How I Built This with Guy Raz - Rick Steves' Europe: Rick Steves

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

Rick Steves spent the summer after high school backpacking through Europe on two dollars a day—sleeping on the floor, sneaking into museums, and subsisting on a diet of bread and jam. When he came home, he found people were hungry for tips on how to visit Europe on the cheap, so he began teaching classes, and was soon hawking a self-published guidebook out of his car. Eventually, he started leading minibus tours and hosting a travel show on Public TV, steadily growing his business even though he was giving away most of his content. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, his no-frills approach to travel has persisted as a powerful brand, with 70 guidebooks, an ever-popular travel show, and—in 2019—an annual revenue of $100 million. For more information on the HIBT Fellowship visit: https://summit.npr.org/fellowsSee 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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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 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. Did you sit down and say, okay, this is the strategy. We're going to create a travel business and we're going to do all these different things. Or do the things that eventually happen kind of just happen haphazardly? No strategy at all. I never, I never really wanted to look in the book and say, oh, now you have a C-O-O.

Now you have a C-F-O. I don't even know what that stuff is until it becomes apparent, oh, we need a guy to do this. And then they go, yeah, that's called a CFO. We're just kind of going, oh, that's why they have that. From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Rick's did you. backpacked around Europe on bread and jam and a few dollars a day and turned his passion for no frills travel into a $100 million brand.

Giving your products away for free doesn't sound like a winning business strategy. In fact, it's one reason why most regional newspapers in America collapsed when media first went digital, because at the dawn of the Internet age, most newspapers made their content available online for free. And lots of subscribers wondered, why am I paying when I could just read it on the internet for nothing? It's an old truism. Once you start to give away your core product, people don't place as much value on it. Except when that truism is false. Like, remember a few years ago we had an episode about the rapper Logic and his manager, Chris Zeru?

Logic spent the first several years of his career giving his music away for free. downloads online. But that free music made its way into the hands of a small and loyal following. People who would pay to see Logic perform those songs at a venue. And over time, that following grew until thousands of people would turn out to see him live. And when Logic finally released his first major label album in 2014, after years of giving his music away, the record shot right to the top of the charts. This approach is actually how Rick Steves created a $100 million travel business. Rick has spent much of his career giving away travel tips, information, videos, and audio tours

for free. But his brand is so trusted, considered so authentic by millions of people, that his travel guides are among the best selling of all time. And before the pandemic hit, 30,000 people a year. year went on tours organized by his company, called, not surprisingly, Rick Steve's Europe. And Rick's done this by being, well, himself, a super nerdy, super earnest tour guide who visits popular sites around Europe on the cheap. His public television show is so recognizable that Rick's up there with PBS icons like Big Bird or Bob Ross or Lovar Burton or Arthur the Arbor.

And what's remarkable about Rick's story is he never planned on building a huge business. He caught the travel bug as a 14-year-old when he tagged along with his parents on a business trip to Europe. Rick mainly grew up in the town where he still lives, Edmonds, Washington. As kids, he and his sister spent a lot of time camping with their parents and being active members of the Lutheran Church. We'd go to church not every Sunday and I do remember it was kind of embarrassing we'd go to church

and then after communion we would go up there and have the wine and the wafer and then we would as a family we would walk straight out of the church it's like thank you that was tasty and then we'd walk to the car and we'd go camping

and it was like that was when I think back on it kind of not a very polite way to go to church but you know my parents were struggling a lot of things and they wanted to have their cake and had their community and vacation too.

But, yeah, we grew up. I mean, now I'm, I love the whole Lutheran style of Christianity. But back then it was just, you know, it's who your parents and your grandparents were. So, you know, we were Lutherans. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about your parents. I know that your dad was, they had like a piano repair an import,

importing store in Edmonds. Tell me, tell me about that. Yeah, my dad was a piano tuner. He was the go-to guy in Seattle for your concert pianists and so on. And an old German guy said, Steve's, you should import the finest pianos in the world from Germany. So my dad thought, well, that's interesting. And he went to the piano fair in Frankfurt

and made connections with the great piano makers, and he decided to import pianos. And I remember when I was a kid, I was just, that was what we were all excited about. I couldn't step into a home without lifting. up the fallboard and seeing what the name was on the above the keyboard for that piano. And, you know, I knew the Beatles paid a blutner, and each piano has a different personality. Even to this day, you know, I can't go into a building in Europe when I'm traveling if I see a piano without checking out the name of it, or I squint to see, you know, on the TV special, what piano that person playing?

