Episode 232: How to Think Bigger, Market Smarter, and Grow Faster — with Guy Kawasaki

Guy 

Most of the time, if your lips are moving, you're selling. You should never ask people to do something you would not do. And this is very useful for entrepreneurs. Evangelism comes from a Greek word meaning you bringing the good news. It's easy to evangelize, good stuff, and it's hard to evangelize. If I could explain this to all your listeners right now, I would charge you a lot of money for what I'm about to say.

Jeff

Well, hello and welcome to another episode of Marketing Guides for Small Businesses, the show that breaks down marketing strategy tools and trends into practical steps for small and medium sized business owners. I'm Jeff Steck from Tylerica Marketing Systems in Austin, Texas. I'm joined by my co hosts, Ken Tucker from Changescape Web in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Paul Barthel from Changescape Web in St. Charles, Missouri. Ian Cantle from Outsourced Marketing is unable to join us again today, unfortunately. So let's get into it. Today's guest is someone who truly needs no introduction, but deserves one anyway. Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of canva, host of the Remarkable People podcast, author of Think Remarkable and I think 16 other books. Guy, is that it? And an adjunct professor at UC Santa Cruz. Guy was a chief evangelist at Apple, a trustee of the Wikimedia Media foundation, and a brand ambassador for Mercedes Benz. Guy has a BA from Stanford University and MBA from UCLA and an honorary doctorate from Babson College. So welcome to the Marketing Guides for Small Businesses podcast, Guy.

Guy

Yeah, thank you for having me. So let's, let's, let's kick this off, baby.

Jeff

Yeah. When we set this up, Madison said, and I quote, you can ask him anything. He's an open boy book. So let's, let's maybe go, go back a little bit and talk about your nonlinear path. You know, your career has taken many turns from the evangelism that we mentioned to founding companies and now championing design at Canva. And you've noted that the path to success isn't always linear. So how did the twists shape your mindset? And what do you say to business owners about embracing a nonlinear journey?

Guy

Well, I mean, you know, I, I, I would like to see how many people's journey is linear. I mean, I guess if you came from a wealthy east coast family, went to an Ivy League, you got an mba, went to Goldman Sachs, you know, yeah, that's a linear path. But I'm from Honolulu, Hawaii. I came from a lower middle income place and, and I, I will thank God for a sixth grade teacher who convinced my Parents to put me in a college. I did that and then I went to Stanford and from Stanford I met somebody who eventually hired me into Apple. But between Stanford and Apple, I, I went to law school for two weeks and I couldn't stand it, so I quit. And then I, I went into the jewelry business while I was getting an MBA at ucla and from that, you know, I went, I stayed in that jewelry company after graduation and then my friend hired me into Apple and I was software evangelist. I was the second software evange. And then I worked for. So then I worked for Apple, I left, I start some software companies. I returned to Apple as Apple's chief evangelist. I leave to start a venture capital for. I finished that and then I went to work for Canva. And along the way I wrote 17 books. And if you had talked to me in the sixth grade in Hawaii, I said, let me tell you the trajectory of your life, guy, I would have told you you're hallucinating. That would never ever happen like that.

Ken

Yeah, wow.

Jeff

I, I can relate. I, I joke that I'm on career 3.0 because I can't hold a job, but how has that kind of shaped your mindsets? And in terms of business owners when they kind of get this vision of being on a path, is there, you know, anything that you would say to reinsture them that that's not necessarily the way it needs to be?

Guy

Well, I tell you something, there's, there's this dichotomy where of course you have to focus and you have to persevere and you have to put in years because there's no such thing as an over success. So I understand that. On the other hand, you know, I think that you one should, when people get interested in stuff, they should pursue that interest and see what comes of it. And knock on wood, that interest will become a passion and that passion will become your life. But. Well, one piece of advice is don't start off looking for passions because the, I think the P word is a bad word because it implies that you're instantly going to fall in love, you're instantly going to be good, you're instantly going to make money and it just doesn't happen that way. So you know, you scratch these itches and some of these, it just turns into something that you love and you can make money doing it. And, and that's the way it goes. And I, I would bet that most people in small businesses, you know, it's not like they took over a family business. It's been in their Family since, you know, the Mayflower came to America, they've probably been all over the map doing all kinds of things. And I, I think that that is the more typical path.

Ken

Yeah, absolutely. It certainly is for me. I mean, I went to college to learn, not to figure out, figure out a job. And I found out my passion was really learning and so I, you know, wound up studying philosophy and my parents were all freaked out. It's like, what in the world are you going to do with that? But now it's like when you, you know, when you, when you have a well rounded education, you know, and you oftentimes have tremendous opportunities that you just have to be aware that you can seize.

Guy

Well, you know, I, I, as, as the famous Steve Jobs said in his Stanford commencement, you can only connect the dots looking backwards. And I mean, well, again, you know, maybe there's this theoretical Ivy League to Goldman Sachs or to Accenture or to, you know, I don't know, Chase or whatever. And you know, that might be a linear path, but I actually think those people are boring. I mean, they may be rich, don't get me wrong, but I think they're boring and they're self centered and, you know, only thing worse than them is the tech bros from Silicon Valley. But that's a different discussion.

