How to Protect Your Identity in a World Trying to Change You | Guy Kawasaki - EP 797

Technology isn't just changing how we communicate—it's changing how we see ourselves. In this conversation, Guy Kawasaki explains why protecting your privacy is ultimately about protecting your identity, your relationships, and your freedom to live intentionally.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, what if your biggest problem isn't that you're not doing enough, but that you've spent too long proving that you are enough? You can be successful, needed, and surrounded by people and still feel completely unseen. That's the problem I explore in my new book, The Mattering Effect. I show you how we become hyper-visible for what we produce while quietly becoming invisible to ourselves and introduce the matter framework to help you reclaim meaning, autonomy, trust, time, energy, and reciprocity. Stop auditioning for your worth, start living from it. The Mattering Effect is available for preorder now at matteringeffect.com. Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  I can't tell you that I can name any investment bankers or private equity people who I think have left the world a better place. So I think that's how you measure a person. Did they make the world a better place as opposed to a richer place? As opposed to having their names on buildings? As opposed to the largest crypto account? I rank people by how much you made the world a better place.

• 1:05John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

• 1:53John R. Miles?

  Hey, it's your friend, John. Welcome back to episode 797 of the Passion Struck Podcast. Let me ask you something. Have you ever had the feeling that your attention isn't entirely your own anymore? You open your phone to answer one message. 20 minutes disappear. You search for one thing online. Suddenly, you're being followed by ads everywhere you go. Your preferences become predictions. Your habits become data. And before you even realize it, technology isn't simply responding to your behavior. It's quietly shaping it. Most of us accept that as the cost of living in a connected world. But what if the real cost is something much deeper?

• 2:36John R. Miles?

  What if little by little, we're surrendering pieces of our autonomy, our attention, and even our sense of self without ever consciously deciding to? That's the conversation we're having today. As we continue our month-long series on flourishing, we've reached a theme that I believe doesn't get discussed nearly enough: contribution. Because before we can meaningfully contribute to the world, we have to ask a more fundamental question: how do we remain fully human in a world that's increasingly trying to measure, predict, and influence every decision we make? Today's guest is the perfect guide for that conversation.

• 3:15John R. Miles?

  Guy Kawasaki is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, host of the Remarkable People podcast, former chief evangelist at Apple, and one of Silicon Valley's most respected voices. His latest book, Everybody Has Something to Hide, begins with privacy, but it quickly becomes a conversation about dignity, boundaries, identity, and what it means to protect the parts of ourselves that should never become someone else's product. By the end of this conversation, you'll understand why privacy has nothing to do with having something to hide, how technology is quietly reshaping the way we think about human worth, and why protecting your attention may be one of the most important acts of intentional living in the modern world. I also think you'll leave with a bigger question.

• 4:00John R. Miles?

  What does it actually mean to leave the world better than you found it? Because by the end of our conversation, that's actually where Guy took us, and it's a perspective I haven't stopped thinking about since we recorded. So let's dive in. Here's my conversation with Guy Kawasaki. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:30John R. Miles?

  I am so excited today to have Guy Kawasaki join me on Passion Struck. Hi, Guy.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Good morning or good afternoon.

• 4:38John R. Miles?

  So I have to say, you are the second person who's joined me on the podcast who said after they finish, they were going to go surfing. That was BJ Fogg.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  BJ Fogg is in Maui.

• 4:53John R. Miles?

  Yes, when I interviewed him, he was in Hawaii. That is for sure.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how he gets away telling people he's a Stanford professor. He's always surfing in Maui, but anyway.

• 5:05John R. Miles?

  Well, he's living the life.

• 5:09John R. Miles?

  Guy, your newest book is called Everybody Has Something to Hide. And I think a lot of people initially misunderstand that phrase. Why doesn't privacy equal guilt?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Well, to use a test, pretend that you're driving down a freeway and there's billboards. And on one billboard, there are some of your text messages. So if you're listening to this and you can say, every one of my text messages can be on that billboard because I have nothing to hide. You do not need to read my book. You also are probably the world's most boring person. So you know, it's not just privacy is not just if you're a fentanyl dealer or you're plotting an insurrection or some kind of crime or some kind of bad thing.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  There are many cases where you just would not want your text messages on that billboard. I'll give you some examples. So first of all, if you have family members not living with you and they're sending you a text message that says, Dad, what is our Netflix username and password? And there's the opposite case where your kid's in college and they cannot navigate the university housing system, which is a very common occurrence. And finally, you just say to them, just give me your name and password and I will sign up for your dorm for you because I am tired of trying to figure it out for you and explaining it to you. And then there's Dad, I want to buy a surfboard. I need your Visa account.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  I need the number. I need the expiration date. I need the secret three digits. Now, if you're telling me that all of that you're okay with having on a billboard, do not read my book. So that is that truly you have nothing to hide. But I would make the case that in today's society, the bar for what you want to hide is much lower. For example, let's say that your boss is hitting on you and making sexual advances and you're trying to seek advice from your family or your friends or God knows your attorney, you wouldn't want that on that billboard. Let's say that you're working for a company and you figured out they're dumping something in the ocean.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  So you're asking your friends, should I be a whistleblower or what should I do? You wouldn't want that. Let's say that your uncle or auntie or grandma or grandpa and your niece or nephew or your grandson or granddaughter says, I missed my period or my girlfriend missed my period. What do we do, grandpa, grandma? I can't tell my parents that. None of that should be on that billboard. And so I am saying that probably everybody, literally everybody, has something to hide.