And presumably you played piano. You grew up taking lessons. No, I had to. I mean, it was, that wasn't an option. And it's interesting. My dad made me play the piano. My mom wasn't a musical. You know, so that was a big part of my childhood. And I remember one day I came home from school, and my dad said, son, we're going to Europe to see the piano factories.

And I thought, Dad, that's a silly idea. But it was actually what opened up my world. So age 14, your parents take you to Europe for this trip. And this trip really, I'm not. I guess, was revelatory, right? Like, what do you remember about how that trip made you think about the world? I mean, you're only 14, so you're still a kid. Yeah.

My very first moments over there, I remember just stepping out of the hotel on my very first morning in the Netherlands. And there was a stop sign in front of this little town in the Netherlands, and all the people had bicycles with racks on the front of the bicycles. And in every rack, there was a set of wooden shoes. and they're all peddling out to the farm where they were going to work in the farm with their wooden shoes for a practical purpose, not for tourism,

but because you needed wooden shoes to walk around in the soggy bog. I mean, were you curious and excited about everything you saw? Were you more like a typical 14-year-old kid where you were kind of bored with some of the museums and things like that? At first I didn't want to go.

I was a 14-year-old with a bad attitude. Then I got over there, and I've always navigated, I navigated childhood with a pregnant, understanding that things go better if you're not fighting your parents. And I just thought, okay, I'm going to make the best of this. And then I was always into stuff. I remember I had no money at all, but I was collecting things.

I would collect bottle caps because in Europe, when you have a bottle cap, it says what city it was bottled in. So I'd have all these exotic bottle caps, beer or soft drinks with where it was bottled. And I collected that. I collected matchbooks. I collected sugar cubes. And I also was a businessman. I would, Guy, it's kind of, when I think back on it, funny because I found the most incredible business for a 14-year-old because I was a coin collector.

Coins sold in Seattle in the 60s, foreign coins for three cents apiece, you know, in the coin markets. It was a German coin or a Norwegian coin. So I could buy 52 Groshen coins for a nickel and bring them home and sell them for three cents each. That is a markup, man. There is a photograph of you. It's you, your mom, your dad, and I think a old sister, and you've got shaggy long hair and big glasses, and it's a photo of your family in Europe.

And this was, I guess, 1969, the summer of 69. Are we looking out a window? I think that's, yeah, that's my mom and my dad, and a piano salesman who took care of us from Berzendorfer in Vienna. And an old man we met, and it was Sunday, and we went to this little village. And we dropped in on the church, and after the mass, everybody, it just felt like it was an old Wild West scene.

Everybody was wearing black and top hats and long mustaches, and everybody walked across the dusty square, passed the fountain over to the wine garden. And they would drink their wine, and they would smear lard on rustic bread and tell stories. And it was multi-generational. And to me, that was probably one of the eye-opening things that I thought this world is just inviting me

to open up to it and explore. And I remember this old guy, he looked like a caricature out of some silent movie. He had a big handlebar mustache and a fancy carved pipe, and he was telling stories about how he witnessed the assassination of Archduke, Franz Ferdinand in 1914 that kicked off World War I. And he was old enough to have witnessed it,

and I was just wide-eyed. And I was right on the border of the communist world, right there between Austria and Hungary. And, oh, gee, it was a cauldron. It was a whirlpool of culture and history. And had my parents not taken me to Europe, I just would have not had that dimension to my world.

And, of course, that was just the first of what would be many more, like dozens more, trips to Europe. Yeah. And I remember on the next trip to Europe, I was in the train station in Copenhagen going between the panof factories in Germany and the relatives in Norway.

And I saw these backpackers. And this was back in a time when literally, a 16-year-old kid in the United States could be on his mother's passport. I didn't have a passport. My mom had a passport with two photographs on it. It was her and her son. This is a second family trip.

This is the second trip, yeah, two years later. And I was 16, so I don't know, that would have been 10th, 11th grade or something. And I remember I was in the train station with my parents And I saw these kids This was really a eureka moment for me Because I was literally, legally chained to my mom to travel With her passport

And then I saw these kids with backpacks With the European equivalent of a URAL pass And interrail pass And they were free as the wind And they had no parents in sight And I remember looking at the destination board In that old-fashioned Copenhagen train train station, which to me, which to me is sort of a

sort of almost a mecca of travelers to go into these old train stations. And I look at the board. The letters flipping. Yeah, those letters flipping. Ticket, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, dig it, dig it, dig it, dig. Tick, dig it, de and it's going to Berlin or Stockholm or Amsterdam. And I saw those kids. And I looked over

at my mom and dad, and I thought, I don't need you guys for this. The world can be my playground. And I vowed right then in the Copenhagen train station that I would go back to Europe every year after I graduated from high school. And I have. So that was quite a commitment, quite a vision. And I didn't have any intention of making a business out of it.

