Dan Heath: Ideas That Stick and Stories That Resonate

0:00:13 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:17 We are on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:21 Helping me in this episode is the one and only Dan Heath.
0:00:26 He is a professor, author, and podcast host.
0:00:32 With his brother Chip, he’s written four books that have sold over three million copies.
0:00:39 Their works include “Made to Stick”, “Switch”, “Decisive”, and “The Power of Moments”.
0:00:41 His latest book is a solo effort.
0:00:47 It’s called “Upstream”, the quest to solve problems before they happen.
0:00:51 We’ll cover this book in an upcoming episode this fall.
0:00:57 Dan also hosts a podcast called “What It’s Like to Be” and what he does in this podcast
0:01:04 is he talks to people from all walks of life and they explain what it’s like to be what
0:01:06 they are.
0:01:13 He has, for example, a beer vendor and I open up this interview talking about the interview
0:01:16 he had with a Secret Service agent.
0:01:22 If you’re familiar with the work of Studs Turkle, you’ll appreciate his approach.
0:01:25 And I tell you, it is quite fascinating.
0:01:27 So I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:33 This is Remarkable People and now, here is the Remarkable Dan Heath.
0:01:41 Are you going to re-interview the Secret Service after the Donald Trump assassination
0:01:43 attempt?
0:01:49 That one was just uncannily timed so we had just posted the episode about two or three
0:01:56 weeks before the incident happened and I had asked her about what had the Secret Service
0:02:02 learned from the famous past failures, of course the Kennedy assassination and the shooting
0:02:06 of Ronald Reagan and some other near misses.
0:02:12 And one of the things she highlighted specifically was not to let the bad guys get the high ground.
0:02:16 So it was just painful to see what happened three weeks later.
0:02:21 It would be so interesting to ask her, “Okay, so don’t let the bad guys get the high ground
0:02:26 and 150 yards away, they get the high ground, so how does that falter the cracks?”
0:02:30 My guess is, and obviously I’m no expert, I’m as much of an expert as you can be having
0:02:33 talked to a Secret Service agent for 90 minutes.
0:02:37 My guess is, though, that there was a clue in something else she said in the interview,
0:02:43 which was she pointed out that the Secret Service, almost more than any other law enforcement
0:02:48 agency, has to work through a ton of other law enforcement agencies.
0:02:52 When they take a candidate to the diner in New Hampshire, they’re coordinating with the
0:02:56 local police station and the sheriff and the airport authority because they have to cross
0:02:59 all these different jurisdictions to ensure safety.
0:03:06 And so my guess is that this was just a very tragic miscommunication among the soup of local
0:03:08 agencies that were involved.
0:03:13 You think the Secret Service has someone testing the donuts before candidates eat them?
0:03:15 Well, that’s a great question.
0:03:20 I don’t think they have any tasters on duty, but maybe if a candidate was sufficiently
0:03:23 paranoid they could be drafted into that.
0:03:28 That’s what interns are for.
0:03:33 Now I’m going to go backwards a little bit, so you have written some great books, books
0:03:39 that I have cited in my own books and you cover things like sticking and switching and
0:03:44 decision-making and moments and preventing problems.
0:03:49 Before we get into your podcast, which I also find fascinating, I got to just ask you for
0:03:52 30 seconds lightning round.
0:03:58 Could you give my listeners the gist of these various subjects so that here’s a benefit
0:03:59 for you?
0:04:03 I think if they listen to your 30 second analysis of each of these subjects, they will be in
0:04:08 courage to read your book, which I really enjoyed your book.
0:04:12 Give me the gist of how to make products stick.
0:04:14 Well, it’s not about products, really.
0:04:18 The first book I wrote with my brother Chip is called Made to Stick.
0:04:20 It’s a communication book, plain and simple.
0:04:24 It’s about how do you communicate your ideas so that they stick with the audience, so that
0:04:27 they’re remembered, so that they change something.
0:04:32 The way you make your ideas stick is you embrace six principles that characterize sticky ideas.
0:04:38 It spells out an acronym, success minus the final S, so if you can imagine those six letters.
0:04:39 Here we go.
0:04:45 Simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and stories.
0:04:50 If you think about something like JFK’s call to put a man on the moon.
0:04:51 It was simple.
0:04:52 It was unexpected.
0:04:55 Nobody thought we could travel to the moon in that era.
0:04:59 It was concrete in the sense that you can imagine what success looks like in your mind.
0:05:03 You can call it a picture of a human being on the moon.
0:05:06 Credibility is where it was difficult at first because no one was sure this was possible,
0:05:10 but when the president is saying it, it adds a veneer of credibility.
0:05:15 It was emotional in the sense that it’s like the next frontier for mankind and what a magical
0:05:17 thing it would be if we could pull it off.
0:05:20 It was a story in miniature.
0:05:24 We are the protagonist and the obstacles are set out in front of us.
0:05:28 The book makes the claim that if you can layer on more of these traits of stickiness to your
0:05:32 own messages, they’ll be better received by the audience.
0:05:33 Brilliant.
0:05:34 Okay.
0:05:37 Now, how do you make people switch?
0:05:38 Switch.
0:05:39 Okay.
0:05:42 This was book number two, and this is a book about behavior change.
0:05:45 How do you get people to act differently?
0:05:52 Our case was that even really big changes ultimately boil down to can you get people to behave a
0:05:56 new way tomorrow that’s different from what they were doing today?
0:06:01 There’s a three-part framework that involves an analogy that’s a little bit to unpack,
0:06:07 but it basically boils down to the three levers you can pull with behavior change are better
0:06:08 clarity.
0:06:12 Can you understand more about which way you need to move?
0:06:13 More desire.
0:06:16 Do you want to move in that direction?
0:06:22 And ease, meaning that your environment, your path has been shaped to allow for easier progress.
0:06:26 The book talks about those three levers and how change leaders can make use of them.
0:06:27 Okay.
0:06:30 Next topic is how to make better decisions.
0:06:34 I’ve never gotten to just do a rapid fire series of advertisements for all my books.
0:06:35 This is fun.
0:06:38 It’s like a stroll down memory lane.
0:06:39 So decisive.
0:06:40 Okay.
0:06:41 This one’s very simple.
0:06:46 How do we make better choices in our life and in our work?
0:06:53 And in the book, our departure place is to say that there are basically four key villains
0:06:55 that afflict our decisions again and again and again.
0:07:01 The villains are narrow framing, meaning that we tend to get fixated on one particular choice.
0:07:05 A lot of times in life, we make whether or not decisions, whether or not I should do
0:07:07 this, whether or not I should buy that.
0:07:08 That’s villain one.
0:07:12 Villain two is confirmation bias, which I’m sure all your listeners are familiar with,
0:07:17 our tendency to collect information that flatters what we want to be true.
0:07:19 There’s short term emotion.
0:07:24 I think it’s wrong to say that emotional decisions are bias decisions.
0:07:29 I think emotion can be some of the most important information that we have in making decisions.
0:07:33 But short term emotion, when you fly off the handle, when you get angry, when you’re outraged,
0:07:37 when you’re euphoric, those may be things we need to wade out.
0:07:40 And finally, overconfidence.
0:07:43 Overconfidence not in the sense of being cocky, but in the sense of thinking that we know
0:07:47 more than we do about how the future is going to unfold.
0:07:53 And so in the book, we lay out a process for helping to minimize or circumvent or avoid
0:07:56 those four villains of decision making.
0:07:57 I love this.
0:07:59 This is Dan Heath for dummies.
0:08:00 Okay.
0:08:03 So now creating powerful moments.
0:08:07 The power of moments is a book about experience.
0:08:11 I think we live in the era of experience where people are thinking about how do we craft
0:08:16 a better customer experience or a better employee experience, a better patient experience.
