Confidence Classic: You Can Be REMARKABLE: The Guide To Growth, Grit, & Grace with Guy Kawasaki Chief Evangelist of Canva & Remarkable People Podcast Creator

0:00Being remarkable is not easy. If it was, there would be more remarkable people, quite frankly, right? So the way to be remarkable is not to decide to be remarkable. The way to be remarkable is decide to make the world a better place. So this could be as a teacher, as a coach, as a mentor, as a parent, you could also make the case you could make the world a better place by turning your own life around. Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week?

0:48We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. a different guest each week. I'm so glad you're back here with us this week. Okay, you're going to be as excited as I am for our guest today. Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva and host of the Remarkable People podcast. So he's a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, Mercedes-Benz brand ambassador, I bet you're driving a nice ride, and special assistant to the Motorola division of Google. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University, an MBA from UCLA, and honorary doctorate from Babson College.

1:35Back in my hood. He lives in Watsonville, California, and he is with us today. Guy, thank you so much for being here today. Yes, thank you. But if I could just issue a couple corrections there that I am no longer on the board of trustees of Wikipedia. You roll off those things. And I am no longer a brand ambassador for Mercedes. They kind of did not continue that program. Although I still have one. And actually, I have one on order too. I was an advisor to the president of the Motorola division of Google, but that was sold off. So what I am is I am the chief evangelist of Canva. I'm the host of the Remarkable People podcast.

2:25And I do live in Watsonville and I love to surf. So that's the three most important thing. Andy's a really cool guy, totally down to earth. And you never know, Guy, you know this with as many people as you interview. You never know what someone's really going to be like when you first meet them. And I just want to say how refreshing it is to see how cool you are. You're just like a regular guy. So thank you for being so nice. Well, I mean, I think that as I write about, I think that people go through like if they do it and they're lucky, they go through three phases. There's the growth phase where you're learning new skills and embracing new things.

3:05There's the grit phase where you're paying the price and you're working hard. And there's the grace phase. And I hope that I'm in the grace phase. And so I, being a podcaster, I don't know about you, but we get about 10 requests a day to be on our podcast. And so I'm rejecting hundreds of people every year. So I know that the fact that I'm on your podcast, I'm at least one or two of the most important people that sent you a request of the 10 that day. So that means you're doing me a favor and it's a privilege and an honor. Well, thank you so much for having that perspective. All right, Guy, tell us, you just brought up your new book, first of all, Think Remarkable.

3:56Wanted to mention because you just brought up Growth, Grit and Grace, the three sections of the book. Can you elaborate a little bit on the idea that we have this growth, grit and grace phases if we're lucky? Yeah, I think that based on my interviews with these 200 remarkable people over the past four years, and when I say remarkable, I truly do mean remarkable. These are people like Jane Goodall, Stacey Abrams, Margaret Atwood, Angela Duckworth, Woz, Stephen Wolfram, the youngest MacArthur Fellow, you know, over and over again. And so what I noticed is this common pattern of you don't get to be remarkable unless you have a growth mindset.

4:43People with fixed mindsets, they believe that, you know, they are what they are. They cannot embrace new subjects, new topics. The skills they have are the skills they'll all ever have. They can't make it better and it won't get worse. and that's just not true of remarkable people. Remarkable people are always learning and trying and working hard, which leads us to the second phase because even if you're willing to learn a new sport or a new subject, it's not going to be easy. I took up surfing at 60 and I've had to dedicate a fair, one might say, obsessive portion of my life to become a surfer.

5:33So you don't just wake up one day and say, I'm going to be a musician and it magically happens. That's the grit phase. And finally, the grace phase is where you decide that it's not about you anymore. It's about making a mark and making the world a better place. And for me, when I die, I want people to say, you know, Guy empowered me. He empowered me with his book, with his podcast, with his speaking, with his investing, with his advising. So just if members of your audience are used to reading self-help books, this is not a self-help book. I think a lot of self-help books, you know, the whole purpose is to get you to come to my conference, right?

6:22And, you know, we're going to be at the Miami Ritz-Carlton and for$5 ,000 in 48 hours, I'm going to teach you how to be remarkable. And in the general session, you know, you, the visionary guru, you walk out and you get a standing ovation and you tell people, oh, say to the person on your right, you're remarkable. And then look to your left and tell that person you're remarkable. And like, stand up and raise your hands because we're all remarkable. That ain't happening. I'm not that kind of guy. Okay. This book is not, you know, the guy's way. This is my analysis of 200 remarkable people filtered through 40 years of frontline tech experience.

