On this episode of the Radical Candor podcast, Amy and Kim sit down with the remarkable Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist at Canva and host of the Remarkable People podcast. The conversation delves into Guy’s storied career, his insights on leadership, and his newest book, Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.
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Episode at a Glance: Insights from Guy Kawasaki
The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript
[00:00:07] Amy Sandler: I’m Amy Sandler, your host for the Radical Candor podcast. And today, we are really excited to welcome Guy Kawasaki with us today. Guy is co author with Madisun Nuismer of the new book, Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.
[00:00:28] Guy is the chief evangelist of Canva, host of the Remarkable People podcast, which recently featured the very own Kim Scott. Guy, you are the chief evangelist of Apple, trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. You’ve been a brand ambassador for Mercedes Benz, special assistant to the Motorola division of Google, author of I want to say countless books, but I suspect there’s a number you’ll let us know now with Think Remarkable.
[00:00:55] Guy Kawasaki: Sixteen.
[00:00:56] Amy Sandler: Sixteen. And you have got a BA from Stanford University, an MBA from UCLA, as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. Guy, what was the honorary doctorate for? I’m curious.
[00:01:11] Guy Kawasaki: Well, I gave their commencement address and I have helped their school a little bit. So they gave me an honorary doctorate. So, yeah, I mean.
[00:01:18] Amy Sandler: That seems like a fair, a fair trade. That’s, that’s fantastic.
[00:01:22] Guy Kawasaki: You cannot buy me, but you can rent me. We’re going to have a lot of candor in this pre, in this interview.
[00:01:31] Amy Sandler: Okay. We’re gonna, we’ll find out what the rates are to rent Guy Kawasaki. We’ll see if we get there on this. Um, and so Kim, you were just on the Remarkable People podcast. I don’t know if you were renting your time or if you were there for the good conversation.
[00:01:46] Kim Scott: I was giving, I was giving my time. I, uh, as Guy is giving us his time today.
[00:01:52] Amy Sandler: Yes. How did, how did you and Guy get connected?
[00:01:57] Kim Scott: Guy, I, I think, you tell me if this is right, but I think, uh, I think your team sent me a copy of your book, which I love, and, and, uh, that was how we got connected, right?
[00:02:08] Guy Kawasaki: Well, I think for the rollout of your book, maybe your PR contacted me.
[00:02:13] Kim Scott: Oh, okay.
[00:02:15] Guy Kawasaki: Right?
[00:02:16] Amy Sandler: I heard that Angela Duckworth might have been involved.
[00:02:19] Kim Scott: Oh, you’re right. It was, it was Angela Duckworth. It was Angela Duckworth.
[00:02:23] Guy Kawasaki: Angela Duckworth is involved in everything. Yes.
[00:02:25] Kim Scott: She is, yes. That was how we met, uh, is Angela introduced us.
[00:02:30] Amy Sandler: Awesome.
[00:02:30] Kim Scott: Uh, Amy, you, you know all.
[00:02:33] Amy Sandler: Well, I just, I listened to the podcast recently, so it’s fresh in my, in my head.
[00:02:38] Guy Kawasaki: Angela and a woman named Katy Milkman, um, basically whoever they say should be on my podcast gets an invite to my podcast. Our due diligence is if Katy or Angela says, put them on, we put them on, that’s it.
[00:02:53] Kim Scott: That’s what happens. So my people sent you my book and your people sent me your book, but really it was Angela. All of these things are true.
[00:03:04] Guy Kawasaki: You want to hear a great story about how I got, how I got Angela on my podcast?
[00:03:08] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:03:09] Amy Sandler: Yes.
[00:03:10] Guy Kawasaki: See, when you have me as a guest, your podcast goes off the rails right away. I’m sure you have this list of questions, but I’m blowing through it already.
[00:03:17] Kim Scott: That’s alright. Let’s just talk.
[00:03:19] Guy Kawasaki: Okay, so.
[00:03:19] Amy Sandler: My first question was to say, what’s the first question you would ask Guy Kawasaki, since you’ve already hosted so many episodes? I guess the first question is a story that goes off the rails.
[00:03:30] Guy Kawasaki: Okay, so I’ll tell you the story. So I have been trying to get Angela Duckworth for a long, long time. She never answers my email or anything right now. I have this attitude of defaulting to yes, it’s, it’s kind of one of my best practices. So I kind of say yes to everybody when they want me on their podcast.
[00:03:51] So one day I’m, I’m on this podcast and I’m starting. And, you know, this is this period that we just went through of, you know, we’re checking equipment and all that. And, and I say to the person, I’m the guest now. I’m not the podcast, I’m the guest. I say to the person, so tell me a little bit about yourself. She goes, oh, I’m sixteen years old. I’m a high school student in, you know, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And I’m saying to myself, God, why did you say yes? I mean, it’s like her mother, her father and her cousins are listening to our podcast. Why are you doing this, you know, freshmen at Tuscaloosa High, you know, why are you doing her podcast.
[00:04:27] Anyway extremely bright woman. Um, and it was like Over the Moon podcast or Once in a Blue Moon podcast or something like that. Anyway, at the very end, at the very end, she says, yeah, you know, I’ve, I really been fortunate. I have people like you and Angela Duckworth. And I said, you got Angela Duckworth? I said, how did you get Angela Duckworth?
[00:04:50] She says, I don’t know. I wrote an email to her and Angela answered because Angela likes to support young women. I said, well, can you do me a favor and send an email to Angela Duckworth telling her that Guy Kawasaki wants her on his podcast? And she sent that email and Angela Duckworth replied to me because of some sixteen year old random podcaster. So that’s how I got the MacArthur fellow, the mother of grit, Angela Duckworth on my podcast.
[00:05:20] Kim Scott: And that is such a good story about now, now I’ve, what, what has been, what I’ve been criticized for my whole career. In fact, when I was in Russia, people called me gospozha da, which means Miss Yes, because I always say yes to everything.
[00:05:38] Guy Kawasaki: I know. I mean,
[00:05:39] Kim Scott: Now I know why I do. Thank you for that story.
[00:05:41] Guy Kawasaki: I think that is a very wise strategy. And, you know, I understand the opposite argument that, you know, you should focus and do a few things well. But, you know, Kim, Kim and I, you know, let’s face it, Kim, we can do lots of things well. What can we say?
[00:05:59] Kim Scott: Or we can do lots of things. Anyway.
[00:06:01] Amy Sandler: Yeah. Lots of things. I, Kim’s career as a bank teller was probably the one exception that makes that rule. Um, I will say what I, not a good job there. Guy, you framed your book around this idea of growth, grit, and grace. So we just paid homage to Angela Duckworth and grit.
[00:06:20] But I think one of the things about that story you just shared was about grace and this idea of how you can be of service to people, and be helpful, and be on a sixteen year old young woman’s podcast. And so, you know, for me, that’s an example of grace and reciprocity. That’s one of the lessons in your, in your book.
[00:06:39] Guy Kawasaki: I thought you meant that she was being graceful, not me, but okay.
[00:06:45] Amy Sandler: You started with some grace, mutual grace.
[00:06:50] Guy Kawasaki: Well I think another lesson there is, you know, defaulting to yes will lead you to places you will never ever predict and never know. So you know, one of my theories is that if you say no, that’s the end of the line, right? It stops there. But if you say yes, you just never know. So you know.
[00:07:11] Kim Scott: You never know.
[00:07:12] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:07:12] Guy Kawasaki: How do I know? Maybe Kim Scott is going to say, Guy, I’ll get you Michelle Obama. I mean, who knows?
[00:07:17] Kim Scott: I don’t have that, uh, but you never know what’s going to happen by the end of this podcast. Something awesome, something, something remarkable will happen. That’s for sure.
