Guy Kawasaki: Lessons From Silicon Valley

We always look for someone epic to end the elevate main stage. In 2017, it was Vinod Khosla, last year's Eric Schmidt, and Al Gore. Yesterday, Martha Stewart. So I'm so excited to welcome our next guest, Guy Kawasaki. Thank you. Right, so a little bit about Guy, because he's a pretty impressive individual and in taking a look and reading through his bio, I found some fun facts that I wanted to pull out. He's worked for Steve Jobs not once but twice, and he actually turned down a third time. He's known for coining the term evangelist and he's been an advisor and an evangelist to hundreds of startups and Fortune 500 companies. This next one might be my favorite. Sir Richard Branson shined his shoes and actually took off his own jacket and used it as a shine cloth when he was trying to get Guy to fly Virgin Atlantic. I thought that one was pretty good. And during all of this time, I don't know how, but he managed to find the time to write 14 books. And all these little stories and decades of experience in the tech sector have really led and contributed to a vast array of knowledge and stories that he actually used to accumulate into his latest book, Wiseguy. And coincidentally, Wiseguy is how I met Guy Kawasaki. The programming team sometimes has to get a little crafty to bring these incredible speakers and high profile talent to the fountain. And so when we were at south by Southwest and I walked by a book signing and I saw it was featuring Guy Kawasaki, I knew that was my shot. And so I went, I bought a book, I stood in line. If anyone's ever done this before, they go before you, they give you a little post it note and they say, write the name of who they would like you to write to make the signing to. And so all I wrote was, guy, join me at Elevate. I'm pleased to welcome Guy Kawasaki.

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much for that fun introduction. A little bit of a factual correction. I did not coin the word evangelism. There was Jesus before me. Admittedly There was a 2000 year gap, but yeah, Jesus came before me. Listen, I truly do enjoy coming to Canada. I love your donuts, I love your maple syrup. I love hockey. And it's especially true this year because it's just, it's so good to be in a country that's a democracy, you know, that that has obvious high regards for women's rights, that is, that is inclusive, that is immigrant friendly, that is concerned about climate change, and it has a leader that can admit a mistake. It's very. This is very refreshing to be here. Also, I think, am I correct? Is the Hockey hall of Fame or museum right across the street? Yeah. So as a San Jose Sharks fan, this is as close as I'll ever get to being a Stanley cup winner. That said, at least San Jose has an NHL team, unlike Toronto. So. So listen, I am 65 years old. I've been living in Silicon Valley for most of my life. And as a Silicon Valley resident, I've worked for Apple, I've worked for Google, I've started some software companies, I've invested in many companies. Today, I am the chief evangelist of a company out of Sydney, Australia called Canva. Canva is an online graphics design service that hopefully many of you use in the 1% category. I'm a Mercedes Benz brand ambassador, which means that I get paid to drive a Mercedes. And finally, I'm an executive fellow at the Haas School of Business for UC Berkeley. Most of you probably heard of me because of my work at Apple and at Apple, I was software evangelist from 1983 to 1987, and then I was a chief evangelist from 1995 to 1997. So I worked for Steve Jobs. I was in the Macintosh division. It seems, though, that every time I left Apple, Apple did better. And one of my big regrets in life is actually leaving Apple. As you heard, I left Apple twice and I turned Steve Jobs down for a third offer. And if I had not made any of those three mistakes, I'd probably be in Tahiti right now, not Toronto. So it all worked out. It all worked out. Listen, at 65, I've had a lot of great experiences in my life. I've made a lot of mistakes. So one day I decided to write a book that was a compilation of the stories of my life, what I learned throughout my life, and this book, Wise Guy, it is not a memoir. It is not an autobiography. I don't consider my life one of those kind of made for movies life. I didn't come across the border with just the shirt on my back and struggled against deprivation and violence and all that. I don't have that kind of dramatic story. I come from a lower middle class family in Honolulu, Hawaii. I didn't know I was poor. I had a wonderful life, but I did learn a lot. And so if you're familiar with the book Chicken Soup for the Soul, this is kind of my version of Chicken Soup for the Soul, all my stories. At one time, I tried to convince my publisher to call this book Miso soup for the soul. But that didn't work out, so we called it Wiseguy. And I'm going to give you sort of my top 10 tips of wisdom that I hope you can take and understand. Use it in your lives. In the words of Steve Jobs, may it help you dent the