YAPClassic: Guy Kawasaki, How to Craft a Pitch That Lands Deals

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0:01:21 What’s up, YAP BAM?
0:01:27 In this episode of YAP Classic, we’re revisiting my 2022 interview with Guy Kawasaki, canvas
0:01:32 chief brand evangelist and a true marketing legend.
0:01:37 Guy Kawasaki is somebody that you probably have heard of before because he’s just so
0:01:39 big in the entrepreneurship space.
0:01:45 As a former revolutionary at Apple in the late 80s and 90s, Guy popularized the concept
0:01:49 of secular evangelism in the technology sector.
0:01:52 And all of his ideas have basically spread like wildfire.
0:01:58 I’ve got to say, nobody knows how to nail a sales pitch like Guy does.
0:02:01 People used to say that whatever he touched would turn to gold.
0:02:06 But he told me that he actually just chooses to touch gold.
0:02:10 He picks the best products to sell and he knows how to pick them.
0:02:13 He doesn’t affiliate with crappy products.
0:02:17 In this episode, Guy and I talked about the importance of knowing how to sell, what it
0:02:23 was like to work closely with Steve Jobs, and we learned the golden rules of evangelism.
0:02:26 He also gives his best sales and marketing tips.
0:02:28 And believe me, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re going to want to hear it.
0:02:33 There’s so much to learn from this conversation, so let’s get right into my YAP Classic with
0:02:35 Guy Kawasaki.
0:02:40 Hey, Guy, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:02:42 Thank you for having me.
0:02:44 It is such an honor to have you on the show.
0:02:46 It seems like I hear your name all the time.
0:02:49 You are also rocking the podcasting space.
0:02:52 You are a host of the Remarkable People podcast.
0:02:56 You’re also a very in-demand keynote speaker, the author of 15 books.
0:03:01 And as for your day job, you are currently the chief evangelist of Canva, which I love
0:03:03 that software.
0:03:07 And previously, you’re also the chief evangelist at Apple, and you’re well known for helping
0:03:09 Apple become a household name.
0:03:13 In fact, you are known to have popularized secular evangelism during your time at Apple.
0:03:17 And so I feel like Apple is a great place to start this conversation when it comes to
0:03:18 your journey.
0:03:19 Far away.
0:03:20 Yeah.
0:03:25 It was a long time ago, but it’s super relevant still, and I think lots of great lessons.
0:03:30 And from my understanding, you had no technical background before you worked at Apple.
0:03:32 You had a degree in psychology.
0:03:38 You were a law school dropout, and your former college roommate actually got you the job.
0:03:40 And this was pre-Apple that we know today.
0:03:44 So 1983, the year before Macintosh came out and changed the world, and you were getting
0:03:48 your MBA, you worked at a jewelry factory, and you said what you learned at the jewelry
0:03:51 factory actually translated to your new job at Apple.
0:03:53 So I thought that was really interesting.
0:03:55 I always talk about skill stacking.
0:04:01 So take us back to your 20-year-old Kawasaki days right before you landed your job at Apple.
0:04:02 What were you like?
0:04:03 How did you get your foot in the door?
0:04:07 And how did your experience in sales translate to your job at Apple?
0:04:13 So I worked for a jewelry manufacturer in downtown Los Angeles, and this manufacturer
0:04:19 sold two retailers, Tiffany, Tivol, Billy Banks, and Biddle, those kinds of high-end
0:04:21 jewelry store.
0:04:25 And the jewelry business is hand-to-hand combat, manufacturer and retailer in terms
0:04:26 of selling.
0:04:33 So it’s not at all like today’s idea of selling where, you know, let’s test the blue line
0:04:38 versus the red line to see if it increases click-through, or let’s see if this background
0:04:41 influences click-through, nothing like that.
0:04:46 This was open up a suitcase of samples and pray for an order.
0:04:47 That’s what it was like.
0:04:50 And from that experience, I truly learned how to sell.
0:04:55 And that selling skill, because it was necessary, you either sold or you died.
0:05:01 So that translated into evangelism and has helped me the rest of my career.
0:05:06 Now, you have many entrepreneurs listening to this, and let me just cut to the chase
0:05:07 here.
0:05:12 As an entrepreneur, there are only two important functions, making it and selling it.
0:05:15 And so if you’re the engineer, you’ve got to make it.
0:05:20 And if you’re the salesperson, marketing person, evangelist, social media person, it’s all
0:05:22 about selling.
0:05:26 And so the greatest example ever of this is was and jobs.
0:05:33 So jobs couldn’t design the motherboard and couldn’t design the computer and laws couldn’t
0:05:34 sell.
0:05:35 So it worked out perfectly.
0:05:37 Laws could design and jobs could sell.
0:05:40 And that’s the genesis of Apple.
0:05:44 So if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re listening to this, you just need to understand that
0:05:49 you fundamentally need two people, one to sell and one to make.
0:05:52 And the rest is the rest is extra.
0:05:53 I love that.
0:05:56 I always say that sales skills is such an important job.
0:06:01 And for me, I remember I worked like 10 or 12 different jobs in retail, working at every
0:06:03 store in the mall.
0:06:09 And back then I was making minimum wage, but that’s translated into millions 10 years later
0:06:14 as I’m using the same skills as an entrepreneur, because my main job to your point is selling,
0:06:19 whether I’m landing sponsorships or selling social media to my clients, you’ve got to
0:06:20 sell as an entrepreneur.
0:06:26 So I’d love to hear about what were some of the key lessons you learned in terms of building
0:06:31 trust and making sales at your time, either at Apple or the jewelry factory, like what
0:06:33 are your biggest like sales tips?
0:06:38 Well, one of the things that I learned at Apple and in the jewelry business is that
0:06:42 fundamentally, well, I call it guys golden touch.
0:06:45 So guys golden touch is not whatever I touch turns to gold.
0:06:47 I wish that was true.
0:06:51 A guy’s golden touch is whatever is gold guy touches.
0:06:56 And by that, I mean, the key to sales and evangelism is that you’re selling and evangelize
0:07:00 something good, because it’s easy to evangelize and sell something good.
0:07:02 It’s hard to evangelize and sell shit.
0:07:04 So guess what?
0:07:06 Don’t affiliate with shit.
0:07:07 Duh.
0:07:12 Now that is a duhism, but you’d be amazed at how many people don’t understand that.
0:07:16 So that’s, I would say 80% of sales have a great product.
0:07:17 Yeah.
0:07:21 And so when you got on Apple, what was your actual job title?
0:07:24 My actual job title was software evangelist.
0:07:29 So my job was to convince companies to write software for Macintosh.
0:07:32 And now you have to understand that evangelism comes from a Greek word, meaning bringing
0:07:33 the good news.
0:07:39 So I was in the position of bringing the good news to developers that Macintosh was a new
0:07:44 platform, new kind of reach to a different kind of customer.
0:07:50 It prevented you from having over dependence on IBM software or IBM market.
0:07:55 And finally, for the engineer, it offered the kind of richness and development environment
0:07:58 that you could write the kind of software that you always wanted to write.
0:08:00 And so this was good news for a company.
0:08:07 It was new customers in new markets with cool potential for graphics.
0:08:09 That was the good news of Macintosh.
0:08:15 In the developer sense, in the consumer sense, the good news of Apple was democratizing personal
0:08:20 computing that people who could not have used the computer because of the user interface
0:08:23 challenges before could now use a Macintosh.