7:09So it's not like I'm a 22 year old, you know, millennial wannabe that says, oh, I met all these famous people. Let me tell you what I learned, because at 22, I've already created a remarkable track record. Like, give me a break. Yeah, we see a lot of those people on social media, don't we? Oh, my God. I mean, were you ever on Clubhouse? Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, holy shit, Heather. On Clubhouse, every conversation was, I'm 25 years old. I've already built up a really successful practice. If you click on the link in my profile, you'll get$200 off my$1 ,000 course on how to make money in social media.

7:58I mean, you know, there's a lot of reasons for the death of, or I don't know if it's dead yet, for the demise of Clubhouse. But I swear, 90 % of the conversations were people talking about how great they were and how you should click on their link for their online conference.

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11:25Okay, you bring up an interesting point, which I wasn't even thinking we were going to get into, but now I'm super curious to get into it. based upon the world that we live in and everyone listens to this note, we all know people, you know, there's people with fake profiles, fake stories, or there are a lot of question marks. I'll leave it at that around them. You are the antithesis of this. Your career for anyone who doesn't know you, hasn't said you followed you or isn't familiar with your work. I mean, is literally as we rattled off these incredible companies that you have been at the C-suite level of.

11:57Let's start with a little bit of your background for those people who aren't familiar. What is a chief evangelist of Apple? And can you share that you're in the meetings with Steve Jobs rolling out these massive campaigns? And what was that like? Yeah, well, you can contact any of the schools that I said I attended to see that I really attended them. That's number one, including UC Davis Law School where I quit after two weeks. I did not know that. I went to law school for two weeks and couldn't take it. So I quit. You know, a lot of people cover that up on their resume by they say they attended as opposed to graduated.

12:41So I'm from Honolulu, Hawaii, a lower income part of Honolulu, though I, you know, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to paint this picture of how I overcame crushing poverty and, you know, lifted myself up by my bootstraps. I came from a lower income family, but my parents made a lot of sacrifices so that I could get a great education. So don't feel sorry for me. I've had a charmed life. and a sixth grade teacher convinced my parents to take me out of the public school system in Hawaii, put me into the private school system because she said I had too much potential. Thank you, God, for that teacher.

13:23Thank you, God, that my parents listened to her. That enabled me to get into a private school in Hawaii called Iolani. At Iolani, I cannot tell you why, but for some reason I applied to Stanford. I also cannot tell you why, how the hell I got into Stanford, but I got in. And so I went to Stanford and from Hawaii to Stanford, it was a religious experience. Now, Hawaii is a wonderful place and, you know, all that. Don't get me wrong. But in Hawaii, your sort of horizons are limited by, well, if I'm really successful, I'll run the Sears Roebuck or I'll run the, you know, Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel or something.

14:08Now, I'm not saying that that's not remarkable accomplishments. It takes something to get to that level. But there's none of the sort of growth of Hewlett Packard or Apple or Facebook or Google in Hawaii. So I get off this airplane in SFO. You get in a van, you go to Stanford. This is like the holy land. I mean, this is like, thank you, God, the scales are removed from my eyes. And at Stanford, I met someone and we became very good friends. And years later, he hired me into Apple, into the Macintosh division. And just so you know, I majored in psych because that was the easiest major I could find.

14:51If you looked at my background on paper, thank God that it was an AI analyzing my resume back then. It would say psych major, two-week dropout from UC Davis. And at the time, I was more or less in the jewelry business, the jewelry manufacturing business. So schlepping diamond gold. You wouldn't say, oh, perfectly qualified. fine. You know, let's bet Macintosh software on this psychology major from the jewelry business. So I'm living proof that nepotism can have positive results. So I worked at Apple as the software evangelist, convincing people to create Mac products. I left, I started some tech startups.

15:36I returned to Apple as Apple's chief evangelist. Then I left again and I started, you know, other companies, writer, speaker, and then Canva reached out to me. Do you use Canva? Yes. Yeah. So 10 years ago, Canva sends me a tweet saying, we noticed you use Canva. We're going to be in the Bay Area soon. We'd love to get together. So I talked to the person doing my social media with me and I say, isn't this the product you use to create graphics for our tweets? And she said, yes. And I said, well, do you like them? And she said, yes. I said, do you think I should help them? And she said, yes. So I met with them.

