Extended Moment: Guy Raz: Why 99% of Businesses Fail & This Secret Made Apple, Pixar, & Elon Musk Billions!

The thing I think about most, especially when I’m on the go, but also when I’m sat here in the Diary Of A CEO studio, is the Wi-Fi and internet that we have to work with. In fact, anytime I’m filming away from the studio, one of the first things I do when I arrive is open up an app and do a speed test to see how strong the signal is.

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Guy, how many people have you interviewed in your life?

I would say over 20,000.

And you started a smash-hit iconic show called *How I Built This*. Why? What’s the mission behind that show?

I wanted to give people access to the greatest entrepreneurs I could find in ways that they might not have access to them. I wanted that wisdom and those stories to be available to anyone at any time for free, forever.

Give me an idea of the kinds and caliber of people that you’ve interviewed over those 20,000 interviews.

Oh, everybody from rural sheep herders in Afghanistan to soccer players in Europe to celebrities in the United States, world leaders, entrepreneurs, and founders of businesses, to ordinary "man on the street" conversations.

I’m really curious. When we talk about building something, the seemingly impossible, most difficult part of building anything seems to be going from zero to one. You’ve sat with people who have gone from having an idea to putting that idea in motion.

It’s not a huge journey to travel, but it seems like the hardest journey to travel because it requires so much of a shift in mindset. It requires the confrontation of fear and apparent danger. There’s something about these people that makes them decide that it’s better than not starting—taking the action is better than not taking the action. Have you been able to figure out what that is in people and how we can cultivate it?

There are several traits that the Venn diagram of founders coalesces around. By the way, many of us have these intuitively, naturally, or can develop them. Curiosity is an obvious one; just this desire to grow, to learn, to look around you and to try and absorb the lessons around you.

But the other ones are a little bit more hard-edged, like a fear of regret of not trying something. Many years ago, I interviewed a guy named Jim Koch. I’ve actually interviewed him recently again. He really revolutionized the beer industry in the United States.

The reason why Europeans drink American beer today is because of Jim Koch. In the '80s, it was a joke. There was actually a famous Monty Python sketch where it said something about rather drinking piss than American beer—something like that. Well, in the '80s, he revived the beer industry in the US with a beer named Samuel Adams.

He really supercharged what became this craft brewing industry in the US: IPAs and all these really interesting beers that to this day are some of the greatest in the world. He started his business, Sam Adams, in his 30s. He was a consultant for Boston Consulting Group. He was making a good salary, he had a family, but there was something about his life that felt unfulfilled.

Part of that was he wanted to build something on his own. He wanted it to be his. He didn't want to work for somebody else. He felt that if he didn't try, if he just continued on at BCG, he would make a lot of money—millions of dollars—and have a very stable, good life, but he felt like he would be unfulfilled if it wasn’t his own thing. He had to try.

So he took a risk. He left. But he felt that if he didn't take the risk, it would be dangerous. He actually uses this paradigm: "Dangerous versus scary." It was really scary to leave his job at BCG, but it would be dangerous if he stayed. The danger would be that one day he’d get out of bed, he’d be 60, and he would regret not having tried.

I think that’s a big factor for a lot of founders—this idea that they don’t want to feel intense regret, and so they’re willing to take the risk even though it might be catastrophic. The idea of building something, of owning something, of creating something yourself that is yours, is a hugely powerful pull.

That is like that magnetic field that they’re all attracted to. They’re all moving in that direction, and I think many of us who are entrepreneurs or aspire to be entrepreneurs feel that magnetic pull.

What role does self-belief play? In your book, you talk about how it’s not always the case that they have huge amounts of confidence and knowledge. Is self-belief essential to get going? From all the people you’ve interviewed that are wildly successful, did they have that self-belief or did they have something else that got them over that first hurdle?

Sometimes there are people who are born with this kind of natural confidence. You know people like that; people that just seem to exude confidence and self-assurance. I think those people are rare in general. Most healthy entrepreneurs experience self-doubt. It is a really natural and, I think, important and necessary trait.

To be able to in your mind say, "Am I doing the right thing? Is this the right thing? Am I making a mistake?" The difference is that while it’s healthy to ask yourself those questions and to interrogate your decisions—because it’s going to inevitably lead to better decisions and force you to justify things to yourself—you have to have a willingness to power through.

That, I think, some people have instinctively, but there are other entrepreneurs who develop that skill over time. I’ll give you an example. One of my favorite stories that I’ve told on the show—it just happens to be the case that out of the 500 interviews or so, quite a few founders are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon Church.

There is a very strong tradition of entrepreneurship in that community. We just interviewed Jason Worsland, the founder of Therabody—you know, the Theragun. He also grew up in the church. I always wonder: what is it about these members of the church and the connection to entrepreneurship?

Virtually every young Mormon member of the church at 18 goes on a mission. They’re sent somewhere around the world with Books of Mormon, with a suit, bicycles, and they go door to door to door to door in every country around the world preaching the Book of Mormon.

Now, 99 out of 100 houses that you knock on, they slam the door in your face. But one door will open. After two years of having 99% of doors slammed in your face, you understand that it doesn’t matter. You’re just going for that one door.

They come back to the United States and they’ve developed this incredibly thick skin. They have withstood all of these "no's" for two years. So when they go to start a business—whether it’s Cotopaxi, Davis Smith, or JetBlue, David Neeleman, or Joel Clark, Kodiak Cakes, or Jason Worsland, Therabody—they’ve heard "no" for so long on these missions that starting a business seems like a piece of cake.

Now they know that all they need to do is withstand those "no's." "No" happens to be the most important word that an entrepreneur will ever hear.

And I guess they also know how "yes" happens. As you were saying, I was thinking about a lot of young people who say to me, "Steve, I’ve tried to get the job. I’ve tried to start the business. I sent ten emails." And they assumed that the ten emails or the five emails to the job they wanted would be enough to get it.

But in that case with the members of the church, they know that "no" comes anywhere between one and 100.

"No" is the default. You expect "no."

So they know that "yes" comes anywhere between one and 100.

