Top Menu
Unbeatable™ Podcast

Guy Kawasaki on Entrepreneurship

By May 1, 2019 May 12th, 2019 No Comments

“I think that in life you’re either making something or your selling something. That’s all it comes down to. And if you can do either of those two things well, you’re set.”- Guy Kawasaki

Kokoro Yoga is a daily practice for Commander Divine, to provide him with both physical and mental/emotional benefits. This summer you can join Mark and the head instructor Catherine between August 5th and 16th for the Kororo Yoga experience. Whether you are interested in enhancing your yoga practice, or taking the first steps toward becoming an instructor yourself, check out kokoroyogaexperience.com for more information or to register.

Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki) is famous as the original evangelist for the Apple Mac and today he talks with Mark about entrepreneurship, brand evangelism and design. He is the author of many books, but the most recent is “Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life.” From a long career in business, and the current evangelist for the Canva graphic design tool out of Australia, Guy shares his thinking about entrepreneurship.

Hear how:

  • You actually need to build something that you want to use rather than building something exclusively for the market.
  • Every competitor will say that they have “the best” product, so you know that every investor has heard about “the best” product hundreds of times. Focus on your story instead.
  • It’s important for an entrepreneur to focus on getting customers before investors.

Listen to this episode to get clear about how entrepreneurship is a state of mind.

Mark has talked before about the Halo Sport system for neural plasticity. By stimulating specific parts of the brain during activity, it makes you better able to learn new types of movement. As a listener, you are able to use the code DIVINE to pre-order the new, upgraded version for half the price of $299. This special price will only be available during the month of May, so go to haloneuro.com to make your order right away.

Love the Unbeatable Mind Podcast? Click here to subscribe on iTunes.

We’d love your feedback, please leave a rating and review.

Transcript

Start

01:53
Hey folks. This is Mark Divine with the Unbeatable Mind podcast. Thanks so much for joining me today. We’ve got a fantastic guest – Guy Kawasaki. I’ll introduce him a little bit more in a second, but once again I just want to say thank you for your time.

There are literally like a billion podcast popping up left and right – and they’re all vying for your attention, so the fact that you’re here listening to this is really humbling and you know it’s awesome. So I really appreciate it.

And you can help others find it by rating the podcast. We have like 500 five-star ratings over at iTunes, but now we’re available on Google Play and Stitcher, SoundCloud, Pandora. A couple other places, so if you listen to it from those platforms then it really helps if you could rate it. So I’d appreciate it if you take the time to do that.

I’m going to get right in because we only have half an hour or so with Guy. I’ve known about Guy for a while. I think probably heard about him as part of the legends of Apple in the ’80s and ’90s. I remember, learned a little bit more about it when Steve Jobs biography.

Guy was the chief evangelist of Apple in the eighties. He has an MBA from UCLA, BA from Stanford, he’s got a doctorate from Babson – but I don’t think he had to go to Babson to get it, so we’ll learn about that.

He’s Hawaiian. Grandson of Japanese immigrants. And we’re gonna have fun because Guy took up surfing at 62 – I was just over in Kailua I lived over in Kailua for a year when I was in the SEALs – and I was just… Guy, have you seen the kite surfing that’s going on over there?

Guy. No, but I know about kite surfing. It looks too hard. But I actually heard it’s easier. I don’t know how that could be…

Mark. Well I talked to a guy over there – I’m 55 and this guy started at 55 – he’s now 59 and he’s just crushing it. Says it’s it takes about five sessions to learn. It’s kind of like a combination of snowboarding and waterskiing.

Guy. Huh

Mark. I grew up on water skis, but I failed miserably at snowboarding. So I got 50% going for me.

Guy. Well, but you only did one of five sessions right?

Mark. I didn’t do any yet. I just stood there marveling. There were about 40 kite surfers out. These guys were just ripping. And some of them – you know, you catch a wave and they go flying up in the air like a hundred feet… At least it looked like that to me.