universe. One of the uses that I found that's most common for my book, believe it or not, is that parents have written to me and said I have to share this story with my kids because I've been telling my kids the same thing and they just don't believe me. But if they read your book, I think they'll believe me. I should have given a copy to Michelle Obama, but that's a different discussion. So this is the lessons of my life. The lessons in tech lessons Silicon Valley. Okay, so first of all, for those of you who have seen many textbooks speakers, none of them here, of course, there are two salient points about tech speakers. First, almost all tech speakers suck, except at the ones that elevate. The second thing, the second thing is almost all tech speakers go long. And that is a deadly combination. If you suck and your speech is short, it's okay. And if you're great and your speech goes long, also, okay. But if you suck and go long, that's just a deadly combination. Okay? So what I do is I use the top 10 format so that in case you think I suck, you can kind of gauge about how much longer I'll suck because, you know, I have 10 key points. Okay? So the first story or the first hindsight I want to talk about is that, you know, when things are not working out, when the system is against you, when the opportunity is not there, change a losing game. Make a change, make a decision. So this is a picture of my ancestors. The person in the top row, second from the left is my father. My aunts and and grandparents are there in the front row. Basically I'm third generation Japanese American. My family moved from Japan to Hawaii to pick sugar cane. They did it because there was just a lack of vertical space to move. In Japan they had very little economic opportunity. So they basically ripped up their entire life and moved to Hawaii. And obviously my life would be very different if they hadn't done that. Maybe I wouldn't exist because my family was from Hiroshima and you know, they could have died in the atomic bomb. So I might not even exist. But in a sense I owe my success for my grandparents generation who had the courage to, you know, get on a ship and come to Hawaii and and start from scratch picking sugar cane. Which I must admit, when I hear about some of my country's immigration policies, and they're saying, yeah, we just want the best and brightest and richest. If they use that standard today, I would still be in Hiroshima or dead. Maybe I'd be working in Starbucks, Hiroshima, but I would not be where I am today. So I think one of the key lessons I learned is you have to change a losing game. The second thing that changed the arc of my life is my parents had an obsession with education. Now, contrary to Asian American stereotypes, I don't want you to think that my parents had me enrolled in violin at the age of two, studying calculus at the age of three, starting a foundation at the age of five. But they definitely thought that education was the key. My father and mother never went to college. My father and mother both graduated from high school, but really went no further. So I show you this. This is a picture of my elementary school in Honolulu, Hawaii. It's Kalihi Elementary. For those of you who are familiar with Hawaii, Kalihi is a little bit past the airport on the way to Waikiki. It is hardly what you would call an upper class area. There's a lot of diversity here. Hawaiians, Filipinos, Samoans, Japanese, some white people called haoles a few of those. But mostly it was lower middle income. And at this school, there was a sixth grade teacher named Trudy Akao. And Trudy Akao took my parents aside one day and said, you know what? Guy is too intelligent. He has too much potential. You need to get him out of the public school system and get him into a more challenging private school system. Because in Hawaii, the private schools are much better than the public schools. So my parents, and they believe me, they didn't have the money to do this, really. They took me out of this school and they put me into a school called Iolani. For those of you familiar with Hawaii, you know that there are two kind of prep academic schools in Hawaii, Iolani and Punahou. Punahou is the school that Barack Obama went to. Iolani is the school that Guy Kawasaki went to. So tell you a funny story. So last night I was in the cherished 100 people who got to take a picture with Michelle Obama. And so when I went up to her, I said, you know, Michelle, imagine what Barack could have achieved if he had gone to Iolani instead of Punahou. So I tell you, if Trudy Akau had not made my parents put me into this very challenging private school, I would also not be here today. And the lesson there is that education counts. And I think the lesson there is that if you're a teacher, if you're a mentor, if you're an advisor, you read about people like Steve Jobs who dent the universe and change the world and Elon Musk electrifies cars and all these kind of major, major billionaire kind of things. But you know what? One teacher, one coach, one mentor, one advisor can change the