Guy Kawasaki - How To Be An Evangelist As A Career

Evangelist comes from a word meaning bringing the good news. So I brought the good news of Macintosh making people more creative and productive. I am bringing the good news of Canva. How it will make everybody a better communicator because they can create great graphics. That's what an evangelist does. Now, a salesperson is primarily concerned with his or her income quota and bonus. But an evangelist is concerned also with the well being of the customer, the opposite person. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up everybody? You're listening to the Hustler podcast with your boys Mount Wolf and Joe Fear.

What's up? What's up? All right, we have Guy Kawasaki on the episode today. This is super special, super fun. He's an amazing guy. You're gonna love him. His stories are amazing, his perspectives are unique and the guy has just a colorful background, interesting, everything. I think you're gonna just really love it. If you don't know Guy, you're gonna get to know him quickly. He's authored 15 books, all the way from a very popular book called Art of the Start and a whole bunch of other books I actually really like. Enchantment was one of my favorite. His latest book is Wise Guy. He was actually the original evangelist. He's the one that popularized it in kind of the business culture. He worked for Apple and right along with Steve Jobs. So that's probably where you might have heard of him. Now he's working with companies like can and a whole bunch of others. He's just an amazing guy. You're going to fall in love with him, I think in this episode and get ready to kind of switch your perspectives of a lot of things. He really has that unique look on things. So you're definitely going to want to get the action guides of this episode. We're taking them as always for you. Just hop on over to flowchartgroup.com that's going to ask you a couple questions. It's actually giving you entry into our Facebook community. But at the same time it's bit a little long as you plug in your email address. Within two weeks of this episode going live, you will get the action guide of this episode. So just head over to flowchartgroup.com you're going to get the Guy Action Guide. And you know what? That's all I got for you right now. So let's go chat with Guy Kawasaki. And we're rolling. Guy, thank you very much for being here with us today.

My pleasure and honor and privilege.

I mean, I mean, Lisa Byer, I gotta give A shout out to her. She's a mutual friend of ours and she hooked us up with the connection to you and she's like, you're gonna love Guy. Everyone in the community is gonna love him as well. So have a chat.

And here we are.

That's right, here we are.

Yeah, I think. I think I saw you speak at Blog World Expo, which I don't even know if that's a thing anymore, but back in. Had to have been around 2011. Ish.

Maybe in LA.

And ever since I saw you speak, it was around the time I think you did the. I think you had a book called Ape or Ape.

Yeah.

And I think it was around the time that that book came out. And ever since we saw that presentation, I'm like, man, I want to get him on the podcast one day and interview him. So this is here we are, a full circle moment for us.

You sure waited long enough.

I know, right? We just found the right people, we.

Asked the right questions.

But yeah, I mean, you just have such a fascinating history and to, you know, you are not a guy where I'm like, tell us your story. Because it's going to probably take a while, so let's not do that. But have you perfected the 32nd, like, hey, if no one has ever heard of Guy, how would you present yourself?

Oh, man, if I can't do an elevator picture myself, who the hell can, right? So, okay, so you start in the clock. How long?

Oh, I'm grilling. Yeah, I'm looking at it.

Okay, so my name is Guy Kawasaki. I'm chief evangelist of Canva. It's an online graphic design.

Blah.

It's an online graphic design service from Sydney, Australia. I'm also creating the Remarkable People podcast. I used to be chief evangelist of Apple and I was on the board of trustees of Wikipedia. I'm also the author of 15 books.

That's amazing. And the Chief evangelist, the evangelist term. I know, that's the constant that has basically translated in everything you've done and you basically coined that term.

Well, there was Jesus before me, don't forget.

Good point. He was pretty big.

There was a 2000 year gap.

Somehow you took the reign, the title.

And ran with it.

I love it.

It was a tough act to follow.

I mean, you're writing a lot of books, so you got that check mark of it too.

Yeah, yeah. The Gospel According to Guy.

A wise guy, right?

Book one. Yeah.

Well, speaking of that, are you working on others? Because you have 15 books. Last one was 2019, I think.

14 times I've said, I'm never writing another book, right? So I don't know how the hell I wrote 15 books.

If you had told me, if you had told me in 1987 when I did my first book, you're going to write 14 more, I would have told you you're nuts. But I, I, I don't think I'm going to write another one because I like podcasting so much and I like podcasting more.

Tell me about that, because that is one of our questions of remarkable people.

Well, so I think that podcast, first of all, it's much more timely. So if something happens last week, you know, next week's podcast can address that, as opposed to the year and a half delay on a book. And with a book, you get one advance in three trances. But with a podcast, you can charge every week, sponsor or an advertiser forever. And as your podcast gets more successful, you can charge more. Whereas with a book, you're getting a flat two or three bucks.

Ever. And it just depends on the trajectory of the book. With a podcast, it's much more flexible. We can do many more things. I don't think it's easier to do than a book because the podcast requires, I think, as much editing as a book, at least the way I do a podcast.

Well, what's, I'd be curious because everyone has their own style about podcasting and, you know, we have our own art format. Give us the. What's your, what's your kind of flow prep look like? Yeah, the flow. How do you think of it?

So, you know, today I interviewed somebody. I did two or three hours of research on her. Many times the people I'm interviewing have written a book. So I've, I read the book sometimes I read the previous book. So two books. I probably put in three to five hours of prep for every guest. So did you put five hours of prep into me?

I actually, I would be inching right around that. I, I'm not gonna lie. Really?

Okay.

I have a different approach. I mean, I bounce all over the place. I want to see everything. Like the TED talks. I don't know. You have like 20 of them, it seems.

Y. Yeah, so there's that. So let's say three hours or so for each guest. Then there's the one hour interview, and then we take two soundtracks and the sound engineer puts them together and uploads them to Descript. Do you use Descript? So we upload to Descript, and then I take the first pass edit at Descript, because.

I hate filler words, and I hate when people repeat themselves. So I think my job is to make the person look and sound as remarkable as possible, which can often take out. I've had instances where in one hour, the guest says, you know, 200 times.

