Embracing AI to Achieve Remarkable Success with Guy Kawasaki [Sidecar Sync Episode 38]

Timestamps:

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

Summary:

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.

Let us know what you think about the podcast! Drop your questions or comments in the Sidecar community.

This episode is brought to you by Sidecar's AI Learning Hub. The AI Learning Hub blends self-paced learning with live expert interaction. It's designed for the busy association or nonprofit professional.

Follow Sidecar on LinkedIn

🔎 Find Out More About Guy Kawasaki:

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/

⚙️ Other Resources from Sidecar: 

• Ascend: Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations E-book 
• Sidecar Blog
• Sidecar Community
• digitalNow Conference
• Upcoming Webinars and Events
• Association AI Mastermind Group

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.

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.

Read the Transcript

Intro: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Sidecar Sync podcast. My name is Mallory Mejias. 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.

Intro: 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. In today's episode, Amit and I get the chance to talk with Guy about his brand new book called Think Remarkable.

Intro: 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, [00:01:00] 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.

Mallory Mejias: Guy Kawasaki.

Mallory Mejias: Thank you so much for joining us on the Sidecar Sync podcast. How are you doing today?

Guy Kawasaki: I am doing very well. I just finished surfing for two hours. So that's why I'm all like red

Mallory Mejias: 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 Kawasaki: I would that is a that is a mild understatement.

Mallory Mejias: 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, [00:02:00] that I just mentioned and Amith, 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?

Mallory Mejias: About Guy Kawasaki. So first, I wanted to start off on that note, um, 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

Guy Kawasaki: Sure

Mallory Mejias: who you are?

Guy Kawasaki: as long as you don't think that I wrote rich dad poor dad. I I mean,

Mallory Mejias: I don't.

Guy Kawasaki: that's all

Mallory Mejias: That I know.

Guy Kawasaki: 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.

Guy Kawasaki: I was Apple's second software [00:03:00] evangelist. I helped convince people to write Macintosh software and create Macintosh hardware. And, uh, 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 and MBA from UCLA and honorary doctor from Babson.

Guy Kawasaki: So that's me in 30 seconds.

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

Guy Kawasaki: I've been telling it a long time,

Mallory Mejias: 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 non profit listeners. And something Amith 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?

Mallory Mejias: And then I've put on my detective hat, I went to work and I found a recent, uh, podcast, I guess that you did talking about [00:04:00] 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.

Mallory Mejias: I'm curious, Guy, you're a writer, you're 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 Kawasaki: Not one second, that I think it's a threat. And I mean, if, listen, 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, and safety and whatever. And you know, it spits out the text.

Guy Kawasaki: I understand how you're threatened. But I'm a writer of nonfiction books and I have a sub [00:05:00] stack newsletter. And if, if AI can replace me, God bless AI, because, you know, I don't think it's going to be that easy. Um, and I, 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 podcast, 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 Christie Yamaguchi and Ronnie Lott and Vivek Murthy.

Guy Kawasaki: Um, when you're asking Kawasaki GPT a question, you're asking me and those 250 people. Um, Seth Golden just agreed to put in 3 million words into my LLM and Derek Sivers is going to put his new book. So I, I, I tell you something, if you, if I had voice synthesis in Kawasaki GPT, [00:06:00] that sounded like me with the slight pidgin accent that I have, you could conduct this podcast interview with Kawasaki GPT, and I would argue that it's answer would be better than mine.

Guy Kawasaki: I

Mallory Mejias: I, I honestly thought about that as I was going through Kawasaki GPT myself. I was like, well, if we have the avatar, which we have the technology to create, um, we could do this live. I 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 Kawasaki: Guess there's only one way to find out, right?

Mallory Mejias: We'll be, we'll be the test run.

Guy Kawasaki: But I could tell you something. If, if you wanted pure text, I think that 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 I asked a Kawasaki GPT to draft stuff for me. So when somebody asked me for a contribution or a blurb or a [00:07:00] forward, guess what?

Guy Kawasaki: I asked myself on Kawasaki GPT. Like if, if someone were to send me a book, this may, 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 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.

Guy Kawasaki: 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. I rest my case.

Amith Nagarajan: 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. And interestingly, with the [00:08:00] world of AI, you know, coming upon them very rapidly, a lot of them have been concerned about, you know, general purpose LLMs like chat GPT and Claude replacing their role in the world.