0:08:20 And the central point in the book that we make is that if you care about crafting great
0:08:27 experiences, what you really care about is crafting peak moments that in our memories,
0:08:30 certain moments come to stand above the rest.
0:08:34 Like if you think about a family vacation from three or four years ago, our memories
0:08:39 are not like YouTube videos where we can just press play and watch the whole thing again.
0:08:41 We all know they dissolve and they fragment.
0:08:45 And so if you think about a distant memory, it’s like you’ve got these flashes and scenes
0:08:47 and snippets.
0:08:52 And so in the book, we go through what psychologists know about why the snippets we retain are
0:08:54 the ones we retain.
0:08:59 And then we flip around the lens and we say, Hey, if you want to create a memorable experience
0:09:04 for a patient or a customer, how do you go about being intentional about creating those
0:09:07 moments rather than just letting them happen serendipitously?
0:09:10 How can you be the author of better experience?
0:09:21 And number five is upstream upstream is a book about preventing problems.
0:09:26 And it points out that so often in life, especially in organizations, we get caught in this trap
0:09:33 of reaction, we’re always rushing around and putting out fires and responding to emergencies.
0:09:39 And we so rarely make the space to get upstream to tackle those problems at their root.
0:09:41 And so the book basically does two things.
0:09:47 Number one is that it tries to explain why reaction seems to be in the default state
0:09:51 while we constantly get pushed back into this reactive state.
0:09:54 And there are a couple of forces that are responsible for that.
0:09:56 And then it tries to help us evade that trap.
0:10:01 There are some habits of mind and some principles that we can adopt to help us become better
0:10:07 preventers and solvers of problems rather than reacting.
0:10:09 Give us some principles here.
0:10:10 Let’s do this.
0:10:11 We double clicked on book five.
0:10:19 One of the principles is that in preventing problems, we often have to have micro understanding
0:10:23 before we can draft macro principles or policies.
0:10:24 So that’s a little bit abstract.
0:10:26 Let me explain what I mean.
0:10:31 One of my favorite stories is about this homelessness campaign that’s been undergoing for years led
0:10:37 by Community Solutions, where they’ll go into cities, especially mid-sized cities like
0:10:41 one of the case studies in the book is about Rockford, Illinois, second biggest city in
0:10:43 Illinois behind Chicago.
0:10:47 And one of the key lessons they’ve learned is your tendency when you deal with a really
0:10:53 complicated problem like homelessness has many variables, many factors involved, big
0:10:56 scale is that you’re going to have to think big, you’re not going to have to stay in the
0:10:57 sky.
0:10:59 It’s going to be some systemic policy lever.
0:11:04 And in fact, what they found is almost the opposite that in places like Rockford that
0:11:09 have succeeded, Rockford has actually eliminated veteran and chronic homelessness from their
0:11:13 community after many, many, many years of just spinning their wheels.
0:11:19 The key is to use what they call a by name list, meaning they literally have a real time
0:11:23 census of every homeless person in Rockford.
0:11:26 They know where they are, they know their name, they know as much as they can about their
0:11:30 health history, any other important pieces of information.
0:11:36 And then all the people involved with homelessness policy ranging from healthcare people to shelter
0:11:41 people to police, state agencies, they all convene on a regular basis and they don’t
0:11:43 talk about homelessness in quotes.
0:11:47 They talk about Steve, okay, who’s seen Steve last?
0:11:48 Where was he?
0:11:50 He was, he still had his tent under the bridge.
0:11:51 All right.
0:11:52 His health’s really suffering.
0:11:54 I think we should put him at the top of the list for housing.
0:11:56 Who’s going to make the outreach?
0:12:01 And it was like that level of specificity and concreteness did two things.
0:12:05 Number one, it is the natural motivator that brings people to this work.
0:12:09 No one is motivated abstractly by homeless policy.
0:12:14 They’re motivated by helping human beings get into housing and live a better life.
0:12:20 And number two, when you get that specific, when you see a problem in three dimensions,
0:12:24 it helps people bring their respective skills to bear.
0:12:30 And so that to me was an example of this notion of micro comes before macro.
0:12:38 It’s not until you’ve housed Steve and Michael and Rodney and about 25 people that you understand
0:12:42 the problem well enough to even think about policy, right?
0:12:45 That you have to earn your way into macro interventions.
0:12:47 That’s one of the ideas in the book.
0:12:53 I gotta tell you that Dan, if I were a guest on a podcast and they said, okay, guy, give
0:12:56 me the gist of all your books one at a time.
0:12:57 I couldn’t do it.
0:12:59 So I’m so impressed by you.
0:13:00 Oh, come on.
0:13:02 This will be the last question about your books.
0:13:04 We’re going to go move to your podcast.
0:13:07 First of all, for the record, people listening to this.
0:13:13 If you are a Bob Childini fan, you will love the work of Chip and Dan.
0:13:18 So if you read influenced by Bob Childini and liked it, you will love their books.
0:13:21 And there’s like, thank you five that we just discussed.
0:13:23 So go buy those five books.
0:13:31 Now that was the kiss up to lead to this question, which is let’s suppose that the DNC calls
0:13:37 you up and says, my God, Dan, you’re an expert in how to make Kamala stick and how to make
0:13:42 people switch and how to make better decisions and how we can have powerful moments after
0:13:45 the DNC and how we can prevent problems.
0:13:47 So Dan, give us some advice.
0:13:52 How do we do all these things to ensure that Kamala and Tim win?
0:13:55 Oh, this is way above my pay bracket, man.
0:13:56 I don’t know.
0:14:01 My observation is that they did anything.
0:14:05 They did better than anything I would have proposed at the recent convention.
0:14:10 I think there were a couple of things that you could glean about their strategy.
0:14:15 One of them was, remember back to the principles of sticky ideas, simplicity was one.
0:14:20 And I think the simple messages that came out of that were joy and optimism, which is
0:14:21 something very different.
0:14:25 I think a Biden convention, it would have been hard to pull off that theme.
0:14:31 And so there was a very conscious altering of the tone, which shown through just the
0:14:35 number of different people who literally use the word joy was striking and clearly part
0:14:37 of their strategic moves.
0:14:41 I think they were great at conjuring stories from the speakers.
0:14:47 It’s like the Democrats of yesteryear from the Al Gore era used to be so bad about just
0:14:53 doing laundry list of policies and referencing obscure legislation and talking in bullet
0:14:54 points.
0:14:59 And there’s very few people that care about that stuff, very, very few.
0:15:03 The people watching a convention are people that may only tune into politics five or six
0:15:04 times in a year.
0:15:10 You’ve got to reach them with stories, with emotion that speak to the American narrative.
0:15:12 So I thought it was brilliantly handled.
0:15:17 That doesn’t mean anything about the election, but as a platform for communication, I thought
0:15:18 it was excellent.
0:15:19 What did you think?
0:15:20 Oh, I loved them.
0:15:27 They should get a Grammy or an Emmy or whatever award you can get for a convention, my goodness.
0:15:33 I saw James Fallows, who was a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter and a political commentator
0:15:34 for many, many years.
0:15:36 He was commenting it.
0:15:39 Just some of the simple execution was notably better.
0:15:43 Even the balloon drops, he was saying, it’s almost comical how often people screw up the
0:15:44 balloon drops.
0:15:49 And he was saying the balloon drops at this convention were like an index that the professionals
0:15:52 were in charge.
0:15:56 And apparently those balloons were recyclable or something.
0:15:59 Oh, really?
0:16:02 Double word score for Democrats, organic recyclable balloons.
0:16:07 Yeah, the balloon crisis is real, so we got to address that.
0:16:12 Now, we’re going to leave books in the past, and I want to talk about your podcast, because
0:16:14 one podcast is to another.
0:16:15 I love your podcast.
0:16:16 Thanks.
0:16:17 Back at you.
0:16:21 Yeah, you mentioned it, but I was going to mention it before I even read it.