16:18And one thing led to another. And now, you know, thank you, God, for Canva. And this is my 16th book, which I've said 15 times. This is my last book. You had no intention of writing a second book? No. My very first book was called The Macintosh Way, and it explained the Macintosh division, what we were trying to do, what we learned from Steve. And at that point, I said, OK, I wrote down everything I possibly can know. That's it. End of writing career. And I guess in a sense, writing 16 books is really very good evidence of a growth mindset. because you cannot write 16 books of the same subject.

17:11No, you definitely can't. What led you to write the 16th? We're going to get real transparent. Let's do it. So there's two theories. One theory is the Polish PR answer. The other theory is, you know, more of like what's realistic. So I'll give you a smattering of both. At 69 years old, having done this podcast for four years, I really did interview remarkable people. I would put my guest list up against anybody's podcast, NPR, Joe Rogan, anybody. I have just as good, if not better, a guest list. And I realized that, man, you know, guy, you have encountered a lot of wisdom, a lot of insights and a lot of value.

18:01But let's face it, you know, am I going to tell people, oh, go listen to 200 episodes, one hour each, and you'll, you know, you'll hear what I have. And so I figured out that I have all this knowledge and I can filter it down even more. So in a sense, I have this moral obligation to take the lesson of Jane Goodall or Angela Duckworth or Carol Dweck or Stephen Wolfram or Woz and put it in a package that everybody can digest and use so that they can make a difference and be remarkable. So that's kind of the high road. The lower road answer is, you know what, there's royalty. So it's a combination of both.

18:52But as I say, when I'm gone, I want people to say, you know, I read Think Remarkable and it just changed my life and it helped me make a difference. And I owe some of my success to Guy. That would be a good legacy. Yeah, that's part of your book. And it's well said. It's something that I certainly hadn't realized in my life until the last couple of years. So I'm sure many people like me will benefit from that portion of the book. Let's talk about this. You mentioned that you've had these incredible guests, literally some of the best guests that are available for any podcast. I would love to have the roster of guests you've had.

19:33How were you able to land? These aren't the people that are necessarily reaching out to you 10 times a day. I know that, my friend. So how did you land this many remarkable? Okay, well, Steve Jobs had a very famous Stanford commencement address in which one of the key messages he had is you can only connect the dots looking backwards, right? So when you're 18 and you major in English, it's hard to say, okay, I was thinking I majored English because when I'm 69, I'm going to write a book, right? I mean, nobody can think like that. I'll give you the dots. So this sixth grade teacher convinces my parents to put me into this private prep school.

20:16In the private prep school, I did well enough to get to Stanford. At Stanford, I meet this guy, Mike Boych. Mike Boych is the guy that eventually hired me into the Macintosh division in the Mac, despite my lack of qualifications in the Macintosh division, I do well enough that I'm very, very visible and I'm tied. My reputation is tied to the Macintosh and Apple. I'm kind of living proof, Heather, that if you do one thing right in your life, you can coast the rest of your life. But that's a different. So now lots of people know about me because lots of people use Macintosh. And in particular, I think it's the creative, innovative, artistic people who use Macintosh because you don't buy a Macintosh to crank Excel spreadsheets.

21:06So one day I get this email out of the blue and it's the director of the TEDx Palo Alto. And she says, I have Jane Goodall coming in for a TEDx and I'm looking for a moderator. She's looking for a moderator. She says, you know, you don't know me, Guy, but I know you because I use a Macintosh. So would you like to moderate Jane Goodall on TEDx? It's like, be still my heart. You're telling me I can interview the Jane Goodall for TEDx. Like, pinch me. Is this a rhetorical question? Yes, I'm all in. Yeah, right. So I cancel a paid speech. cost me a lot of money. But man, you know, at the end of my life, am I going to say, you know, guy, if you had only made one more speech, you would have been happy.

22:02Or are you going to say, I got to interview Jane Goodall. You don't need to be too smart to figure out the answer to that question. So I interviewed Jane Goodall. We become deep friends. To this day, we're close friends. And so when I start my podcast, she's my first guest. All right. So now I don't know about you, but the way I select what podcast I agree to be on, the first question is, who else have you had? I mean, if all you have is Joe Blow from Blow Consulting, who wrote the Blow way, you're probably not going to go on that podcast, right? Probably not. You know, so when I'm asking Stacey Abrams or I'm asking Margaret Atwood or Stephen Wolfram or Neil deGrasse Tyson, please come on my podcast.

