How to Protect Your Identity in a World Trying to Change You | Guy Kawasaki - EP 797

0:00Coming up next on PassionStruck. I can't tell you that I can name any investment bankers or private equity people who I think have left the world a better place. So I think that's how you measure a person. Did they make the world a better place as opposed to a richer place, as opposed to having their names on buildings, as opposed to the largest crypto account? I rank people by how much you made the world a better place. Welcome to PassionStruck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming.

0:53Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

1:16Hey, it's your friend, John. Welcome back to episode 797 of the PassionStruck podcast. Let me ask you something. Have you ever had the feeling that your attention isn't entirely your own anymore? You open your phone to answer one message. 20 minutes disappear. You search for one thing online. Suddenly, you're being followed by ads everywhere you go. Your preferences become predictions. Your habits become data. And before you even realize it, technology isn't simply responding to your behavior, it's quietly shaping it. Most of us accept that as the cost of living in a connected world. But what if the real cost is something much deeper?

1:59What if little by little, we're surrendering pieces of our autonomy, our attention, and even our sense of self without ever consciously deciding to? That's the conversation we're having today. As we continue our month-long series on flourishing, we've reached a theme that I believe doesn't get discussed nearly enough. Contribution. Because before we can meaningfully contribute to the world, we have to ask a more fundamental question. How do we remain fully human in a world that's increasingly trying to measure, predict, and influence every decision we make? Today's guest is the perfect guide for that conversation.

2:38Guy Kawasaki is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, host of the Remarkable People podcast, former chief evangelist at Apple, and one of Silicon Valley's most respected voices. His latest book, Everybody Has Something to Hide, begins with privacy, but it quickly becomes a conversation about dignity, boundaries, identity, and what it means to protect the parts of ourselves that should never become someone else's product. By the end of this conversation, you'll understand why privacy has nothing to do with having something to hide, how technology is quietly reshaping the way we think about human worth, and why protecting your attention may be one of the most important acts of intentional living in the modern world.

3:21I also think you'll leave with a bigger question. What does it actually mean to leave the world better than you found it? Because by the end of our conversation, that's actually where Guy took us, and it's a perspective I haven't stopped thinking about since we recorded. So let's dive in. Here's my conversation with Guy Kawasaki. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

3:53I am so excited today to have Guy Kawasaki join me on PassionStruck. Hi, Guy. Good morning or good afternoon. So I have to say you are the second person who's joined me on the podcast who said after they finished, they were going to go surfing. The first was BJ Fogg. BJ Fogg is in Maui. Yes. When I interviewed him, he was in Hawaii. That is for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how he gets away telling people he's a Stanford professor. He's always surfing in Maui. But anyway. Well, he's living the life. Yeah. Guy, your newest book is called Everybody Has Something to Hide. And I think a lot of people initially misunderstand that phrase.

4:40Why doesn't privacy equal guilt? Well, to use a test, pretend that you're driving down a freeway and there's billboards. And on one billboard, there are some of your text messages. So if you're listening to this and you can say, every one of my text messages can be on that billboard because I have nothing to hide. You do not need to read my book. You also are probably the world's most boring person. So you do. It's not just privacy. It's not just if you're a fentanyl dealer or you're plotting an insurrection or some kind of crime or some kind of bad thing, there are many cases where you just would not want your text messages on that billboard.

5:32I'll give you some examples. So first of all, if you have family members not living with you and they're sending you a text message that says, Dad, what is our Netflix username and password? and there's the opposite case where your kid's in college and they cannot navigate the university housing system, which is a very common occurrence. And finally, you just say to them, just give me your name and password and I will sign up for your dorm for you because I am tired of trying to figure it out for you and explaining it to you. And then there's dad, I want to buy a surfboard. I need your visa account.

6:12I need the number. I need the expiration date. I need the secret three digits. Now, if you're telling me that all of that you're okay with having on a billboard, do not read my book. So that is the truly you have nothing to hide. But I would make the case that in today's society, the bar for what you want to hide is much lower. For example, Let's say that your boss is hitting on you and making sexual advances and you're trying to seek advice from your family or your friends or God knows your attorney. You wouldn't want that on that billboard. Let's say that you're working for a company and you figured out they're dumping something in the ocean.

6:55So you're asking your friends, should I be a whistleblower or what should I do? You wouldn't want that. But let's say that your uncle or auntie or grandma or grandpa and your niece or nephew or your grandson or granddaughter says, I missed my period or my girlfriend missed my period. What do we do, grandpa, grandma? I can't tell my parents that. None of that should be on that billboard. And so I am saying that probably everybody, literally everybody has something to hide. Well, I think it would agree with you, which is where I started my career. Well, one of my theories, John, is that it's one thing to have these laws that say you cannot use this data, you cannot use it this way, prohibited, blah, blah, blah.

