Guy Kawasaki’s Advice for Marketing Teams of One

When you need a maid, when you need a new camera, when you need a new phone, when you need a computer, what is your purchase decision process? Hmm. I doubt that it is because Sidney Sweeney said, buy the new Samsung seven fold. You know, I mean, God bless you. If it is. Maybe she knows a lot about phones. I don't know.

Welcome to the marketing team of one podcast where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now, here's your host, Eric and Mike. We are so lucky today to have with us a huge legend, an OG marketing master, an all around remarkable human being.

I, uh, honestly, kinda lost my, well, you know what, uh, when he agreed to be on our little show here, but, uh. Thank you so much, Mr. Guy Kawasaki. Thank you. Thank you for the, um, wonderful introduction and I think you're giving me too much credit. Well, let's not stop there. I just wanted to go down and let our listeners and, and viewers understand.

A little bit about your journey because it is epic and it is legendary, and you are looked at as, uh, quite a remarkable human being as far as where you began and where you're at now. Guy Kawasaki was one of the original software evangelists for the Apple Macintosh, working directly with Steve Jobs. He's also written 17 books, including.

The Art of the start, the Art of the Start 2.0, uh, which I think is a masterclass. Looking at the reviews of everything online, I think everybody out there understands if you're gonna start a business or be an entrepreneur, you have to read that book first. It gave me a lot of amazing tips, um, to just help our clients with doing presentations and selling, uh, the services that they provide.

So, um. Your latest book is, um. What is your latest book? Sometimes I ask myself the same question. Well, my latest book that is actually out as of mid-January is a Wiser Guy, but in, let's see, this is the 16th. So in, uh. 11 days, I'll have another book out. And that book is called, everybody Has Something to Hide Why And How to Use Signal.

Interesting. And that one's specifically about using the messaging platform signal. Yes. Your first book though, I gotta tell you a little story because I grew up as a designer. So I was a art school geek and I went and worked at a design firm when I was 19. And then I worked my way through about two or three other design firms until I landed here at Page Design.

Uh, but it's funny 'cause every one of those studios that I went to had sitting on their shelf a little book called The Macintosh Way. Really? Which was your first book? Yeah. Wow. And when I was young, I grabbed it off the shelf and started flipping through it. I'm like, okay, great. I get to learn how to use the Macintosh better and maybe I can do more stuff.

And I started reading it and at a 19, 20, 20 2-year-old kid, I'm like, wait, this, this is about something else. This is about working at Apple. Like who I, who cares? You know, like I was a little, you know, I didn't really, it didn't resonate with me where I was. As I grew up though, and kind of got mature, I realized the, the genius that that book was kind of one of the first, and you tell me, I mean, it seemed like it was like the first book that was about the strength of brand and culture within a, within a small company.

Is that about right? I think that would be giving me way too much credit. You know, there were books by David, er. Peter Drucker, you know, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, there are their books that preceded mine and, um, but it, the Macintosh Way was basically a book that explained how to do the right things the right way.

That was my goal. The right things the right way. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, as I read it back or flipped through it, I shouldn't say I fully read it, but when I was probably, I don't know, 15 years ago, I finally flipped through it again. Like, why is this book still, like people just ke it must be standard issue for every design firm that I worked at.

Um, and then I realized that there was something amazing about it. Still today, I, I am chief evangelist of Canva, which you know, as a de uh, design guy, I'm sure you know, I am the host of the Remarkable People Podcast and, uh. Finally, I'm a frustrated surfer and, and right now, just so people know, you know, why is guy fidgeting and moving so much?

About five days ago I pulled my sciatica and I am in great pain right now. So, so this is not my usual calm, contemplated state. Uh, I am somewhat in agony right now, but you know, the show must go on. I. We totally appreciate that and, uh, uh, thank you so much for sticking through it and we'll try not to add any more pain to your, uh, life at this point.

Well, let's talk a little bit about that and chief evangelist for Canva. Yes, we talk about Canva all the time, and we agree it's one of the greatest tools that democratizes graphic design. You don't have to learn Photoshop and Illustrator and all those crazy tools that it takes a lot to learn at this point.

