In this episode, I unpack the lessons from “Think Remarkable” by Guy Kawasaki.
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Full Transcript:
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs and the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do. I’m Mickey Mellen. This is Stacking Knowledge. And that was a bit from Guy Kawasaki’s book, Think Remarkable.
Specifically, that was the ad copy from Apple’s 1997 Think Different campaign, which you’ve probably heard before. Guy includes it early in the book, and it’s a great way to kick things off.
This book is based on the hundreds of interviews that he’s had with guests on his Remarkable People podcast. This book has really broken down into three main sections. They’re growth, grit, and grace. Growth is building your foundation. Grit is implementing your aspirations, and grace is to uplift and inspire. So they’re kind of in order of how he sees things going. So before you get to that, there’s an intro to kind of paint the picture. He starts with a quote from Anne Frank, which is,
quite sad in retrospect, but she says, a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven’t happened yet. And so that’s kind of the idea of this book is you can be remarkable and that’s in your future. You can make it happen from this point forward and here’s how to do it. He also says, quote, being remarkable also means you were a good person. People use words such as empathetic, honest and compassionate to describe you.
This one stood out to me right off the top, because those are words I like to think people say about me, and I think they often do, but not always. There are times when I’m not empathetic, honest, or compassionate, and so I should strive more for that, and that was a good reminder of that.
The last thing he says to kind of structure the book is he has a quote from Voltaire that says, 20 volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared. And that’s basically what this book is. It’s a lot of little pocket pamphlets. I think there’s a hundred and some odd chapters. Each one’s short, just little nuggets of wisdom throughout. So we’re gonna skip quite a few of them. This will be very long podcast. We dug into all of them. We’ll hit quite a few along the way. So let’s dig in here. So stage one is growth, to build a foundation. He starts with actually a quote from his son, Nate Kawasaki, who says, replace why is this happening to me with,
What is this trying to teach me? And that’s a simple statement that’s much easier said than done. I mean, there’s a lot of things where you do say, why is this happening to me? This is so bad. But really if he says, you can frame that to what is this trying to teach me? Again, that growth mindset. How do you grow from the bad things that happen? I thought it was a great, thing to kick things off from Nate there. He also says embrace vulnerability. He has a quote from Jenna Rometti, Gianni. He has a quote from Jenny Rometti that says, quote, growth and comfort never coexist.
He’ll get into this a few times. If you want to grow, that is fantastic. But if you want to be comfortable, that’s something very different. He’ll talk about some of the specific ways you can choose one over the other. This book is about growth though. If you want to grow, growth and comfort never coexist. Let’s just know that going in. He says to plant many seeds. He’ll talk about this a few times. He’ll talk number of ways that happens. He gets a quote here. He says, quote, in Silicon Valley, we throw ideas against the wall, see what sticks, paint a bull’s eye around the winners, and then declare victory.
At most, we are making intelligent guesses and hoping for the best. The best practice is to plant many seeds because the more seeds you plant, the more oaks will grow.” And he talks about this quite a bit as well. Not only from the literally the oaks perspective in his house in California, but obviously in the idea here of just trying many things, testing things out and seeing what sticks and what doesn’t and going forward with that. Lots and lots of ideas of just come up with thoughts, try things out, see where they go.
Moving on to stage two is grit. We kind of hit stage one pretty quickly. The stages get a little slower as we get through the book He has a chapter four is called do good shit and that’s a big thing He talks about a lot like doing quality work He has a quote from Olivia. Giuliana. That says problem plus hope equals change You have a problem add some hope to it You can make a change if you have one or the other you may fall short He also talks a little bit. He’s a quote from Mike Moritz. I was with Sequoia Capital
They say he’s, quote, perhaps the greatest venture capitalist ever, which is likely true. He invested in Google, Yahoo, PayPal, LinkedIn, Zappos, Dropbox, WhatsApp. I he had a pretty good track record there. But he said that the richest vein for tech startups is nerds building what they want to use. And so that’s a great way to come up with ideas for your future. What would make a difference to you probably will make a difference to other people, whether that’s a new product or a service or something you can solve, a problem you can solve that would make your life better, probably is going to make other people’s life better too. And so it’s a good way to ride there.