This is just what I did in the summer. It was just fun. So the day, I guess the day after you graduated high school, this is in 1973, you did. You went on a solo, or you went with a friend, I guess, to Europe. You were 18, right? And you were there pretty much all summer traveling around Europe. That was a hardcore trip. That was the best trip of my life.

And I wanted to go to Europe. I was hell-bent on going to Europe. And my parents said, well, you've got to have a buddy to go with you. And they said, you've got to send home postcard. So if you disappear, we know where you are and we can come and find you. And how did you pay for it? How did you have the money to do that? I remember I used to, I had a jar on the mantle in my parents, in our home.

And it said, send a poor boy to Europe. And every time guests would come over, I would try to, you know, beg a little money. I was a piano teacher, and I was making good money as a piano teacher. I mean, I think I made $6 for a half-hour lesson, and that was really good money. But back then, you could go to Europe really cheap. You could fly to Europe for a few hundred dollars. You could get a year-rail pass, a student-year-rail pass for, I think it was $250. And we lived on three or four.

There was no $5 a day. We lived on like $3 a day. Wow. I mean, that was a time where one of the most famous guidebooks for Americans was was Arthur Frommers, Europe on $5 a day. Yeah, we hit that. And you, and were you living, you were living on that or even less than that a day?

Oh, we're living on less than less than 1973, I get it. But how do you live on less than $5 a day in Europe, even in 1973? You know, I, guy, I've got the journals for this. I was a journal writing fiend. I wrote every day, even when I was 14 years old, what the weather was like,

how much money I had in my money belt, what food I ate. And I can trace every day I was in Europe for every year until I got wrapped up in my business much later when I didn't have the energy, the bandwidth to do that. And, you know, when I was 18, my buddy, Jean and I, we would have a game, would see how many hours we could go without spending any money.

I mean, when we were sightseeing, if we'd go right up to the door, and if it cost, we'd find a way to sneak in the back door, and we would visit it. We would buy a single room in a hotel and I'd sleep on the floor. I would, once a week we'd put all of our money on the bed

and we'd count up the money and we'd divide how many days we had left and we'd say, oh no, we were slipping down below $2 a day, we've got to really tighten up. And then we went home after that trip with no money and we went from the Frankfurt Youth Hostel out to the airport on an expired

rail pass. It was frightening. We were really good at stowing away on trains and boats and the conductors were coming from either end the train. And we knew we were just going to the suburban airport. So, you know, they were, it was like two collapsing walls with those spikes on it, like in Batman and our Superman. And they were coming closer and closer on the left and the right. And we're just, let's get to the

airport. And just in time, we got to the airport, the door opened and we popped out before the conductor's... Before they could see your expired railbouses. And it was, and I came home and I was, I was, I was what the doctor called chronically undernourished or chronically fatigued. Because you were not eating while you were on this trip? I had no sense of nutrition. I would eat bread and jam. We had a one of our theme songs, Cota Cone was a big hit that year, by Paul Simon.

I don't know if I remember that, you know. Can I sing it? I'll sing it a little, if I can remember it. But, Mom don't take my coat of chrome away. Yeah, sure. So it was like, when I think back on all the crap I ate in Europe, it's a wonder I am here at all.

Although my lack of good nutrition, Never hurt me none. I got maggots on my stomach wall. Bread and jam. You know, we went over there, and I often think back, why was that trip so great? And that trip was so great because it was a challenge, because every penny mattered,

because everything was new, because we were totally on our own. And it was just the beautiful part of growing up. I remember that feeling, too, because I traveled around Europe around 19, 20 years old, and that feeling when you do that on your own. And you had to make all these choices and decisions.

And you do, you come back a changed person. It's, it really is transformational. Yeah. And even as a teenager, I was aware of that. And, you know, I often think if the world was smart, they would establish a fund and give every American kid a little gapier trip. And it seems extravagant, but it'd be a small price to pay to get Americans out of their home and into the rest of the world

and realize this world's a beautiful place and it's worth being part of, you know, If you grow up in the United States, you think the world's a pyramid with the United States on top and everybody else trying to figure it out. And you get over there and you realize, no, they like their style of life. And they've got different dreams. They don't have the American dream. They've got the Bulgarian dream. And these are revelations I had as a teenage traveler that are still integral to the talks that I give today.

