Stop Wasting Time Looking for Your Passion: Guy Kawasaki's Guide to Remarkable Living

The word that's often thrown about is the word passion. And I think that that does a disservice to people because it implies that, you know, one day you're going to wake up, you're going to find your passion, bada bing, bada bang, and you're going to fall instantly in love and you're going to be good at it, and you're going to dedicate yourself to it. I think it's much more realistic that as you go through life, you'll find something's interesting and it arouses your curiosity, so you, you know, you explore it. And what I'm telling people is you should explore. Explore a lot of these curiosities, these. These interests. And knock on wood, one or two, maybe three, four in your life will become a passion. But to go through life saying, I gotta find this passion and it's gonna be instant, permanent love, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. You know, do a lot of sampling.

Guys, help me welcome my good friend, Guy Kawasaki. How are you doing, my friend?

Oh, I'm doing great. I'm gonna go surfing right after this, so.

Oh, that's awesome. You know, it's funny, I heard that we both have hockey in common, so I have to pick up the puck one time and skate around the rink every now and again, but that's awesome. Well, look, man, look, you've had a very distinguished career. You know, one of the things I've enjoyed and just kind of like getting to know a little about your content is the humor you bring to everything. You know, I've watched the TEDx talks and some of the other keynotes. I'm like, this guy's funny. Like, he's, you know, he's actually enjoying life. He's enjoying telling the story. So, you know, for. For those who may or may not be familiar with her, maybe give us a little insight and kind of like your background also.

Yeah. So you want me to tell my story? Well, yeah, yeah, well, you know, parts.

A little piece of it so the audience kind of gets familiar with you. Obviously, you spent a great deal of time with Apple, and now the head. Head of leader over at Canva. And there's a lot, a lot of good stuff there, man.

I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, but I now live in Santa Cruz, California. I attended Stanford University, and after that I went into, believe it or not, law school for two weeks, and I dropped out of that. I got an mba. I started working in the jewelry business, of all things. And from schlepping Diamonds. I moved into tech. I was Apple's second software evangelist in the Macintosh division. And then I started some companies. I returned to Apple as Apple's chief evangelist. I became a writer and speaker and today I'm chief evangelist of Canva, which is an online graphic design service. I'm also a podcaster of a podcast called Remarkable People, which is the basis for this book called Think Remarkable. Yeah, and that's where I am. I'm an evangelist, podcaster, author, speaker.

Yeah, man. Well, look, I love it. You know the, the book I, I was kind of, it's, it's really dense, like in a good way. Meaning, Meaning there's a lot of concepts packed into a, packed in just. And you know, to a few pages there. Was that intentional like, you know to.

Kind of like very intentional. Because listen, I'm the author of 16 books, so I know what it takes to write a book and many, many business books in particular. They're one topic for 250 pages, right? So you know, you got to make a product that is the minimum viable product. And if that doesn't work, then you pivot quickly. Okay, I just told you what, what you could have read in 250. So rather than have 250 page books about one strategy, I have 170 page book about 88 strategies. And this is because I think that Gen Z in particular, they just want to read a couple pages. And when you read a concept like that, you either get it or you don't. It's either applicable to you or it's not. Maybe you'll come back to it, but you don't need 250 words to explain some 250 pages to explain something to you. And that's the assumption of my book.

Man, I love it. You know, I'm curious how much of that plays off of you confronting Steve Jobs during the, than the rollout of the, you know, the Think Differently meeting and kind of like what, what, what happened?

Well, we were in a room and, and the ad agency unveiled the Think different television commercials and we loved it. And at the end, the Lee Clow from Chia Day says to Steve, I got two copies of these ads. I'll give you one, I'll give guy one. And Steve says, don't give guy one. And I say to Steve, I said to Steve, what's the matter? Don't you trust me, Steve? And Steve is only Steve Wood. He says, no Guy, I do not trust you. And then this is one of those, you know, make it or break it man or mouse moments. You don't want to look back and say, why? Why did I wimp out? So I fired right back. I said, steve, it's okay. I don't trust you either. That probably cost me a few hundred million, but, hey, it was worth it.

Well, look, you're. Again, your work precedes itself. You're doing amazing things. I want to talk about a couple of concepts in the book, if that's all right.

Sure.

