Guy Kawasaki: Win Every Pitch Using These Timeless Sales Principles | Sales | YAPClassic

Guy Kawasaki learned sales the hard way in the jewelry business, where every deal felt like hand-to-hand combat. With no technical background, he later joined Apple and turned those street-level selling skills into world-class software evangelism. He went on to become Chief Evangelist at Canva, shaping how the world thinks about selling ideas. In this episode, Guy breaks down why selling is the most critical skill for entrepreneurs, the sales strategies that helped him win pitches, and how to identify products or ideas that sell. In this episode, Hala and Guy will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:29) From Sales Rookie to Apple Evangelist (07:35) How to Get Your Big Break (11:49) Leadership Lessons From Apple and Beyond (17:51) The Art of Knowing When to Quit (24:53) How Big Career Risks Shape Success (33:22) Mastering the Sales and Pitch Strategy (42:07) Evangelism Strategy: Pitch Everyone, Always (47:43) Building Likability, Trust, and Competence Guy Kawasaki is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and the Chief Evangelist of Canva. He previously served as the Chief Evangelist at Apple, where he popularized the concept of secular evangelism and helped make the Macintosh a household name. Guy is also the creator and host of the Remarkable People podcast, featuring world-class entrepreneurs and innovators. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/PROFITING Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Spectrum Business - Visit Spectrum.com/FreeForLife to learn how you can get Business Internet Free Forever. Northwest Registered Agent - Build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes at northwestregisteredagent.com/paidyap Framer - Publish beautiful and production-ready websites. Go to Framer.com/profiting and get 30% off their Framer Pro annual plan. Intuit QuickBooks - Start the new year strong and take control of your cash flow at QuickBooks.com/money Quo - Run your business communications the smart way. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting Working Genius - Take the Working Genius assessment and discover your natural gifts and thrive at work. Go to workinggenius.com and get 20% off with code PROFITING Resources Mentioned: Guy’s Website: remarkablepeople.com Guy’s Book, Wise Guy: bit.ly/-WiseGuy Guy’s Book, Enchantment: bit.ly/-Enchantment Guy’s Podcast, Remarkable People: bit.ly/RP-apple Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Online Selling, Economics, E-commerce, Ecommerce, Prospecting, Persuasion, Inbound, Value Selling, Account Management, Scale, Scaling, Sales Podcast

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

• 0:00Hala Taha?

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• 0:45Hala Taha?

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• 1:20Hala Taha?

  Hello, young and profiterers. We're kicking off the first Yap Classic of the New Year, so welcome to 2026. And there's no better way to start off a year of growth, opportunity, and leveling up than by exploring the fundamentals of what truly drives a remarkable career. We're rewinding to my conversation with Guy Kawasaki, legendary marketer, former chief evangelist at Apple, and current chief evangelist at Canva. Guy's career is full of bold pivots, unexpected opportunities, and practical lessons drawn from decades in Silicon Valley. In this interview, he breaks down what true evangelism means, why sales is the most important skill in business, and how to pitch and demo like a pro. Guy also shares candid stories about working with Steve Jobs,

• 2:04Hala Taha?

  the role luck played in his biggest breaks, and how stacking skills from every job can transform your future. By the end of this conversation, you'll have a clearer picture of how exceptional careers are truly built. So let's dive right into my chat with Guy Kawasaki.

• 2:21Hala Taha?

  Hey guys, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:26Hala Taha?

  It is such an honor to have you on the show. It seems like I hear your name all the time. You are also rocking the podcasting space. You're a host of the Remarkable People Podcast. You're also a very in-demand keynote speaker, the author of 15 books. And as for your day job, you are currently the Chief Evangelist of Canva, which I love that software. And previously, you're also the Chief Evangelist at Apple, and you're well-known for helping Apple become a household name. In fact, you are known to have popularized secular evangelism during your time at Apple. And so I feel like Apple is a great place to start this conversation when it comes to your journey.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Far away.

• 3:03Hala Taha?

  Yeah, it was a long time ago, but it's super relevant still, and I think lots of great lessons. And from my understanding, you had no technical background before you worked at Apple. You had a degree in psychology, you were a law school dropout, and your former college roommate actually got you the job. And this was pre-Apple that we know today. So 1983, the year before Macintosh came out and changed the world. And you were getting your MBA, you worked at a jewelry factory, and you said what you learned at the jewelry factory actually translated to your new job at Apple. So I thought that was really interesting. I always talk about skill stacking. So take us back to your 20-year-old Kawasaki days, right before you landed your job at Apple. What were you like? How did you get your foot

• 3:47Hala Taha?

  in the door? And how did your experience in sales translate to your job at Apple?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  So I worked for a jewelry manufacturer in downtown Los Angeles. And this manufacturer sold to retailers, Tiffany, Tyvek, Baileys, and Biddle, those kinds of high-end jewelry stores. And the jewelry business is hand-to-hand combat manufacturer and retailer in terms of selling. So it's not at all like today's idea of selling where, you know, let's test the blue line versus the red line to see if it increases click-through, or let's see if this background influences click-through. Nothing like that. This was open up a suitcase of samples and pray for an order. That's what it was like. And from that experience, I truly learned how to sell.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  And that selling skill, because it was necessary, you either sold or you died. So that translated into evangelism and has helped me the rest of my career. Now, you have many entrepreneurs listening to this, and let me just cut to the chase here. As an entrepreneur, there are only two important functions, making it and selling it. And so if you're the engineer, you've got to make it. And if you're the salesperson, marketing person, evangelist, social media person, it's all about selling. And so the greatest example ever of this is Woz and Jobs. So Jobs couldn't design the motherboard and couldn't design the computer. And Woz couldn't sell. So it worked out perfectly.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Woz could design and Jobs could sell. And that's the genesis of Apple. So if you're an entrepreneur and you're listening to this, you just need to understand that you fundamentally need two people, one to sell and one to make. And the rest is, the rest is extra.

• 5:37Hala Taha?