Anyways I brought it up because you took up surfing at 62. I’m gonna take a kite surfing and maybe we’ll see each other on the waves.

Guy. The thing that scares me about kite surfing is that it has all the variables of surfing -which is the ocean, and other surfers, and the reef, and all that… Plus you’re adding true vertical issues right? Like wind. I mean wind is a factor in surfing, but not in the sense that it’s gonna pick you up and deposit you across the freeway.

Mark. Yeah, there’s a lot of scary elements…

Guy. Yeah and then with surfing you’re more or less on the same plane. And you can run into each other and boards can hit. But with kite surfing you got this long rope that’s extending – I don’t know 50, 60 feet in the air. So that’s 50 or 60 feet you got to worry about. As opposed to 10 feet on a longboard. I don’t know, it sounds scary to me.

Mark. Well I know the thing that scares me is not me. It’s everybody else out there.

Guy. Well, but just imagine everybody else is saying the same thing.

Mark. True that.

So Guy, let’s give our listeners a little bit about you. Your background. I know growing up grandson of Japanese immigrants in Hawaii – I love Hawaii, what an interesting place – and how did you get from there into tech? Into being a tech entrepreneur?

And I hear that your first job was actually in jewelry. So it makes perfect sense to me that you went from the jewelry to Apple.

Guy. I’m glad you can make sense of it. That’s more than I can say.

So if I were to answer this question in one simple word it would be nepotism. Because my college roommate – Mike Boych – got me the job in the Macintosh division.

And you’re right. My background was basically jewelry manufacturing. A BA in psychology, MBA in marketing – so I was not exactly a PhD with computer science from Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford or MIT. You would have had to Photoshop my head onto an engineer’s body. Or pay the HR person two million bucks to get me in. I mean it’s the USC plan.

But anyway, yeah, I’m living proof that…

Mark. Everybody can do it?

Guy. (laughing) That’s a little strong, but I am living proof that you need… Let me say this correctly… So most people and most companies focus on two things – work experience and educational background. I’m living proof that there’s a third factor, which is that you get it and you love it. Meaning that you understand the product. You love the product. And you consider it good news.

So you bring good news to people – which is the definition of evangelism. So I could make the case that with the perfect work experience and educational background, but if you don’t think Macintosh is fantastic, you won’t succeed anyway.

Mark. Were you exposed to the Mac before you went there? I mean were you early user? Or was the Mac even out yet? Give us a timeframe here.

Guy. Yeah so I joined Apple in the end of 1983. September of ’83. And Macintosh was introduced in 1984. January. So previous to me joining Apple I had seen Macintosh, because there was another series of interviews for a job that I did not qualify for. Truly. And so I had seen Macintosh I don’t know mid-1983 and I did not get that job.

It’s the second job that I interviewed for that I got.

Mark. What was the Apple product line before the Mac? Refresh my memory…

Guy. It was the Apple 2. You know, dot-matrix printers, yeah.

Mark. Okay, yeah. So you go to Apple from jewelry. I mean there must’ve been a pretty steep learning curve for you?

Guy. Well, yeah. Here’s another lesson – so you know all these lessons are in this new book called “Wiseguy” that I wrote. And one of the lessons is that yes, I was in jewelry so you would think “well what the hell does that have to do with tech?” but my job in tech, in Macintosh, was to enchant people, evangelize people, make them believe in Macintosh. And that’s fundamentally sales and marketing. So I was in a sales and marketing position in jewelry convincing people that our designs were better – doesn’t that sound familiar. So whether it’s the design of a ring, or a bracelet, or a pendant – or a design of a user interface… I had to evangelize design. And so I learned a lot about sales and marketing in the jewelry business that immediately transferred to Macintosh evangelism believe it or not.

It really lasted the rest of my life. Because I think that in life you’re either making something, or you’re selling something. I mean that’s the two fundamental processes, right?

Mark. I agree with that. And even if you don’t think that you’re doing that, you are, because you’re either making some creative piece of work and then you’re basically selling yourself.