So you take that trip and you come back to Edmonds and you start college. You go to the University of Washington. And what was your, I mean, at that point, you're still young, 18, 19, 20. But did you start to think, you know, here's what I'll do with my life? Like, what did you start to think you might do with your life? At that point, I just, I think I just was very happy to be a piano teacher. I love teaching piano. I had a studio.

I was a little businessman. I had the studio next to my parents' piano store. Paid $200 a month for the rent. We had a recital hall where twice a year the kids would do their recitals. And I bought a coffee machine where I could actually serve coffee and styrofoam cups to all the parents. And it was just, for me, it was just like so happy to do that. And the kids wouldn't practice in the summer. So I'm just going to go to Europe.

I'll see in the fall. Life was going to be simple and sweet like that. And then I thought, well, I should get something practical. So I got a business degree also. So I got a history degree because I love that and business degree because I thought it would be practical. But I had no thought about turning my, my, love of travel into a business. But then, you know, things unfolded. I read that while you were still in college. There was something called the experimental

college, which I think is still around, which some universities have it. And it's basically free classes for people in the community. And you started to, you start to offer a class called Travel Europe, cheap. Yeah. Which, I'm assuming this is free. You would just give these lectures for free? No, not quite, but almost, you know. A couple bucks or something. But, I mean, that was the turning point for me. It was I was in the dorm And I just, I love, when I look back on it, I just love teaching things I love.

I teach piano and I teach travel. And I would spend a lot of time at lunch helping people plan their trips. And I was the local expert in the dorm. And I remember, you know, I remember I took a class about taking the hippie trail from Kathmandu to,

no, from Istanbul to Kathmandu. That was what the ultimate backpacker trip back there. You taught a class or you took a class? No, no, I took the class. And this guy, I was going to do this trip. And there's no good information back then. Today we have a glut of information. But back then, you know, you just didn't have much information.

This guy had information. I signed up for his class, and there was like 15 of us there dreaming about, you know, just like wide-eyed. He's done this trip from Istanbul to Kathmandu over Khyber Pass, you know. Yeah. And we sat there. And he was just too cool for school. He just didn't prepare.

He didn't care about our trip. He had the information, but he didn't give it to us. And it really, it really frustrated me. And at that moment, I realized, if somebody has travel experience and other people need it, it's wrong not to be well organized and share it in an artful, careful, practical way. And I thought, you know, I could do the same thing

and I could really help people. So I put together this class, and it was, I just, it was sort of a lark, you know, it's just this goofy college where people teach you how to, fix your bike or how to build a log cabin or how to forage and eat snails and all this kind of stuff. And I was teaching a class called European Travel Cheap. And I remember I'm not going to mince words, this is European Travel Cheap. That's all it is, how we're going to afford to go to

Europe. And it was a six Wednesday class or something like that. And I thought I'd get 20 kids from the dorm signing up. I had a hundred of their parents signing up. And I just remember, holy cow, I've struck something here. These are not the students. These are the parents. And I left the dorm. I was trying to be very efficient. I knew it would cost $8 for the class.

And I thought, okay, I better, I don't want to have a backlog because of lack of change, you know. So I went, I remember I actually went to the class with like $102 bills. And I came home with $100, $800 in tens and 20s. And for me, as a kid in the dorm, $800, that paid for my flight and my rail pass for next summer's trip. And by the way, Rick, how detailed were you going into in these classes? Was it like, here's how you get to Europe, here's where you stay, here's, or was it? I would sit on a table facing the group in the classroom, and I had a slideshow. I had my slide projector, and I showed slides.

And I remember I could, it was too, after a while it got, I mean, I was teaching all the time. I was just a teaching maniac. I would teach all Saturday. I would give that six-week course in a one Saturday session because people from out of town wanted to take it and they couldn't come every Wednesday night. So they would drive in and I would teach it from nine to five with an hour break for lunch. And I could keep 100 people into a packed little hotel ballroom all day long giving my talk. and I got better and better at it.

And I experimented with the delivery time after time how I would teach this and how I'd get the points across. And eventually my mom's sister, my aunt, said, you should write a book. That's so stupid. And then I thought, well, wait a minute, I've already written the book

by giving this talk over and over and over. And I just sat down and gave my lecture to the paper, and there it was the first edition of Europe through the back door. Essentially, when you say you gave your lecture to the paper, you were just kind of talking how loud and typing it out? Yeah, I think I even hand-wrote it or something. But it was just my lecture, I mean, because I had given that lecture.

