there will come a time where you will want to give up where you will run into a roadblock and you will say is this worth fighting for and you will say to yourself it's not it's better for me to just move on give up but the person who you co-founded the
company with will say we got this we can get through this and there will be other times where those roles are reversed where you are the person with the optimism i have experienced that hundreds of times hey everyone welcome back to on purpose
the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen learn and grow now today we have an extremely special guest because his ability to understand assimilate and synthesize knowledge
insights and information about building successful businesses about finding our calling and following that calling are just second to none now i'm talking about none other than guy razz the author of the new book how i built this and the host of the npr
podcast of the same name he's a connoisseur of entrepreneurs having interviewed hundreds of successful self-starters and researched what makes them successful for years guy was a foreign correspondent for npr and was the youngest bureau chief ever at the age of just 25.
i can't wait to speak to a guy today and share this conversation with all of you guys welcome to the podcast it's so great to be here jay thanks so much for having me no thank you i remember just i think it was a few months ago when we were just
dming on instagram and you kindly invited me to do your live event for how i built this which was unbelievable and i'm so grateful for that opportunity but i've been more excited about today because i want to hear from you
i was so excited to have you on it was so fun we got an incredible feedback and um i mean i i i love your book and so i i love what you do and so it was great when you reached out and i'm so i'm so glad that now now we've we we're you know we know each other
we're going to become friends absolutely i love it and uh i wanna actually start off with with a hopefully a different question than you get asked often and it's uh what was the first thing you ever built uh as a child how did your
family friends parents respond to your first ever thing that you built i grew up in a um a fairly traditional i i'm not uh religious these days um i have a lot of respect and immense respect for people who are religious and who are observing and practice religion
but i grew up in a kind of an observant jewish home as a kid my parents were immigrants and it was really important for especially my mom to keep traditions and so friday nights were very important in my home as a kid that's the the friday the sundown it's
the jewish sabbath and saturday you kind of take a day of rest foreshadowing i do that today but for different reasons and as a kid it was really important that our house was clean and and bright and ready for the sabbath it was just part of our
tradition growing up uh and so i was expected to clean my room and tidy it up and every friday afternoon after school i would spend hours building these elaborate villages out of lincoln logs lincoln logs are you familiar with lincoln logs do
you know what those are it was a cla they still they're still around but it was a classic american toy lincoln abraham lincoln you know the myth was that he was born in a log cabin which is kind of true and so they were these logs that had little grooves and niches in them and
you could build these elaborate homes and structures out of them and i would build these villages in my bedroom as a kid for my dad when he would come home from work uh who was not my dad was not particularly observant it was my mom really
who this was but this was part of our tradition um at home when i was a kid and so i would spend hours building these elaborate villages out of lincoln logs and then eventually legos um and i loved it it was like a wonderful um creative outlet of course
you don't think about that when you're you know eight or nine years old but um but it was a way for me to kind of express myself and also um uh you know show my parents something i was proud of and then feel pride when they were excited about it yeah that sounds
awesome i i remember doing similar i used to play a lot with lego and playmobil and uh some of this similar style of toys and i remember creating lots of villages and castles and boats and uh i actually miss it now that i'm talking to you about right
i know yeah i'm like i want to go build a train track but yeah i need to go and uh get back into it it was so it was so interesting building it out and i feel when i go to places like i don't know if you have that in the us we have in the uk we have lego land
uh which is like yeah there are a few in the us yeah there's one in san diego yeah yeah and whenever i go to those i'm like oh this is so cool like there's just such a fascination towards building a city or a town out of something very small so i
love that thank you for sharing that story and i noticed recently also on instagram you posted an old press pass from your high school newspaper and so you've been you've been a journalist and a reporter and a interviewer for a very long time do you
remember the first story you ever covered yeah it was uh my hebrew school newspaper again i grew up having to go to hebrew school it's like going to catholic school you know you start off something that you do and then and then some people kind of uh but
but it was really you know an important thing when i was a kid and and um i was the i was the reporter for the hebrew school newsletter um so it was you know about some some some uh uh it was like some some one of the the the classes um did a performance and
sing songs and i wrote about that i was um i was a journalist kind of a a you know a journalist i was interested in journalism from a very young age and i don't say that um to sound like you know some kind of you know precocious kid
it's not that i was precocious what it was jay was that i am have always been as a kid i was i still am um even though i do these very public jobs now i am and i think you have a lot of this too um i'm super introverted and actually quite shy i'm not the kind
of person that can easily go into a room and to start shaking hands you know it's a very there's a it's a very american characteristic by the way the charisma which is something that i i can find and have found over time as i've had to do public things but it
doesn't come naturally to me what journalism gave me was a pass was this kind of psychological past in my mind to talk to anybody you know naturally i'm not the kind of person that would just go up and say hey i'm guy roz can i how are you
nice to meet you and make small talk it doesn't come easily to me but when i had a notepad in my hand and this was going back in in all of it in high school i could i felt like as a high school kid i could go up to other kids in high school and ask them
questions because it was for the newspaper i was a reporter and so i was doing a job on behalf of something bigger than me and that was what attracted me to it it was this idea that it was like a it opened a world to me that i i couldn't access without
without that notepad that safety net i love that answer that that is such a brilliant way of thinking about it and i can agree with you more we definitely have that in common i i feel like when i told you about how my parents forced me to go to public speaking
classes it wasn't that after i finished the classes i was just happy being a public speaker it was not until i actually discovered the bhagavad-gita and the vedas and and the spiritual texts that i studied that i felt like i was speaking about
something more than me and beyond me and far more fascinating and interesting than i was and so then i had the confidence to share it because i felt i'd come across this treasure mine of wisdom and i had to share that wisdom with the world and so i can