Ken

So guy, you've, you've said that no matter what your role in a company, you need to know how to make a sale. Can you talk about why you believe that sales skills are so critical for sure for small business owners and things like that?

Guy

Well, listen, if, if you are a small business owner and you're listening to this podcast, this is gonna sound like kind of what I call a duh ism. As in duh. Yeah, Guy, sales are important. I mean, I think my saying is sales fixes everything. And as long as it got sales, you're in, you're in a game, you know, you're not, you're not failing. You may be flailing, but you're not failing yet. And sales fixes everything. And, and as I look back on my life, I think there are only two fundamental purposes. You can either make something or sell something. Everything else you can hire, you can farm out, you can, you know, you can find somebody to do that. But fundamentally, every business is based on somebody's got to make it and somebody's got to sell it. And that was Steve Wozniak making it, and that was Steve Jobs selling it. And if you get those two things right, then, you know, everything else can fall into place. But if you don't have somebody making it, then the salesperson has nothing to sell. If the salesperson is selling, you know, but that's, that's the key. So you need someone to sell it and somebody to make it. And if you don't have somebody making it, you got nothing to sell. If you got somebody making it but nobody to sell it, then how are you going to get revenue? So you just need both. And that's the, that's the key to me.

Ken

Do you think a lot of entrepreneurs, I mean, they're obviously going to be strong in one or the other, typically not both, although sometimes. So do you think it's pretty critical that entrepreneurs recognize early on that they need to bring somebody on? Yeah, you can complement them in terms of either the make or the sell.

Guy

Yeah, I, I really think that the, the probability that you are really good at making something and really good at selling something is low. There are people who can do that, but, you know, not even Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs couldn't design a motherboard and, and Steve Wozniak couldn't sell it. So, you know, you need both. And, and that led to the most valuable company in the world. So I think, you know, if I were advising a small business, I would say when you look around the room at the people that you've hired, you should say to yourself, my God, that person does what I, I mean, excuse me, that person does what he does better than I ever could. And that person does better what she does better than I ever could. And you just go down the line and everybody is better than you. Then you've done a good job recruiting.

Ken

Yeah, absolutely. If you're. So if we're looking at, you know, cultivating sales skills, what's the best way to get into that? Always be selling mentality without coming across as inauthentic or pushy.

Guy

Yeah, you know, I, I was fortunate that I, I encountered selling early in my career because I went to this small jewelry manufacturer in downtown LA and we sold to retailers, we didn't sell to people. And so we had to make sales calls on all these jewelry stores all over the country. And it was truly hand to hand combat. And you know, I gotta say that that was a great beginning for me. It gave me skills that I use for the rest of my career. And my wife, first job out of college, she went to work for Procter and Gamble. And you can really learn how to sell working for Procter and Gamble. So you know, I think that if you're young person listening to this and you're not an engineer, get into sales. I mean, you and, and I would say that sales is a lifelong skill. And I think, you know, in almost everything you do, when you go to the airport and you trying to get upgraded to first class, guess what you're selling, pal. And you know, whenever you, you, you're trying to, you know, you're trying to get a, I don't know, you're trying to get a raise, you're selling. When you're trying to get a job, you're selling. I mean, most of the time if your lips are moving, you're selling. So, you know, you should come to that conclusion and figure out that this is a very important skill. So that when you get pulled over for speeding and you sell the fact that, you know, I don't know, come up with a great reason why you shouldn't get a ticket, you are selling foul.

Ken

Yeah. Do you think, you know, with the explosion of AI, do you think people really need to embrace this make or this sell strategy? Because those are things that I think are going to take a very long time for AI to replace. You know, there are, I mean, obviously some of the make aspects could be taken away very quickly. Some of the sales activities could be taken away very quickly. But still, at the end of the day, there's got to be that human element and that human quality insurance.

Guy

But I will tell you that, listen, I'm 71 years old, so I've seen a lot of shit go down, right? So, you know, you think that, oh, we what? You know, like people have said, well, why do I need a 800 line? You know, I have a retail store, why do I need a fax machine? People can call me on my copper based telephone. Why do I need a website? People can look at my catalog. And now they're saying, why do I need AI? I got, you know, I can use the library, can use the social media. In my, in my career, I have seen personal computers, chips, Internet, social media. And I would say that AI is bigger than all of them combined. And so if you're a small business, AI is the ultimate tool for you. It is an equalizer for you because it will bring to you the knowledge of the entire human race instantly and basically for free. And I can't think of a better deal than that. So now if you're worried that AI is going to take your place, I will tell you that yes, there are going to be jobs that are going to be replaced. But the greater fear you should have is not that AI takes your place. It's that someone who knows how to use AI will take your place. So you've got to be the person who can use AI better than anybody else, selling or making, and then you're kind of assured of a future.

Ken

Awesome.

Jeff

Two things that kind of popped into my head as you were talking, Guy, are, you know, one is just the incredible history we have of underestimating change in technology.

Guy

Yes.

