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Welcome to episode two of A History of Marketing. I'm Andrew Mitrak, and today my guest is Guy Kawasaki. Guy shaped the field of marketing by popularizing the idea of evangelism marketing. Today, there are more than 10,000 technology, brand, and product evangelists on LinkedIn, and that wouldn't have happened without Guy.

Guy worked at Apple during some of their most iconic marketing moments, so he shares an insider's perspective on the launch of the Macintosh, the 1984 Super Bowl ad, and the "Think Different" campaign. Guy is also a teacher; he's written many books about marketing and entrepreneurship, and I talk in the episode about how his books influenced me personally as a marketer. If you like this conversation, definitely check out Guy's Remarkable People podcast, where he interviews the likes of Steve Wozniak, Arianna Huffington, Seth Godin, and hundreds of others. Now, here it is: my conversation with Guy Kawasaki.

Read the full transcript:Note: This text is from a recorded conversation transcribed with AI. I have read it to check for mistakes, but it is possible that there are errors that I missed. I’ve also added images and helpful links in the transcript.

Andrew Mitrak: Guy Kawasaki, welcome to A History of Marketing.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, thank you. I think that's a great name for a podcast, A History of Marketing. You've got a lot of material to cover there, Andrew.

Andrew Mitrak: There's a whole lot of history. I don't know if we'll get to every single campaign and every brand, but we'll try. I want to start by saying what an honor it is to speak with you. When I was a marketer for startups, your book The Art of the Start 2.0—it was the 2.0 version—was one of those books that I just referenced over and over.

Guy Kawasaki: Wow.

Andrew Mitrak: And I feel like I'm speaking to my teacher, so it's amazing.

Guy Kawasaki: Well, I hope you, as a student, got value out of the book.

From Law School Dropout to MBA

Andrew Mitrak: Got a lot of value out of it. So, I want to start this conversation way back before you even started your career. In your book Wise Guy, you write about the time you went to law school. And then you dropped out after a week and changed paths to get your MBA, and you majored in marketing.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah.

Andrew Mitrak: What was it that drove you to an MBA in marketing?

Guy Kawasaki: I wanted to be an entrepreneur as opposed to a lawyer. This is back in the mid-70s. And back then, if you're Asian-American, your parents want you to be a doctor, dentist, or lawyer. So, I tried the doctor route, and I fainted in the hospital, so I knew doctor was out. And then I read some article about dentists having the highest rate of suicide, so dentistry was out. So, all that was left was lawyer. And my father was a legislator in the state of Hawaii; he had never gone to college. So, it was kind of his dream that his son would go to college, go to law school, and all that kind of stuff. And I hated law school. I hated it so much I quit after a week.

Andrew Mitrak: After you quit law school, what was it that drove you to pursue an MBA and focus on marketing, of all things?

Guy Kawasaki: The interesting thing is that back then, an MBA was some kind of dues that you paid. And if you wanted to get ahead in business, you had an MBA. And so, back then, in that 1970-1980 timeframe, we had to get an MBA to get good positions in business.

The Value of an MBA for Entrepreneurs

Guy Kawasaki: Now, of course, the interesting thing is, if someone were to ask me today, "Do I need to get an MBA to be an entrepreneur?" I would tell you absolutely not. That it is neither necessary nor sufficient. And what you should do is, if you're the geek, find the marketer; if you're the marketer, find the geek, and get rolling. You shouldn't go get an MBA.

Andrew Mitrak: Your LinkedIn profile says this: "Education: UCLA MBA." And your quote on it is, "I've come to believe that an MBA is a hindrance to entrepreneurship, but I do have one from UCLA.”

Guy Kawasaki: At least I'm honest.

Andrew Mitrak: Do you think that there was any value from your marketing courses, or were you taught things that were able to apply?

Guy Kawasaki: I can't exactly condemn the whole MBA program. It's not exactly the MBA's fault; you get out of a degree what you put into the degree. And the funniest thing is, I became very good friends with my marketing professor. To this day, we're friends. And yes, I learned the classical marketing things from Philip Kotler, like the five P's or the four P's or the three P's, or whatever those P's are. I got a bunch of P's: price, promotion, place, and—

Andrew Mitrak: Product.

Guy Kawasaki: Product! Product, price, place, promotion. So, I learned that, and I learned classical marketing lingo. So, when a consulting firm comes into your company and tries to BS you with marketing terms, it'd be nice to know the marketing terms they're trying to BS you with.

Learning Sales and Marketing in the Jewelry Business

Andrew Mitrak: A lot of people who get MBAs join those consulting firms, but you didn't do this. While you were in business school, you worked part-time at a jewelry company.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah.

Andrew Mitrak: And to quote your book, "I started out by counting diamonds and left five years later as the vice president of sales and marketing." So, what does sales and marketing look like for a jewelry company in the 1970s?

Guy Kawasaki: The jewelry business is hand-to-hand combat. You have to learn how to sell. Now, when people hear in 2024 "learning to sell," you're thinking, "Oh, it's a Google A/B test," or "You're testing various forms of ChatGPT text." That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about hand-to-hand combat sales. In jewelry, it means you make an appointment with a fine jewelry retailer, you fly to Kansas City, the appointment is at 10:00, they finally come out and say hello to you at 11:00, then they keep you waiting another hour, and then they give you 15 minutes for you to show them your line. And in that 15 minutes, they're telling you your stuff is too expensive, and "We can get this anywhere cheaper," and blah blah blah. So, you learn patience, you learn rejection, you learn a lot of things that are very useful for the rest of your life.

Andrew Mitrak: Totally. So, it sounds like this job was a little more sales than marketing, is that fair?

Guy Kawasaki: Well, let me put it to you this way, Andrew: I believe that all of life is sales. People think sales is just this act of taking these orders down or having people click through and put something in a shopping basket and then use Apple Pay to pay. But I'm telling you, life is sales. You sell to get a date, you sell to get a job, you sell to get an upgrade to first class on United even though you got a coach fare, you're selling the front desk clerk to give you a corner room because you need more space to have meetings in the morning. You're selling the clerk to say, "Checkout is at 11:00, but I got a meeting at 12:00. Can I get a late checkout?" I hate to tell you, but life is sales.

How a Love of Cars Led to a Career at Apple

Andrew Mitrak: So, moving on past the jewelry company, you joined Apple in 1983, which seems like a really exciting time to join Apple. And it was Mike Boich, who was the first software evangelist, who hired you.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah.

Andrew Mitrak: And you write in your book that Steve Jobs told Mike, "You can hire Guy, but you're betting your job on him." And so, do you know why Mike was willing to bet his job on you? What was it that got you this role?

Guy Kawasaki: Well, it was 100% pure, honestly, nepotism. We were very good friends at Stanford. I'm going to take you down a little bit of a rat hole. When I was a young kid in Hawaii, somebody gave me a ride in his Porsche...