Kim Komando: Shaping the Digital Landscape

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. Helping me in this episode is Kim Komando. And before you even ask, yes, her parents gave her that name. Kim is one of America's most successful radio hosts and web entrepreneurs. She is a trusted and respected voice in tech as the host of the popular radio program, The Kim Komando Show. It is on over 400 stations nationwide and heard by millions of people each week. And as you'll hear, she is a one person online media machine. She has written several books including Seven Steps to Online Dating Success, 50 Ways to Make Money From Home, and iPhone for Seniors. Throughout her career, she has been a passionate advocate for using to technology to improve lives, but she's also mindful of the risk and challenges that come with living in a digital world. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And now here is a remarkable Kim Komando.
It boggles my mind that you can do a daily podcast. How do you do that? Just walk me through the mechanics of how you can do a daily podcast.
Kim Komando:
Actually, there's more than one daily podcast. The daily podcast is actually three days of my national radio show, and so I have a show on a total of 510 stations throughout the United States and the weekend show is all three hours. So what we do is we take hour one is Monday's podcast, and then Tuesday is the second hour, Wednesday is the third hour. And then I actually do a separate show just for WLS in Chicago on Friday nights. And so that becomes the Thursday podcast. And then Friday is a different podcast.
It's where I take a couple of folks that I'm mentoring here at the show and we do a morning zoo round table, fun talk about all things digital. So that's becomes the Kim Komando Today. And then, wait, there's more is that I have a daily tech update and it's found on about 389 stations and that is just one news story. And then I also do what we call a Digital Life Hack. And that's also one minute and that's also on a whole bunch of radio stations too. So it's about a twofer I guess you'd say.
Guy Kawasaki:
And how do you come up with this much material?
Kim Komando:
It's not that hard really, Guy. There's just so much happening in the world right now aside from, I know everybody's talking about ChatGPT and AI. But there are also the other things that are happening. For example, what Microsoft is doing with their particular products and maybe there's a new scam going on, maybe there's some new development. And for example, I put in the rundown because I thought this was really interesting to me and if I find it's interesting to me then I think it's interesting to everybody else, is that, for example, there's now something called a re-wilding stage.
And I'm like, what the heck is that? If you had a robotic lawnmower and you want to have just part of your yard, just let it grow wild, is that you can set that in that robotic lawnmower. So I come up with all these different things, how hackers are cracking our passwords, how everybody thinks that they're getting stalked online, what's going on with Apple AirTags and why did it take Google and Apple two years to finally come together with a standard?
And so all of my content has nothing to do with fix it because I actually tell people, if you can Google this answer, then you should probably just Google it and not call me.
Guy Kawasaki:
That's an interesting segue. So today, should people "Google" a question or should they Bard or ChatGPT the question. Because to me, I hardly use Google at all anymore for those kind of questions because I don't want to get three quarter million links. If I want to add a HP printer to my Mac Wi-Fi network, I asked Bard or ChatGPT that. I don't go to Google. So where are you with something like that?
Kim Komando:
I definitely use ChatGPT. I go directly to openai.com. I don't use Bing. I've tried to do that. I found it rather annoying and I know that they've had 100 million people use it since February. And that's something that I never thought I would ever say in my entire life about Bing. And I don't think Bard is ready for prime time. But you have to remember that ChatGPT is not always 100 percent correct. But you bring up a bigger picture before I go to that about Google.
It was probably in December and really into January that I sat down with my team, and I said, "Listen, there's a saying that I've lived by my entire life. And I know that everybody here cringes when I say it, but I really mean it this time. And the saying is it's not teamwork makes the dream work because just, oh my gosh, that's just a horrible thing. But the saying is, if you don't innovate, you evaporate."
So we have to innovate because websites are going away. If I were in Google's shoes right now after looking at ChatGPT, I'd be totally freaking out, which is what they did, and trying to come up with new ways that we can work aside ChatGPT, because we are going to get replaced by ChatGPT unless we can innovate. And so in this whole transitioning state that we've been looking at other ways that we can use ChatGPT.
But if I may just tell you one story about ChatGPT is that when it first came out, I went on there and I don't know if you've done this, Guy. I did a little ego questions over there at ChatGPT, okay. And I said, who is Kim Komando? And it came back and it had basic stuff out of the Wikipedia entry. And then I decided to ask it a question that I get asked probably, I don't know, at least three times a week, honest to goodness. And I was just in Las Vegas and somebody recognized me and said, "I just have a question for you. Is Kim Komando your real name?" Because how can anybody be born with such an alliteration like that? So I decided to ask ChatGPT is Kim Komando her real name? And it came back with this whole litany of just BS.