What is a chief brand evangelist? 'cause you've been one also for obviously Apple, but also Mercedes-Benz. Yeah, a few other organizations. What does that mean? Well, uh, to go back to the basics, evangelism comes from a Greek word that means bringing the good news. So what an evangelist does is bring the good news.

I brought the good news of Macintosh Howett. Made people more creative and productive. I am bringing the good news of Canva, as you say, it has democratized design and enabled everybody to become a much better communicator. And now, you know, I think the last thing I'm ever gonna evangelize is signal, because I think Signal is an essential app for today's society and political environment.

Interesting. Yeah. As I was kind of reading a little bit about Signal, it does seem like it is. I can see why you've get, why you're getting behind it. It definitely, um, is a unique tool that we need nowadays, I think. As an evangelist for Canva, what does that look like? You're showing up at trade shows, you're working the booth.

What does that mean? Well, you know, uh, I have been chief evangelist for Canva for about 11 years, and quite frankly, Canva is doing so well. I, they don't even need me at this point. I mean, I couldn't hurt. Canva if I tried, uh, and, and this is called Guys Golden Touch. And Guys, golden Touch is not that whatever I touch turns to gold guys.

Golden Touch is whatever is gold Guy touches. So I touch Macintosh, I touch Canva, I touch Signal. Um, and the way it works in Silicon Valley is that. You throw a lot of shit up against the wall. Three of 'em stick. You go up to the wall, you paint a bullseye around them and you say, I hit the bullseye. And let me tell you, you can always hit the bullseye if you paint the bullseye after you see what sticks on the wall.

You got perfect name. It sounds like. Yeah, I, I am. Yeah. Actually, if you looked at my career, I. Purely mathematically, I'm probably, I. Maybe four for 40. I mean, something like that. But those four were Superbowl or Yeah, SHA Shaquille O'Neal's a better free throw shooter than I'm a picker of businesses. Well that's interesting.

I think that, uh, you know, brand evangelism is something that I think is entering more of the lexicon of a lot of marketing people they understand with the strength of influencer marketing and things like that. I think it kind of plays. Is it similar to influencing market influencer marketing at this point?

You know, obviously I'm not an 18-year-old babe with, you know, parts of my body hanging out, so I'm not that kind of influencer. Um, I would say that one of the key tenets of evangelism is you truly have to believe that what you evangelize is good news. I truly do believe that Macintosh is good news Canvas, good news signal is good news.

Now if you look at your random TikTok or Instagram reels influencer, you know, it's not clear to me they really believe in that new foundation or that new lipstick or, you know, that new, you know, I don't know. I've a, I've a metin or whatever it is. I mean, the, the thing you should know about evangelism in its purest form is the evangelist has.

Your best interest at heart, not his or hers. So when I tell you to use Canva or Signal or Macintosh, I truly do believe that I have your best interest at heart. Don't get me wrong, all three. Well, two of the three. Well, actually only one of the three. Well, I mean I own four shares of Apple Stock. I own a lot of Canvas stock I own, I have no financial relationship with Signal, so.

Two out of the three. It's good for me if you use Macintosh and Canva. But that's not why I do it. I truly do believe it's good for you. So our, our, our audience is solo. Solo people who are the marketing department at these companies. Yeah. You've probably seen 'em, there's maybe 12 people that work at the company.

The marketing there is the one marketing person who does the website. They do all the social, they get the new brochures, they do all the writing, they do all that stuff. Is evangelism part of, or how should they think of evangelism when it comes to their brand or their company? Is it something that we could apply at that scale, or is it something that only applies to larger scale?

Well, I, I, I don't think it's about the scale or size of the organization, it's really about the goodness of the product or service. So you could have a hundred thousand person, uh, company and they are not evangelistic because quite frankly, they probably have a piece of crap. I mean, it, it'd be hard to evangelize cigarettes, for example, right?

