510: How to Create Pain Killer Products | Guy Kawasaki

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Pivot, fail fast, all these buzzwords bullshit. It's not okay to fail. You should do everything you can to prevent failure. What's one question you wish people asked more of from your time working at Apple, working with Steve? Frankly, I wish people stopped asking me about working with Steve Jobs. For one thing, they all think, you know, what an asshole to work for. I've come to look back on the toughest coaches, toughest bosses, and they teach you the most. That's what life was like.

1:18You had to prove yourself every day.

1:23Before we dive in, I want to extend a warm invitation to join our thriving founder community. It's the perfect place to discover more insightful interviews aimed at helping you build, grow, and scale your business. So don't forget to hit subscribe. Your support means the absolute world to us. Thank you so much for subscribing. Let's get stuck in today's discussion. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

1:58As I shared, it's been almost 10 years since we chatted before the pandemic. I think it was early days Canva. You just became, I think, chief evangelist for Canva. That was 2015. We chatted in 2017. So it was early days founder. I've made the transition from founder to CEO. Lots happened. But what's changed in your life? What's changed in my life since 2017? how long have you got a show? I mean, I've moved houses. Actually, I've stayed with Canva since 2014, so that has not changed. I have become an arted podcaster. I just finished this book. Most of my kids are out of the house now. I mean, you know, lots has changed.

2:56Oh, you know, one bad thing is a couple years ago, I lost almost all my hearing. So the way we're doing this interview is I have a cochlear implant. And what city are you in? Melbourne, Australia. Oh, well, my cochlear implant is from Sydney. There's a company called Cochlear in Sydney, and they make the best implant. So basically, the hearing cells in this year are gone. So the implant is a microphone and electronically it communicates the signal directly to the auditory nerve. So, yeah, I'm a walking miracle of hearing. You know why I lost my hearing? It's listening to all the shitty pitches from entrepreneurs.

3:45I swear to God, it's a, why do you laugh? How can you laugh at my deafness? That's tasteless. My God. You know what's funny? Okay, now this is getting good. We've both spoken at similar conferences, and there was one conference. I don't even know if it runs anymore, Social Media Marketing World by Michael Stelzman. It's in San Diego. Yeah, in San Diego. And I spoke at that conference. I think you headlined it or something like that, and I spoke at that conference. I was one of the 50 or 100-plus speakers, and I met a guy that said he all he wanted to do was pitch you his sass social media tool that was like you know not like canva but like something like it was a it was a sass social tool and he really wanted to pitch you that's so funny you brought back that memory because like I met him after a drink session he's like yeah I'm gonna speak to guy I'm gonna pitch him I'm gonna pitch And that guy's name was Sam Altman.

4:54And if I had listened to him, I would be a billionaire today. And, you know, social media marketing world, that was why Zach from Canva was in the United States. And so Zach and I and then Melanie and Cliff also happened to be there, I think, for something else. So that kind of crystallized our meeting. And, you know, that's when they first found me. and the rest is history. But that was 2013 or 14. Yeah, yeah. This would have been for me, yeah, social media, marketing, I think like 15, 16, 17, probably after we interviewed. Maybe even, yeah, probably around that time. But small world, there you go.

5:40That whole era is one big blur. I can barely narrow down the decade that something happened much less than a year yeah so look um your resume is rich with accomplishments chief evangelist at apple you've done incredible things about a roller um but what was guy searching for at 22 years old like you know a lot of our a lot of our audience community you know early stage with their business in between the 20s, 30s, mid to late 30s. 22 years old. In 1974, I was 20. So let's say 1980. Well, I was still, I got my MBA in 79. So I was in the jewelry business probably. I was schlepping gold and diamonds.

6:40So I had the most analog job. You know, selling in the jewelry business is not A-B testing. You know, does the blue line work better than the yellow line? You know, you get 1.1 % better click through. Selling in the jewelry business was hand-to-hand combat. So our company sold to retailers who sold to the actual customer. And you learned about selling and rejection and patience. And I swear, that was the best training for the rest of my life because I've come to the conclusion and entrepreneurs, they need to understand that. As an entrepreneur, there are only two key functions. And you do these two key functions well.