Exactly. There’s a great story that I came across recently in an interview I did with a guy named Isaac Larian. Isaac is the owner of the largest privately owned toy company in North America called MGA. In the year 2000, he launched a doll called the Bratz doll.

That doll was the first doll to challenge Barbie. Barbie had like 90% market share in 2000, and within three years, Barbie’s market share went down like 30%. Bratz became a $3 billion a year brand. It’s an amazing story.

Now rewind back to the early '70s. He comes to the United States from Iran, penniless, with 200 or 300 bucks in his pocket, no English. He came to Los Angeles—where we are talking. He worked as a waiter. Eventually, he started to import cheap consumer electronics from Japan in the early '80s and sell them to independent electronics stores.

What he would do is go to Japan with a suitcase, buy Sony Walkmen, stuff his suitcase with Sony Walkmen, come back to LA and sell them for a 40% markup to consumer electronics stores. Eventually, he got successful enough that he could bring in shipping containers full of these Walkmen.

By 1985-86, he was doing $4-5 million a year in revenue. So he had a significant business importing Japanese consumer electronics and selling them locally in the US. He’s on a trip to Japan in 1986 and he sees children playing these things called Game & Watch.

It was a rectangular game with an LED screen and two buttons, and it was a craze all over Japan. He said to himself, "I’ve gotta sell these in the US." So he gets on a bullet train to Kyoto, which is where Nintendo’s headquarters are. He goes to Nintendo headquarters and he asks the receptionist to meet with the head of export.

She looks at him and says, "I’m sorry, his name is Mr. Kobayashi. He’s not available. You have to book an appointment with him three or four months in advance." Isaac says, "Look, I’m here in Kyoto just for the day. Can I just have five minutes with him?" She said, "Impossible."

Now remember, he’s got a successful $5-6 million business. He says, "I will wait here in the reception and when he comes out for lunch, can you point him out?" She just says, "I’m sorry, I can’t do that."

He sits down in the reception and he waits and he waits and he waits. And at 5:00 PM, a man walks out of the elevator, he whispers something to the receptionist. Isaac’s been there for six hours. The man walks up to Isaac and says, "May I help you, sir?" He says, "My name is Isaac Larian. I understand you’re in charge of export." He says, "I am."

He said, "I would like to get the license to export the Game & Watch." He says, "Impossible. We’re not interested, and who are you? You need to make an appointment months in advance." He said, "Well, can we just have a quick chat?" He said, "No." He said, "Can I get your business card at least?"

He hands him his business card. Isaac goes back to the United States with this guy’s business card. He goes to his bank and he asks for a million-dollar line of credit in the name of this guy. He sends him a Telex, because there was no email back then, with a million-dollar line of credit letter and he calls him up.

He says, "Did you receive my line of credit letter?" And the man says, "Yes, I told you, Mr. Larian, we’re not interested in working with you. We’re not interested in exporting these toys. Not interested." He said, "What if I pay all cash?" He said, "We’re not interested."

He calls him again a few days later. He says, "I want to order a million dollars' worth of these." He said, "We’re not interested." He said, "Please." The guy in Japan says, "We’re not going to change these into English for you." He says, "Don’t worry, send them to me in Japanese with the instructions. I’ll repackage them."

Exhausted, the guy finally says, "Fine, one-off." In year one, they sell $25 million worth of these Game & Watches in the US. Year two: $50 million. Year three: $75 million. I said to Isaac Larian, "You walked into Nintendo, you sat there, your dignity was challenged, your self-worth was challenged, your ego was challenged. They said no to you repeatedly."

And he said, "Ego, dignity, self-worth—all that stuff is nonsense. Pride... if that’s what you care about, you will never succeed. The minute somebody says 'no' to you is the minute the negotiation begins." And that’s how he runs his business, and that’s how he’s become the entrepreneur he’s become. He’s a multi-billionaire today.

It's an amazing example of why that word "no" is so powerful. Some people naturally can withstand it; some people have to develop the skill that it takes, like those Mormon missionaries, to hear "no" hundreds, thousands of times before they have that thick skin and they can break through.

So interesting, so powerful, and a wonderful reframing of what that moment of rejection means that everyone will go through. When I think about these other entrepreneurs I’ve sat and spoken to who end up getting to where he got to, some of them have to take what I call "No Man’s Land."

They start something, it appears that no one cares. They do that thing for five years, sometimes ten years. It doesn't appear that anybody cares. And then, I don't know, the world conspires or luck shows up or timing happens and that person has lift-off.

Have you seen that in any of the people you’ve interviewed? What is the driving force that pushes someone through "No Man’s Land" for a couple of years, three, four, five, six, seven years when it’s not working, but they have the "something" to persist regardless?

It’s amazing because it does happen. Again, going back to this example of Theragun, this guy Jason Worsland came to Los Angeles to become a chiropractor. It was a difficult time in his life. His marriage had broken up, he had two small children. It was very painful for him to leave Salt Lake City, Utah to come to Los Angeles to study to become a chiropractor.

Eventually, he got in a very, very bad motorcycle accident and was badly injured. He was a chiropractor, so he knew and understood what was going on inside his body. One night the pain was so severe that he decided to take a jigsaw—you know, it’s a saw that you use to carve wood. He took the blade and he bent it, and he taped it up with duct tape.

He thought, "What if I just try this on my muscles?" and he put it on his muscle. It started to pulse on his muscle, and it actually felt pretty good. That percussive feeling started to give him relief. Over the next several months, he started to experiment with this on his patients until it got to a point where people said, "Hey, you’re onto something here."

It would be another seven and a half years before Theragun was actually marketed as a product. During that entire time, he worked, he talked to everybody he could about it. But all they saw was a jigsaw with duct tape on it. They saw this weird product that just didn't seem like it was anything useful.

But people were feeling real benefits from it. So he had on the one hand people saying to him, "This is weird and I don't see a home for it." On the other hand, he had patients, people he was working on, who were feeling real benefits from it—real relief. That was driving him. He knew that if he could figure out how to find a partner, how to get the money—he needed the money to launch this thing.