You know, again, there's a lot to choose from. There's. This is a book that I recommend. Everybody grab a thousand percent. The stories and the way it's positioned, it's just. It's just fun, just enjoyable. One of the ones that stuck out to me as being kind of as an entrepreneur who started and founded my own business and then exited recently, and then now starting the next one is this mindset about changing horses midstream. Like, so can you break that down a little bit? Because I feel like a lot of times we get. We get so isolated on our baby, we don't want to let it go.

So listen, one of the. The cornerstones of being remarkable is the growth mindset. And a growth mindset means you learn new skills, you learn new subjects. You know, you, You. You change, you grow. And one of the ways you can grow is along the same curve. And Jane Goodall is a good example of that. You know, as a. She loved animals. Now, 90 years later, she still loves animals, and she's progressed to be a leader in the renewables and just preserving biology and preserving the earth. So she's moved along that curve. You can also change curves. And the example I cite is Jane, not Jane Goodall, is Julia Child. So Julia child, until her mid-30s, was a spook working for the organization that became the CIA. And she moved to France, fell in love with French cooking, and she became French chef. So that's an example of changing horses. She went from spook.

Yeah.

To chef. And I love that. I mean, listen, I've. I've changed from. From hardware to software to Internet to podcasting. You know, I've. I've changed horses a few times myself.

Well, and I've heard you talk about before that, you know, you don't believe there's such thing as, like, finding your purpose in life. It's like you find many purposes in life along the way.

Yeah, right.

What do you think that's. So that process of self discovery really is kind of coming from.

Well, I think, you know, the. The word that's often thrown about is the word passion. And I think that that does a disservice to people because it, it implies that, you know, one day you're going to wake up, you're going to find your passion, butter, bing, bada bang, and you're going to fall instantly in love and you're going to be good at it and you're going to dedicate yourself to it. I think it's much more realistic that as you go through life, you'll find something's interesting and it arouses your curiosity. So explore it. And what I'm telling people is you should explore a lot of these curiosities, these, these interests, and knock on wood, one or two, maybe three, four in your life will become a passion. But to go through life saying, I gotta find this passion and it's going to be instant permanent love, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Don't, you know, do a lot of sampling?

Yeah, I think, I think James Altucher calls it happy little experiments. It's like, you know, just, you can skip. He said you can skip the 10,000 hours by just having lots of little, happy little experiments. And I love that. In fact, I think you're the only hockey skating surfer that I'm aware of. So I think that's pretty impressive. You can go on the water and the, and the skates and you're still in good shape. So that's pretty amazing.

Well, I could tell you something. I took up hockey at 44, I took up surfing at 60, and that's roughly, you know, like 35, two years too late for surf hockey and about 50 years too late for surfing. And I will tell you that I, I use that as proof of my growth mindset because people at 44 or 60, they're typically not taking up something as hard as hockey or surfing. Those two are two very hard sports to start.

They really are. You know, I started skating myself. I think I was 37 before I did my first, what they call learn to play. And then that led to stick and puck and that led to adult league teams and so on and so forth. And in my, I was, had a, a life coach at the time. Well, I had a different life coach at the time. I always have coaches. But you know, she was, she was telling me, she's like, you know, you're pretty resilient, like, what are you talking about? She's like just getting back up and down off the ice, like learning to skate. I said, yeah, and I've got the bruises to prove it. I'm sure you did, too. So.

Well, part of, part of the growth mindset is you have to embrace vulnerability. Right. And.

Yeah.

And you take up hockey or surfing at that age, you. You learn to embrace wounds in a big, big way.

You know, I was also thinking too, like another. There's another concept of the book that I really like, too, and I kind of. It kind of came up from, like, during the, Obviously during the pandemic and stuff like that. A lot of folks were obviously doing a lot of things virtually, and we were getting a lot of questions coming in either to the show or through Instagram or to me personally. And they were saying, what do I do? I'm currently not able to work, whatever. And I was like, honestly, what I think you should do right now is use your time wisely by increasing your value. Go learn a new skill, Go learn a new value. Go do something different than you've done it before, which plays in the growth mindset, but it also plays into another principle that I think we both share, which is making yourself indispensable. Yes. When you, when the market picked back up, they were ready to take ownership of a whole new. Whole new level of excellence in the, in the marketplace.

Yeah. So I learned this lesson from Andrew Zimmern. Andrew Zimmerman is the guy who did bizarre foods, and he goes around the world eating bizarre foods. And, and, you know, he had some issues when he was younger, so at 30, he had three internships at once, which is some kind of record. And he told me, you know, the. He was advised by his mentor that your goal in life is to be indispensable.