i can identify very closely with that yeah and it's it's it's this this thing that it's like um there's no explanation to it because why did i feel empowered with a notepad and then eventually a microphone in my hand i mean it just something in my brain clicked
and it enabled me to feel safe and comfortable approaching people and having conversations and not being worried about being judged because i was gathering information and that that that was a strong gravitational pull for me
it's what attracted me initially to this profession and later on it would evolve and and and i would do it for other reasons but that was really the beginning so yeah i mean i've got i've got my high school press pass still to this day
i just happen to have it you know but it really is what i eventually would do with my life yeah you've encouraged me to go dig up some old uh things from my life i think it's always fun looking back for anyone who's listening and watching right now i'm talking
to guy raz how i built this the unexpected paths to success from the world's most inspiring entrepreneurs here is the book uh we've got the link in the description so you can go and grab a copy anytime while we're listening uh while you're listening uh
guy what i'm fascinated by and i was saying this to you earlier i think you've done a phenomenal job of breaking down the entrepreneur journey i mean you've done so many interviews with so many incredible people and i can't imagine how you'd even start to write this book
but i i do want to honestly say that i thought everything from the titles to the chapters to the structure was just wonderful to see and and i'm honestly and i'm not joking at all i'm thinking about pursuing a new business venture and i'm going to follow
your book while i do that and i can't wait to tell you how it goes so that's that's a side note but one of the first things i wanted to talk to you about is a question i get asked a lot and it's about this ideas of like how do i know
if this is the thing i should be doing and i think we hear this a lot and i'm sure you hear it a million times and people are like well what do i start with like how do i know if this is what i love how do i know if this is my passion how do i know
if this is the idea and you start off the book by telling people to be open to ideas yeah tell us about how someone finds the answer to that question probably the question that people ask the most i'm sure you get this question the most of almost any question which is how do i
know how do i find an idea the answer is you don't always know right away right and the reality is that most of the time the way we come across an idea is because we have a problem ourselves a problem we need to solve for ourselves and as we
begin to interrogate how to solve that problem for ourselves it starts to crystallize in our mind that maybe that problem is a problem other people have and could solve other people's problems so a great example of this is my friend tristan walker who was on
how i built this tristan is an entrepreneur a brilliant entrepreneur and he is a black man and he knew and knows that razors were not designed for most black men because most black men have curly hair and when they shave oftentimes the hair
and their beard grows back into their skin and most razors in the united states and and sold around the world by gillette and other companies have four or five blades that are designed to cut the hair under the skin the problem is is when it grows out it
grows back into the skin especially for men with very curly hair and it affects mainly men of color and he he knew that this was a problem for him and and and he knew was a problem for his friends but nobody was addressing this problem and in his mind he thought why isn't
there a beautiful product as good as a gillette razor as beautifully packaged available in the same aisle where gillette razors are available why doesn't that exist and that was the genesis of the bevel razor which is now part of the procter
gamble company one of the biggest multinationals in the world they bought they bought the company and tristan is the ceo but it's a a great example of a problem that he needed to solve and that solved a problem for millions of men whose day-to-day routine
was you know in in many cases pain it was not just painful but it was also psychologically painful because of the scarring that occurred and that just the physical pain of of dealing with that and that is how you begin to to come up with ideas you begin by
interrogating your own problems the things that bother you or that need to be improved and we see these all the time jay how many times have you been somewhere and i know anyone listening to this has experienced this you're waiting in line somewhere for a
coffee or you're at a restaurant or you're in a shop and you think to yourself god they could do x so much better if they did it like this way or man you know if they just tweaked that then the outcome would be so much better for the cut for the customer
that's when you start to kind of connect the dots and say wait a minute maybe i can do that you know howard schultz loved coffee and he loved this one little coffee place called starbucks in seattle but guess what they didn't sell
coffee they only sold coffee beans they sold great coffee beans but you had to go brew it at home but he wanted to have the coffee there and so when he bought this little shop he decided to turn it into something much much bigger which today is i think the second biggest
food company in the world and it was all because he he saw a problem that needed to be solved i i think that's such a great place to start for anyone who's listening or watching right now because it's something you experience it's not
something you have to think about you don't have to do a brainstorm you don't have to get a pen and paper out you don't have to be reading lots of books it's it's something that we do almost intuitively i think my biggest problem that i would love to solve right now
is me and my wife never know what to watch on any of the streaming platforms and i spend every night like flicking through like do we want to watch this show oh what's this trailer what do you think oh no all right do you want to watch this and
it's we spend the whole night and i'm not coming up with an uh coming up with a a solution for this but it but it is interesting that that would be a great starting place exactly if i wanted to because it's something that caused me a lot of pain on a daily basis
i'm sure it causes a lot of people a lot of pain on a daily basis at least friends that i know and and therefore it would be a good thing to start on this is a huge challenge discoverability with not just with video content but with
audio content too and so many people are trying to figure out how to solve this this problem because i think for most of us we go by recommendations from friends you know in my case watching things is really challenging jay because i'm i am i am sort of a weirdo when it
comes to watch like i don't like anything violent i don't love things i mean i i'm personally very open and and and to the world into ideas and and um and but i you know i've got two little kids so it's hard to watch things with a lot of like sexual content or
violence or not not only because they're around but i don't really want to see that you know i i it's hard for me to see it i can't like i appreciate quentin tarantino as a genius but it's hard for me to watch his movies because they're so violent
even though they're sort of cartoonish violence breaking bad i i stopped watching it after three or four episodes it was too violent even though it's amazing so i i agree with you i hear you like i have a really hard time figuring out what to watch i end up
watching like you know uh like a wes anderson movie or something that's that's fairly innocuous you know yeah yeah no absolutely i think my the closest i've got to a solution is i really trust votes on imdb so i believe that if anything is above