It said that I was born Kimber Ann Tommy and because my focus was computers, I changed my name to be command like commanding the computer. And it just went on and on. And I was sitting there thinking like, okay, this is totally wrong. So I decided to do some homework and now this is what's so smart about ChatGPT, is that I couldn't find anybody in the world, the entire world by the name of Kimber Ann Tommy, nobody. And so it was smart enough to come up with a name that it couldn't be identified to anything else when in reality Kim Komando is my real name.
And so I decided to tell ChatGPT, "You're being a dope. And ChatGPT, Kim Komando is my real name." So I think an answer to your question, I don't think you're alone in that you're not going to Google. And we've been watching our web traffic very closely and to see when it's going to take that dump. And it hasn't done it yet, but I'm anticipating that.
Guy Kawasaki:
In the old world, the example I use is how to roast a turkey. So I asked that of Google and you get three quarter million links, 50,000 YouTube videos. And if you ask ChatGPT that, it'll tell you start breast down because that's the meatiest part and it needs the most heat and then flip it over at the end to make the skin crisp, which is all I really want to know. On Google, when you ask that question, it gives you three quarter million links and the first links are a recipe site, somebody selling aluminum pans at Amazon, someone's selling turkey basters, someone selling brine.
So the question is, when Bard or ChatGPT now gives you this three paragraph answer without any links, are we going to look on the side and see the same ads and click through to either content sites or e-commerce sites? And if I were both Google and the websites, I would be panicking right now. I don't know what I would do.
Kim Komando:
It's a tough call. And we've been dabbling actually in AI for probably about two and a half, three years. And it happened when I mispronounced a word. We talked about this content that gets produced every single day. And I mispronounced a word and a gentleman on our staff, his name's Mike, and he was trying to figure out where else I said that word because I was on an airplane, where else I said that word so that he could input that word so I would sound fabulous because I made a mistake. And there was no place he could figure it out. And then Jeremy, I like to call him our IT genius, he came out and he said, "There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to duplicate your voice."
And I was like, "What?" And he said, "Yeah." He said, "Let's try to AI your voice." Now, this is years ago. And I had to read I think six hours of Animal Planet scripts, which I don't know if you've ever actually read an Animal Planet script, but it's, "The chameleon jumps over the antelope and spreads its wings." I felt like Attenborough there. It was very flat. It was very flat, but it wrote in a pinch.
So about a year ago, another company came forward and said, "We can do this, too." And I read, I don't know, maybe two or three hours worth of my existing scripts. And then it came out and I was talking like this with no tone, no inflection. And so then I read another three hours being like hyper Kim, which by the way, I can't drink coffee because I'm already wired and fired in my life. So it was like, okay, we're going to give her a cup of coffee and then she's going to go in the studio so it's “Okay. So today we're talking about”. And now it sounds pretty good. As a matter of fact, my husband was listening to real Kim and then he asked the guys in the studio to make an AI Kim of the same script, and he said the AI script sounded better. I was like, "Oh, thanks a lot."
Guy Kawasaki:
We use an application called Descript to edit our podcast and in Descript it forces you to read a script so that it can use your voice, push comes to shove, if you need to not have the real guy say something as an engineer. And we've never done it because we've never not had the real guy to say what they needed, but it's there too.
Kim Komando:
And it is there. And I made everybody promise and I looked at everybody with, and I said, "Listen, if you ever have Kim say something, that she did the entire Cardinals football team at some point, I'm going to be so mad." So just not happening.
Guy Kawasaki:
I don't honestly know if I'm going to keep this answer in the final podcast, but I want to know if you got a bunch of pushback for that joke you made about Steve and Apple battery life.
Kim Komando:
I didn't. Too soon? Not so sure. But handling this complex topic with levity is something that I've done my entire career because so many people approach consumer tech and I just think they take themselves and they take everything too seriously and I read the headlines on Gizmodo and The Sun and The Verge and MSN or wherever it may be, and somebody announces something. And they're like, "Wow, that is the greatest thing. Oh my gosh, it's going to do this and that." It's not here yet. So I make it when you ask about content, unless it's here, you're not going to hear it on any of our content or read it anywhere.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wait, what does that have to do with the joke about Steve Jobs dying early and Apple battery life?