Jeff

I mean, I think IBM famously in the 50s, predicted that, like, four computers that are less powerful than my wristwatch today, could I have four in my house. And, and then the, I mean, the, the jobs disappearing. If you look at all the jobs from 100 years ago, a lot of them don't exist anymore. So I think it's, you know, don't underestimate and embrace the change. Yeah, I absolutely agree with.

Guy

Well, you, you know, you can, as, as some famous general once said, you can lead, follow, or get out of the way. But, and, and, you know, if you think about it, yeah, you know, yeah, we can have an intellectual discussion about AI and how it's dangerous and, you know, all these things that could go wrong, which people said about Internet, people said about technology too. But that's electricity. Yeah, electricity, the wheel, Fire. No, fire is bad. We cannot have fire. So, you know, that kind of discussion always happens. But I think it's largely at this point, a very theoretical discussion because you could have this discussion and come to the conclusion that AI is bad. And what are you going to do? You think you're going to put it back in the bottle? I don't think so. That bottle is broken in a million pieces. You know, so as I say, you know, lead, follow, or get out of the way. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4

Technology isn't usually bad. It's how it's used.

Guy

Yeah, yeah. So I just, I would be amazed if AI cannot supplement somehow everybody's business that's listening to this. I mean, at the very least, listen. I have a podcast called Remarkable People, and guess what? I interview remarkable people. So last week I interviewed Deepak Chopra, okay? So now Deepak Chopra is Mr. Metaphysical Holistic Medicine, you know, woo, woo, all that kind of stuff. And I interview him, and to my utter amazement, he loves AI. You know, his recent book is called the Digital Dharma. That should give you an, you know, an insight into where he's coming from. And at one point I said, so are you telling me that AI can be a guru? And he said, yes. And like, if you think about it, you can treat AI as your personal Deepak Chop or your guru and you can ask Deepak a question 24. He never gets pissed off, he never is unavailable, he never is going to charge you. And so if I were a small business, I would say, you know, ask questions like how can I compete with the new person across the street who offers the same product at the lower price? And you know, I'm not saying that every insight will be brilliant, but it like AI is having your best friend and mentor who's got infinite knowledge available 24 by 7 for free and instant answers. So, you know, if, if I were you, if I was a small business and I was running a classified ad, I would just stick to classified ad in chat GPT and say, can you see any way to improve this to increase callback? So you know, just put everything in there and I guarantee you you will be amazed at how much AI can help you.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I think part of what you're seeing with AI right now is, goes back to what you said Guy about why do I need a website? You know, back when that was new, or why, why do I need an email address? People can call me.

Guy

Right, exactly. Why do I need electricity? The sun is going to rise and.

Speaker 4

I got candles.

Guy

And kerosene awful lot.

Speaker 4

So a while back you, you wrote a book called Wise Guy. And it, the purpose, I believe was to share life lessons that you've learned over your career, over your life. So looking back when you were first getting started, is there one, like, pivotal lesson that you said, this is going to shape how I do business?

Guy

Well, there were many in my life and not, not that I always listened to myself, but I think I learned that you should never ask people to do something you would not do. And this is very useful for entrepreneurs. Right? So, you know, if, if you hate filling in captcha to get a free account, if you hate uploading your credit card information to get a free account, if you hate flying coach from Chicago to Bangalore, if you hate all these kind of things and you wouldn't do them, do not put your customers through them. Do not put your employees through them. Do not put your vendors through. If you like getting paid net 10, do not pay your vendors net 90. I mean, and I think that is a very good, very good compass or north light for entrepreneurs. Of course this assumes that you're not a psychopath, but yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Jeff

I constantly find myself asking, do the people that design this or build this actually use it? You know, it's. Yeah, it's right.

Guy

I know. You know, you don't get me started on this. I mean, listen, I no longer work for Apple, but there are parts of iPhone and Macintosh that I look at this and I say, you have got to be freaking kidding me. Like, have you ever used this? Does, like, does Tim Cook have a personal concierge that does all this for him? Because it cannot be possible. I mean, if, if you look at something like settings, right? So if you look at settings, you think, oh, my God, like, where is security? How do I make the light flash when the phone is silent so I can see it flash? So mixes came in. How do I turn off? It doesn't ring. Oh, is. There's airplane mode. But is it airplane mode or do I silence it? And. And then after you figure all that out, you spend the next week trying to reverse all that. So your phone work, like, work before. Like, you know, as I said, I'm on podcasters, and, and I have figured out, like, literally, you know, it's like airplane mode, shut off sound, do not disturb. You know, you turn all that on. And like, for days I don't know how to return the phone back to where it was. So what I have embraced doing, which is utterly ridiculous, is when I do a podcast, I cannot shut my phone because if something goes wrong, I need to get on the phone with the guest or the producer. You know, I can't be like, blocked out completely. So I take my phone and I put it in a Faraday bag. Like, you wrap your head around that. I'm putting my phone in a bag covered with wire so it doesn't ring in the middle of my podcast. I mean.

Speaker 4

It'S ample. It just works.

Guy

Exactly. It just works if you. If you got a personal concierge.

Ken

So.

Jeff

So, Guy, we are by and large a marketing oriented podcast. We probably should shift gears into marketing a little bit.