eight on imdb it's gonna be epic and it always fits and if anything's above seven on imdb it's usually a good watch if it's a six i'm setting myself up for a bit of disappointment at the end of the night and if it's anything lower than a six it is gonna be the
biggest waste of my time but i love your answer of starting with a problem and that takes us inward straight away it stops you from worrying about like will this be successful how much money will this make will i be able to exit this company you know all the
things that with the people you spoke to and obviously they all went from a problem point of view with a couple of examples that you've so beautifully shared with us and so many more in the book how many people were really thinking
or vocalizing or verbalizing their focus on the result how many people started with anything to do with the result almost done i mean the reality is that in virtually every case for virtually every entrepreneur i've i've interviewed they had a vision and an idea and that
vision and idea became something slightly or extremely different from from how it started out i mean you know one of my favorite stories is a story of of slack right and by the way jay i will add to that i have never interviewed anybody who is purely motivated by money because
if you're purely motivated by money you're probably better off going into finance or getting a job as a lawyer because you will eventually make good money being an entrepreneur is super risky in terms of of you know going for for the gold i
mean yes you can make a lot of money but but virtually everybody i've interviewed is motivated by a problem and solving a problem and and trying to fix something and or build something and and the best evidence for that is
the the vast majority of people who sell their businesses um after 10 or 15 years go and start something else or continue to work for the company that bought them out because it's it's not the gold they're chasing it's the it's the it's the challenge and it's the
team it's the collaborative part of it it's going into the office every day i've interviewed people who have sold their businesses and then and then were kind of pushed out of the companies and they became very very miserable yes because they lost that connection to
the people around them right yes so in term but in terms of like thinking of an idea and it becoming something entirely different i mean one of the best examples of this is slack i mean this that this is a product now that is used by so many people
especially in the pandemic era right my team uses it to communicate slack began as a multi-player multiplayer massive massive multiplayer online game was called glitch stuart butterfield wanted to create a game a video game he is a gamer he's a friend of mine is a
wonderful person and he loves games and he brought a team together he had already had a successful a business called flickr that he sold to yahoo so he had a track record he got investors he brought this amazing team they built
this amazing game and it wasn't successful nobody wanted to play it even though it was a beautiful game it was way ahead of its time and this is 2012. so they had to shutter the company but but what they realized very late in the game was that they actually built
something entirely different which was an internal communicating communications network that allowed the software developers and the sales reps and the development people and the backend people and the business people to communicate
just to internal but a friend of stewards from outside of the company saw and he was like this is amazing can can we use it for my company's like yeah sure here it is here you go that became the product they they did not realize that the
the revolutionary thing they were making was was that didn't even have a name they were trying to build this game but once they realized that they built something completely different that was really useful that was the that was the revolutionary
product so sometimes the idea sneaks up on you you know and you have to kind of go through the other stages to get there you know we just did a story about and i can talk on and on about these stories we did this story about a the largest mexican-american
paleo food company in america called siete foods it was started uh started several years great company started several years ago by a brother and sister from laredo texas um miguel and veronica garza now it's the whole family's involved they had no
money they really started this out because they built a crossfit gym in laredo texas the family ran it and the crossfit gym basically ran out of money in the end they couldn't keep it going but um miguel's sister veronica used to make
tortillas for the customers of the of the crossfit gym out of cassava flour and almond flour because if you do crossfit there's a good chance you're a paleo you're eating a paleo diet you're not eating grains but you're in laredo texas which is like
one of the capitals of tex-mex food and if you love mexican food you're gonna eat wheat and corn and beans well she was going to these crossfitters at their crossfit gym and saying hey do you want to have a paleo tortilla you want to buy some and that's how their
business began so it began as a crossfit gym which eventually morphed into a food business i had no idea about that and i loved that brand me and my wife loved their sauces and their dips and their chips and like they're incredible
yeah they're really tasty and we love them too when we don't want to eat grains or exactly saying like paleo diets like it's it's a great brand i had no idea that was their story and i love how uh i love how you've shared that point about the pivot and the discovery
of a product is not how you expect it one of my favorite chapter titles that you have in here which in and of itself answers the question but i really want to dive deep into it it's chapter three and it's called leave your safety zone but do it
safely i i just thought that that was just told perfectly because uh whether it's been in my own journey or when i'm speaking to people and again the number one question is well when do i know to quit my job like should i quit my job and go all in
is it because i'm not all in that it's not working or when do you know that you know now it's time to bootstrap and get stuck in and when you wrote that chapter leave your safety zone but do it safely i wanted to understand how does someone practice that how does someone
bring that into reality because i think at one point or another everyone gets to okay i know what my problem i'm trying to solve is i've started the process we've started to create something but now it needs momentum it needs money it needs investment and whatever else it
needs how do you leave your safety zone but do it safely you know there's a myth about entrepreneurs that they're all these co these kind of kamikazes that they jump out of an airplane with no parachute and the reality is that's just
not true the vast majority of entrepreneurs as you know jay mitigate their their risks i mean look at your own story you didn't just one day wake up and start making videos based on the the teachings and learnings that you had assimilated as a younger man
you didn't just go off and start doing that you were working for a bigger company and you were making content for the company and through that experience that content was recognized by somebody else then you got a job at the huffington post you built an
audience and then you had the confidence to go out on your own because you knew by that point you had amassed this experience and you had built a platform on which to stand yes this idea of leaving your safety zone but doing it uh safely comes from jim cook
who is the founder of boston beer company the the company that makes samuel adams beer and jim cook was a he had a very safe job he had a career at boston consulting group but he wasn't happy he wanted to do something else with his life