Kim Komando:
It's just a way to make people laugh and some people may get offended by it. If you are a standup comedian anywhere, you're going to offend some people. And I'm certainly not a standup comedian by any means. But what I do try to do is input some of my kind of weird thoughts and strange thoughts and pass it along. Even I put something in the newsletter this morning, which we also have a really great newsletter that we send out every day too.
At the end I put a meme and it was a meme with a coffee cup. And if you look down on this picture, it looks like two eyes and a mouth open the way that the bubbles were. And the meme said something like, "Yeah, we can't believe you're up this early either having a cup of coffee." And so underneath it I put, "There's a whole book in the Bible dedicated to coffee, and you probably never thought about it, but it's called Hebrews." Just these things that come into my head and I'm just not so sure where they come from. So that's where it is.
Guy Kawasaki:
That's why Kim Komando is Kim Komando, right?
Kim Komando:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
That's right. Yeah. Now that the dust is a little settled, how have you utilized ChatGPT for your podcasts and newsletters and everything?
Kim Komando:
I may ask it to do research for me. So for example, I was reading today this morning about how New Zealand, Air New Zealand now has a baggage tracking app. And I thought to myself, certainly Air New Zealand's not the only one. So I went over to ChatGPT and it said United and Delta has it. And I said, certainly there's more than United and Delta. And so then I had to actually do a Google search that ended up, because ChatGPT until right now does not have all the latest information.
I may ask it if I'm writing something or doing something on the show about how powerful an iPhone is compared to the Apollo 11, I may go in there and do that. I may actually input, because the articles are always so long over at Vice, I may put a Vice URL in there and say, "Can you summarize this for me in three paragraphs?"
But I have found that when it summarizes articles that it really misses some of the points that I would like to get across. So it does it in a generic method. If somebody is asking me how to do something and I'm not really quite sure how to do it, I may go to ChatGPT and ask, "A barn is 600 feet away from the main house and they don't have a direct line of sight and they can't put a cable down." And I know the solution is ubiquity, but I want to see if it's going to have the same type of intel that it would pass along as well.
Guy Kawasaki:
And if you ask it a question like, compare the computing power of a Macintosh versus Apollo 11 and it gives you an answer, we both know we can't necessarily trust that answer. So then what's the next step?
Kim Komando:
Oh wow. The next step is to actually maybe go do a Google search if it's really something that you have to be 1,000 percent sure. And then of course then you're dealing with, as you so astutely mentioned, is the sponsored ads at the top and then all these incessant links and the videos that you're just looking for a number. Google is now changing their methodology. And so if you do ask it a question like that, may go to a webpage, which I think is insanely convenient, is that it will highlight that particular sentence.
So you're like, oh, there's a sentence in the whole article that I need, which is also interesting because you're not having to read the whole article. Your time spent on that page is now reduced. Your bounce rate must be incredibly high because you're just going into that page, which will effect of course the CPMs and the RPMs and all the other ad rates accordingly.
Guy Kawasaki:
Have you ever tried a search engine called Neva, N-E-V-A?
Kim Komando:
No, but I will.
Guy Kawasaki:
You should check it out because Neva is ex-Google employees, and you pay for this search engine on a yearly basis, but it provides no sponsored links. And at the top of it summarizes it, the answer ala ChatGPT. So it's the best of both worlds. So it's N-E-V-A. Check it out.
There's these two recent headlines where Goldman Sachs says that 300 million jobs are going to be impacted. And IBM says 8,000 positions may not be necessary over the next five years at IBM because of ChatGPT and the like. Do you believe those numbers? Well, you have to define impact. Impact that does not necessarily mean gone, but do you think it's such a threat to employment?
Kim Komando:
Oh, I don't know if it's that much of a threat, but it is a substantial threat when you look at being able to replace writers and editors and media personalities and paralegals and radiologists. So we will become dependent on this technology. And I don't know if I fully comprehend myself how deeply that is going to be impacting other than to say that if I were in a situation where I was being a data analyst, systems analyst, moving things in words from point A to point B, summarizing, whatever it may be, I think those are the first line that's going to be hit.
And at some point we're going to have robotic landscapers. We all know that's coming, look at Boston Dynamics. But there's still going to be that person that has to program that robot to know that shrub needs to be pruned at a certain level or a certain way.