0:08:27 And today I’m chief evangelist of Canva and it’s the same thing.
0:08:29 Canva has democratized design.
0:08:35 So now you don’t have to be an expert in Photoshop or have a graphic designer in your company
0:08:39 or in your group or be a graphic designer.
0:08:43 Now you can create your own beautiful graphics.
0:08:44 Yeah.
0:08:48 So I read your book called Wise Guy and you had a lot of lessons in there that I really
0:08:51 liked and one of them was just getting a door, right?
0:08:53 And you rose up the ranks in Apple.
0:08:58 I think you ended up directly working with Steve Jobs and obviously you didn’t start
0:08:59 out that way.
0:09:03 And so I’d love to hear your advice because I have so many young professionals trying to
0:09:04 get their big break.
0:09:07 They’re looking for their dream job and they don’t realize that it starts with maybe the
0:09:11 internship and you work your ass off until you get your dream job.
0:09:15 I think very few people initially get their dream job.
0:09:20 Frankly, I’d make the case that when you’re fresh out of college or in that bracket, you
0:09:22 don’t know what your dream job is.
0:09:24 You don’t have enough data to judge.
0:09:29 So particularly for this generation, your generation over the course of your career,
0:09:31 you’ll probably have 10 or 15 jobs.
0:09:36 So you shouldn’t exactly sweat that you don’t like the first two or three because there’s
0:09:43 12 more to come and it’s different in my age bracket and older.
0:09:50 If you went to work for IBM in the 70s or the 80s, you expected to retire or die at IBM
0:09:55 or HP and that’s just not true for your generation.
0:10:01 So for one thing, there’s several pieces of wisdom.
0:10:06 So piece of wisdom number one is it does not matter how you get in.
0:10:08 So I got in because of nepotism.
0:10:10 I got in because of my college roommate.
0:10:12 Other than that, I had very few qualifications.
0:10:15 Arguably, I may not have any qualifications.
0:10:17 So I got in because of nepotism.
0:10:22 But now the important thing to know about nepotism or however you got in is that it’s not how
0:10:23 you get in.
0:10:27 It’s what you do once you get in because the day after I started at Apple, nobody gave
0:10:31 a shit that I worked for this guy or that I went to college with this guy.
0:10:36 At that point, it was you either are productive and useful and valuable or you’re not.
0:10:37 It doesn’t matter.
0:10:39 And now that can work both ways, right?
0:10:44 So if you have no background like me and you get in and you prove you’re valuable, nobody
0:10:46 cares that you didn’t have a background.
0:10:49 The flip side is also true.
0:10:55 So you could have the most amazing pedigree, Harvard MBA, Yale undergraduate, summer internship
0:10:56 at Goldman Sachs.
0:10:58 You work for McKinsey for a year.
0:11:01 So you got this perfect, perfect background.
0:11:05 But then you started a company and you are useless.
0:11:06 Well, guess what?
0:11:11 Nobody cares that you work for McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or you went to Harvard or Yale.
0:11:13 You are just useless.
0:11:15 And so that’s a very important lesson.
0:11:19 It doesn’t matter how you got in, it matters what you do once you got in.
0:11:21 I love that advice.
0:11:26 And while we’re on advice for like the younger bracket of my audience, I heard you once say,
0:11:29 and I wasn’t planning on bringing this up, but I feel like it’s very relevant.
0:11:33 You are saying that people should stay in college as long as they can.
0:11:35 You said it was pretty funny.
0:11:39 You were like, try to stay five years, not four years if you can.
0:11:41 I’d love for you to touch on that a little.
0:11:48 So of course, this does not apply to my children, but I think that college is one of the last
0:11:51 times in your life where you are truly free.
0:11:57 Your biggest problem is your chemistry midterm or your English paper that’s due.
0:12:03 And so this is the last time that those things are seeming big challenges and crises.
0:12:07 For the rest of your life, you’re going to be worried about making money, paying off
0:12:12 student loans, finding a lifelong partner.
0:12:16 God help you when you have kids, then you completely lose control of your life.
0:12:19 And so you should enjoy college as long as you can.
0:12:24 And with hindsight, I graduated in three and a half years because I’m an Asian-American,
0:12:28 so I was like overly driven to graduate fast.
0:12:29 And I didn’t take advantage of things.
0:12:32 So I could have gone to an overseas campus.
0:12:38 The school that I went to had overseas in London and Brazil and Japan, and you name
0:12:40 it, they had an overseas campus.
0:12:44 But no, I was the dumb ass who wanted to graduate as fast as possible.
0:12:47 I wish I had gone to an overseas campus.
0:12:51 Well, the biggest regrets when people are dying are the things that they didn’t do,
0:12:53 but you turned out okay, guys.
0:12:54 I think it’s okay.
0:12:57 I’ve overcome that.
0:12:59 So let’s turn it on the flip side.
0:13:00 You’ve worked at Apple.
0:13:01 You’ve worked at Canva.
0:13:04 What are some of the biggest lessons that you’ve learned along the way when it comes
0:13:08 to managing a team, employer recruitment, employer retention?
0:13:14 I think maybe the most important lesson that I’ve learned in this regard is that you should
0:13:18 hire people who are better than you at what they do.
0:13:21 So if you look around the room, let’s say you’re in a management position, or let’s
0:13:25 say you’re the CEO and the founder, you should look around the room and say, “You know what?
0:13:28 That woman is better at marketing than I am.
0:13:31 That other woman is better at finance than I am.
0:13:34 That man is better than I am at engineering.”
0:13:39 And so everybody in that room should be better than you at what you do.
0:13:44 So the biggest lesson that I learned in employee recruitment and retention and optimization
0:13:47 really is to hire better than yourself.
0:13:51 That it should be a source of pride that when you look around the room, the people you’ve
0:13:55 hired are better at the function than you could ever be.
0:14:01 As we said in the Macintosh division, A players hire A players, B players hire C players,
0:14:03 C players hire D players.
0:14:08 I’ve subsequently modified that so that A players hire A plus players.
0:14:10 And this takes some self-confidence.
0:14:14 If you look around the room and everybody in the room does their job better than you could
0:14:16 ever, then you’re the CEO.
0:14:22 You might think, “Oh my God, I’m supposed to be the big dog and I’m not.”
0:14:27 Well, I think the ultimate confirmation of you being the big dog is you’re big enough
0:14:29 to hire people who are better than you.
0:14:30 I love that advice.
0:14:31 And it’s so true.
0:14:32 You do kind of need confidence for that.
0:14:36 Some people are too cocky to do that, but that’s not how you get ahead.
0:14:40 So speaking of bosses, I heard you on another show.
0:14:42 I do a lot of research for this show.
0:14:47 And you talked about the hardest bosses and teachers being the best bosses.
0:14:51 You mentioned Steve Jobs being your hardest boss, which I just think it’s so cool you
0:14:52 got to work with him.
0:14:56 And then also, your English teacher in high school was your hardest boss, but you didn’t
0:14:58 say what they taught you.
0:15:00 So I want to know what they taught you.
0:15:06 Well, my English teacher taught me about grammar and writing, no question.
0:15:11 And grammar seems to be less and less important these days, but in those days, he just drilled
0:15:12 it into us.
0:15:16 So I learned about writing, the rigors of writing.
0:15:18 From Steve Jobs, “Oh my God, I learned so much.
0:15:24 I mean, I learned that you can’t ask your current customers how to innovate because
0:15:26 all they want is better, faster, cheaper.