and he thought about creating a great american craft beer this was in the early 80s when american beer i mean monty python was making jokes about american beer at the time right it was it was a joke i mean today it's crazy to think about because
american craft beer is the envy of the world and and love beloved in europe but at the time in the early 80s it wasn't so he started to experiment and research this idea on the side but he kept his job and he kept his job for a long time and he kept working on this side project
for a long time as well until he started to dip first one toe and then two toes and then five toes and then the whole foot and then a leg and then eventually he became comfortable and confident enough and it saved some money from his job
that he gave himself the permission to to leap and to take the leap and to try it always knowing by the way that he could go back to his old job if it didn't work now that doesn't mean that you know it's an excuse not to try hard it just means that
there are ways to to take risks and to take the leap but to do it in a way that if it all falls apart it's not going to be catastrophic you know we there's a fetish around failure especially in silicon valley there's a fetish fetishization of failure and
people say fail big fail fast fail you know the reality is that when people talk about failure especially at a place like google or you know facebook they can talk about it because those companies are already successful the people working inside
them have already had some successes failure is really important for all of us to experience but failure can happen in small ways and medium ways and even in big ways but it doesn't have to be catastrophic failure should always be something that
you can bounce back from even if it's painful it's super important to experience failure failure but it's it's almost never a good idea to put absolutely all your chips on the table without some kind of mitigation plan not to say it's not important take risks
you have to take big risks but you also want to take those risks in a safe way guy tell us about some of the risks you took in a safe way because you like you were sharing about me yourself you've been a reporter a journalist you've been an interviewer
and so you know today you're obviously known for being being the incredible brand and the incredible host and of how i built this and then the name of the book and just you have all these amazing relationships where people open up to you in interviews and
share their stories very vulnerably tell us about some of the risks you took to get to that stage as well because i think often it gets forgotten that you've had to live all of this in your journey too even though you're telling the stories
of others yeah i mean look most of my career i was um i i worked for one one or two organizations npr and cnn and i was a reporter and it was a wonderful life and a wonderful career um but through those experiences i was able to to gain more and more experience
i was a foreign correspondent for seven years i covered i covered four wars i was based in in three different countries i reported from 50 60 different countries um i was able to go to places i could never have imagined and meet people in in who were
in in desperate circumstances but we're also so incredibly generous i know you've seen that in places like india you find that in the most deprived places in the world people are actually most the most generous those are the most generous
people and the kindest people and you know at a certain point in my career i i had to decide whether i was going to pursue this life as a news person and pursue the life of maybe becoming a news presenter and and that there's a lot of
prestige that goes with that but about 10 years ago it it began to occur to me that if i was going to do something that was meaning more meaningful to me it it had to be different it it couldn't just be about reporting the news it it had to be something that
people connected to on a visceral level and that was really the beginning of a journey that i started where i wanted to tell stories about human experiences and not stories about things that happened just at the moment but stories that were
that were evergreen that were long lasting and it was very scary for me to leap outside of this safe comfortable job that i had and to start production companies and and to try this on my own but by that point i already had developed the experience and a
platform and i i by the way i did this later in life i didn't do this when i was in my 20s i did this in my you know my my late 30s um early 40s and by the way most first-time entrepreneurs are like 42 years old there's this there's another myth that that it's all
people in their 20s it's not true um and there's a lot of reasons why it can often make sense to gain some experience before you leap out on your own but that that was you know that was a scary thing to do not just to leave the news but to kind
of go off on my own and and eventually to um to to you know to to start programs and and and then make a a kids create a kid's company that i i now have with um two amazing friends we we run a kids media company we make children's shows and we do live shows and
we're making all kinds of content we've got books and so on um and it's scary because you know you're on your own you're sort of out there in the world without the safety net but there comes a time and i and i can't quite articulate it in words but i think
it's it's like you know it you just kind of know it there comes a time in your life and i know you had this experience where you say to yourself you know i got i can do this i got this and i am not a risk taker i am not a kamikaze i am somebody who really needs that
assurance you know i didn't grow up with a lot of you know i didn't grow up with family money i i i financial safety was always important to me yeah having health insurance those kinds of things um but there came a point in my life where
i i felt like i could do it and i can't explain why but i think it's because i had spent so much time in the trenches learning the craft and getting trying to get better at it and i continue to to get to try and get better at it every single day and so
it was very intuitive it was like there's this little you know angel that landed on my shoulder and says you got now is the time you can do this and it and i think that's it's it's it's not a very scientific answer but it's something inside of us that just
says gives ourselves permission to make the leap yeah well well i think you did answer actually really well and it's it's something i think a lot about and i think it's something that's not talked enough about and that's partly because of humility and modesty of some
of the people we sit down with even yourself today i mean you know you're what you just said of like mastering the craft i think that it's so it's such an untold story of repetition and actually building a skill like you developed skills you developed
a craft and when you do that your self-worth and confidence is natural and it's effortless in one sense and it becomes something that you can share with others and it becomes contagious i find that one of the biggest things missing in the
journey of entrepreneurship today at least in how it's being shared is the point that at one point you have to actually have a skill you actually have to master whatever it is and your skill may be knowing how to iterate the best your skill may be
the skill doesn't need to be you know coding inside out like that's not the point the skill could be you know how to bring together a coder and a creative to make magic and and i think that that's just being so undervalued today like you
were a phenomenal reporter with lots of experience that therefore meant when you went out you had confidence and i think that's where that intuitive feeling calling comes from i agree i mean and i by the way i'm not a businessman you know that's not my core competency