7:24Everything else is easy and you can hire professionals. And the two key functions are selling and making. So most of the people in a small company, they should either be selling or making. Everything else is bullshit. yeah yeah so did you know what you like at 22 years old what you would be doing right now like did you surely you jest I mean anybody who tells you at 22 they knew what they were going to be doing a 69 is delusional or pathological liar there's no way I there's no way I mean as Steve Jobs said in his famous commencement address, you can only connect the dots looking backwards. So I can barely connect them looking backwards, but no, there's no way there's, well, for one thing, at 22 years old, you know, how could you predict a career in personal computing or software or social media or online design service, you know, like software as a service.

8:32Yeah, there was barely software period. I mean, this is right after electricity was invented. So no, it's not predictable. And yeah, that's one of the lessons in my book that remarkable people have a growth mindset. And it's not like I'm stuck where I was at 22 selling jewelry. I switched careers. I switched careers several times. That's a growth mindset. And that's what's necessary for entrepreneurs. So I have to ask, just going back in that time, probably a few years later, you know, when you rejoined Apple, when you rejoined Apple as a fellow in 1995, there was a crossroads period for the company.

9:16I'd love to know, were there any moments in time or any stories that really stuck with you that you could share with us? Yeah, well, so, you know, Macintosh was introduced in 84 and then in 87, 88 that's when you know the you-know-what hit the wall Steve Jobs gets fired all that and then Apple was sort of treading water for a while and then Steve came back in 97 and he introduced that new iMac that was the tear drape shop with the colors like cherry and blueberry and tangerine and all that. And then there was the Think Different ad campaign. And I'll tell you, it was a very interesting time because everybody thought, well, not everybody, not Macintosh believers, but everybody outside of Apple thought that Apple was going to die.

10:09And Michael Dell is saying, you know, Apple should give back its cash to its shareholders and close up shop because it's doomed. Yeah, you know, you really did have to think different to believe in Apple and Macintosh back then. Yeah, interesting. Any crazy stories working with Steve Jobs or Apple you want to share? Sure. So one day I'm in my cube and Steve Jobs shows up with this stranger. And he asked me what I thought of this product. And I told him, you know, Steve, it's a mediocre product, mediocre user interface, doesn't really take advantage of the Macintosh graphics and capabilities. And I just basically ripped on the product and the company.

10:58And after that, he turns and he says to me, I want you to meet the CEO of the company. So let's just say Steve completely set me up. But there's a lot to learn from that story. So number one is you better be well-informed when you work for someone like Steve because I guarantee you that he probably thought that that product and company was crap too. And so if you had said it was great, Steve might have fired me on the spot, you know, because it would mean that I was stupid and he did not tolerate stupidity. um so you should be thorough and you should be prepared and you should also be honest because if you had tried to hedge that answer you also might have been fired uh so you know let's just say that when you came to work in the macintosh division you had to prove yourself every day that's what life was like now many people you know they heard the stories and seen the movies etc and they all think you know what an asshole to work for how terrible but I tell you I am where I am because of Steve Jobs I don't think I would have progressed in my career nearly as much without that experience I've come to look back on the toughest coaches toughest bosses toughest teachers and I've come to believe they teach you the most and you know I there's a very important lesson in a categorization of assholes.

12:34So there are assholes who are mission-driven assholes, and there are assholes who are egocentric-driven assholes. So the egocentric asshole is all about me, myself, and I. Am I not brilliant? Am I not the best? Am I not the greatest? And then there's the mission-driven asshole. And the mission-driven asshole only cares that you create a great product or service and you you know you you create customers and you make customers and you please customers and nothing's going to stand in the way of that mission that's the kind of mission-driven asshole that Steve Jobs was he was not the ego-centric mission he was not the ego-centric asshole he was the mission-driven asshole so all you entrepreneurs out there are listening.

13:27I'm not saying that you have to be an asshole, but you have to be mission-driven. And I know you get these questions all the time around kind of, you know, working with Steve Jobs and, you know, what was that experience like and all the great wisdom and lessons you've learned from him. But what's one question you wish people asked more of from your experience and time working in Apple, working with Steve?

13:54That's a lot of caveats on that question. So what's one question I wish people would ask more? Yeah. Or what's one thing that people don't know? They always ask you, but they don't really get it. Huh. Well, frankly, I wish people stop asking me about working with Steve Jobs. I mean, you know, it's like the three questions that Guy always faces is or are, what was it like to work for Steve Jobs? That's number one. Yeah. Number two is, are you related to the motorcycle company? And worst, the worst one. I got to paint you the whole scenario. So you're standing in an airport or you're standing in a store or something.

