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In this podcast hosted by the trailblazing founder of RE/MAX, Dave Liniger, we discover the secrets of those who have overcome challenges, pushed past their own limits, and experienced the best life has to offer.
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Unknown
You.
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Unknown
You.
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Speaker 1
guest joining us. He's a true legend in the tech industry, known for his pioneering work at Apple and his instrumental role in shaping the success of Canva. J Kawasaki is a pioneer in entrepreneurship and innovation.
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Speaker 1
We'll be uncovering the essence of grit and resilience in his entrepreneurial journey. Stay tuned as we unlock invaluable insights into overcoming challenges, maintaining high levels of ambition, and making a difference in the world. Without further ado, let's dive in.
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Speaker 1
So guy, you've had incredible successes in starting businesses from your perspective. How do you define grit in the context of entrepreneurship, and how has it played a role in your own journey?
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Speaker 2
Grit to me, and I am a disciple of Angela Duckworth. grit to me is to continue to do something after it's. Well, when the pain begins and the frustration begins and you just keep pushing through. I think the the flip side of the grit mindset is the growth mindset. And if you have a growth mindset and you want to acquire new skills and new abilities and new markets, new products, new services, if you have that growth mindset, the flip side is you need to have a grit mindset because nothing that involves growth is going to be easy.
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Speaker 2
And so you need growth and grit coupled together in order to succeed.
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Speaker 1
I agree. guy, in the early stages of your career, what challenges did you face and how did you overcome them with determination and grit?
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Speaker 2
listen, I Dave, I don't want to give you the impression that I'm this Horatio Alger story that, you know, I, I came over from Japan and I only had one suitcase and, you know, $20 in my pocket. I, I come from a lower middle class family, in Honolulu, Hawaii. And, we were by no means rich, but we were by no means, you know, like escaping South Vietnam in the last helicopter out of the embassy.
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Speaker 2
But I tell you, the the one of the experiences I had is that I fell in love with technology and computing, but I was in the jewelry business and the jewelry business. It's not exactly a career path. You know, you go from jewelry manufacturing to tech. that's not a logical path. And it was very difficult for me to make that first transition.
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Speaker 2
And I applied to dozens of companies, many companies you would have heard of and they wouldn't even look twice at me because my undergraduate degree was psychology, and my work history was in the jewelry manufacturing business. So, back then, people weren't looking for diversity, shall I say?
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Speaker 1
That is sand. ambition often drives innovation. How can entrepreneurs maintain high levels of ambition to fuel creative and groundbreaking projects?
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Speaker 2
Yeah, this is a trick question. I think, you know, I, I can't tell you that I believe that ambition should be the driving force. at least there's a connotation to ambition that it's about, you know, me, myself and I. And I think that a better motivation, a better foundation is the desire to make a difference and to make the world a better place.
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Speaker 2
And so if you produce a great computer that more people can use and be more productive and more creative, you know you've made a difference. And if you are making an online graphics design service that has democratized, design, enabling people to be better communicators, you've also made a difference. So when you make a difference, I think that one of the natural outcomes is both financial rewards and psychic rewards.
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Speaker 2
And and your reputation becomes that you are remarkable. So the sequence of events this is not a this is not a traditional kind of chicken versus egg question. I think there's a definite sequence, which is you decide to make a great computer, make a great design service, make a great website, make a great restaurant, you know, make a great store, whatever.
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Speaker 2
And then everything else flows from that. So I would encourage your listeners to focus on making a difference. And not about, you know, realizing ambition necessarily, unless your ambition is to make a difference.
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Speaker 1
That's okay. you mentioned the difficulty of making this transition. rejection is a common experience for entrepreneurs. Can you share a specific instance where you faced rejection and how you use grit and perseverance to get through?
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Speaker 2
Sure. Well, I mean, you know, literally in the, scenario I just described when I sent out dozens of applications, I listen, I got I think I got two interviews out of all that effort. And the only reason I got a position in a tech firm was that I went to calm Decks in Las Vegas, and I just went booth to booth pitching them.
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Speaker 2
And I found a small company that their director of marketing had gotten into a car accident on the way to see us, and if it wasn't for that, I would not have gotten that position either. So that was just that was just pure hand-to-hand combat, grit and, you know, walking the aisles of cars and and that's what it took.