• 8:09John R. Miles?

  Well, I think they would agree with you, which is where I started my career.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Well, one of my theories, John, is that it's one thing to have these laws that say you cannot use this data, you cannot use it this way, prohibited, blah, blah, blah. And to put it mildly, governments change, decisions change, things leak. So the better thing is, instead of trying to legislate this and protect people, the better assumption is if an organization or a person doesn't have the information, they cannot do anything to you. So rather than trying to control after it's out of the barn, you should prevent it from ever getting out of the barn, right? So if they don't have that information, they cannot use it.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  If they have that information, no matter what law, what privacy, whatever, they can still use it. So just don't ever give it to them.

• 9:12John R. Miles?

  Yeah, well, as I was reading this book, Guy, and I appreciate everything that you're saying, one of the things that immediately jumped out to me is that the book isn't about paranoia. It's really about what I thought was dignity, autonomy, human trust. And it became very apparent that privacy was deeply personal for you. At what point in your career did that deep connection to it really take root?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Well, not to get too political, John, but roughly, I would say 2024.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  If you know what I mean, but specifically November 2024. So yeah, I just think the political environment today in the United States and really the entire world, it's just better to be a little bit paranoid and be as private and secure as possible. And you may be living in some area where the government is totally benign and not doing anything. But as we have seen administrations change and attitudes change and going back to what I said, when an administration changes, it's better that the previous administration didn't have the data that the next administration might use. So just keep everything private and secure.

• 10:38John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I'm going to share a story from my own life, probably around 2013, when I was at Catalina Marketing, we were doing a joint venture with Nelson called Nelson Catalina Ventures. And this technology was allowing us to identify what a person was watching on their TV. We were then geolocating them to their device and then personalizing their ads based on their viewership. And we could detect when you were at home and when you weren't. We were also, we could detect when you were going into a shopping center, who was one

• 11:18John R. Miles?

  of our clients and immediately contact you. The technology was that was that precise over a decade ago. So one of the things that always makes me worried is I knew what we could do with it. And we were using it, hopefully in a good way. What always scares me is what bad actors can do when they have access to technology like this, because one of the things I have always found with technology is oftentimes you develop things in a benign way, but then it gets farther and farther away from the creator and you have no idea what people are doing. Do you find that true in your long career in Silicon Valley?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Well, absolutely. In Silicon Valley, pardon my naivety, but in Silicon Valley, we wanted to make the world a better place, increase people's creativity and productivity with a new computer that was a graphical user interface, blah, blah, blah. Social media was to have more friends and family communicate, blah, blah, blah. And next thing that people are using Macintosh to create porn and social media is about attacking people and all that. So now, I suppose if you go all the way back, if you could say to Gutenberg, people are going to use your printing press to do bad things, too. They're not just going to print bibles. And well, yeah, lo and behold, lots of porn came out

• 12:44Speaker 01

  from printing presses. And I'm sure Gutenberg didn't design it for that. On the other hand, John, I think that these negative, these dangerous, these evil things, they're the ones that are always highlighted, right? You never hear good news. You never hear that, oh, somebody read a book and was inspired and educated and made the world a better place. You always hear the worst case, because the worst case, the negative news, blood sells. If you use a technology in a proper way and you got more productive or more educated or whatever, that's not exactly news.

• 13:22John R. Miles?

  Well, guys, similar to you, I have spent the vast majority of my career around huge consumer data sets and data sets in general. And looking back, I often wonder whether innovation is scaled faster than wisdom. Do you think technology, at the point we're in right now, is evolving beyond our ethical maturity as humans?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  I think that is the understatement of the day. Yeah. And listen, I live in Silicon Valley. I grew up with all these companies. And like, I look at these tech bros and I just scratch my head like, what the hell happened to them? Right? You want to create a browser, you want to make information more accessible to the whole world. And the next thing, you're supporting, building concentration camps for minorities. That's a big leap there. I really, I'll tell you one thing, John, I have decided that I'm going to limit my net worth to 999,999,990 cents, because I don't ever want to get billionaire's disease.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Luckily, that is not a big risk for me right now. But man, something happens when you cross the billion dollar mark.