But I think what everybody's afraid of, and in my mind, guy, it's like this little person up there in my head saying, "No, this is a remote possibility," because everybody's afraid that the robots are going to take over. And that response from the Steve Wozniaks and the Elon Musks, let's take a six-month break on all this, and meanwhile China's going full force on it. There are a lot of extenuating factors right now that I don't know that me being immersed in this industry for as long as I have been over twenty-five years, I don't know if I fully understand it because I have never seen a fundamental shift like this because of tech in my entire life.
Okay, yeah, we had the first cell phone, and I love Marty Cooper, and he's a fabulous guy, and he did a great job with that fifty years ago. And then we had the iPhone, we had the PCs coming in that instead of $3,000, you can buy one for now $150 for a Chromebook, and nobody's worried about hard drive storage anymore. But all of that pales in comparison to what we are on the cusp of right now.
Guy Kawasaki:
Like you, I've been through the personal computer revolution, internet revolution, social media revolution. I don't think any of them compared to this. I think one of the great ironies is that for a while we thought IBM was on the leading edge of AI with Watson. But why didn't IBM make Watson into ChatGPT?
Kim Komando:
Because it's IBM, because it's a big conglomerate. For the same thing, you could ask the question, and that's a good question, Guy. Why didn't AT&T control the internet? They had a phone line into every person's home, a landline that is now gone. I think in order to innovate that you need to have a little bit of a wild child side of you. You're not afraid to fail. You're not looking at paradigms and goals and committees that you're just going to get your butt out there and you're going to do it.
Guy Kawasaki:
The irony is that if IBM had made Watson into ChatGPT, they would not be worried about 8,000 jobs being replaced by AI, right? They would be staffing up like crazy because they could arguably control the world with AI.
Kim Komando:
100 percent. And I worked at IBM, that was my first job out of college. And I noticed that there were these guys that were driving BMWs and I was driving a Pontiac Sunbird. And I went to my manager and I said, "How do I get to be one of those guys? They're driving a BMW." And she said to me, "I'd like you to come out and come with me and let's go have a cocktail." So I went with her for a drink, she's my manager.
And she said to me, "With all honesty," she said, "You're never going to be one of those guys because you're too blonde, you're too blue-eyed, you're too pretty and you're too young. And they have families and kids in braces, and it's just never going to happen." And I thanked her, and then the next day I called up AT&T and said, "I work for IBM. I'd like to work for you, and I want to be a district manager." And they said, "Come on over." So I was like, "Okay."
Guy Kawasaki:
And the rest is history?
Kim Komando:
Yeah, pretty much. There's a lot going on in between there and then. It's interesting though because certain times have certainly changed. When I went to apply for that job AT&T, they gave me a psychological test, and I don't know if they're allowed to do that necessarily anymore. But I was in a room with just the test proctor, and it was about 100 questions on this test, and one of them was, you're late for the biggest sales presentation of your entire life.
This is going to make or break your quota. But you hit traffic and you're about ten minutes behind schedule and you whip around the corner and then suddenly you hit a dog. Okay. Do you stop and take care of the dog or do you go on to that presentation?
And I looked at the proctor and I said, "This is a BS question right here, okay?" I said, "I'm going to stop and take care of the dog, but that's not the answer that you want." And he said, "You have to answer the way that you feel is correct." And I said, "So what if I say I stop and I'm going to help the dog?" He says, "Well, that's not going to reflect kindly on the test." I looked at him, I said, "Okay, I'm just checking the box that I'm not going to help the dog, but I'm going to help the dog. I just want to make it clear right now that I'm going to help the dog."
Guy Kawasaki:
And you got the job.
Kim Komando:
I did get the job. Yes, I did.
Guy Kawasaki:
So you mentioned China a few minutes ago. And there's this absolute craze about how TikTok is this great threat to America and democracy and all that. And do you agree that it's this monumental threat and that this threat is because it's a Chinese company any worse than Facebook or Twitter?
Kim Komando:
Here's my thought is that of course, we have 150 million Americans on TikTok every day, which is an incredible waste of productivity, but we're not going to worry about that. And of course, we know that everything goes back to Beijing, China, anything that you do on your phone, your face print, your fingerprints, your photos, your text messages, everything's going back. It's being fed back to China, which we know is an enemy state of the United States. That's one side of it.