[00:07:29] Amy Sandler: Well, and the reason I also love that story is this idea of remarkable people, which is the title of your podcast. The book is Think Remarkable. And one of the things Kim and I were just chatting about was, that everyone is remarkable. And that, you know, the sixteen year old hosting the podcast can be remarkable. So in your own words, like what does remarkable mean to you and why the framing on remarkable?
[00:07:53] Guy Kawasaki: Well, remarkable means to me that you have made or are making a difference and you’re making the world a better place. So, my podcast is called Remarkable People, not rich people, not famous people. And I can tell you with great pride, with great pride, I tell you that there has been no private equity or hedge fund billionaire on my podcast.
[00:08:16] And they never will. The only one I would put on is Warren Buffett, but that’s it. Nobody else. None of these people who are trying to, you know, take out the plagiarism of Harvard and you know, now that all the world problems are solved, we got to go after plagiarism in the Ivy League. That’s my top priority. Those people will not be on my podcast.
[00:08:37] Kim Scott: Yeah, I think I love that. And I also love, I mean, the book is such a labor of love and an act of generosity to help people feel inspired early in their career about how can they, in their own unique way, be remarkable. There’s not, there’s not just one way to be remarkable.
[00:08:58] Guy Kawasaki: Listen, I don’t want people to get the impression that you have to be Jane Goodall or Steve Jobs to be remarkable. I mean, you can fix one person, one team, one classroom, one stream. I mean, you can fix your own life and be remarkable. So yeah, I don’t want people to get the impression that you have to be Jane Goodall, although it wouldn’t be bad to be Jane Goodall, quite frankly. I think she’s the most remarkable person alive today.
[00:09:24] Kim Scott: Yeah, I agree. And she says yes to everything. She spoke at my son’s school. Uh, it his high school. High schoolers. Yeah, no, I love that.
[00:09:33] Guy Kawasaki: Yeah. You know, I have another theory that if you want, if you want something, you should ask busy people because I think, I think a lot of people on the outside looking and saying, there’s no way I’m going to get Angela Duckworth. There’s no way I’m going to get, you know, Jane Goodall. So nobody, they self select and they chicken out and they don’t ask. So that, you know, people like me and Kim, we’re sitting here going, we got nothing to do today. Like nobody’s asking us to do anything.
[00:10:05] Kim Scott: We got time. There’s always, there’s always time. There’s always space and there’s always money. It’s just trade off between them.
[00:10:10] Guy Kawasaki: Not in that order.
[00:10:11] Kim Scott: Not in that order. But you know, if you don’t have any money and you don’t have any time, you find some space, you know?
[00:10:24] Amy Sandler: Well, I have to say the foreword in your book, having Jane Goodall there, who is one of my heros, for sure, and I think she was the first guest on your podcast, and I am really curious, this link from your perspective, Guy, around nature and how we all can have a remarkable relationship with nature. Because in the book, not only did you feature Jane Goodall, but you also talked about, uh, getting stoked by oaks.
[00:10:48] Was that the phrase? Like how you can grow oak trees. And then you and Kim talked about growing poppies, and so tell me about nature. That’s something that I think each of us can develop a better relationship with nature.
[00:10:59] Guy Kawasaki: Well, okay. In a rare moment of blatant honesty and humility, I mean, you know, I don’t want you to think I’m like Greta Thunberg, seventy years old and Asian American. Okay, I’m not. I mean, I’m not, you know, like I’ve owned, I’ve owned cars with like less than ten miles per gallon, god forbid. You know, I have flown private planes, but I mean, I don’t fly on private planes anymore. I mean, listen, Clarence Thomas is not flying with me. Let me just put it that way. So unless he’s on Southwest, so, um, so, you know, but I think the thing that I come into nature contact the most is surfing. I surf almost every day, like literally almost every day. And you cannot surf and not appreciate, you know, what nature is to you. But can I, can I try to derail you again?
[00:11:57] Kim Scott: Yeah, but before you do, I want to ask you a question. Did you read Barbarian Days?
[00:12:01] Amy Sandler: Kim likes to derail too, so.
[00:12:03] Kim Scott: Yeah, we’re, this, Amy is going to have a hard time today. Did you read Barbarian Days? About surfing.
[00:12:10] Guy Kawasaki: Oh, yes. Yes. Pulitzer prize book about surfing. Of course I read that book. Yeah.
[00:12:15] Kim Scott: I love that book. It’s so good. Um, all right, well, maybe you can teach me to surf. And I’ll come plant poppies, uh, around your oak tree.
[00:12:25] Guy Kawasaki: Okay. That works for me.
[00:12:28] Kim Scott: Alright. So what’s your derail?
[00:12:29] Amy Sandler: Yeah. Where were you derailing us?
[00:12:30] Guy Kawasaki: Okay. So, you know, if you had to, if you were writing a book, like my kind of book, who could be a better person to write your foreword than Jane Goodall? So anyway, so I have to take you back in time. And what I’m, the story I’m going to tell you, it just proves what Steve Jobs said, is you cannot connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward. So let me connect the dots for you.
[00:12:55] So, I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, in a relatively poor part, and I was in a public school, elementary school. Elementary school teacher tells my parents, take me out of this school system, put me into a private school system so I can go to college. My parents, god bless them, listened to her. And they made the sacrifice to put me into this school. So I go into this school. Now, this school is on the other side of town. So I have to catch the bus to get to this school. Twice in my high school career, I got robbed on the bus. I’ll come back to why that story is important.
[00:13:32] All right. So now I get into this school and god knows, I don’t know why, but I applied to Stanford and god knows, I don’t know how I got in. I’m so old that, you know, back when I applied to Stanford, being Japanese American, you were an oppressed minority. So it wasn’t, you know, this double standard, like Japanese have to have four point three GPA. And you know, seventeen hundred out of sixteen hundred possible points on the SAT. So anyway, so I get into Stanford and then I meet this guy named Mike Boych. And he and I shared of an interest because back when I was in high school, third high school story, a family friend gave me a ride in his Porsche 911. And I came off, I came out of that car and I said, you know, Guy, this is why you should study. This is why you should work hard. Forget changing the world. Just change the car.
[00:14:24] Okay. So now fast forward, I’m at Stanford. And I meet Mike Boych and we become friends because we both love cars. The difference between him and me is that he has nice cars and I want nice cars. Anyway, so now, fast forward again and I, Mike Boych gave me the job at Apple because I was his friend. So I am living proof that nepotism can work out. Uh, because I had a psych degree, I worked for a jewelry company, there was nothing on paper that would make a recruiter look at me and say, oh yeah, let’s bet Macintosh software evangelism on an ex jewelry schlepper who has a psych degree, not one computer class in his background.
[00:15:13] So anyway, so now I get into Apple and I do well, I’m very visible. Fast forward another few years. And I get this email out of the blue. This is Jane Goodall is going to come and speak at TEDx. I’m the executive director of TEDx Palo Alto. I want you to moderate her on stage. I don’t know you personally. You don’t know me personally, but I know of you because of your Macintosh background. That’s another lesson here, that it’s not important who you know, but it’s truly important who knows of you, which is key difference.
[00:15:49] So this woman knows of me. I, of course, accept this. I become friends with Jane Goodall. And then I started my podcast and my, you know, when I started my podcast I was like, who’s the best person for your first guest? Jane Goodall. . And, and I can tell you something, you know Kim and Amy, when, when Jane Goodall is your first guest, it’s pretty easy to get follow on guests because you know, they ask, well, who else has been on your podcast Guy?
[00:16:15] So, I don’t know, have you heard of a woman named Jane Goodall? She’s on my podcast. You know, you, that’s the kind of company you’ll be in. Not one schmuck said, oh yeah, no, I’ve never heard of her. You only have B players, so I’m not going to be on your podcast. I’m saving myself for Joe Rogan, you know?
[00:16:32] So anyway, so I’m telling you that whole story. So that’s how I got to Jane Goodall because a sixth grade teacher convinced my parents to put me into a private school.