  I love that. I always say that sales skills is such an important job. And for me, I remember I worked like 10 or 12 different jobs in retail, working at every store in the mall. And back then I was making minimum wage, but that's translated into millions 10 years later, as I'm using the same skills as an entrepreneur. Cause my main job, to your point, is selling, whether I'm landing sponsorships or selling social media to my clients. You've got to sell as an entrepreneur. So I'd love to hear about what were some of the key lessons you learned in terms of building trust and making sales at your time, either at Apple or at the jewelry factory? Like, what are your biggest like sales tips?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Well, one of the things that I learned at Apple and in the jewelry business is that fundamentally, well, I call it guy's golden touch. So guy's golden touch is not whatever I touch turns to gold. I wish that was true. A guy's golden touch is whatever's gold guy touches. And by that, I mean, the key to sales and evangelism is that you're selling and evangelize something good because it's easy to evangelize and sell something good. It's hard to evangelize and sell shit. So guess what? Don't affiliate with shit. Duh. Now, that is a duism, but you'd be amazed at how many people don't understand that. So that's, I would say, 80% of sales. Have a great product.

• 7:01Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And so when you got on Apple, what was your actual job title?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  My actual job title was software evangelist. So my job was to convince companies to write software for Macintosh. And now you have to understand that evangelism comes from a Greek word, meaning bringing the good news. So I was in the position of bringing the good news to developers, that Macintosh was a new platform, new kind of reach to a different kind of customer. It prevented you from having overdependence on IBM software, IBM market. And finally, for the engineer, it offered the kind of richness and development environment that you could write the kind of software that you always wanted to write. And so this was good news

• 7:44Speaker 01

  for a company. It was new customers in new markets with cool potential for graphics. That was the good news of Macintosh. In the developer sense, in the consumer sense, the good news of Apple was democratizing personal computing. That people who could not have used a computer because of the user interface challenges before could now use a Macintosh. And today, I'm chief evangelist of Canva, and it's the same thing. Canva has democratized design. So now you don't have to be an expert in Photoshop, or have a graphic designer in your company or in your group, or be a graphic designer. Now you can create your own beautiful graphics.

• 8:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah. So I read your book called Wise Guy, and you had a lot of lessons in there that I really liked. And one of them was just getting a door, right? And you rose up the ranks in Apple. I think you ended up directly working with Steve Jobs. And obviously, you didn't start out that way. And so I'd love to hear your advice, because I have so many young professionals trying to get their big break. They're looking for their dream job, and they don't realize that it starts with maybe the internship, and you work your ass off until you get your dream job.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  I think very few people initially get their dream job. Frankly, I'd make the case that when you're fresh out of college or you know, in that bracket, you don't know what your dream job is. You don't have enough data to judge. So particularly for this generation, your generation, over the course of your career, you're probably at 10 or 15 jobs. So you know, you shouldn't exactly sweat that you don't like the first two or three because there's 12 more to come. And it's different in my age bracket and older. You know, if you went to work for IBM in the seventies or the eighties, you expected to retire or die at IBM or HP. And that's just not true for your generation.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  So I am proof of, well, for one thing, that's okay, several pieces of wisdom. So piece of wisdom, number one is it does not matter how you get in. So I got in because of nepotism. I got in because of my college roommate. Other than that, I had very few qualifications, arguably may not have any qualifications. So I got in because of nepotism. But now the important thing to know about nepotism or however you got in is that it's not how you get in, it's what you do once you get in. Cause the day after I started at Apple, nobody gave a shit that I worked for this guy or that I went to college with this guy. At that point, it was you either are productive and useful and valuable or you're not. It doesn't matter. And now that can work both ways, right?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  So if you have no background like me and you get in and you prove you're valuable, nobody cares that you didn't have a background. The flip side is also true. So you could have the most amazing pedigree, Harvard MBA, Yale undergraduate, summer internship at Goldman Sachs, you worked for McKinsey for a year. So you got this perfect, perfect background. But then you started a company and you are useless. Well, guess what? Nobody cares that you work for McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or you went to Harvard or Yale. You are just useless. And so that's a very important letter lesson. It doesn't matter how you got in, it matters what you do once you got in.

• 11:04Hala Taha?

  I love that advice. And while we're on advice for like the younger bracket of my audience, I heard you once say, and I wasn't planning on bringing this up, but I feel like it's very relevant. You were saying that people should stay in college as long as they can. You said it was pretty funny. You were like, try to stay five years, not four years if you can't. I'd love for you to touch on that a little.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  So of course, this does not apply to my children, but I think that college is one of the last times in your life where you are truly free. Your biggest problem is your chemistry midterm or your English paper that's due. And so this is the last time that those things are seeming big challenges and crises. For the rest of your life, you're going to be worried about making money, paying off student loans, finding a, you know, lifelong partner. God help you when you have kids, then you know, you completely lose control of your life. And so you should enjoy college as long as you can. And with hindsight, I graduated in

• 12:06Speaker 01

  three and a half years because I'm an Asian American. So I was like overly driven to graduate fast. And I didn't take advantage of things. So I could have gone to an overseas campus. The school that I went to had overseas in London and Brazil and Japan and you know, you name it. They had an overseas campus. But no, I was the dumb ass who wanted to graduate as fast as possible. I wish I had gone to an overseas campus.

• 12:31Hala Taha?

  Well, the biggest regrets when people are dying are the things that they didn't do. But you turned out okay, guys. I think it's okay.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  I've overcome that.

• 12:41Hala Taha?

  So let's turn it on the flip side. You've worked at Apple, you've worked at Canva. What are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned along the way when it comes to managing a team, employer recruitment, employer retention?

• 12:53Speaker 01

  I think maybe the most important lesson that I've learned in this regard is that you should hire people who are better than you at what they do. So if you look around the room, let's say you're in a management position, or let's say you're the CEO and the founder, you should look around the room and say, you know what? That woman is better at marketing than I am. That other woman is better. At finance than I am. That man is better than I am at engineering. And so, everybody in that room should be better than you at what you do. So, the biggest lesson that I learned in employee recruitment and retention and optimization, really, is to hire better than yourself. That it should be a source of pride, that when you look around the room, the people you've hired

• 13:36Speaker 01

  are better at the function than you could ever be. As we said in the Macintosh Division, you know, A players hire A players, B players hire C players, C players hire D players. I subsequently modified that so that A players hire A plus players. And this takes some self-confidence. If you look around the room and everybody in the room does their job better than you could ever, then you're the CEO, you might think, oh my God, you know, I'm supposed to be the the big dog and I'm not. Well, I think the ultimate confirmation of you being the big dog is you're big enough to hire people who are better than you.

