Lessons - How to Create Content People Actually Care About | Guy Kawasaki - Chief Evangelist at Canva

So you were your evangelizing at camp, but you realized the importance of evangelizing and across the organization, but I want to I want to understand why you and your pre right now you're building out your own podcast. Yeah, you're building out your own community. Because that is something that you're doing for yourself. So walk us through why that's okay. So there's two answers to that. There's the high road and the low road. You don't mean both. That's your vote. Okay. So the high road is over the course of 30 or 40 years. I've been very fortunate to make a lot of relationships gain a lot of visibility. So I have achieved the position where I have the context and the connections to create a podcast like I have. I am an active listener of podcasts and most podcasts have guests. And so I, I, I looked at that. I said, wow, you know, guy, you know, Jane Goodall, you can get to Margaret Adwood. You know, Bob, Jill, Dee Dee, you know, Sean Thompson, you know, was, you know, Stephen Wolfram. I mean, these are remarkable people. So you could interview them about their remarkableness, how they got there, what they did, you know, their advice. They're takes on certain issues. I just released a podcast about Leon Panetta and Leon Panetta was Secretary of Defense, director of the CIA, Chief of Staff of Bill Clinton. You know, he knows a few things about politics. He can help you interpret what's going on right now. So the high road was I figured out that I have the context and the connections and now the time to create a podcast where I can really get remarkable people on record and to preserve their wisdom for posterity. So that's the high road. The low road is I've been making 50 to 75 speeches a year, which means 50 to 75 trips per year, which means, you know, one trip per week on average, and I am just sick of traveling. And so when I came out with my latest book wise guy, I was on the other side of these kind of things. I was the interview, E, as opposed to the interviewer. And so I would talk to these people like, yes, what's your business model? Well, I sell ads. How many ads do you sell? Well, one at the start, one in the middle, one in the end. And how much do you get for these ads? I get 20,000 for the first one, 15,000 for the second one and 5,000 for the third one. So I, you know, I'm not mad at the medical, but I can add 20 and 15 and five and get 40 like a 40,000 per episode. I said, now how many episodes do you do? You know, between 100 and 150 a year. So now I can multiply 40,000 times 100 and get 4 million. And I said, so you tell me you're making at, at best case, even if you're lying to me, 4 million, I divide that in half. That's 2 million. So even if you're lying to me by a factor of 2, you're making 2 million. If you're lying to me by a factor of 4, you're making 1 million. So why am I getting my ass on the plane? 52 times a year. And you're just, you know, doing podcasts without much travel and making either 1, 2 or 4 million works. So I said, I'm going to be a podcaster. I'm not going to like be a public speaker anymore. So that's the low road reason. It's not a low road. It's smart because if you're going to, well, so this is going to this is going to segue into really where I wanted to drive this home because people are in their career. I work at 9 to 5. So I manage a sales team at software sales team. And this is something that I'm doing as a passion project. And it, you know, it really doesn't take a lot to to build something that you're an expert in that you can do on the side. And you don't have to be like, you're not going to get the Jane Goodalls or, you know, like that level of access. I think you interviewed area in a halfington. Like that level of access is obviously reserved for people that have sort of built out themselves in their career. And they're at a certain point. It doesn't mean you don't get. I mean, instant access. It only took 40 years. They only 40 years. They don't see that they don't see the 40 years. I have to, you know, I just asked you like, you know, how many downloads are your podcast getting an obviously ramped up much quicker than most most other people to start. But you've put years into this. So I think that just, but still you recognize that it's an easy thing to do. It's still a low labor. That's a whole other relative. I thought it would be easy to do. It's not that easy. I mean, there, there's no free lunch in the world. So I don't about you. But when I interview, I have such a diversity. So I interviewed Jane Goodall. I have to understand chimpanzees. I interview Bob Childini. I have to understand social psychology. I interview Leon Panetta. I have to understand international relations and politics and Congress and government. And I interview Sean Thompson. I have to understand surfing. Well, that I, that I have. Kind of had that. And then I interview Kristi Amaguchi. Well, I'm not a big Olympic figure skater. So you know, I figured out Olympic figure skating. So there's I think five four or five hours per interview prep. There's one hour of the interview itself. And then I get the transcript back and the, you know, the, the, the first pass of the audio. I think there's