Right.

So I take those out, as opposed to other podcasters who just believe in turning it on and letting people hear. Exactly, you know, how it went down. I edit. So I spent a couple of hours hours editing, and then I give it to the sound designer, and then he goes and he spends another four or five hours editing, often undoing my edit because I edit too heavily. And then he adds the sound and the music and all that kind of stuff. So now it's quote, unquote done. And then Peg Fitzpatrick takes over and does the marketing on the day of announcement, which is another five hours. So there's probably 15 hours per hour of finished product.

It's a. It's a masterpiece. I know. Like, right when I hit play for the very first time, I was listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast, which. And you don't get Tim on many other podcasts outside of this. So, yeah, congrats to you on that one. That's amazing. Thank you. It was amazing to also get him out of his mold, you know, So I definitely recommend everyone listen to that one on your show. Thank you. But immediately when I hit play, I was like, this sounds just next level. Like, just the quality of the intro. I forget how it goes now, but it just doesn't sound like a podcast intro. You know, you actually put some thought into it.

Oh, my God.

I.

You know, I write out the intro, I write out the outro.

Listen. The secret to my success in life is grit and hard work. It's not because, you know, it's, I don't know, natural visionary kind of stuff. So, like, my podcast is probably the antithesis of a Joe Rogan Hogan podcast, right?

Sure.

So.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's the other benefits. I mean, it seems like you show up, you know, the way that I know you've heard, you've said this many times, is getting lucky is. Is better than being smart. You know, you kind of lean into that more. Do you think the podcast is part of that? It's almost like showing up in this person's world consistently.

Yeah, it's. You know, you really.

I think it really. It's. It's a skill to figure out what to ask a person. And I kind of believe that I was just born for podcasting because.

I can I can conduct an interesting conversation with almost anybody today. Today I interviewed a plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills. Like, that's not exactly like interviewing Steve Wozniak, you know what I'm saying? So that's a whole different wheelhouse there.

So what's your approach to questioning then? Because I know everyone has a different approach there as well.

Well, my approach to questioning is to just figure out, I don't know how the questions pop into my head. I mean, you know, so I, I'm interviewing a. This is a real unusual case. I'm interviewing a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon and I ask her, you know, like, do you ever turn down cases? Why? And what do you do with people who come in and they have what's called bdd, which is body dysmorphic something? You know, these are people who just kind of addicted to plastic surgery. And, and they think, oh, you know, this, this 2 centimeter lump on my cheek, everybody's staring at it, but really, you know, people don't even notice it. And so I asked those kinds of questions. I, I don't ask typical questions in the sense of, so, you know, what makes you remarkable? Can you tell us, you know, how you became remarkable? What, what do you feel strongly about? What, you know, what makes you feel good? How do you. I don't ask questions that sort of look like, oh, so what he did was he read Wikipedia's entry and then he's asking the same questions of everybody. And in fact, one of the things that now I like to ask as the very first question, I think the very first question is maybe the most important one, is I always try to ask a question so that the guest truly understands. Guy did the research, he really checked it out because he didn't just read the Wikipedia entry. So a few weeks ago, I interviewed Angela Duckworth, the MacArthur Award winner and author of Grit. And the first question I asked her was, is your daughter still taking viola lessons? Because in the book Grit, she talks about how everybody in her family has to do something that's hard, you know, something that requires practice and it's not purely fun. And her thing was viola. And so the first question was about her daughter's viola, which what I'm trying to trigger is I want Angela to say, aha. So, you know, this guy clearly did his research, he read the book, he knew my daughter is taking viola. So that's my secret to starting up an episode.

A subtle little, little mark there. Yeah, I like, I love that. And I feel like, yeah, the momentum before, before for us, like It'll be kind of like the before banter and, and trying, you know, any relatability, we can get going and then almost hit the record.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Within that momentum. Because you're right, it's the beginning. You gotta get the wheels moving, you know, and see where it heads.

Yeah, well, and you figure, you know, many of these people, they've been on podcasts hundreds of times, right. So they're all asked the same question, like, how did it feel to win a MacArthur Award? Well, duh, I mean.

You'Ll never know.

That's during a questioning.

Do you have any thoughts on this new Clubhouse app that everybody. It seems like Silicon Valley is like real up on it and it's sort of an extension of podcasting. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, you know, in a sense it's like podcasting, only in real time with no editing and no stickiness. And so it's kind of podcasting meets, attending a conference, meets a radio talk show.

And probably has the worst of all.

I have jumped on it because I think that for any social media platform, I need to jump on it just in case it takes off. So I don't really know if it will succeed, but if it does succeed, I don't want to be the last one to the party because the longer you wait, the harder it is to get a follow. And also I don't want some asshole to squat on my name. And then I got to go figure out who at Clubhouse do I convince that I am the guy Kawasaki, not this 16 year old kid in, you know, Shanghai who said he is the Kawasaki. So get his ass off of it. So, you know, instead of having that battle, I just grabbed the name right away.

Yeah.

So I think it could succeed, but I also thought that about Ello and Meerkat and Periscope.

Right.

So. And MySpace. So clearly I've been wrong.

Right now.

I think there's a little too much of marketers talking to marketers and wannabes talking to wannabes and has beens talking to wannabes and wannabes talking to has beens. And so, so many of the conversations was, yeah, you know, you gotta believe in yourself. And I believed in myself. And so I started a company called Blow Consulting. And then I wrote a book called the Blowway. And now I have the online Blow seminars, my Instagram profile, there's a link you can click to to get my free offer for the first, first course of my online course of how to blow away people. The Blow Away. And, and it's like. And you know, on Clubhouse. In the first four weeks, I've already done $2 million worth of business. And so I'm going to teach you how to rock Clubhouse too. Just like me. It's like, you know, you're so full of shit. There's nobody who's done $2 million worth of business on Clubhouse.

You can't do it either.

Yeah, you can'. Either.