Yeah.

And indispensable to the TV station or indispensable to the magazine or wherever you're working. Because indispensable people, they get more responsibility, they get more pay, they get more opportunities, they get more flexibility.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, I hate to tell you this, not you, but I hate to tell your listeners this, that a lot of people think, oh, the goal is work, life, balance. And when they say that, they think, oh, it's going to be 50 fun, 50 work. Well, I will tell you that at any given point in your life, it ain't going to be 50, 50. I, you know, and there's also.

No, I think Yesterday it wasn't 50, 50.

So now maybe over the course of your life, if you add up all the work and all the fun, maybe it'll be 50, 50. But at any given point, it's probably going to be 90, 10. And this is especially true when you're young, so you should, should revisit your assumption that, yes, you can thread the needle and, and do remarkable things and make a difference while you're telecommuting two hours from Bali.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I was, I, I caught a, I got a chance to catch your. One of your recent events over with Google. And, you know, one of the things that kept coming up is you kept like, really helping people understand the importance of working backwards rather than, you know, trying to always forecast forwards. Like, how has that played into your career and how's that helped you win and helps you kind of lead others to win.

Yeah. So this concept I learned from the former chief of staff of Jeff Bezos at Amazon, and he said that, you know, one of the key concepts of Amazon and its success is that they work backwards from the customer, not forward from what they like to do. I'll use a negative example. So with Kodak, in a Kodak, it's disappeared. Right. Nobody uses a Kodak camera or Kodak film anymore. And believe it or not, Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975. But I think they were always thinking forward. You know, we, we make chemicals, we put them on print and we put them on paper, we put them on film. So we just got to find people who want to buy chemicals on paper and film and, and, and that's our business. But if they were to work backwards, they would say to themselves, well, why do people buy our film? Why our paper? It's because they want to preserve memories. So if you work back from the customer, the customer wants to preserve memories, not buy chemicals.

Yeah.

And so if, if you want to preserve memories, it would be pretty obvious to you that, oh, my God, you know, a digital camera is much better than a chemical camera.

Well, yeah, because obviously you have the lifespan. You can put anywhere you want. If you want to print it out, you can print it out. If you don't want to, you don't have to. You got a little more flexibility. Yeah, you know, I, I heard you talk about this before as well, and that's the importance of jumping to the curve. And that kind of plays into Kodak. It can play off of the, into ice and things of that nature. I think as entrepreneurs, we get stuck in the way things have always been and we always want to innovate, but the innovation is incremental, not monumental. Like. So maybe talk to me a little about the importance of jumping ahead in the curve.

Yeah, well, so what I mean by that is that, But I think that big changes occurs when there's a leap. It's not just on the same curve, so it's not making a slightly better typewriter. You know, you got a manual typewriter, and you stay on the typewriter curve. So now it's electric. And then you add a little correctable ball that will remove the mistakes. And, you know, so now you're, you're optimizing the typewriter curve. But then guess what the next curve is the personal computer curve. And there is no more typewriter ball. There is no more correcting fluid. There is no more lifting off mistakes with tape. It's a completely different curve. And then maybe the next curve is augmented reality or, you know, virtual reality. And, and that's not exactly a better word processor. It's completely different. And I think the great innovation occurs when you change curves, not duke it out on the same curve.

Yeah. Well, let me ask you this. Say we've got video, video, obvious video watchers. We got, we got people watching or people listening. In this case. What do you think the first step is in trying to identify the next curve? Like, because obviously you have to have a lot of innovative thought. You have to be like, Steve's a good example, you know, Elon's probably a good example as well, of just having, like, really vision is way out here, you know, to, to kind of see that, I don't know that everybody has that skill set. Do you think they could they develop it or, I mean, how do you see it?

Listen, I, I, it's clear that not everybody has that skill set. I mean, if you look at it, maybe it was Thomas Edison and it was Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, and, and that's why, you know, those people are famous and so rich. It's not that easy to do it. I, I, in a sense, I think for most people, the only way you can pretend to know what was going to happen was looking backwards.

Yeah.

You know, I tell people in S Valley what happens is we throw a lot of stuff up against the wall and, you know, one half of 1% sticks to the wall. And we go up to the wall, we paint the bullseye around what's stuck, and we say we hit the bullseye. Always hit the bullseye. If you paint it on afterwards. But, and you know, when people come on podcasts or they read books, it's always the success story, right? So, you know, you, you, you hear about the Elon Musk or the Steve Jobs or the Thomas Edison, you don't hear about 999,999 failures. And, and so that's important to consider that. Yeah, you know, it's, it's very self selected.

