Sidecar Sync

Embracing AI to Achieve Remarkable Success with Guy Kawasaki | 38

• Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias • Episode 38

Share episode

Send us a text

In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Mallory and Amith sit down with the legendary Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist at Canva and host of the Remarkable People podcast. Guy shares insights from his new book, "Think Remarkable," discusses his favorite AI tools, and introduces his custom LLM, Kawasaki GPT. Listen in as they explore the impact of AI on creativity, the importance of adopting a growth mindset, and how associations can leverage AI for better member engagement and education. Plus, hear why Guy believes that being an AI-savvy professional is crucial in today's competitive landscape.

🔎 Find Out More About Guy Kawasaki and Canva:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guykawasaki/
Lessons: https://www.canva.com/learn/guy-kawasaki/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GuyKawasaki
Remarkable People podcast: https://guykawasaki.com/remarkable-people/

🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
ChatGPT ➡ https://www.openai.com/chatgpt
Claude ➡ https://www.anthropic.com/product
Gemini ➡ https://gemini.google.com
Perplexity ➡ https://www.perplexity.ai/
Kawasaki GPT ➡ https://www.kawasakigpt.com/

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction to Guy Kawasaki
01:52 - Discussion on "Think Remarkable" Book
06:13 - Guy's Perspective on AI and Creativity
09:58 - The Future of AI in Associations
15:45 - Guy's Favorite AI Tools
21:19 - Building Kawasaki GPT
29:01 - Adopting a Growth Mindset
36:00 - The Role of Empathy in Product Development
39:05 - Evangelism Marketing Explained
43:31 - Conclusion and Where to Find Guy

🚀 Follow Sidecar on LinkedIn
https://linkedin.com/sidecar-global

👍 Please Like & Subscribe!
https://twitter.com/sidecarglobal
https://www.youtube.com/@SidecarSync
https://sidecarglobal.com

More about Your Hosts:

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress 🔗 https://BlueCypress.io, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

📣 Follow Amith on LinkedIn:
https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan

Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space.

📣 Follow Mallory on Linkedin:
https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias

Guy:

You know, there's this fear that artificial intelligence is going to replace you. I would say the more accurate fear is that what will replace you is someone who can use AI better than you, not AI itself.

Amith:

Welcome to Sidecar Sync, your weekly dose of innovation. If you're looking for the latest news, insights and developments in the association world, especially those driven by artificial intelligence, you're in the right place. We cut through the noise to bring you the most relevant updates, with a keen focus on how AI and other emerging technologies are shaping the future. No fluff, just facts and informed discussions. I'm Amit Nagarajan, Chairman of Blue Cypress, and I'm your host.

Mallory:

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Sidecar Sync Podcast. My name is Mallory Mejiaz, I am one of your co-hosts, along with Amit Nagarajan, and I also run Sidecar. Mallory Mejiaz, I am one of your co-hosts, along with Amit Nagarajan, and I also run Sidecar. Now, today is a really special day for us here at the Sidecar Sync podcast because we got the chance to interview Guy Kawasaki. Now, if you don't know who Guy is, let me tell you. He is the chief evangelist at Canva and host of the Remarkable People podcast. He was the chief evangelist at Apple, trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, mercedes-benz brand ambassador and special assistant to the Motorola division of Google.

Mallory:

In today's episode, amit and I get the chance to talk with Guy about his brand new book called Think Remarkable. We get Guy's take on artificial intelligence, hear about some of his favorite AI tools and use cases, including his very own custom LLM called Kawasaki GPT. And you'll get to hear whether Guy thinks that associations should embrace AI or not, and I'll give you a little spoiler the answer is yes. Stay tuned for an excellent interview with Guy Kawasaki. After this quick word from our sponsor for an excellent interview with Guy Kawasaki. After this quick word from our sponsor.

Mallory:

Today's sponsor is Sidecar's AI Learning Hub. The Learning Hub is your go-to place to sharpen your AI skills, ensuring you're keeping up with the latest in the AI space. With the AI Learning Hub, you'll get access to a library of lessons designed to the unique challenges and opportunities within associations, weekly live office hours with AI experts and a community of fellow AI enthusiasts who are just as excited about learning AI as you are. Are you ready to future-proof your career? You can purchase 12-month access to the AI Learning Hub for $399. For more information, go to sidecarglobalcom slash hub. Guy Kawasaki, thank you so much for joining us on the Sidecar Sync podcast. How are you doing today?

Guy:

I am doing very well. I just finished surfing for two hours, so that's why I'm all like red.

Mallory:

I just got finished reading your book Think Remarkable recently and I listened to it and I heard you talk quite a bit about surfing, so that that is something you're passionate about, right.