And for me, giving the talk is recreation. It's how are you going to design these ideas and get it across and how are you going to illustrate it? And, you know, you're going to talk about bed and breakfasts and how did that relate to youth hostels? And what about sleeping on the train and finding cheap, free places to sleep and whatever. And at the beginning of each class,

I had everybody write on a piece of paper their fears and apprehensions. And I would survey, for a long time, I would survey the class in the first night, and what are your fears and apprehensions? And I really got good at knowing what people's fears and apprehensions were. What were they afraid of?

They're afraid of the language barrier. They're afraid of not finding a room. They were afraid of getting diarrhea. They're afraid of pickpockets. They were afraid of our... How do I use my traveler's checks properly? So, you know, and I just would have all of these issues that I would just, Bing, Bing, Bing. So you took your lecture, essentially, and you typed it up into a book that you called Europe through the back door.

And did you structure the book in just a, you know, clear way? It was like country by country. Is that how you organized it? In the beginning, the book was two halves. It was like two books bound together. The first half was all the skills. packing, hotels, eating, transportation, communication, you name it. And then the last half were individual chapters on my 20 favorite discoveries.

These are the back doors. So I didn't need to write a guidebook to Paris or to Ireland. I just need to share my discoveries. And for a long time, I kind of almost prided myself in not having to bog down on, you know, phone numbers and prices and hours and that kind of stuff. I just wrote creative articles to turn people onto my favorite corners, the south coast of Portugal, Dingal Peninsula and Ireland, Arrow Island, up in Denmark, you know, the Mosul River Valley instead of the Rhine for your castles in Germany. And did you get it formally published? Did you, I mean, did you start to distribute to bookstores? Tell me what the book looked like and how you made that happen.

The book looked so simple that once it was already sold, people, when I tried to get publicity, they thought it was a pre-publicist. edition. They would say, when's the book coming out? This is the book. It was a very simple thing. Was it self-published, by the way? It was self-published. I didn't know what an ISPN was, so it didn't have an ISPN, which was stupid. You see rocks the pages and staple them together? My girlfriend typed it for me. My roommate was an artist.

I gave him the photographs, and he sketched them really nicely. And then it was a time when you type and you correct by typing a lot. on another piece of paper with a glue stick, you then you glue that strip over the line that has the mistake. Yeah. So it was a lovingly put together pile of 180 pages, and I took it up to the publisher and I dug up all my money and it would cost a couple thousand dollars,

and I got a couple thousand books. I came back a few weeks later, picked him up in my Oldsmobile station wagon, drove home, and now I had the first self-published edition of Rick Steve's Europe through the back door. And then after that, I finally got a publisher, which was a blessing. And how much were you charging for the book in that first year? I think it was $4.95.

And so you were just hawking them yourself. You were going into bookstores and saying, hey, I've got these books, or you were going to giving lectures and offering the book for sale. And then I would have the books in my car. And it was literally the books in the back of my car. And I remember a few occasions I was giving a talk

and, oh, no, you can't sell anything on the premises here. Okay. After the talk, I'd say, if you want to buy the book, I'll be out of my car. And it's just five bucks, you know. And then it's just bam, bam, bam, selling like hotcakes. And I got to the point where I would get bigger and bigger classes.

And I would sell the book for, and the book got bigger and bigger and bigger, but I kept it at $5 for a long time just because I wanted to move those books. And I knew, though, that my audience was my parents' age. For many years, now I'm older, so I don't have audience that's my parents' age anymore. But in the beginning, I was always thinking,

I'm talking to my parents and their friends. And when you were, you know, leading these lectures and talking about going to Europe, I mean, were you just saying, look, you can do this. I don't speak French-German Dutch. You can get a little guidebook. You can make your, you know, you can make it work. I think that's part of my, how I was successful. Part of my appeal is I'm not a scholar. You know, I mispronounce the words.

I don't know how to, I don't say Paris, you know. I say Paris. I speak only English. You know, remember I was interviewing my student. that was a fear and apprehension. I don't speak the language. And I tell them, well, neither do I. And I write guide books.

I make TV shows. I lead tours and I have great vacations going to Portugal. So I have to imagine, after you publish Europe through the back door, self-published that I think the first edition came out in 1980. Is that right? Yes, that's right. I'm assuming that it was clear to you. Because you had established a business, right? You called it Europe through the back door a few years earlier.

It was like a – you probably find a – filed an LLC, but it's not clear to me that you thought this was still going to be the way you were going to make a living up until 19. I don't know if I filed anything. I'm kind of laughing at that because I was so klutzy then. I was just having fun teaching and selling books out of the back of my car when I had books to sell. But, you know, when I think back on it, friends and loved ones and relatives give me these ideas and my gut response is, oh, that's crazy.