Speaker 4

You.

Jeff

You often boil marketing down as providing unique value, essentially offering something different and. And valuable.

Guy

Yeah.

Jeff

For a small business that's in a crowded market, how can they pinpoint what makes them truly unique and valuable to customers? Do you have any tips for communicating that? And, well, I want to make sure they just don't compete on price. Right.

Guy

If. If I could explain this to all your listeners right now, I would charge you a lot of money for what I'm about to say. So I'll give you a mental model that you're going to have to figure out yourself. So I want you to make a two by two matrix. So there's four squares, right? And on one side, you measure the value of what you do. And on the vertical axis, you measure how different are you? So, you know, are you, are you unique? Or is there a lot of clones of what you do? Is what you do valuable or is it, you know, shit? So, you know, I mean, I think you just gotta say, like, so what makes me and my product or my service unique and valuable? So let me give you some examples. So when iPod first came out, it was truly unique and valuable because with ipod, there was no other device that could hold a thousand songs that had a user interface that a mere mortal could control. And you could get these songs from the six biggest music publishers legally and inexpensively and easy. I just described something that nothing else could do. That. And that's why iPod is successful. So you got to think of yourself like, what about my. What is unique and valuable about my sushi restaurant, my dry cleaning business, my web services? You know, and until you answer that question, you're just going to have to compete on price. And that is the worst thing to compete on.

Ken

Yeah, yeah, we, we had Jay Bear on several months back. Yeah, his last book was really talking about speed of response and how critical that is and how that can actually help you avoid competing on price. Because if you're first to respond, chances are you're going to get the business anyway. But you're also going to be able to charge what you would normally charge. It alleviates that pricing pressure, you know, in, in the, in the world we live in today. So, yeah, it's. Differentiation is, is super important. And I don't think enough is spent on that for small businesses. And they, and they wind up, you know, just trying to underbid themselves. And that's not a healthy path.

Guy

No, it's not. And, and you know, this is a place where you really need a reality test because I encounter entrepreneurs every day that, you know, they say, well, well, you know, we have a better model or something like that. But this is not a place to be subtle. This is a place where it should smack you in the face. Right? So if you have the only 3 roll electric SUV that gets 400 miles on a charge, I can explain that. But if you are an electric SUV that gets 250 miles with two rows, boy, how do I tell you? Well, there's the macan, there's the RAV4. Jaguar has one, Chevrolet has won. You could buy a Tesla, you could buy a Hyundai, you could buy a Kia, you could buy a Mustang Mach E. I mean, I, I honestly believe that I can explain every issue with a car metaphor so.

Ken

So let's talk a little bit about storytelling and its importance in marketing. You've pointed out it's not necessarily an easy thing to do, but a good story is really essential. A lot of businesses. I mean, I'm a story brand certified consultant. And one of the things that I like about that is it kind of shifted the paradigm where it's not about you, it's about your customer and your customer the problem and how you're the guide. So I really like that. But still, there's a very important place for small businesses in their origin story, why they got started, why they're different. You know, what they built their brand around, what they believe. Can you share any insights or recognize.

Guy

Sure, sure, sure. So. So first of all, facts are overrated. F, A C T S, not fax. Facts are overrated because with a fact, there's always a counter argument and a counter fact, right? So if you said, well, 12 people died from vaccination, so the person would counter by saying, well, 2,000 people died because they didn't have vaccination or vice versa. You know, so there's always a way that you can slice and dice the data to come out to what you want, right?

Ken

So.