Guy:

I would. That is a. That is a mild understatement.

Mallory:

Yes, Well, I figured I would start off this podcast being a little bit vulnerable on my end, because you talk about vulnerability a lot in your new book Think Remarkable that I just mentioned. And Amit, when he first mentioned your name it sounded familiar but, to be totally honest, I didn't know a ton about you and I'm really ashamed, kind of, and embarrassed to admit that, because I immediately took a deep dive and started researching you and asked myself how could I possibly not have known as much as I know now about Guy Kawasaki? So first I wanted to start off on that note and then acknowledging there might be some listeners believe it or not that we have who are not as familiar with who you are. Could you share a little bit about who you are? Sure, sure.

Guy:

As long as you don't think that I wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I mean.

Mallory:

I don't. That's all I ask, that I know.

Guy:

That's all I ask. Okay, so my name is Guy Kawasaki. I am currently chief evangelist of Canva. I used to be the chief evangelist of Apple. I have been a podcaster, entrepreneur, author, speaker and evangelist at Apple. I was Apple's second software evangelist. I help convince people to write Macintosh software and create Macintosh hardware, and I've also been on the board of trustees of Wikipedia, mercedes-benz brand ambassador and I have a podcast called Remarkable People. I'm the author of 16 books. I have a BA from Stanford, an MBA from UCLA, an honorary doctor from Babson. So that's me in 30 seconds.

Mallory:

Thank you for sharing. It sounds like you've practiced that before. Is that right?

Guy:

I've been telling it a long time.

Mallory:

Well, our listeners know this, but you may not know that we talk about AI pretty much all the time on this podcast and contextualize it for our association and nonprofit listeners. And something Amit and I had to ask ourselves before you came on today was how familiar is guy with AI? Is he into it, is he not into it? And then I put on my detective hat. I went to work and I found a recent podcast I guess that you did talking about harnessing AI for creativity. You mentioned that you used AI as a brainstorming assistant for your recent book Think. Remarkable and mind-blowingly enough, you have your own custom LLM called Kawasaki GPT, which I did use to create my script for this podcast. I'm curious, guy. You're a writer. You're a creative as well. Many writers and creatives have been hesitant to embrace AI because they see it as a threat to their industries as we know it. Did you ever experience that hesitation, or were you one of those that was quick to adopt?

Guy:

Not one second did I think it's a threat. I understand if you're a copy editor and now your company is just going to chat GPT and saying you know, write me a two paragraph description of this product. Be sure to, you know, highlight ease of use and safety and whatever, and you know it spits out the text. I understand how you're threatened, but I'm a writer of nonfiction books and I have a Substack newsletter and I have a Substack newsletter and if AI can replace me, god bless AI, because I don't think it's going to be that easy.

Guy:

And I have to tell you there is such a thing as Kawasaki GPT and it contains all of my writing, my videos, my blog posts and the transcripts of my podcasts, because the transcripts of the podcast reflect 250 remarkable people like Jane Goodall and Angela Duckworth and Stephen Wolfram and Neil deGrasse, tyson and Katie excuse me and Christy Yamaguchi and Ronnie Lott and Vivek Murthy. When you're asking Kawasaki GPT a question, you're asking me and those 250 people GPT a question. You're asking me and those 250 people. Seth Godin just agreed to put in 3 million words into my LLM and Derek Sivers is going to put his new book. So I'll tell you something. If I had voice synthesis in Kawasaki GPT that sounded like me, with the slight pigeon accent that I have. You could conduct this podcast interview with Kawasaki GPT, and I would argue that its answer would be better than mine's.

Mallory:

I honestly thought about that as I was going through Kawasaki GPT myself. I was like well, if we had the avatar which we have the technology to create, we could do this live. I wonder, wonder, though do you think we would lose that element of humanity if we were to interview your avatar versus you in the flesh?

Guy:

I guess there's only one way to find out, right.

Mallory:

We'll be the test rats, but.

Guy:

I could tell you something If you wanted pure text.

Guy:

I think the pure text that Kawasaki GPT puts out as guy is better than what I put out, at least the first pass, and I often use a Kawasaki GPT to draft stuff for me. So when somebody asked me for a contribution or a blurb or a forward, guess what I asked myself on Kawasaki GPT, like if someone were to send me a book. This may impugn my blurbs and forwards from now on, but if someone were to send me a book, I would put the PDF into Kawasaki GPT and I would say give me a three paragraph, 250 word forward, written in the style of Guy Kawasaki word forward written in the name in the, in the style of Guy Kawasaki. Be sure to highlight in two or three bullets the key selling points of this book. And boom, 30 seconds later, not even 30 seconds, five seconds later, I would have a draft forward that I then edit and I send to the author, and the author and the publisher says holy shit, we got this back so fast. It's perfect, we love it, we're going to put it in a book.