7:52And to put it mildly, governments change, decisions change, things leak. So the better thing is instead of trying to legislate this and protect people, the better assumption is if an organization or a person doesn't have the information, they cannot do anything to you. So rather than trying to control after it's out of the barn, you should prevent it from ever getting out of the barn, right? So if they don't have that information, they cannot use it. If they have that information, no matter what law, what privacy, whatever, they can still use it. So just don't ever give it to them. Yeah. Well, as I was reading this book, Guy, and I appreciate everything that you're saying, one of the things that immediately jumped out to me is that the book isn't about paranoia.

8:45It's really about what I thought was dignity, autonomy, human trust. And it became very apparent that privacy was deeply personal for you. At what point in your career did that deep connection to it really take root? Well, not to get too political, John, but roughly, I would say

9:142024, if you know what I mean. Specifically, November 2024. So yeah, I just think the political environment today in the United States and really the entire world, it's just better to be a little bit paranoid and be as private and secure as possible. And you may be living in some area where the government is totally benign and not doing anything. But as we have seen, administrations change and attitudes change. And going back to what I said, when an administration changes, It's better that the previous administration didn't have the data that the next administration might use. So just keep everything private and secure.

10:01Yeah. I'm going to share a story from my own life. Probably around 2013, when I was at Catalina Marketing, we were doing a joint venture with Nelson called Nelson Catalina Ventures. And this technology was allowing us to identify what a person was watching on their TV. We were then geolocating them to their device and then personalizing their ads based on their viewership. And we could detect when you were at home and when you weren't. We were also, we could detect when you were going into a shopping center who was one of our clients and immediately contact you. The technology was that precise over a decade ago.

10:49So one of the things that always makes me worried is I knew what we could do with it. And we were using it, hopefully in a good way. What always scares me is what bad actors can do when they have access to technology like this. Because one of the things I have always found with technology is oftentimes you develop things in a benign way. but then it gets farther and farther away from the creator and you have no idea what people are doing. Do you find that true in your long career in Silicon Valley? Well, absolutely. In Silicon Valley, pardon my naivety, but in Silicon Valley, we wanted to make the world a better place, increase people's creativity and productivity with a new computer.

11:36There was a graphical user interface, blah, blah, blah. blah, social media was to have more friends and family communicate, blah, blah, blah. And the next thing that people are using Macintosh to create porn and social media is about attacking people and all that. So now I suppose if you go all the way back, if you could say to Gutenberg, people are going to use your printing press to do bad things too. They're not just going to print Bibles. And well, yeah, lo and behold, lots of porn came out from printing presses. And I'm sure Gutenberg didn't design it for that. On the other hand, John, I think that these negative, these dangerous, these evil things, they're the ones that are always highlighted, right?

12:20You never hear good news. You never hear that, oh, somebody read a book and was inspired and educated and made the world a better place. You always hear the worst case because the worst case, the negative news, blood cells. If you use the technology in a proper way and you got more productive or more educated or more whatever, that's not exactly news. Well, guys, similar to you, I have spent the vast majority of my career around huge consumer data sets and data sets in general. And looking back, I often wonder whether innovation is scaled faster than wisdom. Do you think technology at the point we're in right now is evolving beyond our ethical maturity as humans?

13:10I think that is the understatement of the day. Yeah. And listen, I live in Silicon Valley. I grew up with all these companies and like, I look at these tech bros and I just scratch in my head, like what the hell happened to them, right? You want to create a browser, you want to make information more accessible to the whole world. And the next thing you're supporting, building concentration camps for minorities. That's a big leap there. I really, I'll tell you one thing, John, I have decided that I'm going to limit my net worth to 999 ,999 ,099 cents, because I don't ever want to get billionaire's disease.

13:53Luckily, that is not a big risk for me right now. But man, something happens when you cross the billion dollar mark. Yeah, I paid really close attention over March and April with what was happening to Meta and YouTube at that point in time. And I think a lot of attention has gone on a courtroom in LA. I don't think as much attention has come from the other court case. And to me, it was really scary because they were using data on where children, young kids live to really target them for really nefarious ways. And to me, this is where privacy to me goes to its extreme. And I have always thought as I've been developing technology that we as the creator had some responsibility to make sure stuff like this never happened.