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Speaker 2
and, you know, I mean, when I look back on that, it's kind of funny, but, it wasn't funny at the time. It was very, very challenging.
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Speaker 1
I'm used to those challenges. So guy entrepreneurship involves navigating the unknown. How can entrepreneurs cultivate that grit to confront uncertainty and persevere in the face of ambiguity?
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Speaker 2
Sure. I mean, to be an entrepreneur means that you're going to go where you know, no man or no woman has necessarily gone before. especially when you start a company. And I think the step, number one is that you need to brace for impact. And bracing for impact means that, you know, you should not go into this game with this concept that, oh, you know, I read about all these billionaires and unicorns and it seems so easy.
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Speaker 2
you start new, you go to one VC firm, they give you $5 million, and then six months later, you ship. And then the biggest problem you have is scaling your company. And, you know, your your app rises to the number one app at the Apple Store or iOS store. And you know what? Yes. I mean, you know, I believe in Santa Claus too, but that's not how it works.
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Speaker 2
So you need to brace for impact that your product will be late. And no matter how great you think it is, the odds are it's going to be very hard to get people to even try it, much less buy it, or even use it. You know, I'm not trying to feel fulfilled people full of negativity. But you you need to understand that that's what's going to happen.
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Speaker 2
And I think knowing that that's going to happen, you're not surprised. And you're also psychologically prepared that, you know, being an entrepreneur and using grit. It is a marathon. It is not a sprint. This is not a nine second thing. This is a 26 mile thing.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, I've heard a lot of people talk to me about Remax, and I try to remind them it's an overnight success. It just took 51 years.
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Speaker 2
yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, the the press tries to reduce many things to instant success. I mean, that's the sexy story, right? But behind every Insta success is years and years of grit. There's like I, I interviewed about 225 remarkable people. Jane Goodall, Stacey Abrams, Bob Dini, Angela Duckworth, Carol Dweck, you know, all the heroes of of behavioral economics economists and and social psychologists.
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Speaker 2
And listen, there's not one remarkable person who said, yeah, you know, I just decided to study chimpanzees. And the next week I was in Africa and I figured out that they have socialize. And then I got invited back to Oxford, and they gave me a PhD. And, you know, life is easy. I mean, nobody described the arc of their life in those kind of terms.
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Speaker 1
You know? But I look at your resume, the, the educational background to begin with. But the companies that you were in and the companies you founded and so on, it looks like just incredible success. Can you share a notable failure from your entrepreneurial journey?
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Speaker 2
Yeah. Listen, I mean, you know, by definition, a resume is a marketing material, right? It's it's an ad for you. So you don't you don't emphasize the warts in your life. I tell you, I started my career in the Macintosh division of Apple. Well, actually, I started in the jewelry business, and then I went to this small software company that had just had their director of marketing be injured.
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Speaker 2
And after that, I went to work in the Macintosh division and in the Macintosh division, I did well, both career wise, visibility wise. And then after that, I started a series of companies and none of the companies I started really were a home run. Then I returned to Apple as Apple's chief evangelist, and that was at the time that Apple was supposed to die.
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Speaker 2
so I help preserve Apple. And then I left and I started out another thing, and I can't tell you that, you know, my life has been one, one success after another. but I can tell you that my life, really my career really began with the Macintosh division, and it's ending with Canva. And and let's just say that that's a pretty good record right there.
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Speaker 2
Now, I never Dave, I never discuss well, you know, between Apple and Canva, there was about 35 years of hitting singles and hitting pop flies and hitting foul balls. I mean, it it, it it's not like that. if you're if I'm being honest.
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Speaker 1
Of course, teams are crucial in entrepreneurial ventures. How do you build and lead a team that shares your level of ambition and resilience?
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Speaker 2
Well, I think, again, that you need to sell people and I mean sell. Not in a, not in the kind of, you know, used car salesman sense, but do you need to get people to believe in your dream as much as you do? And, and that's something Steve did extremely well. I mean, maybe better than anybody else in history.
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Speaker 2
And so we truly believed in this dream of democratizing computing and making people more productive and really creative with a computer and and so it's about selling people on this dream that, you know, this is how we are going to change the world. And I hope you'll join us. let's change the world together. And Melanie did the same thing with Canva.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm sure in your experience with marketing and branding, how can entrepreneurs use grit to effectively promote and establish their ventures in competitive markets?