14:46And somebody comes up to you making eye contact, smiling. You can see that the person wants to engage. And the person starts by saying, you know, a few years ago I was lost. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, with my career. I really didn't have any direction. and then I read your book and your book changed my life. It gave me direction. It helped me get on track. And I'm like, oh man, this is going to be a good day. So I say to the person, well, which one of my 16 books changed your life? And I'll tell you something, many times people say, Oh, rich dad, poor dad. I swear to God, that's happened dozens of times.

15:35Dozens of times. Hey, man, look, you know what's funny? I am half Asian. And when I put on like a little bit of weight, my face kind of feels out. And when we run, when we've ran Facebook ads, there was a time period where people used to say, you know, broke version of Elon Musk or like like different variation of Elon Musk or whatever so I feel you man like I and I've actually had been in America or been places and they're like are you are you who I think you are and they thought I was Elon Musk so look I can relate man okay well one pure Asian to one half Asian can I tell you one more story yeah okay yeah so this is about oh I have had to be 30 years ago i had a 911 all right so i'm in menmo park california and i'm in my 911 and you know when you're driving a 911 as all porsche owners are you you have like delusions of grandeur and superiority so i freely admit i had those faults so i pull up to the stop sign And I look to the left, and this car with four teenage girls is in it.

16:55And they're looking at me, smiling at me, just like the Robert Kiyosaki guy. They're looking and smiling at me and laughing. And I'm sitting there. I'm thinking, man, God, you have finally arrived. Even teenage girls know who you are. It's because of your work at Apple, your books, your speeches. You're so famous, man. You're like Japanese Justin Bieber guy. And so the girl in the front seat, she gives me this motion to roll down the window. She doesn't realize in a Porsche, you press a button, you don't roll the window down. But that's a different story. So I put the window down and she sticks her head out.

17:31And she says to me, are you Jackie Chan?

17:38Now, now. Okay, so, but there's a good lesson in this. And the good lesson is that since that day forward, one of my goals in life is that someday Jackie Chan is in his S-Class or his Bentley and he's in Hong Kong or Shanghai or wherever he lives and pulls up to a stop sign, car full of teenage girls. they ask him to roll down his window and the teenage girl sticks her head out and says, are you guys Kawasaki? That's my goal in life. You got to have goals in life. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I agree. This is awesome, man. Good laughs. So, let's talk about kind of for our audience, a lot of our community, they want to start an e-commerce business.

18:28They're e-commerce founders and they're working on a product, right? And you talked before around this kind of really two things a successful remarkable founder needs to work on and that's selling and making from your perspective what do people need to think about when it comes to making an exceptional product that flies off the shelf you've seen you've seen what that looks like you've been evangelist for some of the you know incredible companies right like what do people need to be thinking about i've been evangelist for some crap too so first piece of wisdom the key to evangelism this is called guy's golden touch is not that whatever i touch the touches turns to gold guy's golden touch is whatever is gold guy touches so what i'm trying to tell you is that if you want to be a great evangelist you got to create or affiliate or find a great product because it's easy to evangelize a great product and it's hard to evangelize shit and that sounds like an obvious piece of wisdom but you'd be surprised so now how do you create great products for customers so there's several methods and i i can't tell you any single one is going to work but there's multiple ways so one is you create the product that you want to use.

19:52You know, you want to use a small, cheap, easy to carry, easy to move, easy to operate computer. So you build yourself an Apple One and lo and behold, more people want a personal computer. It's not just you. So it started with, you know, market research. I want to build the computer I want to use and lo and behold, lots of people are the same. And that is the genesis of many, many tech companies. The founders built what they want to use. A second path is you start from the customer and you work backwards. So rather than figuring out what you know and what you like to do and what you're good at doing, you talk to your customers and they tell you what they want and you build to that target, which is very different than saying, you know, listen, when we like to do this, we're good at this, we're going to make this, and then we're going to make people buy it.

20:54You know, that leads to disaster. I'll give you a classic example. So Kodak used to make film as chemicals on paper, right, and chemicals on plastic. And they didn't work backwards, but they innovated and they created the first digital camera in 1975, an engineer named Steve Sasson. Now, how many of us use Kodak digital cameras today? None of us. And why is that? It's because Kodak, they define themselves as being a chemical company. They made chemicals. what they should have thought is they should have worked backwards from the customer and figured out that the customers wanted to preserve memories so if you work backwards from the customer you figure out how can we help you preserve memories you could help people preserve memories with chemicals on a piece of paper you can also help preserve memories with digital sensors And so if you had embraced this concept of we're going to look and see and we're going to work from the customer's needs, not our capabilities, you might have been Sony instead of Kodak.