Amith:

I rest my case. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and you know there's a parallel universe to most of the listeners to this podcast are people who work at associations or nonprofits AI, you know, coming upon them very rapidly. A lot of them have been concerned about, you know, general purpose LLMs like Chachi, PT and Claude replacing their role in the world, and some of them have taken a similar path to let's address that. Sure go ahead.

Guy:

You know there's this fear that artificial intelligence is going to replace you. I would say the more accurate fear is that what will replace you is someone who can use AI better than you, not AI itself. And I think someone who can use AI better than you and knows prompts better than you and knows how to tweak these things better than you could replace you. Could some $15 an hour person go to ChatGPT and replace a great copywriter for an ad agency Boy? I kind of doubt that. I really do doubt that, you know, I really do doubt that. But but could someone who is a good copy editor or copywriter using chat GPT replace you? I would say you absolutely should be afraid of that.

Amith:

I agree completely and we share a very similar message, you know. Building on what you just said and what you explained earlier about Kawasaki GPT, I think there is a parallel path for associations who have volumes of content you know histories of, in some cases, decades or even centuries of content from journals and magazines and books being able to do something similar to what you did and then have their own GPT or their own AI that helps them do their work better and faster and more effectively.

Guy:

ultimately, but you know, if there's a fear, that I just wrote this book called Think Remarkable right, and I use three or four LLMs to tweak and to research. But it's not like I went to chat GPT and I said give me 50,000 word book that explains how to be remarkable. I want 10 chapters. Each chapter should begin with an active verb. Each heading should begin with an active verb. Each heading should contain three to four bullet items with tactics. And 30 seconds later I had my book, although I got to tell you, as I just said, that I should try to see what happens.

Amith:

But I do not think that it could do it the biggest possible experiment of basically what you just said, and then broke it down and started doing it bit by bit by bit, taking our thesis and having the AI, you know, write pieces of it, you know, and then recompose it and so forth. So we found it to be a very powerful tool. We're about to publish the second edition of the same book and the amount of time it took to write version two essentially was a sliver of what it took to use, you know, the AI tools at the time, early 23 to write version one. So we'll see where that goes.

Guy:

And and what is the the killer app aspect of AI for an association fundraising?

Amith:

Yeah, Well, I think fundraising is certainly an area of interest for a lot of nonprofits. Associations do some elements of fundraising. A lot of times they tend to be focused more on members and professional education. So they're interested in helping their members become better at what they do professionally. So they may be an association for accountants or an association for dermatologists, things like that, and those associations. They have members who essentially are taking education. Sometimes they're delivering content. They have a lot of events where they'll put on annual conferences I'm sure you've spoken at bunches of those over the years where they bring in keynotes and bring in session leaders to talk about things. But education is the core value.

Guy:

Medium I would say for many of these professional organizations is the core value medium, I would say, for many of these professional organizations. Well, I don't know how you could maximize and optimize the educational services that you provide as an association to your customer without using AI. At this point I don't know how you could do it. I mean, if there's any laggards out there, you know, just give it a try. My God and you know you read these stories about. Well, you know, I convinced, I convinced Chachi PT to tell me to leave my wife and create a nuclear bomb and start a war with China. You cannot use chat GPT. It's going to make up shit and it's going to make you do dumb things. Well, you know, if you spend seven hours, yes, I'm sure you could get chat GPT to send you that answer. But I mean, listen, I'm more afraid of about one person in North Korea, one person in Russia and one person in Mar-a-Lago, florida, launching a nuclear war than chat GPT.

Mallory:

You mentioned using a few LLMs to write your most recent book. I'm curious could you share any of your favorite tools or companies that you're keeping an eye on, guy, in terms of in the AI space?

Guy:

You know, I have to say that the LLM market is moving so fast it's very hard to form a loyalty to it, to any particular one, because at any given point you try Gemini, you try Perplexity, you try ChatGPT I mean they're all so good. I think that presents a great challenge to AI startups because I mean, right now you know the way Google has enhanced its fundamental old kind of search to now include AI. Wow, I mean, it's hard to beat Google with AI. I mean I would not want to be one of those companies. So when I was writing my book, I started with ChatGPT and I'll give you a very good use case book. I started with ChatGPT and I'll give you a very good use case.