And yeah, so you're in the same kind of rooms that we've frequented and same exact thoughts on our side too, because there's Silicon Valley rooms, I've noticed, like Naval and Kamal Ravikant were in this one with someone high up in Apple as well, and they were having a panel talking about their perception of Clubhouse and how it's changed now that marketers have entered the room for different, totally different uses of Clubhouse. Yeah, it's interesting.

I think if Clubhouse is going to succeed, it's not because there's get rich quick schemers talking to other get rich schemers. I think it's because it's going to be a lot of different flowers blooming. Like, you know, there'll be one about a Clubhouse club about Indian cooking and one about crocheting and one about yoga and one about hiking in the Bay Area and one about, you know, 65 mustangs or, you know, whatever it is. So I hope that there's kind of an infinite number of small rooms with highly focused topics as opposed to, you know, this is the Millionaires Dinner Club and we have 5,000 listeners here standing by. So tell us, Joe, how did you become so successful with the blow away? And I mean, hit me up.

Yeah, right, right, right. You can only take so much of that bullshit.

It's true. Yeah, I think, I think it's going to go that direction in the way that it's rolling out. It's, it's interesting how they're rolling it out, but yeah, I would hope that it goes all topical in a localized region where it's not massive.

Yeah. And then, you know, I mean, let's face it. So Twitter is working on spaces. You know, Facebook is going to do something. So, you know, you. There's two schools of thought, right? So the pioneer, deeper into it, got the head start. It can take on the established company. The other flip side is Twitter already has, I don't know, 300 million people, and if just 1% of them started using Twitter spaces, they're equal to Clubhouse on day one. So, you know, and so, I mean, I have a million and a half followers on Twitter. Probably half of them are Bots or dead. And, you know, I have, I don't know, 25,000 on clubhouse. Well, might be easier for me to convert my Twitter following to a social audio aspect of Twitter than to start all over on Clubhouse. And I don't know the answer to that question yet.

Almost every time I'm on Clubhouse too, I feel like there's a room going on with a title that says something to the effect of will Clubhouse kill Podcasts?

Right.

There seems to be, like, a lot of people that are worried that people are going to stop listening to podcasts and just sort of tune into conversations on Clubhouse now all the time instead. But, you know, I think you actually described with your podcast the perfect reason why podcasts are never going to die. I think, you know, the production quality and the sort of structure that you can create with podcast. Podcast is going to continue to differentiate. But I'm curious, what are your thoughts? Do you think it's going to impact podcasting?

Well, I mean, honestly, the reason why I'm on Clubhouse is I hope to get more people to listen to my podcast. So Clubhouse is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. You know, the other kind of room that's always there is.

How to monetize Clubhouse. And you know what? There's going to be maybe five people who can monetize Clubhouse. If you think Trixie and Biff and Joe Blow are going to monetize Clubhouse, this I gotta see. I mean, I would be astounded that when you look at someone like, my hero is Marques Brownlee on YouTube.

Right?

And so, I don't know, he's got 30 million followers on YouTube. He has, like, the best tech reviews and unboxings.

Right?

Well, that's 30 million followers. I mean, you know, that's what it takes. 30 million followers would mean you need everybody on clubhouse times 10.

That's true.

You know, this ain't gonna happen too soon. So, you know, if you're Trixie and Biff and Joe and you're worried about monetizing Clubhouse, you're, you're, you're delusional. I mean, it's.

No, it's not to say no one will, but it ain't gonna be that easy.

No, no. And yeah, I wouldn. And I want to put everything in the Clubhouse, but like you said, it's, it's showing up, it's claiming your name. I mean, did you get Guy like you did on Facebook? Because I noticed that when I was stalking you.

Well, I, you know, I just got Guy Kawasaki. As long as. Shit. I'm just happy people don't think I. Real rich dad. Poor dad. That's a start.

I'm sure you get too much of that. Won't even bring that up here, but I mean, to that point, it seems like. Because this is how we've been seeing Clubhouse, and we have seen a spike in our downloads on our podcast because at least we think it's, you know, correlated to that. We can't.

That's great.

I haven't.

Got to be on there, but. No, I guess. Yeah. I don't know.

I should promise people that I know how to make them rich quick if they listen to my podcast.

That's all it takes.

Yeah, I blew it. I freaking blew it.

We don't do that.

Yeah, right.

But it's showing up in the room, and I feel like that's just. I feel like that's your whole career, for the most part, and maybe even before the career is. It's being in the room and somehow finding yourself into that room. I mean, all the way from back to Apple. You know, I'm kind of curious. I kind of want to hear the story there around how you got in there. I mean, I know this story, but I want to share it with the folks here.

Well, yeah, the short story is that I got my job at Apple because of nepotism. It was my college roommate who hired me. So it's not because of my college, you know, perfect educational work experience is because my buddy hired me. And there's a lesson there which is, be nice to people in college, number one. And number two, you know, it really didn't matter how I got into Apple. What mattered is what I did after I got into Apple. Because Steve Jobs wasn't going to keep me around just because my college roommate hired me. He would have fired my ass the next day if I was incompetent. So the lesson is, don't worry about how you get into a company. It's what you do once you get in.

So once you're in, what would your first. You mentioned grit. Another thing I want to bring up is you're always smiling, and I absolutely love it. And I know that's a big piece of it. We'll talk about that in a second. But what would you say is your. What was your first move or multiple moves in the beginning once you got into Apple, knowing you're like, oh, bro.

You'Re asking me to remember what I did in 1983. I can't remember what I did yesterday. I mean, yeah, that's true.

Me too.

You know, I just. Listen, my job was to convince people to write Macintosh software. And I came from a non technical background. So first of all, I had to learn some of the technology. And then it was just trial by fire. I mean, it was hit the road, Jack. So those are good days. And those are good days. I didn't know what I didn't know.

I think that's the best days, huh? Yeah. Get thrown into the mix. Like, good luck.

Amen.