I mean, how is cigarettes good news? So, uh, it's not the size of the organization. I would say it's more dependent on the quality of the product or the service. Hmm. And I, I would encourage you, you know, in your small organizations that Yeah, yes, it, it's good if you are evangelistic, but don't think that evangel.

Is a position. And so, you know, there's, you know, that guy, that girl is the evangelist. It should be that everybody is evangelistic in the company. Ah, everybody should believe that what they do, the product or service is good news. So it's a, it's a state of mind. It's a, it's a way of looking at life and the idea of influencers or trying to hire that is really just.

It, it's counter to the whole explanation that you just laid out for us. I don't think it's relevant at all. You know, if, if you see an, a famous, good looking actor endorse a car brand, I mean. Do you really believe that if you went to that actor's house, he's driving a Lincoln Mercury? I kind of doubt it.

So, you know, I mean, that, that's not, that's not what I would call evangelism. That's what I would call bought and paid for. Um, so you, you need to find people who like. They, they are using something because they love it. They don't love it because they're paid for it. Uh, and. You know that that's few and far between.

Uh, and I, I would say we've been discussing mostly internal evangelists, but the real power of evangelism is external evangelists. These are your customers. So, you know, apple has external evangelists who truly believe in iOS. They truly believe in Macintosh. That was especially true during the 1980s and nineties when there were Macintosh user groups.

There are people who, uh, Harley Davidson owners, there are people, you know, a lot of car marquees have evangelists. They're Tesla evangelists. I don't, I don't know how you could evangelize a Tesla today, but that's another deep hole. We could go into another, another podcast. So, yeah, I mean, what you really have to look for is, you know, what is motivating the person?

Is it a love of the product? Is it my best interest, or is it money and their best interest? Yeah, your podcast is amazing. You've had. So many great guests on there. Brene Brown, I mean, Seth Godin. There's just so many. I try to, uh, limit the number of billionaires on my podcast. I think I have had this podcast.

I've had about 300 guests. I would guess that maybe two or three are billionaires. Um, Barry Dill would be one. Reid Hopkins would be another, I don't think Wozniak is a billionaire. Really? I, you know, I don't Oh, mark Benioff. Mark Benioff. Oh, okay. So let's say I have five out of 300. So it is, you know, we, we, my podcast, we get about 10 requests per day to be on our podcast.

Wow. So, you know, so, so 10 per day's, 50 a week. We only take one. So it's, you know, one out of 50. I tell people it is harder to get on my podcast than it is to get into Stanford or Harvard.

You gotta be Sali. You got a great product there. I mean, it is an amazing show. The conversations are what, what's really interesting is to hear. The guests and their, your influence on them in a past life or whatever they, yeah. I was thinking of the Seth Godin one, the one when he started talking to you.

It was funny to hear his journey and how he relates it back to you a million years ago. You know it, it's funny, when you started this podcast, you kind of did what happens to me, right? Like, so Guy, you know, I'm looking forward to this podcast. It's such a great honor. When I started in design business 19, I, you know, leaf through your book, it was a big influence, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And, and a lot of times, seriously, a lot of times people like Seth Godin or, you know, I don't know, famous people say, yeah, guy, I've been following you my whole life. I've read your books. You're a big influence on me, and I, I kind of really don't know what to do with that. Um, uh, well, first of all, first of all.

I always try to clarify with them that you know that make sure that they understand that I am not the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. That's Kiyosaki. I'm Kawasaki. Just like make sure you're praising the right person. And about one out of 10 times they do have me. Oh,

I've read his book too. I, yours is way more informative. I, not that it's a competition. I know. Well, I, I hate to tell you, but he sold way more copies than I Oh, that's the crime. That's a crime of the century right there. I don't get that. Um, what, so in those conversations, be talking to some of the most remarkable people out there.

Is there something, you know, and they're not all marketing people, I get that, but there were some that definitely speak to marketing. Oh yeah. What, when you think back on some of those conversations you have. What should, what are some of the lessons that you think a solo marketer should steal from them?