0:16:25 But you’re kind of the studs turkle of the modern age.
0:16:28 I love what you’re doing here.
0:16:36 The elevator pitch for the show was literally studs turkle meets Ted Lasso, meaning that
0:16:42 we wanted to take the sociological or reporting instinct that studs turkle had, because he
0:16:47 opened this door for everybody in this space that’s followed, and couple it with a really
0:16:50 positive energy.
0:16:55 I think that so often in the media, careers are covered in a negative way.
0:17:02 It’s about exploitation of workers or people struggling or people changing jobs, and it’s
0:17:03 not that stuff is untrue.
0:17:09 I think it’s all true, but I also think it’s true that it’s a lot more common and a lot
0:17:14 more boring to simply point out that most people like their jobs.
0:17:18 Survey after survey will tell you that they find meaning in their jobs, they don’t dread
0:17:23 going to work, they don’t feel exploited, and so that’s where the Ted Lasso energy comes
0:17:27 from, is on the show, we talk to people who genuinely love what they do, and they do very
0:17:28 different things.
0:17:35 We’ve talked to welders and dog trainers and summer camp directors and forensic accountants,
0:17:40 and I can’t count the number of times that somebody has said, “My job is the best thing
0:17:41 in the world.”
0:17:45 And you know, from the outside looking in, many people would say, “Well, it’s all about
0:17:46 the money.
0:17:47 How much money do you make?”
0:17:52 But clearly, I think your podcast indicates that what defines people’s relationships
0:17:56 with their jobs is not the money.
0:18:02 Money hardly ever comes up, and in fact, my favorite episode is still the first one that
0:18:03 we launched with.
0:18:05 We launched with it for a reason.
0:18:10 It’s with a stadium beer vendor, a man named Howard Hart, has spent his entire career,
0:18:17 I’m talking 35-plus years, selling beer in a stadium, mostly Baltimore sports stadiums.
0:18:20 He saw some amazing things in his career.
0:18:24 He was there for every home game during the Cow Ripken streak, you know, the streak of
0:18:26 continuous games.
0:18:28 He saw Beyonce play.
0:18:29 He saw Super Bowls.
0:18:33 He saw event after event after event, Met Muhammad Ali.
0:18:39 But anyway, what made me think of it was, here’s a guy who is well below the median income.
0:18:42 He made a living, but it was barely a living.
0:18:47 And toward the end of the interview, he has this just beautiful riff where he talked about
0:18:50 how some of his family members would get on him.
0:18:51 “Howard, why are you doing this thing?
0:18:53 Is it just like a summer job?
0:18:55 Why don’t you go and get a proper career?”
0:18:57 And he said, “No, I don’t feel that way.
0:19:02 I feel like I have a community at this stadium, the fans that he saw week after week, sometimes
0:19:04 for a period of decades.
0:19:09 Sometimes he’d be serving the children of people that he’d served the decade prior.”
0:19:13 And he said, “I know that I bring something special to these people and that they bring
0:19:15 something special to me.
0:19:17 And could I take trips to Europe?
0:19:18 Could I have a fancy car?
0:19:19 No.
0:19:21 But could I have a good life?
0:19:22 Absolutely.
0:19:24 I loved what I did.”
0:19:29 And he was just passed when he had retired from the work and it was obvious he really
0:19:30 missed it.
0:19:36 And when I had that interview, it was just, it convinced me that I needed to stay on
0:19:39 this path because it was so powerful.
0:19:43 I think coming into the interview, I thought it was going to be interesting.
0:19:45 I thought it was going to be quirky.
0:19:50 I thought we’d learn a lot of interesting details about beer sales and fans and sports.
0:19:56 But he showed me that there’s this whole deeper level of meaning and purpose that everybody
0:19:57 has.
0:20:00 It’s not just the one percenters with the fancy jobs, the high paying jobs.
0:20:03 It’s everybody can find meaning in their work.
0:20:10 And what would happen if you were interviewing someone and they said, “Yeah, I’m a beer vendor,
0:20:15 but I really get my satisfaction out of something outside of my job.”
0:20:18 I mean, it’s not like you’re doing a scientific survey, right?
0:20:21 So would you just kill that episode?
0:20:22 We’re casting on purpose.
0:20:24 We’re definitely putting our thumb on the scale.
0:20:29 We’re looking for people who do find satisfaction in their jobs, who enjoy talking about it,
0:20:30 who’ve done it for a long time.
0:20:34 So yeah, there’s a lot of selection bias in the show.
0:20:39 And speaking of selection bias, are we ever going to have a hedge fund manager?
0:20:42 What’s it like to be a hedge fund manager?
0:20:45 That is literally one of the jobs on our slate.
0:20:49 We have sort of a master slate of dream jobs that we’re looking for.
0:20:51 I would love to do that.
0:20:55 And I think the hard part is going to be people in finance, especially the biggest money makers
0:21:00 are just notoriously private to the point where they obsess about even having their name
0:21:02 pop up on Google searches and stuff.
0:21:04 But I’m going to find someone.
0:21:06 It may take some time, but I’m going to find someone to come on the show and talk about
0:21:08 being a hedge fund manager.
0:21:13 Oh, God help you.
0:21:17 I actually would be fascinated to hear about, we all know the stories of how much money
0:21:23 they make and all that stuff, but what is it like from 11 to 12 in the morning in a hedge
0:21:24 fund manager?
0:21:25 I have no idea.
0:21:26 What are they actually doing?
0:21:28 What takes up their time?
0:21:29 What stresses them out?
0:21:30 There’s a lot to learn.
0:21:34 I think they’re hunting down plagiarism and university presidents.
0:21:38 That’s the biggest concern they have.
0:21:39 Real comment.
0:21:40 Yeah.
0:21:45 Listen, I don’t hold myself out as a journalist who’s supposed to represent both sides.
0:22:06 I have a bias and I have my whole hand on the scale, not just my thumbs.
0:22:12 So how do you explain how these people get so much satisfaction out of these jobs?
0:22:14 What’s the lesson for the listener here?
0:22:20 One of the things that’s interested me is just hearing the sources of joy or purpose
0:22:21 that people have.
0:22:23 Because I think they can be quite different.
0:22:29 The FBI special agent that we talked to was this guy who had worked with MS-13, the gang
0:22:30 underworld.
0:22:36 What was so interesting about his job was he described it as putting together a thousand
0:22:38 piece jigsaw puzzle.
0:22:39 It’s painstaking.
0:22:41 It’s one piece of evidence at the time.
0:22:47 He said, “So much of what you see on TV about FBI cases is just hogwash.
0:22:53 It’s slow and it’s laborious and it’s filing a request with Verizon for phone records and
0:22:56 then you get the phone records and you realize all of them are burners so you go back to
0:23:00 square one and it’s one piece of the jigsaw puzzle at a time.”
0:23:01 So that’s 90% of your job.
0:23:06 And then 10% of your job is like the stuff on TV, like kicking down the door of a gang
0:23:08 member and rushing in with guns drawn.
0:23:14 So it’s such a fascinating phase shift between the different parts of the job.
0:23:18 It reminded me in a weird way of the summer camp director because he was saying for 10
0:23:23 months a year he sits in an office in Philadelphia with five or six colleagues and they’re just
0:23:25 staring at the computer all day.
0:23:29 Mostly doing recruiting, a big part of the job is doing marketing to get campers, but
0:23:36 a huge part of the job is finding 100 qualified, responsible college age people to be the counselors
0:23:40 and that takes a ton of work and a lot of them flake out so you’ve got to replace them.
0:23:44 And so 10 months a year it’s basically like he’s in a staffing role and then two months
0:23:49 of the year he goes into the wilderness in New England and basically becomes the mayor
0:23:51 of a small town.