• 14:13Hala Taha?

  I love that advice and it's so true. You do kind of need confidence for that. Some people are too cocky to do that, but that's not how you get ahead. So, speaking of bosses, I heard you on another show. I do a lot of research for this show. And you talked about the hardest bosses and teachers being the best bosses. You mentioned Steve Jobs being your hardest boss, which I just think it's so cool you got to work with him. And then also, your English teacher in high school was your hardest boss, but you didn't say what they taught you. So I want to know what they taught you.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Well, my English teacher taught me about grammar and writing, you know, no question. And grammar seems to be less and less important these days, but in those days, he just drilled it into us. So, I learned about writing, the rigors of writing from Steve Jobs. Oh my God, I learned so much. I mean, I learned that you can't ask your current customers how to innovate because all they want is better, faster, cheaper. I learned that A players hire A players or even better A plus players. I learned that if people believe in what you believe in, they will go through all sorts of lengths to help you. That's evangelism. And I also learned some stuff from Steve Jobs, you know, in a sense of what not to do.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Because he was extremely demanding, even scary to work for. And it's not clear to me that that's necessary to succeed.

• 15:37Hala Taha?

  Interesting. I love that. And so, like I said, I've been listening to a lot of interviews. So Jordan Harbinger is actually my mentor and one of my closest friends. And you guys were having a conversation about luck. And you guys got down this rabbit hole about how Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, they had a lot of luck with their journey. And you were arguing that they're smart, but they're not that much different than everybody else. And so I couldn't tell if this was motivating or like depressing, because on one side, it's a good thing that we all could potentially achieve that kind of greatness.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  I don't know if I exactly said that Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk are not any smarter than any of us. The person I know best is Steve Jobs, and he's on a different plane of intelligence. Okay? Let's concede that. Having said that, if you gave me a choice of here's a lucky CEO and here's a smart one, I probably would pick the lucky one based on what I know today. And now, when you have a Steve Jobs who is both lucky and smart, and could actually influence both sides. So if you're smart, you may influence your luck because you'll be in the right place at the right time. And if you're lucky, then you'll seem smart.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  It's not exactly a either/or. You can be both, and arguably, those people are both. My point was that it's not just about you. There are plenty of smart people in the world. And some of them have just been unlucky. Some of them have picked the wrong thing. Some have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, et cetera, et cetera. So if you start believing that you are God's given gift to entrepreneurship, then you're going down a bad path. You should be humble enough to understand that it takes a lot of things to be successful, one of which is luck.

• 17:34Hala Taha?

  Yes. And I'm sorry if I misconstrued your words. It wasn't my intention. It wasn't my intention. I wanted you to go to tell us that. And I want to understand, do you feel like there's any way to like maximize our chances to get lucky?

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Well, part of it is just showing up. So you have to show up. I mean, luck, there's a saying, a Chinese saying, that you have to stand by the side of the river a long time before the roast duck will fly into your mouth.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Which is to say, you can't just depend on luck. You have to go make the luck happen and you have to be in the game. So if you're an entrepreneur, well, if you truly believe in luck too much, you may believe that you don't even have to be an entrepreneur, that someday, I don't know what, fortune will smile upon you and bada bing bada bang, you're presented with the next apple. That's not going to happen. You have to go start the apple. You have to go fail a few times. And that's just the way it works. If it was easy to be an entrepreneur, believe me, more people would be one.

• 18:36Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I totally agree. So let's talk about quitting. So another life lesson that you often talk about is quitting. You quit law school, I think, just a couple of weeks in. And I agree, the times that I've quit something in my life were some of the best decisions in my life because it, it opened up the opportunity to do something different. And sometimes you've got to let go of good to get something great. And it actually reminded me of something. I, I interviewed this guy, Colin O'Brady, yesterday. He's this like endurance athlete. He's crossed over Antarctica unassisted. He's rode through Drake's Passage, which has claimed the lives of like 20,000 sailors. And he told me something that like really imprinted on me. And it was that life is a scale of one to 10. So 10s are like the biggest milestones in your life.

• 19:22Hala Taha?

  Crushing it with some sort of accomplishment, having a baby. Ones is like going bankrupt, getting divorced, all those bad things. And people tend to stay at five. You know what I mean? They're comfortable. They, every day is just five, five, five. Cause they're worried about hitting a one or a two. And they never get a nine or a 10 because they're just staying at five. And so I feel like that is very relevant to taking a chance to doing something like quitting, because people are just so afraid of failing. So I'd love to hear your, your perspective on quitting and why it's not failing and just your thoughts on that.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  So several thoughts, some of which may conflict. First of all, quitting takes courage. I don't know about you, but for me, it took a lot of courage to quit because I was in such this, you know, Asian American path of going to this prestigious school, then going to law school. And you know, it was all planned out, being doctor, lawyer, dentist, right? So getting off that track and basically wasting the efforts of 2,000 years of my family.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Took some courage.

• 20:26Hala Taha?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Now, I interviewed Angela Duckworth and she had a very interesting take on quitting, which is she says you can quit, but you should quit when it's a good day. So let's say, I'll take an example. Let's say that you're taking the violin and you're not allowed to quit because you are not progressing on violin. You can quit if you're doing well with violin and you just decide that you don't like it. That's okay, but quitting before you even get to that point is not okay. It's a very interesting perspective on quitting. It's easy for her to say and me to say, not necessarily to do. But anyway, so that's an interesting thing about quitting. You just, you have to quit in the right way for the right reason at the right time.

• 21:11Hala Taha?