Amith Nagarajan: And, um, some of them have taken a similar path to,

Guy Kawasaki: let's address that.

Amith Nagarajan: Sure. Go ahead.

Guy Kawasaki: that. First. I have to sneeze though. One second, I'm going to mute.

Mallory Mejias: Sneeze break, everybody.

Guy Kawasaki: Um, uh, 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, and, you know, knows how to tweak these things better than you could [00:09:00] replace you, you know, could like some $15 an hour person go to chat GPT and replace a great copywriter for an ad agency, but I kind of doubt that, um, you know, I really do doubt that, but could someone who is a good copy editor or copywriter using ChatGPT replace you, I would say you absolutely should be afraid of that.

Amith Nagarajan: I agree completely. 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 what you did and then have their own GPT or their own AI that helps them do their work better [00:10:00] and faster and, you know, more effectively.

Amith Nagarajan: Ultimately,

Guy Kawasaki: but you know, um, if there's a fear that I just wrote this book called Think Remarkable, right? And I used 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.

Guy Kawasaki: 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, but I do not think that it could do it.

Amith Nagarajan: yeah, not quite yet. Anyway, maybe at some point, but it's certainly I've tried things similar to that because we wrote a book on AI for the association community and we published it last June. And, uh, we started off with like the biggest possible experiment of basically what you just said and then broke it down and started [00:11:00] doing it bit by bit by bit, taking our thesis and having the AI, you know, write pieces of it.

Amith Nagarajan: You know, the 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 in early 23 to write version one.

Amith Nagarajan: So we'll see where that goes.

Guy Kawasaki: And what is the killer app aspect of AI for an association? Fundraising?

Amith Nagarajan: 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. Uh, so they're interested in helping their members become better at what they do professionally.

Amith Nagarajan: So there may be an association for accountants or an association for dermatologists, things like that. And those associations, uh, they have members who [00:12:00] essentially are taking education. Sometimes they're delivering content. Uh, 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, you know, they bring in keynotes and bring in session leaders to talk about things.

Amith Nagarajan: But education is the core value medium, I would say, for many of these professional organizations.

Guy Kawasaki: 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, I don't know how you could do it. I mean, if there's any laggers out there, you know, just give it a try. My God. And, you know, you, you read these stories about, well, you know, I convinced.

Guy Kawasaki: I convinced ChatGPT to tell me to leave my wife and create a nuclear bomb and start a war with China. You cannot use ChatGPT. It's going to make up shit and it's going to make you do dumb things. Well, you know, [00:13:00] if you spend seven hours, yes, I'm sure you could get ChatGPT to send you that answer. But I mean, listen, I'm more afraid of about.

Guy Kawasaki: One person in North Korea, one person in Russia, and one person in Mar a Lago, Florida, launching a nuclear warhead than Chad GPT.

Mallory Mejias: 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

Guy Kawasaki: space?

Guy Kawasaki: You know, it's, 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 Chat GPT, mean, they're all so good. I mean, it, it, I, I think that presents a great challenge to AI startups because, I mean, right now, you know, the, the, the way [00:14:00] Google has enhanced its fundamental old kind of search to now include ai.

Guy Kawasaki: Wow. I mean, it's hard to beat Google with ai. I mean, , uh, I would not wanna be one of those companies. So when I was writing my book, I started with chat GPT, and I'll give you a very good use case. So I wanted to make the point in my book that many people who are remarkable made dramatic career changes.

Guy Kawasaki: It's not like they stuck with, you know, what they fell in love with age five till the age 95. Although Jane Goodall is an example of that, but you know, that's not. That's not the only path to being remarkable. So I asked chat GPT, give me examples of people who made dramatic career shifts and were successful.

Guy Kawasaki: And chat GPT gives me four or five, one of which was Julia child. And I said, Julia child, like how is she making a career change? And chat GPT explains that Julia child was working for the OSS, which is the precursor to the [00:15:00] CIA. And until her mid thirties, she was a spook (spy). 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.

Guy Kawasaki: And you know, that's why Julia Child is Julia Child, the French chef.

Guy Kawasaki: I would have never, ever heard of that example were it not for ChatGPT. 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.

Guy Kawasaki: That, that same thing. And I got to tell you something mentally, after you told them what you're going to say, and then you said it, Then to write the summary, 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 [00:16:00] sections of the book, I put in the first parts of those sections.