0:23:56 And everything is under his jurisdiction, like the childcare for over 100 campers whose
0:24:01 parents will not be there and the healthcare needs that they have and full service food
0:24:07 operations with three meals a day and a snack and everything from keeping them safe on canoeing
0:24:13 activities to attaching tether balls to poles is like everything rolls up to him.
0:24:18 And I just love learning stuff like that about these jobs that can look radically different
0:24:22 from moment to moment and then with other people it’s exactly the opposite.
0:24:28 The nurse every week looks about the same, the patients are going to change, the severity
0:24:33 of the problems are going to change, but the flow and the rhythms of the job are virtually
0:24:34 the same from week to week.
0:24:38 And so that’s been one of the pleasures for me is just kind of feeling what it’s like
0:24:40 in these different roles.
0:24:49 Let’s pretend that the HR Association of America is having a conference and they retain you
0:24:54 to be the keynote speaker and you stand up there and you say, okay, let me tell you after
0:24:59 this podcast and interviewing these people, let me tell you the key principles of making
0:25:01 people happy and love their job.
0:25:03 And what would you say?
0:25:07 Yeah, I don’t know if I have those answers yet guy, just to be totally honest, because
0:25:11 my books are all about how to like my books are, you know, here’s six things you can do
0:25:14 to make change easier, make your idea stick.
0:25:18 And so I have that kind of practical hat on with this podcast.
0:25:22 It’s just more about tell me what your life is like.
0:25:24 Why do you like what you like?
0:25:25 Why do you hate what you hate?
0:25:27 What are the tensions in your job?
0:25:29 What are the funny things that happen?
0:25:32 And yeah, I don’t know if I have those answers yet.
0:25:37 I know that part of the answer is how do we help people find these places where they have
0:25:40 a profound fit?
0:25:46 You can just tell when you talk to these people, they found the place that was for them.
0:25:51 The welder, one of my favorite episodes with this welder has a personality that just jumps
0:25:52 through the microphone.
0:25:57 He’s such a character, so funny, so colorful, and he loves welding.
0:25:59 He freaking loves it.
0:26:03 The way that you and I like writing and doing our podcast, he loves welding.
0:26:08 And so it’s just gotten me thinking about how do you make sure people find that place
0:26:09 where they click.
0:26:14 And I don’t know what the answer is yet, but it’s definitely like a source of dawning
0:26:16 curiosity for me.
0:26:17 It’s interesting.
0:26:20 There’s this concept of ikigai, this Japanese concept.
0:26:27 And the way I think Americans define ikigai is that you take a Venn diagram and you draw
0:26:32 circles of what you’re good at, what you like to do, and what you can make money at.
0:26:36 And whatever in the middle of those three circles is your ikigai.
0:26:43 But I would make the case, and I think your interviews may actually confirm this, that
0:26:48 this third circle about what you can make money at is not necessarily the most important
0:26:49 circle.
0:26:55 I think you found your ikigai when you’re not good at something and you may not make
0:26:59 a lot of money, but you still love it.
0:27:00 Amen.
0:27:05 I’ve always thought of money as being like a threshold variable, meaning I think money
0:27:10 can be a really big irritant or more than an irritant, an obstacle if you’re not making
0:27:14 what you need to have the amount of freedom you want in your life.
0:27:17 But above the threshold, I’m not sure it counts for much.
0:27:21 I’m not sure it counts for nearly as much as getting to a better fit with people that
0:27:24 you like more, with work that you like more.
0:27:31 One of the things I’ve started thinking about is we’re so half-hearted with young people
0:27:34 helping them see where they might potentially fit.
0:27:39 We would always do these weird career inventories that were primarily skill-based.
0:27:44 It was like if you’re good at math, you should be a stockbroker, or if you like to re-eat,
0:27:45 you should be a librarian.
0:27:48 It was this real kind of dumb matching stuff.
0:27:53 One of my nieces is just a huge animal lover, and she said that adults would always, when
0:27:58 they discovered she loved animals, tell her she should be a veterinarian.
0:28:03 And I just think that stuff is so clumsy and silly, and that we need some way to start
0:28:11 diagnosing, are you better with kind of short, playful, fun interactions or long, deep ones?
0:28:14 Which of those plays do a young person’s strengths?
0:28:15 Are they patient?
0:28:18 Could they assemble the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle?
0:28:20 Would that be intriguing to them?
0:28:22 Would they have that kind of diligence?
0:28:25 Or do they want something a little bit more transactional, like the hairstylist that I
0:28:31 interviewed where it’s like every hour or two hours someone leaves with a better look,
0:28:32 and that feels good.
0:28:36 And it’s not like there’s a right or wrong direction, it’s all about fit, but I just
0:28:39 feel like nobody’s talking about that layer of stuff.
0:28:44 I am fascinated about this concept of casting calls.
0:28:49 So how do you decide what kind of profession to cast for?
0:28:52 And then when you issue the call, who do you get answers from?
0:28:59 And walk me through the process of you want a beer vendor, you end up with this guy in
0:29:01 Baltimore or something.
0:29:02 How does this process work?
0:29:08 It is an incredibly messy and cumbersome and low-probability process, is the answer.
0:29:10 It’s finding stories as an author.
0:29:13 There’s just no elegant, efficient way to do it.
0:29:18 So we usually, we start with a list of professions that we’re scouting for.
0:29:20 We never just do one at a time, because it’s too frustrating.
0:29:22 We’ll have five or six going at once.
0:29:24 And we try to just keep a mix.
0:29:28 There’s no science to this show, but we try to do some blue-collar, some white-collar,
0:29:33 some that are fun to think about, like professional Santa Claus, and some that seem like they
0:29:37 might be boring, like a welder, but they actually turn out to be fascinating.
0:29:42 And then it’s everything from asking our guests for help, like we found the cattle rancher
0:29:47 thanks to one of our listeners, knew somebody in Alpine, Texas, this woman named Chachi Hawkins
0:29:49 who was just brilliant.
0:29:52 So sometimes our listeners come through, sometimes it’s a media search, like Howard
0:29:57 Hart, the stadium beer vendor, the producer Matt Purdy found an old clip in I think the
0:30:02 Baltimore Sun that was profiling him, and he sounded interesting, so we’ll reach out.
0:30:05 Sometimes people volunteer themselves, they’ll say, “I’ve listened to the show, and I do
0:30:08 such and such, and interview me.”
0:30:10 So yeah, it’s a real crapshoot.
0:30:11 What do you guys do?
0:30:13 Do people just bombard you with pitches?
0:30:15 Is that the way it works for you?
0:30:21 After listening to your podcast, I question our methodology, because we do get bombarded.
0:30:26 We turn down about 10 people a day who want to be on our podcast.
0:30:33 And so, I mean, if you figure it, we probably reject 2,500 people, and we accept 52 people,
0:30:38 so the odds are one out of 50, so I tell people that it’s easier to get into Stanford or Harvard
0:30:40 than to get on my podcast.
0:30:44 I like that, that’s good.
0:30:51 But a lot of it is, at the time that someone is writing a book, all bets are off because
0:30:57 someone who is basically unreachable for 51 weeks a year, all of a sudden is trying to
0:31:01 get as much publicity as they can, now you can get to Neil deGrasse Tyson because he
0:31:06 has a new book coming out, the rest of the year, he won’t answer your call, right?
0:31:12 But I gotta tell you, maybe our methodology is flawed because we keep saying we want remarkable
0:31:18 people, not necessarily famous or rich people, but remarkable people, but would we have gotten
0:31:20 that beer vendor?
0:31:21 There’s no way.
0:31:23 That hairdresser, no way.
0:31:26 So maybe our methodology is flawed.
0:31:31 I wonder if it’s just the kind of thing where every 10th episode or something, you plug
0:31:36 in somebody that you’ve hunted down because of that, so it doesn’t have to be a night
0:31:41 and day thing, but maybe it’s like you’ve got your wild cards that you plug in from time
0:31:42 to time.