  That is interesting.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  I also think that, well, let's see, I quit that law school. I have no regret about that. I think it, the concept of a slippery slope is vastly overrated. So you can make the case, oh, God, you quit law school. So now you're a quitter. You're not going to be successful for the rest of your life. You're just going to be a bum because you quit law school. Well, it didn't exactly work out that way. And I think if you look at many things, the referral to the slippery slope is vastly, vastly overblown that if you require background checks to buy an AR-15, next thing you know, you're going to be taking away my guns. That's a slippery slope fear, right? But it ain't true.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  I mean, so you need to beware of being too afraid of the slippery slope. Now, if you quit three or four things in a row, you probably should be worried about the, you know, you are going down that slope, but quitting one thing, I don't think so.

• 22:13Hala Taha?

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• 22:57Hala Taha?

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• 23:12Hala Taha?

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• 24:20Hala Taha?

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• 25:04Hala Taha?

  the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast, young and profiting. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. I think in your case, you quit, but it's not like you decided you weren't going to work or like keep on hustling and trying to make it. You found something that you enjoyed more. So I totally agree there.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  I would say my observation is most people stay too long rather than quit too early. But I got to give you a huge caveat with that. But I also have come to believe that the concept that the grass is always greener is not true. And that sometimes you should fertilize and water the grass you're standing on, not try to find greener grass.

• 26:00Hala Taha?

  Are you alluding to you leaving Apple by any chance?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 26:04Hala Taha?

  Talk to us about that.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Well, I left Apple twice, actually. Once because I wanted to start a company, but actually both times because I wanted to start a company. But now let's be honest, when you leave a company to start another company, you could talk about all the romance of entrepreneurship and you wanted to dent the universe and blah, blah, blah, blah. But it fundamentally, at some level, it means that you are not happy or you don't believe in where you are. I mean, there's got to be some piece of your decision that is tied to that. It cannot purely be all this amazing upside. And so, listen, if you had told me when I quit in 87 and 97, that Apple would become a $2 trillion company, I would have told you, you are on hard drugs.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Like hard illegal drugs. There is no way. The first time I quit Apple, it's not clear that Apple would have survived. So who knows? Who knows? So sometimes you should just stick with it. Now, this might not play well with your generation, who I just said is gonna have 12 to 15 jobs over their career. But at least my experience, you know, I know people who had a great one or two years at Salesforce and left because at that point Salesforce was already large, publicly traded. They weren't handing out big options anymore. It was hard to see how they're gonna make millions and millions of dollars and rise into this large organization. Well, it's too early to really assess that decision.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Because I left Apple in 97 and it didn't become a trillion dollar company to, I don't know, 2017 or whatever it was, right? So it took 20 years. Now, you might say, well, who wants to work for the same company for 20 years? But that's dependent on what you're doing and how you're growing, not necessarily just going to the same parking space for 20 years. So this interview is filled with inherent conflicts that I just want people to realize who's listening that, yes, I am conflicting myself. I know I'm conflicting myself, but you have to understand that that is how life goes.

• 28:16Hala Taha?

  Yeah, it's not black and white.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  It's not black and white. And I am just one data point. With entrepreneurs, in particular, I'll give you a classic entrepreneurial thing that one theory says you take your shot and then you pivot quickly. Another says, no matter what the negativity and naysaying is about your product, if you believe, you stick through it, you stick with it, and you pop out the other side. Those are two completely different things, right? Pivot or grit it out. Both have worked. So it kind of depends on, well, what's the last podcast I listened to?

• 28:52Hala Taha?

  Exactly. Who was the last person I talked to about this?

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 28:57Hala Taha?

  I love it. But you know what? There's many paths to success. Like you said, people succeed one way or another, and you succeeded even though you've made decisions that maybe you kind of regret. But at the end of the day, that maybe that wasn't your path. Let's talk about some of these decisions because you quit Apple twice, then Steve Jobs, I think, asked you back a third time. You said no, you almost got to be the CEO of Yahoo.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Well, that's an overstatement. I was asked to interview. Let's take the worst case. Let's say I got asked to interview and I was offered the job. So I could have been, yes.

• 29:29Hala Taha?

  You could have been the CEO of Yahoo. And I guess that was before Yahoo was Yahoo, right?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, so that, you know, that right there, that's two billion.

• 29:38Hala Taha?

  Those are billion dollar decisions.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:40Hala Taha?

  Have you learned anything about decision making? Where do you feel like you've gotten better at it? Or do you just feel like, again, it's this luck idea of luck?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Well, who among us doesn't think they're getting better at decision making? But let's just say we're not all right. So I don't know. Listen, I turned down this opportunity with Yahoo. I quit Apple twice. I turned Steve Jobs down for another offer. So there, you know, there's four right there, right? So that would be roughly, I'd say, two and a half billion dollars total. And you know, two and a half billion here, two and a half billion there, it adds up to real money after a while. So on the other hand, a lot of it is positioning and branding, often in your own mind. So in my mind, the way I explain

• 30:28Speaker 01

  myself is, okay, so I worked at Apple and Canva. Ah, who's going to say you're a failure? I mean, Apple and Canva, I mean, that's, that's two very good acts, right?

• 30:41Hala Taha?

  I mean, I think you are far from a failure. You are very successful. And Canva is like becoming this huge company. I mean, you really found a unicorn. You do know how to pick them.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Well, okay, let's discuss that.

• 30:55Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Okay, because it's very important that I think entrepreneurs truly understand what goes on. So I started with Apple because of nepotism, right?

• 31:05Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Then I left Apple. I started a company. I went back. I started another company. Those two companies you would not have heard of because they were moderate if successful at all. As a venture capitalist, I probably put down, I don't know, 15 bets or something. So if you just looked at the numbers, if you just were a numerical geek, you'd say, okay, guys, so you have Apple and Canva, and you have 15 failures. So Guy is two for 17. So that's one way of looking at it. The way I look at it is I may be two for 17, but look at the two.

• 31:43Hala Taha?

  Look at the two and you're, everybody knows that you are. You're hosting a popular pod. You're being way too modest. You've written 15 bucks. Come on.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Well, you know, but listen, I'm, I'm not a trillionaire. I'm not a billionaire. I'm, you know, I just like, I'm a surfer. I just like to like to surf and podcast. That's what I do. I surf and podcast. That's my, I have decided that, you know, my podcast, I'm on a mission to make people remarkable with my podcast. And it's not because of my wisdom. It's the wisdom of people I interview. Such as if you're an entrepreneur, I have interviewed Steve Wozniak. I've interviewed the CEO of Poopery, which is a great story. Don't laugh at that story. Suzy Batiste, a Frey farm, the most pumpkins, the hint water. So I have a lot of different kinds of entrepreneurs in my podcast.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  And I think my podcast is actually over the course of my lifetime, I've been an evangelist, I've been an investor, I've been an advisor, you know, whatever, et cetera, et cetera. The best work I've ever done is my podcast, without question. It's also the least appreciated.