0:15:30 I learned that A players hire A players or even better A plus players.
0:15:36 I learned that if people believe in what you believe in, they will go through all sorts
0:15:38 of lengths to help you.”
0:15:40 That’s evangelism.
0:15:45 And I also learned some stuff from Steve Jobs in a sense of what not to do, because he was
0:15:48 extremely demanding, even scary to work for.
0:15:52 It’s not clear to me that that’s necessary to succeed.
0:15:53 Interesting.
0:15:56 I love that.
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0:20:45 So Jordan Harbinger is actually my mentor and one of my closest friends.
0:20:50 And you guys were having a conversation about luck and you guys got down this rabbit hole
0:20:57 about how Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, they had a lot of luck with their
0:21:01 journey and you were arguing that they’re smart but they’re not that much different
0:21:03 than everybody else.
0:21:08 And so I couldn’t tell if this was motivating or like depressing because on one side it’s
0:21:13 a good thing that we all could potentially achieve that kind of greatness.
0:21:18 I don’t know if I exactly said that Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are not any smarter
0:21:19 than any of us.
0:21:26 The person I know best is Steve Jobs and he’s on a different plane of intelligence, okay?
0:21:28 Let’s concede that.
0:21:33 Having said that, if you gave me a choice of here’s a lucky CEO and here’s a smart one,
0:21:37 I probably would pick the lucky one based on what I know today.
0:21:44 And now when you have a Steve Jobs who is both lucky and smart and could actually influence
0:21:50 both sides so if you’re smart you may influence your luck because you’ll be in the right place
0:21:54 at the right time and if you’re lucky then you’ll seem smart.
0:22:00 It’s not exactly either or, you can be both and arguably those people are both.
0:22:04 My point was that it’s not just about you.
0:22:10 There are plenty of smart people in the world and some of them have just been unlucky.
0:22:12 Some of them have picked the wrong thing.
0:22:16 Some have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, et cetera, et cetera.
0:22:23 So if you start believing that you are God’s given gift to entrepreneurship and you’re
0:22:29 going down a bad path, you should be humble enough to understand that it takes a lot of
0:22:32 things to be successful, one of which is luck.
0:22:33 Yes.
0:22:37 And I’m sorry if I misconstrued your words, it wasn’t my intention.
0:22:38 It wasn’t my intention.
0:22:42 I wanted you to go to tell us that and I want to understand, do you feel like there’s any
0:22:46 way to maximize our chances to get lucky?
0:22:49 Well, part of it is just showing up.
0:22:51 So you have to show up.
0:22:56 I mean, look, there’s a saying, a Chinese saying that you have to stand by the side
0:23:03 of the river a long time before the roast duck will fly into your mouth, which is to
0:23:08 say, you can’t just depend on luck, you have to go make the luck happen and you have to
0:23:09 be in the game.
0:23:15 So if you’re an entrepreneur, well, if you truly believe in luck too much, you may believe
0:23:19 that you don’t even have to be an entrepreneur that someday, I don’t know what, fortune
0:23:23 will smile upon you and bada bing, bada bang, you’re presenting with the next apple.
0:23:24 That’s not going to happen.
0:23:26 You have to go start the apple.
0:23:31 You have to go fail a few times and that’s just the way it works.
0:23:35 If it was easy to be an entrepreneur, believe me, more people would be one.
0:23:36 Yeah.
0:23:37 I totally agree.
0:23:39 So let’s talk about quitting.
0:23:42 So another life lesson that you often talk about is quitting.
0:23:46 You quit law school, I think just a couple of weeks in and I agree.
0:23:49 The times that I’ve quit something in my life were some of the best decisions in my life
0:23:53 because it opened up the opportunity to do something different and sometimes you’ve got
0:23:56 a let go of good to get something great.
0:24:01 And it actually reminded me of something I interviewed this guy Colin O’Brady yesterday.
0:24:03 He’s this endurance athlete.
0:24:07 He’s crossed over Antarctica, unassisted.
0:24:12 He’s rode through Drake’s passage, which has claimed the lives of like 20,000 sailors.
0:24:16 And he told me something that really imprinted on me and it was that life is a scale of one
0:24:17 to 10.
0:24:23 So 10s are like the biggest milestones in your life, crushing it with some sort of accomplishment,
0:24:24 having a baby.
0:24:30 Ones is like going bankrupt, getting divorced, all those bad things and people tend to stay
0:24:31 at five.
0:24:32 You know what I mean?
0:24:33 They’re comfortable.
0:24:38 Every day is just five, five, five because they’re worried about hitting a one or a two
0:24:42 and they never get a nine or a 10 because they’re just staying at five.
0:24:48 And so I feel like that is very relevant to taking a chance to doing something like quitting
0:24:51 because people are just so afraid of failing.
0:24:54 So I’d love to hear your perspective on quitting and why it’s not failing and just
0:24:56 their thoughts on that.
0:24:59 So several thoughts, some of which may conflict.
0:25:01 First of all, quitting takes courage.
0:25:05 I don’t know about you, but for me, it took a lot of courage to quit because I was in
0:25:11 such this Asian American path of going to this prestigious school, then going to law
0:25:15 school, and it was all planned out being doctor, lawyer, or dentist, right?
0:25:24 So getting off that track and basically wasting the efforts of 2,000 years of my family took
0:25:26 some courage.
0:25:30 Now I interviewed Angela Duckworth and she had a very interesting take on quitting, which
0:25:36 is she says you can quit, but you should quit when it’s a good day.
0:25:43 So let’s say, I’ll take an example, let’s say that you are taking the violin and you’re
0:25:48 not allowed to quit because you are not progressing on violin.
0:25:53 You can quit if you’re doing well with violin and you just decide that you don’t like it.
0:25:54 That’s okay.
0:25:57 But quitting before you even get to that point is not okay.
0:25:59 There’s a very interesting perspective on quitting.
0:26:03 It’s easy for her to say and me to say, I’m not necessarily to do.
0:26:05 But anyway, so that’s an interesting thing about quitting.
0:26:10 You just, you have to quit in the right way for the right reason at the right time.
0:26:11 That is interesting.
0:26:17 I also think that, well, let’s see, I quit that law school, I have no regret about that.
0:26:23 I think the concept of a slippery slope is vastly overrated.
0:26:27 So you could make the case, oh, God, you quit law school, so now you’re a quitter.
0:26:29 You’re not going to be successful for the rest of your life.
0:26:31 You’re just going to be a bum because you quit law school.
0:26:34 Well, that didn’t exactly work out that way.
0:26:42 And I think if you look at many things, the referral to the slippery slope is vastly, vastly
0:26:47 overblown that if you require background checks to buy an AR-15, next thing you know,
0:26:49 you’re going to be taking away my guns.
0:26:51 That’s a slippery slope fear, right?
0:26:52 But it ain’t true.
0:26:53 Right.
0:26:58 So you need to be aware of being too afraid of the slippery slope.
0:27:03 Now, if you quit three or four things in a row, you probably should be worried about
0:27:08 the, you know, you are going down that slope, but quitting one thing, I don’t think so.
0:27:13 I think in your case, you quit, but it’s not like you decided you weren’t going to work
0:27:15 or like keep on hustling and trying to make it.
0:27:19 You found something that you enjoyed more, so I totally agree there.
0:27:25 I would say my observation is most people stay too long rather than quit too early.