• 14:38John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I paid really close attention over March and April with what was happening to Meta and YouTube at that point in time. And I think a lot of attention has gone on courtroom in LA. I don't think as much attention has come from the other court case. And to me, it was really scary because they were using data on where children, young kids live, to really target them for really nefarious ways. And to me, this is where privacy, to me, goes to its extreme. And I have always thought, as I've been developing technology,

• 15:21John R. Miles?

  that we as the creator had some responsibility to make sure stuff like this never happened. How is it getting so far away from so many of the creators I know, who would have in a million years, never let something like that happen?

• 15:40Speaker 01

  The simplest explanation is that money changes people, right? I don't know what else to say. And the irony of this is that these are some of the richest people doing that. What does it, if you're worth $500 billion, what difference does it make if you're worth $550 billion? I don't understand that. And it seems to me that if you're towards the end of your career and you're worth a lot of money, I would spend the rest of my life trying to make the world a better place and enjoy my life. I would not dedicate myself to making crypto successful and ensuring the long-term capital gains of the United States

• 16:22Speaker 01

  of America was as low as possible. I would focus on my grandchildren. I would surf every day. I would travel all over the world. I would not be sucking up to Washington DC all the time.

• 16:36John R. Miles?

  Well, it's amazing how much that pendulum has switched over the past couple of years. Well, one of the things, Guy, that I have really become aware of is technology isn't just tracking our behavior. It is shaping our identity. And the issue with this is that identity is getting shaped in youngsters as early as seven, eight, nine, who are given these devices. And all of a sudden, that identity is around likes, visibility, engagement, followers. And the way I see it is our human worth is becoming quantified.

• 17:18John R. Miles?

  How, because a lot of my work is around mattering. How do you think technology more and more is amplifying people's fear of not mattering?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's amplifying not mattering. I think it is redefining what mattering means, right? So to, to many young people, I think mattering means likes or followers, as opposed to, I think it's better to have about 15 or 20 really good friends than 15 million followers.

• 17:55John R. Miles?

  Right.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  And that's, I would make that choice all day. Now, don't get me wrong, if I could have 15 or 20 great friends and 15 million followers, I would do that, too. But if you had to pick one, I would say over the course of your lifetime, 15 million followers, 15 friends, you pick the 15 friends. I don't know. But I'm telling you, I am somebody who, at least on paper, has about six or seven million followers. And it doesn't mean anything anymore. I wish I could tell you, John, with my, let's say, six million followers, I could tell them, hey, I just came out with a new book called Everybody Has Something

• 18:35Speaker 01

  To Hide. Six million of you, let's just be conservative. One out of 10 of you will go buy the book. So that's 600,000. I can tell you something, I have not sold 600,000 copies of them. Social media doesn't work anymore. I really do believe that social media as a marketing platform doesn't, maybe if you're Kim Kardashian, it works, but not Guy Kawasaki. And I cannot move the needle with social media for my books or for really anything. I honestly don't know what can move the needle anymore for marketing. Maybe Substack newsletters. But man, it's sure as hell not your followers.

• 19:18John R. Miles?

  We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Guy. If today's discussion has you thinking differently about your relationship with technology, I want to invite you to continue the conversation beyond the podcast. Every episode in our flourishing series includes a companion workbook with reflection questions, journal prompts, and practical exercises designed to help you apply these ideas to your own life. I also publish a companion essay each episode inside the ignited life on Substack, where we explore the themes from every episode in greater depth. This year, I'm also sharing behind the scenes ideas from my upcoming book, The Mattering Effect, releasing in October. Much of my work asks a simple question. What happens when people no longer feel like they matter? As

• 20:02John R. Miles?

  Guy and I discuss in today's episode, technology isn't just changing how we communicate, it may also be changing how we measure our worth. Those are ideas I continue to explore inside the ignited life. You'll find links to this week's workbook, The Ignited Life and The Mattering Effect, in today's show notes. Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 20:39John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Now let's get back to my conversation with Guy Kawasaki. And well, Guy, I'm glad you brought this up. I'm in the midst of an experiment right now. So I, like you, have a large following. This podcast has approaching 90 million downloads. Tons of people have listened to it, but I decided consciously not to move my audience to Substack. I had seen a lot of people who had done it. And then you're looking at, you have 200,000 followers and no one is interacting on any of your notes and posts. So I decided I was going

• 21:21John R. Miles?

  to go all in on really talking about what I care about, what I think is really impacting people and seeing how this might grow organically. And I don't have the tens of thousands of followers, but I will tell you what I have noticed is that the people who are interacting are really interacting and they really care about the topics. And it was interesting. I had a person reach out to me not too long ago and she said that she reached out to me on LinkedIn and I responded to her and agreed to do a 30 minute call with her. And she said that she had reached out to three or four other people who talked all the time on their

• 22:02John R. Miles?

  podcast about how approachable they were and she never heard anything back. So to me, there's part of this privacy thing to me is also the, you have to expose yourself a little bit if you really want to help people and influence people. So part of your baggage needs to be out there because if people don't see it, who's going to want to interact with you if all they ever hear is your Tom Brady wins seven Super Bowls, but never hear how we almost walked away from football story. You know what I'm saying?