i and and you're exactly right like your skill might be you are a great people person or you develop the ability to identify really smart people who can make things happen or you get really good at getting people to do things for you because they
believe in you i i recently interviewed steve wozniak the co-founder of apple and his descriptions of steve jobs really brought that home because steve jobs talent was of course he had an incredible eye and an incredible sensibility of what what
would work what was it beautiful and and he had a sense great sense of beauty and also um functionality but you know he didn't invent the apple ii he didn't invent the mac he didn't invent the ipod or the ipad but he they wouldn't have happened without him
you know the uh steve wozniak created the the apple ii computer and all the software but steve jobs looked at that thing and said let's make a beautiful case for it let's make this really easy to plug in let's make this really simple to use and he couldn't
code it but he understood what people wanted and he could direct people to make that happen and that was his genius he was not going in there with a soldering iron or tapping the keys with his fingers his genius was he was conducting an orchestra yeah
exactly exactly and there's that there's that beautiful part i believe it's in walter isaacson's book or maybe in in one of the other stories of steve wozniak looking at steve jobs and he's saying what do you even do you're not a coder
you're not you're not a marketer you're not an engineer what do you even do and uh steve jobs supposedly replied musicians played their instruments i played the orchestra and and you know that idea of he he wasn't a musician he didn't know how to
play the instrument but he knew how to bring it together speaking of uh steve jobs and steve wozniak you have a whole chapter on here in in the book called finding your co-founder and it's so interesting because that's actually a stage at which i'm at right now in
in something i'm wanting to pursue and and i like you as you said i don't consider myself a business person that's not my core competency or skill set it's not the part i find interesting or fascinating it's something i've had to learn but it's people that i've
surrounded myself by to support me in that space when you think about finding a co-founder tell me about some of the biggest mistakes people may have shared and tell me about the solutions to finding a good co-founder because i think we're also living at a time
where and i'll be open when i was launching my businesses a lot of people said to me they said jay like why would you have a co-founder you could have a hundred percent of a hundred percent and you're you know you you have a brand so you
should protect that and i was always like hey i'd i'd much rather have more people involved and and get excited and have like you know more energy and more enthusiasm and build more things because we have other people and so i've always had that mindset but
i think we live in a mindset today where it's like no own 100 of 100 and don't trust anyone what are some of the mistakes we make and what are the solutions i mean there's a famous investor in paul graham and his rule for investing in a startup i mean he
this guy is the founder of y combinator he's an investor in airbnb and you know all the companies that came out of y combinator his rule of thumb is he only invests when there are co-founders now not every business has more than one founder and some
work just fine with one founder what i have found in interviewing hundreds of entrepreneurs who have co-founders who started with a who have businesses that they created with another founder or more more than one is it is going to be extremely hard
starting a business it doesn't matter what business it is will be very hard it doesn't matter who you are it doesn't matter if you're a celebrity you know lebron james by the way has maverick carter they have a partnership and they created a business around
lebron james which is a billion dollar business having a business partner or partners is crucial for the one simple reason which is there will come a time on any journey where you will want to give up where you will run into a roadblock and
you will say is this worth fighting for is this worth trying to get around and you will say to yourself it's not it's better for me to just move on give up but the person who you co-founded the company with will say we got this we can get through this
and there will be other times where those roles are reversed where you are the person with the optimism i have experienced that hundreds of times with my children's media company i have two partners meredith halpern ranzer and mindy thomas we make kids content and we make
we have live shows and we do all kinds and we're we were about to enter into a a phenomenal partnership um there have been so many times on that journey over the last four years where one of us is just feeling so dejected or low or we had a setback or
we tried to raise money and it didn't we got a term sheet and then it was pulled it's all these things have happened and at every step of the way there was one out of the three of us who was like we got this guys we've had
really low points and really incredible high points that is absolutely crucial you need somebody in your life who can reassure you because you will have moments where you want to give it all up how you find that person is partly luck and but partly it's about
finding of course somebody who has complementary skills somebody who can do things that you cannot do who has competencies that you don't have but most importantly you have to find somebody you like you trust respect and can get along with because ultimately the thing that
breaks partnerships up in every case professional partnerships is the same thing that breaks up romantic relationships up it's it's differences of of outlook it's it's an it's an an inability to communicate um it's an inability to work through
tension there will always be tension with partners but when you have a partner with whom you have agreed that you will be transparent open and communicative with you will be able to work through that we did we did an episode about 7th generation
the non-toxic cleaning products company that was started by by two partners alan newman and jeffrey hollander and within three years they had a falling out a very bitter falling out but they began as intense friends fast friends but they didn't do
the hard work before they came to the to realize that they should be partners which was to really interrogate what each person was wanted out of this and why and i think that was the mistake but on balance i believe having a partner gives you
more uh creates a higher probability that you will succeed yeah i i love that you compared a business partnership to a romantic relationship or a marriage uh i i think that's such a great way of looking at it because in the same way as we have a honeymoon period
in our relationship so we get carried away with chemistry and not really forming a real connection or compatibility we do the same in business like you said when you become fast friends and you fall for each other and things seem to be going perfectly and
then all of a sudden you're met with that moment where you realize that you don't have the same values and you haven't communicated effectively and and i think what you said doing that mature work of setting your values in the beginning
setting your systems and standards i think we all want to trust people more like we all want to love and trust and have this open relationship but actually doing that hard work up front seems to be the long-term sustainable option and by the way
you know it's really important to give yourself that time and to give yourself the opportunity to decide that maybe the partnership isn't right i mean i've been in the process of developing a partnership with a a friend well somebody who's now really a