Well, like immediately, well, first of all, I would start with the episodes that featured Bob Chelini, C-I-L-D-I-N-I. He wrote the book Influence, so Bob Chelini. Was a huge, or is a huge influence on me, and I think every Soul Marketeer should read his book Influence. So that's one episode. Another is David, er David, er, A-A-K-E-R, talks about branding.

He's arguably the father of branding. So there's David Ocker, there's Laura Reese, RIES. She is the daughter of Reese and Trout, another famous marketing book, and there's Katie Milkman, who I think is the next Bob Cini, and there's Angela Duckworth, who is the queen of grit. Finally there is Carol Dweck, who is the mother of the growth Mindset, and so these are episodes, well, not necessarily you have to listen to my podcast, but these are the people's works you should read.

That's what I love about, especially Art of the Start. When you go through it, you're, you pretty much end each chapter with a list of other books to, to reference and go back to. And you know, after reading it, I went and got a bunch of those books too. So just this kind of trail that leads you down, uh, to Ultimate Wisdom, which I'm still searching for to this day.

But believe me, you and me both. So let's talk a little bit about touchpoint, because those solo marketers are directly, you know, they're in control of those customer touch points. So you're working on a small company, you've got touchpoints, example website, that's one. Correct? Yeah. Or advertising or your social feed, things like that.

What things would you suggest they prioritize? Is there a, is there a simple answer? There might not be. This might be a, well, I mean depending, but, so here, here's my tips. So first of all, you should go and see or go and be your customer. You know, don't just like. Depend on, I don't know, reports or reading or you know, internet research.

You should actually go to see how these customers live, how they actually design stuff, you know, how they drive their cars, the stuff like that. Right? So, so go and see even better would be going and being where you are actually doing what the customer does. Hmm. Uh, I, I had a famous example where. A friend of mine named Martin Lindstrom in his episode explained how this pharmaceutical company wanted to be closer to the customer.

So he took these executives and made them breathe through straws, and at the end of the exercise he said you wanted to be closer to your customer and made you into the customer. That's kind of what a. A person with asthma feels like breathing through a straw. So I made you into the customer. So if you're, you know, listening to this podcast, what is the equivalent of breathing through a straw for your customer?

That's number one. That's, that's go and be or go and see. Number two is you should work backwards from the customer, not forward from what you like to do. You may like to do a certain thing. Your company may have been. Doing it for years is maybe very successful, blah, blah, blah. And so when that happens, organizations tend to start thinking, well, this is what we do now.

We just gotta get people to like what we do. And I think that is the wrong direction. You gotta look at what people need, and then you figure out how you can address what. They need, not what you like to do. A very good negative example of this is Kodak. So Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975, but they work forward, right?

They think we're a chemical company. We put chemicals on paper, chemicals on film. You know, that's the business we're in. We gotta make people buy more chemicals on paper and chemicals on film. But if Kodak worked backwards, they would figure out that people don't wake up in the morning saying, ah. Where can I buy chemicals on?

In Springfield, Kodak was fundamentally in the business of preserving memories. So if you work backwards from the customer who's trying to preserve a memory, you'd look at digital photography and say, you know what? We got this wonderful cash cow called analog photography. We're selling chemicals on paper and film, but we're preserving memories.

And man, it is a lot better to preserve a memory digitally. So that you don't need any chemicals, and so you can immediately see if you got the shot, not after you returned from Hawaii and after you went to the drugstore and after you've dropped off your film and after you picked it up and after you discovered that you had the lens cap on.

It'd be nice to know you captured your memories right after you took the picture. So, you know, go and b, go and c work backwards from the customer. Uh, and then the, the third thing I would highly advise you to is to eat your own dog food. Now, eating your own dog food is related to being your customer and.

By this, I mean before I meant, you know, see the need, the pain that you're addressing for your customer that's going and being, but another form of going and being is you gotta eat. What you're cooking. And, and I would say, you know, uh, a very good example of this is, I don't know, you know, your IT person has convinced you that for security, we need capture.