• 22:38Speaker 01

  But John, why do you say that Substack is not a useful platform for doing what you want to do?

• 22:48John R. Miles?

  No, what I'm saying is I think it is a really good platform for it. I sometimes find it to be extremely user unfriendly if you're getting started on it. And I have no idea and I'm not sure anyone does how the heck their algorithms work. And maybe that's a good thing. But I'm not going trying to get posts boost. I'm just trying to put out what I believe and I'm hoping the right eyes reach it.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, John.

• 23:17John R. Miles?

  To me, yeah. And to me, it doesn't matter if that's a couple of eyes or a thousand eyes.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  John, once a day, I get an email from somebody who has used AI to craft an email to me that says, I saw your interview with, pick a name, Jane Goodall. I really enjoyed it. It's such high content, but you are really sub optimizing your podcast and your YouTube channel. I can propose that I can create a proposal that will increase your followers on YouTube. I've done it for Joe Schmo on the Schmo Show and I took them from 500 to 50,000. And would you like a proposal? I get one of those per day. And then also, you also get the one that says,

• 24:06Speaker 01

  hi, I am Joe Schmo and I am in Brooklyn, New York, and I have the Enterprise Book Club. So every week we read one book that has to do with enterprise software and we carefully selected your book. Everybody has something to hide. We will be happy to include you in our future Joe Schmo Enterprise Book Club. Would you like to participate? I get one of those two every day. And now I just mark them all as spam. I don't even answer them anymore.

• 24:41John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I get the same stuff. I get the same stuff. What bothers me the most as well is the reach outs that you get for people to come on the podcast and you realize pretty quickly that they've never even listened to an episode and have no idea what the show is about or what you're about. So that is maddening to me.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  John, my podcast, we get about, I think about eight to 10 requests per day to be on our podcast, right? So we have 52 episodes a year, but let's say we get 10 requests a day, so 10 times, let's say 250 work, we probably get 2,500 requests to be on, we take 50 of them. So, you know, it's roughly one out of 50, although some people we proactively go after, we don't wait for them to ask us, right? But anyway, let's say, one out of 50 people who tries to get on my podcast, we accept. So I tell people, it is harder to get on my podcast than it is to get into Stanford or Harvard.

• 25:45John R. Miles?

  Man, I hear you. I was doing about 52 a year and then two and a half years ago, I was developing such a backlog that I decided to do a second interview episode a week.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 26:00John R. Miles?

  And

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Are you nuts?

• 26:02John R. Miles?

  I'm telling you. So we put out three episodes a week and

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Three episodes a week?

• 26:08John R. Miles?

  The third one is a solo episode. So I have done basically 220 keynotes now on various topics. And that one is that it takes the most time. It's also the most satisfying. And interestingly, it doesn't matter what guest I have on, they get the most listens and views. And I think that the thing about podcasting is that people don't realize is people come to the show for the host more than they come for the guests. And they come to your show because

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, really?

• 26:39John R. Miles?

  I truly believe this. And I think people come to your show because they like the way that you interview your guests.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 26:47John R. Miles?

  I think they go to Jay Shetty because they like what he has to talk about and the way he interviews the people who he talks to. Or they go watch Jimmy Fallon on TV because of the same thing. And once I realized that and started leaning into it, it kind of made a huge difference.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  I gotta think about that now. I'd never heard that theory. That is a very, I thought it was all guest driven. And John, can I tell you a funny story? So there are days, John, where I get these pitches and it says, hi, my name is Joe Schmo. I have written a book called The Schmo Way. I'm 26 years old. I have already created an executive coaching business in six digits. And I've listened to your podcast. I listened to Jane Goodall, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Steve Wozniak, Vivek Murthy, Tony Fauci, Francis Collins. And I believe

• 27:48Speaker 01

  that I should be in your show because I can add the kind of interest and value that Jane Goodall and Tony Fauci and Vivek Murthy and Stephen Wolfram and the other MacArthur Award winners and Nobel Prize winners. I believe I'm in that category. And I'm looking at that. I'm saying, I must be on candid camera someplace because somebody's taking my video reaction when I'm reading this email that Joshua says that he is as remarkable as Jane Goodall. And it's hard for me to keep a straight face when I read some of these. And I just want to send them an email that says, have you lost your fricking mind? You couldn't even

• 28:29Speaker 01

  carry Jane Goodall's water carriers water. But I don't do that, John. I don't do that. I just tell Madison to reject them.

• 28:40John R. Miles?

  Well, well, I believe me, I've had every angle you could possibly think of with people trying to get on the show. But you gotta be picky because I'm trying to intentionally serve the audience with content that I'm hoping will help them. That's the whole, that's the whole purpose to it.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Right. Well, most of these pitches, they're not trying to help the audience. They're trying to help themselves, right? Which is not my point. My point is, oh, Joe Schmo, I wake up every day, Joe, thinking how I can make you more successful. That's the reason I have a podcast.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Oh my Lord. Well, I can see I'm not alone with these 1% problems.