Well, I also think it's important to realize that even the, the most visionary among us go through substantial setbacks. I mean, oh my God, Apple almost went bankrupt, Elon. Like, everybody's like, you know, in pursuit of this, this, this vision, if you will, there's a lot of trial and error. There's a lot of, to your point, painting the bullseye on after, after you have a big hit, but not thinking about the lease and the other things that didn't work out so well. Right, so.

Well, there's a, there's a lot of selective memory. Let's just say.

Well, obviously we have the visionaries of the world, but I also know that you also share a belief that there's remarkable in all of us. So what do you think? Like, step one of just becoming remarkable in your own right isn't leaving.

I think for sure that step one and being remarkable is not to decide to be remarkable. Step one is you got to decide do good shit. You got to do something. You got to, you know, make a product, make a service. You gotta, you gotta lead a classroom, you gotta coach a team, you gotta change your life, you gotta do something. You gotta make a difference. And if you make a difference, and it's a big enough difference now, you don't have to be Steve Jobs or Gene Goodall, you could make a difference to one life. But when you make a difference, people will start thinking that you're remarkable. So the way it works is you make a difference, people will think you're remarkable. It's not because you woke up one day, you bought my book, and you decided to be remarkable that all of a sudden you'd be remarkable? Because if my book could do that in one day, I would sell it for a lot more.

Well, the good news is, is while it took you over 60 or so years to kind of get to where you're at and get all this wisdom in here, I, I dare say the book shaves off a good decade or more for most people that will get in here and consume the book.

Ah, I love to hear that.

I mean, seriously, like, like, I mean, I was, as I was kind of going through it, I'm like, man, that's an awesome principle. That's an awesome principle that it made it really hard to prepare for the show, to be honest with you. Like, really super hard. Because it, there's so much good stuff in there. And if I couldn't use, I couldn't use the thing. Now I've used it like, I've used the lesson before and learned it myself. Like this, this is, this is good stuff, man.

Well, I, I, you know, in a sense there's two factors going on there. So number one is I interviewed 250 remarkable people and these are people like Jane Goodall and Stacy Abra and Steve Wozniak. Yes, Steve Wolf. You know, these are not, these are not people that don't have something to inspire you and inform you. So I've collected the wisdom of 250 people and, and I've been at it for 40 years of hand to hand combat.

Yeah.

So it's not like, you know, some 20 year old Goldman Sachs summer intern has written a book about how to be remarkable.

Somebody who has been through the wars, have written, has written a book, and that's me. So I, I've been fortunate to come out the other side.

Yeah, I love it. You know, it's interesting to me because there was a study done, it was years and years ago, it's probably Maybe a good 10 years ago, maybe 15, that said that on average, the people who have this wealth of knowledge, you just mentioned the Goldman Sachs, these people that have done very, very well, done very great things in their own careers and this other kind of stuff and, and done all this excellent stuff, very seldom do they turn around and give that wisdom to someone else behind them or coming up around them. So out of that, what is, I guess what's in your heart that made you want to do this? Like, why did you want to pour back into the world with so much stuff?

Well, I think that I've realized that, listen, don't get me wrong, that I have a growth mindset. You can tell by when I pick up hockey and surfing. I also have grit. I can work truly hard. But even with growth and grit, it's not always about you. Because there was a sixth grade teacher who turned my life, you know, into a very different direction. There was an English teacher in high school. There have been bosses, there have been coaches.

Yeah.

I mean, there's probably people I don't even know of who helped me along.

Right.

So when you, when you, when you reach that kind of humility and you figure out, man, I am just, I'm just a lucky little guy. You figure out that, you know, maybe I should create luck for other people and pay back the universe.

Yeah.

So I think people have, successful people have an obligation to open the door for other people and I kind of feel bad for people who think it's a zero sum game. And, you know, if I help other people be successful, I'll be less successful. That's really a attitude.

Well, it really is. And it's actually, it's interesting you interest that because that was one of the things that I love a lot about your approach to building teams. And because I feel like this is a. This is an entrepreneurial business CEO trap. All day long, when you go and hire people that you want to, you end up suppressing because for some reason you're insecure about their excellence.

