Lessons - The Secret To Evangelism | Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist at Canva

Welcome to the lessons episodes of Success Story. These lessons episodes will be shorter clips from past guests, accomplished value community members, and myself. In each short episode, we'll feature concise and insightful actionable conversations and tactics, providing you with real-world strategies and tips to help you achieve your personal and professional goals. If you're seeking a no-nonsense approach to growth and progress, you've come to the right spot. Settle in, take notes, and enjoy. Let's speak about what you're doing with Canva in relation to evangelism. And why is evangelism important for companies in 2020? I am the chief evangelist of Canva, and I have to explain what evangelism means. So evangelism comes from a Greek word, meaning bring the good news. So I'm bringing the good news of Canva. And the good news of Canva is that Canva has democratized design so that anybody can create great design. You don't have to be a trained designer, and you also don't have to buy or rent expensive Adobe products. So think of Canva as Photoshop for the rest of us. So my job is to make sure that people are aware of the good news of Canva. And that's not unlike the first job in my career, the first tech job in my career, which was evangelizing Macintosh. So Macintosh's good news was it made people more creative and productive. And Canva's good news is that it is making everybody into a designer so that they can communicate more. And that's what I do. And why is evangelism now a role? When it, before it just seemed to be something that was a good practice, the best practice for companies, now you sort of codify it into something that is an actual chief evangelist office. Yeah. I don't, I didn't intentionally codify it. But I think what happened is that people realized that simply advertising and promotion, which are forms of bludgeoning people into becoming your customer, is not as effective. It doesn't last as long. It's also more expensive, whereas evangelism is selling your dream. It's getting people to believe in something as much as you do. So if I can get people to believe in Canva, and if I, well, I think I did, get people to believe as much in Macintosh as I did, they carry the battle forward for you. So with sales, the object is close to deal with Canva, excuse me, with sales, the object is to get, with sales, the object is to close the deal with Canva and evangelism. The object is to get people to believe. Evangelism, evangelism is something that obviously I think a lot of companies are doing now. The celebrity CEO, you see it a lot. And that's, that's kind of what it's, it's doing is removing. I, I don't want to put words in your mouth, so feel free to interject, but it's removing the brand from the company into an individual that's sort of being the champion. So can you go ahead, I don't theoretically and ideally, it's not that there's a single evangelist for the product or the company or the service, it's not even a separate department. Basically in the company should be evangelistic about the product. So if you met the accounting person at Canva, you would see that he or she is evangelistic about Canva. There are people like me who have that in their job title, but everybody in your company from the shipping clerk to the receptionist to the VP of HR should be evangelistic about the product. And this is not to say that, you know, the celebrity CEO is often evangelist for the company, but not always, you know, many times the, the, the highly visible sort of CEO as brand. That's more about the person than about the evangelism. So I don't assume that every visible CEO is an evangelist. It would be a better and better assumption that every visible CEO is a jerk and some of them are evangelists, not jerks. I like that. And I think you're, I think you're 100% on point. Now I also like that you made a point of stating that everybody in the company in a marketing environment, 2020, should be an evangelist, but I, you know, if we look at companies, I don't think that's the case the most fact it's, it's the opposite. Well, you know, to be successful in this perfect world with everybody is the evangelistic. The start is a great product and let's just say that not every company has a great product. So it's very hard to be evangelistic and succeed as an evangelist for something that's crap. It's hard to evangelize crap. So how do you, so, so as somebody who's in their career, where should they be looking to, to align with companies like how, you know, the interview state like where it's, you're at a point in your career where you can have that luxury and you can align with companies that you truly do believe in and you, and you've had the experience when somebody's earlier on in their career, what, what should they be asking? What questions should they be asking? Where maybe they can sort of better vet the company to make sure that they do align with the company who they can eventually evangelize and really tie into like their whole mission. You know, so, okay. I'm going to completely contradict myself in a minute, but to start, you know, go to work for companies that make stuff that you love. And if you love something, it's easy to be evangelistic about it. If you're just doing it for the money, it'll take an extreme case. You know, I don't think many investment bankers love private equity. You know, they don't get everything. How can I make the world a better place with private equity? How can I buy low and sell high and, and that's going to dent the universe and make the world a better place? So it would be hard to be evangelistic about private equity. On the other hand, with a Macintosh, with Canva, it could be an electric car. You know, I bet many Tesla employees are evangelistic about Tesla that they believe that, you know, this is a way to prevent the end of humanity. So it takes the product or service that's the high road and that's the start. Now I said I was going to completely reverse myself. I will also tell you that I'm not naive. So let's take this case where hypothetical case. So you go to work for a company that sells, I don't know, pet supplies online. And you know, you like dogs, you like cats, but you're not a dog kind of guy or a dog kind of gal or a cat kind of guy or a cat kind of girl. But you got this good job at this company. It's a startup and you don't hate animals, but that's not your passion. And all of a sudden you get on and it becomes a rocket ship and you're selling hundreds of thousands of cans of dog food and cat food per day and leashes are flying off the shelf and flea powder. You can't even keep it in stock and, you know, all this kind of stuff. And now the company's valuation is $5 billion and because you got in early, you got 1% of a $5 billion company. Trust me, you will get passionate about pet supplies. You may even be able to convince yourself that you're evangelistic that you've made pet supplies more inexpensive, you've made pet supplies more available to people who use, so better kinds of pet supplies. So I'm not completely naive, I'm not telling you it's all pixie dust and unicorns, but the start is a great product.