Guy Kawasaki: And then I said, write me a summary of this section in one paragraph, two to three sentences, you know, a hundred words and bada bing, bada bang, chat GPT spits that out. It's a fresh summary, it's not just me rehashing words and you know, I, 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.

Guy Kawasaki: That would take a long time

Mallory Mejias: I love what you said about being a loyalist to it being difficult to be a loyalist to certain tools. And I will admit I was the biggest ChatGPT loyalist up until about a week and a half ago, Amith, when 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 ChatGPT.

Guy Kawasaki: And, and what makes it [00:17:00] better? Yeah.

Mallory Mejias: Amith asked 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 Um, and it was actually suggesting ideas for me in terms of how to flow this book that Amith just mentioned that we're working on That I was impressed by and said, oh, okay.

Mallory Mejias: Well, that makes sense. I and to me with chat gpt I don't often have moments of wow, that was a really good suggestion.

Amith Nagarajan: And what I've experienced so far is it feels less formulaic. So you don't get the same type of sentence structure and you know, everything, you know, chat GPT does, they write something for you. It says in conclusion, you know, at the end or in today's digital world is like the beginning of every every paragraph.

Amith Nagarajan: 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, you know, the broader arc of the technology is because of the competitive dynamic, because of the level of investment going into this, um, we're gonna all benefit [00:18:00] from significantly improved capability over time.

Amith Nagarajan: But the flip side of that is, even if the AI never got better, what we've received in the last couple years is truly amazing and can be leveraged in so many ways people have not even begun to scratch the surface on,

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah. Okay. Based on that plug, I will go try Claude today or I'll go retry Claude. 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?

Guy Kawasaki: 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 it's this, 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.

Guy Kawasaki: Kawasaki at [00:19:00] 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 and I just, I just stick with Claude right now.

Amith Nagarajan: 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, you know, the differentiation based on raw intellect is going to be probably mitigated.

Amith Nagarajan: I think the UI is going to

Guy Kawasaki: I, I'm telling you, I, If you took those four, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, and you, and you got to throw Google in there because Google is my default search engine. Right. I, if I were those five companies, I would not know how I am going to, you know, prove that I'm differentiated. That is the, uh, that's, that takes more marketing savvy than I know.

Amith Nagarajan: Well, you know, one, [00:20:00] 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. Um, even if the underlying model that you use to build that is slightly less compelling on its own. Then let's say the latest model from open AI or the latest model from Gemini.

Amith Nagarajan: Um, there's still tremendous value in Kawasaki GPT because it has all of your content. You've verticalized the underlying LLM and the same opportunity I think exists for a lot of brands, associations, you know, being. being part of that. Yeah,

Guy Kawasaki: um, 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 Golden, Gary Vaynerchuk, Guy Kawasaki, you know, any of us, Jeffrey Moore, any of us can say, well, there's more GPT, there's Vaynerchuk GPT, [00:21:00] there's Golden GPT, there's Silver's GPT, you know, but what I think I can add that they don't necessarily have is because I have a podcast that features remarkable people.

Guy Kawasaki: Every week I add content to my LLM that if you, if you trust my taste in who gets on my podcast, then you should trust my taste into the, in the fact that there's going to be a transcript. Next week from that interview. So now when you ask Kawasaki GPT a question, you might get a citation to Angela Duckworth, which is a very powerful thing.

Mallory Mejias: That's so awesome. It's got me thinking, I guess we need to do a sidecar sync podcast, or maybe a sidecar GPT. I mean, why not? You know?

Guy Kawasaki: Well, I mean, but here's the challenge, right? So for Kawasaki GPT or [00:22:00] 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, right? 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.

Guy Kawasaki: 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 GPT is giving me a touch of immortality. 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 Nagarajan: I think there's, there's a really interesting aspect to [00:23:00] that. And I think the other thing too is, um, 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.

Amith Nagarajan: 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 I end up going to CHATGPT because the answer is pretty darn good, Um, it might not be as good as what I have to do, as what I'll get from the Dermatology Association, but it might be pretty good.

Amith Nagarajan: 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, um, lowering the bar, making it easier for association content to be accessible, whether it's through GPT or through something else. I think that's a key issue that these folks need to really pay attention to.

Guy Kawasaki: But I would make, I didn't mean [00:24:00] 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 a LLM because if it gets scraped in an LLM, I just took myself out of the equation and I'm going to be replaced.

Guy Kawasaki: 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.