0:27:31 But I got to give you a huge caveat with that, but I also have come to believe that the concept
0:27:36 that the grass is always greener is not true, and that sometimes you should fertilize and
0:27:41 water the grass you’re standing on, not try to find greener grass.
0:27:45 Are you alluding to you leaving Apple by any chance?
0:27:46 Exactly.
0:27:47 Talk to us about that.
0:27:52 Well, I left Apple twice, actually, once because I wanted to start a company, but actually
0:27:56 both times because I wanted to start a company, but let’s be honest.
0:28:00 When you leave a company to start another company, you could talk about all the romance
0:28:04 of entrepreneurship and you wanted to dent the universe and blah, blah, blah, blah,
0:28:10 but it fundamentally, at some level, it means that you are not happy or you don’t believe
0:28:11 in where you are.
0:28:17 I mean, there’s got to be some piece of your decision that is tied to that.
0:28:21 It cannot purely be all this amazing upside.
0:28:27 And so, listen, if you had told me when I quit in ’87 and ’97 that Apple would become
0:28:37 a $2 trillion company, I would have told you, you are on hard drugs, like hard illegal
0:28:38 drugs.
0:28:39 There is no way.
0:28:43 The first time I quit Apple, it’s not clear that Apple would have survived.
0:28:45 So who knows?
0:28:49 Sometimes you should just stick with it.
0:28:54 Now, this might not play well with your generation, who I just said is going to have 12 to 15
0:29:01 jobs over their career, but at least my experience, I know people who had a great one or two years
0:29:07 at Salesforce and left because at that point, Salesforce was already large, publicly traded.
0:29:09 They weren’t handing out big options anymore.
0:29:13 It was hard to see how they’re going to make millions and millions of dollars and rise
0:29:15 into this large organization.
0:29:23 Well, it’s too early to really assess that decision because I left Apple in ’97 and it
0:29:30 didn’t become a trillion-dollar company to, I don’t know, 2017 or whatever it was, right?
0:29:32 So it took 20 years.
0:29:36 Now, you might say, well, who wants to work for the same company for 20 years?
0:29:40 But that’s dependent on what you’re doing and how you’re growing, not necessarily just
0:29:43 going to the same parking space for 20 years.
0:29:49 So this interview is filled with inherent conflicts that I just want people to realize
0:29:53 who’s listening that, yes, I am conflicting myself.
0:29:58 I know I’m conflicting myself, but you have to understand that that is how life goes.
0:29:59 Yeah.
0:30:00 It’s not black and white.
0:30:02 It’s not black and white.
0:30:04 And I am just one data point.
0:30:08 With entrepreneurs, in particular, I’ll give you a classic entrepreneurial thing that one
0:30:13 theory says, you take your shot and then you pivot quickly.
0:30:18 Another says, no matter what the negativity and naysaying is about your product, if you
0:30:23 believe you stick through it, that you stick with it, and you pop out the other side, those
0:30:26 are two completely different things, right?
0:30:29 Pivot or grid it out, both have worked.
0:30:34 So it kind of depends on, well, what’s the last podcast I listened to?
0:30:35 Exactly.
0:30:37 Who’s the last person I talked to about this?
0:30:38 Exactly.
0:30:39 I love it.
0:30:40 But you know what?
0:30:42 There’s many paths to success.
0:30:46 Like you said, people succeed one way or another, and you’ve succeeded even though you’ve made
0:30:51 decisions that maybe you kind of regret, but at the end of the day, that maybe that wasn’t
0:30:52 your path.
0:30:56 Let’s talk about some of these decisions, because you quit Apple twice, then Steve Jobs,
0:30:58 I think, asked you back a third time.
0:31:01 You said, no, you almost got to be the CEO of Yahoo.
0:31:03 Well, that’s an overstatement.
0:31:05 I was asked to interview.
0:31:06 Let’s take the worst case.
0:31:09 Let’s say I got asked to interview, and I was offered the job.
0:31:11 So I could have been, yes.
0:31:16 You could have been the CEO of Yahoo, and I guess that was before Yahoo was Yahoo, right?
0:31:17 Well, yeah.
0:31:19 Right there, that’s two billion.
0:31:21 Those are billion-dollar decisions.
0:31:22 Yes.
0:31:26 Have you learned anything about decision-making, where do you feel like you’ve gotten better
0:31:31 at it, or do you just feel like, again, it’s this luck idea of luck?
0:31:35 Well, who among us doesn’t think they’re getting better at decision-making?
0:31:38 But let’s just say we’re not all right.
0:31:40 So I don’t know.
0:31:43 Listen, I turned down this opportunity with Yahoo.
0:31:44 I quit Apple twice.
0:31:47 I turned Steve Jobs down for another offer.
0:31:49 So there’s four right there, right?
0:31:55 So that would be roughly, I’d say, two and a half billion dollars total.
0:31:58 And two and a half billion here, two and a half billion there.
0:32:01 It adds up to real money after a while.
0:32:08 So on the other hand, a lot of it is positioning and branding often in your own mind.
0:32:14 So in my mind, the way I explain myself is, okay, so I worked at Apple and Canva.
0:32:16 Ah, who’s going to say you’re a failure?
0:32:23 I mean, Apple and Canva, I mean, that’s two very good acts, right?
0:32:25 I mean, I think you are far from a failure.
0:32:30 You are very successful, and Canva is becoming this huge company.
0:32:32 I mean, you really found a unicorn.
0:32:34 You do know how to pick them.
0:32:37 Well, okay, let’s discuss that.
0:32:38 Okay.
0:32:39 Okay.
0:32:44 Because it’s very important that I think entrepreneurs truly understand what goes on.
0:32:47 So I started with Apple because of nepotism, right?
0:32:48 Okay.
0:32:49 Then I left Apple.
0:32:50 I started a company.
0:32:51 I went back.
0:32:52 I started another company.
0:32:56 Those two companies you would not have heard of because they were moderate if successful
0:32:57 at all.
0:33:03 Because of venture capitalists, I probably put down, I don’t know, 15 bets or something.
0:33:09 So if you just looked at the numbers, if you just were a numerical geek, you’d say, okay,
0:33:14 guys, so you have Apple and Canva, and you have 15 failures.
0:33:17 So guys, two for 17.
0:33:18 So that’s one way of looking at it.
0:33:25 The way I look at it is, I may be two for 17, but look at the two.
0:33:29 Look at the two, and everybody knows who you are, who’s the popular pot, you’re being
0:33:30 way too modest.
0:33:31 You’ve written 15 bucks.
0:33:32 Come on.
0:33:33 No, no, no.
0:33:36 Well, you know, but listen, I’m not a trillionaire.
0:33:37 I’m not a billionaire.
0:33:39 I’m just like, I’m a surfer.
0:33:41 I just like to surf and podcast.
0:33:42 That’s what I do.
0:33:43 I surf and podcast.
0:33:48 That’s my, I have decided that, you know, my podcast, I’m on a mission to make people
0:33:50 remarkable with my podcast.
0:33:52 And it’s not because of my wisdom.
0:33:56 It’s the wisdom of people I interview, such as if you’re an entrepreneur, I’ve interviewed
0:33:58 Steve Wozniak.
0:34:01 I’ve interviewed the CEO of Pooparee, which is a great story.
0:34:08 Don’t laugh at that story, Susie Bates, Frey Farm, The Most Pumpkins, Hintwater.
0:34:14 So I have a lot of different kinds of entrepreneurs in my podcast.
0:34:17 And I think my podcast is actually over the course of my lifetime.