• 32:49Hala Taha?

  I might be able to help you there.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:51Hala Taha?

  I have to say, my client, Marshall Goldsmith, went on your podcast and we were planning to put out a podcast and you were so good at the podcast that he literally came to me in a meeting and he was like, Hala, I don't think I want to do this podcast anymore. And I was like, why, Marshall? You were so excited about it. And he's like, I went on this guy's podcast, Guy Kawasaki, and he was so good and so prepared. And this is just way too much work. I could not be doing this. And Hala, and I was like, all right, we'll switch gears, whatever you want, Marshall.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  This is a great story. So of course, I've been on the other side of this discussion, right? So one day I get an email from Marshall Goldsmith, and I hope people out there understand who Marshall Goldsmith is. He's like the living Peter Drucker, of course. They may not know who Peter Drucker is. But so Marshall Goldsmith is arguably the best executive coach in the world, maybe ever. And so he sends me this email. He says, Guy, you changed my life. And I said, is this spam? So he says, give me a call to schedule a time. So I call him and it's really him. And he says, you know, Guy, he tells me this story, that he was on my podcast and he listened to it. It's so well done. And I was so well prepared. He just doesn't want to do it anymore. He told me, God, you changed my life. You made my

• 34:08Speaker 01

  life better because I was going to try this and it's too much work and it's too hard. I don't want to do it anymore. And so that is like, one of the greatest forms of praise I've ever had.

• 34:17Hala Taha?

  How funny is that? That is all coming full circle. And then I'm the one behind it. That's so funny.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  That's true. I lost you a client. I'm sorry.

• 34:25Hala Taha?

  No, we're doing all his social. It's all good.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. I have a question for you.

• 34:31Hala Taha?

  Sure.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Because I've been on the other side of this conversation in 175 times. Okay?

• 34:37Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  So are you just so smart that you have remembered these details to ask me these questions? Or do you have notes in front of you?

• 34:46Hala Taha?

  Oh, well, I have a teleprompter.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Okay, so you're looking at the notes?

• 34:50Hala Taha?

  I can flip back and forth and usually when I say the question in the very beginning, when I do the intro,

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:57Hala Taha?

  I'm reading it because I don't want to butcher it.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:00Hala Taha?

  But then as we're going along, I'll peek at it, I'll read it and then I'll flash it back down so that I just have my notes. I'm very, very well prepared. So I have a little teleprompter and I just flip back and forth.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Well, listen, I've been on many of these interviews and nobody, seriously, okay, no bullshit, I've never seen an interviewer who makes better eye contact and yet seemingly has all these facts memorized.

• 35:24Hala Taha?

  Thank you.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Never. So that's why I asked you how you did it because I was all set for you to tell me, no, Guy, I did all my research and it's all up here.

• 35:32Hala Taha?

  Well, a lot of it is.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:34Hala Taha?

  A lot of the conversation has been all up here and a lot of the conversation, like I'm just flipping through and being like, oh yeah, I, I, I wanted to ask about that. And I don't have time to read it all, but I just see like little bits of it and, you know, part of the confidence is just writing it all out and preparing.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  So I, I hope that you don't edit this part of the conversation out, but I want all you people listening to this podcast that Hala is a fantastic interviewer. And I say that and I consider myself a fantastic interviewer.

• 36:07Hala Taha?

  Oh, thank you. That's so sweet. Thank you so much. That's so nice. I won't cut it out because there's, whatever, I prepared. I always tell everybody, you gotta prepare, man. I go on interviews and you know what they do to me sometimes? I hop on, how do you pronounce your name?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:24Hala Taha?

  I'm like, oh, you say you haven't listened to one episode. Why am I on here?

• 36:29Speaker 01

  I have a theory. We're going down a deep hole right now. So

• 36:32Hala Taha?

  We are.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  I have, I have a theory that I like to start my podcast with a question that sets the interviewee back in the sense like, holy shit, Guy really read the entire book.

• 36:48Hala Taha?

  Me too.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  He's not asking a question from the intro or chapter one. He's asking a question from the middle of the book or he's asking a question that, God, he watched some YouTube video like 10 years ago that I did. He, this is not just somebody stuck the Wikipedia entry in front of him and said, okay, go ask, you know, Jane Goodall these questions.

• 37:09Hala Taha?

  100%.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:11Hala Taha?

  I do that, too. I'll make sure that I say something just so that they feel comfortable like, "Oh, okay, this is gonna be a good interview because she actually like knows these little details."

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:21Hala Taha?

  I didn't just read your Wikipedia page.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:26Hala Taha?

  All right, so let's get back to the actionable advice for these young and profiting podcast listeners.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Well, but that's actionable, Hala. I mean, the lesson here is 99.9% of the people, whether it's podcasting or entrepreneurship, or you know, whatever, don't freaking prepare.

• 37:45Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  They think they're just, a very good example of this is pitching your company.

• 37:50Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  So, most entrepreneurs believe that they're natural communicators, they're gonna rise to the top, they're gonna rise to the occasion, and they're gonna just pitch from their hearts that it's gonna work out right because they're a natural. And that's total unequivocal bullshit. And so, you need to prepare.

• 38:10Hala Taha?

  I wanna stick on this.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, if Steve Jobs, if Steve Jobs used to prepare for weeks for a keynote, and if Steve Jobs needs to prepare for weeks, guess what? You are not Steve Jobs. Not you, Hala, you, listening. You are not Steve Jobs. So, if Steve Jobs needed weeks, you probably need months.

• 38:28Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm. And I have to say, having a good pitch skills, being able to demo your product, this is so key. I have a funny story, too. So, when I was first starting Yap Media, I was just, I had my podcast, two years into it, grew this brand, people were asking me to be their client. I kept pushing it away, and then finally was like, "Fine, I'll give this a shot." I had volunteers and interns, and I was like, "I'll hire them," right?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:51Hala Taha?