So we're gonna put everybody, when they sign up for their free account, we're gonna give 'em 16 pictures and we're gonna say, identify all the pictures with a crosswalk in it. And I have never, ever, ever done one of those right the first time. So, okay, so now I failed the sidewalk test. Now it says, okay, identify all the pictures with the bicycle in it.

I flunked that one too. And then, you know, after you flunk three or four, it says, you know, too many false attempts. Please try again later or something. So. You don't like capture? Why are you putting your friends and potential customers through capture? Um, or you tell people. Yeah, you know, you could have a, you can have a 30 day trial process and at the end of 30 days you can decide if you wanna start paying or not.

But right now, we want your credit card right now in advance, and then we're gonna make it so fricking hard for you to figure out how to cancel. You know, it's not through the Apple store. You gotta click on my profile and my profile, my account, my account, my billing, and at the very bottom is six point times font.

It says cancel and you click on that. And at 4 0 4, you know like yeah, you're telling me that you wanna like sign up for a new service, give 'em your credit card, 30 days of trial and then figure out, oh my God. Is it worth the hassles trying to cancel a $10 monthly charge by spending an hour on the phone telling them to close my account?

I mean, this kind of shit happens all the time. I know firsthand because I, I go through it all the time. Yeah. Evil on some level. Yeah, it's not easy. Um, it's interesting what you just mentioned 'cause it's. You, one of the points that you brought up, and, and this is kind of counter to what I think what Steve Jobs put into your mind was, don't build what the customer wants, build what you want.

How does that, that seems different a little bit than what you had initially. Your first point was, you know, I have two explanations for that. So first of all. There has only been one Steve Jobs. Okay. So saying that, you know, you should build what you want and then the customers will want it too. Yeah.

Steve Jobs can get away with that. Not clear that you and I can get away with that. So that's, that's number one. Number two is, um. To contradict what I just said, I think it is. If you look at the richest vein for successful companies, I would say that it's two guys, two gals, a guy and a gal building the product that they want to use.

Mm-hmm. So they build this apple one that they wanna use, and lo and behold, many other people wanna use it. So, yeah, so that would contradict what I just said, but you know, uh, a sign of intelligence is that you can hold two contradictory thoughts in your brain at the same time. So I assume that your listeners are intelligent, so I'm giving you two contradictory pieces of advice that you know, yes, they're extremely tel intelligent, so.

Yeah, and I think that there's probably, there's a nuanced version of, you know, both of those sides, and I think that that's where you really have to consider, just be open to both sides of those and then consider it for your situation or your customers and what they're doing. Yeah. You know, the way it really works is you.

Throw a lot of shit up against the wall, as I said before. And then if you're successful, you mention the success. If you fail, you don't mention it. I mean, you know how many books have been written about failures, especially written by the person who failed? Yeah. Who would wanna leave? Yeah, I can, I can hardly wait for Elizabeth Holmes to explain the lessons of.

Teos the Teos way. A lot of solo marketers are managing the social feeds and a lot of the social. You, you mentioned an enchantment a lot about, you know, trust and being genuine and being out there. Yeah. Uh, and being a real person. How, how do people balance? I'm the person with the phone doing the tiktoks for my company.

Yeah. I am I now the face of the company. How do they balance that with I? Is there some sort of nuanced tips or tricks that you could talk about that would help people bridge that a little bit? Again, I'm gonna give you advice that is conflicting, so. I have been very active on social media since Twitter started.

You know, this is original Twitter 1.0 before it became a Nazi platform, and I have to tell you that social media. Google Plus Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. Highly, highly effective marketing platforms to get the word out to reach your followers. You know, blah, blah, blah. Then all of a sudden, you know, now if you have a million followers and you post the story and you see 10,000 people looked at it, you know, the logical question is, I got 10,000 people, uh, a 1 million people following me.

How come only 10,000 people looked at it? And I hate to tell you, it is not necessarily you, but it seems to me that the contract is. If I manually, voluntarily decide to follow you, it means I wanna see everything you do. So I want the algorithm to be, if I follow you, show me everything guy did. But that is not the algorithm.