Yeah.

And you and I both agree on hiring people with excellence, period. What did you see in your career when people didn't do it well versus when people did it well?

I saw implosion and failure. I mean, you know, I tell you something, if you're a manager listening to this, when you look around the room at your staff, if you cannot say that these people can do their jobs better than you can do, you are making a hiring mistake. Something is wrong with you. Everybody you look at should be better at you at what they do. Because if you're better than everybody, you have hired a bunch of mediocre people. Or I guess there's another more positive way to look at this is if you look around the room and they're not as good as you, but you believe that they have. Have the ability to become as good or better than you. I accept that. I think that's very good attitude. But if you're hiring people around the room that are not as good as you and you want to keep them not as good as you. Yeah, you are a loser.

Yeah. Wayne, you're gonna. And your business is gonna grow at a snail's pace. It never outgrows you. So eventually if you're not there, it dies. There's a lot of different reasons why it doesn't make sense to do that. You know, I'm a big believer in hiring slow, firing fast, and mentoring often. So by hiring slow, you take your time. You really kind of, really kind of understand the skill sets. Firing fast, meaning that the expectations were clearly set out, roles, responsibilities. I have learned, however, in my career that not every failure of a team member is a failure of a team member. A lot of times it can be a leadership failure. The person wasn't taught well, led well, instructed well, great outcomes weren't really dedicated or assigned. In your career, what have you seen in your hiring process that really works well to get the best talent on the bus, to keep Us from, you know, to kind of get us out of our own way.

Listen, I, you know, I think everybody you meet, they all believe there are a good judge of character, right? Like, you know, I'm a good hire. I have a intuitive sense of who's going to be good. I've never met any manager who didn't say that. And clearly we are not. Right. Like a lot of us have no idea, idea how to hire. I, I, I think if you go in with the attitude that I want to hire people who are better than me or I want to hire people who at least could be better than me, that's 90 of it. And now you may be such a loser that it's not that hard to be better than you. I'm not saying that.

But I could, you know, like this is back in the, the, in the mid-80s. And if you looked at Steve's direct reports, even back then, half were women. You know, people of color, all that. I mean, Steve Jobs did not give a, about your race, religion, color, sexual orientation. All he wanted to know is that can you help him make the best computer in the world? That's all that mattered to him. And hallelujah for that.

Amen. Well, amen to that because I feel like it's, obviously we have Apple as of now. I'm, I'm on Apple devices as we're recording all of this. I'm totally ingrained in their ecosystem because of the simplicity, the cleanliness of design. We, you know, I, I always felt like Apple did a good job of solving problems I didn't know I had.

Yeah.

If that makes any sense. You know. And you know, I, it's interesting that when you look at these, these organizations and, and Camp is a great example of that. Honestly, I use CANVA fairly regularly on a regular basis because I'm a novice. I don't necessarily want to spend the money to go hire a graphic designer every 10 minutes to make it a small or slight image change, you know, and it's, and it's been a really good resource for that, you know, and now, and now they're incorporating AI as well and all that good stuff. And I don't know, there's a lot of really good stuff there. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying the show. Steven Scoggins here. I've got something that I think is I'm just going to blow your mind. Imagine taking your life and your business to the whole another level. I'm talking about eight figure level and beyond. You see, you've been Working your butt off to build your business to where it is now. But what if you could work smarter, free up more time, make more money and impact along the way? How much would that be worth to you? You see, I can prove that basic steps, basic mindset shifts and subtle changes can make the biggest difference. I want to introduce you to the eight figure mindset makeover. It's absolutely free and it's here for you. It's a powerful summary of my top strategies that help propel me from the streets, if you will, to upwards of nine figures in quote unquote success as we like to chase it. This is more than just tips though. It's a complete mindset overhaul. Simple hacks that you can apply today to begin working on your unprecedented heights in your own business. I would like the honor to share these types of things with you that turn my dreams into reality so you can experience the same type of joy and freedom that I now get to live out in my own day. In other words, it's time for you to build your own unstoppable enterprise. And if you're really ready to take it to the next level and elevate your life and your business, this is an absolute game changer for you. So if you want to take advantage of this free resource, simply go to the show. Notes can click the link or you can go to steven scoggins.com backslash8figures figure that's steven scoggins.com Backslash8 figure. Until then, much love, God bless. Let's get back to the show. Take care. You know, one of the principles I want to go back to in the book is this, this concept of go see, go be go do. If I got that, if I got that right. And I'm curious to know from your perspective why that's such an important principle.