Today it’s a multi-billion dollar business, but it took seven years. During those seven years at any given time, because he was broke, he could have just walked away and given up. But he had this feeling and he had this feedback that convinced him there was something there.

One thing you are known for is asking people about luck and the role that luck has played in their lives. Do you think these successful people believe in luck? What role do you think luck has played in making them who they are?

Luck plays a really important role. Luck is a weird word because it’s an intangible and it’s like a superstitious word. It’s like fate, right? It’s one of those words that I think in our modern age of science a lot of people are resistant to because we believe that we can engineer outcomes. That humans through the sheer force of will can engineer an outcome.

That might be true in some cases, but you can’t discount this notion of chance or fortune or luck. You know, you came to the UK when you were two or three years old, single mom, built a business. What are the chances of that happening? The chances of you being in a different circumstance are greater simply because of the statistical realities of that circumstance. But through sheer force of will and some luck, here you are. You can’t discount it.

So how do you think about luck? I’ve often pondered this. Where should I find the luck in my life? Is it in me meeting my girlfriend through some sort of chance encounter, or is luck much more of a fundamental thing in the case that you’ve just described with me coming to the UK?

Because it’s true, if I hadn't come to the UK when I was two years old and I was still in Botswana, everything is different. My education is different.

You might be very successful there too, but you just don’t know.

It’s probable that I wouldn't have had the freedoms in my life and the opportunities I’ve had if I was still in Botswana. So as something that I didn't have any control over because I was two, I look at that and go: that’s really fundamental luck. I had parents that loved me, they moved me to this country where you have healthcare and all these amazing things.

That is lucky. That is just huge fortune that I had no involvement in. Another kid could be moved to the UK at two years old and they might be in prison now. I’m trying to understand—when I get think really deeply about it, I go: maybe I’m responsible for nothing in my life. Because it’s all nature and nurture. It’s my DNA and it’s the circumstances that that DNA were put in. If you really think about it, maybe I’m responsible for nothing.

You’re responsible for a lot, and then you’re not responsible for some as well. Here’s the thing. You didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge, but you know a lot of kids who did go to Oxford or Cambridge and they won’t be a fraction as financially successful as you might be, or me, or anyone else that they know.

And that’s not because you’re better than them or they’re worse than you; it’s not that at all. There are factors—there are traits, there are circumstances—that give everybody different powers. Having the right kind of personality is also luck.

I mean, you might be the smartest, most educated person on the planet, but if you cannot withstand hearing "no" again and again and you’re trying to run a business, you’re not going to make it. If your ego is so enormous that it gets in the way, if your sense of dignity and pride is so important to you that it’s an immovable object and you can’t see past it, then it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are.

You can be a horrible student, a failing student, but have those traits—a personality that enables you to talk to anybody, open mind, kindness, friendliness—and you will be a hundred times more successful because that’s the roll of the dice that handed you those traits. You might not be book smart, but you got those other things. So there are all these factors that are intangible, and we all have bits and pieces of these things. It’s just a matter of how we use them.

You’ve interviewed Richard Branson, right? So have I. One of the big things I took away from Richard was—this sounds like a crazy thing to say, but—he admitted how many things he’s really not good at. He admitted that he’s only really good at a couple of things.

This kind of bucks the trend of what you think when you think of successful people, because you assume that especially CEOs and entrepreneurs are these amazing Swiss Army knives that are just good at everything; everything they touch turns to gold. Richard taught me that you don’t actually have to be good at that many things to be wildly successful. You just need to be good at a very narrow thing and then mitigate your downsides through delegation.

But that’s what he’s good at. That’s his talent. Richard Branson’s talent is in spotting talent in others and empowering them to go out and build and trusting them. I did a show for many years called *Wisdom From The Top*. That show was a CEO show. I interviewed CEOs.

One of the CEOs I interviewed was a guy named Mark King, who for years ran Adidas’ North American operations. He ran TaylorMade, which is a golf brand, and then Taco Bell. He was the CEO of Taco Bell. Mark King made this exact point.

He said, "You know, I’m not the smartest guy in the room. I’m not the most intellectual, I’m not the most capable and competent when it comes to X, Y, and Z, but I’m really good at finding the people with the answers. I don’t have the answers most of the time, but I’m really good at finding the people who can get the answers." And that is what a great leader can do—CEO or founder, entrepreneur. It’s figuring out who can find the answers and inspiring them to gather around you.

This is one of the things I’ve learned really late in my business career. I say really late, but I mean I learned it probably at 28, and then for the last three years, it’s been front of mind. The game I’m playing as a founder and an entrepreneur isn’t "how smart am I" and "how hard do I work." It’s about realizing that I’m a recruitment company.

Every business I start is a recruitment company. I have this really crazy analogy I sometimes use where I say to people: if you had hired Elon Musk and got the best out of him, you would be worth trillions. If you’d hired Steve Jobs and got the best out of him, you would have created an Apple or something else or a Pixar.

Though it’s an extreme, largely impossible lens to think through, it illuminates the fact that much of the job of a founder is to find these exceptional people and get the best out of them. That is like the easiest path to value creation versus hoping that you can become the best at design and computer programming and all of these kinds of things. Honestly, in my life, it’s been like this really big fundamental reframe which has caused me to reallocate my time. Now I’d say I spend 20 hours a week on recruitment, whereas before I might have spent half an hour.

Right. And this is why I asked you earlier about people, talent, and how important that is to the game of building a company, which by definition is a group of people. What you’ve seen in great founders there... have you ever spoken to Walter Isaacson?

No. He's the guy that used to follow Steve Jobs. Of course, he's a brilliant writer.

Yeah, he talks a lot about how Steve Jobs was exceptional at that. I remember him saying that before Steve Jobs died, he asked him in his backyard, "What is the thing in your life that you’ve built? What is the product that you’re most proud of?" and Walter responded, "The team."

And I see that now in great entrepreneurs. I see how obsessed they are with culture and people.

Yes. I mean, as Peter Lynch says, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast," right?