Like the algorithm is. I don't know what the algorithm is. If I knew I would explain it to you. But not everybody who follows you sees it. So this is a long diatribe to tell you that. Listen, I have about. I don't know, 79 million followers, of which probably 8.5 million are either dead or Russian bots. But that's a different discussion.

So anyway, let's say I have, let's say I have 9 million followers. I wish I could tell you, I send a message, a tweet, a post, you know, whatever, TikTok, whatever, and, but a bing, but a bang, 9 million people follow me. And a mere 900,000 by my book. Oh man, that would be, huh? I would freaking be doing back flips with this pulled sciatica if that were true.

And so what this whole diatribe is telling you that I guy Kawasaki, I freely admit I don't know how to make social media work. I don't. Interesting. I don't even know if you can make social media work at this point, so, so that's the bad news. Now, if I were gonna give you a piece of advice about how to try to make your social media work within my negativity, I would say that the, the true asset test is that you always try to provide value.

In your posts. Mm-hmm. So it can be educational, it can be inspiring. It can be entertaining. I did not mention that it is a sales promotion. Mm. Mm-hmm. So this is going back to, you know, being your own customer. Do you constantly want social media posts that are selling to you or do you want social media posts that are educational or inspirational or entertaining or what?

You know, if. If I were, if I were an airline and I had a social media, you know, account, I would not be constantly pushing, these are our specials to go from San Jose to Hawaii, or this is our special to go from San Francisco to London. I would not be constantly hammering sales, I would be saying. If you go to Hawaii, these are the top 10 restaurants you have to eat at.

Mm-hmm. If you go to London, this is the best way to get from Heathrow to downtown London. So you're adding value. You know, United Airlines is giving me advice about the best places to eat. Hawaiian Airlines is telling me about the best places to surf. They're not just pushing down their brand down my throat constantly.

They're adding value. Yeah. Yeah, there's it. So that's interesting that you mentioned that social media is. And, and that's, I, I kind of agree. It seems like at this point it's a pay to play and that's probably happened in the last year and a half or two years, maybe. Um, and it's hard to get really good advice from people other than what you had just given genuine, provide value.

But you know, which, what, what I, I freely admit this. What I cannot understand is everybody I talk to just says, yeah, guy, social media is broken. It's not that useful anymore. Mm. Well, who the hell is paying Facebook billions of dollars every year? I mean, unless all those people are stupid and giving Facebook money for something that doesn't work.

It must be working for them. So somebody has figured out how to make Facebook work because obviously they get billions of dollars for advertising and you know, so does Google. So you know, what do I know? Yeah, it seems to be, yeah, really changing a lot. I mean, it's a hard thing to keep hammering on, and it's hard to find people who have current knowledge of figuring that out because a lot of the people that.

Have knowledge or have written books about it. They already have their 6 million followers that they got five, eight years ago. And yeah, their game plan back then will not work today. I don't think that's, well, I can tell you I'm one of those people with 6 million followers, and I will tell you right up front.

I have no idea how to make that work. And you know, I recently, I joined Blue Sky, I joined Threads, right? Mm-hmm. So I think I have like, I don't know, 4,000 on Blue Sky and I don't know. I don't, I, maybe I have 30,000 on threads or vice versa. Anyway, I have nowhere close to a lot of followers on new platforms.

I literally have no idea how to get a lot of followers on either of those two node platforms. Um. It seems like, well, yeah, if you're, if you're Michelle Obama, or you know, if you are Kim Kardashian or I don't know, whatever that actress's name that did the jeans thing, Sydney Sweeney or, yeah, I never heard of her till the jeans.

I never heard of her after that. But you know, I'm 71 years old, so don't take my data as anything relevant, but, so I'm, you know, I'm not Sidney Sweeney. I'm not Michelle Obama. I'm not. Kim Kardashian. I'm not LeBron James. I'm not Anthony Edwards, you know. I'm not Matthew McConaughey. I don't drive a Lincoln Mercury, so I don't know how to get followers anymore.

I dunno, you in my book, you're right up there with those. You're the, you're the Kobe, you know, so I know you meant that as a compliment, but I take that as an insult except for Michelle Obama, but okay.

