How I Built This with Guy Raz - Bonus Episode! Ask Guy Anything: December 2021

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

What makes a good How I Built This story? Why do our episodes take weeks to produce? How does Guy prepare for an interview? As a bonus this week, Guy wanted to take some time and answer a bunch of your questions! If you have other burning questions about the show, our process, or even just about Guy, you can Ask Guy Anything by submitting a question at guyraz.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with a place with a all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.ca. Hey, everybody. First of all, happy holidays. And thank you so much for being part of what we do here. We make this show for you. And as I've said before, I don't think of this show as a business show, even though it's full of really valuable and useful advice.

and insights on how to start and run a successful business, big or small, I think of it as a storytelling show. And what I try to do in each interview is to get inside the consciousness of each guest with the hope that they will take me and you on the journey that led them to what they built. Anyway, a few weeks ago, I asked you all if you have any questions about the show. And clearly lots of you do because we receive tons of them and we can't get to all of them. But I thought I'd try to answer a few that represented what most of you wanted to know. So let me start with this one from Marley in San Diego. And Marley asks, how do you prepare for a guest's appearance? Is there a particular target market in mind when creating an episode?

If so, who? All right, well, Marley, great question. Let me start with how we prepare for a guest's appearance. We actually prepare long before we even approach the guests. So our team, our small team, spends a lot of time reading all kinds of publications and websites and magazines looking for potential guests for the show. Once we have found a guest and they've agreed that they want to come on the show, we do a very, very deep dive into their life story. So even before we approach the guests, we've done, you know, some pretty substantial work on who they are and their story and their background. and somebody prepares a basic outline of their life and I'll look through it and then I'll have a conversation with them and just explain what we do on the show and if they want to do it.

And then they go away and then we decide if it's going to work out. And then if it does, one of our amazing researchers on the show will go and begin to do a deep dive into this person's life. So that research packet will eventually arrive to me. It's anywhere from 40 to 50 single spaced pages. So it's a very dense research packet. So it typically takes me anywhere from five to sometimes 10 hours to prepare for every single interview. Now, the goal is to learn things about the person that I didn't know. And sometimes they didn't remember.

And so my job as an interviewer is to. take all that information that I have and all that reading that I've done and all the research that the team has done and given to me, you know, and essentially try and discover new things about the person, which happens each and every time, multiple times, every single interview. And if I go in so well prepared, then I can, I can do that. I mean, I answered your question about is there a particular target market in mind when creating an episode? No. That's the beauty of our show, is that our audience, of course, lots of people listening and lots of Lots of you listening might have your own store. You might have your own business. You might have an Etsy shop. But lots of people listening don't. You know, they may be inspired to one day want to start something or maybe have a side hustle or maybe are just listening to the show because it inspires a different way of thinking about how they do their work maybe for a bigger company.

So there's no target audience in mind. That's the beauty of our audience. It's incredibly diverse. It's just a really, really awesome audience. And so we are so lucky to have all of you listening to the show. Okay. Thank you for that one, Marley. Okay, on to the next one.

This is from Isis in Milford, Michigan. And ISIS asks, how do you pick guests? Okay. There is no simple answer to this question because there's no formula. If there was a formula, you would just plug in A and B and C and D and then you'd get, you know, Y. Right. But it's more of an art than a science. So broadly speaking, we look for brands.

We look for things that you would recognize, something you might buy in the store or a service you would use online or a product that is relatively familiar. Obviously, we've done less well-known brands, but we look for brands that have a national, maybe even an international presence. But we are based in the U.S., and so oftentimes many of the products are known only to people. people in North America. So brand is something we look for because when people connect with it in some way, or they say, oh, I've heard that. It's more likely they'll listen to the episode. The second thing we look for is, does this person want to be on the show? Is this person self-reflective? It's really important that our guests, and by the way, all of our guests are founders. That's the difference between our show and another show. Another show I do actually called Wisdom from the Top, where I interview C.E. How I built this. Sometimes our guests are CEOs, but they're always founders of the business. That is crucial. That's why we haven't done the story of Coca-Cola or Ford because those founders aren't alive. It doesn't mean those stories aren't great. They are great. It's just that we focus on founders. Okay. Back to to where I was. So do they want to be on the show? And that's important because we ask all and the reason why I have a kind of a background conversation with every guest is to explain that we need. them to be willing to surrender to the process. I use that word kind of tongue and cheek, but it's a term I use, not sort of like surrender, this is a battle, but more like surrender to the process,

trust us. We need you to totally open up to be able to tell your story. And it's not to embarrass you, but it's to show that every human is a 360 degree, you know, animal, right? We're all, we're all complex and we've all done things we're proud of and things we're less proud of it, but it's important to show all of those things because if every person on high built us was this perfect, buttoned up, perfectly packaged person, it wouldn't be a reflection of reality. So it's important that when we get guests on that they're willing to talk about their failures, their drawbacks, their struggles, or mistakes, even things that might be a little bit embarrassing, because we want people to be able to relate to that. So that's

really important. And then we look for things like struggle. It's harder for us to, on this show to tell a story of just rocket success without any setbacks. And it's not to say those stories aren't legitimate or worthwhile to tell. The importance behind, the reason behind that approach is we don't want a cookie cutter story. So that's it. That's basically how we pick us. Okay. Another question of ISIS, which show has been your children's favorite, which episode? They don't always listen to it because then their dad. I'm just being honest. They just don't always want to listen to it. But sometimes they do listen to it, especially my older son. And they really like episodes about food, like Tate's cookies or the episode about Logic, I think, is one of their favorites.