What is culture in your view?

I think culture is many things. It’s a common mission, it’s a belief in a way of doing things—not in *the* way, that there’s only one way, but *a* way, which could mean innovation, risk-taking. But a shared belief in a common mission, right?

Now a lot of people say, "Well, alright, what about Coca-Cola? What’s the common mission there? Making a sugary soft drink?" And I would venture to say that if you talk to somebody who worked for a company like Coca-Cola, they would have probably a common vision or a common view of why they do what they do.

It’s not about a sugary soft drink; it’s about being part of something bigger that has impact. Strong cultures are places where people feel like they’re working towards a common goal.

We talked earlier on about failure and people’s relationship with failure. What about quitting? Failure is kind of like involuntary quitting, but quitting is when you make the decision at some point in the journey that you need to pivot, "this is not working."

It seems to me like in all the stories of the people that I’ve interviewed that have become successful, there has been several moments where they’ve made a decision to quit something which was either objectively not smart or terrifying. I’ve almost come to learn that I think quitting is actually a skill that winners have managed to really sharpen.

Obviously there’s that phrase: "quitting is for losers." But the more people I’ve interviewed, the more I’ve come to learn that quitting is a bit of a skill.

And I think recognizing when to quit as well. In my 20s, there were periods of time where I was a reporter at NPR at the time, and there were periods of time where I was frustrated and I wanted to quit. But I didn't. I got really close at times because I was covering the Iraq War and Afghanistan. I was in and out of war zones. I was scared.

Had I quit at that time, my life and career would have been totally different. I don’t think it would have been as interesting. I think it’s important that I waited till the right moment when I did quit and stopped working for a big organization and started my own business.

I needed to have that experience in my back pocket. I needed to feel like I was ready. Was it scary when I did it? When I left the safety of a big organization with insurance and a retirement plan and a guaranteed income? Yeah, it was really scary. I had two kids. My wife had a small salary.

But I felt like I could take that risk because it was the right moment. There was something that told me it was the right moment. So I think it has to be a thought-through process. A lot of times people say to me, "Should I quit and start my own business?" and I almost always say, "No. Start your business slowly."

So 99% with your job, 1% your business. Then 5% your business, 95% your job. Then 10% your business and 90% your job, until you get to a point where maybe your entire evening and weekend is spent on your side project. And then it’s time.

I followed a similar path in my life, and I’ve been quite an aggressive, prolific quitter at the same time at really key moments. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought it through to a fault sometimes, but sometimes it’s just been a feeling you have when you feel like you’ve reached the end of a flowchart of options.

For me, it’s like when I can’t change it and it sucks, I have to quit. Or when the effort it would take to change it isn't worth the reward on offer, so I have to quit. It's like this flowchart I have in my head. Throughout this conversation, you've cited these moments where someone was unfulfilled. You said that three or four times—like they were unfulfilled, they knew they could do something better. They needed a change.

I’ve wondered what the role is in reaching "rock bottom" in your life as a catalyst for change. I’ve actually asked a few people whether sometimes we just need a bit more pain. It doesn't sound like a nice thing to say, but...

I think that rock bottom or a version of that is often a catalyst for change. It goes back to this idea of framing. It’s very hard. Failure or setbacks that are intense and severe are really hard. But they are often necessary to trigger the change that needs to happen.

I can tell you I’ll never forget the day—it was 2011—when I found out while I was still working as an employee at National Public Radio and I was told that I would not become the weekday host of *All Things Considered*. That was my dream. I had started there as a 22-year-old kid hoping that one day I’d be the main anchor. It’s like the *Today* program on BBC, except in the evening.

That’s all I wanted. I was a foreign correspondent, I covered 50 countries, I ticked all the boxes. I covered the Pentagon, I was the weekend anchor of the show. I did everything right, by the book. Everything I thought I had to do. But when it came down to making a decision, I was not the person that they wanted.

And that was a low point. I really believed my career was over. During that time, while I was looking and searching for a way to leave the news world because I was convinced I was finished, I had heard of an opportunity to create a show with the people who do TED Talks.

I jumped at that opportunity, and that changed everything. That prompted me eventually to leave to start my own business, to start creating podcasts. I would never have been in the podcast world had I done that. I would have been on the radio doing news today. And without that low point, I wouldn't have had the trigger to force me to find the next thing, to find something different and new. That failure changed my life.

Partners, co-founders, people, talent. What have you come to learn about the importance of finding a co-founder, finding people to go into business with as it relates to where you’ll end up?

I’ll be 50 this year. A lot of young people ask me—younger people ask me—what’s the best piece of advice you can give me in life? My advice is always the same: find a partner in life. Now, different from a business partner, which I’ll get to in a moment, but I want to talk about a life partner.

I believe that there is a partner for everybody, whether it’s through Tinder or Hinge or Bumble or at a church or at a bar or wherever. I believe there’s a partner for everybody. And I believe that you are much more likely—not just that I believe, but statistically it’s true—you’re much more likely to be successful if you have a partner to share and build a life with.

That is the single most important thing you can do as you build a life. Now, in a business, I give the same advice. You can build a business as a solo entrepreneur and it’s happened, and we have had many solo entrepreneurs on the show who’ve built businesses by themselves. Well, with others helping of course, but as the only founder.

It’s harder, not because it’s technically harder—it’s emotionally harder. Because there’s always going to be a point along the journey—and you’ve experienced it and I’ve experienced it—where you say to yourself, "I suck. I’m a failure." And there’s no one else to say to you, "You’re just feeling that today. You’re just feeling that now, but tomorrow you’re not going to feel that."

And I, as your co-founder, might feel that and you’re going to need to tell me that *I* don’t suck. That’s the beauty and importance of having a co-founder, because they are there on the journey with you. You are going to go into a crucible of fire when you start a business. You are going to hit moments of incredible stress, near failure, and you’re going to need somebody to be there in the trenches with you.

