Guy Kawasaki has enjoyed an incredible career as a product evangelist and entrepreneur, helping popularize groundbreaking tools including the Macintosh and Canva.
Guy recently spoke to Saima Rashid and Adam Kaiser, hosts of 6sense’s Revenue Makers podcast, to share his insights on being an effective product evangelist, which boil down to this: Design with the customer in the mind.
Below are highlights from the second episode of our conversations with Guy, presented as a Q&A. To hear more from him, you can listen to his Remarkable People podcast or read one of the 15 books he’s written. His latest book Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference is available now.
If you missed Part 1 of this podcast, you can find it here.
(Editor’s Note: There are a few PG-13 swear words in the podcast interview, which are also presented here in the Q&A.)
Highlights
In his second appearance on the program, Guy discusses techniques for designing great products, how to drive audience penetration, the importance of diversity, and seizing opportunities.
Use Empathy with Design
Saima: We have a saying at 6sense: “Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.” How do you create good stuff and then execute impactful strategies?
Guy: There are techniques for designing great products. One is empathy. Understand what the customer wants, and I truly mean go and see. Don’t depend on reading summaries and surveys. Actually go and see what they’re doing.
You want to understand what it’s like to drive an electric car? Then drive an electric car so you understand the frustration of range anxiety. You understand that when you pull into a charging location, nine of the ten chargers aren’t working, and the tenth one won’t accept your Visa.
You need to actually be that customer, and that will help you design a great product.
Work Backwards
Guy: Another thing is to work backwards from the customer. Kodak, for example. Kodak is a chemicals company.
But if you work backwards from the customer — the customer doesn’t wake up in the morning saying, “God, I wish I could buy chemicals on film. That’s my biggest fantasy. Why can’t I buy chemicals on film?”
What the customer wants to do is preserve memories. Kodak is in the preservation of memories business. The irony is, in 1975, Kodak invented digital photography.
Let’s just say nobody is using a Kodak digital camera today, and I think that that was because Kodak was working forwards, as opposed to working backwards from what the customer might want.
Make What You Want to Use
Guy: Tech companies started because the CEOs built what they wanted to use. I guess you could make the case that they were being the customer. But when Woz (Steve Wozniak) created the Apple I, he built the computer he wanted to use.
So those are three methods.
Wild Creativity
Adam: How do you penetrate the audience – drive a visceral reaction?
Guy: It starts with good shit. If you have good shit, then just let your creativity go wild.
I’ll give you an example, but not from tech. I am a big fan of Liquid Death. It’s canned water. So what’s the innovation here? They put water in an aluminum can.
But those cans look like cans of beer. If you don’t believe me, go buy a can of it, open it up, and start driving around. I guarantee you will be pulled over by the cops. That’s the test.
Liquid Death has a corporate slogan, which I must say I admire. The slogan is “Murder Your Thirst.” I think it’s such great marketing. You don’t forget something like Murder Your Thirst.
Diversity
Saima: I wanted to talk about innovation and, specifically, innovation through diversity. So many studies of organizational structure prove that more diverse companies just perform better.
It’s not just diversity in the makeup of the people, but diversity of thought and points of view. How do we expose our teams to various ideas and skills, especially on the marketing side where we want that principle to really drive innovation with the teams?
Guy: I think you do it because it’s right. Conceptually, I believe that intelligence and ability is randomly distributed. So you can’t tell me that white males are more intelligent and better performers.
I think that a diverse workforce brings you different perspectives, and diversity here means age. It means gender.
In the 1980s, half of Steve Jobs’ direct reports were women. And, listen, there are a lot of scary aspects to working for Steve Jobs, but you weren’t scared of working for Steve Jobs because of the color of your skin, your religion, your gender, or your sexual orientation.
All he cared about was making the best computer.
Reduce Regret
Adam: There’s a different section in the book talking about seizing opportunities. How do you lead or help prioritize the right opportunities so that sales and marketing leaders can make the most impactful decisions without regret? How do you enable that?
Guy: I address this concept of regrets in the book because Daniel Pink had a great project called the Regrets Project in which tens of thousands of people went online and surveyed and expressed what their regrets were.
The major regret was they did not take the risks they should have taken.
I think regret No. 2 was they let their social relationships deteriorate with their relatives. Based on what I learned from Daniel Pink, if you want to minimize the regrets in your life, you take chances and you stay close to your family. That’s it.
Learn From Setbacks
Saima: On that threat of seizing opportunity, taking chances, let’s be honest. Failure is inevitable. In the book, you say to use your own setbacks or industry challenges as a catalyst for remarkable change and innovation. How do you think go-to market leaders do that?
Guy: I’ll quickly explain the story of Halim Flowers. He was arrested at 16 for being an accomplice to a murder. After 22 years, he was released. Now he’s written books, and he’s become an artist.
For some people, the setback is not getting into Harvard, Yale, or Dartmouth. That’s one level of setbacks, but not too many people served 22 years in prison. That is a shining example of how you can learn from your setbacks or you can let your setbacks destroy you.
But, I mean, the flip side of every setback, the flip side of every failure is learning. I think that if you have a growth mindset, you open yourself up to vulnerability and you learn from your failures. The best case from a failure is an education.
Jane Goodall
Guy: I’m personal friends with Jane Goodall. She is 90 and travels three hundred days a year. I recently offered to let her stay at my guest house. She said, “Guy, there is no time to do that. I have to do what I have to do.”
That’s what you call leadership, right? That’s why Jane Goodall is maybe the most remarkable person alive today.
Saima: On the flip side, who’s the worst leader you’ve ever had to work for?
Guy: Honestly, I have not had any boss that I would really bitterly complain about. Just like failure, you might be able to learn more from lousy bosses than good bosses. You can learn a lot from a really bad leader.
Hear More
Guy has more insights to share. To hear the rest of this podcast, listen here.