Guy:

So I wanted to make the point in my book that many people who are remarkable made dramatic career changes. It's not like they stuck with what they fell in love with age five till they age 95, although Jane Goodall is an example of that but that's not the only path to being remarkable. So I asked ChatGPT give me examples of people who made dramatic career shifts and were successful. And ChatGPT gives me four or five, one of which was Julia Child. And I said Julia Child, how is she making a career change? And ChatGPT explains that Julia Child was working for the OSS, which is the precursor to the CIA. Julia Child was working for the OSS, which is the precursor to the CIA, and until her mid-30s she was a spook. And then she moved to France and she fell in love with French cooking and then she wrote a recipe book and had a TV show and you know, that's why Julia Child is Julia Child, the French chef. I would have never, ever heard of that example were it not for ChatGPT.

Guy:

And another way I use ChatGPT in my book is that I believe that the end of every section of a book should reiterate what that section tried to teach you. You know, this is the old yarn of tell them what you're going to say, say it and then tell them that you said it. Right, that same thing. And I got to tell you something that, mentally, after you told them what you're going to say and then you said it, then to write the summary.

Guy:

It's very hard to do that in a bright and fresh way. You tend to just want to cut and paste and, you know, replace it. So for many sections of the book I put in the first parts of those sections. And then I said write me a summary of this section in one paragraph, two to three sentences, a hundred words, and bada, bing, bada bang chat. Gpt spits that out and it's a fresh summary. It's not just me rehashing words, and you know I have. I counted once. I have 88 recommendations in my book, so that means there's at least 88 sections, which means I would have had to summarize 88 sections. That would take a long time.

Mallory:

I love what you said about being a loyalist to being difficult to be a loyalist to certain tools, and I will admit, I was the biggest chat GPT loyalist up until about a week and a half ago, amit, when I tried Claude 3.5 Sonnet. So, Guy, if you have not tried that one, I challenge you to do so To me, in my opinion, better than chat GPT.

Guy:

And what makes it better?

Mallory:

You know, amit asked me that same question and it was kind of hard for me to put in words. It feels smarter, it feels like it can do more with less context, and it was actually suggesting ideas for me in terms of how to flow this book that Amit just mentioned, that we're working on. That I was impressed by and said, oh okay, well, that makes sense and to me, with ChatGPT, I don't often have moments of wow, that was a really good suggestion.

Amith:

Yeah, what I've experienced so far is it feels less formulaic. So you don't get the same type of sentence structure and everything ChatGPT does they'll write something for you. It says in conclusion, at the end, or in today's digital world is like the beginning of every paragraph, so it's a little bit less formulaic. I don't think it's necessarily like smarter, although the benchmarks say it is in some areas, but it's certainly an exciting advancement, I think, for everyone who's users of these tools. What we see in the broader arc of the technology is, because of the competitive dynamic, because of the level of investment going into this, we're going to all benefit from significantly improved capability over time. But the flip side of that is, even if the AI never got better, what we've received in the last couple of years is truly amazing and can be leveraged in so many ways. People have not even begun to scratch the surface on.

Guy:

Yeah, okay, based on that plug, I will go try cloud today, or I'll go retry cloud. You know it's funny because sometimes I have. I'll tell you exactly what I have bookmarked. So I could tell you that you know, I have a folder called AI. In that folder I have chat GPT, claude, gemini, perplexity, kawasaki, gpt, right. So those are the ones that I try, and sometimes it's just I try one and it says enter your name and password. I go, oh shit, I'll just go to chat GPT. Or sometimes this is you know, enter the email that you started with and we'll send you a link. And I can't remember was it Guy Kawasaki at Gmail or Guy T Kawasaki at Gmail? And like, on the other hand, if I just go to Claude and it's already the page and it's prompting me for the question, then I just stick with Claude right now.

Amith:

Well, what you're describing, you know a low friction, easy user experience, I think is one of the differentiators people are going to have to lean on Because ultimately, if you know, each of these AIs becomes three times smarter in the next two years. The differentiation based on raw intellect is going to be probably mitigated, I think the UI is going to become a big factor.

Guy:

I'm telling you, if you took those four ChatGPT, cloud, gemini and Perplexity and you've got to throw Google in there, because Google is my default search engine, right, if I were those five companies, I would not know how I am going to. You know, prove that I'm differentiated. That is, that takes more marketing savvy than I know.

Amith:

Well, you know, one thing that I wanted to mention with associations is that, you know, in the world of content stacks we say you know, kawasaki GPT is a good example. Even if the underlying model that you use to build that is slightly less compelling on its own than, let's say, the latest model from OpenAI or the latest model from Gemini, there's still tremendous value in Kawasaki GPT because it has all of your content. You've verticalized the underlying LLM. The same opportunity I think exists for a lot of brands, associations, you know, being part of that.