Can you do it alone? Yes, you can. It’s just harder. And the success rates of co-founder businesses tend to be higher. It’s why—and I mention this in my book that came out a few years ago—the legendary investor Paul Graham, one of his criteria for investing in companies is co-founders. You have to have a co-founder because that is a stronger guarantor of success than a solo entrepreneur.

What do you think people should be looking for when they’re seeking a co-founder? Is it a personality thing, is it a skill crossover? Are they looking for someone similar to themselves? And where do these co-founders come about? Where do you find a co-founder?

I think it’s like dating. Oftentimes co-founders find each other—sometimes they know each other in college or university or school, or they meet at a company. Sometimes they are looking for a co-founder; sometimes they are looking for somebody to start a business with.

There’s no sort of formula that you can just kind of tick every box. I think a lot of it is instinct; a lot of it is luck. You might have two people with totally disparate skills: a technical co-founder and a marketing or operational co-founder, or a fundraiser/visionary and then the operational side.

That might be perfect, but they might have a personality conflict. There might be some point where they have very divergent views. So much of it is about compatible personalities. It’s like a marriage, by the way. You can marry somebody, you can love somebody, fall in love with somebody who is going to be more of a nurturer and you’re maybe more of the disciplinarian when it comes to building a family, or vice versa.

Really compatible family-building skills. But if your personalities aren't compatible, over time that marriage won’t last if you can’t grow together. Oftentimes co-founders when they start a business—the most successful co-founders grow together too. They start a business and then they grow it together and it becomes stronger over time because they also learn mistakes together and figure out how to recover from those mistakes together.

And in some cases, had a failed business before. We just had an episode of our show with the founders of a breakfast cereal called Magic Spoon. These guys met at university, Greg and Gabby, and they decided to start a company together—a protein bar company.

Protein bars made out of crickets. It was called Exo bars. It was an amazing idea because crickets are very nutritionally dense, high protein, really good for the environment, don’t require a lot of water, you can turn them into a tasteless powder. They really pursued this business for seven or eight years together, and the business failed.

For obvious reasons, which is we in our society—in the United States, in the West—we're not yet ready to consume insects. There's a psychological barrier. So that could have been the end of their partnership.

But they decided that they wanted to continue building something together because they believed in each other. They moved on to a completely different product, also high in protein but breakfast cereal. High protein, no sugar, low in carbohydrates—so a keto kind of brand of breakfast cereal, which is now in 20,000 grocery stores in the United States and may even be in the UK. But that’s an example of this partnership where they failed together, but which allowed them to then build something that saw success.

One of the other central questions I get as it relates to that starting phase is: people are currently working in a full-time job, they have an idea, but they’re not sure how to pivot from the full-time job to the idea. Do they quit their job and then pursue the idea? Do they stay in their job and do it part-time?

That sort of conundrum of how I go from idea to execution while I’m in a full-time job that I need to keep the lights on. You talk a little bit about this in your book as well—this idea of how you leave your comfort zone safely.

Of course, it depends on the company. If you’re coming up with a technology and you’re working at Google, it’s probably a better idea to quit first because otherwise Google is going to claim ownership over that idea. Many companies operate that way where they’ll argue that well, if you work for the company and you have an idea, we own it.

So there are examples where you want to leave the company. But we have had so many examples on *How I Built This* of founders who have kept their day job while pursuing this other idea because they had to pay their bills, they had to feed their families. We did a story a couple years ago—this is actually a UK-based company—and it’s an amazing story.

It’s a story of a guy named Kristian Tapaninaho, who is from Finland, and his wife Darina, who is Scottish. They were both sort of educational consultants in the UK. They met at college and they had like an educational consultancy and they had various jobs.

But Kristian was a tinkerer and he dreamed of building something. He wasn't sure what it was. It happens that he was a home cook and he had a problem, because this is where all great businesses start: "I have a problem, and maybe other people have that problem. And if lots of people have that problem, maybe I can solve it."

His problem was he couldn't cook a pizza at home. Why couldn't you cook a pizza at home? It has to be really hot. That’s how you get those beautiful crusty Neapolitan pizzas with the blackened crust, because they cook for a minute at very high heat. Home ovens don’t go that high.

What did he do? He started to pound some metal together and he built his own pizza oven that was wood-fired. Well, today that pizza oven is Ooni Pizza Ovens, one of the best-selling home pizza ovens in the world. They’re between 300 and 500 bucks, you know, they’re pretty affordable. You can... they’ve got wood versions, they’ve got gas, propane gas, they’ve got an electric version.

These guys kept their day jobs years into building this company because they didn't know if it was going to work or not. That’s a billion-dollar company. An example of somebody who really didn't, you know, had one foot in one place and one foot in the other place, and once this other thing was real, they felt that they could take the leap and go for it.

So here's the thing. A lot of people assume that entrepreneurs are these kamikazes. "YOLO, I’m going to jump out of an airplane, no parachute, and go for it." That’s a myth, actually. There are some who are like that, you know, but in general, most entrepreneurs calculate the risk.

They do take risks, but we all take risks every day. It’s that they mitigate those risks in different ways. So in the case of Ooni, "Yes, I’m going to keep my day job for a little while and build this thing, and then it is a risk to jump out of my day job and to pursue this full-time, but it seems now I can see where this is heading." And that’s the moment where you can take that leap.

It’s interesting as well because that story doesn't fit the mold because there was a lot of patience. The patience seemed to come from someone that was really focused on actually solving a problem versus getting rich. Someone that’s focused on getting rich would have taken a much more kamikaze approach, I think, than someone who was really just focused on a problem they genuinely wanted to solve.

And you said, "Oh, it ended up being the best pizza oven." It’s probably because he was so focused on, as I said, that he was so focused on solving the problem that he spent five, six, seven years making the best pizza oven and worried later about whether people would want it or whether they would make him rich from creating it.

Typically it’s the other way around. With entrepreneurs that come up to me when I’m in the gym or in the street, the focus and the priority is clearly "how do I get rich? I’m thinking of selling this, or I’m thinking of selling this." I guess this brings up the question of the role of passion and genuine curiosity in creating truly valuable things that the world then makes you rich or remunerates you for.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be rich. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make lots of money. This is an engine that powers innovation, right? I mean, incentives breed innovation. So there’s a reason why the United States, for example, is one of the most, if not the most, entrepreneurial society in modern history—because there are incentives to grow your business.