0:34:18 I’ve been an evangelist.
0:34:19 I’ve been an investor.
0:34:20 I’ve been an advisor.
0:34:23 You know, whatever, et cetera, et cetera.
0:34:28 The best work I’ve ever done is my podcast without question.
0:34:31 It’s also at least appreciated.
0:34:33 I might be able to help you there.
0:34:38 I have to say, my client, Marshall Goldsmith, went on your podcast and we were planning
0:34:43 to put out a podcast and you were so good at the podcast that he literally came to me
0:34:48 in a meeting and he was like, Hala, I don’t think I want to do this podcast anymore.
0:34:49 And I was like, why Marshall?
0:34:51 You were so excited about it.
0:34:57 And he’s like, I went on this guy’s podcast guy Kawasaki and he was so good and so prepared.
0:34:59 And this is just way too much work.
0:35:01 I could not be doing this, Hala.
0:35:06 And I was like, all right, we’ll switch gears, whatever you want, Marshall.
0:35:07 This is a great story.
0:35:10 So of course, I’ve been on the other side of this discussion, right?
0:35:13 So one day I get an email from Marshall Goldsmith.
0:35:16 And I hope people out there understand who Marshall Goldsmith is.
0:35:18 He’s like the living Peter Drucker, of course.
0:35:23 They may not know who Peter Drucker is, but so Marshall Goldsmith is arguably the best
0:35:27 executive coach in the world, maybe ever.
0:35:31 And so he sends me this email, says, “Guy, you changed my life.”
0:35:34 And I said, “But is this Spam?”
0:35:37 So he says, “Give me a call to schedule a time.”
0:35:39 So I call him and it’s really him.
0:35:42 And he says, “You know, guy, he tells me this story, that he was on my podcast and
0:35:43 he listened to it.
0:35:45 It was so well done and I was so well prepared.
0:35:47 He just doesn’t want to do it anymore.
0:35:49 He told me, “God, you changed my life.
0:35:52 You made my life better because I was going to try this and it’s too much work and it’s
0:35:53 too hard.
0:35:54 I don’t want to do it anymore.”
0:35:59 And so that is like one of the greatest forms of praise I’ve ever had.
0:36:03 How funny is it that it’s all coming full circle and then I’m the one behind it?
0:36:04 So funny.
0:36:05 That’s true.
0:36:06 I lost you, a client.
0:36:07 I’m sorry.
0:36:09 No, we’re doing all his social.
0:36:10 That’s all good.
0:36:11 Okay.
0:36:12 Okay.
0:36:13 I have a question for you.
0:36:14 Sure.
0:36:19 Because I’ve been on the other side of this conversation 175 times, okay?
0:36:20 Okay.
0:36:26 So are you just so smart that you have remembered these details to ask me these questions or
0:36:28 do you have notes in front of you?
0:36:30 Oh, well, I have a teleprompter.
0:36:31 Okay.
0:36:32 So you’re looking at the notes?
0:36:37 I can flip back and forth and usually when I say the question, in the very beginning
0:36:41 when I do the intro, I’m reading it because I don’t want to butcher it.
0:36:42 Okay.
0:36:45 So then as we’re going along, I’ll peek at it, I’ll read it, and then I’ll flash it
0:36:47 back down so that I just have my notes.
0:36:48 I’m very, very well prepared.
0:36:51 So I have a little teleprompter and I just flip back and forth.
0:36:58 Well, listen, I’ve been on many of these interviews and nobody, seriously, no bullshit.
0:37:04 I’ve never seen an interviewer who makes better eye contact and yet seemingly has all these
0:37:06 facts memorized.
0:37:07 Thank you.
0:37:08 Never.
0:37:11 So that’s why I asked you how you did it because I was all set for you to tell me no guy.
0:37:14 I did all my research and it’s all up here.
0:37:19 Well, a lot of it is, a lot of the conversation has been all up here.
0:37:23 And a lot of the conversation, like I’m just flipping through and being like, oh yeah,
0:37:27 I wanted to ask about that and I don’t have time to read it all, but I just see like little
0:37:28 bits of it.
0:37:33 And you know, part of the confidence is just writing it all out and preparing.
0:37:40 So I hope that you don’t edit this part of the conversation out, but I want all you people
0:37:45 listening to this podcast that Hala is a fantastic interviewer.
0:37:49 And I say that and I consider myself a fantastic interviewer.
0:37:50 Thank you.
0:37:52 That’s so sweet.
0:37:54 Thank you so much.
0:37:55 That’s so nice.
0:37:58 I won’t cut it out because there’s whatever I prepared.
0:38:00 I always tell everybody, you got to prepare, man.
0:38:03 I go on interviews and you know what they do to me sometimes.
0:38:04 I hop on.
0:38:06 How do you pronounce your name?
0:38:07 Yeah.
0:38:09 I’m like, oh, you say you haven’t listened to one episode.
0:38:11 Why am I on here?
0:38:12 I have a theory.
0:38:14 We’re going down a deep hole right now.
0:38:16 So here we are.
0:38:25 I have a theory that I like to start my podcast with a question that sets the interviewer
0:38:30 back in the sense like, holy shit, Guy really read the entire book.
0:38:31 Me too.
0:38:34 He’s not asking a question from the intro or chapter one.
0:38:39 He’s asking a question from the middle of the book or he’s asking a question that
0:38:44 God, he watched some YouTube video like 10 years ago that I did.
0:38:49 This is not just somebody stuck the Wikipedia entry in front of him and said, okay, go ask
0:38:51 you know, Jane, good, all these questions.
0:38:52 100%.
0:38:53 Yeah.
0:38:54 I do that too.
0:38:58 I’ll make sure that I say something just so that they feel comfortable like, oh, okay,
0:39:02 this is going to be a good interview because she actually like knows these little details.
0:39:03 Yep.
0:39:05 I didn’t just read your Wikipedia page.
0:39:06 Yeah.
0:39:13 All right, so let’s get back to the actionable advice for these young and profiting podcast
0:39:14 listeners.
0:39:16 Well, but that’s actionable, Hala.
0:39:23 I mean, the lesson here is 99.9% of the people, whether it’s podcasting or entrepreneurship
0:39:26 or you know, whatever, don’t freaking prepare.
0:39:27 Yeah.
0:39:33 They think they’re just a very good example of this is pitching your company.
0:39:38 The most entrepreneurs believe that they’re natural communicators, they’re going to rise
0:39:42 to the top, they’re going to rise to the occasion, and they’re going to just pitch from their
0:39:46 hearts that it’s going to work out right because they’re a natural.
0:39:49 And that’s total unequivocal bullshit.
0:39:52 And so you need to prepare.
0:39:53 I want to stick on this.
0:39:54 Yeah.
0:39:58 So if Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs used to prepare for weeks for a keynote.
0:40:01 And if Steve Jobs needs to prepare for weeks, guess what?
0:40:05 You are not Steve Jobs, not you, Hala, you listening.
0:40:07 You are not Steve Jobs.
0:40:11 So if Steve Jobs needed weeks, you probably need months.
0:40:15 And I have to say, having a good pitch skills, being able to demo your product.
0:40:16 This is Stokey.
0:40:17 I have a funny story too.
0:40:23 So when I was first starting YAP Media, I was just, I had my podcast two years into
0:40:25 it, grew this brand.
0:40:26 People were asking me to be their client.
0:40:29 I kept pushing it away and then finally it was like, fine, I’ll give this a shot.