22:53The first thing they ask, maybe they don't ask it, but I know they're thinking it, is who the hell else has been on your podcast? To which I say, well, maybe you've heard of some of my guests like Jane Goodall. and guess what? Nobody ever says either to me or to themselves, why should I go on this podcast? He has losers like Jane Goodall, people you never heard of. So once you have Jane Goodall, then you get Margaret Atwood, then you get Woz, then you get Bob Cialdini, then you get David Ocker. And guess what? It gets easier and easier. And pretty soon you are buying, you're not selling. Right.

23:40You've got people now that are so attracted to you. You're able to decline and or say yes to whoever. But it started out, like you said, you had to get that big name first. And that came from such a serendipitous moment. Well, I guess not really, because you had already built your name up at Macintosh at Apple. You were known. That's how you got that door open for you. basically. But, you know, can I tell you that I purposely worked at the Macintosh division because I knew that someday I was going to start a podcast and people would have to have heard of me. So they would say yes. No, we know that.

24:16I'm that smart. God bless you. But it ain't true. And I think there's like an important lesson here that I kind of believe you should default to yes. You should always say yes. You should help people because you just never know. I would also like to clarify one point. So I've been dropping all these big names and I know I've been dropping these big names. It's a marketing ploy, right? But I just want you to know that being in my book or being on my podcast, it's not because you're rich or you're famous. it's because you're remarkable. So the big names I dropped are people who are remarkable. At an extreme, if some billionaire who ran a hedge fund asked to be on my podcast, the answer would be no, because I don't give a shit that you have figured out financial arbitrage and you've made billions of dollars because you have not made the world a better place.

25:21You've made your world a better place, but you haven't made the world a better place. And so I've been dropping all these big names, but I can also drop names of people most of you would never heard of. A high school teacher in Rogue River, Oregon. A guy who is now a respiratory therapist, but he grew up in the projects in Brooklyn and both his parents are crack addicts. I've had Halim Flowers, who's one of the hottest young artists in America today. You know, he's the next Jean-Michel Basquat. He was sentenced at 16 to 44 years of prison for being an accomplice to a murder. Six years he got out early, and now he's one of the best artists.

26:07You know, most of you have not heard of him. You will hear of him. But he is remarkable. I have another woman who was smuggled across the U.S. border from San Diego as a baby. She lives in a house with 15 other relatives, and now she's working for Adobe as a middle manager. You know what? I think that's remarkable. On the other hand, you know, it's not like I have hedge fund billionaires, trust fund babies. None of those. They don't qualify. Interesting point. There's a very dynamic cross-section of these remarkable people from very different backgrounds, very different success stories on the podcast and that you utilize in the book.

26:51What themes did you pull or can you share with us that you've learned from these various remarkable people? Well, in a sense, we've been talking about this the whole time, right? Because the book is based on growth, grit, and grace. And that's what I learned from him. I would be hard pressed to think of somebody who has more grace and graciousness than Jane Goodall. That's what I learned. And this is a sample of 200 people, highly selected. It's not scientific in the sense that I took a random sample of people and I waited for all the factors. And then I gave them objective tests so that they pass.

27:33It's not like Mensa, where if you got an IQ, you're in. Right. So this is subjectivity, self-selection, a lot of things. On the other hand, there is a lot to learn from these people. And I just want that to get out in a form that people can easily gain access to. Now, my podcast is free. You can download all 200 episodes, but that is literally 200 hours of listening. You can read my book. My book is less than 200 pages and you could read it in probably two or three hours. And that's how it should be. This is not the Chicago manual of style. That's 700 pages. This is not the war and peace of self-help, OK?

28:21This is more like how to be remarkable for dummies. I mean, I want this to be quick. Part of making a difference and part of being remarkable, you can only read and study. so much. At some point, you just have to do. So I don't want you to become a reader. I want you to just grab the information and go. Starting the year with a wardrobe refresh, Quince has you covered with luxe essentials that feel effortless and look polished. They're perfect for layering, mixing, and building a wardrobe that lasts. Their versatile styles make it easy to reach for them day after day. Quince has all the staples covered, from soft Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like designer pieces without the markup, to 100 % silk tops and skirts for easy dressing up, to perfectly cut denim for everyday wear.

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