I talked about developing a routine. This is kind of just atomic habits basics here a little bit, but it’s a good reminder for all of us. There’s a quote from BJ Fogg. I’ll read the quote here. says, and so those are the two hacks. One, you make it tiny. Two, you don’t use any external reminders. You use your existing routine to be your reminder. So you’re finding where it fits, where it will flow. And then the third hack is how you wire it in to make it automatic. And that’s by causing yourself to feel a positive emotion. So again, make it tiny.
make it automatic and make it positive. So if you wanted to, for example, brush your teeth more often, you could say, make it tiny. I mean, it’s kind of tiny in and of itself. Bigger ones you may need to break down to atomic pieces, hence atomic habits for that book. But he says, don’t use any external reminders. Use your existing routine. So if brushing your teeth was something you want to do more, every time you eat, you go brush your teeth afterward. You don’t have to have a separate reminder. Your reminder is when I eat, I brush my teeth, and then to feel positive, I would hope that would make you feel positive anyhow. And I hope that’s not something you need a lot of reminders for, but you get the idea there.
He also talks about balance quite a bit, and really the lack of balance if you want to be remarkable. So this title he called, Forget Balance, Think Ikigai. So he says, you want a balanced life of equal portions of work, personal and family time, you might have to go work for a big successful company and hope you never get laid off. If you want to be remarkable and make a difference, you may be facing an unbalanced life and years of toil and sacrifice. again, it’s your choice to make. There are a lot of people that pick a big successful company, hope not to get laid off and…
have a great balance of work and personal and can do all that stuff. He says this book’s about being remarkable. If you want to be remarkable, it’s not gonna be that simple. It’s gonna be unbalanced. And frankly, I don’t mind unbalanced. You know, there’s, I don’t want to say work 80 hours a week or whatever, but to say work is this section and life is this section doesn’t really work for me either. I like to kind of blend them together. I’ll work a little bit on the weekends. I’ll take some time off during the week. Like we kind of make it work. And he’s kind of saying that for, for being a remarkable person. need to do that probably much more than I do even. He talks about
Selling your dream, he pulls a quote from John Lennon, says quote, a dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. And so yeah, you can dream by yourself all day, but if you want to go somewhere, get people to go with you, make that dream a reality. He gets into longer chapter now called Grok, the Gospel of Bob. Bob being Robert Cialdini. He talks about him quite a bit in here. So he says, here’s my favorite Cialdini-isms that will accelerate the adoption of your ideas. And I’m gonna read through all these. It’s just a fantastic list. I think it’s a big piece of the book.
So let’s go through what it is. Accelerate the adoption of your ideas. The first one is to make people like you. He says, quote, how influential and persuasive do you find people who you don’t like? End of discussion. Make yourself likable if you want to sell them your dream. Next he says, use peers. Bob calls this persuasion. Use people around you. Precipicate. This is the idea of helping people before you want something from them. I recommend trusting in karma and helping a broad swath of people. Ideally, you would help people for the sheer pleasure of making the world a kinder, gentler place.
His next one is ask for reciprocity. Help for the sheer pleasure, but there’s nothing wrong in asking for the return of a favor. In fact, it may be optimal because it enables people to repay favors and then feel better about asking you to do more, which in turn builds better relationships. So I have two stories I’ve heard about that. One was a family that had a neighbor move in and they knew they were much better off than the neighbor. The neighbor struggled financially, but they would go over from time to time to ask to borrow little things like a cup of sugar. And the child asked around like, why are you asking to borrow a cup of sugar? We have plenty of sugar.
They said, so she’ll feel okay to ask me favors back. And I thought that was very sweet and brilliant. I have a longer one from the book, The Charisma Myth. It was a great book. They have a long quote here about Benjamin Franklin. I’ll read this piece of how he handled this very thing, the asking for reciprocity. From the book, said quote, Benjamin Franklin’s favorite way to win over his political opponents was not to do them favors, but rather to ask them for favors. Franklin once wrote a note to one of his adversaries expressing his hope of reading a certain rare book he’d heard that this gentleman possessed.
and asking the favor of borrowing it for just a few days. The gentleman complied. Franklin returned it as promised, with a second note warmly expressing his appreciation and gratitude for the favor. In his autobiography, Franklin describes what happened as a result. He said, quote, when we next met in the house, he spoke to me, which he had never done before, and with great civility. And he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions so that we became great friends and our friendship continued to his death. This technique has become known as the Ben Franklin Effect.