0:31:47 I gotta tell you, every once in a while, over the transom or from a listener, they bring
0:31:53 up a name that we never would have heard of and I’ve interviewed more people who are
0:32:01 ex-cons than most podcasts and let’s just say that you had to do some work to get some
0:32:02 of these ex-cons.
0:32:04 Who are your favorite interviews?
0:32:06 Like what are the circumstances that make it a great interview?
0:32:14 Oh, I had a guy who at 16 was sentenced to 45 years or something for accessory to murder
0:32:20 and he got out after 22 years because of a law change in Maryland and he became a very
0:32:25 successful artist and I love that kind of story.
0:32:31 So yeah, and then we had people who are cattle whisperers and I may not be as studs turkle
0:32:34 as you, but I’m not elitist either.
0:32:38 What have you learned about finding more of your people?
0:32:43 Like I imagine these days, you’re probably better at casting people than you were in
0:32:44 the first season.
0:32:46 Well, actually, I don’t know if that’s true.
0:32:54 I think that as my podcast has gotten more and more visible and I’ve gotten more listeners,
0:32:58 the listeners have come up with ideas that help me a lot.
0:33:03 I’m trying to tap the wisdom of the crowd or at least the wisdom of the listener and
0:33:05 that has been very useful.
0:33:10 I think we can now switch to the section called what is like to be Dan Heath.
0:33:11 Okay.
0:33:12 Okay.
0:33:13 Okay.
0:33:14 I’m inspired by you.
0:33:15 All right.
0:33:22 First of all, what’s your allocation of mind share between writing, teaching, podcasting
0:33:23 and speaking?
0:33:26 How do you allocate your mind share?
0:33:28 For me, it’s a very clear priority list.
0:33:33 It’s number one, writing, love writing and writing, I mean that in the broadest possible
0:33:34 sense.
0:33:38 Like the hardest part of writing is researching, having something to say and having some stories
0:33:39 to tell.
0:33:44 So, writing actually encompasses more research than writing, but still, I think of it all
0:33:48 as the product is a book that I’m proud to ship out.
0:33:49 So, that’s number one for me.
0:33:52 These days, the podcast is number two.
0:33:55 I just absolutely have loved working on this podcast.
0:33:59 You and I were exchanging emails talking about how our podcasts are kind of like hobbies
0:34:05 for us and I loved when you said that because it made me realize that basically is what
0:34:06 it is.
0:34:12 I go and go canoeing and do CrossFit or whatever and I like to do this podcast.
0:34:13 It’s fun for me.
0:34:14 It’s a joy.
0:34:17 And then third is speaking and teaching.
0:34:22 I love to talk about the ideas of my books and I love to travel around and I don’t ever
0:34:28 want that to take over my life, but I really like it as part of the master portfolio.
0:34:31 What’s the hardest part of writing for you?
0:34:35 Finding the stories, it’s incredibly hard.
0:34:38 For those who haven’t read my books, they’re kind of story driven.
0:34:43 What I’m trying to do is make some broad point, hey, you want to communicate your ideas.
0:34:47 I go into a bunch of work and try to figure out, hey, how do you sharpen up ideas?
0:34:49 What are the important principles?
0:34:54 In the days when I was writing with Chip, we would just spend years going through research
0:34:58 and comparing it with real world stuff and try to come up with something to say.
0:34:59 But that’s not enough.
0:35:04 No one wants to hear you just blab on about your perspective about communication.
0:35:07 We have to find a vessel for those principles and those are the stories.
0:35:13 I want to find stories of real people in real situations exemplifying those ideas and that
0:35:15 is incredibly hard.
0:35:20 I’ll give you a little tip that helped me, although I don’t, because your podcast is
0:35:22 different and your stories are maybe different.
0:35:29 But when I was writing my last book, “Think Remarkable” with Madison, I had this principle
0:35:37 in my head that I wanted people to have embraced the growth mindset of Carol Dweck.
0:35:40 And I think you can grow along two parameters.
0:35:46 One is vertically, like you start with loving animals and you become Jane Goodall.
0:35:50 But you can also make big career switches that are unforeseen.
0:35:55 And so I went to chat J.P.T. and I said, “Give me successful cases of people who made dramatic
0:35:58 career shifts.”
0:36:03 And it mentioned Julia Child because Julia Child was a spook until she was in her mid-thirties
0:36:08 and then she moved to Paris and fell in love with French cooking and that’s why Julia Child
0:36:10 is the French chef.
0:36:14 I never would have found that story without chat J.P.T.
0:36:21 So you might want to quiz chat J.P.T., looking for stories, but no, don’t get me wrong.
0:36:26 Chat J.P.T. makes shit up, so then I’ll have Madison J.P.T. go and verify that Julia Child
0:36:28 actually was a spook.
0:36:32 I’m just finishing up a book that’s coming out next year and I kept hearing all the hype
0:36:34 about AI and so constantly be trying things.
0:36:35 Can it do this?
0:36:36 Can it do that?
0:36:40 At one point, I was trying to remember the name of this article or where I’d seen it
0:36:45 that was about the yips where athletes like suddenly lose the ability to do something
0:36:46 that was routine.
0:36:50 There’s a famous case of a baseball player who all of a sudden couldn’t make a throw
0:36:51 to first.
0:36:52 You would just throw it away every time.
0:36:56 He’s a professional player, probably done it a hundred thousand times in his life and
0:36:59 just some psychological thing flipped and he couldn’t do it.
0:37:03 I knew I’d read it in The New Yorker and so I was like, “Okay, this is perfect for Chat
0:37:04 J.P.T.”
0:37:05 So I go there.
0:37:06 I’m like, “There was an article in The New Yorker a few years back.
0:37:08 It was about the yips, blah, blah, blah.
0:37:11 It comes back, just boom.
0:37:12 Here’s the article.
0:37:13 Here’s the author.
0:37:14 Here’s the name of the piece.
0:37:15 It’s in this issue of The New Yorker.”
0:37:17 I’m like, “Yes, AI works.”
0:37:20 I go and I type it in, “None of that is real.
0:37:22 The author is not real.
0:37:24 The title of the article is not real.
0:37:27 The date is not real,” and so I’m like, “Oh, okay.”
0:37:30 Well, so that’s what we’re dealing with.
0:37:35 I have found it to be the best at exactly what you described with the Julia Childs thing.
0:37:39 I think it’s a great counter-intuitively, at least for me.
0:37:41 It’s a great brainstorming partner.
0:37:46 It’s like, “Hey, if you’re thinking about a phenomenon like this, what are seven examples
0:37:51 of that and five of them will be garbage and two of them will be, oh, I wouldn’t have thought
0:37:52 of that?”
0:37:53 And there you go.
0:38:03 And while we’re on the topic of AI, Madison and I created Kawasaki GPT, and Kawasaki GPT
0:38:09 contains all my writing, speaking, blogs, videos, everything I have, plus the transcript
0:38:11 of every one of my podcasts.
0:38:12 Really?
0:38:13 Yeah.
0:38:20 So if people went to Kawasaki GPT and after your episode comes out and if they ask, “How
0:38:24 do we make ideas stick?”
0:38:28 Kawasaki GPT is going to cite you about how to make ideas stick.
0:38:29 Nice.
0:38:36 So I think, Dan, that you should do Heath GPT because you have these six books and you’re
0:38:38 going to have all these podcasts.
0:38:44 So it is a standalone source of knowledge that you are creating.
0:38:46 You should have a Kawasaki chatbot.
0:38:51 You could be like a virtual coach for millions of people.
0:38:54 But okay, you know who Marshall Goldsmith is?
0:38:55 Yeah, of course.
0:38:56 Okay.
0:38:57 So he has done that.
0:38:58 There’s Goldsmith.