  I remember, I went, I had a billionaire that was interested in my services. His name is Jason Waller, still my client.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:57Hala Taha?

  And I had no website, I had no logo, I wasn't even incorporated. I had no trademark, nothing. All I had was my PowerPoint presentation skills, and I was a good presenter, and I did it for myself already. And so, I went in, I gave a pitch, and I closed, like, my first deal was a $30,000 monthly retainer from a freaking PowerPoint presentation.

• 39:19Hala Taha?

  That I just designed really nicely. And so that just goes to show you like if you can pitch and demo, you can make so much out of literally nothing.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Well, especially now, if you use Canva instead of PowerPoint, you'd have gotten a 50,000 retainer.

• 39:35Hala Taha?

  I did use Canva. I've been a user of Canva for like, I've been like, I don't know how they're not sponsoring me. I've been using Canva for like five years.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  I work for them. They don't sponsor me.

• 39:46Hala Taha?

  I literally made my presentation on Canva.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Oh, great. But you know, the lesson there is, but you prepared, obviously, right? That's number one.

• 39:56Hala Taha?

  I was preparing my whole life. It's like you prepare, like preparing with so many different things like presenting at HP, presenting at Disney, presenting in my MBA. It was just like many, many experiences that led up to that moment that changed my life.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Yep. And so the lesson there is you gotta show up and you gotta be gritty. As I said before, standing by the side of the river, the roast duck is not gonna fly in your mouth.

• 40:23Hala Taha?

  Yeah. But I want to hear more advice about your pitching skills because I know that you talk about it a lot with evangelism. So like, how should, like, what should we do? How should we prepare for a demo? Like, what do we need to know?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Okay, so first of all, I think the key to a pitch is the preparation. And the preparation for an entrepreneur, let's say you're pitching to a venture capital firm. So you have better know who's in that room, where they came from, what school did they go to? What are their interests? What are they invested in? What boards are they on? Everything like that. You're looking for hooks that, oh, we both went to Stanford, we both like to surf. You're on the bar of copper and I love copper, you know, as my CRM solution. You're looking for hooks to differentiate yourself from the other dumbasses that came in at eight, nine, 10, one, two, and three.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  You're the four o'clock appointment, right? So everybody said, we have patent pending, curve jumping, paradigm shifting way to dent the universe. We're going to provide you with unbelievable shareholder returns while enabling our employees to self. actualize their life goals or exceeding the expectations of our customers. Every entrepreneur says that. Nobody says I'm a dumbass who's lazy. Okay. Hmm. So you have to find hooks and the hooks are LinkedIn is God's gift to pitching. Basically, if you don't study LinkedIn before a pitch, something is wrong with you. You're an idiot. It looks like have a sign on your head that says, I am clueless. So that's the preparation. I think initial concept is you can never be too brief.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  I've never sat in a presentation or a pitch and said, this was too short. It was too succinct. Something is wrong. I have never ever said that. And I've said it thousands of pitches. So you know, there's the guy Kawasaki ten, twenty or thirty rule, which is ten slides in twenty minutes, thirty point font minimum. So that's a good sort of foundation or framework. The other metaphor that I would love for entrepreneurs to understand is to think of yourself as an airplane or a pilot in an airplane. And at two ends of the spectrum in airplanes, there is the seven eighty seven air Airbus A three eighty at one end.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  And at the other end, there's the F fifteen, there's the, you know, the F eighteen, the whatever. And so the A three eighty and the seven eighty seven, they have two miles of runway and they go rumbling down. And then at the end of two miles, they take off and everybody says, how the hell can half a million pounds ever exceed? But anyways, you know, it's a miracle that those planes take off. At the other end, you're on an aircraft carrier, you get in this plane, you have a hundred and fifty meters to get off the flight deck or you fall in the water and you die. And I think most entrepreneurs think they are piloting a seven eighty seven. So they come into this pitch and they say, well, let me tell you my life story. My great grandfather came over on the Mayflower and he landed in New Canaan connected.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  And then he started a horseshoe business and he went and like, and then, and then, okay, finally, so, you know, then they made it rich. So they endowed of a fellowship at Yale and I got into Yale and the first summer I worked at Goldman Sachs. And then I got a Harvard MBA and I started at HP in the internship program. And then I took Windows classes and finally I decided to start a company. Okay, that's the Airbus A380. The F-18 pilot has got to get off the deck and you should be an F-18 pilot. So in the first 30 seconds, everybody in that room should understand what you do. I have sat in so many pitches where they're talking about their whole family heritage, their education, their strategy, the size of the internet.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Oh, the internet's going to be big. You know that, right? So let me explain how big the internet will be. And this is right now. And so there this Airbus A380 trying to get down this two mile runway. And I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, is this hardware? Is this software? Is this e-commerce? Is this social networking? Is this AI? What the hell do they do? And so I think the most important lessons are be brief, prepare, and get your ass off the tarmac as fast as you can. 30 seconds into it, they should understand this is a software company. This is a cloud-based software company. What does Canva do? It democratizes design, so you don't need Photoshop. There, I said it. Five seconds.

• 44:52Hala Taha?

  I love that and practice, right? I'll hop on discovery calls. I know they can't afford my services and I'll just do it to practice, right? Practice your pitch.

• 45:03Hala Taha?

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• 45:49Hala Taha?

  Buy one copy for $32 and get a second copy free. So you can keep one for yourself and give the second to a friend, future co-founder, or someone who needs a little push. What's up, Yap fam? If you're building a personal brand, you already know how hard it is to stay consistent with content when you're also trying to actually run your business. I love creating content, but realistically, I'm not trying to sit in front of the camera every single day. I need time to work on my business. But the problem is consistency matters. The more people see your face and hear your voice, the more familiar you become. That's why HeyGen has been such a great tool for me. You can record just 15 seconds of footage, create an AI avatar of yourself, and use it to make videos on demand.

• 46:33Hala Taha?

