How I Built This with Guy Raz - Introducing: How I Built This with Guy Raz

Episode Date: September 2, 2016

Guy Raz interviews the world’s best-known entrepreneurs to learn how they built their iconic brands. In each episode, founders reveal deep, intimate moments of doubt and failure, and share insights on their eventual success. How I Built This is a master-class on innovation, creativity, leadership and how to navigate challenges of all kinds.New episodes on Mondays and Thursdays for free. Listen 1-week early and to all episodes ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcasts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello, this is Guy Raz, and welcome to how I built this. I will come up with these ideas and think, I can't do that. And then I'll think, well, come on, I have to do that. And then I'll think, God, if I don't do that fast, somebody else is going to do it. It's a show about founders and visionaries and how they built some of the best-known brands in the world. You know, he asked me about a focus group. I said, I did do a focus group. I put it on the dining room table.

My mother looked at it and said, oh, my God, honey, this is going to be big. You'll get a free masterclass in business from hundreds, literally hundreds of founders of brands like Instagram, Chipotle, Airbnb, Starbucks, and Chabani. I wanted to make it something that they've never seen before. And what you'll love about these stories is that so many successful founders start out. Totally clueless, you don't know what you're talking about. We were kind of getting busier and busier and losing more and more money. And there were definitely a lot of products that we, opened up and sort of looked at and we're like, this doesn't look great.

We didn't really know what a pallet was. And I got a super angry call for my doorman saying, what the hell did you get chipped here? He's like, there's a pallet on the sidewalk. What am I supposed to do with this? My guests share stories that don't appear in their official bios or anywhere else. I never loved my business. Your business is an instrument to make you happy, and you own it. It doesn't own you. And always on how I built this, I saw that. I knew it. I could feel it. The sheer joy of creating something from nothing. And I was like, oh my God, like we did it.

Like someone in the world is using this thing out in the wild. That feeling, like seeing someone using your product and loving it, is like way more rewarding than any amount of money in the world. So check out how I built this. Follow us on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.