0:38:59 No, no way.
0:39:00 Yeah.
0:39:07 So you can go and ask Goldsmith GPT these questions and I tell you regularly, when I am asked
0:39:14 to make a forward or a blurb or contribute to some kind of Harvard Business Review or
0:39:22 even my sub-stack newsletter, we go to Kawasaki GPT and we ask Guy the question as the first
0:39:23 draft.
0:39:24 Really?
0:39:25 Yeah.
0:39:26 Yeah.
0:39:29 So what kind of question would you ask and what kind of response would it give?
0:39:30 Just generally.
0:39:32 I’ll give you a very good example.
0:39:38 So a sub-stack newsletter we just put out was like, “What can you learn from Bob Cheldini?”
0:39:43 And Kawasaki GPT comes back with nine principles that you can learn from Bob Cheldini as the
0:39:44 first draft.
0:39:45 I love that.
0:39:50 Now, push comes to shove after you do all the editing to the first draft.
0:39:55 Maybe you didn’t save any time, but I’m telling you, it sure helps you get started.
0:40:00 I tell you, the number one use case for me of chat GPT is ginning up stories from my
0:40:01 daughters.
0:40:02 They just love the idea.
0:40:07 They’ll just give me these crazy characters, “Okay, do one with us and our friends, Nina
0:40:11 and Gabe, and we’re in a forest and it’s a little bit spooky, but not too spooky.”
0:40:16 And damned if chat GPT won’t spit out like a perfect thousand-word story with an arc
0:40:22 with all the care, it is just astonishing.
0:40:24 Up next on Remarkable People.
0:40:29 At the end of every episode, we added what we call internally a reflection, which is
0:40:33 just me kind of musing on what I heard and what stood out to me and what I thought was
0:40:34 super interesting.
0:40:38 And I try to broaden it out a little bit, find some themes where maybe the listener can
0:40:43 learn something that matters for them from the dog trainer or whatever, and that made
0:40:44 a huge difference.
0:40:48 I was so glad that we suffered through that feedback because it was painful.
0:40:55 Man, it’s painful to hear that people are like yawning at what you did, but it made
0:40:59 us stronger and better for sure.
0:41:02 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
0:41:05 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
0:41:11 If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate, and review it.
0:41:17 Even better, forward it to a friend, a big mahalo to you for doing this.
0:41:22 Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:41:28 So let me ask you, what is your setup back to the what’s it like to be Dan Heath?
0:41:29 What is your setup for writing?
0:41:33 What kind of computer, what word processor, what do you use?
0:41:36 Only the fanciest stuff guy, only the best top of the line.
0:41:40 Man, I don’t think I have anything that’s not going to bore you to tears on this front.
0:41:43 I do most of my writing at coffee shops.
0:41:44 It works for me.
0:41:48 I go there, put my headphones in, try to get to it first thing in the morning.
0:41:51 I try to block three or four hours.
0:41:53 I think of it as shifts, writing shifts.
0:41:58 I only do one shift a day unless it’s crunch time and the book is due or something.
0:42:00 And I try not to do anything else.
0:42:05 Like I never schedule calls in the middle of that because I’m all about flow.
0:42:08 It takes me a while to get in the groove.
0:42:12 Even after all these years, I still have to fight the procrastination instinct and fight
0:42:17 the instinct to check messages and email and check the news.
0:42:22 And man, even after almost 20 years of this stuff, I still have to do it every time.
0:42:24 And then I’ll get over the hump.
0:42:27 And then it feels great to just disappear into the flow state.
0:42:30 I’m sure in it, there’s nothing better.
0:42:33 Not in the sense that it’s like euphoric, it is not.
0:42:34 But it’s just like the world disappears.
0:42:36 It’s just what you always hear about the flow state.
0:42:37 And I love that.
0:42:41 And I love the feeling, I forget who said this, but there’s a famous person who says, “I don’t
0:42:44 like writing, but I love having written.”
0:42:47 And that’s like the way that I feel about it.
0:42:50 And so I try to keep that flow state going as long as I can.
0:42:55 Just don’t let it get broken up with a stray phone call or an email exchange or whatever.
0:42:59 Are you using a Macintosh and Microsoft Word?
0:43:01 I use Word on a PC.
0:43:04 I’ve had a ThinkPad for years and years, I hear that looms you.
0:43:05 Yeah.
0:43:10 But I tell you what, I was just reminiscing with a friend, you’ll appreciate this.
0:43:16 The first time we saw a Macintosh classic, our journalism teacher had gotten it in high
0:43:18 school.
0:43:23 And man, it’s one of probably my top five tech moments in my whole life.
0:43:30 Just what that thing could do relative to what we were used to, absolutely dazzling.
0:43:33 What era were you evangelizing for Apple?
0:43:37 I was the software evangelist from ’83 to ’87.
0:43:43 So just as it came out and then ’95 to ’97 when Apple was supposed to die.
0:43:44 Oh boy.
0:43:47 All the thought leaders were convinced Apple was toast, right?
0:43:52 Windows was market share leader, returns to scale, yaba, yaba, yaba.
0:43:53 Didn’t work out that way.
0:43:54 Nope.
0:43:58 And I hope I had a little bit to do with that.
0:44:01 So now, what’s your setup for podcasting?
0:44:05 Podcasting, the listener can’t see, but you can.
0:44:08 I’m in my office right now and I have a very sophisticated setup.
0:44:11 I use a Blue Yeti USB mic, which I love.
0:44:18 And I’ve surrounded it with the best soundproofing that money can buy, i.e. a couple of pillows
0:44:23 from Michaels that are positioned around me to kind of deaden the sound a little bit.
0:44:26 And yeah, this is where I do my podcasts.
0:44:28 I don’t do video with my podcasts.
0:44:31 I really want to just immerse myself in the conversation.
0:44:35 So I’ve got my headphones squeezed around my ears and I’m just trying to be as attentive
0:44:37 and curious as I can be.
0:44:42 And what software or platform are you recording on?
0:44:47 We use Clean Feed and then do local recordings as a backup.
0:44:53 And like you, you sent me a courtesy, a microphone just in case I didn’t have one myself.
0:44:57 And we do the same thing because I mean, I just cringe when I hear podcasts and some
0:45:02 of them, you know, with a lot more listeners than me that have people calling in on their
0:45:05 cell phones and man, you just, you can’t do that.
0:45:06 It’s a podcast.
0:45:08 Like you got to obsess about the audio.
0:45:14 And from the time you record an episode to the time it actually goes live is how long?
0:45:15 That has varied a lot.
0:45:21 Like sometimes we really get productive and we’ll get a bunch of episodes and inventory.
0:45:26 I think we’ve had as many as six in inventory at once, which is a lot for us because we’re
0:45:27 every other week.
0:45:31 So that, you know, that’s like three months worth of show in the can.
0:45:36 And then we’ve been as narrow as the Thursday before it airs on Tuesday.
0:45:38 But yeah, that’s our cycle.
0:45:39 Okay.
0:45:43 And when you get the audio files, how do you do it?
0:45:50 And how much editing do you do of the file, removing filler words and moving things around?
0:45:57 I don’t do any of that, but my genius producer, Matt Purdy, does a ton of editing.
0:46:01 And the reason is you’re talking to a lot of people who communicate for a living.
0:46:07 I’m really not a lot of my people are good talkers and good storytellers, but they’re
0:46:08 not used to interviews.
0:46:11 They’re not used to concise answers.
0:46:13 And so we’ll talk for 90 minutes.
0:46:18 And then Matt and I will edit it down to maybe 27, 28 minutes.
0:46:22 So we’re really plucking out the best moments, the best stories.
0:46:23 And that helps a lot.
0:46:29 And so you are literally sending a set up to the beer vendor or the secret service agent
0:46:32 or the FBI agent and they’re in their house.