0:40:32 I had volunteers and interns and I was like, I’ll hire them, right?
0:40:33 Yep.
0:40:37 I remember, I had a billionaire that was interested in my services.
0:40:39 His name is Jason Waller, still my client.
0:40:40 And I had no website.
0:40:41 I had no logo.
0:40:43 I wasn’t even incorporated.
0:40:45 I had no trademark, nothing.
0:40:48 All I had was my PowerPoint presentation skills.
0:40:51 And I was a good presenter and I did it for myself already.
0:40:57 And so I went in, I gave a pitch and I closed like my first deal was a $30,000 monthly retainer
0:41:03 from a freaking PowerPoint presentation that I just designed really nicely.
0:41:09 And so it just goes to show you like, if you can pitch and demo, you can make so much out
0:41:11 of literally nothing.
0:41:16 Well, especially now, if you use Canva instead of PowerPoint, you’d have gotten a $50,000
0:41:17 retainer.
0:41:18 I did use Canva.
0:41:22 I’ve been a user of Canva for like, I’ve been like, I don’t know how they’re not sponsoring
0:41:23 me.
0:41:24 I’ve been using Canva for like five years.
0:41:25 I work for them.
0:41:28 And they don’t sponsor me.
0:41:31 I literally made my presentation on Canva.
0:41:32 Oh, great.
0:41:37 But you know, the lesson there is, but you prepared obviously, right?
0:41:38 That’s number one.
0:41:43 I was preparing my whole, it’s like you prepare, like preparing with so many different things
0:41:47 like presenting at HP, presenting at Disney, presenting in my MBA.
0:41:52 It was just like many, many experiences that led up to that moment that changed my life.
0:41:53 Yep.
0:41:58 And so the lesson there is you got to show up and you got to be gritty.
0:42:03 As I said before, standing by the side of the river, the roast duck is not going to
0:42:04 fly in your mouth.
0:42:06 Yeah.
0:42:09 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:46:08 You and your team will get more done in less time, with more joy and energy.
0:46:14 To get 20% off the $25 working genius assessment, go to workinggenius.com and enter the promo
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0:46:17 That’s right.
0:46:23 You can get 20% off the $25 working genius assessment at workinggenius.com using promo
0:46:24 code profiting.
0:46:31 I want to hear more advice about your pitching skills because I know that you talk about
0:46:33 it a lot with evangelism.
0:46:35 What should we do?
0:46:37 How should we prepare for a demo?
0:46:39 What do we need to know?
0:46:44 First of all, I think the key to a pitch is the preparation.
0:46:48 The preparation, for an entrepreneur, let’s say you’re pitching to a venture capital
0:46:50 firm.
0:46:57 You have better know who’s in that room, where they came from, what school did they go to,
0:47:01 what are their interests, what are they invested in, what boards are they on, everything like
0:47:02 that.
0:47:05 You’re looking for hooks that, “Oh, we both went to Stanford.
0:47:07 We both like to surf.”
0:47:12 You’re on the bar of copper, and I love copper as my CRM solution.
0:47:17 You’re looking for hooks to differentiate yourself from the other dumbasses that came
0:47:20 in at eight, nine, 10, one, two, and three.
0:47:22 You’re the four o’clock appointment.
0:47:28 Everybody said we have patent pending curve-jumping paradigm shifting way to dent the universe.
0:47:33 We’re going to provide you with unbelievable shareholder returns while enabling our employees
0:47:38 to self-actualize their life goals or exceeding the expectations of our customers.
0:47:40 Every entrepreneur says that.
0:47:43 Nobody says I’m a dumbass who’s lazy.
0:47:50 You have to find hooks, and the hooks are LinkedIn is God’s gift to pitching, basically.
0:47:53 If you don’t study LinkedIn before pitch, something is wrong with you.
0:47:54 You’re an idiot.
0:47:58 Have a sign on your head that says, “I am clueless.”
0:47:59 That’s the preparation.
0:48:04 I think initial concept is you can never be too brief.
0:48:08 I’ve never sat in a presentation or a pitch and said, “This was too short.
0:48:11 It was too succinct.
0:48:12 Something is wrong.”
0:48:16 I have never ever said that, and I’ve sat in thousands of pitches.
0:48:21 There’s the guy called Saki 1020 or 30 rule, which is 10 slides in 20 minutes, 30 point
0:48:23 font minimum.
0:48:26 That’s a good foundation or framework.
0:48:33 The other metaphor that I would love for entrepreneurs to understand is to think of yourself as an
0:48:36 airplane or a pilot in an airplane.
0:48:45 At two ends of the spectrum in airplanes, there is the 787 Air, Airbus A380 at one end,
0:48:54 and at the other end, there’s the F-15, the F-18, the whatever.
0:49:00 The A380 and the 787, they have two miles of runway and they go rumbling down.
0:49:04 At the end of two miles, they take off and everybody says, “How the hell can half a million
0:49:05 pounds ever exceed?”
0:49:08 It’s a miracle that those planes take off.
0:49:11 At the other end, you’re on an aircraft carrier.
0:49:16 You get in this plane, you have 150 meters to get off the flight deck or you fall in
0:49:18 the water and you die.
0:49:23 I think most entrepreneurs think they are piloting a 787.
0:49:26 They come into this pitch and they say, “Well, let me tell you my life story.”
0:49:31 My great-grandfather came over on the Mayflower and he landed in New Canaan Connected and
0:49:39 then he started a horseshoe business and then they made it rich, so they endowed a fellowship
0:49:44 at Yale and I got into Yale and in the first summer, I worked at Goldman Sachs and then
0:49:49 I got into Harvard MBA and I started at HP in the internship program and then I took
0:49:54 Windows classes and finally, I decided to start a company.
0:49:56 That’s the Airbus A380.
0:50:01 The F-18 pilot has got to get off the deck and you should be an F-18 pilot.
0:50:07 In the first 30 seconds, everybody in that room should understand what you do.
0:50:12 I have sat in so many pitches where they’re talking about their whole family heritage,
0:50:15 their education, their strategy, the size of the internet.
0:50:17 The internet is going to be big.
0:50:18 You know that, right?
0:50:20 Let me explain how big the internet will be.
0:50:25 This is right now and so there is this Airbus A380 trying to get down this two mile runway
0:50:28 and I’m sitting there, I’m thinking, “Is this hardware?
0:50:29 Is this software?
0:50:30 Is this e-commerce?
0:50:32 Is this social networking?
0:50:33 Is this AI?
0:50:36 What the hell do they do?”
0:50:43 I think the most important lessons are be brief, prepare and get your ass off the tarmac
0:50:44 as fast as you can.
0:50:48 30 seconds into it, they should understand this is a software company.
0:50:50 This is a cloud-based software company.
0:50:52 What does Canva do?
0:50:54 It democratizes design so you don’t need Photoshop.
0:50:57 There, I said it, five seconds.
0:50:58 I love that and practiced, right?
0:51:00 I’ll hop on discovery calls.
0:51:04 I know they can’t afford my services and I’ll just do it to practice, right?
0:51:05 Practice your pitch.
0:51:08 What about who we should pitch to?
0:51:12 There’s the right people and the wrong people and some of them are really uphill battles
0:51:13 so I’d love to hear that.
0:51:18 Well, you may not agree with this piece of advice but I think that when you’re starting
0:51:21 out, you should pitch to anybody who’ll listen.
0:51:23 I don’t think you can be proud.