[00:16:42] Kim Scott: That’s amazing. Uh, one of the things that I, and I wonder what you think about this. At Apple, one of the stories that was maybe impossible, maybe true was Steve Jobs comparing debate at Apple to a rock tumbler. And he says, you go out, he told the story from being a kid and he, his neighbor sent him out into the yard to get three or four ordinary.
[00:17:08] It’s not, don’t go get the most exceptional stones in the yard, but just go get three ordinary stones and you put them in this rock tumbler. And you know, there’s a lot of noise, a lot of friction, but three days later out come these beautifully polished stones. And he can, he likened debate on our discussion on a team to a rock tumbler.
[00:17:26] And I think, like when any of us get into the right situation, and the right situation for us, that’s when we can become remarkable. So what do you think about that?
[00:17:36] Guy Kawasaki: I like that theory. And in a sense, I’ll give you, um, the first part of the book is about the growth mindset, which is, it’s basically an homage to Carol Dweck, because Carol Dweck is the mother of the growth mindset right now.
[00:17:53] Fast forward, and there’s a protege of Carol Dweck named Mary Murphy, and she’s also a professor. She writes a book and she brings this insight to Carol that says, you know, Carol, a growth mindset is basically inside somebody’s head, right? You either believe you can grow or you can’t, or you believe you’re fixed or you’re not.
[00:18:16] So it’s inside somebody’s head. There’s another factor Carol, that you don’t address, which is the environment you’re in. Because if you have a growth mindset in a growth mindset organization, you’ll do well. But if you have a growth mindset inside a fixed mindset organization, you’re going to suck.
[00:18:35] Kim Scott: Yeah, you’re going to bang your head against the wall.
[00:18:37] Guy Kawasaki: And so I think that’s a very important lesson there. You know, it’s not just the mindset. I mean, if you worked at Apple, they had, they had a growth mindset in the company, not just in the people.
[00:18:50] Amy Sandler: And Guy, it’s interesting because, like when you’re talking about the environment that you were at Stanford and you were able to connect the dots and your parents were able to support you to get to Stanford. And then you met the guy, Mike, was that his name, who had the car and then connected you to Apple. And one of the things you talk about in your book is that, you know, encouraging employers to not necessarily hire focus just on formal education, you know, wanting to democratize that. But how do we democratize the meeting of the person like Mike who can get me into the job at Apple? And so on and so forth? How can you, how can you create more of those connections?
[00:19:28] Guy Kawasaki: Well, I think you need to, to hear some of these examples. And I think too many HR decisions or recruiting decisions are made, you know, primarily on your educational background and your work experience. But I ask that people throw in a third thing, which is, does the candidate love what we do?
[00:19:49] Because love conquers all. And you know, like here we have a non technical ex jeweler, right, and he has a major in psych from Stanford because that’s the easiest major at Stanford that’s possible. So, you know, he’s like, I’m everything wrong for that and here I am. So I hope people listening to this will say, you know, yeah, you know, you have the right backgrounds and educationally and work experience, but, but really what attracts us to you is that you love the product. It’s Canva, it’s Macintosh, you know, it’s Android. I don’t care what it is, but you’ve got to love the product. I think that goes a long, long way.
[00:20:33] Kim Scott: Yeah. And you got to love what you’re going to do. You got to love your role in building a product, uh, you know.
[00:20:39] Guy Kawasaki: Well I only wish that people knew as they were going into a company, that they’re going to love what they’re going to do. That’s not always true.
[00:20:48] Kim Scott: Yeah. But like I had a, actually he was at Apple University too. Richard Tedlow. He used to ask a very good question. Um, this is, one of my favorite professors from business school, who is also at Apple University. And Richard used to ask, do you want to be a manager or do you want to do the thing that managers do? And if you don’t want to do the thing that man, don’t become a manager. Do you want to be a product person or do you want to do the things that product, and there’s a lot of, you gotta, you’ve gotta be able to be excited even about some of the things that other people might find tedious. That’s part of being responsible.
[00:21:28] I mean, I think one of the, uh, the patterns of thinking that we need to break out of is that as you rise in a company, it means that you’re managing more and more people. And you know, yeah, I mean, I don’t think that’s true. I mean, you can be the most amazing individual contributor for twenty, thirty, forty years. What’s wrong with that? You know, I hope people appreciate that, you know, you don’t need to have a, you don’t need to have a bunch of people working for you in order to succeed. You can succeed as an individual.
[00:22:02] Amy Sandler: And Guy, we’ve talked a little bit on this podcast about the concept of ikigai, which you also talk about in the book and, and you distinguish between interest and, and passion. I thought that was such an interesting distinction. Can you share a bit more and define from your own experience?
[00:22:18] Guy Kawasaki: I think people throw around the P word, passion, much too loosely and much too cavalierly. They, it’s as if, you know, they’re telling young people you have to find your passion and you know, preferably you’d find your passion before you’re eighteen years old because we need a college essay. So you should need to talk about how you started a not for profit educational institution in Africa at seventeen so you can get into Dartmouth, right? So, uh, I think that we set people up for failure because they think, oh my God, I’m supposed to find this passion and it’s supposed to be instant love and I’m supposed to be instantly good at it and you know, this is how life works. And life does not work like that.
[00:22:59] Kim Scott: No, it does not.
[00:23:00] Guy Kawasaki: So. Yeah, my advice is you scratch a lot of itches, you, you know, pursue a lot of interests and knock on wood, one or two or three over your lifetime will turn into a passion, or an ikigai. But I mean, in a sense, it’s like saying to someone who’s, you know, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, you know, why haven’t you gotten married?
[00:23:23] Why haven’t you found the man or woman who’s going to be your passion for the rest of your life? What’s wrong with you? Well, I would say that eighteen, nineteen or twenty, you should still be collecting data. You shouldn’t be declaring your lifelong passion.
[00:23:41] Kim Scott: Yeah. You got to do your, um, due diligence. You’re doing your due diligence.
[00:23:45] Guy Kawasaki: You got to plant a lot of oats.
[00:23:48] Kim Scott: Until you figure out which one is going to survive. I so agree with that. I mean, I think that, in fact, I was very proud of my son recently. He was asked to write some essay about, you know, what’s the, you know, what’s his passion and he’s like, I want to be just a kid. And I was like, amen. Like that is, that’s what, that’s what we want for, uh, for people to be able to explore and do some stuff they don’t wind up like.
[00:24:16] Guy Kawasaki: And, and what kind of institution asked that question?
[00:24:19] Kim Scott: It was a private school.
[00:24:22] Guy Kawasaki: High school or college?
[00:24:23] Kim Scott: High school. They asked, they asked.
[00:24:25] Guy Kawasaki: A high school is asking, what’s your passion?
[00:24:28] Kim Scott: Yeah. Uh, you know, or tell us what’s your, what’s your superpower. I’m like, I’m a kid. I’m a kid. That’s my superpower. I’m just a kid. But the good news is that he pointed out the absurdity and they, they took the feedback. They, that worked for him, his essay.
[00:24:47] Guy Kawasaki: If somebody can look back and say, I knew this was the one thing to do. I knew this was my passion. I would say that that person is, is very selectively remembering the past.
[00:24:59] Kim Scott: I mean, it was, I had a, I had a mentor who said to me once, only about one percent of us really know what we want to do when we grow up. And I was thirty at the time. So I wasn’t a child. And he said, and they confused the hell out of the other ninety-nine percent of us. And that, that feels really true to me.
[00:25:17] Guy Kawasaki: I’m surprised that it’s as high as one percent, but that’s a different discussion.
[00:25:23] Amy Sandler: And it’s interesting because you talk about a growth mindset and I know your book is really trying to focus on advice for, for younger people starting their career. And I think there’s a lot of wisdom there for us, uh, not as young folks around this idea of a growth mindset because you, you talk about that you started playing hockey in your forties and that, did you really start surfing in your sixties? Because now I know it’s a daily passion or interest. Is it an interest or a passion? I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Maybe surfing has become a passion.