world for one student. And that, to me, is as good as anything Steve Jobs has ever done. Get an education. This. This is a man named Harold Keebles. Harold Keebles was my English teacher in my senior year of high school. And Harold Keebles was the toughest teacher that I ever had in my life. Steve Jobs was the toughest boss. Harold Keebles, toughest teacher. And so when we were in English composition, the way he would work is you. You wrote reports, you wrote stories. He looked at your composition. He marked the errors that you made. You got back your composition, you had to write the sentence incorrectly, as you did. You had to write the rule that you broke, lack of serial, comma, split infinitive, passive voice. And then you had to write the sentence correctly again. And this is before word processing, cutting and pasting, all this. This is, you know, writing it out longhand. And so that's a real pain in the ass. And that's how I learned to write, because of Harold Keebles, as you heard. I have now 15 books, and I assure you that Harold Keebles is in heaven, cracking up, because I don't think he would have said, yeah, guy is the student of mine that's going to write 50. There is no freaking way that he would have predicted that. And as further evidence to that rare moment of humility. So when I was writing the book, I had to look for old pictures to put into the book. This picture's in the book. And in going through all this stuff that my parents had saved, I found an English report card. And so my recollection to my children has always been, yeah, you know, unlike you, I didn't have all this social media. I wasn't defocused. I wasn't watching YouTube all day. I wasn't watching, you know, Dexter all night. I was like, I was studious. I was working. I was trying to, you know, be all I could be. Diligent, good, Asian American, right? So I was like, I don't know if I was straight A's, but I was up there. You know, I tied for the scholar for I tied for the Athlete Scholar award in my school, and I won the Scholar Athlete. So I'm telling this whole picture to my kids to set the academic standard for my family. Right, Right. And then I find this. Oops. Oop. It was blocked out, Okay? I found. Believe it or not, I found an English report card, and I had a C minus in that class. And the comment was, guy is doing less than honors work in an honors class next quarter. Guy is showing some elements of diligence and some elements of progress, but not much. And so I had to show that report card, and I'm sorry, I hid the slide. Maybe in a rare act of pride. I was a total C student in English. So there's another lesson there, which is selective memory. I really thought I was an A student in English, but I wasn't. Third thing that I learned is to get motive in any way you can. You know, when you read biographies and memoirs and you listen to the Michelle Obamas, you always think, oh, my God, they have such lofty goals. They're going to end poverty. Greta is going to end climate change. They're going to really dent the universe, change the world. And that's what motivates them. You know that Sandra Bullock show where she's a beauty contestant and every beauty contestant has to make an essay about a personal statement about what's important to her. She talks about peace and weather. I don't know. Whatever this is. What's the name of that movie? Yes, yes, yes. And so you think it's all like that. Right? So let me tell you my story. So this is a picture of a bus stop. This bus stop is in Honolulu, Hawaii. It's at a high school called Kaimuki. Kaimuki is in a lower economic area of Hawaii. Iolani is across the street from Kaimuki. But this is the bus stop that I had to catch a bus to go home. So one day, some big Samoan kid robbed me at this bus stop, okay? And I was a very traumatic. I mean, I wasn't. He didn't, like, stick a gun at me or knife me or anything, but he just. His mere physical presence threatened me, and I had to give him all the money I had. And that so traumatized me, but in a sense, it motivated me because that day I said, you know, Guy, you are going to study hard, you're going to work hard, you are never going to live in a place where you're going to get hijacked again. Nothing about ending poverty, climate change, raising the level of literacy. I just didn't want to live where I would get hijacked. Fast forward a few years. I'm at Stanford. That's a whole other story. I don't know how I got into Stanford. I mean, I am so old. I am so old that when I applied to Stanford, being Japanese American, I was considered an oppressed minority. That's right. Wrap your mind around that. They had to admit me because I was impoverished and because the opportunities were not equal for Asian Americans back then. Anyway, so I'm at Stanford, and luck has it, I get paired with a guy named Mike Boich, and you'll see his picture again. Mike Boich comes from a very wealthy coal mining family who lived in Phoenix, Arizona. So you know how in college, Thanksgiving or some holiday, you go home with your roommate, you know, because Hawaii was too far. So