That being said, I would say about 95% of the people that I’ve interviewed, founders of businesses, in virtually every case, are not primarily motivated by money. Of course money is important; we all want to have financial security. But what they’re motivated by is solving a problem they have or looking for an opportunity in the marketplace to solve a problem that lots of other people have.

In virtually every case—because what I do on *How I Built This* is I mainly interview founders of consumer products, products that are either American cultural icons or global brands. In virtually every case, it is somebody who’s trying to solve their own problem. I did a story last year about an amazing entrepreneur named Monique Rodriguez.

Her mom worked as an administrator at a hospital on the south side of Chicago. She grew up with a single mom, her dad was in and out of jail on drugs. She managed to go to nursing school. Monique became a nurse, which was a huge achievement raised by a single mom in a tough neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.

She becomes a nurse and within a couple years of doing that job was feeling unfulfilled. But she was always dreaming of something. Monique had a problem, which was she could not find hair care products for her hair. She was a Black woman, she wasn't able to find really good consumer products on the shelves.

So she started to experiment with essential oils. Eventually she started to mix essential oils and play around with her hair—avocado and jojoba, all these different things. She started to make Instagram videos. This is like early Instagram. She had at the beginning ten followers and then 20 followers, and she would show people what she was doing with the oils and use it on her hair and show how it was improving her hair.

Over time people were writing in the comments, "Hey, where can I buy this stuff?" Well, after a couple years of people saying that to her, she was still a nurse. She asked herself the same question: "How can I do this?"

So with almost no money, she launched a brand called Mielle Organics, which was hair care products for women with textured hair. Fast forward to 2023, she sold that business to Procter & Gamble for reportedly half a billion dollars.

This is a woman who started a hair care products company in her apartment in Indiana—she was living in Indiana at the time—with no experience in the industry, with no connections, but just a passion to solve a problem she had.

That was the beginning of an empire, and that’s a story that I see again and again. You can never, ever substitute passion with a desire for money. Passion is always going to trump a desire for money. It eats desire for money for lunch or breakfast.

What is passion doing that just a desire for money wouldn't do along that journey? If we think about her in that apartment, if we take her and we drive her with passion and we see where she ends up ($500 million), and then we take her and we drive her with a desire for money and we see where she ends up—why would she end up in different places? What are the steps, the mechanisms?

I’m not sure she would end up in different places. There’s no question that money can be an engine and a motivator. But with passion and a belief in the thing that you’re building having the ability to solve the problem for many, many people—if you’re building something that just solves your problem, it’s not enough. That’s not a business; that’s a hobby.

But if you build a product that solves a problem for millions of people or could potentially solve a problem for millions of people and you have a passion to build it because it’s solving your problem, that is going to drive you. That’s going to motivate you to keep moving forward. Whereas if it’s simply a profit motive and it doesn't land quickly, you’re unlikely to keep with it. You’re unlikely to have the patience. You’re going to move on and try something else, which is fine too.

There's something in there also in the case of the pizza guy who made the pizza ovens where, because they’re so passionate about it, they understand the problem so deeply that they’re able to truly innovate. Whereas like, if I was trying to start a pizza oven business now, frankly, I’ve never experienced pizza ovens before. I've never used one, never failed at using one, never succeeded at using one. So my information would have to come from Google.

It's one of the things I see a lot in entrepreneurs—how they managed to think for themselves. The force that makes them think for themselves and not just accept the conventional way of doing things. Someone like Elon Musk is a prime example of a real first-principle, start from zero in a sort of a blank sheet of paper. Very hard to do because convention’s filling all of our brains. So very, very difficult to do. I wish there was some way of teaching that.

Yeah, I mean, it is hard to do. But I also think that part of the process and part of building something is a willingness—not a desire, not a hope, not the enjoyment of, but a willingness—to experience failure. That’s really hard.

Elon Musk has experienced a lot of failure. I mean, put aside his quirks and his challenging parts to him. There’s no single person on the planet who I believe who’s had a bigger impact on reducing climate emissions. I mean, say what you want about him, but between solar power and cars that are emissions-free, he has had a bigger impact on global climate emissions than virtually any other individual on Earth, which is quite a remarkable thing if you think about it.

A lot of people really hate him, but at the same time he’s had a huge impact on the climate. He’s also had a lot of failure. We did the story of PayPal on the show many years ago and told that in great detail. Max Levchin really was the creator of PayPal. He’s now the founder of Affirm. Max Levchin and Peter Thiel started PayPal. Elon Musk had X.com. They merged into PayPal.

They actually kicked Elon Musk out of the company. Max Levchin tells the story about the day the board kicked him out as the head of the company and Elon was crushed. Tesla for the first what, 16 years of its life was a money-losing business. Nobody believed in it.

I think part of his bravado and part of his... maybe part of who he is today comes from those scars of people not believing in him. I think that he, but he also was and still is prepared for failure. When a rocket launch launches and fails, he doesn't like it, but he moves on and he continues.

I did an interview not that long ago with Hilary Swank. She was 17 or 16 when she came to Los Angeles with her mother from Washington State to become an actor. Penniless—I mean literally penniless. They literally slept in her mom’s car for weeks at a time while she went to high school and then auditions. I mean, they had no money.

She went to audition after audition and would get bit parts here and there. Only at the age of 25 did she get a breakthrough role on *Beverly Hills, 90210*. It was in the '90s, it was the height of that show’s popularity, and she finally gets a recurring role on a hit television show. It’s a massive breakthrough.

What happens? 16 episodes in, they kill her character. Her contract is done. She’s out of work. Her entire career blows up and she’s finished. She was devastated at the time. She thought her career was over because that was the ticket to cruising altitude in Hollywood.