friend become a friend but somebody i knew over the last year and it's regular calls it's it's weekly conversations and also developing the idea and that has been absolutely crucial because you will be tested there will be so many moments on
that journey where you will be tested and and you're you're going to need to know that the person with you is a person of integrity and a person who is in this with you in the trenches with you and it's as they say there's an element of luck there too
but you can also control that control for that by really taking the time to interrogate that relationship and to understand that this is the right person yeah absolutely absolutely this is so helpful guy i'm enjoying this conversation so much so far we've got so
many more questions i want to ask you but i did want to take a quick pause because i i just want to let you know that your ability to share these stories of people you've interviewed with your ability to share your own experiences
is just it's magical it honestly is and i know that you've had a lot on this week and last week with your summits and the live event and but you're just so present right now right here with these stories and i want to thank you for that and uh
i applaud you for being able to share these stories in such a practical way that everyone who's listening and watching right now i hope you're all taking notes by the way because i'm taking mental notes and i honestly believe that you've given us the
pathway to building a business in a book which is which is actually really really difficult to do so one of the things that i think you shed a lot of light on and i'm sure a lot of your guests have also spoken about is that there seems to be a lot of
mysticism around fundraising right there's a lot of mysticism about how much money you need to actually get started and then when you need a certain amount of money i remember being one of those people who would sit and dream with my friends in london and we'd be like oh but you
need like a million dollars to do that or you need like five million dollars to do that and then you always postpone it in your head and it's always like everyone's always like when you see a app idea launching like oh i had that idea like seven years ago
like oh they're just you know there's a big difference between the idea of a company actually fundraising how much you need can you what are some of the myths around fundraising that you think we have in society today and what did you
actually learn from speaking to the people that actually did it effectively i mean i think the biggest myth is that you need it right and and by the way sometimes you do but i think there's an assumption that you have to go out and find money now because that
has been the path for several of these billion dollar unicorns the reality is building a business is not about building a billion dollar unicorn building a business is about building something that is sustainable and gives you fulfillment and might actually
provide employment for other people i mean look at your own your own life you didn't have any money to make videos but you had a friend who shot weddings and he said i i'll help you out and he he happened to be really good and at four
two in the morning four five in the morning six in the morning you went around in london and you got these great shots because nobody was out there and you didn't get permits to do it because you were just in and out quickly filming and you built that up slowly
and then you got to a point with such a huge audience you'll mass such a huge audience that you could then muster the resources in the capital to deploy for better larger scale productions and so you built it up like a pyramid and that actually is a very simple way
of thinking about any business right it starts here and then you kind of progressively move up now there are some businesses that are pretty much impossible to do that way i don't think you could build tesla without going to investors but but the reality is that
you know elon musk when he started out building x.com which was his payment company he didn't have funding he had to start on his own for several months and then eventually had to find people who were willing to give him you know a thousand bucks here a thousand
bucks there now here's the thing most people don't have access to sandhill road uh venture capitalists they can't just walk into sequoia capital and say hey here's my idea and i want a million dollars the vast majority of people don't have
those networks by the way the vast majority of people don't just have a rich uncle or rich parent who can write them a 10 000 check so the idea that you know capital is accessible to to everyone is just not true but i do believe that virtually all of
us do if we need to to amass some capital do have access to to some of it and ways to get it so one of the things i talk about in the book is the concentric circles that we all inhabit you know we are at the center of our own circle right our we're we're
we're we're sort of ego maniacal selfish creatures that's not really fair to say but we we all have our own we're all living our own movie right that's our consciousness it's it's our own movie but and we're at the center of our own world but around us there are these
circles of of close and loose ties so imagine you want to start a business and you start to talk to your friends and you start to tell them the idea and one friend might say you know my boss actually might be interested in hearing this or
another friend says somebody i go to you know i i'm in a bowling league with or whatever it might be the way to kind of build that those circles is by really you know testing your idea out on people talking with people and trying to get feedback from people
and asking people do you know anybody is there anybody you think i should meet with one of the best ways that founders that i've interviewed have raised money is by going to a meeting with somebody and not going with the intention of
getting money from them even though in many cases they would love that outcome but saying to them who should i talk to who should i go see can you can you give me three or four names and you you very quickly build this network of people that you have a
connection to and a tie to and that is really how many founders who don't have access to venture capital or you know big money is how they start to build the funding to to create their their businesses and so um it's it's a very it's a it's very
possible it's just requires a commitment and work and time and and a willingness to put yourself out there i love that question though because it puts yourself out there without having to put yourself out there so when you ask some of the question of saying
hey do you know anyone that i should speak to about raising funds for this or introducing for this kind of manufacturer or product designer you give that person the opportunity to say oh i want to be involved let me know and if they don't that's fine they
introduce you to their friends or their network and so i feel like it's such a healthy way of being able to ask for help and put yourself out there without actually feeling that kind of awkwardness or weakness or feeling like you don't have it figured out
you have a great knack of asking good questions uh you've you've developed the art of asking fantastic questions what has been your favorite question to ask people that has given you the answer that was most fascinating the reason i asked this
is a few years ago i used to say to people i was like if you see someone you admire go up to them and don't ask them for a picture ask them for a question ask them a question because that picture will last a moment uh but the question will give you a story to tell
forever and what question do you think people should ask people that they admire and people that they respect i think it's more about a tone rather than a question and i'll give you two answers to this because i i will give you a question i love it