  So instead of constantly filming from scratch, you can create more content, stay visible, and keep showing up without making your entire life be about generating content. And you guys know I'm always looking for tools that give entrepreneurs more leverage. HeyGen is definitely one of those tools. 30 million people already use it, from solo founders to 85% of the Fortune 100. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com/profitting. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N dot com slash P-R-O-F-I-T-I-N-G. Heygen.com/profitting.

• 47:12Hala Taha?

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• 47:56Hala Taha?

  and has been used in high-stakes situations where concentration And alertness are critical, including by soldiers, pilots and astronauts. Visit mod.com, that's M O D dot com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with promo code profiting. That's promo code profiting at mod.com. See their website for important safety information and we thank mod for sponsoring the pod. Um, how about who we should pitch to? So there's the right people and the wrong people and some of them are really uphill battles. So I'd love to hear that.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Well, you may not agree with this piece of advice, but I think that when you're starting out, you should pitch to anybody who'll listen. I don't think you can be proud. Now, of course, you know, we'd all like to pitch to John Doerr or the general partner, the big cheese at Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins or whoever, right? We'd love to pitch to Elon Musk. We'd love to pitch to Tim Cook, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm telling you, when you start off, you should just pitch to anybody who'll listen. And it's for the reason that you mentioned that, you know, yeah, you may be starting with the summer intern who's not going to make a decision to write you a check for five million bucks, but 20 summer interns later, you will be meeting with a partner. At that point, it's too late.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  You need to have had 25 rejections and 25 practice sessions to be ready for this great meeting and you have to pay the price.

• 49:23Hala Taha?

  Yeah. So what about like more generally though, like, and when it comes to evangelism and trying to market a product?

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:30Hala Taha?

  You don't want to market a product to people who just don't believe in it. You want to go agnostic. I want to hear those lessons from you.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  So I would say that here we go with some sort of conflicting advice. On the one hand, I would say that you should pitch even a product to anybody who'll listen. It's good practice and you may never know, you may think that this person is not qualified, but this is a summer intern or secretary administrative aide, customer service manager, whatever, not the decision maker, but guess what? The decision maker is listening to this person because this person did really does the work. Or this person you're pitching to spouse is a decision maker at another company. You just never know. So I'm really into indiscriminate pitches. I think it's also humbling that you should not think that you are so freaking important

• 50:24Speaker 01

  that unless you are talking to the CXO, this company is not worthy of your time. Like frankly, you know, you're bullshit. You're full of shit. Anyway, so that's one thing. Now, on the other hand, as you say, you could be wasting a lot of time doing what I'm saying. And I freely admit that. But I would say that, yes, go for it. Go do your qualification and figure out who the decision maker, et cetera, et cetera is. Yes. And again, LinkedIn is your greatest weapon in this. But if you said, okay, guy, should you pitch too much or too little? Should you evangelize too much or too little? I would say too much.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Err on the side of doing too much. And this is completely in the face of the concept of select a few targets, know them well, get just the most highly qualified, specific. Use a rifle. I'm telling you, use a shotgun.

• 51:21Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I mean, this goes back to a lot of the things that we've been touting today, like expanding your luck, showing up, getting practice, preparing, right? It's just all those things combined because you never know who you pitched to, like what that will end up being or who will end up being in 20 years even.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll tell you a great story that you as a podcaster will truly appreciate.

• 51:42Hala Taha?

  Sure.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  So do you know who Angela Duckworth is?

• 51:45Hala Taha?

  Yes.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  MacArthur Award winner, you know, grit, right?

• 51:48Hala Taha?

  Yes.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Okay, big deal. Maybe she's your client.

• 51:50Hala Taha?

  Not my client, but probably will be on my podcast soon.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Okay, so who among us as a podcaster would not want to have Angela Duckworth?

• 51:59Hala Taha?

  Nobody.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Nobody. Nobody in their right mind. Maybe Joe Rogan would have won. But anyway. So I want Angela Duckworth, right? So I don't know her. So I send an email to whatever, [email protected]. No response. Weeks go by and I default to yes. I kind of say, I like, I really didn't know exactly what I was getting into today, but I default to yes. Now, if you think that I did all the research and you had Marshall Goldsmith and you know, how many followers are you? The most influential person on LinkedIn and all. And that's why I said, yes, you can believe that. God bless you, but that's not the truth. The truth is, I default to yes. So I default to yes. And one day, I'm on this podcast as a guest. And the person starts off by saying, yeah, so you know, hi, my name is whatever, Trixie Smith.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  And I live in, I don't know, Mobile, Alabama, and I am a freshman in high school.

• 52:50Hala Taha?

  Oh, boy.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  And so we're going to talk about whatever innovation, right? And I was sitting there thinking, God, you are such a dumbass. Like, why did you accept to waste an hour of your life on a podcast with a 14-year-old person from Alabama? Not that I have anything against Alabama, but you know. And she probably has five subscribers to her podcast. Mom and dad, aunt, uncle, and younger brother. Okay? But low and behold, man, she asks great questions. And then at the end of this podcast, I say to her, who else have you had on your podcast? Because I'm thinking, who else was dumb enough to say yes, right? And she said, oh, two weeks ago, I had Angela Duckworth, and my freaking jaw is on the ground. And I says, you had Angela Duckworth? How did you get Angela Duckworth?

• 53:36Speaker 01

  She goes, well, Angela Duckworth really likes to help young women succeed. So I, as a young woman, reached out to her, and she said, yes. I said, okay. I said, so how about this? Will you ask Angela Duckworth to be on my podcast? And she says, yes. So she, 14-year-old girl in, like I said, Mobile, Alabama, with over-the-moon podcast. She writes to Angela Duckworth, she sees me, and low and behold, Angela Duckworth answers. And one thing leads to another, and I get Angela Duckworth on my podcast.

• 54:07Hala Taha?

  Amazing.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  So that's, people might think, oh, God, everybody knows who you are, you're a big deal, blah, blah, blah. So that's how you, even Angela Duckworth would be thrilled to be on your podcast. You know, she's probably just checking info at angela duckworth.com every half an hour, looking for that invite. But the truth is, it was a 14-year-old podcaster from Mobile, Alabama, with five subscribers, who got me on, who got me Angela Duckworth. Now that, every entrepreneur should listen to that story and say, huh, God, what's the point? Point is, you never know. You never know. For all you know, you know, for all you know, her, her grandfather was Warren Buffett. Who knows, right?