And Isis says, your son's favorite is the Home Depot episode. We've listened to it a thousand times. A thousand times. The Home Depot episode, amazing. Thank you for that. Isis. Okay. We're going to take a quick break.

But in a moment, a question about my own entrepreneurial journey. So stay with me. I will be back in a second. You are listening to, kind of listening to how I built this. Ask me anything. See you on the other side. Hey, welcome back. I'm answering a few of your questions on this episode today. We're going to be back with a bunch of new incredible episodes in the New Year. And I just can't wait for them. So look out for those. All right. Let's move on to this question from Micah in Alberta, Canada. Micah, love Canada, my wife, my children. or Canadian, who, go Canada. Micah asks, listening to all these stories, does it ever make you think about starting your own business? Well, Micah, it turns out that I do. I have two businesses. I don't talk about it much.

I don't, you know, I don't necessarily think. This show isn't about me. It's about our guess. But I do have two production companies that I founded or co-founded. One is Built to Productions, which is involved in producing this show. And I produce a show called Wisdom from the Top, which you can also listen to and subscribe to. It's a really, I love it. It's a really interesting show about leadership, management, big ideas around what makes certain businesses work.

I interview current CEOs, former CEOs. I interview really great business book authors like Jim Collins. We've had Injernouye of Pepsi on it. We've had Ken Chenult of American Express. just some really amazing CEOs. Also, with Built a Productions, produced a show called The Rewind on Spotify, no longer do it, but a really fun show where I interviewed pop singers about their life. And then I'm a co-founder of another production company called Tinkercast,

and this is a children's media company. And if there are any parents out there or you know any kids in your life, you might know our best-known show. It's called Wow in the World. It's a science show for kids and parents. It's a show. I started with my friend Mindy Thomas almost five years ago. And it's super fun. Every episode is rooted in a real peer-reviewed scientific journal article.

And we explain science to kids and parents and to ourselves. And we go on these incredible adventures. We have a time machine. We've got a giant pigeon named Reggie. We have a nosy neighbor named Dennis. Mindy's grandma, G-Force is a world champion wrestler. of course not really but in the show and it's super fun we actually do a live show we're going on the road back in 2022 so that's part of tinkercast we also have two other new podcasts um one is called how to be an

earthling it's about two aliens who are travel writers for their distant planet and they happen to end up in our galaxy and then our solar system and they crash land into earth and they are stuck on earth and on every episode they meet a different earthling species which happens to be an animal species, and it's full of original music from the pop-ups who also do the Wow in the World theme song. They're an incredible band, so there's that show. And then another new show we launched called Who When Wow, which is a biography show. We've told the story of Roberta Clemente and Houdini and Shirley Chisholm and amazing people

throughout history. So all those shows are designed to be listened to by parents and kids together. We do live shows, as I mentioned, we've got all kinds of partnerships and public. publishing and we are even working on an ed tech platform. And hopefully in 2022 we'll have our first commercial product available. So yes, indeed, I am an entrepreneur. Thank you for the question, Micah. I'm going to do one last one.

This is from Peter O'Brien. In Dublin, Ireland, I love Dublin. I've been there a bunch of times. Peter, I was once there on Bloom's Day with my family, and it was so cool to see everyone dressed up like characters from Ulysses. in the pubs along Grafton Street. I've got such an enduring memory of that day. It was so fun.

All right, Peter's question is, is there a fact-checking process in how I built this in the post-production process? And are interviewees allowed to tell their own truth or is time spent verifying the details? Okay, it's a great question. There is an intense fact-checking process.

So not only do we do a deep biographical dive into the person's life story, we also have a very detailed timeline. And oftentimes I'm interviewing somebody and they'll say, well, then in 2007, I did this and this and that. And I know that that happened in 2006. And I will stop them in interview. And I'll say, hey, I'm just going to stop you. That happened in 2006. So we're real, really, we're sticklers for facts and for details about the facts. And we do a fact check and post-production on every show. We'll go through the transcript and we fact check. And now there are some things you just can't fact-check, you know, that haven't been. a thought in someone's mind, for example, or the breakfast, they ate one day, just things that, you know, are not out in the public domain. So invariably, it is a singular perspective from the person I'm interviewing. It's that person's perspective or the two people I'm interviewing. It's their perspective.

So, you know, it's different than a documentary because in a documentary you've got multiple voices telling a story. This is an oral history show through the voice. and the perspective of one person. So there are always going to be perspectives that other people might see differently, but we work really, really hard to make it accurate and to make sure it is accurate and to make sure it is. And the facts check out. Peter also adds, I imagine that would be expensive and maybe even impossible or time consuming. It is all of those things.

It is expensive. It's time consuming. That's why it takes us so long to produce an episode. And we have a small team and we put a lot of care into making sure that the show stands up to scrutiny. So that's really important. There are lots of podcasts out there. Lots of a really good podcast out there that are live to tape or that, you know, where you hear things that may not actually be accurate. And, you know, for us, it's really, really important.

It's just we think that we have to do that. And so that's it. So great question. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, everyone, for your awesome questions. If you would like to submit one for a future Q&A session, just go to gairoze.com and fill out the form. Thank you again. Happy holidays.

Thank you so much for being part of our world. We love you guys. Thanks.