• 29:29John R. Miles?

  Well, what's interesting to me is what that shows you in the examples that you've given is these people who are reaching out to you are doing the opposite of self censoring, aren't they?

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, as Groucho or Harpo Marx did. I wouldn't want to join a country club that would admit me.

• 29:56John R. Miles?

  Guy, when you think about the most recent book, do you think human beings honestly deserve to have boundaries around their relationships, their thoughts, their health, their beliefs, finances? Or do you think we're long beyond that point?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Well, I need a little more clarification of that question. When you say boundaries, do you mean that in a negative way? Or tell me more about that question.

• 30:23John R. Miles?

  I think that I'm coming at this because I'm from more of the life that I'm doing now. When I was senior executive, John, those companies wanted nothing of my personal life to be anywhere. It was all about them. But now that I'm out there more in the public eye, I find that your audience wants to learn all these things about you. And, and to me, I think there's some level of boundaries that I think need to be there because there are parts of you want to share, there are parts of you don't want to share. But I often think that at times that the community wants you to expose everything.

• 31:06John R. Miles?

  And so my, my, my point is, I think that there are boundaries that we should want to have and that there should be things that we should, if we desire to keep them private, should be private. But it seems like there's a growing expectation that nothing in your life should be private. And it can all be monetized.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  I sure as hell don't agree with that. I think now, different people may have different boundaries. But if you looked at all my social media feed, you hardly ever see any pictures of my family. You hardly see any pictures that are my personal life. Now, I may show you me surfing, but I don't show you my daughter surfing or my son surfing, right? I think there should be boundaries and, but it is for each person to decide on their boundaries. I don't want the government telling me, this is what you can and cannot share. What if the government says, well, on social media, nobody can express a sentiment that

• 32:10Speaker 01

  is against the current prime minister or something like that, that I don't believe in that boundary. If you want to express your political views, go for it. And there may be consequences, but life's a bitch. That's how you get interesting holes, right?

• 32:28John R. Miles?

  My point was, in my case, I choose not to expose a lot of those things. And I'm criticized by a lot of people that I would have so much more interaction if I did this, if I exposed more of this, if I brought my family into this more. And I choose not to share that portion of me. And I

• 32:48Speaker 01

  My, my answer to those people would be, well, start your own goddamn podcast. Do whatever the hell you want.

• 32:55John R. Miles?

  Yes.

• 32:57John R. Miles?

  Well, my, my point is, and I think the argument that you make in the book, is that modern society is gradually accepting more and more of unprecedented levels of surveillance as normal. And to me, it's not just the government that's doing it. I think the more that we accept it as normal, the more we expect it of others, is where I was going. And that's what I was trying to see if you, in your research, if you thought that was true.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  I believe you're right there, that we are getting desensitized, or we are desensitized, right? No. On the other hand, this is a complex topic because there is also a level of paranoia, right? When companies are tracking your clicks and tracking all that, I don't know if you should go too crazy. Maybe it's too late already, right? If the government or a company could see every question I asked, every LLM, it is not clear. I would want that to be possible. Let's just put it that way.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  On the other hand, the inability to ask those kinds of questions of a search engine or an LLM because of paranoia is also not exactly optimal too, right?

• 34:19John R. Miles?

  You're absolutely right. When I was at Lowe's, I was responsible for all our data at one point. And people who don't know a lot about Lowe's, they now consider themselves to be a software company. And I think at the time that I was there, you could have considered us to be a big data company. And that's at its crux, what Amazon is. I can't even imagine the data that Amazon has, but you think about this. You're giving your information in smartphones, apps, messaging systems, browsers, location services, social media, metadata tracking. And when I was at Lowe's, Guy, without a loyalty program, we were able to match the consumer 92% of the time.

• 35:04John R. Miles?

  We had this system we built called Single View of the Customer. So we knew when you were at your primary location, or we knew when you were in Hawaii, or we knew where you were somewhere else. And we would shift everything as a result of that. And that was 15 years ago.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Walk me through this, John. So we're talking about Lowe's, L O W E S, the place that you buy is Home Depot for the rest of us, that Lowe's, right?

• 35:31John R. Miles?

  Yes.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Okay. So you're telling me that how would Lowe's know that I am now in Honolulu?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  I really want to know, how would it know that?

• 35:43John R. Miles?

  Because of your mail.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  My mail? You mean my mail, my analog mail to my house?

• 35:51John R. Miles?

  So that would be part of it. And we also would share shopping information, data with other retailers who you shop that. So by looking at credit card data and other things, they wouldn't give you your private information, but they would give us information on shared location of people who we were partnered with through third parties that we were working with.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Man, I am screwed there, John. I am totally screwed.