Guy. Yeah. That’s all it comes down to, and if you can do either of those two things well you’re set.

Mark. Yeah. So did you give yourself the title chief evangelist? I mean were they actually hiring for that?

Guy. Well, the first time they were literally hiring for software evangelist.

Mark. They used that term, too.

Guy. Yes, yes. They invented…Mike Murray and Mike Boych invented that term. And the reason why is because… My job was not to be third party software developer relations… You know, whatever. My job was much more fervor and zeal to convince people that Macintosh made people more creative and productive. So it was fervor and zeal as opposed to “I’ve got to fill my quota.”

Mark. Oh, that’s pretty cool. I mean nobody else was doing that. I mean I don’t think Microsoft salespeople were doing this back then.

Guy. No, no. I can promise you they weren’t.

Mark. So how long were you at Apple?

Guy. I was at Apple ’83 to ’87 and ’95 to ’97.

Mark. Okay. All right. And good relationship with Steve Jobs? Any interesting…?

Guy. Well I can’t tell you I was in his inner innermost circle. But he didn’t fire me, if that’s what you’re asking…

Mark. (laughing) He liked to fire people if they’re not performing.

Guy. I count that as a victory. I didn’t get fired.

Mark. For sure. What was it like to see the company go basically down the tubes and teeter on the edge of disaster when Jobs was fired? And then obviously you came back, I think, when he was brought back right?

Guy. Well yeah. So I left in ’87 to start a software company. And then I returned in ’95 and when I returned in ’95, was when Apple truly was supposed to die… And, you know, Michael Dell is telling Apple to give back the cash to shareholders and close the company. Because it’s game over. Steve had just sold Next to Apple and was coming back.

So we overlapped the second time very little.

Mark. Mm-hmm.

Guy. You know, Apple might not have been big enough for both of us. And clearly he was more valuable than I was. So yeah that’s kind of the timing.

Mark. Interesting.

Entrepreneurship

12:51

So you started a software company how did that go?

Guy. You know, it certainly didn’t become salesforce.com or anything like that. It still exists and I started several software companies that were singles. Not doubles, triples or homeruns. But you know I’m kind of living proof – and this is another piece of wisdom – that if you do one thing really right in your career you can live off it for 30 or 40 years.

Mark. True that. Talk about some of the… One of the things I love about what you’re doing is you’re a serial entrepreneur and you support entrepreneurs, right? You do a lot of coaching and speaking and investing.

But also sharing your experiences through your writing. So you wrote “The Art of the Start.” and then “Enchantment.” And then – like you said – your new book “Wiseguy.” Great title by the way.

Guy. Thank you.

Mark. Lessons from life. Let’s talk about “The Art of the Start” right? So what does it take for an entrepreneur to get off his or her butt and get going in something that they’re interested in or they see a need for?

Guy. Well, I think that the richest vein for a tech startup is that you build the product that you want to use. So Steve and Woz build the Apple One, you know? Marc Andreessen builds Netscape.

And now this is completely contrary to what you would call “classic marketing.” because classic marketing says you talk to potential customers, you look at the landscape, and you decide what people need.

Mark. Right.

Guy. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying build what you want to use and just hope you’re not the only nutcase in the world that wants to use it.

Mark. (laughing) Right. Well, because what you’re saying there ties to what you said before – is you’re gonna be passionate about it. Like, if it’s something that you need to use or you can’t do without, then why not build it and then you’ll have a lot more passion and energy around it. You know, instead of making another widget.

Guy. Seriously, if you look at the great tech companies, I swear that’s the investment thesis. That they built something that they want to use and lo and behold – sometimes to their utter amazement… Other people wanted it too.

Mark. Right. What’s the hardest part about being an entrepreneur? Let’s just say, mark gets off his butt and says “I’m gonna build this app that I really want to use.” and I figure out how to go out and build the app. What’s the hardest thing that I face in the next few years?