14:52How is it getting so far away from so many of the creators I know who would have in a million years never let something like that happen? The simplest explanation is that money changes people, right? I don't know what else to say. And the irony of this is that these are some of the richest people doing that. If you're worth$500 billion, what difference does it make if you're worth$550 billion? I don't understand that. And it seems to me that if you're towards the end of your career and you're worth a lot of money, I would spend the rest of my life trying to make the world a better place and enjoy my life.

15:36I would not dedicate myself to making crypto successful and ensuring the long-term capital gains of the United States of America was as low as possible. I would focus on my grandchildren. I would surf every day. I would travel all over the world. I would not be sucking up to Washington, D.C. all the time. Well, it's amazing how much that pendulum has switched over the past couple of years. Well, one of the things, Guy, that I have really become aware of is technology isn't just tracking our behavior. It is shaping our identity. The issue with this is that identity is getting shaped in youngsters as early as 7, 8, 9 who are given these devices.

16:27Yeah. And all of a sudden that identity is around likes, visibility, engagement, followers. And the way I see it is our human worth is becoming quantified.

16:41How, because a lot of my work is around mattering. How do you think technology more and more is amplifying people's fear of not mattering? I don't know if it's amplifying not mattering. I think it is redefining what mattering means, right? So to many young people, I think mattering means likes or followers, as opposed to, I think it's better to have about 15 or 20 really good friends than 15 million followers. right and that's i would make that choice all day now don't get me wrong if i could have 15 or 20 great friends and 15 million followers i would do that too but if you had to pick one i would say over the course of your lifetime 15 million followers 15 years 15 friends you pick the 15 friends i don't know and but i'm telling you i am somebody who at least on paper has about six or seven million followers and it doesn't mean anything anymore i wish i could tell you john with my let's say six million followers i could tell them hey i just came out with a new book called everybody has something to hide six million of you let's just be conservative one out of ten of you will go buy the book so that's six hundred thousand i can tell you something i have not sold six hundred thousand copies of that book.

18:12Social media doesn't work anymore. I really do believe that social media as a marketing platform doesn't, well, maybe if you're Kim Kardashian, it works, but not Guy Kawasaki. And I cannot move the needle with social media for my books or for really anything. I honestly don't know what can move the needle anymore for marketing, maybe Substack newsletters, but man, it's sure as hell not for your followers. We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Guy. If today's discussion has you thinking differently about your relationship with technology, I want to invite you to continue the conversation beyond the podcast.

18:53Every episode in our flourishing series includes a companion workbook with reflection questions, journal prompts, and practical exercises designed to help you apply these ideas to your own life. I also publish a companion essay each episode inside the Ignited Life on Substack, where we explore the themes from every episode in greater depth. This year, I'm also sharing behind-the-scenes ideas from my upcoming book, The Mattering Effect, releasing in October. Much of my work asks a simple question. What happens when people no longer feel like they matter? As Guy and I discuss in today's episode, technology isn't just changing how we communicate.

19:30It may also be changing how we measure our worth. Those are ideas I continue to explore inside The Ignited Life. You'll find links to this week's workbook, The Ignited Life and the Mattering Effect, in today's show notes. Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

20:02you're listening to passion struck right here on the passion struck network now let's get back to my conversation with guy kawasaki and well guy i'm glad you brought this up i'm in the midst of an experiment right now. So I, like you, have a large following. This podcast has approaching 90 million downloads. Tons of people have listened to it. But I decided consciously not to move my audience to Substack. I had seen a lot of people who had done it. And then you're looking at, you have 200 ,000 followers and no one is interacting on any of your notes and posts. So I decided I was going to go all in on really talking about what I care about, what I think is really impacting people and seeing how this might grow organically.

20:55And I don't have the tens of thousands of followers, but I will tell you what I have noticed is that the people who are interacting are really interacting and they really care about the topics. And it was interesting. I had a person reach out to me not too long ago, and she said that she reached out to me on LinkedIn, and I responded to her and agreed to do a 30-minute call with her. And she said that she had reached out to three or four other people who talked all the time on their podcast about how approachable they were, and she never heard anything back from her. So to me, there's part of this privacy thing to me is also the, you have to expose yourself a little bit if you really want to help people and influence people.

21:45So part of your baggage needs to be out there because if people don't see it, who's going to want to interact with you if all they ever hear is your Tom Brady wins seven Super Bowls, but never hear how we almost walked away from football story. You know what I'm saying? But John, why do you say that Substack is not a useful platform for doing what you want to do? No, what I'm saying is I think it is a really good platform for it. I sometimes find it to be extremely user unfriendly if you're getting started on it. And I have no idea, and I'm not sure anyone does, how the heck their algorithms work.