Guy Kawasaki: How dare you just take it? You know, you need to compensate me. And like, let me get this through your, my head. You, you, 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 [00:25:00] like,

Guy Kawasaki: in what scenario do you think that you're going to get compensated?

Guy Kawasaki: Now you may think you deserve getting compensated. I would even argue against that, 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.

Guy Kawasaki: 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. [00:26:00] Maybe I should buy his book. I would much rather be part of the answer than part of the ignorance of it. It's, it's not even close.

Mallory Mejias: I recently saw on, uh, an association website that I 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, to your point, Guy, it'll be interesting to see, I guess, how plays out in the association space.

Guy Kawasaki: I mean, isn't that like, you know, 20 years ago when you said we got to 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.

Guy Kawasaki: Keep us out of that. Like, hello.

Mallory Mejias: I like that take. Um, Guy, I want to talk a little bit about the [00:27:00] book, Think Remarkable, which is all about how to cultivate remarkableness. Um, 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.

Mallory Mejias: 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?

Mallory Mejias: Or do you think this is something people are born with?

Guy Kawasaki: First of all, I don't use LLM to write my headings. Okay. They may, they may check my grammar. They may 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 [00:28:00] possible. But that's a stupid question, because if you ask an author.

Guy Kawasaki: do you think that what you're suggesting people become

Guy Kawasaki: 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. 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.

Guy Kawasaki: 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 Mejias: I will, I will accept that critique. Thank you for that Guy. It did not come from KawasakiGPT. com. I don't know. I guess in my mind I was thinking, I, I, I think that I was born with it. And I think Amith, you probably were too. And I guess I'm, [00:29:00] it's possible. Uh, yeah, I don't know. I guess I just wanted your take on it.

Amith Nagarajan: 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 you know All of us have these biases formed by repetition And uh, you know, 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.

Amith Nagarajan: Therefore. It'll never work, right? So even though I like to think of myself as someone with a growth mindset That might that bias It goes against the grain, right? So I think there's, there's an element of continual training that is important to remember, even if you're someone who kind of aligns with that.

Guy Kawasaki: 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 [00:30:00] associations can be better. That's why we exist, right?

Guy Kawasaki: We help them be better. So I think that's the same thing. I truly do have a growth mindset. And, but I do agree. I think you need to be reminded of that every once in a while. Um, 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.

Guy Kawasaki: 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, uh, that shows I have a growth mindset.

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

Guy Kawasaki: 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, [00:31:00] a great deal of effort. It's the hardest thing that I have ever tried to do is 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 know, you need to understand you're probably going to get hurt.

Guy Kawasaki: And I'll tell you, my peers, 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, you know, I surf once a day now. Right. So I, this is a good segue to, you know, One's ikigai and one's interest in life. Um, I think many people think that, you know, you need to find your passion or your icky guy in life.

Guy Kawasaki: 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 [00:32:00] 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 Nagarajan: Yeah, I can relate to that. I've, I, I also surf. I am absolutely terrible at it, but I love it tremendously. And, uh, it's the challenge of it, it's the, if the minute you think you're good at it, uh, the wave we'll tell you otherwise. So,

Guy Kawasaki: Yep.

Mallory Mejias: I too have tried surfing just once, just once, but it was, it was really fun. It was an exciting time now.

Guy Kawasaki: Where do you guys live? Huh?

Mallory Mejias: Well, I did live in new Orleans up until about a month ago and I now live in Atlanta, Georgia Amith.

Amith Nagarajan: and I'm in New Orleans, a good bit of the year at the moment. I'm up in Utah. I spend the summers in Utah to escape the, the New Orleans heat. [00:33:00] So, guy, I don't have, uh, waves out here, but we do have a lot of lakes and recently I've been doing e foiling. I dunno if you've, uh, seen that are you in Hawaii at the moment?

Amith Nagarajan: know what

Guy Kawasaki: I, um, have never tried e foiling. I have never tried foiling. Uh,

Guy Kawasaki: started you know, call me old fashioned, but I, I just,

Guy Kawasaki: i, these, you know, I tell you what really did it for me. 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.

Guy Kawasaki: 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, AI is so good. Yeah. They

Amith Nagarajan: thought it was

Guy Kawasaki: can fake Mark Zuckerberg on an e foil holding an American flag. Look how good generational AI is. But that freaking thing [00:34:00] was real.

Guy Kawasaki: 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?