Guy. Everything is gonna be hard. Literally. Everything is gonna be hard. Fundraising is gonna be hard. Finishing your product is gonna be hard. Getting customers to try a new product from a new company with insufficient funding is going to be hard. Getting people to join a company that they never heard of that their parents are telling them “you’re crazy.”

There’s not gonna be anything that’s easy. I don’t know… Nothing. And I’m describing the best case.

I don’t want to paint a picture that entrepreneurship is impossible, but it’s not like you fire up our PowerPoint, you make a few calls, you do a few pitches, you raise the money… And next thing you know you buy your ping-pong table and you find a chef to cook lunch every day. And bada-bing, bada-bang, you know, your greatest issue is how do I scale fast enough?

Mark. Right.

Guy. I don’t know in what fairytale this happens.

Mark. Do you coach or see entrepreneurs or budding entrepreneurs who kind of have that mindset these days? Or are most of them fairly clued in that this is going to be a long slog?

Guy. I think that the general attitude is “it’s going to be a long slog, lots of challenges, lots of difficulties. Many pivots, disappointments, etc. For everybody else except us.”

Mark. (laughing) Because mine’s different.

Guy. Right. “We have rock star programmers. And I know what I’m doing.” and so one of the wisdoms in “Wiseguy” is what I call the opposite test. And the opposite test is imagine your competition – are they saying things that are opposite from you? So what… One real-world example is you’re pitching to a venture capitalist, and you go in there and you say “I have patent-pending, curb jumping, paradigm shifting, enterprise class scalable product or service that’s easy to use and bug-free.”

And you think “oh my god, I just used every friggin’ buzzword. And I just described the perfect thing. And you know what? Nobody else is saying that.”

Well the truth of the matter is that the team that came in at eight, nine, ten and eleven – one, two, three and four – all said the same thing.

Guess what? Nobody came in and said “I have a piece of crap that’s buggy, hard to use. I don’t know how we’re gonna scale. I don’t know how we’re gonna get our first customers. I don’t know how we’re gonna overcome Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Yahoo, Facebook and Google.

Now if everybody said that and you come in and you say you have patent-pending, curb jumping, paradigm-shifting, bug-free, easy-to-use, enterprise class, scalable product – you would be saying something different. But everybody says the same thing.

So the lesson is rather than using all these adjectives that everybody uses – you should tell a story. And the story should not be about patent-pending, curb jumping, etc., etc. It should be about why you created this product.

And I’m chief evangelist of a company called Canva right now. And so, you know, the pitch for Canva is that the co-founders were instructors in Western Australia. In Perth. And they were teaching their students how to use Adobe products – Illustrator and Photoshop – and they noticed how difficult and expensive those products were. And they thought “there must be a better way.” so they started Canva…

Mark. You know, I’ve had that thought before myself. So I could see that, right there.

Guy. Yeah. So you know – that, I think, is a lot more effective than saying “well, you know, there are five billion people on the Internet. Imagine if just one percent of those five billion people had to create a graphic. Do you know how many graphics that is every day? And how hard could it be to capture 1% of all the graphics made?” well, yeah…

Mark. That’s not very inspiring.

You say that entrepreneurship is a state of mind. What is that state of mind?

What entrepreneurship being a state of mind means is that you see the world full of possibilities. Full of upside. That the glass is half full, not half empty… If you meet an entrepreneur or you meet someone who says he or she is an entrepreneur. And says that you know they’re waiting for this time where it’s a growing market with proprietary technology that only we have and can do, and there’s no competition, and venture capital is at its peak – that’s not an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur in a worst case would say “yeah, nobody’s funding companies. We have no idea what we’re doing. We’re not sure that our technology will work. Even if it does work, we’re not sure that besides the two of us anybody will use it. But we’re gonna try anyway.” that’s the entrepreneur.

Mark. Yeah. And the entrepreneur is flexible and realistic enough to know that whatever idea you had to start with, it’s probably not gonna look like that yeah two years later.

Guy. Yeah. Well you have to realize that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a little delusional and masochistic.

Mark. Thank you.