But what I'm really fearful of and why I've told my audience to take TikTok off their phone, which I know that they don't want to do because they love TikTok, is to just keep in mind that there's tremendous power with that 150 million Americans. That if Beijing, China wanted to push down a fake video of, say, President Biden saying that we are on the verge of a nuclear war with Russia, whatever it may be, if you thought getting toilet paper during COVID was a nightmare, just imagine if something like that happened, that you just want to keep in mind that is a real possibility because they could feed a video that could say anything, and you'd have half of our population totally freaking out.
They could also maybe use that type of power to maybe disrupt the power grid. So yes, the information's there, and I'm not sure they care about what Bob in Bloomington, Illinois is doing at two o'clock in the afternoon when he should be working and he's watching somebody dance on TikTok as much as it becomes a conduit for something bigger.
Guy Kawasaki:
And why is that threat any worse than Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk deciding that Donald Trump won the election?
Kim Komando:
I think it is because it's more powerful because not everybody is on Facebook. Not everybody is going to be following Elon Musk. Most people, when I say most people that I interact with, my audience, they think Elon Musk is a little out there and him spending $40 billion for Twitter and then he's got Tesla problems with the full self-driving car, and he's got SpaceX, he's got Starlink. This guy is all over the board. Mark Zuckerberg, he bet the farm on the Metaverse and now he's out saying, "Oh, forget about that. I'm going in all in AI. Yes, this is what I want to do right now." So we have these threats all around us. But I think the intimate forum of TikTok just makes it more dangerous than Twitter or Facebook.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So you would actually favor banning TikTok. I don't know how you would actually pull that off, but you would favor that?
Kim Komando:
Yes. And I also am in favor of the social media companies finally being held accountable for these stupid challenges that kids are dying over. I also think that social media companies need to really enforce that unless you're thirteen or over that you're not on Instagram. I'm not really sure how they'd be able to do that, but they make billions and billions of dollars by selling our data. And they say that they can't have an 800 number for you to call and get customer service for.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, there is some hypocrisy there, right? So do you recommend any social media platform for your listeners or maybe even more important for your family, for someone you love?
Kim Komando:
You know what's interesting about that is my son just graduated from USC, so he grew up with all things digital. I gave him his first cell phone when he was three.
Guy Kawasaki:
Three?
Kim Komando:
Yes, it wasn't today's phones. It had just a couple of little buttons. It had Mom, Dad, and 911. I threw that in his backpack. So he's been around this and we've had the chats about Xbox, and I've taken away his phone when he was a teenager, I took away his car because he was driving too fast because I had a sensor on the inside.
Guy Kawasaki:
You should have given him a Sunbird.
Kim Komando:
I should have. A funny story about that is that he was driving too fast and this OBD computer by Davis Electronics came up and said he was going like sixty miles per hour in a thirty mile per hour zone, and he got two red light tickets in the same weekend. And I said, "That's it. You're not driving your car anymore. I'm going to take you to school and pick you up." And that went on for two days. So the second day I noticed when I was dropping him off, all his friends are standing there waiting for him to get dropped off. And I look at him, I go, "What's that?" He goes, "Oh," he goes, "I totally get cred whenever you drop me off." And I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Mom, you're dropping me off in a Ferrari F12." I'm like, "Oh”.
But anyway, so he follows one person on Instagram and that's me. He turned off all of his notifications from Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram. Yes, he has TikTok. He won't get rid of it. And I asked him about that and he said, "I got tired of social media controlling me." So as far as what I recommend for the listeners, it may be for a different purpose if you're trying to build a business. If you want to keep track of what your kids are doing online, you better be online. When you need to have those talks with them their entire life, you just can't expect to have it turn around one day and you're going to be like, "Oh, by the way, you're fourteen. What have you been doing on Instagram for the last six years of your life?"
So it's one of these things that in the beginning, I didn't see how prevalent it was going to be. I didn't believe when Facebook said, meet me at facebook.com/whatever your address was because and every media personality was doing that. I said, "You know what? I'm going to keep them where I want them. They're my customer." But now everybody's on there doing who knows what.
Guy Kawasaki:
You obviously look at every consumer product and service. And what's your impression about the user experience? Is it getting better or worse these days?
Kim Komando:
Oh, I think it's getting far better. It's getting better as far as getting things to work. I'm just so impressed, for example, that you can sign on to your streaming media accounts by using a QR code. And you don't have to go to your laptop or your phone and get that six digit number and then try to find that on your TV keyboard. So it's getting better.