22:27And maybe that's a good thing. But I'm not going trying to get posts boost. I'm just trying to put out what I believe. And I'm hoping the right eyes reach it. Yeah, John. Yeah. And to me, it doesn't matter if that's a couple eyes or a thousand eyes. John, once a day, I get an email from somebody who has used AI to craft an email to me that says, I saw your interview with, pick a name, Jane Goodall. I really enjoy it. It's such high content. But you are really sub-optimizing your podcast and your YouTube channel. I can propose that I can create a proposal that will increase your followers on YouTube.

23:16I've done it for Joe Schmo on the Schmo show, and I took them from 500 to 50 ,000. And would you like a proposal? I get one of those per day. And then also, you also get the one that says, hi, I am Joe Schmo, and I am in Brooklyn, New York, and I have the Enterprise Book Club. So every week, we read one book that has to do with enterprise software and we carefully selected your book. Everybody has something to hide. We will be happy to include you in our future Joe Schmo enterprise book club. Would you like to participate? I get one of those two every day. And now I just mark them all as spam.

24:01I don't even answer them anymore. Yeah, I get the same stuff. What bothers me the most as well is the reach outs that you get for people to come on the podcast and you realize pretty quickly that they've never even listened to an episode and have no idea what the show is about or what you're about. So that is maddening to me. John, my podcast, we get about, I think about eight to 10 requests per day to be on our podcast, right? So we have 52 episodes a year, but let's say we get 10 requests a day. So 10 times, let's say 250 work. We probably get 2 ,500 requests to be on. We take 50 of them. So, you know, it's roughly one out of 50, although some people we proactively go after.

24:50We don't wait for them to ask us, right? But anyway, let's say one out of 50 people who tries to get on my podcast, we accept. So I tell people it is harder to get on my podcast than it is to get into Stanford or Harvard.

25:08Man, I hear you. I was doing about 52 a year and then two and a half years ago, I was developing such a backlog that I decided to do a second interview episode a week. Wow. Oh, are you nuts? I'm telling you. So we put out three episodes a week. Three episodes a week. The third one is a solo episode. So I have done basically 220 keynotes now on various topics. And that one is, it takes the most time. It's also the most satisfying. And interestingly, it doesn't matter what guest I have on, they get the most listens and views. And I think the thing about podcasting is that people don't realize is people come to the show for the host more than they come for the guests.

26:00And they come to your show because I truly believe this. And I think people come to your show because they like the way that you interview your guests. I think they go to Jay Shetty because they like what he has to talk about and the way he interviews the people who he talks to. where they go watch Jimmy Fallon on TV because of the same thing. And once I realized that and started leaning into it, it kind of made a huge difference. I got to think about that. No, I never heard that theory. That is a very, I thought it was all guest driven. And John, can I tell you a funny story? So there are days, John, where I get these pitches and it says, Hi, my name is Joe Schmoe.

26:48I have written a book called The Schmoe Way. I'm 26 years old. I have already created an executive coaching business in six digits. And I've listened to your podcast. I listened to Jane Goodall, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Steve Wozniak, Vivica Murthy, Tony Fauci, Francis Collins. And I believe that I should be on your show because I can add the kind of interest and value that Jane Goodall and Tony Fauci and Vivek Murthy and Stephen Wolfram and the other MacArthur Award winners and Nobel Prize winners. I believe I'm in that category. And I'm looking at that. I'm saying I must be on candid camera someplace because somebody is taking my video reaction when I'm reading this email that Joshua says that he is as remarkable as Jane Goodall.

27:41And. It's hard for me to keep a straight face when I read somebody's and I just want to send him an email that says, have you lost your freaking mind? You couldn't even carry Jane Goodall's water carriers water. but I don't do that, John. I don't do that. I just tell Madison to reject that. Well, I believe me, I've had every angle you could possibly think of with people trying to get on the show, but you got to be picky because I'm trying to intentionally serve the audience with content that I'm hoping will help them. That's the whole purpose to it. Right. Well, most of these pitches, they're not trying to help the audience.

28:29They're trying to help themselves, right? Which is not my point. My point is, oh, Joe Schmo, I wake up every day, Joe, thinking how I can make you more successful. That's the reason I have a podcast.

28:43Oh, my Lord. Well, I can see I'm not alone with these 1 % problems. Well, what's interesting to me is what that shows you in the examples that you've given is these people who are reaching out to you are doing the opposite of self-censoring, aren't they? Yeah. As Groucho or Harpo Marx did, I wouldn't want to join a country club that would admit me.