Guy. Yeah.

Mark. I’m an entrepreneur too, so I’m definitely delusional.

Guy. But this doesn’t mean that everybody who’s a delusional masochist is an entrepreneur.

Mark. True that.

Guy. I’m saying every entrepreneur is delusional and masochistic. Not everybody who’s delusional or masochistic is an entrepreneur.

Mark. (laughing) That’s awesome.

Show not Tell

22:30

Mark. I think I know we’re gonna go with this, because you’re big on as an evangelist about telling stories, but how does how does one really mobilize people to join them by articulating their vision and sharing their goals and the mission.

So most people… You know, I think that’s become really formulaic too. “Vision, mission, goals” right? And people write it down and then they don’t really do much with them after that. So what’s your view on this?

Guy. Ask that again?

Mark. Yeah, I kind of put a lot into that question. (laughing) I think I even answered it while I was talking.

Guy. Yeah, yeah. Mark. Vision, mission and goals are somewhat formulaic, I think, for a business plan or an entrepreneur, you know, for a pitch. But I think that you have a different take on it. How can an entrepreneur really get the story across best? And share their vision and their mission and the goals that they’re trying to achieve.

Guy. So I think 90% of this comes down to how well you can demo your product.

Mark. Okay. Interesting.

Guy. Because just like every pitch goes with this patent-pending, curb jumping, paradigm shifting… Every time you’re trying to recruit somebody, every person says we have patent-pending, curb jumping, paradigm shifting, easily fundable, whatever… Product or service.

So what I think you have to do is show your prototype. And show not tell. Which is a huge difference.

I don’t think you’ve ever been recruited by a company who said “we have a piece of crap that just… We’re not sure it’s gonna work.”

Mark. (laughing) Microsoft did.

Guy. Well, that’s a good exception. So the thing is to not so much tell people what you’re going to do but to show them and let them fantasize by themselves. So to use Canva again as an example… The key to recruiting someone for Canva in the early days was showing them “okay, so let me show you Canva. We have dozens – now hundreds – but dozens of categories such as social media, book covers, presentations, posters, business cards within each of those design types we have hundreds of templates. So you scroll through all these templates, you pick one that you like, you change the text, you add your photo or you buy a stock photo from us, and within five minutes you’re done with the graphic. And so what you’re trying to do is show people like “oh my god. Anybody can design with Canva.”

And then a reasonably intelligent investor or prospective employee will be sitting there saying “huh, I just saw this person make a beautiful graphic in five minutes. I couldn’t even boot Photoshop in five minutes. So let me just do a little quick mental math. I mean there’s a lot of people who need graphics. Canva can help a lot of people make graphics. I should go work for Canva.”

You want them to sell themselves.

Mark. Right. That’s pretty interesting.

So if you’re pre-product, you got to have a demo at least be able to demonstrate the efficacy and the elegance of your idea.

Guy. Yes. So the wisdom in the book is that a demo is worth a thousand slides.

Mark. (laughing) Right.

Guy. Basically.

Mark. So would you even… If you were pitching Canva today to a VC would you even go into all the other stuff? All the finance management, you know… Blah blah blah? Or would you just show them the demo and tell the story?

Guy. You mean two guys in a garage or two gals in a garage or a guy and a gal in a garage starting from scratch? Or taking today’s Canva and going into a VC who had never heard of it.

Mark. No, I meant like an early like an entrepreneur just starting out. Like two guys in a garage, or a guy and a girl in a garage. Trying to create something new and get funding.

Guy. I think that there should be ten slides in a presentation. And that in the first 30 seconds, you should explain what the hell you do – as opposed to who the hell you are -because quite frankly nobody cares who the hell you are unless your product is exciting to care about who the hell you are. So in the first 30 seconds, you explain who you are. And you may go in and describe the opportunity – how many people need graphics? It should be just fairly obvious. And then you go in and you say “well, let me give you a quick demo.” and so you’re in slide roughly 2 or 3, you start the demo and you never get to 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, because they are so enthralled by the demo that they can do their own calculation about how big this will be. And they don’t care if you don’t have a world-class team, because if you needed a world-class team almost by definition you probably…no… If you had a world-class team almost by definition, you wouldn’t be pitching them.