Well, I think it's such an important principle to instead of just reading reports or looking at dashboards, you actually go and see, you know, what's actually happen happening on the factory floor, not just the report. Or go and see how people with two kids, two baby strollers, two baby bags, two car seats go and see how they're trying to use a car. Yeah, but even better than going and seeing is going and being so, you know, you, you take your spouse and your two kids and your two car, your two strollers and your two seats and your two baby bags and you try to put it in a four door sedan. Right? I mean go actually be that person or you actually work on the factory and you know Figure out like, oh my God, how can people work here so noisy or it's so dirty or I don't know, so noxious or the parts are misorgan, disorganized, I don't know, you know, whatever. But actually go and be what you're trying to fix and what you're trying to serve.

Yeah, no, I think that's, you know, what's interesting is I, I love that approach because the perspective that you gain make all things better. Better when it's, When's the old adage, walk a mile in somebody's moccasins or shoes or something like that. Like that. There's a lot of wisdom there. Yeah. You know, and one of the things I've also heard you talk about that I just absolutely love because I don't think the marketplace has enough of it is exhibiting and experiencing and giving away grace.

Like I, I really find that that's. It's easy a lot of times to. And I actually struggled with this as a leader for a long time. It was easy for me to find the things that were going wrong.

Wrong.

It was difficult for me to focus on what was going right and when things were going wrong in between going wrong and going right and someone needed a break. I had a hard time giving it for a long time. So I guess it's kind of a two part question. Why is grace so important? And then how can we be more grace giving as leaders?

I think a lot of grace and graciousness, it comes with age. I mean, it's, you just need to get the beat out of you for a while in order to be gracious. Yeah. And you realize that, you know, maybe you're not the center of the universe. And I, I think, you know, the first thing you got to realize is that taking the high road is, is not only better for the world and for people. I actually think it's easier. Right. Like if you, if you have to go through life always hating other people, hating their success, you're always looking for failure, you're looking for negativity. Takes a lot of energy to do that. I mean, just if you assume the best of people, give people multiple chances. And don't get me wrong, I have failed in this too. But I just think maybe I'm just lazy. It's just easier to take the high road.

Yeah.

And you know, like if as you.

As you drive home and you know, you're in the, you're in the lane where the car, where the on ramp comes on, you know, like, I think you can tell a lot about a person from when you're in that lane and someone is about to merge. Right. So some people, they see somebody about to merge, they speed up.

Yeah.

Some people just stay the same speed and they say, well, if he makes it, he makes it. And then some people slow down and wave the guy or the gal forward. Right?

Yeah.

I would make the case that of those three behaviors, the one that takes the least energy and the one that brings the most satisfaction is slowing down and letting the person merge in.

It also reduces the most traffic.

And it also reduces the most traffic. And. You know what I mean? You, you let somebody merge onto the freeway, you're not going to be 30 minutes late because of that.

Yeah, not at all.

Not at all.

It's kind of funny because obviously, even just flying, right, everybody's in a rush to get on an airplane. Just sit on the airplane for 20 minutes while everybody else boards. Everybody arrives at. Leaves the same destination at the same time.

Right.

But yet you'll, you'll have somebody who's literally pushed past three or four people because their, you know, their number on their seat is a little lower than the person behind them. I've just never, I've never understood it. I'm like, I get on the plane, I get on the plane. Like, it's, you know, I don't know.

And I, you know, I, I guess I can understand that if you're trying to make a connection, okay, that, that, that now, that, that's a reason. Right. But like, this rush to get out because we're all going to wait at Baggage claim for 45 minutes, like, what difference does it make when you got the baggage claim?

It doesn't.

It.

The baggage claim is the world's equalizer. It doesn't matter. Oh, my gosh. Well, look, you've been around a lot. You've been around a lot of incredible people. You know, that's, that's a, That's a gift. And of itself.

We would generate and also agree that you're an incredible person with all that you've accomplished and done and how you actually go to market and how you serve and how you work with teams. And I'm curious to know from your perspective, who's the most remarkable person you've ever worked with.

Well, by far. If, if the test is who you've worked with.

Well, let's, let's just qualify that. The most remarkable person in general. Let's see if we can. Let's see if we get past Steve.

