Lessons from Apple and Canva — Guy Kawasaki
Steve Jobs and Melanie Perkins have built great companies — and Guy's been close to them in both Apple and Canva.
Guy Kawasaki is the most famous software evangelist in the world. He’s helped Apple, and currently Canva, reach and engage their supporters as their Chief Evangelist.
Along the way he’s worked for brilliant people like Steve Jobs (Apple) and Melanie Perkins (Canva). He’s even had his shoes shined by Richard Branson!
We talked with Guy about the lessons he’s learnt from these luminaries and how to make a great career:
Why you should become the best version of yourself rather than trying to copy your heroes — and how Steve Jobs and Melanie Perkins are so effective by being opposites
Why Steve Jobs’ advice of “find and pursue your passion” can be harmful to most people — and the alternative he believes in
How “passion” works differently in the real world than most people think
How he dealt with family pressure when he quit law school
Why you shouldn’t stress about finding the perfect job
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What we loved
“Don’t become a little mini-me of anybody”
There’s no simple and solo answer for how Steve Jobs and Melanie Perkins can succeed — and they couldn’t be further apart.
The wisdom here is that people can succeed in multiple ways. People should take in a lot of data and understand what Steve, Melanie, Elon Musk do and then develop their own path and method.
Just don’t become a little mini-me of anybody.
We couldn’t agree more strongly with Guy. One of our core beliefs is that everyone should avoid copying their heroes because everyone’s different. We all have different personalities, interests, skills, and experiences.
Just like the next Google won’t be a search engine, the next Guy Kawasaki or Elon Musk won’t be like them — they’ll be unique in their own way and leverage that distinctiveness to help them.
Should we do like Steve Jobs and listen to our hearts?
Some of that is pure California bullshit. But even then, Steve was 1 in a billion.
Guy’s saying this is a risky strategy for most people. We see the successes in the Steve Jobs’ and J.K. Rowling’s of the world, but not the cost of the people who tried that path and failed. He’s implicitly suggesting you to think about your career dispassionately, at least in part.
Devil’s Advocate
If you’re hedging your bets and being conservative, it might decrease your likelihood of success over the long-term if you want to be at the top of your field. And it’s more than 1 in a billion — it’s minimum 1 for every field and within that, its sub-disciplines. A Harvard Business School professor wrote of the dangers of not pursuing a clear passion.
People with an oversized ambition and in the right moment of their lives might be better served by a higher-risk, higher-reward strategy.
Sam Altman, former President of Y Combinator (the accelerator behind AirBnB, Reddit, and Stripe) recently wrote:
How could Sam’s suggestion be wrong?
We love the reply from Casey Winters — Eventbrite’s Chief Product Officer and a well-known Silicon Valley marketing executive.
What’s uncomfortable about this topic is that there isn’t a right or wrong answer — you have to answer this from within.
Dive deeper
Should you try to do everything to find and pursue your passion?
Cal Newport has written extensively on “the passion trap” and how a more reliable path to happiness is to develop mastery
Why pursuing passions may be good for you, even if it doesn’t become your career (paywall)
How do follow Guy’s advice to “pay the price” once you find something you’re good at? Master your craft.
Stay tuned for our upcoming interview with Scott Young on how to become a better learner
Find Guy online
Guy has a podcast called Remarkable People