[00:25:53] Guy Kawasaki: I would say surfing is an obsession. I surf every day. I take breaks from surfing to do podcast interviews.
[00:26:02] Amy Sandler: Well, sorry to get in the way, but I’m so curious. Like what, what was it that sparked in you to go from, you know, one day someone who doesn’t play hockey or one day someone who doesn’t surf to like, how did you actually, what was the first time getting on the skates or getting on the surfboard like for you?
[00:26:19] Guy Kawasaki: All right. So for a birthday party, my wife and two sons, we went to the San Jose Sharks game. We never had seen hockey before. I’m from Hawaii. I’d never seen hockey. I mean, you know, we have shave ice. We don’t have hockey. So we go to the Sharks game and we love the game because hockey is just this beautiful combination of, it’s war and it’s strategy and it’s violence and it’s also ballet. It’s a very, very great game.
[00:26:51] And, you know, unlike soccer or football, depending on how you want to label it, um, you know, in, in soccer, they’re like, the ball always goes out of bounds and then, you know, somebody gets tripped and he’s writhing on the ground as if he’s broken his leg. And then thirty seconds later, he’s, you know, back in action, like nothing. Like that’s, I don’t know, that’s like, that’s like professional wrestling meets soccer, right? That is such a bullshit thing. So, and, you know, so in hockey, the puck hardly ever goes out of bounds. And if you were to flop around like that, in a hockey game, you would be humiliated because all these hardcore Canadians, they would be pissing on your grave if you did that.
[00:27:35] Anyway, so we, you know, because we’re Silicon Valley parents and we indulge our kids in everything, they say to us, oh, mom and dad, we want to try hockey. Of course you want to try hockey. Just, just don’t try wingsuiting. So, so we get them in this hockey class. And then my wife says, you know, honey, um, I don’t want you to be like other Silicon Valley executives, you know, which are Blackberry and you’re sitting on the sidelines or behind the glass.
[00:28:06] And you’re just like, you know, when your son’s on the ice, you look up and you look up from your Blackberry, you watch for sixty seconds, and then you’re back to your Blackberry. I want you to involve with our kid’s life. So I want you to take up hockey too. I listened to my wife, so I took up hockey and then I loved hockey.
[00:28:25] And it’s similar thing with my daughter. My daughter got really into surfing and I said, okay, so, you know, here we go. Hockey too. And then I fell in love with surfing. And so my parenting has been kind of like this, that rather than trying to force my kids to take up what I take up, or what I love, I take up what they love.
[00:28:46] It’s a lot less friction. So it’s not like, you know, it’s not like I force my kids to be marketers, right? So, um, yeah, you take up, you take up hockey, I’ll take up hockey. You take up surfing, I’ll take up surfing. But I alluded to this earlier, my other son is a wingsuiter and I draw the line there. I mean, I want to look really good at my wake, so I don’t, I’m not doing wingsuiting.
[00:29:13] Amy Sandler: What is wingsuiting?
[00:29:13] Kim Scott: Is that where you jump out of a plane and like, uh,
[00:29:15] Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, like you’re a squirrel.
[00:29:17] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Like, but you could do iFly. Have you tried that?
[00:29:20] Guy Kawasaki: Yeah. The thing in Las Vegas.
[00:29:22] Kim Scott: They have one right here in the Bay Area. That was what I did with my daughter during COVID.
[00:29:28] Guy Kawasaki: You mean the jet engine thing?
[00:29:29] Kim Scott: It just blows air and you like, you know, but there’s no danger because even if the thing, even if the electricity goes out, you only fall. It’s fun. I recommend it.
[00:29:40] Guy Kawasaki: But, but Kim, I work for Apple. So people who are blowing hot air at me for years, I don’t want to get back into that situation.
[00:29:48] Kim Scott: It’s not hot air. It’s cold air. There you go. Big difference. Big difference.
[00:30:02] Amy Sandler: Well, I think it’s really interesting, you know, that your passions or at least obsession of surfing, ice hockey doesn’t sound like it became a passion, maybe an interest in you enjoyed doing it.
[00:30:14] Guy Kawasaki: I would say that my wife may be interested in it. My daughter may be interested in it. But after about sixty seconds, it became my passion.
[00:30:25] Amy Sandler: That is really cool. Kim, are there any lessons from a manager or leader kind of following the, uh, the guidance from the people that work for them to try, try things out? Is there any equivalent from parent to kid and management?
[00:30:40] Kim Scott: There’s a lot of morals to your story, Guy, but one of them is that, is that a great, a great way to be a leader is to, is to get interested in what your people are interested in, and go do it with them. And, uh, try stuff out. You’re following in order to spend time with them and that’s what you really need to do.
[00:31:00] Guy Kawasaki: Imagine all the people who have taken up golf because their manager took up or likes to play golf, right? So that’s how they’re gonna like get quality time and they’re gonna suck up to them on the golf course or then gotta go to the strip club, and like, oh my God.
[00:31:19] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah. Uh, and it still happens that people take their managers, take their people to strip clubs. It’s ridiculous.
[00:31:27] Guy Kawasaki: I cannot imagine that. I mean, you know.
[00:31:30] Kim Scott: Yeah. Um, but you wanna follow them, maybe not anywhere they wanna go, but.
[00:31:37] Amy Sandler: Some, some discernment there.
[00:31:39] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:31:40] Amy Sandler: Well, as we’re moving into some more, uh, potentially challenging topics, you know, Guy, you shared a story where,
[00:31:48] Guy Kawasaki: We haven’t had any challenging topics yet.
[00:31:50] Amy Sandler: Well, you talked about how you were, um, I don’t know if you were mowing the lawn or you were making, uh, doing some work in the garden. Trimming the hedges. Yes. Uh, do you want to share that story with our listeners?
[00:32:03] Guy Kawasaki: Sure, I’ll tell you the lesson of this story. The lesson of this story is you should chillax. You should give people the benefit of the doubt. You should not look for trouble where trouble might not exist. You know, enough trouble is going to come your way. Don’t look for it. So the story goes that, this is, uh, I don’t know, twenty years ago. My wife and I were living with our first son in San Francisco on Union Street, and right where the Union Street ends into the Presidio, so let’s just say that’s a very nice part of San Francisco.
[00:32:37] And I was out front, and I was cutting our bougainvillea hedge, and this older white woman comes up to me and says, do you do lawn too? Now, now, you know, I kind of didn’t let her off the hook. I said, oh, I’m Japanese. So you think I’m the lawn man, huh lady? So now, so, you know, there’s a lesson there about proto, about, you know, sort of stereotyping because of, you know, race, right?
[00:33:10] So like every Japanese is not a lawn man. And, you know, every Mexican person is not a yard man. And every Mexican person is not a cook. And, you know, every black person cannot dance well. I mean, we could go on and on and on, right? Although, you know, maybe not every white person is a member of QAnon. Okay, so we got to give white people the benefit of the doubt too.
[00:33:31] So, so anyway, so that’s one story about, about stereotypes. But then the next thing is that, uh, my father comes and visits me a couple of weeks later. I’m third generation. He’s second generation. He served in the U.S. Army, and I fully expect him to just go off on this, right? How dare this woman ask you if you’re the yard man and you’re doing lawns. Because, you know, you went to Stanford, you work for Apple, you’ve written twelve books, you know Steve Jobs, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:34:05] And to my utter amazement, he says, you know, son, on Union Street, a Japanese man cutting a hedge most likely is the yard man, so get over it. And I, like, that just took me so by surprise, and he said, you know, take the high road, treat it with humor, don’t look for trouble. Maybe she just wanted to know if you do lawns.