A couple weeks later, her agent calls her and says, "Hey, there’s an indie film they’re doing an open audition. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s something. Why don't you go do it for an audition?" So this small indie crew, she auditions for the role and she gets it. She gets offered the role, and it’s going to pay her nothing. She’s going to make like three to five grand on this film.

But she has no other options, and she had the time because she wasn't doing *90210* anymore. So she could actually do this role. Well, the role was as Brandon Teena. The film was *Boys Don’t Cry*. She was nominated for the Academy Award, became one of the youngest nominees and then winners of the Academy Award that year, and was catapulted into global stardom. Then a few years later, won her second Academy Award as Best Actress in the company of Meryl Streep and Sally Field and a few others.

An amazing story. Had she not had that failure on *90210* or what felt like a failure at the time, she would have never had the opportunity to audition for this film.

What can we learn from these stories and these people?

We can learn that failure can be a blessing. It’s all about how we reframe it. Now, I’m not saying I’m perfect at this. I hate failure. When I fail, it’s painful. When I have failed in my life and career, it’s been really hard. The hardest part about it is reframing it.

And that’s what takes all of my strength, energy—I think for anybody—to reframe it and to try and convince yourself that there’s a reason, there’s a plan, whether it’s God or a force or karma or something. There’s a reason why it’s happening.

In my life, in every case of failure—every case—it’s happened for the right reasons. An opportunity came about because that failure moved an obstacle aside.

Because of how you reframed the failure, because of what you did after the failure. It's conceivable that if you take any one of your big failures in your life and you had downed tools, you’d let the failure get the best of you, then it wouldn't have turned in... and this is kind of what I was thinking as you were saying about the force or the God or whatever. Maybe *we* are the force and *we* are the God.

I don't mean to sound narcissistic or anything, but I’m just thinking there’s probably a couple of stories of people that had their character killed in a movie that decided "forget this," and we don’t tell those stories now because they said "forget this" so they didn't get the Academy Awards. But in that story, she sounds like she was her own force. She made the decision that... and it’s interesting because in that moment when you find out your character’s killed and you come home and tell your friends your character’s killed and you feel the shame, there’s no apparent light at the end of the tunnel.

None. It’s got to be something else that drives you on. It is a force. This is not a show about faith or religion, so it depends on what anyone believes in, but I’m a believer in fate. I believe in it. I don’t think that it happens without intervention on our behalf—that we put effort into it—but whether you believe or not, whether you believe in a higher power or not, I believe in a force.

It doesn't happen automatically. We also have to engineer it. But I believe that there is some kind of guiding force. One interview I did about a year and a half ago was with Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks is probably the greatest living actor, maybe in the English language. He is the Spencer Tracy of his generation. He’s been in so many films, he’s won so many Academy Awards.

When he was ready to start his career, his acting career, he desperately wanted to be in a very prestigious Shakespeare festival in Sacramento, California. That was going to launch his career. He didn't get any roles. He didn't get a single part.

So he had to find other acting roles. One day he finds out about an open audition for a new sitcom that ABC was going to possibly produce—a pilot show based on two guys living in an apartment together in New York. The show was called *Bosom Buddies*. He auditions for the part. Hundreds of people are auditioning. Tom Hanks is a nobody.

He gets the part. But now they’re just going to make a pilot. They make the pilot and the show actually gets launched. But even then, there was no guarantee that after that show ended, his career would continue. His co-star Peter Scolari did not have as successful a career as Tom Hanks did. Tom Hanks was on that show, *Bosom Buddies*, for a few years. It was moderately successful. But he became the superstar.

His career began as a series of failures. So part of it is his own will—the sheer will of just keeping on, keeping on. Part of it is fate, part of it is luck, part of it is God or whatever you want to call it. There’s something there that said to him, "Keep going."

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Failures are going to be important for you. You’re going to need them in order to get to the next place.

What are you thinking about the subject of work-life balance? You’ve interviewed a lot of very successful people, billionaires; they apparently have it all as it relates to sort of material success. But it must have illuminated the sacrifices they’ve made in other areas of their life. What have you come to learn is most important, and what is the warning that you might pass down the ladder to other people that are looking up and thinking, "I want to be a billionaire like Richard Branson or someone else that’s wildly successful"?

I mean, there’s always the perception that we have or outsiders have of the founder and the internal perception within the family, right? So we saw Steve Jobs differently than Steve Jobs’ family saw him. I think he was a loving father and partner and was seen not as Steve Jobs the founder but Steve Jobs the dad.

There’s no question that in many examples, in many interviews I’ve done, the sacrifices that the founders have made to build their businesses have meant that their personal lives have been challenging. Their marriages have collapsed, they’ve had difficult relationships with their children. It’s happened, for sure.

Is this a big regret you see in the people that you’ve spoken to?

Sometimes. I think sometimes, there are some cases where there’s a bit of regret around that, around missing big chunks of their kids' lives. Isaac Larian, who’s a wonderful man and very close with his kids, because of the success of the Bratz dolls and the threat that it posed to Mattel, he became the subject of endless lawsuits and then counter-lawsuits with Mattel.

He was wrapped up and tied up in court cases with Mattel, the maker of Barbie, for virtually a decade. When he finally won on appeal, the last judgment—he got I think he won about $300 million in a judgment against Mattel—his son was asked by a reporter, "Aren’t you so happy that your dad won?" And he said, "I’m sad because I didn't have my dad around for ten years because he was wrapped up in this trial."

And of course, Isaac was there for his family, but the point is there are massive sacrifices.

In my case, in a much smaller version of a business I run, I have always wanted to be and I’ve always tried to be there for every sports game, for every school event, for every parent-teacher conference. We as a family have dinner together every night. We run a family meeting every Sunday night. My kids don’t love it, but we sit down and we talk about the week ahead. We talk about our goals for the week.

We go over—it’s going to sound a little earnest, but we have a codified list of family values that we wrote down. All four of us wrote them down and decided what our family is.

What kind of things are on there?

Gratitude, generosity, forgiveness. So if—it just happened the other day with my son—he got really mad at me because I yelled at him, and I apologized. I said, "I’m sorry, I had a stressful day," and he was still mad. And I said, "Hey, on our family values is forgiveness. Remember, it says forgiveness. Accept an apology and move on."

