. Thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing your story and all of this wisdom. It's been a great conversation. Thank you have a good one.

[0:47:55.4] GK: Bye.

[0:47:56.0] MB: Bye.

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