[00:34:32] I should have said that, you know, either I could have either said that, uh, I do lawns, but you know, the woman who owns this house sleeps with me for me cutting her bush. What are you going to do? What are, you know, cutting her bougainvilleas. Cutting her bush might not be the right phrase in this story. So that was the day I learned to take the high road and give people the benefit of the doubt and not like, you know, not like make myself crazy.
[00:35:02] Kim Scott: Yeah. So in the spirit of Radical Candor, I wonder if there’s a way to tell her that she had made a mistake. Like, again, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt, this white lady. Uh, so let’s give her the benefit of the doubt.
[00:35:14] Guy Kawasaki: There’s a third part to this story, if you want to hear it.
[00:35:16] Kim Scott: Yeah, I do want to hear it.
[00:35:17] Guy Kawasaki: So now, now I’m doing my Remarkable People podcast and I interviewed, um, a black activist. And I tell him this story and I say, so, you know, I mean, do you think that’s optimal? He goes, you know, Guy, I mean, what you should do in that kind of circumstance is treat it as a learning opportunity. And you should very calmly say to that woman, you know, some people might find something like that offensive because you think that because I’m Japanese, I’m the yard man. I’m not the yard man. So I just, I don’t know if you even know if you’re doing this. But you should appreciate the fact that some people might be offended by the racial stereotyping. And she said, you should treat that as a, as a learning opportunity for the other person. And if you just don’t say anything, she might never know that it was considered offensive.
[00:36:08] Kim Scott: She might never know, or she might realize and feel like a jackass. But it would be easier, it would be easier for her to acknowledge it if you said something. So like, yeah, I think when we, when we were talking about this on your podcast, I was talking about, uh, about how I tend to default to silence. So if I had been in your shoes, I probably wouldn’t have said anything, right?
[00:36:32] Guy Kawasaki: Yeah.
[00:36:32] Kim Scott: And, and then,
[00:36:34] Guy Kawasaki: So says the white woman.
[00:36:35] Kim Scott: Yes. Uh, yes, the white woman. And the woman, you know, like there was a time I was at this, uh, I was going to give a talk. It was a big conference, big tech conference. It was like ninety percent men, ten percent women. And right before I went on stage, this guy runs up to me and he says, where’s the safety pin? I need a safety pin, you know, assuming that I, was the same kind of thing. And, and I didn’t say anything to him, but I still, like, I’m still kind of annoyed with myself for not saying anything to him because the problem, the problem was, I just kind of looked at him like, what’s your problem?
[00:37:16] And went on went on stage, and then he thought he was getting bad service. And so now he’s going to go ding the staff of the, of the conference, the conference organizer. And that’s not fair to them. So I think there’s like, you know, we all play these different roles. Sometimes, sometimes you’re the target of whatever annoying, you know, it wasn’t the end of the world, but it wasn’t, it was funny, but also annoying.
[00:37:42] Guy Kawasaki: Now, when you say you didn’t say anything, do you wish you smoked his ass or do you wish you just calmly pointed out the fallacy of his idiocy?
[00:37:52] Kim Scott: I wish, I wish I had done what, uh, guests on your podcast had recommended. Treated it as like, you know, I’m sure you don’t want to make this mistake again. So I want, I want to let you know that, that I am not one of the organizers and that in fact, the organizers prevent this exact situation, are all wearing these bright yellow t shirts. And they’re thirty years younger than I am. So there, you had a couple of clues, uh, that I was not the person to fetch your safety pin.
[00:38:23] But then, you know, the other thing is he was so rude to me. And this is where like, now we’re going to factor in power in this whole thing. Uh, he thought it was fine to teach, to treat one of the organizers of one of the people who was staffing the conference that way, and it’s not really okay.
[00:38:41] Guy Kawasaki: Was it Elon Musk?
[00:38:42] Kim Scott: No, no, it wasn’t. I don’t know who, I don’t remember who it was. It was some random, some less well known money guy, uh, but he was an LP to venture capital firm. So, uh, yes. So, okay. So now I’m going to tell you my yard story. Working in the yard story, which happened just recently. Okay.
[00:39:03] Guy Kawasaki: Does it have to do with poppies?
[00:39:05] Kim Scott: I was, I was weeding along the side of the road so that the poppies would grow. Because the invasive grasses, you know, get in the way. And so I, this is an obsession with me. Like I will spend twenty, thirty hours a week during the spring weeding, pulling out these. And I’m, and,
[00:39:22] Guy Kawasaki: You should hire a Japanese American to do that for you.
[00:39:25] Kim Scott: I do hire some people to help me, but I really like to do the work myself. Uh, I enjoy it. It gives me enormous pleasure. And so one of my neighbor stopped and he was like, ha, ha, ha, you got a new job, Kim. And I feel like there’s like this snob, snobbery around different kinds of work that is just not acceptable. Like we should all do the work that we love to do regardless of, you know, it’s like a caste system almost.
[00:39:53] Amy Sandler: So kim, did you say anything to that?
[00:39:57] Kim Scott: I said, this gives me more pleasure than anything I’m going to do this week. You want to join me? You know.
[00:40:05] Guy Kawasaki: Does he have an American flag flying upside down outside his house?
[00:40:09] Kim Scott: No, he does not. No, he does not.
[00:40:14] Amy Sandler: Well, thank you for the segue on how do we connect with people with opposing viewpoints. And I really love this tip, Guy. This came from spiritual leader, Mark Labberton. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Who was one of your guests and talked about asking how instead of why can help us connect with folks with different viewpoints. So how would you like to explain that to us, Guy?
[00:40:44] Guy Kawasaki: Okay. So, I’m interviewing Mark Labberton, uh, he was, at the time he was CEO of Fuller Seminary. And for those of you who are not familiar with Fuller, Fuller is kind of the Harvard Business School of Christian Management and Leadership. Now, there’s a lot to unpack in that statement already because, you know, there’s a whole new connotation to being Christian these days, right?
[00:41:12] So this is, this is the Christian that loves people and is open minded and you know, not the one that’s like, whatever you do, Donald is okay because you banned abortion. Not that kind of Christian. This is the old school Christian. So anyway, so I said to him, so you know what, like, I don’t understand, you know, if from the outside looking in and you look at all the evangelical Christians and you know, with their, with their airplanes and all this, and how they like support somebody like, I don’t know how you could say, you know, they’re a Christian. Mark, how do you deal with that? And he said, you know, Guy, don’t ask them what they believe. Don’t ask them why they believe it. Ask them how they came to believe that. Because that fosters an actual conversation and discourse. You may learn something about that person and understand where they’re coming from. So that, you know, maybe the what and the why become much more palatable, or much more tolerable, when you know how they came to this belief. And I truly do believe that is a great thing. Not that I’ve done it, but I mean,
[00:42:23] Kim Scott: It’s hard to do.
[00:42:26] Guy Kawasaki: It is hard to do. But you know, I’ll give you a good example that is not hard to understand. So let’s say that you meet somebody and they’re, you know, anti vax, right? So they’re anti vaccination And so you ask him, well, how did you come to be anti vax? And he says, or she says, you know, listen, my great granddaddy was in the army and he was involuntarily enlisted in this experiment where they gave vaccines, and he got a vaccine and the vaccine killed him. So now I think vaccine can kill people. Well, when you hear that story, you know, you can understand why someone might be anti vax.
[00:43:05] Kim Scott: Yeah. I think that’s, I think that is really beautiful and really important in the next, uh, especially over the next few months. Where we’re going to have a lot of, a lot of strong disagreements, I think. I’m gonna, can I read you a quote by John Stuart Mill? And I think this is, this has been very helpful for me in those, in wading into those conversations. Okay, even if your belief be not only true but the whole truth, unless it is vigorously and earnestly contested, it will be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational ground. The dogma becoming mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction.