But I think what's getting worse is the opportunities that companies are taking to upsell you. So all of a sudden you have this, but now you're going to get this and you need this and you need this and you need this. And before you know it, what you thought you were spending $5.99 a month, now suddenly you're looking at $26 a month. That just happened to me yesterday, I think it was. I got a notification. My New York Times digital subscription somehow went up from $6.95 a month to $26.95 a month.
Yes, I'm not sure that happened, but one of the things on my agenda today is to cancel my New York Times subscription and then sign up again for $6.95 because I'm really cheap. I can talk about having jets and boats and all this other stuff, but at the end of the day, I was a bootstrapper, was living on ramen noodles. And when you have to get twelve packages of ramen noodles for a dollar and you are trying to park your car in your garage because you don't want the repo man to come get it on the street, then that lesson just never ever leaves you. And so I know it drives our accountants crazy because I'll go through our numbers and I'll be like, "How come we paid this contractor $26.92 more this month than we did last month?" Or whatever it may be. It's just one of those things.
Guy Kawasaki:
As you look at products that consumers can buy, what companies are in your hall of fame for product quality, UX, service, the whole thing? And what are in your hall of shame?
Kim Komando:
You can't beat an Apple product. I know they're expensive. And speaking of upselling, they're always upselling it. Why get a 256 gig phone when you can get a one terabyte phone or whatever it may be? And you need AppleCare. And of course you don't want the iPhone Pro when you get the iPhone Pro Max. But when you look at user experience, it's really hard to beat. And I say this and right afterwards, I'll tell you guys, somebody's going to run on social and say, "Oh, she's only saying that because Apple's a sponsor." Okay, Apple has never given me one dollar of advertising money. I buy every Apple product that I get.
Hall of shame. Oh boy, there's just been so many. I think some of these e-bikes that are coming out are just downright dangerous, especially the no-name brands. Vizio TVs, not a fan of them. I know they're cheap and they're cheap for a reason because they're selling all your data. If you don't care about it, just go ahead and buy a Vizio TV. And now we are talking about even cars. I bought a Tesla, I'm a car gal. And so I was really excited to buy a Tesla. And of course, if you're going to buy a Tesla, why buy that car? Why buy an S when you can buy a Plaid? So I bought the Plaid. This thing's a rocket. It is a rocket. And I didn't even go in ludicrous mode, not even.
But the workmanship is crap. The trunk didn't quite fit if you looked at it. One side was bigger than the other. The inside, why can't I have Apple CarPlay? Why can't I do that? Why do I have to listen to Tesla's music if that's what I want to listen to, if I don't want to listen to the radio? The full self-driving mode, let me tell you, I would be dead right now.
I put it on because I thought, oh, this is going to be great. I can drive from Santa Barbara down to LA and I won't have to worry about it and it would be fun. Got out of Santa Barbara and I almost hit a truck. About five minutes later, a motorcycle blew through a stop sign and I actually called Tesla up and I said, "Can I send this back to you? Can I return my Tesla? Is that something that you allow? I've only had it for a week. I don't want it anymore." And they said, "Nope, you can't trade it in and you can't give it back to us."
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow.
Kim Komando:
Also on the Tesla, there's no side mirrors, no lane change alerts on the side mirrors.
Guy Kawasaki:
There's no blind spot?
Kim Komando:
No.
Guy Kawasaki:
No way.
Kim Komando:
Yeah. You know what you're supposed to do? Okay. They got that big tablet in the middle. What you're supposed to do is turn and look in that big tablet to see if somebody's going to be there. And then if somebody is there, they give you that beep, beep, beep. Okay, I don't want that. I want to be able to see, is it yellow? Is it red? But I may be a little different because I can only see out of my left eye. So having blind spot assistance is paramount when I'm driving.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, it's literally true for you.
Kim Komando:
It is. I had a cornea transplant that didn't quite work 100 percent when I was a kid. And as a matter of fact, coming up soon, I'm having another one. So I'm really hopeful that maybe I will be able to see. So that would be pretty exciting. And the first thing I want to do is I want to get into VR because I've never been able to really experience VR so now I'm like, okay, yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
You missed the window on Facebook VR already.
Kim Komando:
I know. Those people didn't have legs in the Metaverse. What was that about?
Guy Kawasaki:
I used to be a Mercedes brand ambassador. And in a Mercedes you have total control of the lights, the color lights in the cockpit. And Mercedes has blind spot. But I always said, "Why don't you make those lights in the whole cockpit when you turn on your lane switch signal?" And if there is something in the way, make all the lights blink, not just the little one in the side view mirror. Make all the lights on the dash blink. Wouldn't that be more obvious?