Guy:

Yeah, I hope so and I am trying to make Kawasaki GPT a really great endpoint for research about entrepreneurship and innovation and evangelism and marketing. Now, any author Seth Godin, gary Vaynerchuk, guy Kawasaki, any of us, jeffrey Moore, any of us can say well, there's more GPT, there's Vaynerchuk GPT, there's Godin GPT, there's Sivers GPT, there's Vaynerchuk GPT, there's Golden GPT, there's Sivers GPT. But what I think I can add that they don't necessarily have is because I have a podcast that features remarkable people. Every week I add content to my LLM that if you trust my taste in who gets on my podcast, if you trust my taste in who gets on my podcast, then you should trust my taste in the fact that there's going to be a transcript next week from that interview. So now, when you ask Kawasaki, GPT.

Mallory:

A question you might get a citation to Angela Duckworth, which is a very powerful thing. That's so awesome. It's got me thinking. I guess we need to do a Sidecar Sync podcast GPT and Meath, or maybe a Sidecar GPT. I mean, why not you?

Guy:

know. Well, I mean. But here's the challenge, right. So for Kawasaki GPT or Vaynerchuk GPT or you know whoever you know, I don't know Sidecar GPT, the question is, how do you get people to use a particular LLM as opposed to Claude, perplexity, Gemini, google? I mean, how do we compete with that? I don't know the answer to that yet, but I'm just doing it for fun, because I want to see what can be done. And you know, at the very least I could make the case not that this drives much of my life, but I could make the case that Kawasaki GBT is giving me a touch of immortality, because when I die, I mean, obviously new content might not be added to it when I die, although if I can figure out a direct data connect from heaven, I'll send it in. But let's assume I can't. That in a sense, kawasaki GPT means I'm immortal.

Amith:

Yeah, I think there's. There's a really interesting aspect to that, and I think the other thing too is how do you compete? You know, in the context of what you just described, that's not your primary concern, I guess, but you know, for the association that's thinking hey, you know, people can get answers to their professional questions. In our narrow domain, let's say, it's a dermatology and I want to get I'm a dermatologist, I have a professional level question about something I'm doing and I want to get my question answered right. Where do I go for that? If question about something I'm doing and I want to get my question answered right, when do I go for that?

Amith:

If I end up going to chat GPT because the answer is pretty darn good. It might not be as good as what I have to do, as what I will get from the dermatology association, but it might be pretty good. And if there's a lot of friction between me and the best answer, I might take a good enough answer. And so I think part of the challenge is lowering the bar, making it easier for association content to be accessible, whether it's through a GPT or through something else, and that's a key issue that these folks need to really pay attention to.

Guy:

Now I mean but I would make I didn't mean to start that answer with the word, but I'm just going to make a point that if by chance you are listening to this and you're thinking oh my God, I got to jealously guard and keep confidential and not let my information be scraped into an LLM, because if it gets scraped in an LLM, I just took myself out of the equation and I'm going to be replaced. I have to jealously guard my information and keep it protected. I think that is a defeatist attitude. That's the worst thing you can do. And you know I have these conversations with authors and they say you know what? I don't want any of these things scraping my book or scraping my articles. You know I worked hard to write that I, you know I spent so much effort. How dare you just take it? You know you need to compensate me. And like, let me get this through my head you think that what perplexity? Or Claude is going to say, oh, we cited guy in one of our answers, so we owe him one, one thousandth of a cent. And like I mean, in what scenario do you think that you're going to get compensated? Now you may think you deserve getting compensated. I would even argue against that.

Guy:

But I would say that listen from what I look at it. Let's say I have this concept of what makes a great pitch and I say it's 10, 20, 30, 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font, right. So when somebody goes to an LLM and says what makes a great pitch, one attitude is oh my God, I don't want anybody to mention 10, 20, 30 as an answer. That's my proprietary intellectual property. I don't want that mentioned in that chat GPT answer. My attitude is holy shit, just put 10, 20, 30 from Guy Kawasaki is the recommended method to create a great pitch. That's what I want. And then they'll say well, maybe this guy is interesting, maybe I should listen to his podcast, maybe I should read his Substack newsletter, maybe I should buy his book. I would much rather be part of the answer than part of the ignorance of it. It's not even close.

Mallory:

I recently saw on an association website that I forget the name of, but I wouldn't mention anyway, at the top there was a disclaimer that said no LLMs may scrape this website for any information forget the name of, but I wouldn't mention anyway. At the top there was a disclaimer that said, um, no llms may scrape this website for any information, and I've never seen, uh, any kind of disclaimer like that on a website. So yeah, to your point, guy. It'll be interesting to see, I guess, how this plays out.