[00:43:54] So, in other words, if you’re not willing to talk about beliefs where you have a disagreement, then your beliefs become prejudice, if you’re not open to being challenged. Even if you’re not going to change your mind, I think. Um, what do you think about that?
[00:44:12] Guy Kawasaki: Well, isn’t that a little contrary to, you know, like challenge? Mark Labberton did not say challenge the person’s belief. Mark Labberton said, ask them how they came to believe something.
[00:44:25] Kim Scott: But also the point is, allow them to challenge your belief. Like the conversation, I think that’s what he’s saying. Is like having a conversation with someone with whom you disagree vehemently, is very useful, even if neither one of you change your mind because you,
[00:44:42] Guy Kawasaki: You should always be talking. You just never, you should always be talking.
[00:44:48] Amy Sandler: You had a quote from Stacey Abrams, who was also on your podcast. I’m going to say the quote, but if you want to share how you got Stacey Abrams, ’cause it sounded like that one was a real labor of love. But I love this as a, just a general frame, which I think really works with Radical Candor too, which is be curious, solve problems, and do good. Like what a great frame for how to think things. And I think be curious, especially about other people. But tell us where, tell us about Stacey Abrams. How did you get her to connect?
[00:45:21] Guy Kawasaki: I almost jumped out of my skin when she said those three phrases, because I had already organized the book in grit, grace, I mean, grit, I had already organized the book growth, grit, grace. And then here comes Stacey Abrams and she basically says, you know, you should be learning, you should be, you know, persevering and you should be doing good. And like, oh my god, you line up exactly with the sections of my book, Stacey, so.
[00:45:50] I have been pursuing Stacey Abrams for about two years and I, everywhere I spoke, every, everybody I interviewed, everybody, I just said, can you get me to Stacey Abrams? And I should have asked that sixteen year old girl in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She probably had, could have got me saved a year for me. But anyway, so finally somebody that I was talking to introduced me to Stacey and Stacey answered my email. And then, and then she, um, she was, she was coming to where I live because she had a, uh, she had a book signing.
[00:46:30] Kim Scott: In Watsonville.
[00:46:31] Guy Kawasaki: And so I reached out, I said, you know, Stacey, I know you’re coming to Santa Cruz and you’re having a book signing and you know, you’re probably really crazy busy. So, I have a spare house, you can stay in the house. And then, you know, before you go to the signing, you can hide out and, you know, have peace and then. I swear to god, I mean, I thought, I’m like, probably her security detail thought, oh, this is a guy who’s trying to kidnap her. And they’re like, who the hell is this guy? So I sent people my LinkedIn profile to show that I’m not a random nut. And anyway, so she’s ended up working in our house that afternoon before she went to her signing. So, um, we don’t let anybody else sit in that chair. That’s the Stacey Abrams chair.
[00:47:17] Kim Scott: I love that.
[00:47:18] Amy Sandler: I have a bunch of questions, but since you are a podcast host, like what question do you want me to ask you right in this moment? What’s feeling interesting and important?
[00:47:27] Guy Kawasaki: I don’t care. You just ask me whatever you want to ask me. I don’t care.
[00:47:31] Amy Sandler: All right. Well, one of them is about imposter,
[00:47:34] Guy Kawasaki: I’m not a control freak.
[00:47:34] Amy Sandler: One of them’s about imposter syndrome. Um, but since you said about not being a control freak, like that feels like another message that I took away from your book, which is especially about reciprocity and grace of like doing things to that, saying yes, doing things to be of service, but without necessarily having the idea of exactly how it’s going to look. Like, I’m doing this thing for you, Guy, and I’m expecting this in back. Like there’s sort of that letting go. Do you want to share more about that?
[00:48:03] Guy Kawasaki: Well, I have come to believe that, you know, defaulting to yes is long term, very good, very good policy. And I also believe that there is a karmic scoreboard in the sky, and somebody or something is keeping track. You know, like, are you helping people or are you just trying to get help? And I think that there is a scoreboard. And, you know, whether you believe in god or not, I have this, I know, I know I’m theologically wrong, but you know, I have this belief that, well, just in case there’s god and I get up there to the top of the escalator, and, you know, he’s, he or she, it’s probably she, and she asked me, so, you know, why should I let you into the pearly gates of heaven?
[00:48:52] And I don’t want to say, well, I gave a building to Stanford or, you know, I got rid of plagiarism at Harvard. Or I, um, ensured people could have weapons. Uh, I want to say that I help people make a difference and I help them be remarkable. And I helped them realize their dreams with my books and my writing and my podcasting. So that’s why you should let me into heaven. And I, I’m pretty confident I’ll get in. And now let’s say that god does not exist. But my logic is that, you know, nobody really knows if god exists or not. So we’re talking about eternity.
[00:49:33] So why take a chance, right? This is, do not take a chance. This is not, this is not something you just roll the dice with. I also think on a very practical sense that, oh my goodness, you know, it is, it’s much easier to be positive, and negative, than negative. And it’s much easier to help people than to always be coming up with reasons why you cannot do things. So,
[00:50:00] Kim Scott: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a happier way to live while we’re here.
[00:50:03] Guy Kawasaki: It is a happy. Happy is easy. It’s angry that’s hard.
[00:50:07] Kim Scott: Yeah. Exhausting, angry.
[00:50:09] Guy Kawasaki: It is exhausting.
[00:50:10] Amy Sandler: You do talk about, and I love that you mentioned Julia Cameron. I did the Artist’s Way, um, ages ago. I love that, that book and that program and sort of the inner self critic as well as imposter syndrome. You talked about both of those things and so I’m curious, what lessons do you have for those of us who are really hard on ourselves. So maybe the default is actually to be really more critical and oh, I don’t think I’m capable of being remarkable.
[00:50:37] Guy Kawasaki: Okay. So here’s the interesting thing that, you know, I’ve interviewed about two hundred and fifty people of which maybe sixty or seventy percent were women. I have more women than men on my podcast because quite frankly, there’s more remarkable women than men, but that’s a different discussion. So anyway, so, um, I, I can tell you one of the astounding facts is that many, many highly accomplished women told me they had imposter syndrome. Not one man said they had imposter syndrome.
[00:51:09] Kim Scott: Wow.
[00:51:10] Guy Kawasaki: What do you think of that? Like, you know,
[00:51:12] Kim Scott: I believe that. I think, you know, I have twins, a boy and a girl. And it was really interesting to me, like from a very young, one of my favorite stories about my son, he’s going to be mad at me. But we were, we used to go to this farm every weekend called Hidden Villa right around the corner.
[00:51:32] Guy Kawasaki: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:51:34] Kim Scott: And, and they would, there’s a lot of chickens there. And Battle got very good at catching the chickens and hugging the chickens. And he’s sitting there and he’s holding this chicken, hugging it, saying, this chicken loves me. Meanwhile, the chicken is like shitting all over him. I was like, you know, I wish I were a little boy. Like the confidence of the little boy is really delightful. Uh, and I wanted to celebrate that. And I also want to make sure that my daughter feels the same confidence.
[00:52:08] Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:52:09] Kim Scott: He also got a guitar and I said, do you want to take guitar lessons? He’s like, what are you talking about? I already know how to play the guitar. I love, I love that.
[00:52:23] Guy Kawasaki: I would say that, you know, maybe that’s a little too confident, right?
[00:52:29] Kim Scott: He was a child. He’s now a little, you know, a little more self awareness. But I do think that there is, I don’t think imposter syndrome is something I want to impose on my son. I think it’s something I want to remove from my daughter.
[00:52:44] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:52:44] Guy Kawasaki: That’s a good point. That’s an excellent point. Yes.
[00:52:48] Amy Sandler: Were there any tips from your guest, Guy, around, um, kind of overcoming imposter syndrome that you think would be helpful to share?