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Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, you again, we come back to this concept that you only read about the sort of miracle stories that, oh, you, you know, you posted one thing and it went viral or you did one thing and it went viral and, you know, live happily ever after. And, as you say, it took 51 years for you, and it took about 40 years for me.
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Speaker 2
And I think that the, the key to marketing and sales is its sampling. It's just you gotta try a lot of stuff and a lot of stuff will fail. And, you know, there's there's always this kind of, fu fad du jour, which is, you know, first it was social media and and now it maybe it's TikTok and then it's going to be artificial intelligence or something.
00:13:12:09 - 00:13:35:10
Speaker 2
But you just have to keep trying different things. And life is keep moving ahead. And I don't know if that's that's just the way it is. And if you don't have a great attitude, if you don't have this growth mindset that you need to constantly learn and, and shift from, you know, there was a time where having an 800 number was like a breakthrough, like, oh my God, they have an 800 number.
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Speaker 2
What brilliant marketing. I mean, we laugh at that now and then and then for a while it was, oh my God, they have a website. You know, you don't have to call the 800 number anymore. You don't have to use a fax machine, never a website. And we just keep going down the line like that. And you know, now in the age of AI, that's going to be a whole new ballgame.
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Speaker 2
So if you didn't have a growth mindset, you might be still stuck on having a toll free line as your major marketing effort. Yeah.
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Speaker 1
I've often repeated the concept that you can't do today's business with yesterday's methods. Yeah, it's better to be in business tomorrow.
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Speaker 2
Yep.
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Speaker 1
And in this rapidly changing world we're in, it's changing so fast.
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Speaker 2
I mean, how many of you have gone to a blockbuster to rent a movie late?
00:14:24:03 - 00:14:38:16
Speaker 1
I understand that for startups facing challenges and setbacks, what advice do you have for maintaining this grit and the determination to navigate the complexity of starting a business?
00:14:38:18 - 00:15:06:07
Speaker 2
Well, I mean, this is this is one of those kind of subjects that, you know, yeah, yeah. If you listen to the author and the guru and the visionary and, you know, the thought leader and they're telling you you've got to have grit, you got to keep going. And I would not disagree with that, but I think that, you know, the key is that when you, when you are in a situation.
00:15:06:09 - 00:15:30:05
Speaker 2
Well, I was at a very large company the other day and to my utter amazement, in the middle of this employee meeting about my book, okay, in front of 250 of his peers, this one employee as well. How do I know when it's time to quit this company and start my own company? And like, I was floored. Like, who would ask that question in front of his boss?
00:15:30:05 - 00:16:04:00
Speaker 2
But but anyway, I think the answer to that question is when you no longer are asking people if you should do something because you just feel compelled to do it, that's when you know. And until that moment, you know, you ought to think twice because something is obviously not quite there yet. Now, I don't want to paint a picture that when you start a company, you are absolutely certain of success, because that would you may be delusional, if that's the case.
00:16:04:02 - 00:16:13:06
Speaker 2
But you should not be like, if if someone can easily talk you out of doing something, then you probably don't believe in it enough.
00:16:13:08 - 00:16:34:02
Speaker 1
I agree with that. You know, I started Remax when I was 27. now I'm 78, but I was always had this young mindset. it was maybe naive, but I read a study recently that the average age of a, a founder of a company is 47 years old.
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Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:16:34:22 - 00:16:52:20
Speaker 1
And I, you know, you think back on jobs and you think back on Bill gates and you think back on, Facebook and all that. And that distorts the picture is the majority of the people really have had a career before. They stick their toe in the water and start something.
00:16:52:22 - 00:17:20:15
Speaker 2
Yeah. I think, you know, I've read that statistic too. And and I am surprised. but I think what someone should do is they should look beyond the top level data. Right? So the top level data may say the average is 47. But what would be I think more interesting is well break this down by industry. So maybe in restaurants it's 47 and maybe in retail stores it's you know, 45.
00:17:20:16 - 00:17:43:21
Speaker 2
But what about for a tech firm like what's the average starting age of a tech firm which is different from a restaurant or a retail store or a consultancy or something? Because, I that's what I would be interested in. I suspect that the starting age of founders for a tech firm is much less than 47.