I go home with him to Phoenix and we go to his house, and his house backyard is the golf course of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. And like, my head is exploding. This guy lives on a country club, and then his father drives a Rolls Royce. That night we go to dinner at the Arizona Biltmore, and his mom says, I'm tired, guy. Will you drive me home in my Ferrari? My head is further exploding. I mean, this is like Miami Vice. I'm going to drive a Ferrari. So I drove this Ferrari for one block home. And I'll tell you something that changed my life because I said, someday I am going to buy a Porsche or a Ferrari or Mercedes Benz. So I'm telling you all these stories not just to be transparent about what a simplistic, shallow person I am, but I'm telling you, you know what? It didn't matter that I didn't want to get hijacked and I wanted to buy a Ferrari. And that's what motivated me. It's not what motivates you, it's what you do with that motivation. Next thing is a great story about motivation, which is one day I'm in Menlo park, and at this point, it's about 20 years ago, I had a 911 Porsche, okay? So I'm in my Porsche. And you know, if you're driving a Porsche, you're a smug son of a. Right? So I'm in this Porsche, and I'm at this stoplight, and I look over to my left and there's a car with four teenage girls. And they're giggling and they're smiling and they're making eye contact with me. And I think, God, you have truly arrived. You know, maybe not Justin Bieber. Level. But even teenage girls know who you are. It's because of your writing, your speaking work at Apple, Startup Maven, all this kind of stuff, right?.com guy. So the girl in the front seat goes like this. Roll down your window. Clearly not a Porsche owner. You don't roll down a Porsche window. You push a button. But anyway, so I push my button, the window goes down, she sticks out her head, and she says, are you Jackie? So now that's a good story. You know, that's a story about humility. But I'll tell you something. Since that day, again, motivation. Insipid, shallow, but powerful nonetheless. Since that day, one of my goals in life is that someday in Hong Kong, when they're not rioting, Jackie Chan is in his Bentley, or hopefully a Mercedes S Class. And he's at a parking. He stopped at a light, looks over four teenage girls making eye contact, smiling, all that. And Jackie Chan says, of course he recognized me. I'm Jackie Chan. Girl in the front seat, roll down your Bentley window. Puts down his window, sticks out her head and says, are you Guy Kawasaki? That's my goal in life. Now, I give you this picture just so you can see the similarity or lack of. Now, you might think, oh, yeah, guy, you hang out with Michelle Obama, you hang out with Jackie Chan, you hang out with Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, all that. Well, let me tell you something. I've never met Jackie Chan. So I was in the Beijing Wax Museum. This is as close as I've gotten to Jackie Chan. The next thing talking about motivation going on is I learned a very valuable lesson, which is lots of people have this sense of pride that, you know, I have to get in on my merit. I have to get in by earning it. I can't get in because your father, your mother, connections, luck, whatever. I have to get in and earn it. My observation is you just get in any way you can. It doesn't matter how you get in. What matters is what. What you do once you get in. So, for example, this is the Macintosh Division, 1984 in front of the Macintosh division building. I'm in the upper left hand corner. You can barely see me. So stupid. You know, if I had known app would be so successful, I would have stood in the front of this picture, much less quit. So this is the merry band of Macintosh division employees, the smartest people I've ever worked with. It was just a great, great time. I mean, I wish all of you, once in your life, have an opportunity to work in the Macintosh division of your Life and to work for someone like Steve Jobs. Now, lots has been said about Steve Jobs, all of it true. The movies, the books, the articles, everything you've heard about him is true. Very difficult to work for. He just like, he wouldn't hesitate to rip you in front of all your colleagues. He would say, you know, why is this person still working for Apple who hired him? Why is he still working at Apple? And this is in front of all your peers? And I saw him do that a couple times. It scared the shit out of me. And I said, you know what? That is never going to happen to me. I am not going to be the guy that Steve Jobs says, why is Guy working at this company? And so you have all these HR theories about meeting with your employees, developing mutually acceptable goals, focusing on the positive, all that kind of stuff. Steve Jobs did none of that. Steve Jobs ruled by fear. And I'll tell you something. Contrary to every theory of motivation you have ever heard, including at this conference, fear works. It drove me to do some of the best work of my life. Now, everybody wants a Steve Jobs story. So I'll give you