Uh, you're the goat man. You know, I, it's just in my, in my eyes for sure. Um, so that's interesting. I mean, what, so what works for small companies as far as what, I mean, what do you, what do you think, what, from your perspective, I mean, well, I've heard you talk about Google and, and just, you know, setting up Google profiles and things like that as a basic, but what, well, I mean, you, you gotta do all that stuff, but to me.

And listen, I, I come from Apple, so you know, I'm not exactly marketing driven. Ironically, I'm more product driven. So if I was giving advice, I would say put nine tenths of your effort into making a great product or service using empathy, working backwards, you know, blah, blah, blah. Make this great product, take care of your customers and just keep your fingers crossed.

That word of mouth. Interesting. The customer testimony is what gets customers. I, I don't know about you, but you know, whenever, uh, whenever I pick almost any kind of service or new product. I, I, I, it's not because of the advertising, it's because of, you know, uh, the, the Yelp, or I look at the star ratings, and I realize some of these can be gamed.

I asked my friends, you know, it's not like I, it's because I saw this great Super Bowl commercial that now I'm gonna buy crypto. You know what I mean? So I think it's word of mouth. You know, I, I mean, a very good test for all your listeners would be when you need something, when you need a maid, when you need a new camera, when you need a new phone, when you need a computer, what is your purchase decision process?

Hmm. I doubt that it is because Sidney Sweeney said, buy the new Samsung seven phones. You know, I mean, God bless you. If it is. Maybe she knows a lot about phones. I don't know. I would if I were buying a new device. I would follow Marquez Brownley. Yeah. There you go. Right. Agreed. Or I, Justine. And I. Justine.

Yeah. Yeah. It seems like YouTube is one of those reference points where you can go to try to do your own research that. Yeah, and I mean, I know that there's algorithms associated with that too, but uh, that does seem like you can get a little bit better. I spend a lot of my day on YouTube watching. What surfing videos?

What do you what? Watch. I think. I could double my personal productivity if there was a way to turn off YouTube shorts. Because when I go to YouTube and I look at one short, and you know, it's always about, ah, look at this guy stealing this box of Amazon box and blows up in his face. So then I watch about five of those, and then the next thing is, oh.

Look at this elephant fighting this tiger because the tiger attacked her baby. It's a wonder I can get anything done. It's so overwhelming the world today. It's is too much. Yeah. What's one marketing tactic solo marketers should stop doing? Trying to go viral? Yeah. You know, I mean, I think going viral is more or less pure dumb shit luck.

So I don't think, you know, one of your marketing strategies is get dumb shit. Lucky. That's, that strategy doesn't scale. So, you know, stop trying to go viral for crying out loud. Just add value. Yeah, I always do. Just make a great product, make a great product. You know, if you think about it, all the millions and millions of social media posts that I go out every day, and you know of that, you see a tiny, tiny percentage that have gone viral and you think, oh yeah, I'll go viral too.

Right? But the fact is that when you see something like that, you should ask yourself what's missing? So you see these viral videos of the elephant protecting her co her baby from the. Tiger and it goes viral. You don't see the other 9,999,000, you know, videos of elephants protecting their babies from leopards and pythons and all that.

You only see the one that goes viral, so you think, oh my God, you know? Yeah, we have a dry cleaning service, but we're gonna have a video with an elephant protecting her baby from a tiger. We're gonna go viral and then we're gonna get people to come use our dry cleaning service. Nice. I don't know. Walk me through that line of reasoning there.

I don't think there is much reasoning behind that for sure. If there's one episode of Remarkable People, your podcast, you've outlined a few good ones that I think you know or great reference, what's one that you would, this is my final question then I wanna talk about your book a little bit. Yeah, your next book, but, um.

Is there one that just stands out as like, this is really, and it doesn't even have to be marketing related, just, you know, great human beings. Um, Jane Goodall. I know maybe up there. I I you took the words right. Mouth. Um, uh, my, my podcast started with Jane Goodall. She was the first guest I ever had. Hmm. I might say that that was the best episode.