Curiosity, respect, taking responsibility. There’s value in reminding yourself about the things that you aspire to be. I think in the case of a family, to build a strong family, it takes work and commitment and time. And that means that you’re going to sacrifice other things in order to achieve that.

Why are you still doing what you’re doing? Because if you’re 15, almost 15 years in, right?

Into *How I Built This*, we’re eight. In podcasting, yeah, 2012 I started. I am really privileged because I get to learn every day. I get to learn from people that I talk to and exchange ideas with people. I essentially have created a life for myself where I earn a living from learning, which is an amazing place to be.

Every day is different. What motivates what I do is knowing that I can create something of value for people for free. Going back to the beginning of our conversation, the impetus for *How I Built This* came from an experience I had now 15 years ago when I was on a sabbatical year and I took a business school class.

On the first day, they handed us a case study part A, and it was about Starbucks and Howard Schultz. I devoured it. It was fascinating. And then the story ended, but you had to wait four days for the class to come back to get part B. And it was fascinating. I didn't know about the case study method. I didn't know that’s how they taught business school.

What I realized soon after was two problems. The first is the case studies were thin—they weren't comprehensive. And the second problem is they were only accessible to students at Harvard Business School or to other business schools who were paying $120,000 a year.

I knew then at that moment that I could do the same thing as a storyteller for free. Make these case studies even better and make them available for free. That was the genesis of *How I Built This*.

It was never a show for entrepreneurs or budding entrepreneurs; it was always a show for people who were interested in building a creative life. That’s what it’s always been about. That’s what motivated me then and that’s what motivates me now.

When I hear from somebody who says—and I hear this all the time—"I started a business, we started to hit a really rocky patch, we didn't think we would make it. And that week I listened to Tom Rinks of Sun Bum, or I listened to Ariel Kaye of Parachute, whatever episode I listened to, and I listened to it and I felt exactly what she felt at that moment when her business was collapsing, was crumbling, and I thought, 'Okay, we can keep going.'"

And I hear that all the time. Because the show is not about heroes. It’s not about superheroes. It’s about ordinary people who built incredible brands and how they did it. And they didn't do it because they’re superheroes; they did it because they’re human. I want everybody who listens to the show to be able to relate to anybody on the show, whether it’s Richard Branson or Howard Schultz or Sara Blakely. Whoever we have on the show, they’re humans that are just like the people listening.

Who’s been your—and I get asked this all the time and it’s a bloody awful question, but I’m going to ask you because I get it so often—what has been the interview that has stayed with you in the most profound way? Or the first interview that stayed with you in a profound way?

I have to qualify the answer because there are elements of every interview I do that stick with me, that are powerful. The story I told you about Isaac Larian and the "no," or his childhood in Iran. Elements of Gary Erickson’s story, the founder of Clif Bar. Howard Schultz’s story, growing up in a housing project in Brooklyn.

So it’s impossible to tell you what’s the one interview out of 500 that stuck with me the most. There are elements, there are things that I remember and connect with about every interview. And I keep in touch with many of the founders who’ve been on the show.

But I think recently, one of the most powerful interviews we’ve done in terms of the scope and the creativity has been the story of Sun Bum, which is a suntan lotion. It was started by a guy named Tom Rinks. Tom wanted to create a suntan lotion brand that could be disruptive in the marketplace.

He drew elements from all of these disparate influences: Japanese streetwear, surfboard culture, and he even, even though he was in Holland, Michigan, he got a mailbox in Cocoa Beach, Florida because he wanted to put Cocoa Beach, Florida as the address on the back of the bottle.

He was influenced by all these different things and put them all together to build a brand that eventually sold to SC Johnson for hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s stories like that—and there’s so much more to his story—but there’s stories like that where you begin to understand how people took all of their life experiences and started to put the puzzle pieces together to build something enduring.

How many kids have you got?

Two.

How old are they?

12 and 14.

From all the interviews you’ve done with hundreds of people, 500 extremely successful people, tens of thousands of others—if there was just one message that you think would be most useful for those two young kids as they go off into their lives, if they are to listen to this in ten years' time, 20 years' time, what would that message be?

Find a partner to build your life with. It doesn't have to be a romantic partner or a lover; it can be a sibling or a close friend. But if you can find a partner to build a life with, somebody you can support and who can support you, you are infinitely more likely to build a happy life.

Guy, thank you. Thank you so much for so many things. Thank you so much for the inspiration. You’ve been a huge inspiration to our show since the very, very beginning. In fact, my producer and the co-founder of this show, Jack, who I started this with, he from day one has been talking about your show.

Not just in the sense of learning from a great podcaster who makes content in a really value-loaded way, but from the stories you’ve told. Because the stories you’ve told on your show as well have been... Jack and myself have continually cited them as breadcrumbs for people like us that are building things.

Kind of like what you said, they’ve given us key insights and nuggets at certain moments when faced with certain challenges on how to navigate. And you’ll never get to see the value that that’s given to so many people. But I just want you to know that I’m one of them, that Jack is one of them, and that we’re very appreciative for that and also for your time today. So thank you so much, Guy.

Thank you.

The thing I think about most, especially when I’m on the go, but also when I’m sat here in the Diary Of A CEO studio, is the Wi-Fi and internet that we have to work with. In fact, anytime I’m filming away from the studio, one of the first things I do when I arrive is open up an app and do a speed test to see how strong the signal is.

The number of screenshots I’ve sent to my team about Wi-Fi signals at different locations is actually pretty crazy. It matters that much to me because it’s such a competitive advantage to have fast Wi-Fi. On any given day, if I’m recording hours and hours of footage with a podcast guest, I then often have to have my team send that across to our London team, who then do the edit.

Fast Wi-Fi and internet is not a "nice to have," it is absolutely business-mission critical. So, when it came to finding the best provider who could supply internet and Wi-Fi to our new LA studio, which I’m sat in right now, we looked at every single option.

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