Guy

So that's the problem with facts. Now, stories. Stories are much harder to argue with. Now, let me give you an example, which I consider a negative example. So let's say that, you know, some doctor says lung cancer is the greatest cause of death in, you know, Americans over 50. We lose. I'm. I'm making this up. I don't know the numbers. Like 500,000 people a year die from lung cancer. So that's all facts, right? Now, to counter that, somebody tells you a story, well, My uncle is 80 years old. He has smoked a pack of cigarettes every day of his life, and he's as healthy as ever. Hmm. Now, you can't say you're a liar. Your uncle is dead. Your uncle has lung cancer. Your uncle is, you know, speaking through. Through a tube in his throat. So how do you counter that one story with your facts? And that's kind of the problem with facts. Now, if you. On the other hand, if you are the recipient of a story, you should also know that a story is not necessarily statistically and scientifically valid. So let's just. Well, we're gonna. I'm gonna come back to stories and how to use it well, but let me tell you. I'm gonna tell you the opposite side right now. So whenever you hear a story, ask yourself what's missing and I'll give you a great example. You often hear the stories that, oh, you don't need a college education. There's Bill Gates, there's Steve Jobs. You know, they, they didn't go to college, they didn't finish college. You can be like Bill Gates, you can be like Steve Jobs, you can be like Mark Zuck, they never finished college. Well, when you hear a story like that, you should ask what's missing and what's missing as well. How many people didn't go to college and couldn't start a company? And how many people went to college and were successful as an entrepreneur? So you have to ask, you know, all the possible permutations. Just don't take three stories and one person's 80 year uncle who smokes a pack of cigarettes every day as, oh, I think I'll light up maybe because, because I just heard a story of a guy who smoked a pack a day for 80 years. Yeah, smoking doesn't cause cancer. I mean, that's not the way to live life. So now, okay, that's the negative side. And you know, I'm trying to get you to be skeptical, but I think the story of your origin of your company, first of all, it's helpful if it's true, but if you can tell a story, people want to know why you started your company. So, you know, Melanie and Cliff were in college in Western Australia and they were teaching other students how to use Photoshop and how to use Illustrator. And they realized, man, you know, Photoshop is so hard for these students and it's takes so long to load and you got to buy a site license and it takes months and months to figure out how to use it. So they started Canva and now Canva, you just go and you pick your, your design type. There's already templates and you know, in the time it would take you to install Photoshop, you can have a finished design in Canva. That's a great story. That's the kind of story that you want. And I'll tell you one more story. And this is gonna contradict what I just earlier said about make sure the story is true. But this is a good story that I, I want to tell you anyway. So, so, you know, if you, if you look for the story of ebay, the story of ebay is that Pierre Ahmed Yar's girlfriend, now wife, she was a toy collector, she collected PEZ dispensers and there was no way for her to sell PEZ dispensers. So Pierre Amadyar created Ebay so his girlfriend could sell PEZ dispensers. That's the story they tell about the origin of ebay. Now, the truth is that Pierre Omadyar was more of a microeconomics kind of guy and he was trying to figure how do we find the perfect clearing price where the supply curve and the demand curve intersect. And it's not a perfect price if your computer is in St. Louis and the buyer is Austin, because the buyer in Austin is never going to know about the computer for sale in St. Louis and the guy selling the computer in St. Louis is never going to know about the buyer in Austin. So he created ebay so that the buyer and the seller in Austin and St. Louis could establish the, you know, perfect market clearing price. That's the truth behind ebay. But I tell you the story of I created this company so that my girlfriend could sell her Pez dispensers. I think it's a much better story for ebay.

Speaker 4

It's so sweet. So small businesses and social media, they think it's funny to give me the social media topics we do. So a lot of small businesses, and you know, you've said this, that it's like one of the last affordable marketing channels and the last cost effective ways to get eyeballs, as it were.

Guy

Yeah.

Speaker 4

So you have to be consistent. You have to share content. I mean, it takes time. And a lot of small business owners are really strapped for time.

Guy

So.

Speaker 4

Yeah, how can they utilize it? And I guess my other question is how does that those eyeballs? Because I've never had luck with this. How do those eyeballs Translated conversions.

Guy

Okay, well, first of all, it dep. I mean, it truly depends on what, you know, what you claim is a small business because not all Smith, not all small businesses can use social media. Social media is not good for everything. And I have to tell you that I have a very different opinion about social media than I had a few years ago because I think that, that largely social media for most uses is ineffective today. Like, I have, I don't know, 10 million total followers and I wish I could just like say, hey, I got a new book. And I don't know, let's pick a round number. So I have 10 million followers and I tell them I have a new book. So 10% buy the book. So I sell a million copies of my book. Let me tell you something, I'm away short of a million copies. I not sure that social media works anymore because there's too much noise and there's, you know, you Just don't know what to believe on social media. So if I were a small business, now this is, I'm assuming the small business is like a consumer facing small business. Right. But if I were a small business, consumer facing, I think I would be focusing more on my ratings on Google and Yelp because I know when I pick something like a key shop or, you know, or a sushi bar or someone to cut down my eucalyptus trees, I go to Google, I search for tree trimmer, I see the guy with 4.9 stars. I read the first two or three reviews and I call them up and I say, I got some eucalyptus trees I want cut. I'm not looking at his Instagram to see that he's posting pictures of, you know, here comes his beautiful eucalyptus falling down. Or just look at my beautiful chainsaw. Somebody tried that recently. And so it's not clear to me that if you have a tree trimming business, you should be on Instagram, let's just put it that way. And I would do everything I could so that when somebody looked you up in Yelp or, or Google, you come up four and a half to five stars.

Speaker 4

Yeah. And I, that's. Those are some very interesting pores. I just read an article today that broke down how people search by demo, broke it down by demographic, how people search and the platforms they use. And. Yeah, and basically mirrored what you just said. Like Gen Z tends to use social media, they, or chat GPT. But I agree, social media, to me it's an echo chamber. And like you said, you can't, you don't know what's true or not. There's no vetting going on there.

Guy

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, you, you can't exactly completely trust Yelp and, and, and Google's rating system either, but it's a lot better than somebody's TikTok account. I mean, but again, it kind of depends on what kind of business. Right. I mean if you're a fashion business. Okay, I understand Instagram. Right. You're not going to go to Yelp to find out is the blouse beautiful at this company. Although you might go to Yelp and find out like, is this retailer, you know, reputable? And if, if, if you go to yet Etsy, you would look at Etsy's average, you know, review and scoring and all that. So, but I would not call Etsy and its ranking system. And when I shop on ebay, I'm just checking stars too. I mean, I think that's what's more important and quite frankly that you know, that leads to another, maybe bigger point is that instead of social media, just make good shit. Just treat people right. Just show up on time, just respond to service calls and you'll get a very high ranking. And it doesn't matter how many followers you have on Instagram. If you said to me, guys, you can either have a five star average on Yelp or you can have 5 million followers on Instagram. If I were a small business, I would probably pick five stars on Yelp.