0:51:29 Of course, we’d all like to pitch to John Doar or the general partner, the big cheese
0:51:33 at Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins or whoever, right?
0:51:34 We’d love to pitch to Elon Musk.
0:51:38 We’d love to pitch to Tim Cook, et cetera, et cetera.
0:51:41 But I’m telling you, when you start off, you should just pitch to anybody who’ll listen.
0:51:45 And it’s for the reason that you mentioned that, yeah, you may be starting with the summer
0:51:50 intern who’s not going to make a decision to write you a check for five million bucks,
0:51:54 but 20 summer interns later, you will be meeting with a partner.
0:51:56 At that point, it’s too late.
0:52:04 You need to have had 25 rejections and 25 practice sessions to be ready for this great
0:52:06 meeting.
0:52:08 And you have to pay the price.
0:52:09 Yeah.
0:52:13 So what about more generally, though, like when it comes to evangelism and trying to
0:52:19 market a product, you don’t want to market a product to people who just don’t believe
0:52:20 in it.
0:52:21 You want to go agnostic.
0:52:24 I want to hear those lessons from you.
0:52:30 So I would say that here we go with some sort of conflicting advice.
0:52:36 On the one hand, I would say that you should pitch even a product to anybody who will listen.
0:52:37 It’s good practice.
0:52:38 And you may never know.
0:52:43 You may think that this person is not qualified, but this is a summer intern or secretary,
0:52:48 administrative aid, customer service manager, whatever, not the decision maker.
0:52:49 But guess what?
0:52:54 The decision maker is listening to this person because this person really does the work.
0:52:58 Or this person you’re pitching to, spouse is a decision maker at another company.
0:53:00 You just never know.
0:53:03 So I’m really into indiscriminate pitches.
0:53:09 I think it’s also humbling that you should not think that you are so freaking important
0:53:14 that unless you are talking to the CXO, this company is not worthy of your time, right?
0:53:16 Frankly, you know, you’re bullshit.
0:53:17 You’re full of shit.
0:53:20 Anyway, so that’s one thing.
0:53:24 Now, on the other hand, as you say, you could be wasting a lot of time doing what I’m saying.
0:53:31 And I freely admit that, but I would say that, yes, go for it.
0:53:36 Go do your qualification and figure out who the decision maker, et cetera, et cetera is.
0:53:37 Yes.
0:53:40 And again, LinkedIn is your greatest weapon in this.
0:53:45 But if you said, OK, guy, should you pitch too much or too little?
0:53:47 Should you evangelize too much or too little?
0:53:49 I would say too much.
0:53:51 You’re on the side of doing too much.
0:53:58 And this is completely in the face of the concept of select a few targets, know them
0:54:04 well, get just the most highly qualified, specific user rifle.
0:54:06 I’m telling you, use a shotgun.
0:54:07 Yeah.
0:54:11 I mean, this goes back to a lot of the things that we’ve been touting today, like expanding
0:54:16 your luck, showing up, getting practice, preparing, right?
0:54:20 It’s just all those things combined because you never know who you pitched to, like what
0:54:23 that will end up being or who will end up being in 20 years even.
0:54:27 OK, I’ll tell you a great story that you as a podcaster will truly appreciate.
0:54:28 Sure.
0:54:30 So do you know who Angela Duckworth is?
0:54:31 Yes.
0:54:33 A Carthar Ward winner, you know, grit, right?
0:54:34 Yes.
0:54:35 OK, big deal.
0:54:36 Maybe she’s your client.
0:54:39 Not my client, but probably will be on my podcast soon.
0:54:40 OK.
0:54:44 So who among us as a podcaster would not want to have Angela Duckworth?
0:54:45 Nobody.
0:54:46 Nobody.
0:54:47 Nobody in their right mind.
0:54:48 Maybe Joe Rogan would want.
0:54:51 But anyway, so I want Angela Duckworth, right?
0:54:52 So I don’t know her.
0:54:57 So I send an email to whatever info@angeladuckworth.com, no response.
0:55:00 Weeks go by and I default to yes.
0:55:05 I kind of say, like I really didn’t know exactly what I was getting into today, but I default
0:55:06 to yes.
0:55:09 Now, if you think that I did all the research and you had Marshall Goldsmith and you know,
0:55:12 how many followers are you, the most influential person on LinkedIn and all?
0:55:15 And that’s why I said, yes, you can believe that God bless you.
0:55:16 But that’s not the truth.
0:55:19 The truth is, I default to yes.
0:55:21 So I default to yes.
0:55:26 And one day I’m on this podcast as a guest and the person starts off by saying, yeah,
0:55:30 so you know, hi, my name is whatever, Trixie Smith.
0:55:33 And I live in, I don’t know, Mobile, Alabama.
0:55:35 And I am a freshman in high school.
0:55:36 Oh boy.
0:55:38 And so we’re going to talk about whatever, innovation, right?
0:55:40 And I was sitting there saying, God, you are such a dumbass.
0:55:47 Like why did you accept to waste an hour of your life on a podcast with a 14 year old
0:55:49 person from Alabama?
0:55:55 Not that I have anything against Alabama, but you know, and she probably has five subscribers
0:56:00 to her podcast, mom and dad, aunt, uncle and younger brother.
0:56:01 Okay.
0:56:05 But lo and behold, man, she asks great questions.
0:56:09 And then at the end of this podcast, I say to her, who else have you had on your podcast?
0:56:12 And I’m thinking, who else was dumb enough to say, right?
0:56:18 And she said, Oh, two weeks ago, I had Angela Duckworth and my freaking jaw is on the ground.
0:56:20 And I said, you had Angela Duckworth.
0:56:21 How did you get Angela Duckworth?
0:56:26 Well, Angela Duckworth really likes to help young women succeed.
0:56:30 So I, as a young woman reached out to her and she said, yes, I said, okay.
0:56:32 I said, so how about this?
0:56:34 Will you ask Angela Duckworth to be on my podcast?
0:56:36 And she says, yes.
0:56:43 So she, 14 year old girl in, like I said, Mobile, Alabama with over the moon podcast.
0:56:45 She writes to Angela Duckworth.
0:56:49 She sees me and lo and behold, Angela Duckworth answers.
0:56:53 And one thing leads to another and I get Angela Duckworth on my podcast.
0:56:54 Amazing.
0:56:58 So that’s, people might think, oh, guy, everybody knows who you are, your big deal, blah, blah,
0:56:59 blah.
0:57:02 So that’s how you, even Angela Duckworth would be thrilled to be on your podcast.
0:57:06 You know, she’s probably just checking info@angeladuckworth.com every half an hour, looking for that
0:57:07 invite.
0:57:13 But the truth is, it was a 14 year old podcaster from Mobile, Alabama with five subscribers
0:57:16 who got me on, who got me Angela Duckworth.
0:57:21 Now that, every entrepreneur should listen to that story and say, huh, what’s the point?
0:57:25 Point is, you never know, you never know.
0:57:30 For all you know, you know, for all you know, her, her grandfather was Warren Buffett.
0:57:31 Who knows?
0:57:32 Right?
0:57:33 Exactly.
0:57:34 Well, that’s cool.
0:57:37 I know her name and, and help her.
0:57:38 I can’t remember.
0:57:42 Now I want to be like Angela Duckworth and help this girl.
0:57:43 That’s right.
0:57:44 All right.
0:57:47 So let’s talk about enchantment before we go.