How would you define what an evangelist is? Because when I, when I think of an evangelist, I think of somebody who really loves a product. So they're going to go tell everybody they know about a product. That's kind of evangelist. In my mind.

That's pretty good. I mean, basically, evangelist comes from a word meaning bringing the good news. So I brought the good news of Macintosh making people more creative and productive. I am bringing the good news of Canva, how it will make everybody a better communicator because they can create great graphics. So that's what an evangelist does. Now, a salesperson is primarily concerned with his or her income quota and bonus. But an evangelist is concerned also with the well being of the customer, the opposite person.

It's interesting. Do you think, looking at influencers now. I'm just thinking of those Instagram influencers, the ones that are evangelists or they might call them.

They're not evangelists, they're hired guns.

Thank you.

I mean, listen, I'll take an extreme example, right? Do you think Matthew McConaughey drives a Lincoln?

Seriously doubt it.

If we went to his house, do you think we'd see him driving around in a Lincoln? There's no freaking way.

You think Shaquille o' Neal uses ice and icy cold hot packs or whatever? No, there's no freaking way.

No.

I'm telling you, though, I use a Macintosh. I have, I'm a brand ambassador for peace vans. This is a company that upfits Mercedes mattresses. I really do have one of those. I really use it. I am helping a company called Merge4. I really love their socks. I think they have the best socks. And so, you know, I don't, I don't get involved with stuff that I don't use.

Yeah. So as podcasters, I know Joe and I, one of our big goals as podcasters is to be evangelists, Right. So one of the ways that we do that in our business is through affiliate marketing. You know, we talk about the tools that we love and use in our own business and we tell people about it. We'll get a commission if people buy through our links.

Sure.

You know, what advice would you give people who want to kind of be that career evangelist? Like, the thought of being an evangelist for products sounds really, really good. How does somebody take a career path into evangelizing products?

Well, I mean, this is called Guy's Golden Touch. And Guy's golden touch is not that whatever I touch turns to gold. Guy's golden touch is I touch what's gold.

It's easy to evangelize. Canva and Macintosh. It's hard to evangelize shit. So don't try to evangelize shit. Well, duh. Sounds like a duh is. But you'd be amazed how many people think I'm gonna go evangelize shit. And people are gonna love it. It's not going to work. So I think 90% of evangelism is a great product.

And you use the product too. Because I know in Canva you were a user and didn't they reach out?

They found me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, how much better is that? And it's it. I loved reading and hearing that about you because that's. That is how we approach affiliate marketing. We've been doing it for 10 plus years.

Yeah. I mean, you know, as long as people understand that you're not pimping a product just to get the affiliate fees, it's because you truly do believe in it.

Right.

That's the key.

And people see through it too. I mean, I know our community has reached out to us many times and saying, you're approaching this in a different way than most affiliate marketers. We're in that bucket. I guess most people don't take the evangelist approach.

I can hardly wait till you guys endorse the Lincoln Navigator.

I don't know if Lincoln's on my.

List, but my favorite is when I see basketball players or. Or professional athletes promoting McDonald's or something. It's like, you know, your trainer's gonna kick your ass if they ever catch you eating that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

So to be. I wanna go to the smiling thing. And I know it's. I don't know, from the outside perspective, it just seems so, like, hey, smiling a lot, great. But how have you. I mean, I feel like I tend to do it often. It feels good, but it's because we're sharing, I don't know, good vibes, good feeling. And we're doing. We're having fun.

If you're having fun and you're, you know, you're getting people to make their lives better by picking the right product and stuff. Yeah, well, what is there to be grumpy about? I do think that, you know, people have different dispositions and I just happen to be a glasses half full positive, rising tide floats all boats kind of guy. And you know, I don't know, it's not my fault you're a grump.

Have you always had that outlook? I mean, I know you're from Hawaii, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, like, that's your problem. Eat shit and die, bro.

Not my problem. I'm good. But you're right. No, you're 100% right. Do you think that I mean that I feel like that can get you through all the challenges, the grittiness, like you mentioned getting thrown into the shit, the mix and figuring out your way and it opens doors. I feel like when other people are stonewalled or stone faced.

Yeah, I don't, you know what? Like, I don't, I don't like to do business with grumpy people. But, you know, I'd rather do business with a. Like, I think the first check mark is competence. Second check mark is happy in business anyway because, you know, I don't want to do. Do business with a happy, incompetent person.

That's on the low left of the graph.

Exactly.

Yeah. That's the wrong. That is the wrong part of the graph. Yes.

On that note, let's talk about high and to the right because I know that's something that you've had in your TED talks and you've spoken about quite a bit. Can you explain that for us here?

So this is the famous Guy Kawasaki two by two matrix. The vertical axis measures degree of uniqueness or differentiation. The horizontal axis measures value. So I think the key to life is that you are unique and valuable. If you're unique and not valuable, then you're just plain dumb. You own a market that doesn't exist. Valuable but not unique. You always have to compete on price because people can get the same thing. And if you're not unique and not valuable, then you just totally suck. And you know, it's not even worth discussing. So the corner you want to be is when you are unique and valuable. And that could be as a spouse, as an employee, or as a product. And so when the ipod first came out, it was unique and valuable. It was the only way that you could put a device in your pocket with a user interface that immortal could operate. You could get a wide selection of music legally inexpensively easily. There's no other product that could do that at the time. So it was unique and valuable.

Yeah, yeah. I think the other option at the time was it like a zoom or some. Some real thing.

Diamond Multimedia. Yeah, whatever that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, it's. How would you go about. Like, do you look at. Well, I guess when you're evangelizing companies, would they already. Are you looking at their company and obviously are using them, but to be a marketable type of. Of tool or a software company, do you kind of go through an audit and make sure that.

No, I. First of all, you know, I don't view the lens. My lens is not. Is this a company that I can have a business relationship with as an evangelist? So, you know, I was using. I was using Canva, and they found me. I didn't find them. I found them as a user, but I didn't find them as, you know, let me apply there. So.