• 36:23John R. Miles?

  Well, both Lowe's and Home Depot, and I would bet Walgreens and CVS, other large retailers, compete millions of dollars for the post office information. So when you move to a new location and you get that mailer that has, in some years, a Home Depot coupon and other times a Lowe's coupon, that is one of the trigger points.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 36:50John R. Miles?

  The other thing that we built was, at the time I was there, NASCAR racing was huge and Jimmy Johnson was our driver. And he had, at that time, the largest fan club of anyone. And that was all pulled in to bigger Lowe's as well. And I know FedEx was doing that with Denny Hamlin and the Target driver was doing it. Home Depot was doing it with their drivers as well. You don't realize how much of this gets pulled in. And so I'm setting this up because your book is really about, why should people use Signal? But I wanted you to explain, you've got listeners here who use WhatsApp, they use Messenger,

• 37:32John R. Miles?

  they use other app, other messaging systems. They're giving away their location services all the time to these companies, the social media. What, what is the danger for a listener if they're not technically savvy like you are?

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Listen, so everybody is blowing smoke these days that we have end-to-end encryption in messages and email, right? So end-to-end encryption means that as your message is traveling through the world, it's all scrambled up, so nobody can read it. Let's just take that as a given. But there is another issue here, which is the metadata. So to use a metaphor, if you mail somebody a letter, the letter inside the envelope is encrypted, but the envelope outside is not encrypted. And that outside envelope shows the return address, it shows where it was postmarked, when it was postmarked, where it's dropped off and who it's going to, when it was dropped

• 38:31Speaker 01

  off, how did you drop it off, all that kind of metadata. Now, so Apple keeps that, Facebook keeps that. And when I say they keep it, it means that under the right kind of pressure, they have to or can reveal it, such as, we're going to slap you with tariffs unless you give us a backdoor. That kind of pressure can exist, right? So you want, as I said before, you want all these entities to have as little information as possible, as opposed to trying to control the information once they have it. In the case of Signal, which is end-to-end encrypted, just like everybody else, but Signal only keeps three pieces of information, which is when you open your account, what

• 39:14Speaker 01

  their phone number is, and when you last sent the message. Now, if you think about that, knowing those three things, and only those three things, that, that's not very useful in trying to build a case against you, right? So yeah, your phone number is this number, Guy. Well, that's easy to get anywhere. You joined Signal five years ago. Okay, fine. You know, I joined Signal five years ago. And the last message you sent was yesterday at noon, but it doesn't know who you sent it to and all that. On the other hand, other companies have all that metadata. And by using enough metadata, they can pretty much place you. You were right next to the same place where the riot occurred.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  And right before the riot, there was a burst of messages to this other person we're watching, and they can place you. You can probably tell me better than I can tell you how you could use metadata to place somebody. So you want that metadata to not exist, and Signal is the best at that.

• 40:17John R. Miles?

  So to make this really real for a listener, what this meta metadata is doing is, it's looking at Who are the people you're talking to? When are you communicating with them? Where are they located? What are your patterns of interaction? And then over time, it's learning about your behavioral habits. And all of this is really happening subconsciously to you doing anything. And the more you use the platform, the more it's collecting. So what it's doing in the background, these companies who are very good at this, it's predicting your behaviors, it's influencing your decisions, it's shaping your consumption. Anyone who's got, Amazon will know how this does this, or Facebook is listening.

• 41:02John R. Miles?

  When you get the ads, it goes back to what we were doing 12 years ago at Catalina. And more, most importantly, and this is what bothers me probably more than anything, it's manipulating your attention. So data is no longer simply information. This is what I got from the book. It's behavioral power.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  You don't want things that, so I understand what you just said. I understand the implications and the scariness. But just the irony sometimes, so let's say Amazon knows me inside out, front and back. They know what I bought, where I bought it, where I shipped. They know all of that, right? And, and now they have these huge investments in AI and big data and you know, blah, blah, blah. They know everything, right? So now I go to Amazon and I say, I want to buy an HP 5A Magenta toner cartridge for my printer. Right? So I asked specifically for the Magenta toner cartridge for the HP 5A.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  And it gives me all these ads for Epson printer, Apple printer, Brother printer in black and white and all like, Amazon, I just freaking told you exactly what I want. Why are you sending me to another printer company for the yellow cartridge? Not the Magenta cartridge that doesn't work in the printer app? I don't understand that. So yeah, I'm going to go buy the wrong printer cartridges because Amazon sent me a link that says, people who bought Magenta for HP also bought yellow for Brother printers. Jeff, man, something's wrong with your reasoning here.

• 42:46John R. Miles?

  Well, Jeff's been gone there for a while now, even before he was gone.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's busy getting married in Italy, right? And I don't know how, I don't know. I thought the topic of this podcast is how to flourish, not how to be private.

• 43:08John R. Miles?