So that was from the Charisma Myth, but this is yeah, the Asperger’s Propriety. The next one on the list provides social proof. He gives the example, says, back in 2002 when people began seeing many white iPod earbuds, resistance was futile. And I think a lot of us that were old enough back in 2002 remember that very well. Next is to demonstrate expertise. He talks about his doctors. He’s had some hearing loss issues. And when the doctors that he trusted a lot said, here’s what you need to do, he said, I hopped right onto the operating table because of their expertise. They demonstrated it, he trusted them for it.
He says to demonstrate scarcity. He says when people think there’s a limited quantity of something, it becomes more valuable to them. For example, there was a limited number of Gmail accounts when Google first introduced its email service. Scarcity is often bullshit, such as the limited number of copies of NFT art, but the psychological effect is real. Next he says tap into commitment and consistency. People like if they make a commitment to be seen as someone that follows through on commitments. So if you can get them to make a commitment, signing a pledge or whatever, can often make a big difference. Foster unity, people want to get together.
demonstrate a trend. This was interesting. He said quote, Bob told me that people extrapolate data so it’s powerful to demonstrate a trend. A single data point isn’t nearly as powerful. For example, a 10 % market share may be a huge accomplishment but it’s not as powerful as saying in year one we had 3%, in year two it was 5%, in year three it was 10%. People will assume your market share will continue to grow. His next one is promote helping others over helping oneself. I think that one’s fairly obvious and it’s a point he makes a lot in the book.
And last one is use converts. If there’s people that are against you or don’t use your product or like your competitors better and they eventually come over to your side, take advantage of that. Tell their story. What made them shift? They’re gonna be a huge fan of yours at that point because of that. And he tells some stories that back that up. That can be great to use converts. That was the list of Bob’s Grock there, but he has one other piece in this that I thought was good. Mostly just as a simple reminder for myself, because I’m not always as good about this as I should be, but he says before you meet someone, he says, quote, do your homework.
Shame on you if you don’t use LinkedIn, a chat bot, a search engine, and social media platforms to learn more about a person before you meet. These tools make it trivially easy to find something you have in common with most people. And I’m pretty good about that, but I could always do more. I’d need to be researching more just to find those commonalities before we meet. He has another chapter called Let 100 Flowers Blossom about kind of getting everyone collectively behind things. And he talked about the Macintosh, how…
When the Mac was first coming out, the idea was kind of, let’s compete with IBM. Let’s get spreadsheets and databases and make that happen. And that’s not what happened, but it’s because of the community. So he said, quote, we wanted a general productivity computer, Macintosh, but independent software companies and our customers created a desktop publishing machine. Hallelujah. I learned to take the win and build upon it. Ultimately, the market, not you, is what controls the positioning of your products and services. So you let the market do what they want, let people try things, let them build things. It’s going to make everyone better in the end of it.
And then onto stage three is grace to uplift and inspire. He starts with a quote from the Dalai Lama that says quote, graceful leadership is about leading by example and showing others how to live with kindness, compassion, and empathy. Very similar to that quote early on, but yeah, graceful leadership is about leading by example and showing others how to live with kindness, compassion, and empathy. He talks about imposter syndrome and getting over imposter syndrome, but not completely getting over it necessarily, because there’s advantage to having it. Here’s what he says, well I guess to back up.
If you’re not familiar with imposter syndrome, it’s the idea that you’re not as smart as people think you are, which we all basically have to a degree. He shared a story about Brene Brown, I think it was in this book, where she said when she was writing her 10th book, she said, this is the one, this is the one they’re gonna find out I’m a fraud, they don’t really know what I’m talking about, and clearly she’s not, and she’s awesome, but everyone has that a little bit, and it can be a good thing. So here’s what he said about that in the book. He said, viewed positively, imposter syndrome can mean that you have a sense of humility and self-awareness.