22:10A third method is just to go and see as opposed to read or listen to or look at dashboards. But you actually go and see how people are using your product. And even better than going and seeing is going and being. So this means that you are the customer. You are using the car or the computer. And so you know exactly what it's like. You're not doing focus groups. You're not doing interviews. You really are the customer. You know exactly the pain points. And I think those are the richest veins to create great products. And then you got to also throw in a big lump of luck because luck. I'd rather be lucky than smart.

23:00You don't believe you make your own luck though? Well, making your own luck, I think is a semantic thing, right? So if you work backwards from the customer, if you are the customer and really know what the customer needs, if you understand what true business you should be in, preserving memories or putting chemicals on paper and plastic. I think that by doing those things, you are in essence making your luck. Yeah. Yeah. And when it comes to, I guess, products and ideas, you said you get pitched a lot of shitty ideas. Why? What should people be thinking about when it comes to coming up with a business idea?

23:50ah i mean we we've been discussing that for 10 minutes i mean you know do people need this um do people already express that they are frustrated with this you know another very good metaphor is you know many entrepreneurs they make a decision well maybe they don't make a decision consciously but from the outside looking in there are fundamentally two kinds of products there are painkillers and there are vitamins. So a painkiller means that, you know, there's a real problem out there that it's too hard to update software by sending out thousands of DVDs. Why don't we update in the cloud? Why don't we have cloud-based software, right?

24:36So that's a painkiller. By contrast, you could have vitamins and what vitamins do, they're supplements and they, You know, they make you better or they make you feel better. They're healthier or whatever. They're preventative. But I'll tell you something. It's much easier to create a painkiller or, well, let me be more accurate. Painkillers and supplements are both hard to create, but it's a lot easier to sell a painkiller than a vitamin. And if you want an extreme example, I get migraine headaches. And if you ever talk to somebody with migraine headaches and you say, I have the cure for your migraine headache, I have the painkiller.

25:25I guarantee you that that person will pay more for this migraine painkiller than the biggest pack of supplemental vitamins. Trust me. and when you got when you got a migraine headache you will pay anything to get rid of that headache yeah and like i i i love this concept and i've seen it myself in practice right like when you put out a product that is a true painkiller and you get the product right it just flies you don't it's not it's not it's not difficult to sell it it's not difficult to market it yes you have to get the messaging right and that can take time but it just has this gravitational pull towards people wanting to buy it for people wanting to use it for people want to play with it for people want to to to you know like consume it um and i think it's just hard to describe yeah at the beginning at the end of my career i've been associated with two great painkillers right so So Macintosh, the pain that Macintosh solved is that computers were too hard to use.

26:36It's not a supplement. It didn't make an IBM PC slightly better or a Data General or a VAX, you know, or an IBM 360 slightly better. It wasn't a supplement. It was a painkiller. There were people who just could not use computers. And now at the end of my career, the pain that Canva solves is that there are just some people who cannot make graphics with products like Photoshop and Illustrator. It's just too expensive, too difficult, too complex. That's pain. and they want to be better communicators and they don't want to have to find an agency to create their graphics or wait in line for the graphics department to have time for their projects.

27:24Their pain is immediate. You know, like let's say you're a real estate company. I mean, and you get a new listing. You need to create flyers for your new residential listing. You're in pain, man. You need to get it out there. You need that flyer because every day that goes by, you're losing sales. And that's pain. That's not supplements. Hey guys, I really hope you're feeling inspired from today's interview. Now the truth is, all successful e-commerce founders started from zero with a spark of an idea and a whole lot of determination. But let's be real, building or growing an e-commerce business is no walk in the park.

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28:40Try Founder Plus today for just$1 for seven days so you can accelerate your business goals. Visit founder.com forward slash start dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial. All right, now let's jump back in the show. I'm curious as well just around mindset. I think this is a really important thing for founders and you speak to a lot of remarkable people, you know hence your show and you know and you're connected with like extremely incredible successful people from all walks of life um we know that like in our community and and for early stage startup founders that confidence is a struggle that that people face um how do you think people can build their confidence in the midst of failures and challenges this this may sound like a circular reasoning but the way you build your confidence is by succeeding and by that i mean you know instead of waiting for you to let's say you're to use a metaphor if you were going to if you wanted to build your confidence as a surfer I do not recommend that the first place you try to surf is Nazare or the Pipeline or Mavericks.