And then I think about it, and it's actually a great idea. And a good friend of my parents, Patty Price, said you should take bus tours around. And I just thought, that sounds horrible. And then I thought, God, there's huge efficiency in sharing the rental cost of a minibus. And I'd love to, you know, I'd love to help organize people's trip plans at the table and the dormitory over lunch. And I'd love to take people around Europe on these minibus tours. And so, you know, I was giving these talks, and it was very easy to talk to people who were enamored with me because of my fun stories I could tell about traveling.

It was kind of natural. They'd be interested in traveling with me if I made that possible. And I did. And the minibus... There was no promises. The minibus tours were like... It was like a commune on wheels.

It was not profitable except to cover my costs so I could stay over there longer. And, you know, everybody had to almost sign a little agreement that says they wouldn't complain about the lousy accommodations. It was so upfront. So you would basically, would you drive the bus? Yeah, I drove the bus. It was just, that was a beautiful formula.

When people want to get into the travel business and make some money, I say, you know, I think the best thing is just to have a forte. Just, you know, you are, you are Mr. Scandinavia, you are Mr. Baja or Mr. Baja, California. And just do that specialty with eight people on a minibus. And the economy of sharing a vehicle with eight people is wonderful. The fact that you don't have to take care of a driver and a guide, but the driver can be the guide is wonderful.

And that was kind of my original formula there. And this worked really well at the time. I would actually have a day where I would announce my minibus tour plans for the next year. And I would give the talk. I would say, okay, I'm going to explain the tours, and then I'll take deposits for the tours on that day. and I'd have four or five tours that I would do with the minibus. I was always the guide and the driver.

And that night, all those tours would be full. They would sell out. They would sell out that one night. And it was like, what, 10 or 12 people per tour? Eight people per tour. It was usually 22 days. Back then, I only did 22-day tours. I was on a one-man crusade to help Americans have a longer vacation.

I was just amazed that we put up with such short vacations. So it was 22 days in Britain, 22 days in Germany. 22 days in Germany, Austria, Switzerland. It's funny because now, you know, 40 years later, it's evolved where that's way too long for the American market. And the longest tour is 20 days. And our best-selling tours are 10 or 12 days. So I'm trying to picture this. I mean, you are like in your late 20s.

You're offering these minibus tours with eight people. And it's you're driving the minibus and you're the guide. And you only speak English. So, I mean, that's a lot to take on. Like you didn't have a local guide with you. was just you and eight people. Oh, yeah, and I didn't have the sophistication or the appreciation of a local guide or the money for a local guide. So we were just bumbling around together.

You know, I remember we would do the craziest things. We'd go through the, there's an oak forest where Admiral Nelson used to get his masts for his ships in southern Wales. I forget the name of the Forst of Something, very romantic. And we would take turns sitting up on the top of the bus on the luggage rack. and a couple of people up on the top of the luggage track, just so they could look up at the oak forest as we rolled through it slowly. Every night in the youth hostel,

we'd pull out the map and debate. We would actually debate what we're going to do the next day. And this was a formative time for me as a tour organizer because, again, I was learning what the market wanted. I was learning how many hill towns can a mortal tour find worth climbing up? How many Madonna's and children can a mortal tourist be excited about.

After a while, it doesn't matter if it's Raphael's greatest. They're going to stay in the bus and do something else because they're burned out on Madonna's and children. It's interesting. I remember,

this is this business kind of philosophy, I think, of mine. I would have the handbooks for those tours, laying around in my lectures. And the handbooks were designed so people could be independent in the context of the tour.

There was always this focus on it. Everybody got a handbook who joined the tour. Right, yeah. And time and time again, and I was so impressed by how honest my students were in these classes I gave. I never checked ID for checks

when people were giving me any money for anything, and I just didn't need to. They're just great people. But they were stealing this book, these books, and I thought, these tour handbooks are driving decent people to theft. They need to be available for sale. So the next year is sort of a radical thing to do.