  Well, what I'm getting to is what happens when human worth becomes measurable? Because that's what's happening. And because when it starts to do that, I had a conversation with Jim Millsaki. He's a professor at Stanford and he studies cynicism. But we were having this conversation that we live in a mass market of measurable mattering, which is leading to insignificance, loneliness, anxiety and mental health that is skyrocketing at the cost of $16 trillion by 2030.

• 43:47John R. Miles?

  So to me, our privacy goes right into that, which is why this was such an important conversation to me. Because a lot of this is happening to people and we don't even know what's happening to us.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:00John R. Miles?

  It's taking our aliveness from us more and more because we're not doing the things like you're saying, going out there and enjoying life and traveling and experiencing the ocean and everything else.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Well, so at one level, I'm trying to tell people that if you are going to message, you should consider using Signal to message as opposed to WhatsApp or Apple messages. So that's a very baseline technical level, right? And once you decide you're going to use Signal, you should read my book to figure out how to use Signal optimally. But at a higher level, which is more what we're discussing, you have to understand the consequences of security and privacy today. Signal or not, whether you signal or not, but the big picture is

• 44:52Speaker 01

  you really have to work actively to protect your privacy and do not give away anything you wouldn't want to see on a billboard. And same thing applies to email, right? You should probably use Proton instead of Gmail. Think of all of what Google knows about you when it reads all your Gmails. That's a little scary too, right?

• 45:15John R. Miles?

  They would never do that.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. They do no harm. That's right. That's right. Yeah.

• 45:21John R. Miles?

  And I have to tell you, man, their acquisition of YouTube has got to be one of the greatest acquisitions of all time with what they're able to do that, your viewing habits. I can't believe they got out of the podcasting space because then they would have had the podcast, which they hoped would move to YouTube. They had YouTube and then they could read all your emails.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Well, you know what else? I don't know if you remember this, but Google had a social media platform called Google Plus. And I thought, I thought Google Plus was so much better than Facebook or Twitter. And Google gave up on Google Plus, but I think if Google had kept Google Plus and evolved it and kept it up till today, it would rival Meta. I think they gave up too early, but maybe that's better for the world that they don't know have all the stuff we have on social media because they already got all the email and they already got all the searches. Let Facebook have something.

• 46:22John R. Miles?

  I am just shocked and I think it probably had to do with the leadership at the time, with what Microsoft had a decade ago, that they did not become the dominant player in this space. Because they had all the keys to the kingdom.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Well, you could also say that in a sense to Apple, right? Think of the advantages Apple had for social media. And then now going forward, think of all the advantages that Apple has for artificial intelligence. Because if you think about it, so Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, all of it. Perplexity, which is the stupidest name I ever heard for a company, but anyway. So all these AI platforms, you have got to go to their website or you have got to install their app or whatever, right? But Apple, because it owns the hardware, could have AI truly built in.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  They have the most easily accessible platform because they own the platforms. Apple should dominate AI. But I don't know. Meanwhile, John, I don't know about you, I have AirTags, right? Because I need to track where I leave my backpack, right? And the freaking AirTag, let me tell you about this AirTag. So the AirTag 2.0, it has, somebody sat down and said, how can we make a battery replacement the hardest possible? You have to lick your fingers and then you press that little stainless steel thing and you kind of get it out and maybe it pops off.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  And then you lick your finger again and you twist it clockwise. And then if you want to know if you have AirTag 1 or AirTag 2, you know how you tell? It's because the text on AirTag 2 is all caps. And the text on AirTag 1 is upper and lowercase in the point font on the stainless steel. So that's how you tell whether you have the early one or the second one. And then, not that I want to get too obsessed with AirTags, but you would think that the person who designed the AirTag would say, hmm, people are attaching this to keychains. Maybe the AirTag should have a built in little hole so you could put the ring through it, right?

• 48:49Speaker 01

  But no, we got to make the battery impossible to change. We got to make it so you got to buy this other thing to stick your AirTag in so that there's a hole so you can put it on your keychain. What am I missing here? What am I missing here? That has nothing to do with privacy or flourishing, but I just thought I'd mention that.

• 49:11John R. Miles?

  Well, what are we doing here?

• 49:13Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 49:17John R. Miles?

  Well, I do want to mention just for the listeners, we didn't cover it today. If you're watching this on YouTube, I'm holding up Guy's previous book, The Wiser Guy, which I devoured on an airplane flight that I had cross-country. And I thought it was such a fun book to read because it's just filled with anecdotes and stories and fascinating things that you've learned from wise people and as you've grown wiser. So I wanted to throw that out there too, but.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  All right. So basically, Wiser Guy is a compilation of the stories of my life that taught me some wisdom, right? But Wiser Guy also incorporates what I consider the best stories that I heard on my podcast. So you can think of Wiser Guy as a chicken soup for the soul, if you're familiar with Chicken Soup for the Soul. The earlier version of Wiser Guy was called Wise Guy. I suppose I could write one more volume called Wisest Guy. Probably more likely I'll call it Dead Guy. But anyway, you'll love this, John. I pitched, when I pitched Wise Guy, I wanted to call the book Miso Soup for the Soul,

• 50:32Speaker 01

  but they wouldn't let me do it. But I tried. Miso Soup for the Soul.