Ken

I've started talking about social media is either bitching, bragging, or bawling. It just seems like, you know, that when you, when you hop on and you look at the news feeds, it's like, like if it's not an ad, it's, it's, it's one of those three things. And it's just like you said, it's all noise.

Speaker 4

So, yeah, social media is definitely pay to play now.

Ken

Yeah, it's.

Speaker 4

Yeah, you've got a lot of small businesses that think that it's, it's free or inexpensive. And maybe a few years ago it was, but not anymore.

Guy

Well, you know, who am I? I mean, I honestly, I don't have the data, but if you, if, you know, maybe somebody out there is running a real estate office and with Facebook, you can say, well, you know, target people who live in the St. Louis, Missouri area who make over 100,000 a year, who live on the west side of St. Louis or whatever and send them this ad for a new listing. I mean, there's a reason why Facebook does billions of dollars of business. Right. So, but that's advertising. That's not necessarily social media. Right, Right.

Jeff

I think as the platforms, the mainstream platforms anyway, are kind of victims of their own success. And they've gotten, if I can make up word over algorithm.

Guy

Right.

Jeff

When it started, they were very organic. People were connecting. But now they've gone to, they're only seeing bits and pieces. They're seeing like, you know, Ken said, bitching, balling and bragging and people are just getting tired of it.

Guy

There is nothing organic about social media anymore.

Ken

So let's, let's talk about evangelism for every business. So, I mean, obviously you, you know, you've been so dynamic and phenomenal in your evangelist roles. How can you, how do you recommend that a small business develop evangelists?

Guy

Sure, sure.

Ken

And the owner of a business become their own evangelist.

Guy

Okay, so first of all, let me define evangelism. It comes from a Greek word meaning you bringing the good news. So as an evangelist for Macintosh. I was bringing the good news of Macintosh that it would make people more creative and productive. And then as the evangelist for Canva, I was bringing the good news that this company democratized design so now you can create beautiful things and become a better communicator. So the lesson number one with evangelism is you got to have good news. Because I learned something very early. It's easy to evangelize good stuff, and it's hard to evangelize shit. So if you have shitty products or shady service, you cannot use evangelism. So that, you know, that kind of goes back to that two by two matrix, right? So it all starts. It's very easy to evangelize Canva. Trust, trust me, I know. So I'm telling you that, you know, step number one is make a great product or service. And when, when you can honestly say that my product, my service is good news, that's when you can start evangelism for this. And then evangelism is. The difference between evangelism and sales, I would say, is that evangelism is perhaps the purest form of sales in that it's not just, I'm trying to make my budget, I'm trying to make my forecast, I'm trying to make my bonus, I'm trying to make my quarter. The key to evangelism is that you have the other person's best interest at heart also. So, yeah, I'm telling you to use Canva. Don't get me wrong, it's good for me. But. But I have your best interest at heart. I truly do believe that Canva will make you a better communicator. It ain't just about me trying to make more sales for Canva. I think Canva and Macintosh will make your life better. So the key is you've got to have something that makes people's lives better.

Speaker 4

Do you.

Ken

So do you think the business owners can act as their own evangelists?

Guy

Oh, absolutely. I mean, if, if a business owner owner is not an evangelist for his or her company, who is going to be? I mean, like, you know, oh my God. If you don't believe in it, how do you expect anybody else to believe in it?

Jeff

Yeah, let me flip, flip that around a little bit. And I think it's going to come back full circle and all make sense. But the key point you just made was, you know, you've got to have good stuff to evangelize. You've got to have the good news to take out. Right? There's the. Before that. The don't Worry, be crappy part. The part where you're getting something out there and then iterating on it. And has that been taken too far, do you think?

Guy

In some cases you're shoving it right back in my face.

Speaker 4

It has in software development.

Guy

So the joke here is that in an earlier book I had this saying that don't worry, be crappy, as opposed to be happy. And this came from my observation that if you wait for the perfect world, if you wait for the perfect first Macintosh, or the perfect book or the perfect restaurant, or the perfect anything, life is gonna pass you by. So I coined this. You know what I thought was a cool little saying that don't worry, be crappy. Which means that the first version of Macintosh definitely had elements of crappiness to it. And so if you wait for the perfect world, that's too late. You have to get it out. And now I'm not saying, I'm saying don't worry, be crappy. I'm not saying ship crap. That's a different thing. Okay. Lots of people know how to ship crap. I'm telling you, you should create something that is good. Good news. And good news can have elements of crappiness to it. First, Macintosh didn't have enough ram, it didn't have big enough storage. It wasn't color, lots of crappiness to it, but it was still good news.