0:57:52 I know we’re wrapping up on time here, but I love this concept of like, likeability,
0:57:56 first impressions and making people like you more.
0:58:00 So I’d love to hear your best advice and guidance when it comes to you being more enchanting.
0:58:01 Okay.
0:58:03 So enchantment, I think has several pillars.
0:58:07 Enchantment is likeability because it’s hard to be enchanted by someone you don’t like.
0:58:08 Let’s face it.
0:58:09 Right?
0:58:10 So there’s likeability.
0:58:16 There’s also sort of competence that it’s hard to like people who are incompetent bozos.
0:58:18 That’s the second leg.
0:58:22 And the third thing is trustworthiness because you could like somebody.
0:58:25 You could like some tick-tock influencer.
0:58:28 That doesn’t mean you trust that tick-tock influencers.
0:58:30 You could like Paris Hilton.
0:58:32 That doesn’t mean you trust Paris Hilton.
0:58:38 So likeability, trustworthy and competence, those are the three pillars of enchantment.
0:58:43 And so this book enchantment is about how to increase all three of those things.
0:58:47 As far as likeability, I think a lot of it is just, well, this was written before the
0:58:48 pandemic, right?
0:58:52 So I think a lot of likeability is what is your handshake like?
0:58:57 Is it like wimpy or are you trying to crush the person’s hand or is it in the middle?
0:58:59 What is your smile like?
0:59:02 Is it a grit your teeth, hold the pencil in your teeth kind of smile?
0:59:06 Or is it a legitimate, happy Duchenne smile?
0:59:07 Are you showing crow’s feet?
0:59:09 You’re too young to have crow’s feet, Hala.
0:59:11 But are you showing your crow’s feet or not?
0:59:15 Because crow’s feet is a very good indication of sincerity in smiling.
0:59:18 So it’s those kinds of things.
0:59:23 And a third thing in likeability is are you accepting people for what they are or are
0:59:24 you trying to change them?
0:59:30 So I think people can pick up when you can sense that this person thinks that I should
0:59:36 be a Democrat or I should be a Republican or I should be something that I’m not.
0:59:40 It’s hard to like people who don’t accept you for what you are.
0:59:45 And I know that you say you also should be aligned to a good cause.
0:59:49 And I thought this was really interesting because you wrote the book in 2011 and in
0:59:54 the last year, I feel like every other conversation I have is like conscious business, conscious
0:59:55 leadership, right?
0:59:59 Like everybody wants to talk about aligning purpose with a good cause.
1:00:02 And it seems more recent because I’ve been doing this for four or five years and now
1:00:04 everyone’s talking about that.
1:00:09 So I’d love to hear your thoughts on why you think we should align ourselves to a good
1:00:11 cause and you obviously thought this for a long time.
1:00:17 Well, just to be clear, I’m not saying you should align yourself with a good cause because
1:00:20 it’s good marketing and good financial returns and good all.
1:00:25 And that, although those may be true, don’t get me wrong.
1:00:26 Biproducts, yeah.
1:00:34 Yeah, it is a byproduct and I just believe that there is a karmic scoreboard in the sky.
1:00:38 And this karmic scoreboard is tallying what you do with your life.
1:00:44 And if you jack people around and screw them and you like trash the earth and all that,
1:00:46 it’s being counted someplace.
1:00:50 Now you can say, guy, you’re so full of shit, you know, like, do you have any scientific
1:00:52 proof of this karmic scoreboard?
1:00:53 Not at all.
1:00:54 You can’t prove God either.
1:00:56 But you know, I digress.
1:01:00 But I’m just saying, you know, with something like this, why take a chance?
1:01:01 Why take a chance?
1:01:05 I mean, you’re only talking about your life, your reputation and who knows, maybe your
1:01:06 afterlife.
1:01:10 So, you know, do you want to be stuck in a 737 in a center seat in the smoking section
1:01:15 or you want to be in Singapore Airlines or, you know, Emirates Airbus A380?
1:01:16 It’s up to you.
1:01:19 So I just think it’s good karma.
1:01:20 Yeah.
1:01:22 I love your defaults.
1:01:23 Yes.
1:01:24 I’m the same way.
1:01:25 I just say yes.
1:01:26 Yeah.
1:01:28 If you can help somebody, if you have the time, why not?
1:01:29 Even if you don’t have the time.
1:01:30 Yeah.
1:01:33 Well, this has been such a great conversation, guy.
1:01:37 I always end my interviews with the same couple of questions and then we do some fun
1:01:38 stuff at the end of the year.
1:01:44 So the first one is, what is a piece of actionable advice that my young and profitors can do today
1:01:46 to become more profiting tomorrow?
1:01:50 You can learn how to truly empathize.
1:01:53 That is, this goes beyond market research.
1:02:01 So, you know, so market research is basically go and see, go see how people live, go, whatever.
1:02:07 I would say if you want to do it even better, you go and be, which means you go and be the
1:02:08 person.
1:02:13 Like you, let’s say you’re doing a study of customer service, so you could go to the
1:02:18 customer service center and you could see what happens on the call lines, or you could
1:02:24 actually put the headset on and be the customer service person, or you could actually call
1:02:28 into your company’s customer service and be the customer.
1:02:34 Empathy is a great skill and it’ll just open your eyes to so many things.
1:02:35 Oh my gosh.
1:02:36 I love that advice.
1:02:41 And what is your secret to profiting in life and this doesn’t have to be monetary.
1:02:43 profiting is whatever you believe it is.
1:02:46 Listen to your wife.
1:02:47 How’s that?
1:02:48 Why?
1:02:50 Because women are smarter than men.
1:02:52 I truly do believe that.
1:02:57 Like if you look at this world right now, men have screwed this world up from top to bottom
1:02:58 for centuries.
1:03:00 I think we should let women run the world.
1:03:05 I mean, what a better place to stop the interview right then and there.
1:03:09 And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do?
1:03:14 Well, if you truly want to see my best work, go to remarkablepeople.com.
1:03:16 Just a word of caution here.
1:03:20 Remarkable people is not guys spouting off about how to be remarkable.
1:03:25 Remarkable people is guys getting people like Jane Goodall and Steve Wozniak and Neil deGrasse
1:03:31 Tyson and Ariana Huffington and Kristi Yamaguchi and I could just go on on Angela Duckworth
1:03:32 on and on.
1:03:37 I’m trying to get the wisdom from them into you.
1:03:39 That’s what I’m doing on remarkable people.
1:03:40 I love it.
1:03:43 Well, if you guys like my podcast, I think you’re going to love guys, so make sure you
1:03:44 check it out.
1:03:48 We’ll stick all of his links in the show notes, and thank you so much for this amazing conversation.
1:03:49 My pleasure.
1:03:52 And maybe I should have you on the podcast.
1:03:54 I would love to be on the podcast.
1:03:56 They call me the podcast princess.
1:03:58 I built a media empire.
1:04:02 I have 60 employees, started it as a side hustle.
1:04:04 I’d love to be on your podcast.
1:04:08 I know you’re the podcast queen.
1:04:09 Forget the princess.
1:04:10 Oh, thank you.
1:04:11 I’m not saying you’re old.
1:04:12 No, I know.
1:04:14 I feel like I want the princess for a few years, and then I’ll graduate to queen, like.
1:04:15 Okay.
1:04:17 All righty.
1:04:18 All the best to you.
1:04:19 Take care.
1:04:20 Thanks, guy.
1:04:20 Bye-bye.
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