I'm curious okay, so let's, let's me, let me say this. I think the most remarkable person alive today is Jane Goodall. Wow. Because she personifies growth, grit and grace. Wow. Now, three or four years ago, I might have said that Elon Musk is right up there. But then lately, Elon Musk, I, I don't know what's up with that guy. He's just like, he's got his hands.

On lots of pies.

Yeah, I, I don't see a lot of grace in him anymore. Yeah. So he fell off. I mean, if you, if you just took that part of him away, look at all the difference he's made. He's, you know, like electrified cars single handedly. He's doing, you know, satellite Internet access. He's doing flying to Mars. He's building tunnels underneath Las Vegas. You know, he's doing all this kind of really game changing stuff. But man, on the, on the gray scorecard, man, he's in the negatives.

Yeah, that's true. Well, I haven't had a chance to spend probably as much time with them, around them as you guys have. But, you know, it's, it's interesting to watch leaders as they continue to grow themselves, new organizations, how it changes them long term, short term. You know, one of the things I always remind myself of is, and this comes. A good friend of mine was on an airplane one time in first class and a lady was kind of was that air person that we talked about. She was trying to get on the plane really fast. She was clearly having a bad day. She was very aggressive, you know, kind of stay out of my way. Don't like, don't do this, don't do that. And he said about halfway through the flight he had to get up to go to the bathroom. So he got up to go to the bathroom and you know, she was kind of a little aggressive about, you know, because she was, hey, he had the window seat, she had the aisle seats. He had to kind of like bypass her. So he comes back and notices something on her, on her, her shirt hurt. And see that he said, look, I don't want to disturb you. I'm just curious, what's that about? Come to find she was like, basically he discovered that her mother had just passed away. Her mother had not had her ducks in a row. So she was taking all, absorbing all the stuff to go with that. And I find in times like that, when you're going through a lot of difficulty in life, and I'm not saying Elon is doing this, he May or may not be doing, going through something like this, but we tend to not be our best selves. Right. We tend not to be the grace giving, the empowering, encouraging person. We're, you know, and I guess we're in the middle of that thick and thin. Right. So, you know, if somebody's in the middle of the thick and thin, kind of what's worked for you and what can you, you know, what can you say?

I mean, I, I mean, you know, that's a, a true to life example of taking the high road, right?

Yeah.

That you could assume that she's just a Karen and she's, you know, this entitled kind of whatever person, but maybe she has a reason and you know, maybe that person who is trying to merge too fast on a freeway, maybe she's like a single mom and, and she has a kid and she's also taking care of her older parents and you know, she just got laid off. I mean, who knows what's going on?

Yeah.

Or maybe she's just a jerk. But.

You never know.

To your point, you won't know. If you don't take the highest road, you won't know. Yeah, because the other, the, the what? What? The, the opposite of the high road is just butting heads, right. It's creating conflict and being more aggressive yourself and raising your energy state that way. Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. I'm curious, you know, I, I heard a rumor that you used AI to write the book. Is that true?

I, I use AI every single day of my life. I, I am the biggest supporter of AI I think AI is an absolute game changer and it's, I think it's bigger than the Industrial Revolution. And you know, every day I, I use AI and I say to myself, how the hell did I do this before? I mean, I just.

Less sleep, lots of less.

And, and you know what? I, I know at some level that these large language models, they're just, you know, predictive. They're putting one syllable in front of the next based on some mathematical model. But I swear to God, I swear to God, ChatGPT is sending attention. Yeah, Chat GPT is a lot smarter than many people I know.

Yeah, well, and it gets smarter every single second.

Yeah.

Like it really does. I'm curious, I mean, out of, of all the resources and the tools that the AI currently offers, what are some of your favorite?

I use Chat GPT all the time. I use Claude, I use, you know, Quill Bot. I use all these things and one of my, one of my. You know, I'm glad this is one of those things. Like, I'm glad it's not my problem, but I. I don't know how you achieve domination as the large language model of choice.

Yeah.

Because I swear to God, you can go to Claude and Chat GPT and, you know, Perplexity, which is the world's stupidest name for a company. You can go to, like, five different places and ask the question, and you get really good answers five times. I mean, I don't know how you establish brand loyalty to an LLM.

Yeah, no, it's interesting. I mean, let me go back to the book a little bit here. Out of when you went to go write the book, what are some of the. I guess the points of ease that AI helped with and what are some of the challenges you ran into?