The order for me is I fall in love with something and it happens that they need an evangelist or an ambassador or an advisor. Like, for example, do you use Descript?

Yes. Right.

So Descript is something. If they ever asked me, Descript is something I could evangelize. Because I.

True.

I spent hours and hours in Descript every week. And I don't know how I would do podcasting without this script, to tell you the truth. Because if I was in GarageBand and I was trying to, you know, remove every freaking time somebody says or, you know, or.

Right.

My podcast would be different. You would hear all the ums and rights, you know, because I wouldn't take them out. But with the script, it has empowered me to do podcast editing that I could have never done before. So do you have direct contact with them?

We don't, but I bet we could figure out how and maybe.

No, no, no. I have direct. I was just wondering. So. Yeah, because there's some things I would like to change. Like, we're going really deep into the weeds here, but. So do you ever work in the View where the tracks are separated so you can edit one track and not the other?

I have, and I. Okay. I'm just going to be honest. Guy Jacob on our team is a master at Descript. We're like, super surface level. It's been a while. And I know they're layering so many features on there. It seems like weekly, but describe a little bit. Yeah, a little bit.

What?

So one view of Descript. What Descript does is you load up your track. So in this case, there would Be probably three tracks, right. One from each mic. And then.

You load them up, you combine them, and then there's a transcription of all three tracks. And then you edit text. So you can remove text and that would remove the audio. So if you see where I say, you select the and you say, you know, ignore that. Then when you listen to it again, the, um is gone. And so that's a beautiful thing. As opposed to what, you know, trying to look at for that little jag in the sound wave where you're going to eliminate that. So that is a beautiful thing. But there's two views where you hear all three at once and you edit the text. But then there are times where people are laughing over the other person, and that's when you want to go into the separate view where you can see each track. So if you're laughing while I'm talking, we can edit your track to take the laughter out. So you only hear me talking. So that's another view of the audio in Descript. So I was just wondering if you used that view.

I'm sure Jacob is probably nodding aggressively right now or anything because he absolutely loves it. And we used to use addition, Adobe Audition. And yeah, I mean, Matt did most of the editing prior to him, but Descript is a complete game changer.

Oh, yeah.

Have you ever used the type type it out and it basically creates your voice?

I did train it, but I'm such a perfectionist that I haven't seen the use case for that. Right. So if I'm doing the intro or the outro.

I just record it over and over until I like it. As opposed to an engineer types in these words and use synthesize guide. We never do that.

Yeah, I think it's good for filler words or if something got cut out, maybe in zoom or something. Internet connection could be good there.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I wanted to. So this is sort of a fairly dramatic shift, but we did ask some questions of our listeners. And so I wanted to ask.

Fire away.

I want to ask some questions from them. So Rick Friesen, he was asking. So you wrote the Art of the start. Yes. Do you still recommend that people start businesses from scratch, or do you encourage people to buy companies and then sort of pivot it more towards your purpose?

Boy, I'm not exactly an expert in that, but my scenario is always starting a company. Now, people have to understand that I'm talking about a tech company. Right. So, you know, if, if, if you want to be in the dry cleaning business and somebody already has Three dry cleaners. So you want to boot up fast. God bless you. Buy the three dry cleaners. But, you know, in the software business or in the tech business.

You know, why would you want to buy somebody else's piece of shit? I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, I hope you're an entrepreneur who believes that you can do better than this thing you're gonna buy.

Now, as companies reach a certain mass, then, you know, why not grab their install base their technology, their people. But I don't know, it's hard to imagine a scenario where you're going to buy a business before.

It'S almost like.

You want to buy a business where the owners don't want to sell.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. If they're willing to sell it, then they know the skeletons and why they.

Don'T want it anymore. Exactly.

Yeah, totally makes sense.

That's good perspective. It's always go for the motivations of the seller or. But even better, if they're not even willing to sell, somehow get in there. Yeah, to that point, because you've said this before, I wrote the quote down here is, entrepreneurship is a state of mind, not a job title. And I forget exactly where I pulled that from, but it was interesting.

I forget where I said it.

This is the thing. My research is kind of like this big spider web of stuff. So I figured something rings a bell. But.

You'Ve started companies, but you've also been in a position hired on. At Canva, for instance, you interviewed, or at least what we read. No, you did interview the founder of Canva, who's your boss.

For my podcast.

Yes.

Yes, for your podcast. Yeah. I guess speaking of that quote, entrepreneurship is a state of mind, not a job title. Because there's a lot of entrepreneurs listening right here. They might have that state of mind, but they might all think they have to run their own business.

Well, I mean, what I'm trying to get at is that entrepreneurship is an attitude and it's a mindset of the glass is half full. The world can be a better place. I can deal with the negativity and doubt.

I am not a risk lover, but I am not going to let risk paralyze me. And so this is kind of the multi, the mental state of an entrepreneur. Whereas some people think of it as a title and a lot of it is, you know, they're so worried about positioning as a thought leader and, you know, writing white papers and appearing at conferences and, you know, being synonymous with something and positioning themselves as this great CEO and All that, like, just cut the bullshit. I mean, if you just made a great product, everything else falls into place. But if you're trying to position. Do you think Elon Musk or Steve Jobs gets up in the morning saying, huh, Elon, how can I position myself as a thought leader today? Why don't I make a car? Oh, yeah. Good job, Elon. You know, I refuse to believe that Steve Jobs and Elon Musk ever think about how they position themselves as thought leaders, gurus, or visionaries?

Well, I mean, I'd say that's pretty evident with Elon. Just with some of his appearances on Joe Rogan. He wasn't thinking about it too much.

That's the time he's stoned.

Yeah. Twitter post, back and forth. Yeah. Who knows? I guess, speaking of Steve Jobs, you having worked for him and right alongside him, what would he say about the state of, I guess, everything in digital right now?

I don't know. It just seems like there's a lot going on that's different.