It's been all downhill from then. What makes her so, I, I really think that Jane Goodo may be the most remarkable person that I have ever come to know. I mean, you know, it's her and Steve Jobs. It's her and Steve Jobs. Yeah. Is what makes her so amazing. I mean, uh, well, she know, she has, she had a growth mindset.

She is gritty and she's so gracious. Um, I, you know, she died a few months ago and the world is a lot less remarkable without Jane. Good. Hmm. I can't say that about a lot of other people. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about your next book. It's about signal. You've mentioned signal a bunch of times on here.

Um, yeah. Give me, speak to the crowd. What, what, well, what should they remember? What should they take away? The book is called. Everybody has something to hide. And you know, people think that, oh yeah, I, if I work for the Pentagon, or if I'm a mobster, or if I'm an activist, or, you know, if I'm a revolutionary or you know, I got something to hide, you know, because the government's coming after me, or, you know, something like that.

And you think, ah, I'm, I'm just a regular old parent, you know, I got two kids in college. You know, I don't have anything to hide. I would say ask yourself this deep philosophical question. Do you ever text your kids something that you would not want on a billboard on the side of a highway? Okay. And if the answer to that question is yes, you should use signal.

So let me give you some examples. As a parent. I know I have sent my name and password to my kids to use my credit card. I know they have sent me their name and password to sign into some system to help them figure out their housing or their insurance policy or something, right? So we're passing along banking information.

We're passing along account information. On what I consider platforms that are not se uh, not secure and private enough. Um, let's say that you are, you are working for a company and you wanna reach out to your best friend because you found out the company is polluting the river, and you think, oh man. I don't know what to do.

Should I blow the whistle or not? Man, I would not put that on WhatsApp. You could also be on the recipient side, right? So you're just fat, dumb, and happy. Living a completely clean and legal life. And all of a sudden, out of the blue, your niece in Texas is, I miss my period uncle. I don't know what to do.

Wow, man. And you know, that's an incoming text. And so it's not just what you initiate, it's also what comes into you. Sometimes you have to be cognizant that it's not what you say, but you also need to protect the other side because they don't know what they're doing. Right. So, um, I'm just trying to make the case, the signal is the best way to do this.

It's encrypted. They don't store any data. It's one of those things where I think even on their website, they post all of the, um. Requests for information and all those things on their website because they, well, let me, let me, uh, in case there's any, you know, hardcore crypto secret and algorithm encryption, guys listening or gals listening to this, there are many end-to-end encrypted mess encrypted messaging systems including WhatsApp, Apple's messages, signal, you know.

But there's two issues here. So the message is encrypted, but the metadata, the metadata is information like who was it sent to, when was it sent to? How was it sent? You know, when, what? You know, all that kind of stuff. And signal only retains three pieces of information, which is the phone number. When the account was opened and when was the account last.

Use those three pieces of information of metadata signal has, it keeps nothing else. It has nothing else. Interesting. And in this political environment that we're living in today, it's all the more important to keep things as secure as possible. For sure. Yeah. Well, Mr. Kawasaki, thank you so much. This has been an honor to talk to you.

You're welcome. Been many years for decades. Um, you're a true, remarkable human being and I love everything you're putting out in the universe. Um, thank you so much. Alright, my pleasure. And okay, this is perfect timing. Um. Everybody has something to hide. My signal book comes out on January 28th, and for the first five days, I'm giving it away for free.

After that, it goes up to the astronomical price of $4 and 4 cents. IE 4 0 4. It's Kindle only. It's it's only digital because I wanted to make it free like this. I wanted to make it cheap even after it was free. And signal changes a lot, so I have to revise the book a lot. You can't do that with a book where there's a hundred thousand in print.

So, um, I'm going electronic only at least for a while, so yeah. Well, that's a wonderful contribution and uh, super helpful I think, for everybody out there. Thank you so much. Alright. Alright. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in. For more information and other episodes, subscribe to the marketing team of one podcast on YouTube, apple, or Spotify podcast networks.

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