• 54:47Hala Taha?

  Exactly. Well, that's cool. I want to find out her name and, and help her.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  I can't remember.

• 54:54Hala Taha?

  Now I want to be like Angela Duckworth and help this girl.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 54:59Hala Taha?

  All right, so let's talk about enchantment before we go. I know we're wrapping up on time here, but I love this concept of like likability, first impressions, and making people like you more. So I'd love to hear your best advice and guidance when it comes to being more enchanting.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Okay, so enchantment, I think, has several pillars. One is likability, because it's hard to be enchanted by someone you don't like. Let's face it, right? So there's likability. There's also sort of competence that it's hard to like people who are incompetent bozos. That's the second leg. And the third thing is trustworthiness, because you could like somebody, you could like some TikTok influencer, that doesn't mean you trust that TikTok influencers. You could like Paris Hilton, that doesn't mean you trust Paris Hilton. So likability, trustworthy, and competence, those are the three pillars of enchantment. And so this book, Enchantment, is about how to increase all three of those things. As far as likability,

• 55:59Speaker 01

  I think a lot of it is just, well, this was written before the pandemic, right? So I think a lot of likability is, what is your handshake like? Is it like wimpy? Or are you trying to crush the person's hand? Or is it in the middle? What is your smile like? Is it a grit your teeth, hold the pencil in your teeth kind of smile? Or is it a legitimate, happy Duchenne smile? Are you showing crow's feet? You're too young to have crow's feet, Hala, but are you showing your crow's feet or not? Because crow's feet is a very good indication of sincerity and smiling. So it's those kinds of things. And a third thing in likability is, are you accepting people for what they are? Or are you trying to change them? And so I think people can pick up when you know, you're like, you can sense that

• 56:43Speaker 01

  this person thinks that I should be a Democrat, or I should be a Republican, or I should be something that I'm not. It's hard to like people who don't accept you for what you are.

• 56:55Hala Taha?

  And I know that you say you also should be aligned to a good cause.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:00Hala Taha?

  And I thought this was really interesting because you wrote the book in 2011. And in the last year, I feel like every other conversation I have is like conscious business, conscious leadership, right? Like, everybody wants to talk about aligning purpose with a good cause. And it seems more recent because I've been doing this for four or five years. And now everyone's talking about that. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on why you think we should align ourselves to a good cause. And you've obviously thought this for a long time.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Well, just to be clear, I'm not saying you should align yourself with a good cause because it's good marketing and good financial returns and good all. And that, although those may be true, don't get me wrong.

• 57:39Hala Taha?

  Byproducts, yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is a byproduct. And I just believe that there is a karmic scoreboard in the sky. And this karmic scoreboard is tallying what you do with your life. And if you jack people around and screw them and you, you know, you like trash the earth and all that, it's being counted someplace. Now, you can say, God, you're so full of shit, you know, like, do you have any scientific proof of this karmic scoreboard? Not at all. Can't prove God either, but you know, I digress. But I'm just saying, you know, with something like this, why take a chance? Why take a chance? I mean, you're only talking about your life, your reputation, and who knows, maybe your afterlife. So, you know, do you want to be stuck in a 737 in a center seat in the smoking section? Or you want to be

• 58:26Speaker 01

  in Singapore Airlines or, you know, Emirates Airbus A380? It's up to you. So I just think it's good karma.

• 58:34Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I love your default, yes. I'm the same way. I just say yes.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:40Hala Taha?

  If you can help somebody, if you have the time, why not?

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Even if you don't have the time?

• 58:44Hala Taha?

  Yeah. Well, this has been such a great conversation, Guy. I always end my interviews with the same couple of questions and then we do some fun stuff at the end of the year. So the first one is, what is a piece of actionable advice that my young improffeters can do today to become more profiting tomorrow?

• 59:01Speaker 01

  You can learn how to truly empathize. That is, this goes beyond market research. So market research is basically go and see. Go see how people live, go whatever. I would say if you want to do it even better, you go and be, which means you go and be the person. Like you, let's say you're doing a study of customer service. So you could go to the customer service center and you could see what happens on the call lines. Or you could actually put the headset on and be the customer service person. Or you could actually call into your company's customer service and be the customer. Empathy is a

• 59:45Speaker 01

  great skill and it'll just open your eyes to so many things.

• 59:50Hala Taha?

  Oh my gosh, I love that advice. And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this doesn't have to be monetary. Profiting is whatever you believe it is.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Listen to your wife.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  How's that?

• 1:00:02Hala Taha?

  Why?

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Because women are smarter than men. I truly do believe that. Like if you look at this world right now, men have screwed this world up from top to bottom for centuries. I think we should let women run the world.

• 1:00:16Hala Taha?

  I mean, what a better place to stop the interview, right then and there. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Well, if you truly want to see my best work, go to remarkablepeople.com. Just a word of caution here. Remarkable People is not Guy spouting off about how to be remarkable. Remarkable People is Guy getting people like Jane Goodall and Steve Wozniak and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Arianna Huffington and Christie Yamaguchi and I could just go on and Angela Duckworth, on and on. I'm trying to get the wisdom from them into you. That's what I'm doing on Remarkable People.

• 1:00:54Hala Taha?

  I love it. Well, if you guys like my podcast, I think you're gonna love guys. So make sure you check it out. We'll stick all of his links in the show notes and thank you so much for this amazing conversation.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  My pleasure. And maybe I should have you on the podcast.

• 1:01:08Hala Taha?

  I would love to be on the podcast. They call me the podcast princess. I built a media empire. I have 60 employees, started it as a side hustle. I'd love to be on your podcast.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  I think you're the podcast queen. Forget the princess.

• 1:01:21Hala Taha?

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  I'm not saying you're old.

• 1:01:24Hala Taha?

  No, I know. I feel like I want to princess for a few years and then I'll graduate to queen like.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Okay. Alrighty. All the best, dude. Take care.

• 1:01:33Hala Taha?

  Thanks, Guy.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Bye bye.