my Steve Jobs story. One day I'm in my cubicle working, and here comes Steve Jobs. He comes with somebody I've never met. He says, guy, what do you think of this company called Eduware? Excuse me, not Eduware, Nowhere. And I said, well, you know, first of all, nowhere was an educational software company. Nowhere was truncation of knowledge software. So I said, well, Steve, you know, it's kind of a mediocre company. Its product is mediocre. Drilling, practice, arithmetic. Two plus two equals four. Doesn't really take advantage of our graphics sound anything like that. Mediocre product. Mediocre company. Not strategic for us, Steve. And you know what Steve did next? He said, I want you to meet the CEO. Yeah, welcome to my life. That's what it was like working for Steve. This next picture shows the guy on the left is Mike Boich. Mike Boich was the first software evangelist. So there was. Jesus, Mike Boich, Guy. That was the order. Okay, so Mike Boich was my classmate at Stanford. His mother is the one with the Ferrari Daytona. So the way I got my job at Apple, God's honest truth, I was Mike Boich's roommate in college. I had a psych major from Stanford because that was the easiest major at Stanford at the time. I went to law school for two weeks after Stanford. And I quit law school because I couldn't handle it. They were just trying to tell me that I was crap. And we're going to remake your mind. And my fragile ego at the time could not stand that, so I wimped out. And quite. Although the way I look at it now, with hindsight is many people practice law for 20 years and figure out they're miserable. I figured that out in two weeks. So I'm telling you that the only reason why I got into Apple was not my educational background, not my work experience. It was nepotism. Nepotism is a good thing. It didn't matter that I got in because I was Mike Boich's roommate. What mattered was what I did once I got in. So this plays both ways. It doesn't matter why you got in if you have connections, if you have an educational degree. And it can work in the sense that, yes, he got in because he's Boich's friend, but he's doing well. But it can also work the other way in the sense that, my God, he has a PhD from MIT. He worked for Hewlett Packard or National Semiconductor or Intel. Got the perfect background, education and work experience, but he's incompetent. So just because you have a perfect background and you get in and you're incompetent, you're going to fail. You may have an imperfect background, and all you got in was because of nepotism. And if you work hard and succeed, it also doesn't matter why you got in. Don't worry about why you got in. Number five. Number five is my thought that as you get older in life, you finally figured out, don't look for problems where they don't exist. Plenty of problems are going to hit you in the face. They're going to be inevitable. But don't go looking for more, because you're going to get enough coming right at you. So this is. By the way, this light is blinking. I guess I'm over time already. But a. What are they gonna do? You know, Seriously, right? Are they not gonna invite me back next year? Yeah. So. So this is me standing in front of a house that we owned in San Francisco. It's on Union Street. If you're familiar with San Francisco, it's one block from the Presidio. So let's just say it's a nice part of San Francisco. So one day I was at this bougainvillea bush pruning it, okay? And this old white woman comes up to me and says, do you do lawns? And I said to her, so I'm Japanese, so you think I'm the Yardman, right? She goes, no, no, no. You just do such a great job cutting the bougainvillea, I want to know if you do lawns. So right there, there's a lesson. Racial profiling. Don't make any assumptions, right? But wait, it gets better. Two weeks later, my father comes and visits me. I'm Sanse. He's Nisei, second generation, third generation. So, you know, I figure I tell him this story. I fully expected him to just go off on this situation. Like, how dare this white woman ask my son if he's the yardman. He went to Stanford, has an MBA from ucla. He worked for Steve Jobs. He's written five books. She thinks you're the yardman. That's what I thought he would say. That's not what he said. He said, son, on Union street near the Presidio, a Japanese man cutting the hedge. Most likely you were the yardman, so get over it. Holy cow, he's telling me, don't look for problems where they don't exist. Don't be a victim. Take the high road. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Use humor, not anger. It's a huge lesson in my life. Number six. Number six is if there's anything that I would attribute for my success, it's not that I'm smart or visionary or anything like that. Two things. I'm lucky and I'm willing to work. I love to grind it out. I love there are people who are smarter than me. There are people who can work harder than me. There are not too many people who can work harder and be smarter than me. I love to grind it out. This is a sweater given to the Macintosh division. This sweater says 90 hours a week and loving it. We were working 90 hours a week and loving it. It was just the best time. 90 hours a week and loving it. Number seven. Number seven is my hindsight, my wisdom, that you have got to remember your friends. Because as you're on the way up, man, you're going to see them again on the way down. Be nice to people, remember your friends. And here's the story. So this is a picture of Marc Benioff. He's the mogul of Salesforce, right? So I know none of this will get out beyond this haul, but I'm going to tell you two good stories about Marc Vanioff. So I gave Marc Benioff his first job in his career. He was a freshman at usc. We gave him a summer internship in the Macintosh division writing assembly language programs, for example, programs so that external developers could learn how to use the Macintosh assembler. And at the time, and he still is, he's a big, shall I say full bodied white guy. And so we used to call him because he came from a very rich part of Northern California called Hillsboro, right near the airport. So behind his back, his nickname was the Hillsboro Doughboy, just like the Pillsbury Doughboy. So basically the Hillsboro Doughboy has turned into the man of salesforce.com now you're wondering, what the hell does this have to do. Do it. Remember your friends. Okay, so about five years ago, Mike Boich's son graduates from college. Mike Boich calls me and says, you know, my son wants an interview at Salesforce. Do you think you can reach out to Marc Benioff, who was your intern when you worked for me? I said, of course, Mike. So I reach out to Marc Benioff and I swear, within two hours, Mike Boich's son had an interview. Fast forward another two years. My older son graduates. He too wants to work for Salesforce. I send an email to Mark Benioff. This time in one hour, the VP of HR was in on the whole deal, interviewing, getting this all set up for my sum. Marc Benioff, billionaire, super powerful guy in enterprise software, remembered that I gave him a job when he was a freshman at usc. Truly, he didn't. I was just stunned that he would remember his friends. It's a great story about the class of Marc Benioff. Next thing is touch gold. Touch gold means this. So lots of people from the outside looking in may think that, you know, God, you have the golden touch. You're the evangelist. Whatever you touch turns to gold. If you only knew, I'm about 2 for 10. But anyway, so it is absolutely not true that guy has a golden touch. But what I like to call Guy's golden touch is not that whatever I touch turns to gold. Guy's golden touch is whatever is gold guy touches. So this is a picture of the day that I met the co founders of Canva. The way this happened was that someone who worked for me as my social media assistant was using Canva to create Twitter graphics. Canva noticed that I was using Twitter graphics. The person in the middle, Cliff, sent a tweet to me saying, we notice you're using Canva. We're coming to the United States. We'd like to get together. Frankly, I didn't know who the hell he was and I didn't even know I was using Canva. So I reached out to my social media assistant. I said, Is this the company you use to make our Twitter graphics? She said, yes. I said, do you like it? She said, yes. I said, do you think I should help them? She said, yes. And so I met and the rest is history. Now I'm the chief evangelist of Canva. We sign up tens of thousands of people every day. We're Australia's second unicorn. Right now, life is good. But I'll tell you something I wish I could tell you that I made Canva successful. It's not true. Canva, like Macintosh, was just a great product. And it's very easy to evangelize something great. It's very hard to evangelize crap. So, duh ism that this is. If you want to be successful in life, find or create something great, because trying to be great with crap is too hard. Touch gold number nine is my recommendation that you continue to learn. I think many people think that learning ends when you graduate. You get out of the University of Toronto, you get out of the University of Calgary, you get out of, you know, whatever, and then, boom, that's it. You learned everything you need to know. Bada bing, bada bang, off you go. Not true. What I've learned is that truly learning may establish start after you get out of formal education, but certainly it does not end when you get out of formal education. And the example that I like to use is the opposite of education. It's sports. So this is a picture of me at 48. I decided to take up ice hockey, which is 44 years too late. And I just fell in love with ice hockey from the moment I first stepped on the ice. I loved ice hockey. So about 15 years, I loved ice hockey. I played three or four times. Sometimes I came to Toronto and people found out that I love hockey, so they set up a pickup game at Ryerson. And, you know, there was this guy named Eric Lindros or something like that. He was on the same line with me, and for one hour, he fed me passes and I. And I could not score. But anyway, so then what happened was my sons