• 50:40John R. Miles?

  You mean Wiley wouldn't let you do it, huh?

• 50:44John R. Miles?

  I love it.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  I tried, I tried.

• 50:50John R. Miles?

  I'm going to end with this question for you.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 50:53John R. Miles?

  You have spent years observing remarkable people, interviewing remarkable people. And from everything I've read, living an extraordinary life yourself. What do you believe creates a truly meaningful life?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  I believe what truly creates a meaningful life is that you leave the world better that you found it. So that you make the world better for other people, not for yourself. And if you said to me, Guy, who's the most remarkable people, person you know? I would probably say Jane Goodall. I would say Jane Goodall left the world a lot better. Steve Jobs did it his own way. And I can't tell you that I can name any investment bankers or private equity people who I think have left the world a better place. So I think that's how you measure a person. Did they make the world a better place as opposed to a richer place?

• 51:53Speaker 01

  As opposed to having their names on buildings? As opposed to the largest crypto account? I rank people by how much you made the world a better place.

• 52:04John R. Miles?

  Awesome. And Guy, since we talked about Substack and I know it's a focus for you. What is your Substack? So my listeners can go there and check it out.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Oh, my Substack is merely Guy Kawasaki. My podcast is Remarkable People. And listen, I'm at that stage of life where Canva has been very good to me. Royalties don't matter to me anymore. So I will tell you that all you listeners, everybody has something to hide, has an English version and a Spanish version, because I really think the Hispanic people should, could benefit from more privacy awareness. So if you send an email to the word English@GuyKawasaki or Spanish@GuyKawasaki, just send an email saying you want a copy of the book and then I will buy you a copy

• 52:57Speaker 01

  from Amazon and send you the link. Because I really want as many people to have this book about privacy as possible. So if you want the English version, [email protected]. If you want the Spanish version, [email protected]. You send the email and we will send the link. Now, I can only offer this in the United States because Jeff Bezos doesn't believe in sending books across country lines. I don't know why, but anyway. So if you're in the United States and you want an English or Spanish version, you know what to do. I'd be happy to buy it and send it to you.

• 53:33John R. Miles?

  Awesome. Guy, it's such an honor to finally get you on the show. I've been wanting to do this for a very long time. Thank you so much.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. And every time I go into lulls from now on, I'm going to think of you, John.

• 53:48John R. Miles?

  I love it.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  All righty, bye. Thank you.

• 53:54John R. Miles?

  One thing stayed with me long after this conversation ended. Guy never argued that technology is the enemy. He challenged us to become more intentional about the relationship we have with it. Because every day we're making decisions about what we share, what we protect, and where we place our attention. Those decisions don't just shape our digital lives, they shape who we're becoming. Near the end of the conversation, I asked Guy what he believed creates a meaningful life. His answer was beautifully simple. Leave the world better than you found it. I can't think of a better definition of contribution. If today's conversation made you think differently about technology, privacy, or what it means to flourish in the modern world, I hope you'll share this episode with someone who would enjoy it.

• 54:36John R. Miles?

  Those personal recommendations are still the best way these conversations reach new listeners. And if you'd like to continue exploring these ideas, follow Passion Struck on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Subscribe to the Passion Struck YouTube channels and download this week's companion workbook through The Ignited Life on Substack. Everything you need is linked in today's show notes. Next week, I'm joined by one of the most innovative coaches in America, Sean Brosnan. Sean built one of the greatest high school cross-country programs in history, producing national champions, Olympians, and athletes who rewrote the record books. But what fascinated me wasn't his training philosophy. It was his belief that the biggest limits we face are rarely physical, they're mental.

• 55:19John R. Miles?

  In our conversation, Sean explains why most people dramatically underestimate what they're capable of, how belief becomes a competitive advantage, why culture always beats talent, and what it actually takes to build a life or a team that consistently performs beyond what anyone thought was possible. Whether you're leading a company, raising a family, building a career, or simply trying to become a better version of yourself, I think you'll hear your own story in this conversation. I can't wait to share it with you.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  I think everyone has their own individual reasons of why they're going to run or flourish or do well. I think there's some people that are super competitive and they hate losing and that's an attribute and then sometimes it can hinder you too. I just think there's all different reasons of why. As a coach, it's like your job to find that individualism. The biggest thing I always say in my coaching and I think in coaching in general is it's all individualized and people are like, yeah, yeah, I do that. But they don't. Everybody's different and everyone's going to react to different things.

• 56:17John R. Miles?

  Until then, remember, the life you leave behind will always be shaped by the life you choose to live today. Go out there and live life passion struck.