Guy:

I mean, isn't that, like you know, 20 years ago, when you said we gotta figure out a way to prevent google from from scraping our website, because, you know, god forbid if somebody goes to Google and searches for dermatology? We don't want to be in the first page of results. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Keep us out of that Like hello, I like that.

Mallory:

Take Guy. I want to talk a little bit about the book Think Remarkable, which is all about how to cultivate remarkableness. You dedicate the book to Gen Z, but it's it's really a great read, I think for everyone. And that first section you have is called Growth Building a Foundation and one of the first few chapters of that section is called Adopt a Growth Mindset, and that is something that we talk about on this podcast a ton the importance of having a growth mindset, especially as it pertains to AI, the importance of hiring people with a growth mindset. Now, it might be semantics, or maybe it was your LLM, but you call the chapter adopt a growth mindset. So do you think that this is something that can be cultivated or do you think this is something people are born with?

Guy:

be cultivated, or do you think this is something people are born with?

Amith:

Well, first of all, I don't use LLM to write my headings. Okay, let me check my grammar.

Guy:

Let me summarize they're not writing my headings, so that's like. And secondly, that you know I mean this in the friendliest and warmest and non-insulting as way possible. But that's a stupid question, because if you had asked an author, if you ask an author, do you think that you know what you're suggesting? People become is born, not made or not learned, or not embraced or not adopted. You're kind of asking well, why should people buy your book or read your book If it's going to be natural? You either got it or you don't. So you know, I don't know. I mean, that question did not come from Kawasaki GPT. So of course I believe that you can learn how to be remarkable, otherwise I wouldn't write the book. I would have written the book you know, like I don't know how to evade taxation, I don't know Something like that.

Mallory:

I will. I will accept that critique. Thank you for that guy.

Guy:

It did not come from KawasakiGPTcom, I don't know, I guess in my mind I was thinking.

Mallory:

I think that I was born with it and I think, amit, you probably were too, and I guess I'm it's possible you probably were too, and I guess it's possible?

Amith:

Yeah, I don't know. I guess I just wanted your take on it. I want to chime in for a sec. I think I probably had some element of growth mindset baked into my background and early upbringing, or something like that. But I also, too, find it helpful to remind myself from time to time to not get stuck in a rut, because all of us have these biases formed by repetition. And, for example, oh, in this particular company, we tried marketing our products in a certain way. It didn't work, didn't work, didn't work. Therefore, it'll never work, right? So, even though I like to think of myself as someone with a growth mindset, that bias goes against the grain, right? So I think there's an element of continual training that is important to remember, even if you're someone who kind of aligns with that.

Guy:

Well, I mean, in a sense, to flip the question around. How would you like it if I asked that? Well, do you think associations can improve their offering to their members, or associations are just either good or bad, and what are you going to tell me? Of course, associations can be better. That's why we exist, right we help them be better. So I think that's the same thing and I truly do have a growth mindset. But I do agree. I think you need to be reminded of that every once in a while. And listen, you're talking to a guy who took up ice hockey at 44, coming from Hawaii, where there is no ice on the ground, we have shave ice, we don't have pond hockey. And then, at 60, I took up surfing because my daughter took up surfing. So you know, respectively, that's 50 years too late for surfing and 34 years too late for hockey. That shows I have a growth mindset.

Amith:

So, Gak, you mentioned you just were surfing right before this podcast. What is it about surfing that keeps you coming back?

Guy:

Well, it's because it's because it is, it's just. I gotta tell you it's just like a perfect sport, because it requires a great deal of judgment, a great deal of effort. It's the hardest thing that I have ever tried to do. It's like harder than working for Steve Jobs. I mean, it's just, and you have to embrace vulnerability, especially if you take up surfing at 60, because you need to understand you're probably going to get hurt and I'll tell you my peers, if they play golf twice a year, they think they're active. You know, the rest of the time they're watching Fox. So I surf once a day now, right, and so this is a good segue to you know one's ikigai and one's interest in life.

Guy:

I think many people think that you know you need to find your passion or your ikigai in life. I think many people think that you need to find your passion or your ikigai in life. And if you draw a Venn diagram, if you draw a circle where you know this is what I'm good at, this is what I like to do and this is where I can make money, and you take the intersection, that's your passion, that's your ikigai. I completely disagree with that definition. That's your passion, that's your ikigai. I completely disagree with that definition. I think for me and surfing is I am not good at it, I'll never make money at it, but I love it. When you do something you cannot make money and you're not good at, yet you have truly found what you love.