i think it's more about listening to somebody i i actually get much more information by just being an active listener to what somebody is saying and there's a wonderful book actually came out it came out about 30 years ago it's called um how to talk
to your kids so they'll listen to you something like that i can't remember the name of the book and it's basically designed it's a parenting guide and it basically says when your kid comes to you and says i'm so mad you know at school today johnny
was so mean to me you shouldn't say well you know don't worry about johnny go find another friend like that's the instinct that a parent has this book said no parents you got it all wrong when your kid comes to you and says johnny made me so mad today i'm so angry
just listen and say oh i'm sorry to hear that don't give advice just listen and what you find is that your kid will give you more and more information that principle applies to adults too if you if if you are talking to me and you are
telling me your story jay and i'm with you on that journey and i am not just with you but i'm i'm i'm expressing empathy i'm i'm like i feel you i'm really like god that must have been so hard that sometimes that's my response to somebody i don't say and
then what happened i'll say and it's not a strategic thing i'm not yeah yeah i'm not like doing this in a calculated way it's just i'm just saying that must have been so hard i i can't imagine how hard that was and that person says
and then they go on and they continue to tell you to tell you their story so a big part of it is active listening but if you have one shot you find somebody you admire and you just you've got one question for them i think you can always ask a person
what is something if you could go back in time to to the younger version of you what would you tell yourself now what would you say you will almost always get an interesting answer from somebody yeah that's beautiful i love that and i i'm so glad you raised the point about
tone and listening because it's it's so refreshing to hear that as well because you also get a different uh you can ask the same question with a different tone yeah and get a completely different answer and you can almost feel it when it's a technique
versus when it's a true seeking of of a individual's like heart and mind and like you can tell when they're obsessed with that question versus when they think it's a good question to ask and and i think that applies to the listener the the receiver who's going to
answer the question as well uh tell me about when you are putting this book together and you're obviously trying to compile like i mean i don't know how many interviews you've done now how many is it do you have a number do you know
we've done for how i built this total um about 400 in-depth interviews with founders entrepreneurs incredible okay so 400 interviews you're trying to compile it uh what what do you think has been the craziest most outlandish story or pain that you
came across in these 400 interviews that has like stayed with you so strongly that you just think this is you know this is almost like a movie like i can't believe this was someone's actual life i try and think of every episode in a cinematic way i really do because i'm
trying to unfold that story and create a visual experience for people i want people to go to just completely get lost in the story i think of what i think of how what i do is and by the way um you're right i mean tone and listening is such an important
part of it because how you talk to somebody how you ask questions it's not what you ask it's how you ask it right that's not how you elicit information it's not the actual words you use to ask a question because if it was so simple you could
just give people a list of questions sometimes questions are very effective but it's how you ask them i think that for me i'm always looking to to help somebody tell their story in a way that you could imagine as a movie you could imagine in a
because story our human stories are movies we every single one of us is a movie many people think i'm not that interesting or my life isn't that dramatic and and and what they don't realize is that it is in my job is to show you that is to
know so much about you ahead of time that i can pull that out of you because i know that i can see that that's the advantage we have as outsiders we can see other people in ways they can't see themselves and it gives all of us a superpower i think you know a story
that sticks into my mind is a recent one we did about a company called the mcbride sisters collection it's the largest black owned wine business in the united states and one one of the largest in the world and it was started by two sisters
robin and andrea mcbride they both shared the same father he was african-american and they had both had different mothers neither of these women knew the other existed until they were in their 20s their father died and they were informed by relatives
that they the other one each sister was informed that they had a sister andrea was raised in new zealand her mother was kiwi she had met andrea's father in los angeles and then emigrated to new zealand robin's mother was from monterey california
and raised also a white woman raised her daughter in monterey california and these two women did not know the existence of the other until they were in their 20s and the story of their reunion is so emotional it's so powerful um we were all crying when we were
recording the interview because it's almost impossible to believe that it's true that it happened that they through just a random miracle not only did they come together not only did they love each other from the moment they saw each other
but they both grew up in wine growing parts of the world monterey california and new zealand and they both had this incredible passion for wine and they both decided that they were never going to be apart again and andrea moved to the united states to to be with her sister
and they went on to to create this business they started it 15 16 years ago very small with no money with no connections in a world dominated by mainly by white men and they created this incredible business you can find mcbride sisters wine
in virtually every grocery store every walmart you know around the united states today and how they got there is it's an epic it's a hero's journey it's it's as good as any movie you've ever seen and it's all true that's incredible i need to go back and listen to that uh i've not
i've not not heard that one so definitely excited to dive back into it i hope everyone who's listening will go off and listen to that episode as well it sounds absolutely phenomenal on how i built this uh guy i wanna coming towards the end of our
conversation here i wanna talk a bit about how this book and your work massively helps people who don't wanna be entrepreneurs because i think that all the lessons you've shared today all the lessons in the book are applicable to each and every person
whether they're an intrapreneur inside their organization or whether they work at their parents business or whether they uh are just just working a a regular job and going out there and doing it i think the what you're sharing and the things
that me and you care about are things that are applicable and useful to anyone and everyone in a skill set and often the entrepreneurship journey has today been made very sexy and like attractive and and it's almost like everyone feels the pressure that they
have to be an entrepreneur i remember with one of my mentors who i absolutely love and i had him he was a mentor for me when i was at accenture and he was he would always tell me he'd be like jay you're an entrepreneur and i'd be like no i'm not i'm just like
i was like i'm not an entrepreneur i'm like i like working for people i just want to make videos i just want to make content like i'm i'm more of a reporter journalist kind of person i don't want to and he was like no no you're an entrepreneur and he