30:05Okay, the first place you surf is a nice soft wave one to two feet. So you build your confidence because you take a nice long, thick, wide, soft board to a place where there's one or two foot waves. God bless you, you achieve success. Then you go out on a smaller board and you go out on a bigger wave and you go from one foot to three foot to five foot foot, ten foot to twenty foot. Maybe you continue and you go to Mavericks and now it's sixty feet. And maybe you continue and now you go to Nazare and it's a hundred feet. But the way you got confidence is because you started at one foot. so break your goal down into small chunks that you can achieve build confidence and build skill and go from there i tell entrepreneurs all the time you know they're trying to create this entire community and infrastructure and vertically integrate and horizontally dominate and all that and i i've said listen you were trying to boil the ocean you're trying to boil the ocean you should be trying to boil a cup let's just boil one cup right now and then we'll worry about the ocean later you know when apple computer arguably has boiled the ocean right in computers and phones but it started with an apple one it's not like waz said i for i envision a day where in 20 or 30 years we have the most devices in the world i mean for crying out loud he just wanted to sell the a homebrew, computing club, a bunch of motherboards.

31:55That's the start. Just boil a cup. After you boil a cup, then you boil a pot. And after a pot, a bigger pot. And then a vat. But let's not try to boil the ocean to start. And I'd love to hear any stories you could share of setbacks or failures that you've had in your career that really hurt and how you worked through that. But, you know, when I first tried to get into the computer business from the jewelry business, let's just say that my resume was not optimized for that transition. So I had dozens of rejections. When I became a writer, I had dozens of rejections from publishers. Even this last book, Think Remarkable, this is my 16th book.

32:39It was rejected. I mean, you know, after a while, you come to realize that rejection, rejection is just part of growing up. It just, it's, you know, if you think from the outside looking in successful people, it was easy and everybody said yes. And, you know, the world just rolled over for them. You're delusional. It just, it does not work like that. And so you get used to that and it actually makes you stronger. And it's easy for me to say, but I mean, it took me 69 years to achieve this position. And, you know, Macintosh, Apple almost went out of business. That was a failure. I mean, I've started software companies that maybe were, got to first base, certainly not to third base or home.

33:33and one thing i learned in technology is that well this is this piece of advice is going to be somewhat internally inconsistent but one thing i learned is that it's not how many times you fail it's only that you succeed once so if you have four startups and four fail but the fifth one succeeds nobody's going to remember the first four trust me they only care about their success okay now the part that conflicts with that advice is it sounds like guys saying it's okay to fail you know pivot fail fast all these buzzwords you hear and that's also bullshit it's not okay to fail you should do everything you can to prevent failure you know you don't want to waste people's money and time and careers and the earth's resources because you know just on a on on a like little flippant thought you decided you try something for the hell of it to see if it works and if it fails no problem it's not our money that's a bullshit attitude you're not gonna go far with that attitude yeah and it's uh you know one thing that's interesting is you've you know you said you get a lot of pitches and I was just thinking to myself do you do much angel investing i used to but i i really don't um i've done some i i have it'd be interesting i've never tallied it up you know if i took all the gains and all the losses am i positive or negative uh but then you know then i had this uh but purple cow what are the other phrases there's purple cow there's unicorn black swan yeah I had I had a black swan purple cow unicorn farting pixie dust and that's canva yeah canva changed all the rules yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so look um yeah canvas yeah can just their their ability to execute like because I've watched that journey.

35:43I interviewed Melanie, I reckon early days Canva. So what it probably would have been 2015, 2016, early days Canva. I'll never forget actually. She was so nice, such a really good person. Like back in the day, there was no Zoom and I use Skype and I use this tool called Ecamm Call Recorder. And I was going, I was just starting to go full-time on Founder and I was doing the interview in my parents' basement and I forgot to hit record. I forgot to hit record and it was an interview with her. Wasn't even a front cover story either. Wasn't even a front cover story. And yeah, I was speaking to her and interviewing her for like 15, 20 minutes and I was like, oh my God, I'm so sorry.