Amith:

Yeah, I can relate to that. I also surf. I am absolutely terrible at it, but I love it tremendously and it's the challenge of it. It's the minute you think you're good at it the way we'll tell you otherwise, yep.

Mallory:

I too have tried surfing, just once, just once, but it was really fun.

Guy:

it was an exciting time well, where, where do you guys live?

Mallory:

well, I did live in new orleans up until about a month ago and I now live in atlanta, georgia and amit yeah, and I'm in new orleans a good bit of the year.

Amith:

At the moment, I'm up in utah. I spend the summers in utah to escape the the new orleans heat. So, guy, I don't have waves out here, but we do have a lot of lakes, and recently I've been doing e-foiling. I don't know if you've seen that. Are you in Hawaii at the moment?

Guy:

I have never tried e-foiling. I have never tried foiling. You know, call me old-fashioned, but I just these. You know, I'll tell you what really did it for me. So a few. I forget if it was July 4th or Independence Days or you know, I mean or Memorial Day or something, but Mark Zuckerberg put out a video where he was on a e-foil carrying an American flag, an American flag, and the music that was playing was like born in the USA or something Right, and I and I looked at that. I said that has got to be a parody, my God.

Amith:

I thought it was too.

Guy:

Yeah, they could fake Mark Zuckerberg on an e-foil holding an American flag. Look how good generational AI is, but that freaking thing was real. I mean, like I want to know, like what's with billionaires? Like how could you sit down and say what I'm going to do is put out a video of me holding an American flag on a foil playing Born in the USA? Like in what parallel universe do you think that's cool or effective or useful or impressive or what I mean something to have? I mean, billionaires have different brains from me.

Amith:

Yeah Well, I saw that video. I had the same reaction. I thought it was a good deep fake. And then I found out it was real and I almost stopped e-foiling after that. But e-foiling it's too much fun to give up. If only it's too much fun to give up.

Mallory:

Well, Guy, my next question for you is about empathy. And don't worry, I'm not going to ask you if empathy can be cultivated. I learned from that last question.

Guy:

You're a kickstarter.

Mallory:

Exactly exactly. But you talk in the book a lot about being empathetic personally, of course, to be a good person, but also professionally when you're trying to figure out what products and services you should create to better serve your customers. And I think this is interesting to put into the lens of associations, because what you often see is someone like a marketer, for example, working for a legal association or a CPA society, a marketer who doesn't really have that much experience, probably at all, with that profession or industry. Do you think AI could serve as a potential solution here? In the case of, if you're talking to ChatGPT, a marketer, and you said act as a CPA, you know what would I, what are my pain points? Do you think that could take the place of human empathy?

Guy:

Wow, I mean, I have never thought of this question. I have never tested CHAT-GPT, but I will tell you something that if you gave me, two people equally qualified and one, just you know, went to CHAT-GPT and wrote some prompt about. You know what are the problems that dermatologists are facing and how can my association help them? What are the problems that dermatologists are facing and how can my association help them? That's plan A. If you told me plan B was, I'm going to go work in a dermatology clinic for a month to see what it's really like. So you go and see what it's really like. Guess what. I would pick plan B. I think plan B is going to come up with better stuff than plan A. Now. Plan B with ChatGPT, I think, is the ultimate solution. But just asking ChatGPT, I think you'd be very impressed with the answer. But man, there's like something to gain from either working or interning at a dermatology clinic, or at least visiting a dermatology clinic, right? That just cannot be replaced yet by an AI or an LLM.

Amith:

I think that relates back to the famous Zappos culture practice where every employee, no matter how senior, would spend a full week in customer support talking to customers. There really is no substitute for that.

Guy:

But you know, I have an example in the book of where a pharmaceutical company wanted to get closer to its customers. So my friend, martin Lindstrom, had the executive team breathe through straws for a few minutes and then he said to them so you know, you're a pharmaceutical company, your drugs are treating people with asthma. Now you know what it's like to be asthmatic. It's like you're breathing through a straw 24 by 7, by 365. I mean, that's a hell of a lot better than you know paying McKinsey $5 million to help us get closer to the customer by conducting end user research. And you know focus groups.

Mallory:

Well, we're coming up close to time. I couldn't do this podcast with you, guy, without talking a little bit about evangelism. Wikipedia actually calls you the father of evangelism marketing and, yeah, or it says, many call Guy Kawasaki the father of evangelism marketing. Just so you know?

Guy:

Well, there was Jesus before me, just to you know. Set the record straight.

Mallory:

Fair point and I had the idea of you know, getting you to define what evangelism marketing was, but I stopped myself. I went to Kawasaki GPT and I asked it to define evangelism marketing, which is the act of proclaiming the good news about a product or service. Do you agree with that?