Oh, oh. So AI definitely helped me find examples. And, you know, I mentioned Julia Child earlier, Right. So one of my concepts was, like, remarkable people. They make big changes, they change horses. So I asked Chat JPT give me examples of successful people who have changed careers, and guess what? Julia Child. I had no idea Julia Child was a spook, and then she became a chef. Neither did I, wasn't for Chat GPT, Julia Child would not be in my book with total certainty. Yeah, I. That's. You know, to me, Chat GBT is a. A as a research assistant that is infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely patient, and pretty much free.

Yeah. Yeah.

How can you beat that? How can you beat that?

The world's best assistant.

That's right.

Did you run into any challenges while you were kind of writing the book and kind of using some of the AI to help out with some of that stuff?

You know, I know that Chad GPT and all these large language models make shit up. So also, I also have Madison GPT. So Madison GPT is okay. Madison. So Chat GPT just told me that Julia Child was a spook until her 30s. You got to go verify that, because I don't know if Chat GPT is just making that up. And so I had a human check all these things.

Oh, man. It's fun. That's hilarious. I love it.

That's so good.

Well, I love the. Again, I love the principles in the book a lot. One of one. One of the ones that I thought was just interesting was kind of like a play on words to me. It's like, learn to punch up, not down. Yeah, punch up, not down.

Well, that.

What were you trying to say?

That's. That's part of the high road, right? So, you know, I, I cannot stand it when I see people punching down. And the example I cite in the book is when Donald Trump was making fun of the New York Times reporter with the neurological, you know, disease that, you know, makes him shake like that. Right. It's like, like you freaking, you're a freaking billionaire. You're running for the presidency of United States. You're making fun of somebody with neurological problems. I mean, yeah, that's pretty, I mean, how much more punching down can you do? Right? I just don't understand that.

So, yeah, that's pretty messed up for sure. Well, man, I've enjoyed the conversation. You're welcome on the show anytime. You're, you're fine, man. I, I tell you what, you, you're, you're awesome.

Where do you live?

I'm now in Utah, ironically, in silicone slopes, as they call it here.

Ah. In the league, there's no surfing there.

No, no, no, there's. But they're just skiing and they now have ice hockey coming. So, you know, you want to come and skate some? We can lace the skates. Okay. You want to fly to Cat, Take the one hour flight to California, then we can, then we could throw on a surfboard and try that.

Alrighty. Thank you so much for having me as your guest. Is very enjoyable. Thank you for doing all the prep work. Clearly you've read the book.

My pleasure. Well, reality is, is anytime we have a guest come on, I want to make sure that the world gets the most I can get out of our guest. We don't, we don't take lightly who joins us on the show. We see us, we see our show as an act of service, as a greater good. Right. We're trying to build a legacy that outlives us and this content helps us get there.

I, I, one podcaster to another, I'll tell you that I have tried many times to go to Chat GPT and, and tell it, you know, okay, what, what should I ask this guest? And I'll tell you something. ChatGPT is terrible at that. There's no freaking way. There's no way. There's no way it comes up with. Like I, I once asked ChatGPT I was going to have Ginny Rometti, the first female CEO of IBM, on my podcast. I saw what should I ask Ginny Romidi? And it gives me questions like, well, ask her about the future of technology. Well, shit, I mean, I don't need a large language model for question like that. I mean, I need something much more specific.

So yeah, well, you know, again, it's. You know, the guest that we bring on the show has done a lot of work themselves to be in a position to be on the show to begin with, which means they have value that the audience needs and wants and desires. And I think one of the one you. I'm sure you've realized this from podcasting, like, there's only so many of us. Like, meaning there's one of you, there's one of the me. And the questions that we think would be interesting to serve our audience better. I would assume that AI is going to have a hard time with that for a little while longer, because I know my buddy Tony Robbins and Dean Gr and those guys are. Have got digital versions of themselves that can now answer questions using AI and all kinds of really cool stuff. So I know that's. That's a maybe in the future, but no, it's. It's been an honest joy to have you on the show, man. I appreciate you big time.

All right. Thank you so much. Have a good day. I hope you have a hat trick in your next game.

Hey, I appreciate that, man. Thank you. Thank you. See you, buddy.

Take care. Bye.

Bye. I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here.

Service is everything. And, you know, it just made me think, even for the person who's listening right now, even when it comes to the sales and sales conversations, focus on being of service, right? You should speak 20% of the time or less in a sales call. It's not about you, it's about them.