[00:52:56] Guy Kawasaki: I can give you some. So number one is just recognize the fact that it is imposter syndrome. When you look around the room and you say, oh, I’m a fake. I’m not as good as these people. They’re going to discover this. And you know, they’re going to out me. Um, that’s called the imposter syndrome and the very fact that it’s labeled that imposter syndrome and in the general vernacular and conversation means that guess what? It’s very common. Right? It’s a very common syndrome. So the very fact that it has a name like that and it’s well known means that lots of people have it. You are not alone. In fact, I would make the case that. If you had a choice between having imposter syndrome and you had the, you know, sort of,
[00:53:42] Kim Scott: This chicken loves me.
[00:53:44] Guy Kawasaki: Entitlement syndrome. Yeah. If I had to choose between imposter or entitlement syndrome, I pick imposter syndrome all day long.
[00:53:53] Kim Scott: Yes. That is true.
[00:53:54] Guy Kawasaki: So, that’s number one, realizing that lots of people have it. And the number two is, you know, you just got to like step back and look at like, look at all the positive things that I’ve done. I, you know. I am not an imposter. You just need to convince yourself of that and surround yourself with people who are positive, not tearing you down.
[00:54:16] Kim Scott: How did you do that at Apple? Apple was a pretty confident, I found it, like, I’ve been in a lot of environments, I found sometimes Apple could be a bit intimidating.
[00:54:26] Guy Kawasaki: You know, you could make the case, so here’s Guy Kawasaki, right? So, He has a BA at the easiest major at Stanford Psychology. His background was schlepping and counting diamonds. And now, he’s with these like, you know, PhD students from Carnegie Mellon and Steve Jobs and, you know, all these people. Did I have an imposter syndrome? Yeah, maybe for two weeks, but anyway.
[00:54:54] Kim Scott: So what was the, what was this, what was your solution?
[00:54:57] Guy Kawasaki: I don’t know. I, you know, this was so long ago, imposter syndrome was not yet recognized. And I think that, well, well, the practical term is that, Steve Jobs was so intimidating. He just scared the shit out of everybody. Probably everybody had imposter syndrome. So, you know, when you’re fearing for your life, you can’t be thinking about, am I an imposter? You just got to do what you do to survive.
[00:55:23] Kim Scott: Yeah. And I think that it’s useful to remember that, like when you feel like you’re at a disadvantage for whatever reason. The people who wind up successful are not those who play beta dog, but those who step up and just get on a, uh, try to get on a level playing field, even if you don’t, you know, even just recognize that that gap is imaginary.
[00:55:47] Guy Kawasaki: It is imaginary. And I also think that, you know, we’re talking about complex things because it’s a fine line between you, you gotta believe that gap is imaginary. And then if you go too far, then you start believing that you are superior to everybody. And I’m telling you, it’s better to believe there’s a gap than to believe that, you know, you are entitled to everything. Um, that’s a lot harder to beat the shit out of.
[00:56:16] Kim Scott: Yes. Totally agree. Yeah. You don’t, you don’t want to put yourself up here or down here. You want to get on a, get on the same.
[00:56:22] Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, you should. I have come to believe Kim and Amy that over the course of my life, I’ve come to believe that everybody you meet is better at something than you. Everybody. And it could be surfing. It could be hockey. It could be making tacos. It could be cooking. It could be, you know, I don’t know, violin, whatever, but you, you are not the center of the world.
[00:56:48] Kim Scott: That is the truth. Uh, yes, there’s no such thing as a B player. Everybody’s great at something.
[00:56:55] Amy Sandler: Yeah. And, and remarkable.
[00:56:57] Guy Kawasaki: Everybody’s great at something.
[00:56:58] Kim Scott: Everybody’s remarkable.
[00:57:00] Guy Kawasaki: But nobody’s great at everything.
[00:57:02] Amy Sandler: Yeah. Guy, I have one more question and then one reflection before we close. And I want to make sure that I bring in, ’cause I think, you know, Kim talks a lot about getting, uh, stuff or shit done in the book, Radical Candor.
[00:57:14] And on your podcast, in your book, you talk about Harvard professor Ellen Langer’s wisdom about making the decision right versus making the right decision. And that feels especially relevant now. So can you share why, why that rang such alarm bells for you?
[00:57:31] Guy Kawasaki: This, this really rang a very loud bell, although I’m deaf, so that’s not a good metaphor. But anyway, so, so basically Ellen Langer said, you know, people, we spend so much time with artificial intelligence and big data and all that. We’re trying to make this perfect decision and we make, tie ourselves in knots trying to make this perfect decision. And you cannot predict the future. You don’t know what’s going to happen.
[00:57:55] So a better attitude is you take your best shot and then you just make your decision right. And I, and I heard that, I said, god damn, that is some wisdom there. I mean, you know, you, people, people think if you, you make a decision careful enough, you’re going to make the right decision, and then it’s all easy after you make the right decision.
[00:58:17] But A, you’re not going to make the right decision, and B, it’s not going to be easy. So you should just figure out that, you know, whatever you decide, you make your decision right. And that is one of the most important things that I learned. And you can apply it to surfing too. You know, when you’re out there surfing and you’re, ninety percent of surfing is waiting for, looking for, and finding the right wave.
[00:58:41] The right speed, the right height, the right direction, the right everything. And then at some point you just turn and you paddle and then you discover, ah, this wasn’t the right wave. But then at that point,
[00:58:52] Kim Scott: You’re committed.
[00:58:53] Guy Kawasaki: You know, you just have to make your decision right. You’re committed, as you say, you’ve got to make your decision right. And you get a rave, you get a ride out of a wave that was not ideal. And that’s how surfing works. I think that’s how life works.
[00:59:07] Kim Scott: That is such a good metaphor. I’m using it, today.
[00:59:11] Guy Kawasaki: Okay, feel free.
[00:59:15] Amy Sandler: It is a great one. And I actually like the, using ride and wave and coming up with a rave. That’s a, we can, uh, coin that as well when you’re doing the ride and the wave. Um, last thing. You and Kim have a lot in common, even though you just met, recently. You have the diamond cutting.
[00:59:32] Guy Kawasaki: I think she’s a spook.
[00:59:33] Amy Sandler: Yeah, well, that was where I wanted to go.
[00:59:35] Guy Kawasaki: She was recruited by Russia when she was there. And she’s been just dormant this whole time. And when Donald Trump becomes president, she’s going to rise up.
[00:59:44] Kim Scott: Nope
[00:59:44] Amy Sandler: Well, the funny thing is that Kim and I went to business school together. I didn’t know her then, but Kim, I don’t know if we talked about this. In the fall of that first year, I got a letter in a nondescript envelope, and it was inviting me to become an operations officer. And for a few days.
[01:00:00] Kim Scott: For the CIA.
[01:00:01] Amy Sandler: Yeah. Um, like an agent. So I, for a few days, I had, well, I had this fantasy. This country, America, the U.S. And so I had this fantasy. This was when Silence of the Lambs came out that I was going to be like Jodie Foster and like jogging through Quantico. But then I was like, what’s the point of doing this if I can’t tell anyone? So it didn’t, it didn’t really last, it didn’t last very long. But I just thought you would get a kick out of that since Guy seems to think that your career, uh, led you down a different path.
[01:00:31] Kim Scott: That I’m a spook. Yeah, no. I couldn’t even, I told you guy, I couldn’t even get a job in the U.S. embassy as a nanny because I was president of Princeton Alliance to reverse the arms race. I was on the, I was too, uh, too liberal even then.
[01:00:47] Amy Sandler: And as a language thing, I suspect that that is maybe not a good word. Um, I’m wondering for referencing a spice, spook. I don’t know what the etymology is, but we can, we’ll find out on that. We like to, we like to call out our, uh, our own internal biases on that.
[01:01:05] Kim Scott: It’s so interesting when you look at etymology of words, how many of the words that I like to use, ’cause I like colorful language, are deeply problematic in their origin.