I really. I'm a mere mortal. I cannot possibly, possibly understand the Steve Jobs operating system. And I would make the case that anybody who tells you that they understand Steve Jobs and could predict what he would do is full of shit. I mean, it's kind of. If you think the Turing Test is tough, you try to take the Jobs test. I mean, I don't. I would not know. I don't know. For all I know, he would have loved Donald Trump. Who the hell knows?

I don't know.

Why not? Yeah.

Oh, God. Like, you know, the Avocar is such a source of humor for me because, like, I. Obviously, I know what it takes to make a personal. Maybe not obviously, but I do know, you know, kind of what it takes to make a personal computer. And I became a Mercedes Benz brand Ambassador, so I kind of know what it takes to make a car. And I. Like. A car is about a thousand times more difficult than a computer because, you know, when a car fails, people die. And it's not just, you know, hold command, shift pr, and reboot your car. So. And a computer. You know, the best. The worst case of a computer is somebody takes it to a dusty, crowded Starbucks. Right? Well, a car. Rain, sleet, snow, you know. Idiot. I mean, idiot. There's so many. Somebody doesn't put oil in. Somebody puts the wrong kind of oil. Somebody puts diesel in the gas engine. I mean, so many things go wrong, and there's so many more factors, a car than a computer. So Apple's gonna make a. Apple's gonna make a car. This I gotta see.

Well, we all wanna see it, maybe. Yeah.

Well, first of all, Apple's gonna make a car, right? And so I could tell you right now, it's gonna be just the world's greatest car for the first 75 miles, and then you gotta recharge it. Okay? So that's number one. Now, when you use the charger, you can't use the industry standard or the Tesla supercharger. You gotta buy this 2000 DOL that fits on top of the cable that goes into the industry standards because Apple had to create a special cable that nobody else uses for their electricity. In fact, they almost considered making their own kind of electricity, which would have been proprietary, but they decided to use industry standard IEEE Electricity and just change the dongle.

Thank you, Apple, for making it simpler.

I think the most ridiculous thing that we're on Apple computers. I'm actually an Apple fan, but I think the magic mouse that you have to plug into the bottom of the mouse is one of the most ridiculous designs I've ever seen.

To charge it.

Yeah, to charge the mouse.

Well, and then. Okay, so, you know, I mean, seriously. So would you buy a car from a company that gives you only two USB C ports?

Hell no.

So would you buy a car from a company that took out your SD card reader because they decided nobody had a SD card reader? Or would you buy a car that. That, you know, so maybe there's only one port into the car, but then you can buy an optional dongle in case you want to put other things into your car. I mean, I. This. I gotta see.

I.

Let me tell you something. I will not be the first early adopter of an Apple car, trust me, because I know how hard it is to make a car.

Look at Elon. I mean, he's been at it for a while now and. Yeah, yeah, well.

But, you know, Elon supports the argument that one guy can make a car. Now, of course, the windows fly off.

All the time and, you know, they break sometimes.

Yeah, minor details. Yeah, but I mean, still, he. You know, Mercedes Benz is out at 200 years old or something, and Tesla is 20 years old or 10 years old.

Right.

So it can be done, but. Oh, man, I just.

Yeah, I'm not gonna be the first. I'm not buying Apple Car 1.0, I guarantee you that.

I think it's probably a smart.

To the point about the whole command shift. Whatever. I remember the Tesla. I had a Tesla for a little bit, and when nothing was working, I had to Think of it like a computer. And it really was. Hold down a couple of buttons and remember this.

You have to reboot.

It was a reboot. And I was like, oh, it's a computer more than a car. Wow. This is a total paradigm shift.

The very first time we ever got in it, we couldn't get the radio to work. And the way to get the radio to work was turn everything off and then turn it back on again. Like, just like a computer.

That sounds familiar, right? So maybe somebody who worked for Microsoft designed that part.

Probably.

Probably.

Oh, my God. All right, let's wrap this up so you can get out of here.

What's exciting? I mean, you have. What are some interesting things. So remarkable. I think it's a newer product you're evangelizing on your podcast. It looks really cool.

Oh, the tablet. The tablet, yeah. So this is. You know, people think I have freaking genius because I have the Remarkable People podcast sponsored by the Remarkable Tablet. But I'm going to tell you, it's just pure accident. I came up with the name Remarkable People, and then months, months later figured out, oh, there's a tablet. What a great person for a sponsorship. And then luckily, the Remarkable Tablet is so well done. And, you know, I use it. I use it all the time. And what my use case is.

I draft my podcast questions using Google Docs, because sometimes I let other people into it and edit, and then I print it to PDF, then I put it on my Remarkable. And so during a podcast, I'm actually taking notes on my Remarkable during the podcast for two reasons. One is I'm worried about the clacking noise of Apple's keyboard. Right. So I don't want the. The keyboard noise in it. And secondly, I think when people see you using a tablet and writing.

It'S a positive. You know, they think, oh, my God, Guy must think I'm smart. He's taking notes.

Right.

Whereas if they see you typing, they're thinking, oh, guy is answering email while I answer. Which is not a good thing.

Yeah.

So I think improves the attention of your guests if they see that you're taking notes with a pencil like, device, as opposed to pounding away on your keyboard, answering your wife or answering your son or, you know, ordering Instacart.

There you go.

Yeah, but, yeah, maybe we should upgrade our. Because we do the same thing, taking notes and having. I mean, we do physical paper, but remarkable is. Well, my.

You know, my problem with physical paper is that at any given point, I have, like, four legal tablets. And, you know, these leather Bound things, and they're all scattered. Scattered around, different. And I don't know where I. I don't know what I wrote in what. And so with the remarkable, the beauty is it syncs to the cloud. So even if the tablet is stolen or lost or destroyed, I still have it in the cloud. And it also, it can take your writing and OCR it. I've never done that because I don't need to get digital. I start digital and then I go analog, taking notes on the questions. And then once that I'm done with that, I'm done with that. I don't, you know, retranslate the notes. So that's my use case for the. For remarkable.

I love that use case. Thanks for sharing that, because I think that just solved some things in my mind because I'm like you. I'm like notepads everywhere. I love writing things down. But where is that thing?

