Guy Kawasaki
speaker
235 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Guy Kawasaki’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
You're still not going to be Steve Jobs. You're not going to be Steve Jobs. So the last person who tried to emulate Steve Jobs is now in prison. If you know what I mean.
Listen, let me be honest. I would not be where I am without Steve Jobs, right? Because let's just say that there's a saying that the rising tide floats. I will also tell you that the tsunami floats everything too. And I was riding the tsunami. So Steve Jobs, I've never met anybody like him. He really could either invent the future or call the future.
He could predict what people would want, or he would make whatever the hell he wanted and convince people that they wanted it too. Either one of those explains Steve Jobs. And I learned from him the importance of design. I learned about how to be an evangelist and get people to believe in stuff as much as you do.
Well, first of all, evangelism comes from a Greek word meaning bringing the good news. So Apple's Macintosh was the good news that made people more creative and productive. And I will now unveil, get a drum roll here, I will unveil the secret to evangelism. And the secret to evangelism is that you evangelize good shit because evangelizing shit is hard, if not impossible.
So now that sounds like a duh, isn't it? Like, God, thank you very much. Until this podcast, I was going to evangelize shit. But now I realize I shouldn't evangelize shit. I should evangelize something insanely great. Thank you very much. You know, what a great podcast.
What I'm telling you, what I'm telling you in a not subtle way is that if you want to be a great evangelist, you have to either create or find or align yourself with something great. Otherwise, it ain't going to work because evangelism is about bringing the good news. And if you have mediocre news, it ain't going to work. So don't try it with something mediocre.
Now, I'm not saying that evangelism is the only way to succeed. There are other ways to succeed. I mean, for crying out loud, Microsoft has succeeded. So that proves, right, you don't have to be insanely great. But for evangelism to work, you have to have something great.
There are two explanations for why I left Apple, the first time anyway. So one explanation is this. I was the evangelist for Macintosh, and I believe Macintosh was good news. It was a great opportunity. So, of course, Guy would leave Apple to start a Macintosh software company, right? Because if the evangelist doesn't believe in the software market, who will?
So it's expected almost that I would leave. So that's story A. Story B is deeper and sicker and more insipid about me. So at the time, this is 1987. At the time, I was a manager of the group that did the Apple-labeled software developer tech support and Apple evangelism, convincing people to do Mac software. So... I was the manager and the next level up was director.
And the next level after that was VP. And so Apple had this policy that they would buy a director or VP a car. That was, you had to get one level higher than me. So I love cars. I love cars. We could have a whole podcast just about cars and cars. I don't mean like I have to drive a Lamborghini to show off the other people. Nobody needs to know what I drive. I need to know what I drive.
I just put it in the garage. I look at it. I don't need to pull up at some country club or some disco in my Lamborghini. In fact, I would never do that because I don't go to discos or play golf. But anyway.
You should have him and me on and I will debate.
So anyway, so the next level of Apple, you get a free car. So I go into this job review, right? I think he was CEO of Apple at the time. And he starts by saying, you know, guy, the small developers, they just love you. These are the page makers and these companies you probably never heard of. You know, they love you. The small developers love you. You've championed them.
You helped them embrace Macintosh. They're bringing out these innovative products. And I'm thinking, man, should I get a Mercedes? Should I get a Porsche? Should I get a Lamborghini? Should I get a Ferrari? Which kind of car should I get? And then he says, but the big companies don't like you. Microsoft doesn't like you. Lotus doesn't like you. WordPerfect doesn't like you.
And Ashton Tate doesn't like you. And I'm thinking, here we go. No more car. And he says, they don't like you. And I'm an optimist. I'm still thinking, yeah. this is a strength of mine because Microsoft was copying our user interface, so they shouldn't like me. And Ashton Tate was doing a piece of crap software, so they too should not like me.
So I'm going down this list thinking, those big people should dislike me, and it's their fault, not mine. But he says, so since they don't like you, but your job as evangelist is to have all the companies like you, I'm not promoting you to director. Okay, so I walk out of that meeting and I see my friend Jean-Louis Gasset.
At the time, he was the vice president, but I was the manager, but we were more or less peers in a sense. So I go to Jean-Louis, I say, Jean-Louis, guess what, Jean-Louis? Yeah. I did not get Z promotion, Jean-Louis. And I said, you know, and this is why. And Jean-Louis, I think I'm just going to quit. And he says, guy, do not quit.
It'll be very useful for your career to leave Apple as a director as opposed to just a manager. And he said, listen, there's going to be a reorg and I'm going to be your boss. And you have another review in six months. And in six months, I'll make you a director. So for once in my life, I listened to somebody and I stayed for six months and then I got to be a director.
And then the next day I resigned. What? So now if you look at my LinkedIn profile, it says director of Apple. Only for one day, but I was director of Apple. So that's another piece of wisdom. Don't believe everything you read on LinkedIn. Yeah.
So if you're 35 to 65 and listening to this, I mean, one lesson to that is you quit on your own terms and you quit when it's good for you. And don't quit out of fury or hate. Calm down and think, what's the strategic move? When should I quit? And let me quit on my terms, not on the company's terms.
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