[01:01:16] Amy Sandler: And so, well it definitely has a very, um, offensive term as well as the spy one, so we’ll optimize for just spy.
[01:01:22] Kim Scott: I did not know that. Okay. Spy.
[01:01:26] Amy Sandler: Guy, uh, was there one story that we haven’t yet gotten from you that, um, that would be fun to share before we, before we wrap? Either from the book or just anything that sparked maybe you and Steve Jobs battling over whether you got a presentation or not.
[01:01:41] Guy Kawasaki: Nah, I mean, I’m tired of talking about Steve Jobs.
[01:01:44] Amy Sandler: Okay, good.
[01:01:45] Guy Kawasaki: Okay, I’ll tell you a story, another story about motivation because one of my key lessons in the book is it’s not how you got motivated, it’s that you did get motivated. So don’t worry about the source of your motivation. Just worry that you are motivated. So I’m going to tell you one last story.
[01:02:07] It’s twenty-five years ago or so, and I had a Porsche 911 because, you know, I took the formative high school experience and executed on it. So I had a 911 and I’m in Menlo Park, California, and I’m on El Camino, um, right where Jeffrey’s Hamburger is, if you will know where that is, and Kepler’s, and Kepler’s.
[01:02:27] So I’m at the stoplight and I look to my left and there’s a car with four teenage girls in it. They’re looking at me and they’re smiling, they’re giggling and they’re making eye contact. And I’m thinking, oh Guy, you have arrived man. You’re like the Japanese Justin Bieber. They know who you are. It’s because of Apple or your books or your garage.com, or you know, you’re speaking your TED Talks.
[01:02:50] There’s so many reasons why these teenage girls could know who I am. . So the girl in the front seat, she says, roll down your window. I roll down my window and I, and she sticks out her head and out of her window and she says. Are you Jackie Chan?
[01:03:08] Well, I’d rather be asked if I’m Jackie Chan than if I do you longs, but anyway, that’s us. So now, you know, so you’re wondering, once again, we’re like, you know, there’s, there’s a superficial story about, you know, racial profiling or something, but a really good lesson from this is that ever since that day, one of my goals in life is that someday Jackie Chan is in Hong Kong or Shanghai or Beijing or wherever he lives and he’s in his Bentley or his S Class or his 7 series BMW.
[01:03:41] God forbid he’s in a Tesla. But anyway, he’s in his car and he looks over and there’s this car with four teenage girls and they’re making eye contact and they ask him to put down his window. And the girl in the front seat puts out her head and says to Jackie Chan, are you Guy Kawasaki? That’s my goal in life. You gotta have goals in life if you want to be remarkable.
[01:04:05] Kim Scott: That is an excellent goal.
[01:04:08] Amy Sandler: Well on that note, uh, how would you like,
[01:04:11] Kim Scott: I have one last story and then we’re gonna end. So I’m gonna tell you what I did when I was a sixteen year old girl driving around.
[01:04:17] Amy Sandler: Oh my goodness.
[01:04:18] Kim Scott: We used to, this is a terrible story, but this is what we did. We would, we would take our shirts off, my friends and I, so there’d be like eight of us in my station wagon. We’d take our shirts off and we would, I drove a Buick station wagon, and if you hit accelerate on that, it would go off to a screeching. So we’d pull up to a red light.
[01:04:39] And we’d, we’d tap the window of the car next to us. And believe me, those guys always rolled their windows down right away. And then, and then we’d say, remember that cartoon, I mean that commercial, Do You Want Some Grey Poupon? We’d say, Do You Want Some Grey Poupon? And whatever we had. These guys were like, we’d slap it in their face. A spring full of Grey Poupon, and then the light would turn green and I’d hit the accelerator and we’d peel out. So you got treated well by those fourteen year old girls.
[01:05:11] Guy Kawasaki: And what does taking off your shirt have to do with this?
[01:05:15] Kim Scott: It ensured that they would roll the window down.
[01:05:18] Guy Kawasaki: Oh,
[01:05:20] Amy Sandler: I don’t quite know what lesson we’re going to draw here and, uh,
[01:05:24] Guy Kawasaki: I think you’re going to get some bad feedback. I’m glad you told that story, not me. That you’re, you’re enforcing the sexualization of young women.
[01:05:34] Amy Sandler: Yeah, we might, we might want to edit that one out, Kim. That was at your own autonomy. We’ll ask, we’ll ask the rest of the group on that. Well, Guy.
[01:05:45] Guy Kawasaki: You can, you can ask the rest of the group about my metaphor of trimming bushes for the woman.
[01:05:50] Amy Sandler: I already decided that was going to have to be edited out. So,
[01:05:54] Kim Scott: We’re keeping it all in. This is gonna be the Radical Candor podcast.
[01:06:01] Guy Kawasaki: I think if you have a sub stack newsletter, you should now have paid subscriptions in which you hear all the dirtiness that happens in our podcast that we edit out.
[01:06:10] Amy Sandler: Alright, see, always a marketer. We already got some, that is some valuable advice from the expert evangelist. Guy, how can people find you? Where do you want them to go? How can they get your book, etcetera?
[01:06:24] Guy Kawasaki: I mean, listen, seriously, if you cannot find my book, you’re not going to be remarkable because you’re clueless. How can you not find my book?
[01:06:36] Amy Sandler: This is a podcast. What’s it, it’s called Think Remarkable.
[01:06:41] Guy Kawasaki: Poor Brandi and Nick. They just want to get this over and like start editing. But okay. Now I’m going to tell you one last story. Okay. So this is absolutely, I swear to god, true. Every week somebody comes up to me and says, I was lost. I didn’t know what to do with my life. I had no direction. And then I read your book and it changed my life. It gave me direction. And now I am successful because of your book. And I say to them, oh, which one of my sixteen books changed your life? Every time they say, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
[01:07:26] Kim Scott: Oh no. Oh no.
[01:07:31] Amy Sandler: Oh my, that was, that was written by Jackie, Jackie Chan? Did Jackie.
[01:07:35] Guy Kawasaki: Yard Man. Jackie Chan. Robert Kiyosaki. I am everywhere, baby.
[01:07:40] Kim Scott: Wow.
[01:07:41] Amy Sandler: Oh my gosh.
[01:07:42] Kim Scott: Yeah. Well, what can you do?
[01:07:44] Amy Sandler: Well, we will say Guy Kawasaki is author of Think Remarkable. It’s called Think Remarkable, or is it just remarkable with the word think?
[01:07:55] Guy Kawasaki: I’m going to write a book, Poor Dad, Poor Dad.
[01:08:02] Amy Sandler: We’ll have you on the podcast to talk about it, Guy. All right, so look for Think Remarkable, listen to the Remarkable People podcast, uh, go,
[01:08:12] Guy Kawasaki: And subscribe to my Substack newsletter, that’s where I’m putting my effort now. That and my podcast, yeah.
[01:08:17] Amy Sandler: All right, go check out Guy Kawasaki’s Substack.
[01:08:23] Kim Scott: We had a good time.
[01:08:24] Amy Sandler: We had a lot of fun. Thanks for making it work.
[01:08:27] Guy Kawasaki: Alright, bye.
[01:08:28] Kim Scott: Take care.
[01:08:29] Amy Sandler: Bye bye.
[01:08:30] Kim Scott: Be well.
Radical Candor Podcast Resources
- Guy Kawasaki
- Books | Guy Kawasaki
- Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People Podcast
- Think Remarkable | Guy Kawasaki
- Guy Kawasaki | Substack
- Is There Better Than Better | Ellen Langer
- Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck
- Mindset | Carol Dweck
- Kim Scott: The Power of Radical Respect and Candor | YouTube
- The Problem With Passion 3 | 9 | Radical Candor
- Beyond ‘Sorry’: How to Apologize and Mean It 6 | 22 | Radical Candor
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