I put everything I knew about doing the tour in the handbook for the tour intending to give people the information necessary so they could do the Rick Steve's tour without Rick Steves. They could buy the book for five bucks and do it on their own. And some people said, oh, you're giving away all your secrets. No, it was a great thing because it turned people onto the tours

and it opened up my teaching to people that wouldn't take the tours anyway. And then I could stand in front of these groups of people who were taking my class for free and say, I don't care, you can take my tour, or you can buy the book and do the tour without me, but just do it and do it right. When did you start to think of yourself as the real deal? Because I think a lot of people, including myself, have had and sometimes still have, imposter syndrome. We're like, how do people listen to me? When did, when did you start to

think, God, I'm not an expert, but. Right. Well, you kind of grow into it. Yeah. I remember a big breakthrough for me was Arthur Fromer. I mean, he was the granddad of all this. He's the guy that inspired the democratization of international travel, you know. You're up on $5 a day, right? His classic book. Yeah. And I was just a kid. And I mean, I must have been right after I self-published my book.

And he, I didn't even know he knew who I was. He had me fly all the way to New York and be on his radio show. Wow. Or was a TV show, I think, maybe. And he put his, you know, he kind of effectively put his arm around me and he said, And ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet the next Temple Fielding, Eugene Fodor, and Stephen Burnbaum of the travel publishing world. Wow.

Those were the big household words in the 50s and 60s, Fielding guides, Fodor guides, Burnbaum guides. And eventually, I mean, you would do your own like Rick Steve's guides because you'd get a publisher and start publishing them. But, I mean, for a while, I guess you were pretty much hawking that first book on your own, right? Yeah. And it was sort of this, it was like this big business that was just a little kernel, and it was just ready to burst out because there was such a market for it if it was designed and, what do you call, scaled up properly. What about your personal life? Were you married at that point in the 1980s? Yes, I was married. I forget. I remember I was, my class was Wednesday nights, and I got married on a Saturday and a Sunday, of course. So I remember giving a talk one Wednesday and saying,

I'm going to get married this weekend. That whole next week was dedicated to getting married. And then the next Wednesday I was back in the University of Washington giving the experimental college class. So I guess that's a little indication that I was focused on my business quite a lot. And my wife was very supportive and a beautiful partner for that period of my life. And then I got this complexity of a growing family and kids and also a business that was just taken off

and my heart was in two places at the same time. And it sounds like it was still a regional business. It was still like Pacific Northwest. Like Rick Steve is the guy in the Pacific Northwest. I remember the day, I remember I was walking to the book, the book fair once in San Francisco, and my publisher put his arm around me and he said, Rick, if you're ever going to get anywhere,

you've got to have more titles, you know, because then I just had two or three titles. And I thought, oh, more titles. That sounds like a lot of work. And then I had to branch beyond that, you know, favorite places, essays and generic travel skills into specifics. Where are you going to sleep in Brussels? Where are you going to eat in Copenhagen?

You know, what time is the museum open in Dublin? And that was a lot of work, and there was a big change. But that's what people wanted, and that's what we could offer in a unique Rick Steves kind of way. So then we embarked on making all of these guidebooks to different countries. in different regions and ultimately different cities. But from 80 on, after I had the guidebook,

the bus tours were funding the idealism of the business. Then I started to get people working with me. And that was kind of a breakthrough. You know, you got a book, you got an idea, and you need to realize it's not a one-man show. When we come back in just a moment, how Rick went from selling books out of his car to hosting an incredibly popular TV show

and how that success and all the work that went with it would wind up taking a big toll on his family life. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 1991, and from his home in Edmonds, Washington, Rick Steves is running a pretty successful travel business, writing guidebooks and doing small tours of Europe for months at a time.

And then comes a pretty important turning point. He starts making a TV show called Travels in Europe with Rick Steves. Tell me how that began. I mean, did you find a production company and have them follow you through Europe? I mean, how did that idea even come about? You know, when you just said that, I'm just thinking, I am such a reluctant, I'm sort of, in a way I'm eager, and I'm just like an energizer bunny about all this,

but in another way I'm sort of like digging my heels in, like a stubborn dog and saying, no. Some loved one says you should make tours and take people around on a minibus. No. And then I do that. And then somebody says, you should write a book, and I say, no.

And then somebody, actually a whole bunch of people in the late 80s were coming to me and saying, you should make a TV show. Yeah. I thought, no way. But then I thought, these are smart people. And they've worked with other people and made shows. they've got a track record of success, and they see something in this, and I thought, well, I'll give it a world.

So the idea was you'd make a TV show where you'd be touring cities in Europe and kind of taking us with you on the journey. But how, I mean, how would you, like, how were you going to, like, finance it? Well, that was the trouble. I mean, everything I'd done up until now had been no finance necessary. I'm just, I'll give a free, gather 10 people together. I'm there all day giving you a talk, you know. But this was different because you had to have. a funder.

It's expensive. Production company, yeah. It's a huge investment of time. And for me, it was investment of time. Do I really want to take all that time away from researching my guidebooks and dedicate it to making TV shows where I'm not learning anything, you see? When I'm researching, I'm learning. I'm contributing.