Where'd that go?

Yeah. All right, Guy. Okay, thank you very much, everyone. Listen to Remarkable People podcast and pick up the one one of 15 books that guy has out there. We'll link everything in the show Notes. I appreciate you, man. Thank you. Thank you.

Take care. Good luck to you all. Bye Bye.

That was Guy Kawasaki, not to be confused with Robert Kiyosaki.

Why would that be a case?

Well, because he mentioned I did not write rich dad, poor dad. And we got to talking about it. We're like, I bet that actually happens a lot.

Oh, yeah. Well, there's a story that I've heard him talk about as well. He was driving down the street, I think, in Beverly Hills a long time ago, and he got stopped by a car full of young girls that were, like, hooting and hollering at him. He was like, I made it. And they all thought he was Jackie Chan.

Oh, man.

So, yeah, that one's a lot worse.

Because I don't think he looks like Jackie Chan. And his name doesn't sound like Jackie Chan.

It was a visual thing.

But Kiyosaki and Kawasaki sound very familiar.

Yeah, but that. I mean, I like Guy's approach so much. He's just having fun with this thing.

Yeah, well, getting to have a conversation with Guy, I think is sort of like a borderline bucket list moment for me. Cause he's somebody that I do remember following over a decade ago.

Yeah, no, I remember. I think the first book I read of his was Enchantment. It was always thought that was like, the coolest looking cover, too. It's like red with this butterfly origami. Thing?

Yeah, it's like origami.

Yeah. And I revisited that the other day and I was like, damn, this is a good book. I think my brain would take it in in a different way now. That was like 10 years ago or something.

Well, his book Ape A P E. I think it stood for author, publisher.

Yeah, it was something like that.

Entrepreneur, maybe. I don't remember what the E stood for, but it's something like that. And I remember I went to Blog World Expo and he was speaking at it, and it was around the time the book came out. So his talk was all about how to put out a book and how to quickly self publish a book. And I watched the presentation, I bought the book, I read the book, and then I wrote WordPress revealed a few months later.

That's right.

So he inspired you to write a book then?

Yeah, well, I think. I think before hearing Guy Kawasaki speak, I thought the process of putting out a book was just this. You put your head down and you just hammer away at the keyboard every day of your life for three years and eventually end up with a book. And it just sounded like this insane process that I thought, man, why would anybody ever write a book? It just seemed so hard. And when he explained some of his processes, there were some shortcuts and stuff in there to sort of quickly get a book out quicker.

What was the thing that was like, oh, okay, that's totally different?

Well, I think for the most part, I think it was almost like the permission to just go self publish.

Right.

It was sort of early on for kdp, Kindle Direct Publishing and all that kind of stuff. And he was kind of one of the first people evangelizing the concept of self publishing your book instead of going through a traditional publisher.

Got it.

And so hearing him talk about, like, yeah, I put my book together in Microsoft Word and I hired an editor to go. Go find typos and organize some things. And I had a book and I self published it. Just hearing him talk about that made me think, okay, this isn't as complex of a concept as I thought. And so what I did with WordPress revealed was I made this book that was sort of a combination of content I'd written on my blog.

Transcripts from interviews that I'd done. And then, then I went and I put out a survey that said, what's your number one question around WordPress? I got 100 people to send me their biggest questions around WordPress. I organized them into a logical order, and I literally wrote the book by just answering the Questions one by one. Once I had all 100 of these questions answered and sort of in a logical order, I added some transcripts from some interviews. I added some of my blog posts in it. And I had a book about WordPress.

Bingo. And you, I mean, you sold the shit out of that book. I remember that. Yeah.

It was the number. When it launched, it was the number two best selling book in the business category. The number one book at the time was Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday.

I didn't manage to knock off.

I didn't manage to pass him a.

Little WordPress book in that book. Yeah, that's wild, man. That's cool. I didn't know about that part. Well, Guy was the guy. He was the guy. Was the guy to write a book.

Book.

Yeah.

Definitely a big catalyst.

Yeah, man. I mean, I. Well, speaking of this interview, the whole podcasting thing, I thought that was interesting.

I did not know we were going to go that direction with the show either. But he seemed to really, really light up around the topic of podcasting. So I'm like, we're, we just launched Pod hacker. Let's go this route.

Oh my God. I mean, we'll probably include some video or, or cuts at least from this, you know, I mean, shoot, there's. That's what I love about podcasting. And you could tell he has a whole different way of looking at it than us. I mean, we are not the edit all the ums and us and you knows and all that stuff out because Lord knows we're freaking riddled with them in our own ways. But, but it's.

We do some edits, but not to the level he does. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, like, I honestly don't know how much Jacob edits afterwards or. Yeah. After we're done recording. But it's.

Yeah, they didn't hear it in the interview because this will have been edited out, but Guy actually took a phone call in the middle of the conversation. So, I mean, stuff like that we are going to edit out.

Of course. Yeah, yeah.

Fun little behind the scenes.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. It's just I find it fascinating the way that he looks at. Because he said it's like a book, you know, it's. That's. And he likes it more than books. It seems like you can get the content out quickly, but. But he's not just getting it out to get it out quickly. You can tell there's so much preparation during the episode. You know, I don't think we talked well, he's taking notes and all that stuff. And then afterwards, he has that whole editing process, multiple stages.

I'm actually really surprised by how much his fingers are on the podcast.

Same.

Right. I mean, the research doesn't surprise me because you and I, we do quite a bit of research. A lot of. I would say you probably go to more depth on the research than I do. But, you know, some episodes, I'll go really, really deep on our kids guests. We've had episodes in the past where we found out we're having a guest tomorrow, and I would go binge read their book so that I would be prepared for the show tomorrow. Right. So that's definitely happened in the past. So I'm not surprised by the research stuff. It's after the podcast is over, I'm surprised how much time he goes in and he himself edits out ums and us and any sort of concepts that were repeated in the episode, he's going to edit those out. And I'm just like, I would have thought that he would have had an editor that goes and does that, but you can just tell that this is, like, this is his baby, and he wants to sort of have the ultimate control over what gets produced and put out to his audience. It's his craft.