This is good because it can motivate you to work harder to fulfill and exceed your lofty image. And it’s better to have imposter syndrome than the narcissistic I am awesome and the universe owes me accolade syndrome. ⁓ Digging in further in that chapter, let’s see, I’m skipping quite a few here. There’s a nice quote from Gandhi that simply says, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. I like this one here, you talk about counting your blessings. He said, everyone I interviewed for remarkable people, his podcast.
counted their blessings even when their blessings were few and their difficulties were numerous. Everyone. So again, he had amazing people on that podcast and he said all of them counted their blessings and that’s something I’m trying to be better about. I mean, if you’re listening to this, you’re able to listen to a podcast. You’re one of the rare people in history that has that much technology and freedom of time and all the resources needed to listen to a podcast. Remember that. know, something I try to do that’s tangible is whenever I go to the tap to turn on the water, I try to look at that just for a second say, this is amazing. I mean, 99 % of humans that ever lived
don’t have that. I’ve got four different taps in my house that I can turn on, get beautiful fresh water anytime I want, at any temperature I want. It never runs out and it essentially costs nothing. mean the cost of a glass of water on your water bill is under a penny. It’s essentially free. It’s amazing. Just take a second and appreciate that and count your blessings with that. Going further, we talked about over delivering. I like this one. He said, getting an okay sometimes from a manager doesn’t produce the same feeling when it’s done in an instant.
He shares a story about going to a restaurant and had a problem there with his previous visit and the cashier took care of him right away. Like gave him some free tacos or something like that. And that was great. It’s okay, like he said, okay if the cashier says, let me go talk to the manager and then they come take care of you. And that’s good, certainly better than them not taking care of you. But man, when the cashier has the power to be able to just take care of you right away, it’s fantastic. You know, I’ve heard of other great companies that do this.
I think it’s the Ritz Carlton, ⁓ most of their staff has like $1,000, just like whatever they want to do they can. If it’s under $1,000 just help the guests and take care of their problems. We do something similar at Green Melon. Our number is a little looser, something like $100 or $200, but we say if you need a plug-in, if you need something to get things done, just do it. Don’t waste your time, don’t waste our time, don’t keep the client waiting, make them happy. If it’s a bigger thing, let’s talk about it. if you can empower your team to take care of your customers without having to go back and ask every time, it’s fantastic.
Next he talks about changing how you keep score, not just keeping score based on money. People think money is how you measure success and it is one way to do it and we’ll talk some of the downsides to it right at the end here. But he says, how you keep score says a lot about you. So here are some areas to examine to ensure you’re on the right path. And he gives, I believe it’s six things you can measure other than money to see if you’re on the right path. So he talks about impact with Saul Kahn, the creator of Kahn Academy. He measures by how many kids he’s helped around the world. Fulfillment, loving what you do and doing what you love.
Relationships, he says, one measure of success is the quality of your relationships. ⁓ The fourth one is growth. Over the course of your lifetime, you can measure your success by how much knowledge and skill you’ve gained. Resilience, you’re ⁓ probably successful if you can persevere in the face of challenges and failure. In other words, when you were tested, did you pass? And then the last one is contentment. This means that you don’t long for more of anything except maybe time with your family and friends. Contentment indicates that you realize what’s truly important in life. So non-financial measures, yeah, impact,
fulfillment, relationships, growth, resilience, and contentment. And he says, quote, people who keep score this way are almost always gracious. If you keep score this way, you will become gracious too. The people who keep score with money, power, and fame are seldom gracious. They see everyone as a means to their end. Another thing he talks about is when you’re disagreeing with someone or having a difficult conversation, he suggests using how instead of using the word why. So I’ll read, it’s kind of a longer section here, but I thought this was a great way just to explain
how to have these tough conversations. He says, quote, that question how is really different from why do you believe this? How is a narrative and almost all of our whys are undergirded by hows. It’s how did you come to be convinced that this was true? How did you come to think in that way? How did you come to experience life in the way that you’re describing that now requires the response you’re making? How did that actually unfold? The question how can be an amazing tool in helping people who are not like each other find each other in a different way.
