Views from the Bus: Episode 7, Guy Kawasaki of Remarkable People

In this episode of Views From The Bus, Bob Rief is joined by his good friend and legendary tech leader Guy Kawasaki. The two talk about Guy’s love for surfing and how he picked the sport up at 60 years old. Guy now has a podcast called Remarkable People that has featured guests like Jane Goodall, Margaret Atwood, Arianna Huffington, Kristi Yamaguchi, and more!  

PODCAST HIGHLIGHTS

7:45 – Guy’s love for Surfboards: “Some people collect cars, some people collect paintings, some people collect mistresses. I collect boards. I love to buy surfboards.”

11:59 – Guy now only spends time in the ocean: “That’s all I ever do. I would usually spend four to five hours surfing every day, literally every day. I literally never surfed in Hawaii till I was 60.”

16:20 – Taking up surfing: “I fell in love with surfing and believe me, you know, when I do something, I’m either in the whole way or I’m not. So, you know, as they say the difference between a chicken and a pig in terms of dedication to breakfast, well I’m the pig, man, I give my life for breakfast.”

22:40 – Starting surfing at 60: “If you start off at eight and you can get pounded and all that, and you have the rest of your life to figure it out. But if you start off at 60, you need to move things along. So I got a lot of lessons from my daughter’s surf coach, he compressed a lot of learning for me.

29:14 – The Remarkable People Podcast: “I have this podcast called remarkable people and I interviewed remarkable people, such as Jane Goodall, Margaret Atwood, Arianna Huffington, Kristi Yamaguchi, Vivek Murthy, the guy who’s running Biden’s coronavirus task force.”

30:06 – Meeting and learning surfing from Shaun Thompson: “So we’re in the Apple store sitting at the genius bar to get the screen replaced and this guy comes up to me. He says, are you Hawaiian? I said, no, I’m not. He goes well, but you really look like Guy Kawasaki. I said, I am Guy Kawasaki, but I’m not Hawaiian. I’m Japanese. And then the genius sitting next to me says that’s Shaun Thompson. I said I don’t know who Shaun Thompson is. He’s like the world champion, you know, Kelly Slater of his day. And so that’s how I met Shaun Thompson and he took me surfing and not even Shaun Thompson could get me to stand on a board. That’s how pathetic I was.”

32:00 – The two kinds of naysayers: “I think there are two kinds of naysayers. So one is just a total loser. You know this is like the guy who has never done anything in his or her life but always tries to bring other people down. So I’m a failure. So I’m going to tell you why you’re going to be a failure. So, you know, basically a loser, I don’t think that’s particularly a dangerous bozo because only a loser would listen to a loser. So that’s not the dangerous one. 

The dangerous one is the winner bozo. So the winner dresses in all black, owns a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, famous, you know, millions of followers, all that stuff. So you think, oh this person really knows his or her shit. So if this person says it can’t be done, it shouldn’t be done, isn’t necessary, I should listen to that person. But my observation is half those people are just plain lucky. They aren’t any better than anybody else. So you should not listen to them.”

34:10 – Cash is king during a pandemic: “I think that cash is king right now. In good times you can sort of worry about your image, right? That you want to be presented and positioned and perceived as this high-end exclusive brand, blah, blah, blah. Well, I’ll tell you right now in a pandemic, the question is, are you dead or alive? It’s not whether you’re alive and prestigious, it’s are you alive or dead?”

41:20 – Outdoor sports future: “If you look at how well outdoor sports are doing in the worst time with the worst infection and unemployment and all that, you have got to assume in great times, it’s going to be even better.”