took up hockey, and my wife told me, you know, I don't want you to be like a typical Silicon Valley guy. I don't want you to be on the sideline with your BlackBerry every once in a while, looking up at the game. But fundamentally, you're on your BlackBerry. I want you involved with our children's lives, so I want you to take up hockey, too. I always listened to my wife, so I took up hockey, too, and I loved it. Okay, so fast forward now it's five years ago, and my daughter takes up surfing. I said, well, jeez, I don't want to traumatize her. So, like, she's. I don't want her to think, oh, so, dad, you took up hockey for your sons, you took up nothing for me. I'm taking up surfing. So I took up surfing. And I just love surfing. I gave up hockey for surfing. So this is a picture showing that, you know, when you start surfing at 61, it's a little too late. This is the outcome of learning. Shall I say, this is not what it should look like. And so the lesson here, there's two lessons. One is not that many people would take up hockey at 48 or learn to surf at 61. I'm telling you, it can be done. It is about learning, continuing to learn. Second lesson is that I think many people think that in your life, what happens is, if you're a hockey player, you get your kids to play hockey. If you're a surfer, you get their kids to surf. If you are an engineer, you make your kids into nerds. If you're a photographer, you get your kids to take photography. If you're an opera singer, you make them sing. I didn't do that. What I did is whatever my kids liked, I took up. This is a lot easier because if I forced them to take up something I liked, it would constantly be leaning on them to like it and to do it. But I took up what they liked, and it's much, much easier. That said, I did draw the line with one son because one son took up wing suiting. And that is something I was not willing to do because I want to look good at my funeral. So two lessons from continuing to learn. This is one of the pictures that warms my heart the most. This is my daughter and myself surfing in Hawaii. And I can tell you probably not a lot of you surf in Toronto, but it is a beautiful, beautiful sport. It is the most absorbing physically and mentally sport. Second is hockey. But second, surfing, I think, is harder than hockey. So I encourage you to start surfing before you're 61. The tenth thing. The tenth thing is that in life I figured out that you just have to do what it takes. You have to do what it takes. It's not going to be easy. It's not going to be pleasant. You just have to gut it out. This is a picture that was alluded to earlier. So the scenario here is that I'm in Moscow. I'm speaking at the same conference as Richard Branson. I'm sitting in the speaker ready room. Richard Branson comes up to me and he says, guy, do you fly on Virgin? I said, well Richard, I'm United Airlines, global service. I don't even know how I got to be global service. So I don't want to jeopardize global service. I take every flight I can on United States. And when I said that, he got down on his knees and he started polishing my shoes. This is the moment I started flying Virgin. So Richard Branson, billionaire knight, got down on his knees. I never saw Steve Jobs get down on his knees. Except for that first picture you saw. That's the only known instance of Steve Jobs ever getting on his knees. Richard Branson, by the way, I did not fly United here. I flew Air Canada. And my God, Air Canada 787 Dreamliner. That is a nice plane, man. That is like the Emirates of North America. That is a really nice plane. So Air Canada, if you're out there, congratulations. That is a great airplane. I have to explain one more thing because I know, you know, you're wondering what the hell guy, like, why are you so incompetent with photography? So this, this picture is not. Because I'm the last speaker on the last day and your eyes are not focusing. This picture is out of focus. So the question is, guy, you are such a loser. Why do you have such an out of focus picture? You don't get Richard Branson to shine your shoes every day. You should have had an in focus picture. Well, the true story is that I had my camera with me and then there goes Richard Branson on his knees polishing my shoes. So I hand my camera to someone standing there saying, take this picture. I need to record this historic moment when I convert to Virgin. And the focus was set to manual. And so that's why it's out of focus. And what can I say? I'm an incompetent photographer. So the lesson is, do what it takes. Get down on your knees if you have to. The 11th thing as a bonus for you, this is not about politics or drugs. Although Canada certainly has the get high part. I hope you don't get to the right part, but I think that the next slide can explain all of life. Really? Really. Marketing, innovation, product development, Life. Really Life. So it's a two by two matrix. Two by two matrix. In case no one has taught you this, you always want to be in the upper right hand corner. Always define the axes so that you're in the upper right