If I’m sitting there and having somebody unload their story of how they came to hold that conviction, I’m suddenly in a really different place than it would be if we’d just been having a debate. Why ends up creating, often creating a defensiveness, but how creates an invitation. I want to know you and I want to know your story. So rather than asking why and kind of debating folks, how, understand their story, get to know people. Again, this is a lot about connections and understanding people. The better you understand people, I mean, the better everyone is for that. And so yeah, the how works out very well for that.
He talks about ignoring the small stuff. He says, give people the benefit of the doubt. Almost all the time people are diligent, competent, and doing their jobs. So go through life assuming that people are good until proven bad. In fact, I’d probably give them two or three strikes before drawing any conclusions. So he shared a story there where a woman in his neighborhood said something to him he didn’t appreciate and he took it very poorly. But when he talked to his father, his father said, no, here’s her perspective. Here’s why she thought that. And it kind of changed his perspective. He didn’t give her the benefit of the doubt. And in retrospect, he wishes he had. His father explained how she should have received
benefit of the doubt because she probably was coming from a good place or at least a fair place and he didn’t see it that way because he immediately assumed the worst and so it give people the benefit of the doubt. He shares in chapter 9 turn and burn the Chinese proverb you’ve likely heard that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago the second best time is now and so if there’s good things you want to do you may say I really should have started doing that good thing a long time ago started giving you that that charity or working that nonprofit or starting the business or whatever you want to do you should have probably done it before but
you didn’t and so the next best time is today not tomorrow not next week not next year but right now and then lastly he ends the book on a great great bit of tips from his parents ⁓ he says I’m ending with my top 10 tips for being remarkable because we’ve so covered so much
He ends the book with just great tips to kind of summarize what was in the book and just kind of reiterate some of what we talked about. So he says quote, I’m ending with my top 10 tips for being remarkable because we’ve covered so much material. So number one, make the world a better place. This is what remarkable people do. Money, fame, fortune and followers are usually incidental. They are not the priority. Two, keep on growing. Remarkable people don’t stop learning. They’re exploring, not boring. It doesn’t occur to them that they have ever arrived or that they are done. Number three says do good shit.
These three little words define what makes a difference and what remarkable people do. They provide a conceptual framework for what you want to accomplish with your life. Number four, plant lots of seeds. You have to plant many acorns to just get a few oaks. You never know which will take root, which will be eaten by the deer, and which will grow up strong and mighty. Number five, raise the tide. Life is not a zero sum game if you’re trying to make the world a better place. The rising tide floats all boats and the falling tide brings down everyone. I love that one. Life is not a zero sum game.
if you’re trying to make the world a better place. There’s room for everyone to do that. If you’re trying to make the most money, there’s not room for everyone there and you’re gonna burn a lot of boats. Let’s rise everything together. At number six, he says, trust the dots. The only way to see how the dots connect is by looking backwards. There’s no way to predict the ultimate outcome, so give yourself a break and keep trying. This actually, he sort of paraphrased a quote from Steve Jobs. Steve had said, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So have to trust the dots will somehow connect in your future. So.
Again, hindsight’s 20-20. You can see what got you to where you are. You don’t know what’s going forward, so just trust it. Keep putting the dots down on the road. Keep working forward, and things will probably work out well for you. Number seven, trust your icky guy, that which gives your life meaning and purpose. It may take you years, and you may even transition from one to another. Number eight, make yourself valuable and unique. When you do something that’s needed and you are the best at it, you’ll make a difference, and you’re on your way to being remarkable. Number nine, keep at it. To succeed, you must stand up one more time than you fall down.
Everyone will forget the number of times you failed if you succeed and grit overcomes talent in the real world. We see this all the time. Most anyone you see that successful has a string of failures that led up to learn from they tried things they kept putting down acorns to build trees and this is where we ended up. And then the last one number 10, take the high road. There’s little traffic on the high road because only remarkable people go there. This means giving people the benefit of the doubt and believing people are good until proven bad.
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