Jeff

Yeah, I think, you know, those two things, as I said, I think they come back full circle and come together is, you know, don't get stuck in the quest for perfection, that, that, you know, you never get anything done. But I'm also a little concerned right now, frankly, personally, that we're seeing a lot of stuff that's just, it's, it's the crap part, not the good news part. It's get it out there to get it out there and we'll fix it later. And later never come later is a well intentioned never. Right?

Guy

Yeah, but, you know, at any given point in history, everybody believes that, man. It's not just not as good as it used to be. What happened to the old values in the old way of it? Yeah, I mean, I can tell you, I truly do believe that, you know, we are incredibly healthy these days. And you know, I'm like, if somebody said to you, yeah, you know, what happened to the good old days of the 1950s? You, you, you mean in the 1950s when we were all breathing asbestos and, you know, and we're all having these like epidemics and polio wasn't cured yet, You Mean, that's when life was good and now life sucks. Yeah.

Speaker 4

So this, this could go so many different ways. Standing out versus playing it safe. So you, you've said some things in the past that, well, if you're using social media, right. You're probably going to piss people off. Well, it is so easy to offend people these days. So how does that play to.

Guy

I gotta, I gotta pull, I gotta pull that book out of circulation because it's out there, you know, things change. So back in the heyday of Twitter and stuff, you know, like you were, you were posting and you were expressing your opinion, you're talking about products and all that. And, and you know, if, if you were promoting or evangelizing a product and some people said they hate it and they couldn't use it and it sucked and all that, I would tell you that, you know, you're not going to make everybody happy. So you cannot let the 0.1% of the people who are expressing negativity change your mind about what you do. And this is a fine line between ignoring feedback and ignoring feedback. I mean, there is some feedback you just need to ignore. And you know, they're, first of all, when you get negative feedback on social media, you should just make sure that it's not some 16 year old kid in a dark basement who's telling you what's wrong with your Ferrari, because that kid has not bought your Ferrari, is not driving your Ferrari, you know, and that kid is telling you it's ugly and the mileage and you know, the, I don't know, the gear shift sucks and all that and like 16 year old kid doesn't even have a license yet. You're worried about what he's saying? I don't think so. Yeah, so some of that is, you know, you got to know what to.

Speaker 4

Ignore and there are stupid people out there.

Guy

There are. Yes, yes.

Jeff

You definitely need to have a thin skin to be an, a thick skin to be an entrepreneur.

Guy

I think that's for sure. You need to be delusional. I say, you know, so let's talk.

Ken

About customer delight and loyalty. I think this is a brilliant insight in that you need to focus on delivering value. We've talked about what you think there. Just build good stuff, get good news out there. Then you earn the right to promote yourself, to go out and try to get new customers. How do you recommend a small business, create that exceptional customer experience that keeps people coming back, you know, and, and how can that turn into, you know, a growth engine for repeat business? And referrals.

Guy

Well, I mean, there are probably so many different people listening to this in so many different businesses. I don't think that, you know, I can express how everybody can do it. But, I mean, I guess the, probably the most important concept is the concept of empathy, which is you to, like, put yourself in the place of your customer. And if you're in the place of your customer and you don't like what you do and you suck, I mean, it's time to make a change. And I, I'll give you a very good example. I have a friend named Martin Lindstrom, and he's a marketing consultant. And this pharmaceutical company came to him and said, you know, we want to get closer to our customer. So he took their executive staff and they went into this off site. And, you know, one of the exercises he, he did was he passed out straws and he made everybody breathe through the straw. And at the end of a few minutes, and it is a difficult thing to breathe through a straw, he said, you're a pharmaceutical company. You want to get closer to the customer. I made you into the customer. You have customers who have asthma. They're looking for you and your product. Product to help them with their asthma. Now you know what it feels like to have asthma. You are breathing through a straw. 24 by 7 by 3. 65. So I'm telling you as a metaphor for all you owners out there, what is your version of breathing through a straw? What are you, what can you do to understand what your customer is going through?

Speaker 4

And if you're a divorce attorney, half the people are going to hate you. So small budgets, you know, a lot of startups, they. They just don't have money. They don't have big budgets, and they're probably not going to get any kind of venture capital. Nope, probably not. Not. Not on the horizon. So how can they do more with less? I mean, how. Any tips on how they can get started without those big budgets?

Guy

Well, I mean, you know, I, first of all, I hate to burst your bubble, but, you know, if you are working in marketing, in a extremely successful, valuable company. Company, it's not like the money is just rolling into your budget and you can do anything, right? I mean, don't believe for a second that if you're working for Apple, you have unlimited budget to do everything. It just doesn't work that way. The grass is not greener. Sometimes it's better to water the brown grass around you than trying to find green grass someplace else. But I, I got a. I keep Saying this and you know, people are going to think that I have one track mind. But the best marketing of all is when your customers are delighted and happy and your customers turn into evangelists. And one of the things that evangelists do is they go on Yelp and Google and they rate you five stars. And I'm telling you, that is the best marketing of all.

Jeff

We're coming up on the hour. I'm going to kind of jump to another segment and we'll just wrap it up into one question, if that's okay. I know we had a couple. Ken. Yeah, the future. So, Guy, you know, if you look ahead, the trends in the horizon, what you see coming in, where should business owners. Folks, we talked about AI, but in the broader sense, you know, what do you see coming? What business owners focus on? How do they future proof?