hand corner. Okay, that's how you cheat on a two by two matrix. So in the bottom right hand we have something where you, your product, your service, it's something that's valuable but it's not unique. So if you have something that's valuable but not unique, you always have to compete on dollars, on price. Michael Dell makes a lot of money there. He adds the same. Ah, God, it hurts me to say this, but you know, he has added windows to the same hardware. It's a valuable computer, but it's not unique because you can get a Dell, a Lenovo or an hp, you know, whatever. There's lots of ways you can buy a clone. So when you have a clone, when you have something valuable but not unique, you always have to compete on price. In the upper left hand corner, that's where you have something truly unique, but it is not valuable, right? So in this corner you own a market that doesn't exist. In that corner you are just plain stupid. In the bottom left corner, you're stupid and it's crowded where you're stupid. So in the bottom left corner, I like to say that's where dog food online was in America about 15 years ago. Pets.com you buy dog food online, right? So why was pets.com not valuable? It wasn't valuable because, yes, you could discount dog food by not having a retailer, but then you had to add shipping and handling, so it wasn't really that much cheaper. You discount the price you add in shipping and handling. And it also wasn't valuable because now someone had to be at home when the dead cow in the can came to your house, right? Otherwise you get this little yellow tag that says, we tried to drop off the dead cow in the can today. No one was home. We're going to try to drop off the dead cow in a can tomorrow. And if you're not home tomorrow, then we're going to take the dead cow in the can and send it back to the factory. So you've got to be home now to receive the dead cow in the can. Not convenient, not cheap. It also, it wasn't unique and let me tell you why this is a very valuable lesson for any entrepreneurs out there. So the pitch for pets.com and you never ever should use a pitch like this in your presentations. 300 million Americans, one in four owns a dog. 75 million dogs. Each dog eats two cans of dog food per day. 150 million cans of dog food sold per day. Total addressable market, 150 million. And dogs and dog food is a very Attractive market because dogs eat every day. It's not a boring B2B business where you don't do business on Saturday and Sunday. This is B to C, or more accurately, B to D. Every day, dogs eat. So with my rock star, co founder, programmer that I met one day at my frat or at my sorority who says he or she knows Python, how hard could it be to get a 1% market share? 1% of 150 million cans per day is 1 1/2 million. 1 1/2 million times 365, conservatively speaking. We're talking 6,700 million cans of dog food per day. Total market domination called Goldman Sachs let us go public. Hallelujah. So that's why there was pets.com, mypets.com, epets.com, lastminutepets.com, safewaypets.com, discountpets.com there was rogerspets.com there was like 16 ways to buy dog food online. Have to be at home when the dead cow in the can came. Not valuable, not unique. I'm telling you all of this so that you avoid those three corners and you get into the upper right hand corner. Get high and to the right. Think of Donald Trump on marijuana. Get high and to the right. Getting high and to the right means that you are unique and valuable. Think of the first iPod. IPod was unique and valuable. It was the only way you could get music inexpensively, easily, legally, on a device that had an interface that a mere mortal could operate. Back then. IPod was unique and valuable. That's the key. Whether it is your product, your service, or yourself. Think of yourself as a product. Am I unique and valuable? Do I offer Salesforce a unique and valuable employee? Accenture Rogers, Air Canada. Am I a unique? Did I mention all the sponsors? Am I good or what? Yeah. So do I offer something to those companies that is unique and valuable? Do I offer to my spouse something that is unique and valuable? Do I offer to my children something that is unique and value? Or all of life, I think, boils down to being unique and valuable for your market. Thank you for being our northern neighbor. Thank you for years of support and trade. Not everybody in America thinks you're the enemy. Thinks that you're evil. Thinks that you're taking jobs. I don't know. Think that you're sending down marijuana. I appreciate what you've done. I love hockey. I love the Canadian people. I love Tim Hortons. Oh, my God, I love Tim Hortons. I love maple syrup. I love maple syrup. I love donuts. I love maple syrup and donuts together. That's even better. It's so nice to be here. My best friend in Canada is Amber McArthur, and she's a great Toronto influencer. So I hope you make your custom T shirt, and I hope that. That you gained some wisdom from this keynote, and it empowers you, it inspires you, and it helps you change the world. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.