Mark. Right.

Guy. So we’re all faking it anyway. So I would rather have people come in with a world-class product or service that I can do my own math and say “wow. This is fantastic.” than to have a quote-unquote “world-class” team of former Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook executives who have a piece of crap.

Mark. Right. What’s the biggest mistake you think you’ve made? And what did you learn from it?

Guy. Well, more wisdom from the book… So I quit Apple twice… I turned Steve Jobs down for a third job offer. I also declined to interview for the position the first CEO of Yahoo. So that’s four mistakes I made. And I figure, conservatively speaking, two to three billion dollars right there.

Mark. Good god.

Guy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would not be doing a podcast right now.

Mark. (laughing) Well, you probably wouldn’t have written the books either, and shared all that wisdom.

Guy. Absolutely. I would not. I would be like Bill Gates curing malaria or something.

Mark. Well, you could have also been blamed for Yahoo mess… You know, you don’t.

Guy. No, but I would have cashed out by now. Don’t you worry.

Mark. You say in your book – I’ve got some notes here from it – entrepreneurs shouldn’t be focused on making money, but on making meaning. I love that because too many people do go in with dollar bills in their eyes and they forget that – like you said – it might be a single that you have to live with for a long time.

Guy. Yeah. I think that people who join startups or create startups primarily to make money… I don’t know, it just doesn’t ring true.

Now don’t get me wrong – I mean I’m not telling you that Steve Jobs was a philanthropist, okay. But at least he realized that to make money, you got to do something insanely great. Now if you just want to make money, go to New York and be an investment banker. I mean let’s just… You know, like if you’d rather watch “Billions” than “Silicon Valley” then go be an investment banker. Go be Axe Capital.

But if you want to do something that dents the universe – as Steve says – and believe me if you dent the universe, you will also make money.

Mark. For sure.

Guy. But which came first is the question.

Mark. Right. I mean, it seems to me, Guy, like we’re heading into just an extraordinary time to be an entrepreneur. With all the confluence of technology coming together and you know 7 billion people going to be connected soon to the internet. One of these companies will figure it out.

I mean what’s your view of where entrepreneurship is going in the next 10 or 20 years?

Guy. Well, first of all nobody knows what’s gonna happen in 10 or 20 years.

Mark. True that.

Guy. I mean nobody knows what’s gonna happen in 10 or 20 months – much less years…

Mark. It’s changing so fast.

Guy. Yeah. And also in unpredictable ways. Two years ago you would have said Facebook is unstoppable. Well, it still may be unstoppable. It definitely has some challenges and like I don’t know Elizabeth Warren is talking about breaking it up. And who ever foresaw that right?

And so having said that – the trend is your friend in that the costs of starting up a company are much lower. So you’re not buying $5,000 workstations anymore. You’re not paying for $100,000 ads in the Wall Street Journal. Everything is pretty much free, public domain, or cheap. Facebook allows you to really target your advertising.

So I think the costs of starting a company are much lower. So that’s all good news right?

The bad news is that one of the richest veins for entrepreneurship is immigrants, because if you look at who started the great tech companies it’s not like they came over on the Mayflower four generations ago, right? So these are people who left Vietnam in the last helicopter outside of the US Embassy and you know they’re they moved from India and all this kind of stuff. And it’s hard to build the case that outside of the US you’re now looking at the US and saying “that’s where I want to get my education. And that’s where I want to put down my roots. And that’s where I want to get my work visa. And that’s where I want to cross the border.”

Mark. Interesting.

Guy. And so I think we’re handing the next generation of tech entrepreneurship to Canada and China.