Speaker 4

I.

Guy

I don't know that answer. And if any person says they do, I would suggest you not believe them. Now, what I would do for each individual industry or market or whatever you represent, I would go to Chat GPT and I would say, you know what, what are the threats to tree trimmers? Or, you know, I'm, I'm not being facetious. I bet you you could go to chat GPT and say, I live in St. Louis, Missouri, I have a tree trimming service. What future developments should I be aware of and how can I profit from changes? I, I haven't done this, but it would be very interesting to say what Chat GPT says. So I'm coming back to AI again. I'm telling you that. Yeah, you can ask Guy Kawasaki, who has this tech vision and you know, been in Silicon Valley, what he thinks, but you can ask all of humanity's knowledge that question. So, so go to AI and ask that question. I promise you that it will have a good answer for you. And I would do that. And it's freaking free and fast. I mean.

Ken

Yeah.

Guy

What more can I say?

Ken

Yeah, I did something similar yesterday. I just moved to Albuquerque. So I did. I went into ChatGPT and I asked it to give me a market analysis and, and demographic breakdown.

Guy

Yeah.

Ken

For a digital marketing agency that focuses on AI solutions and lead generation.

Guy

Yeah. And.

Ken

And with deep research, it gave me a really fantastic report that was about 12 pages long.

Guy

Wow.

Ken

Yeah, it was fantastic.

Guy

And it took what, like 30 seconds?

Ken

This one took a little bit longer because research. So it took maybe two to three minutes.

Guy

Oh, that's a real bummer. I'm sorry you had to go through all that trauma.

Ken

Yeah, I had to wait that extra few seconds.

Guy

Or you could pay McKinsey $5 million and wait six months. Yeah.

Ken

Yeah, exactly.

Jeff

Okay, guys, move to the wrap up. Is there anything that you'd like to say that we didn't ask you, we didn't talk about?

Guy

Well, I. I just hope that, you know, I. I hope that you will listen to my podcast because I. It's the best work that I've done in my career. I interview truly remarkable people like Jane Goodall and TPAC Chopra, Steve Wozniak, Stacy Abrams, Bob Cialdini, David Aker, Katie Milkman, Angela Duck Worth, and. And if you don't want to listen, I have a book called Think Remarkable that summarizes the lessons, but even faster and cheaper, which is free. You can go to Kawasaki GPT. Kawasaki GPT has all my writing, all my video, all my posts. Everything is in there. And it has the transcripts of all my podcasts. So you can go to Kawasaki GPT and ask me questions. And I promise you that the answer that you get from Kawasaki GPT is better than the answer you will get from me. And I also will tell you, I'll give you a dirty little secret. When I need to write an article, I need to write a forward or I need to come up with an idea, guess who I ask? I ask myself at Kawasaki GPT.

Jeff

That's great. Thank you.

Guy

Alrighty.

Ken

Have you seen what Julia McCoy's doing? Do you know who Julia McCoy is?

Guy

No, I don't.

Ken

Yeah, she's. She's been in the content marketing business for a while. She's created a YouTube channel with her AI video avatar. And. And since she's a content writer, she still writes the content, but she does, she doesn't deliver the video at all. She just turns it over, lets the AI video avatar deliver the. The YouTube video.

Guy

Oh, can you. You know how much easier and cheaper that is than trying to shoot that? My God.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Ken

Yeah, it's absolutely brilliant.

Jeff

So, yeah, thank you very much for being here with us.

Guy

Okay, I thought of one more thing. So if I'm a small business owner and let's say for a second you believe guy, and you are going to focus on the Google ratings and the Yelp ratings and, you know, those kind of things, those comments and reviews, I can tell you a very good use for Chat GPT, which is when you see a person's comment, you put the comment into Chat GBT and you tell Chat GPT, please write a response. Response for me. Be humorous, be warm, be friendly. I mean, you could even Push it and you could say, hey, you know, this person just complained, please draft an apology for me. Or you could even do something like this person just said that, you know, they had the best sushi in their life in my restaurant. So I want to write them a thank you. But do it it in haiku or do it in a five line poem or do it as a rap song and your responses will be so interesting and so unique that more people will come review you.

Ken

Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 4

Good idea.

Guy

Okay, guys.

Ken

All right.

Jeff

Thanks again for being here.

Guy

All the best. I hope I didn't offend anybody. I hope I didn't swear to God too much, but, you know, not at all.

Jeff

This is great. This is all right. Thank you.

Guy

All right, take care.

Speaker 4

You too. Thanks.

Guy

Bye.

Jeff

Bye.

Guy

Bye bye.

Ken

So. So if you found this podcast valuable, don't forget to hit the subscribe button for more insights. And if you if you really like it, please share it with your fellow entrepreneurs and marketers who think that you could that they could benefit from this type of content. Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries and exploring new ways to connect with your customers and grow your business. And ask Guy for his GPT for wisdom next week. Keep calm and mark it on. Thanks, Guy.

Guy

Bye Bye.

Ken

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thanks. Bye.