Guy:

First off, I literally could not have said it better.

Mallory:

Okay, so Kawasaki GPT checks out my question to you. Thinking about the association business model, particularly the membership model, can you evangelize something that might be considered traditional or something that you've always done, or do you think it's necessary to have it be something new, something innovative that you're sharing with people Does?

Guy:

that make sense? I don't think it needs to check the innovation or new box. Does that make sense? I don't think it needs to check the innovation or new box. The only box, the most important box, is that you truly do love and believe in the product. So you know what Like. Do you use Canva by any chance?

Mallory:

Oh yeah, I use Canva all the time.

Guy:

Okay. So you use Canva, right? You probably tell all your friends to use Canva. You tell your friends, oh, you're creating a wedding invitation. You know you shouldn't just use the templates. You can templates from, I don't know, hallmark or whatever. You can actually create beautiful stuff in Canva, right?

Guy:

So, believe it or not, you are an unpaid, maybe even unconscious, evangelist for Canva. Now I just want to break your heart, because Canva is 10 years old. You could make the case that you're not bringing them new news, right, I mean? And now Canva has AI built in so you could tell your friend who's just got engaged to use Canva and it'll help you generate the text for your innovation. I mean your invitation, not your innovation. So you know, and if, like if somebody came to you and said I'm thinking of buying a laptop now, in 2024, I'm thinking of buying a laptop, do you think I should get a Lenovo or an HP or a MacBook Air? I hope you'll say, oh, my God, you got to get a MacBook Air. It's not even you know, it's not even close. So you're evangelizing Macintosh. Macintosh was introduced in 1984. That's probably 20 years before you were born, right? So I mean you can evangelize old stuff.

Amith:

I think that's a great point for all of our listeners. In the association market, a lot of the core capability that associations are providing has been around a long time. You know the idea of education, the idea of connectivity, the idea of advancing a particular profession or a sector and it is definitely, you know, not new news that these associations are providing these capabilities. But if they do their job well, they really do have a big impact on the world. If they do their job well, they really do have a big impact on the world. And I think kind of zooming back into that fundamental purpose and reestablishing those beliefs and focusing there can be very powerful.

Guy:

Yeah, you know, if I were the CMO of an association, I think that AI presents a fantastic opportunity for my association and I would go all in on. Yes, we are the dermatology association of America, and what we're going to do is we're going to show you how to incorporate AI into your practice. I can't think of a more valuable thing you could do. And, like 20 years ago, if I were the same association, I would say we're the Dermatology Association of America, we're going to show you how to incorporate the internet into your practice, and then, after that, we're going to show you how to incorporate social media into your practice. And then we're going to show you how to incorporate AI into your practice. And then, after that, we're going to show you how to incorporate social media into your practice, and then we're going to show you how to incorporate AI into your practice. What better thing could an association do for its members than that? I can't think of anything.

Mallory:

Well, I want to thank you so much for sharing your insights for talking about associations on the Sidecar Sync podcast with us. Guy, where can people find you? Where can they find your book?

Guy:

They can find me. I mean, you know my website is Guy Kawasaki. I was going to give you my email address. I'm GuyKawasakicom, my Substack newsletter. Just go to Substack and look for Guy Kawasaki and my book. Oh my God, if you cannot find my book by using a search engine, you are not remarkable.

Mallory:

But you can become remarkable. Remember that you can become it. It's called Think Remarkable. Are you on LinkedIn, guy? I'm assuming? Yes, I don't think I follow you. I got to go do that right after this.

Guy:

You go subscribe to my Substack newsletter, but I'm telling you my Substack newsletter and my podcast they are both the best work I have ever done in my life. They are both the best work I have ever done in my life. Unfortunately, they also may be the least appreciated, but I'm telling you that I could not do this newsletter and I could not do this podcast if it were not for about 45 years of experience.

Amith:

This is the culmination of my career. These two things that's amazing, Makes a ton of sense All right. Thanks so much. Thanks, so much for being with us, guy.

Guy:

Maybe there's an association of secular evangelism.

Amith:

You know what? It wouldn't surprise me. There's associations for just about anything you can think about.

Guy:

All right, take care. This has been very enjoyable. I love the questions All right All the best to both of you.

Amith:

Thanks so much Thanks for tuning into Sidecar Sync this week. Looking to dive deeper? Download your free copy of our new book Ascend Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations at ascendbookorg. It's packed with insights to power your association's journey with AI. And remember Sidecar is here with more resources, from webinars to boot camps, to help you stay ahead in the association world. We'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, keep learning, keep growing and keep disrupting.