We invited dear Guy Kawasaki at Swift Innotribe at Sibos in 2009, as the innovation guru everyone wanted to hear. Apple evangelist, investor, master in pitching ideas, and many other assets guaranteeing a great show.

He is now close to 70ish years old, discovered he loves podcasts and went on a TEDx talk titled “how to be remarkable” delivered few weeks ago. Link to the talk is here https://youtu.be/MExSugcldHo

He was hired at Apple basically sponsored by his friend, absolutely little qualified for the job, but ended up becoming one of the most prominent characters and used that story to pivot into a super well paid speaker, and investor and an advisor. That actually reminded me how I got hired at SWIFT, basically playing squash with the managing director of the Paris Office back then, and harassing him to buy my data center capabilities I had just built in Italy for a French company, in my delusional belief that SWIFT could have picked some of our racks to host the Fort Knox of the payments industry.

In retrospective it was a dumb thing to do, but I guess the combination of tech infrastructure knowledge and my blunt NGAF sales attitude got this person inspired enough to offer me the job that changed everything.

Guy was saying “it doesn’t matter how you get in, you just act as you fit” … amongst other tips to make you “remarkable”.

Now, the word “remarkable” has two flows, the way I see it: “standing out from the crowd” is the first one, which implicates that what makes you remarkable is how people look at you. The other interpretation I give to this word is less dependent from how you are seen and perceived, and more about a person being remarkable in itself, making an Impact in the world, as a unique human being.

I believe it is our duty to find our own way to be remarkable in the second of the meanings I was talking about, although I am very conscious this is the least popular of the two, and probably the there is a tendency to be more prone to think about the Impact you want to thrive when you get older.

To be honest, I started this article because I reacted negatively to the talk I heard from Guy, but after careful consideration I am grateful it took the right spin in how I would like to be remarkable in my own way, and the only one making sense to me.

Watch the TEDx talk and tell me your thoughts

Rebelliously yours

Matteo