Mark. Right. I agree. It’s gonna be hard to reverse that…

Guy. I honestly don’t know if it will be that hard to reverse. I mean, you could make the case if you stack the courts there’s gonna be so much you know anti-immigration that’ll last beyond the President. On the other hand, the optimist in me – and I’m very much an optimist – I think maybe I hope, I pray the rest of the world will say “okay so you know the US really blew it, all right? But fundamentally it’s still the best game in town. Slide them a break. They screwed up.”

Mark. Ya know, I like that. And also there is a lot of long tail kind of momentum with just the whole freedom of thought mindset. That doesn’t come to people who don’t grow up in a free capitalistic or quasi-capitalistic society like America, you know what I mean?

Guy. Yeah.

Mark. You know, Chinese… There’s a lot entrepreneurship there from those around the coastal region – but even that you know they’ve had to steal most of their stuff.

Guy. Well, I mean with China, the intellectual property is different, funding is different, ownership is… I mean there’s a lot of I don’t think the US is as attractive as it used to be to an immigrant, but I don’t think it’s you know 99th in the world either. Yet.

Conclusion

34:42

Mark. So your book “Wiseguy: Lessons from Life,” is there like a, you know… Like one really powerful lesson that you think you’d like to leave… That we haven’t talked about, that you’d like to leave with a listener who wants to be an entrepreneur? Or is thinking about going down this path or maybe making a change?

Guy. Yeah. Well how about I offer a quick summary, because there’s no one simple answer right?

Mark. Okay. That’s fine.

Guy. So some key points: well, number one my advice is you build a product that you want to use and just hope to hell you’re not the only nutcase in the world that wants to use it. That’s number one.

Number two is to remember that the purpose of a company is to create customers not raise money. I think so many entrepreneurs all they can think about is pitching. And they think “okay so I’m gonna pitch. I’m gonna pitch. I’m gonna plan. I’m gonna forecast. I’m gonna raise money and then it’s easy.”

Quite the contrary. When you raise money that’s when it gets hard. So remember it’s all about creating customers.

Number three, the corollary about creating customers guess what? You can’t create a customer without a product. So finish the freaking product, for crying out loud.

Mark. (laughing) And don’t get distracted on all the other shiny things.

Guy. Yeah. And the fourth thing is that always remember that I can’t think of an example of a company that failed because it couldn’t scale. But many entrepreneurs they think “oh my god. With my patent-pending, curb jumping, paradigm shifting, rock star programmer co-founder for the first time in the history of man and woman we are going to ship on time a beautiful bug-free fantastic product. So oh my god, we have got to scale. We have to have co-location, we need customer support in place. We need all these policies and procedures. We need in a room full of engineers and QA people and all that. Because we are going to be on time and great.”

Guess what? You are going to be late and the dogs will not even know that you exist, much less be eating your food.

And so they create an infrastructure that’s geared towards the fantastic success that they expect. And it never goes that way. So the bottom line – my last piece of advice is always be thinking “eat what you kill.”

Mark. Right

Guy. As opposed to “eat what you plan to kill.” because you are not going to kill as much as you think you are, as fast as you are.

Mark. Right. And every kill is gonna be a lot of work.

Guy. Every kill is gonna be hand-to-hand combat, and it’s just as likely you’re gonna die as kill. And this is if it’s going well.

Mark. Right, exactly.

Awesome Guy. Well times up here. I so appreciate your coming and joining us on the show here. Good luck with everything and I’m looking forward to reading the book so “Wiseguy: Lessons from Life.” go check it out it’s available now right? It’s in the marketplace?

Guy. Absolutely. Yes.

Mark. Awesome. And I hope to see you in the surf in Hawaii sometime.

Guy. You know if I drop in on you I apologize in advance.

Mark. (laughing) Awesome. Thanks again.

Guy. Thank you.

Mark. Alright folks. Thanks so much for listening. That was Guy Kawasaki. Check out his book “Wiseguy: Lessons from Life.” and again thanks for listening. Thanks for your support of the Unbeatable Mind podcast. And train hard, stay focused and have fun.

Hooyah.

Divine out.

Leave a Reply