Kim Komando:
That would be pretty amazing. I would love that. And you're right.
Guy Kawasaki:
How hard could that be?
Kim Komando:
I don't think it would be very difficult. And I don't know if you took a look at the new SLS, but they're pretty innovative. They have that big tablet now in the middle. And you actually, when you get in the car, you give it to your fingerprint and then it personalizes your whole car experience to that fingerprint, which I think is just really sweet.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. Since we're talking about Teslas, you think Elon Musk has lost his mind? No, this a serious question.
Kim Komando:
What facet? I'm sorry. Can you elaborate on it?
Guy Kawasaki:
Listen, I think that Elon Musk single-handedly converted the car industry to electric.
Kim Komando:
Correct.
Guy Kawasaki:
I think he single-handedly made space exploration more affordable and democratized and whatever. I think Starlink is a wonderful solution for many people. But then is he a white Christian nationalist QAnon Trump supporter? Is he anti-vax? What is he anymore?
Kim Komando:
He's definitely out there. Okay. You also forgot Neuralink where we're going to connect our minds up to. And he's doing experiments with monkeys and we've got The Boring Company, the underground tunnel, but he is educated. He has a degree from Wharton and a physics degree. He's got what, eleven kids? Or I don't know how many kids he has now because he says that we're under populating the world. I think he would be a really interesting guy to have lunch with. I'm not sure, because it would be like all over the board be like, squirrel. Okay. Nope. Come on back. We were talking about this. Come on back.
Guy Kawasaki:
Would you want your sisters to marry him?
Kim Komando:
Yeah, because maybe they'd throw some money my way at something. That would be okay.
Guy Kawasaki:
He might waive the $15,000 autonomous upsell on your Tesla.
Kim Komando:
And that was another thing that got me ticked off. So I went to sell it and I called up Tesla and my assistant called, and I said, "This full self-driving mode, I paid $12,000 and then it went up to $15,000." And Tesla told my assistant that was not transferable from owner to owner. Okay, this is a software switch. You and I both know this and they know it. Okay. And so I'm like, "You're kidding me." So the guy who I'm selling the Teslas with, he says, "I'm not paying for the full self-driving mode because it's not going to be transferrable."
I'm like, there is no freaking way that this is the way it is. So I called up Tesla and I got this nice guy by the name of Chad. I said, "I bought a Tesla Plaid, I don't want it. And I want to transfer the full self-driving mode." And he said, "It's our policy." He goes through this whole thing. I said, "Chad, your policy sucks." And I said, "Is there a manager I can talk to?" And he said, "Let me get somebody." And then he comes back three minutes later, he says, "We checked your records and it is transferable, Ms. Komando. Not a problem." Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
And happy ending? You sold it?
Kim Komando:
I sold it. I was so happy. I sold it right before they dropped the price. I was like, thank goodness for that.
Guy Kawasaki:
So right now you have no Tesla.
Kim Komando:
No Tesla. I don't want a Tesla. I don't recommend a Tesla. And my sister, she loves her Tesla. And I said, "You know what? Good for you." But I would not park that in my garage overnight charging, just saying, I wouldn't do that. Would not.
Guy Kawasaki:
So Kim Komando, have you had to overcome any huge challenges or is just you live this storied life?
Kim Komando:
Oh no. There's no storybook life. There's no storybook life. And I will tell you that I probably have given away millions of dollars to my listeners over the years. And we do what I call random acts of kindness. And we've had really been very blessed by just a loyal audience over the years in serving a particular niche.
But as far as challenges, when I was first starting out the company, I was in wildly in love as we all are in our twenties, and this was the guy. And we were a couple of months from getting married, and he died in a plane crash, which I thought I should have just been with him. I was really that close. And I always remember in the Bible, you have to walk through the shadow of death. You don't walk around it, you don't jump over it. You have to walk through it.
And when I got through that, it took me about a year and a half, two years. When I got through that, I became a better, different person because that's when you really find out what you're made of. And I went to all the shrinks. I said, "What can I do to get over this? And what can I do?" And everybody wanted to put me on Prozac. I'm like, "You know what? I don't want to be on Prozac. That's not it."