keeps saying it like go home and be like this guy just doesn't understand me and and now i'm like oh you were right you were right uh but if someone's sitting here listening and they're like oh guy and jay i don't don't really want to
be an entrepreneur i don't think i have it in me it sounds too scary yeah what what can they take away from these conversations your podcast in this book because i think there's so much for them to take away and i don't want people to miss out just
because they don't want to be an entrepreneur yeah so probably only about 15 or 20 percent of our audience are actually traditional entrepreneurs people of a brick and mortar store or online store who have hung a shingle outside and are
are running a business the vast majority of people who listen to how i built this are may not think of themselves as traditional entrepreneurs but they are the reality is that entrepreneurial thinking happens all of the time it happens every single day of our lives if you are
a parent with kids um trying to think of creative ways to manage your household if you are a single person thinking entrepreneurially about how to fill your time one of the most innovative products in in modern human history is the iphone that was invented by
johnny ive inside of apple would you not say that was entrepreneurial that whole product was developed by people within apple who wanted to connect people through a handheld device there was no dictator mandate from above that said let's do this now it was
it was part of a process that developed and created these amazing products entrepreneurial entrepreneurialism is a mindset it's not about hanging a shingle outside of your door it's about thinking creatively it's about thinking collaboratively it's about
trying to to do different and new things and improve ways of working within your own team it might be coming up with a whole new system for how you hold each other accountable it might be a small nudge or twist or change in how you approach
your own role it or how your team is organized it's the same thing as leadership you know leadership is can be a title but having a title alone doesn't make you a leader what makes you a leader is when you share your experience with others you
know we do this on our teams especially on how i built this it's a small team of producers but from the very beginning and we we really work to promote people from within from from our interns eventually become producers and we have a system where we encourage
the the sort of the lowest level person from a title perspective we encourage that person to take a leadership role so we have an intern the intern gets guidance from the previous intern who's now a producer and other producers who may have been
interns two or three years earlier but who are now leaders we now have a former intern who is mentoring a current intern that's a leadership position that is a leader once you start to behave as a mentor to other people and you don't have to be
much older than them you might be a year or two ahead of them you are a leader you are an innovator and you are an entrepreneur that is what it's about it's a way of thinking and operating it's not about selling a product inventing a product and
hanging a shingle it's a mindset and everybody has the potential to adopt that mindset i love that guy thank you so much for uh sharing that so clearly uh both through this interview and in the book and in all of your podcast episodes uh we end every episode of on purpose
with a final five a fast five uh so these answers have to be in one word or one sentence maximum i break my own rules all the time so be ready for me deviating but guy if you're ready uh we'll get going okay all right so question one is what is the best piece of advice you've
ever received it's hard to give one answer but it's a variation of dance like no one's watching which means be open to all kinds of experiences don't limit yourself i love that great piece of advice uh what's the worst piece of advice you
ever heard stay in your lane interesting interesting okay uh question number three uh what is your metric for success your personal metric it's very simple to create kind responsible warm and loving humans i'm a parent i have one job to do it's
to pass on my values as best i can to my children and hope that they become good kind loving people who contribute to the world it's that simple for me i really it really is it's it's that's it i love that that's my that's my purpose
yeah it's beautiful uh question number four if you could have invested in a company or person aligned with your values at the beginning that you've now got to know or that you've interviewed now who would have been um it would have been sal khan even though he runs a
non-profit i just he's he inspires me in infinite ways i mean what he has created with khan academy is life-changing it educates 30 million people a month for free and i and anybody listening are watching if you do use it please contribute to
khan academy because it is a gift to the world that's beautiful and the fifth and final question guy is if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be you must visit another country i love that it's a great answer
and we've never had it before so it's also unique in a written answer i love it everyone guy raz the author of how i built this the unexpected paths to success from the world's most inspiring entrepreneurs go and grab your copy we've put the link
in the description below as well i hope that all of you read this use it don't just read it use this book uh use it if you're someone who's stuck if you're trying to find a pivot if you're struggling to figure out which is the right idea if you're trying to find your co-founder
having issues with your co-founder uh literally this book covers the whole gamut of the journey of an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur and i couldn't recommend it more guy it's been so much fun spending so much time with you over the last couple
of weeks i honestly want us to turn this into a real friendship i can't wait to hang out and spend time together and get to know each other's families as well is there anything that i haven't asked you to share that you'd love to share
right now i would love to hear it from you no but i just i i can't even begin to thank you for your generosity and also i'm i'm a little bit uncomfortable with how kind and generous you've been about what i do and and and the show um i i really i have one really simple rule
which is i never want to do anything i never want to appear anywhere i never want to make content or a show if i feel like it wastes someone's time i i always want if somebody is giving me their time if someone's listening to this interview
right now on your show i and they're giving me something extremely valuable which is their time and i never want to waste that time i always want to be able to give somebody something that is valuable or useful and and so that's what i do
that's why i do what i do that's what i aim to do um and you know you're just so generous and and and the things that you've said about the show and what i do um it means a lot i mean that's that's why i do it absolutely guy thank you so much for
coming on on purpose and i meant every word i said uh everyone go and follow guy on instagram as well if you don't already to find out more about how i built this and all the incredible work he's doing he's also giving away thousands of dollars to help
uh people start their businesses and companies too so uh please please please go and check out for more details uh guy thank you again for doing this i'm so grateful for your time and i hope we can connect soon me too thank you thank you man thanks guys
if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here i'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monkbook.com check below in the description to make sure you order today