0:46:36 You don’t do these and any of these in person, none in person.
0:46:38 We’ve done a couple in studio.
0:46:42 The stadium beer vendor actually slept out to a local MPR station.
0:46:46 And we just recorded maybe a month or two ago with some long haul truckers that went
0:46:47 to a station.
0:46:50 That was the first time we had two people on an episode.
0:46:54 It was a husband and wife team who drive in the truck together.
0:46:56 That’s what they call team driving.
0:47:01 Like if you’ve got a cargo load full of fresh produce, like you can’t afford to just take
0:47:03 10 hours to sleep off the time.
0:47:04 So you’ve got to be driving continuously.
0:47:06 So you go back and forth.
0:47:11 Not only do they team drive, they’re married and it was such a hoot to hear them finishing
0:47:16 each other sentences and complaining about the other person, talking about what it’s
0:47:20 like to be with your partner literally around the clock.
0:47:22 Madison is from Nebraska.
0:47:26 So when they were talking about driving through Nebraska, I was, oh yeah, they kind of insulted
0:47:27 Nebraska.
0:47:28 Didn’t they, Madison?
0:47:30 Did you take Umbridge at that?
0:47:32 Yeah, there’s not much going on though.
0:47:35 So I don’t blame them.
0:47:40 She said driving through Nebraska was like being a steering wheel holder because it’s
0:47:41 so flat.
0:47:42 There’s no turns.
0:47:43 There’s no curves.
0:47:44 Yup.
0:47:46 It’s a straight shot.
0:47:52 I noticed in your podcast format that the way you work that you do a snippet and then
0:47:57 you do an intro and then you do the interview and then you do an outro.
0:48:03 Was that like a really carefully architected A B test that you figured out which way is
0:48:05 the better flow of a podcast?
0:48:08 No, is the short answer, but we did do some testing.
0:48:14 In fact, we almost pulled the plug on the whole show because our initial format, this
0:48:19 was before it went on the air when we were still just figuring out how do we do this?
0:48:25 We were doing roughly 40 minute episodes, maybe 45 minutes without much structure.
0:48:30 It was like just go and people were pretty lukewarm about it.
0:48:36 We did some testing with listeners and I had hired this market research consultant to try
0:48:39 to keep us honest because the thing I was most worried about is I’m so in love with
0:48:41 this project.
0:48:44 I was worried I wouldn’t listen to feedback and so I wanted someone outside to come and
0:48:47 whisper in my ear and tell me what they saw.
0:48:50 She was not real encouraging after that first round.
0:48:53 She was like, “I’m seeing a couple of paths here.
0:48:58 One is could you make the jobs more interesting almost in the dirty jobs way of could you
0:49:06 have a lion hunter and a ninja instead of welder and forensic accountant?”
0:49:11 Then Matt and I, the producer and I went back through the data and we’re like, “No, actually
0:49:12 we’re seeing some signs of hope here.
0:49:17 Maybe we’re deluding ourselves, but I think what people are telling us is they dig it,
0:49:19 but it could be better.”
0:49:22 We went back to the drawing board like it’s got to be shorter.
0:49:27 We set just a mandate like the first 20 episodes we did not allow ourselves to exceed 30 minutes.
0:49:29 We would be obsessing like at the last minute.
0:49:33 It cannot go over 30 minutes no matter what we have to cut, which is good discipline for
0:49:34 us.
0:49:36 Then we added a bunch of structure.
0:49:41 Before it was this formless conversation and so we were like, “We got to have a beginning
0:49:42 and a middle and an end.”
0:49:47 We added some structural elements like now we rip off the this American life like cold
0:49:48 open thing.
0:49:51 We just want to get you into the conversation at an interesting point.
0:49:55 I don’t want to be in the first 30 seconds saying, “This is Dan Heath.
0:49:59 This is my series of conversations with people in different jobs.
0:50:01 I’m going to get you into it.”
0:50:02 You do not.
0:50:04 I’ve listened to your show.
0:50:05 We ended it.
0:50:06 We added an element.
0:50:10 At the end of every episode, we added what we call internally a reflection, which is
0:50:14 just me kind of musing on what I heard and what stood out to me and what I thought was
0:50:15 super interesting.
0:50:20 I try to broaden it out a little bit, find some themes where maybe the listener can learn
0:50:24 something that matters for them from the dog trainer or whatever.
0:50:26 That made a huge difference.
0:50:30 I was so glad that we suffered through that feedback because it was painful.
0:50:36 Man, it’s painful to hear that people are like yawning at what you did, but it made
0:50:38 us stronger and better for sure.
0:50:45 It would be interesting if you took your raw transcript, shoved it in chat, GPT and
0:50:48 asked, “What are the three main lessons from this episode?”
0:50:51 I mean, that might help you at the end.
0:50:52 Yeah.
0:50:55 A lot of work sometimes coming up with the reflection, I’m like, “What are my reflections
0:50:56 from this?”
0:50:57 Maybe I’ll outsource that.
0:50:59 You’ve given me an inspiration.
0:51:00 Take it to AI.
0:51:04 I love comparing notes because you’re doing a similar thing with your podcast.
0:51:07 It’s a podcast about curiosity like mine.
0:51:12 If you’re telling me that people are interested in beer vendors and forensic accountants,
0:51:14 they got to be interested in podcasting.
0:51:15 My God.
0:51:16 Okay.
0:51:20 My last podcast question is, and I’ll tell you how I would answer this question too,
0:51:24 but do you listen to the actual final product?
0:51:26 Of course.
0:51:27 Every time.
0:51:28 Yeah.
0:51:29 Huh.
0:51:30 I never do.
0:51:31 You don’t?
0:51:32 No.
0:51:33 Wow.
0:51:34 Why?
0:51:35 You lived at once and that was enough.
0:51:40 I never do because I know that I will listen to it and I will hear where I would have made
0:51:42 an editing change.
0:51:44 I would have removed the filler word.
0:51:46 I would have shortened the pause.
0:51:49 I know that there will be things that I’ll say, “We got to fix that.”
0:51:58 And so, I record, I do editing, light editing, I give it to Madison and Jeff C or Sound Design
0:52:03 guys and I like, I never look at it again or never listen to it.
0:52:05 I get that instinct.
0:52:08 It’s never pleasurable for me to do it.
0:52:09 Well, that’s not true.
0:52:14 I enjoy the parts with the guest, but when I hear myself, I’m always cringing because
0:52:16 I’m like, just like I just did.
0:52:22 I said like too much or there was a more elegant way to ask a question or I wish I’d followed
0:52:23 up about that.
0:52:27 There’s always something I could have done better, but I feel like I have to rub my own
0:52:33 nose in that stuff to get better over time.
0:52:39 One of my guests once told me that you know you’ll discover your love in life when you
0:52:41 enjoy the shit sandwich.
0:52:46 So there’s a lot of shit sandwiches in podcasting and writing that I know you and I enjoy.
0:52:47 Okay.
0:52:52 So now, once again, being inspired by your podcast, we’re going to end with a lightning
0:52:53 round.
0:52:54 Oh, okay.
0:52:59 Question number one, what’s a phrase that writers would know?
0:53:01 Oh, I got a good one.
0:53:03 You’ll know what this means and most people won’t.
0:53:04 A galley.
0:53:05 Yeah.
0:53:06 A galley.
0:53:10 If you’ve got a book coming out, I have a book coming out as it happens in January
0:53:15 and it’ll come out as a hardcover along with the audio and ebook version, but about four
0:53:21 or five months before the hardcover comes out, the publisher will print up a paperback version
0:53:22 of that book.
0:53:27 They call it a galley, which is something you send around in advance to colleagues or
0:53:28 media or other people.
0:53:32 You’re trying to get a little bit of word of mouth piling up so that something has happened
0:53:34 before your book debut.
0:53:35 So that’s a galley.