Guy Kawasaki: I mean, something's happened. I mean, billionaires have different brains from me.

Amith Nagarajan: Yeah, uh, well I saw that video, I had the same reaction. I thought it was a good deepfake, and then I found out it was real and I was just shocked. And I almost stopped efoiling after that. But, uh, efoiling is too much fun to give up, so.

Guy Kawasaki: Oh,

Mallory Mejias: 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 my lesson from that, from that last

Guy Kawasaki: quick study. Yay.

Mallory Mejias: exactly. But you, you talk in the book a lot about being empathetic personally, of course, to be a good [00:35:00] person, but also professionally when you're trying to figure out what products and services you should create to better serve your customers.

Mallory Mejias: 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 ChatGBT, a marketer, and you said act as a CPA, you know, what would I, what are my pain points?

Mallory Mejias: Do you think that could take the place of Human [00:36:00] empathy.

Guy Kawasaki: association help them? That's, that's plan A. If you told me plan B was, I'm gonna go sa I'm gonna 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. Just, 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

Mallory Mejias: the, uh, the

Amith Nagarajan: think that relates back to the famous [00:37:00] 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. I

Guy Kawasaki: pharmaceutical company wanted to get closer to its customers So my friend Martin Lindstrom Had them, 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.

Guy Kawasaki: 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. Well,

Mallory Mejias: Well, we're, we're coming up close to time. I couldn't do this podcast with you guy without talking a little bit about [00:38:00] evangelism. Um, Wikipedia actually calls you the father of evangelism marketing. And I was. Yeah, or it says, many call Guy Kawasaki the father of evangelism marketing, just so you know.

Guy Kawasaki: there was Jesus before me just to, you know, set the record

Mallory Mejias: Okay, fair point. Um, 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, first off?

Guy Kawasaki: I literally could not have said it better.

Mallory Mejias: Okay, okay, so KawasakiGPT checks out. My question to you, um, 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 [00:39:00] something new, something innovative that you're sharing with people?

Guy Kawasaki: No, 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, do you use Canva by any chance?

Mallory Mejias: Oh yeah, I use Canva all the time.

Guy Kawasaki: Okay, so you probably tell all your friends you use Canva. You tell all your friends you use Canva 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?

Guy Kawasaki: I mean, and now Canva has [00:40:00] 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 I, you know, and, and if, you know, Like if somebody came to you and said, I'm thinking of buying a laptop now in 2024, right?

Guy Kawasaki: 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.

Guy Kawasaki: So, I mean, you can evangelize old stuff.

Amith Nagarajan: That's a great point for all of our listeners. Uh, 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 [00:41:00] providing these capabilities, but if they do their job well, they really do have a big impact on the world.

Amith Nagarajan: And I think kind of zooming back into that fundamental purpose and re, you know, reestablishing those beliefs and focusing there can be very powerful.

Mallory Mejias: Okay.

Guy Kawasaki: CMO of an association,

Mallory Mejias: Okay.

Guy Kawasaki: I think that AI presents a fantastic opportunity for my association. And I would go all in on yes. We are the dermatology, derma, whatever, we're 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 [00:42:00] incorporate the Internet into your practice. And then after that, we're going to show you how to incorporate social media into your practice.

Guy Kawasaki: And then we're going to show you how to incorporate AI into your practice. Well, what, what better thing could an association do for its members than that? I can't think of anything.

Mallory Mejias: That is a mic drop moment. 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 Kawasaki: They can find me, I mean, you know, my website is Guy Kawasaki at, not Kawasaki, I was going to give you my email address, I'm GuyKawasaki. com. 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 [00:43:00] not remarkable.

Mallory Mejias: 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, I don't think I follow you. I got to go do that right after this.

Guy Kawasaki: You, you go subscribe to my Substack newsletter, but I'm telling you, my Substack newsletter is, my Substack newsletter and my podcast, 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.

Guy Kawasaki: It's, this is the culmination of my career, these two things.

Amith Nagarajan: That's amazing makes a ton of sense

Guy Kawasaki: All righty,

Amith Nagarajan: Thanks so much for being with us guy

Guy Kawasaki: maybe there's an association of secular evangelism.[00:44:00]

Mallory Mejias: We will

Amith Nagarajan: it wouldn't surprise me there's associations for just about anything you can think about

Guy Kawasaki: All right, take care, this has been very enjoyable, I love the questions. All the best to both of you.

Amith Nagarajan: Thanks so much