another four or five hours of editing of that that I do. And that's it. And then I give it to a sound sound designer. And he probably puts another four or five hours into it. And so now we have a finished product. And then the hard part begins, believe it or not, because the hard part is getting the word out. And you got to use social media and mail champion newsletter episodes and live with, you know, live video confercing and holy shit. Webinar is all that it might be easier to get on playing 52 times zero. I think I think I think the whole point is though to start. Like that's really like I encourage everyone to just start because you, yes, you put a lot of love. You put a lot of love into the, you put a lot more love than a lot of people put into their thought. Yeah, you put more love into it. I think so. I think so. I think so. I think that I think also the more you do it. The easier it is to remove a little bit of that prep because you know the questions that are going to come up and you can guide people down. Ignostic of what they do. You want to be a little bit educated. But yeah, I, I think that it comes a little, I think I think it gets a little bit easier. I hope it gets a little bit. How many episodes have you done? So this is so the 20 20. I'm at about 13 and I will tell you though that I have obviously been on this side, right. And so I know When somebody truly knows who I am and somebody truly doesn't. And so, you know, you, you can ask five or six. So, you know, what was a career? What was your career path? What was the secret to your success? Yeah, you know, and then it's obvious. What was it like working for Steve Jobs? So I know when they've looked at my Wikipedia entry, but I also know when they've done a deep dive. And so when I do a deep dive. And let's take someone like Jane Goodall. So when you interview Jane Goodall, if you want to show her that you've done a deep dive, you have to say to her, well, tell me how without a bachelor's degree. Lewis Leaky helped you get a PhD at Oxford. So you didn't have any undergraduate degree and you got a PhD because Lewis Leaky helped you. Okay, so that's not something that might be too obvious. Although that is in her Wikipedia entry, but you know, that's a kind of a detail. And so I don't think most people interviewing Jane Goodall would ask her, you know, like, how'd you get a PhD without a undergraduate degree? And when you, when you ask, when you ask Leon Panetta, when you're interviewing Leon Panetta, everybody's asking them about being in the sit room. It'll sound a bit loud and and you know all that, but I try to ask them. So, let's look at. I hope you know who these people are, but let's look at James Mattis and John Kelly. So John Kelly was the chief of staff for Trump James Mattis was secretary of defense, both marine generals, they lasted a couple three years, and then they were fired or left or whatever resigned. I asked Leon, so I said, you know, how do I interpret that? Do I look at it and say, well, is where they were they complicit is the attitude, well, you know, I only work for Trump two or three years. I'm not a bad guy. I left after two or three years. Yeah, you could make the case. That's like say, well, I only work for Hitler for two or three years. Man, I wasn't that bad. I left after two years. Well, you can, you can believe that. On the other hand, I said to Leon, so Leon, tell me, you know, is it that or is it these guys were patriotic Americans? They, you know, they sacrificed. They went to work for someone. They probably didn't ideologically agree with because they love their country. And they thought they could prevent disaster from the inside, which way do I look at that beyond. And so that, that's not something you just read Wikipedia and you come up with. So I don't, there's a whole diet travel about how hard it is to ask good questions, I guess. Now, let me, let me ask you this. Now I feel like all my questions are at the microscope. So you got me sweating, but I do this again. Yeah. No, no, no, it's good. It's good. I like it. I actually really like where this is going. So do you find as a marketer, you think that there's more value in delivering that granular content. Or do you think that them to to to scale the podcast and to get it and get as many people into this possible knowing that the people that you're speaking to people already don't have an idea of what like they don't even they haven't gone on their Wikipedia. So does it make sense to get that granular or does it make more sense to stay high level and what's better commercially. Listen, when I have two and a half million followers or episodes downloaded or two and a half, two and a half million copies of each episode or download, I will tell you the answer is I don't know. I mean, maybe everybody asked those kind of simple easy questions because that's what everybody wants to hear. So I don't know, you know, of the people who listened to Leon Panetta's episode, I don't know how many were wondering. So yes, how should I think of John Kelly and James Mattis? That probably never occurred to 99.9% of the people. But then, you know, isn't that what makes Terry Gross a great interviewer? Isn't that what makes a great 60 minutes interviewer great. Not that they asked the softballs.