And that's when astute psychiatrist said to me, "Then you just have to work, and you have to work so hard that when your head hits that pillow at 11:00 at night that you don't have anything to think of other than I need to rest." I would get up at five in the morning, I'd go for a run. And then I worked all day long.
And that's when I did the infomercial, which was a tremendous success. I called myself the computer tutor. I started the computer section on America Online, did deals with Prodigy and all these other folks, and really started formulating the company that for the first three years did not make a dime. And I was literally on the verge of having to take a job back at IBM or I was going to work at Houlihan's if the infomercial didn't work. So I decided I would probably go to Houlihan's. But anyway, so the infomercial was a solid double, and then life goes on and you get married. And when I was twenty-eight years old, my mother moved in with me because my father, it was just a freak thing, and he died unexpectedly. And so she was working at Bell Labs. And so I said, "Come with me. Come live with me." I was living in Phoenix then.
And so when my husband asked me to marry him, I actually looked at him and he was on his knees and I said, "Mama comes with me. Just wanted to let you know. Okay?" It was December 17th, 2017, and my mother and I were very close. I did not live with my parents. I left home when I was fifteen to go to college because I was one of those kids that got out of high school and went to college super early. But for three quarters of my life, I lived with my mother, maybe more. But on December 17th, 2017, she was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. And that became my mission to save her. And I was doing a show at Bloomberg. I just moved into this 24,000 square foot building. Studios, we had all these employees we were running around and I was trying to do all that, and I didn't lengthen her life.
People at Mayo said, "Take her home and have her fill out her bucket list." And I said, "The woman's traveled to 120 different countries. There's not a lot left on her bucket list. But what she wants to do is just see her grandson, my son, our son graduate from high school." And that was her goal. And so I told the Mayo Clinic, now this is not the answer I want. And then found MD Anderson and jetted her back and forth, and she was a real trooper.
And unfortunately she passed away in September of 2021. But that was really very difficult being a full-time mom, wife, businesswoman, on-air personality, always supposed to be happy every day, but being also a full-time caregiver with somebody who has cancer. Everybody's life has challenges. Everybody's life is not 100 percent beautiful 100 percent of the time. But you know what? It's pretty darn good most of the time, and if you can find those moments of just pure joy.
Guy Kawasaki:
Did your mom get to see him graduate?
Kim Komando:
Yes, she did.
Guy Kawasaki:
That's good.
Kim Komando:
She did. And he actually did his senior speech all about his relationship with her cancer journey. It's on YouTube if anybody ever want to see it, it's on my channel. And it's really telling the impact that a grandmother can have on a grandson when that grandmother is there every single day of this child's life. And don't get me wrong, they used to fight. They would fight.
One time my mother called me, and I was at work, and he was about nine, and she called me, she said, "You better get home right now, or I'm going to kill him." I'm like, "What?" And she goes, "I'm so mad. I can't even talk to him right now. You just need to get here and you better get here right now." So I fly home and I opened the garage door and I could just see in her face, she's was just pissed. She can't even stand it. She lived in our guest house, so she's like going to her place.
And I looked at Ian and I said, "What did you do?" And he said, "Granny was sitting on the couch in the family room having a bowl of chicken noodle soup. And I flew my helicopter drone over her head, and I swear, Mom, it was just an accident. And the helicopter drone fell right in her soup and her soup went all over her face."
Guy Kawasaki:
It must be exciting in your house.
Kim Komando:
It was. It really was.
Guy Kawasaki:
All right, Kim Komando, I think this has been just a funny and delightful episode.
Kim Komando:
Well, thank you, Guy. You know what? I've always followed you, I have to tell you. You've always had your hand in some really remarkable ventures in Silicon Valley, and I probably should have said this at the beginning. I was really excited to talk to you today because you're a legend. And I mean, I never thought I'd be sitting here having a conversation with you.
Guy Kawasaki:
I hope you've enjoyed listening to this episode and learned something new about the latest trends and developments in tech from America's digital goddess, Kim Komando. Don't forget to check out Kim's website at komando.com, K-O-M-A-N-D-O.com, where you can find the latest information about her work and stay up to date with the tech news and trends. As always, thanks for tuning in, and until next time, stay curious and keep exploring the ever evolving world of technology. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. My thanks to the ever evolving world of the Remarkable People team. That'd be Peg Fitzpatrick, Jeff Sieh, Shannon Hernandez, Luis Magaña, Alexis Nishimura, and the drop-in queen of Santa Cruz, Madisun Nuismer. Until next time, mahalo and aloha.