Yeah, you could totally tell he means he wants to put his best foot forward out there. Just like a book, you know, you're not gonna. You're not gonna just throw a book together and slap some stuff together and hope it flies, you know? Yeah, no, it's very interesting. And I mean, there's.

Shoot, there's.

There's a lot. I love the whole car thing. Yeah, I know. That was a question. We wanted to get out to him, and he definitely had some opinions on it.

Quite honestly, I was surprised. We kind of covered a lot. We covered all. Like, I'm looking at our notes here, and I'm like, there's not really anything on here that we put in our notes that we didn't actually get around to covering. We kind of ran the gamut of all the stuff we were excited to chat with him about.

About. Pretty damn close, man. So, yeah, I think there's, like, one I could maybe look at here.

But, yeah, I mean, I think the two things that were sort of unexpected for me around this was I wasn't expecting to go as deep on podcasting.

Right.

And I definitely wasn't expecting to go as deep as we did on Clubhouse.

That, too. Yeah. And cars. I guess I wasn't expecting that either, but I loved it.

Well, I mean, I almost got the impression that he's not really a huge Apple fan anymore.

Yeah, to some, I think he was wearing AirPods or one. It looked like, but. And he had an iPhone. Now we're analyzing everything. I mean, he said he was on a Mac, but. Yeah, I mean, there's. To his point, he's right with the dongles and taking things away that actually give a user more flexibility. And I know it's all in the. You know, it's for simplicity's sake and all that, but, man, he's right. And that kind of is worrisome for a future car, potentially. It's like, oh, yeah, what are you going to have one. One dongle for the whole car? Like, special power. I didn't even know that. Jesus.

Yeah, I never knew that that was a thing that was ever discussed. Like, I mean, what. You've got direct current and alternating current. So was he talking about, like, a third type? Like, beyond those.

I can't speak into it.

You know, obviously there's, you know, the 110 and 220 and all that kind of stuff, but that's just like the amount of different. Different voltage. Right?

Yeah. Yeah, I think. I don't know.

I don't even know what that was. Like. My head can't wrap around the concept of a new type of electricity. Like, I just can't even process it, I guess.

I have no clue. I asked my stepdad, Kevin. Yeah, he educates me on this stuff, so I'll ask him. I'm like, can you do some research on this thing?

Yeah.

What does he mean by this? Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I think this is. This is super cool. My big takeaway is. Yeah, the clubhouse thing and podcasting with him.

Yeah. I did not know how passionate he was about podcasting, and it makes me excited to hear that he's as passionate about podcasting as I think we are.

It's a really good show. So, yeah, everyone. I mean, go take a peek at Remarkable People is the name of his podcast. And the episode I listened to is Tim Ferriss, which I brought up. I'm like, you don't see Tim Ferriss on other shows.

He's flat out said on his show that he doesn't go on other podcasts anymore. So. So for a guy to be able to get him, like, that's. That's really. That says something about guy for sure.

Yeah, I know. Woz has been on his show. Steve Wozniak and a whole bunch of. A whole bunch of people. I'm gonna dig in deeper because, I mean, it literally felt like you're adding.

People to my dream 100 right now as we speak.

Well, we gotta add.

We gotta add Wozniak to the Dream 100.

Seriously, man. I mean, it's, I don't know, very cool stuff and very remarkable people. People over there on this podcast.

So make sure you grab the notes for this one flowchartgroup.com you can go there. You'll be asked to join our group. One of the questions will be to give us your email address. If you choose to give us your email address on that question, we will email you the notes to this episode. If you do it within two weeks of this episode, going livechartgroup.com pod hacker should be out by the time of this recording. So go to podhacker.com to get more details around that and to deep dive on podcasting yourself. All the details about that will be@podhacker.com and easy webinar. Let's talk about it.

Yeah, I mean, this is going to be a tool. We're probably going to be firing up quite a bit more because of Pod Hacker, because we have a good use for it there for that initial project. So Easy Webinar, just calling it as it is, it does everything you need for webinars. It's like Guy was talking about with Canva. It Canva demarcate D.

Basically makes it.

What are you trying to say? I would help you out if I.

Knew where you were going. That's it. That's the word. Like, I don't say this word too often, but it does that for graphics. Yeah. You know, it basically makes it so you don't have to use all these, you know, Photoshop and, you know, do all these lessons. I feel like Easy Webinar is similar to that because it just gives you everything you need for whatever time type of webinar you want to try. Because they have the different styles of webinars, but also once you get in there, you have landing pages, you have all the systems, you have all these frameworks. And basically, if you don't know anything about webinars, but you know, you probably should be using them in your business in some way, selling, training, collaboration, whatever. Try it out. Easywebinar.com hustle. They're hooking you up some discounts over there@easywebinar.com hustle. Go get it.

Go get it.

Do you just like to say hustle?

I just like to say the hustle.

Part and repeat me and Repeat.

You.

You're good at that.

I am good at that.

Oh, shit. Ah, no, I'm stopping now. I gotta stop talking.

And I know you probably enjoyed this episode because we enjoyed making this episode. And usually if we really had a good time on a conversation, we hear from you telling us that you enjoyed the conversation, which we really appreciate. But you should go and share this conversation with your friends.

Even if you didn't like it. Go share it.

Yeah, if you didn't like it, share it with your enemies.

Well, actually, I like one of the prep for.

Guy was listening to Jordan Harpinger's podcast. Great interviewer. And he's always saying, yeah, share it with your enemies. Share with people you don't like. He's like, share this thing with everyone. Yeah, go do that. Listen to Jordan.

Yeah, it'll make your friends like you even more. And it might even flip your enemies. It might flip them.

Do we want to flip them? Flip them off or flip them?

We knew where that joke was going. Of course.

We were right. Thank you so much, as always. We'll see you next time.

Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address, and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

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