00:17:43:23 - 00:18:25:23
Speaker 1
I would assume. So. So one last question. Yes. as I was growing my business, there's this concept about networking and using your network to expand. And to a certain degree, it was, not tasteful to me. This question of put people in your bucket and then they will oh, you and I did not like that. However, after decades of working, I have discovered the value of networking, of getting a step up on the competition by using friends and neighbors and contacts, that you can further both of your goals.
00:18:26:01 - 00:18:34:11
Speaker 1
So talk to me about, networking in your mindset with all these businesses that you started.
00:18:34:13 - 00:19:10:23
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, I understand the hesitation to, you know, to be this kind of manipulative networker, right, who just like, shucking and jiving and trying to, you know, make relationships towards the specific end. having said that, I mean, I think if you ask people, they would say that I have a lot of connections in, but I let me tell you some principles of, I think that will, will show you a higher ground than, you know, simple shuck and jiving networking.
00:19:10:23 - 00:19:32:05
Speaker 2
So first of all, I think that whenever you do something, you should do something that is mutually, mutually beneficial. Right. So like when I tell people to use a macintosh, well, at this point in my life, I have like four shares of Apple, doesn't really matter to me, but I truly do believe when I tell you to use a macintosh, I'm doing you a favor.
00:19:32:05 - 00:19:53:14
Speaker 2
I'm helping you pick the right computer. Same thing with Canva. Canva I have many more shares, but with Canva, I can honestly tell you when I tell you to use Canva, it's because it's good for you to, not just me. So number one, in networking is it's got to be mutually beneficial. It's not a matter of how can I use this person towards my end?
00:19:53:16 - 00:20:21:10
Speaker 2
second thing is, I believe in reciprocation and that when somebody helps you, you have a moral obligation to help them. Third, I believe in precipitation. If there's such a word, which is, you know, you should just do things for people in advance and not even expect repayment, but know that I think there's a karmic system in operation where when you do good stuff for people, good stuff happens to you.
00:20:21:10 - 00:20:41:09
Speaker 2
It just kind of works out that way. And the fourth principle I have is that I always will, not always. But I most of the time I default to. Yes. So I mean, there's, you know, there's this concept that you should focus and keep saying no and only do a few things very well. But that's not my theory.
00:20:41:09 - 00:20:48:16
Speaker 2
My theory is you say yes to everything and you help as many people as possible, and you let karma sort it out at the end.
00:20:48:18 - 00:21:00:23
Speaker 1
It's an outstanding attitude. Thank you. in closing out, what's the title of your latest book and what does it cover?
00:21:01:01 - 00:21:26:11
Speaker 2
my, the title of my latest book is Think Remarkable Nine Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference. And the genesis of this book is I have this podcast called Remarkable People. And in which I interview people like Jane Goodall and Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stacey Abrams, Bob Cellini, Katy Milkman, Angela Duckworth, Steve Wolfram, Steve Wozniak, and trying to drop all the big names that I can.
00:21:26:13 - 00:21:45:09
Speaker 2
And so now, this podcast is five years old. We have 250 hours and 5000 pages of transcripts. And there's so much information and inspiration in that we figure it out. No one's going to listen to that amount of time, and no one's going to read that on a transcript. So we need to put it into a book.
00:21:45:11 - 00:22:12:14
Speaker 2
So this book called Sync Remarkable is 170 pages and it has 88 tactics. I use a lot of heads and subheads. I use a lot of bullets. There's a lot of tactics and practical stuff. This is not one of those 250 pages about one concept. This is practical and tactical. Every two pages there's some new idea for you.
00:22:12:16 - 00:22:22:00
Speaker 2
And I'm trying to make this, in a sense, a sort of a manual for life, particularly for young people who are searching for a direction in life.
00:22:22:02 - 00:22:30:09
Speaker 1
That's awesome. I appreciate that, lots of great ideas for us today. I sincerely appreciate you being on the show with me.
00:22:30:11 - 00:22:37:14
Speaker 2
thank you very much for having me. And I'm flattered to meet the founder of Remax, so that's a big deal.
00:22:37:16 - 00:22:38:05
Speaker 1
Thank you.
00:22:38:09 - 00:22:38:17
Speaker 2
All right.
00:22:38:23 - 00:22:41:11
Speaker 1
Take care of people. Take care of yourself.
00:22:41:11 - 00:22:44:13
Speaker 2
Bye bye. Bye bye. Have a good weekend. Take care.