0:53:37 Okay.
0:53:41 And what is the deepest insult to a writer?
0:53:42 Boring.
0:53:45 I think that’s the deepest insult.
0:53:47 You pour so much of yourself into it.
0:53:51 You try to make it snappy, you try to tell stories, you try to crack some jokes and if
0:53:59 people just find themselves too bored to flip the page, we’ve committed the cardinal sin.
0:54:03 Because to have permission to really teach someone something, at least that’s the point
0:54:08 in my book, is to try to share tools, I have to earn that right by making the pages interesting
0:54:10 enough to keep flipping.
0:54:13 I’ll tell you my deepest insult as a writer.
0:54:17 It happens regularly.
0:54:22 So people come up to me, Dan, and they say, I was lost.
0:54:24 I didn’t have any direction in my life.
0:54:26 I didn’t know what to do.
0:54:29 And I read your book and it changed my life.
0:54:34 And I say to them, which of my 16 books changed your life?
0:54:43 And they always say, rich dad, poor dad.
0:54:50 If you think you got problems, you should just claim it.
0:54:52 What is your favorite writing tool?
0:54:57 My favorite writing tool is a cup of coffee, always has been, always will be.
0:55:02 I don’t care if the media comes out with a story next year that coffee causes cancer.
0:55:04 I’m in for the long haul.
0:55:08 It’s my writing copilot.
0:55:13 And what phrase strikes fear in a writer’s heart?
0:55:15 Oh, I haven’t thought about that one.
0:55:16 Let me think.
0:55:17 What strikes fear?
0:55:20 Oh, I know what it is.
0:55:22 And this happened before.
0:55:27 Basically someone has written what you’re writing and it’s about to come out.
0:55:32 The idea that somebody has been working on the same topic and might beat you to the punch.
0:55:34 This happened with Made to Stick.
0:55:39 The initial title of our book was What Sticks.
0:55:41 More of a descriptive spin, What Sticks.
0:55:42 We had always called it that.
0:55:44 We were doing covers.
0:55:49 We find out there’s another book coming out three months before ours that’s called What
0:55:50 Sticks.
0:55:51 I am not making this up.
0:55:55 We had the URL for WhatSticks.com and the authors reached out for us and they were
0:55:59 like, hey, we’ve got a book coming out from a major publisher.
0:56:00 Just I noticed you owned it.
0:56:05 We’re happy to reimburse you for the and so we’re like freaking out like literally our
0:56:09 exact same title, seemingly the same material.
0:56:10 And so it’s just a red alarm fire.
0:56:14 We ended up changing the name to Made to Stick, which I think in retrospect is a better name.
0:56:15 It is.
0:56:16 We never would have gotten there.
0:56:19 It’s more kind of agentic, I think, which is better for the topic.
0:56:25 But anyway, the happy ending is the book really wasn’t that similar to what we were chasing.
0:56:28 It was a little more kind of advertising centric and anchored.
0:56:31 And so it didn’t ultimately feel competitive.
0:56:35 But boy, were we panicked for about 48 hours there.
0:56:36 Okay.
0:56:40 And this is my last question for the lightning round.
0:56:41 Who is smarter?
0:56:42 You or Chip?
0:56:43 Definitely Chip.
0:56:44 Yeah.
0:56:45 Definitely Chip.
0:56:46 He got the brains in the family.
0:56:47 I don’t know what I got.
0:56:52 I got these pillows from Michaels.
0:56:56 When you say Michaels, are you mean Michael’s Art Supply?
0:56:57 Yeah.
0:57:07 There’s going to be only the best places there are perfect for soundproofing your podcast.
0:57:08 Yeah.
0:57:09 Testimonial right here.
0:57:15 Then you can go to Etsy and you type out sound deadening material.
0:57:17 You get a lot cooler stuff.
0:57:19 I can tell you that’s what I did.
0:57:20 Yeah.
0:57:23 Guys looking at my setup right now and just shaking his head.
0:57:28 But see people would never know because it sounds good that we have to keep that behind
0:57:29 the scenes.
0:57:30 That’s all that really counts.
0:57:31 Okay.
0:57:35 So now Dan, this is truly my last question because you brought it up.
0:57:39 We have now recorded one hour four minutes and 39 seconds.
0:57:44 Are you telling me that your advice is to cut half an hour out of this?
0:57:45 Absolutely.
0:57:46 100%.
0:57:51 It will be better if you cut out the worst half of this because yeah, I’m not that good.
0:57:52 I’m not an hour and four minutes good.
0:57:55 I might be 34 minutes good, but I’ll leave that up to you.
0:57:56 I disagree.
0:57:58 Man, this has been such a treat.
0:58:01 I feel like we used to see each other on the road.
0:58:06 There was a period of about a year where I felt like every time I had a keynote, it was
0:58:11 either that Guy Kawasaki had spoken the day before or he had spoken last year or we were
0:58:12 like in the same orbit.
0:58:19 I think that effect is twice as big as it truly is because a lot of people confuse me
0:58:20 with kiyosaki.
0:58:25 So if you had kiyosaki and Kawasaki speaking at conferences, you really might have had
0:58:29 that experience of always following or preceding me.
0:58:32 It was like an enchantment era.
0:58:34 I always loved that cover, by the way.
0:58:35 Oh, thank you.
0:58:37 It was a brilliant cover.
0:58:38 The butterfly.
0:58:39 Yeah.
0:58:41 Who did the origami?
0:58:47 Believe it or not, there’s this guy in Hawaii who was like Mr. Origami and he had a shop in
0:58:51 the international marketplace and I went to his shop and I asked him to design me this
0:58:52 butterfly.
0:58:58 So he made a Kawasaki butterfly and it was quite expensive actually.
0:59:03 And now, I don’t know, if you go back to Waikiki, international marketplace, which used to be
0:59:09 a real zoo, now it’s all high-end dolce and gabbana and ermies.
0:59:15 I can’t even pronounce it and all that kind of stuff and it’s not exactly what it is anymore.
0:59:19 So you commissioned an origami butterfly, that is cool.
0:59:20 That’s me.
0:59:26 That is really cool and the cover is so distinctive, I love that one.
0:59:32 Alright Dan, this has been just wonderful and I’m not cutting out 30 minutes from this
0:59:33 podcast.
0:59:37 I don’t give a shit if it’s not optimal.
0:59:41 Listeners be damned, you’re getting the whole thing and you’re going to like it.
0:59:45 And this whole transcript is going to go into Kawasaki GPT.
0:59:47 So you will be immortal then.
0:59:49 I love it.
0:59:51 My ideas will live on.
1:00:00 I must admit that this episode has gone all over the map from commissioning original butterflies
1:00:07 for book covers and beer vendors and secret service agents and how to make things stick
1:00:10 and how to make decisions.
1:00:13 But Dan Heath, he’s just that kind of guy.
1:00:17 He has a lot of interesting things to talk about.
1:00:23 So I hope you enjoyed this episode and there will be a follow-up episode coming this fall
1:00:24 sometime.
1:00:30 Wait, I guess it’s already October so we are in the fall.
1:00:36 We will cover his book, I promise you, maybe a bit of winter, not the fall.
1:00:38 So I’m Guy Kawasaki.
1:00:44 This is Remarkable People and I hope you stick with this podcast.
1:00:52 The team is made out of Madison Nysmer, producer and co-author of Think Remarkable, Tessa Nysmer,
1:00:59 our ACE researcher, and then we have the incredible, remarkable sound design team of Jesse and
1:01:02 Shannon Hernandez.
1:01:07 And finally, Luis Magana, Alexis Nishimura, and Phalan Yates.
1:01:09 You forget it.
1:01:17 We are the Remarkable People team and we are on a mission to make you Remarkable.
1:01:19 That’s what we do.
1:01:28 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.
1:01:30 This is Remarkable People.