It's a huge practical investment in my program of who I am as a travel teacher. Sure. The TV show, it takes six days to produce. a half-hour TV show, and you learn nothing during that. I mean, I always thought, oh, I could learn while I'm there. No, it's just so all-consuming. You're just there waiting for the jackhammer to stop, trying to remember your lines, waiting for the clouds to go away,

and then saying it, and then you go to the next place and you do it, and after six days, a phone goes well, you have a show. But how did you find, I mean, how did you even begin the process? Did you find a production company and then start to pitch the show? What did you do? No, I didn't want to do it. They found me. and I did it.

This was a small production called Small World Productions. Small World Productions, yeah. And they were, a lot of people had been contacting me. There was this flurry of interest in the late 80s. And I was skeptical

and I felt like, well, I can actually play hard to get because I don't want to do this. And they were really smart, good people, and they knew what I did. They had been followers of mine. You know, they knew my program.

They drank the Rick Steve's Earp through the back door, Kool-Aid, and they wanted to share it on public television. And I said, okay, if you guys think you can do it, I'm with you. And I was basically a hired hand. I was the host.

So they owned the whole thing, and they hired you as the talent, let's say. Yeah. One of their friends had a few thousand dollars that he could be the funder. And we did a pilot, and I look at it now, and it seemed kind of gawky, but at the time it was good enough to get the show off the ground. And what, you make a pilot and pitch the idea to public the job? TV stations? Yeah, when you make a TV show for public television, you need a station to be your presenting station.

And Seattle opted out for some reason, so Oregon took it up. And Oregon public broadcasting, OPP, all over the country now, you know, 30 years later, people think I'm from Portland because my show gets the little OPP jingle. And they presented it to the system and a few channels picked it up. And if it works well,

There's a buzz and other channels pick it up the next time around. But what that end up doing was kicking off a series. And we did five series with Small World. And I remember it was expensive. Every dissolve was a financial decision. I remember they had to go to an editing suite and just have forever dissolve. Right. And a camera was hugely expensive.

Now anybody can afford a camera. But back then, you took out a bank loan to have a camera. Yeah. So this was really, I mean, this production company, they had this idea, you were the face of it, but it wasn't your... Wasn't mine, no. The only pay I was getting was the exposure, I suppose, to the public and the chance to say, and he writes a guidebook. So at the end of the show, he writes a cool book, and if you like the show, you like the book, you buy that, and then Small World would make a little money.

And, I mean, that was kind of risky, even a great risk because you were essentially giving them the IP. I mean, they owned the intellectual property to this. You know, it could have worked entirely in their favor and not in your favor. I had no option. I mean, they knew how to do it. I didn't. They had, I didn't have any capital. Yeah.

And it was, for me, it was an adventure. It was one of those things that if an opportunity comes along, say yes. You know, I had the energy. And it turned out to be frustrating because I wanted to be more than what they wanted me to be. What did they want you to be versus what you want? you to be? They wanted me to be an obedient host that would learn his lines

and stay out of the way. And I had a teaching agenda. They had a let's stay in business agenda and I had a teaching agenda. So they wanted to produce shows that would be pleasant to watch and popular. And I wanted to produce

shows that would teach the Rick Steve's style of travel. But, I mean, in 1991, you were not the kind of typical television host. You know, you're, you've got this, you know, kind of nerdy, earnest thing going. And which, of course, today, that's why people love you. But then, like, you know, people were going for like the, you know, the deep bassy voice like that, you know, that kind of.

So, I mean, I'm just curious why they thought you were the guy to be the face of travel. Well, if there wasn't public television, I don't think anybody else would have taken. can look at me, but public television was the domain of the Bob Ross's and the Mr. Rogers and the Rick Steves, I think. And we were all getting started back, or we were doing it back then. We were part of the time. I look at it and I think, boy, that was dorky. But it's me, it's honest, it's authentic and it's driven by a passion for travel. And we all were true blue for public television. It was tough to be viable back then. I mean, the gear was expensive. The post-production was expensive. It was hard to get underwriting. And it's just hard to

have it. I've got a lot of friends now that are travel teachers that are trying to break through with a TV show on public television. I don't know how you do it. I mean, I'm very lucky that I had the breaks that I had way back then. I mean, the station's got it for free because you guys were handling the underwriting. And then, and you got some publicity to have it. And this turned you into a celebrity. Yeah. Like kind of quickly, right? You know, one thing I've had as a business sort of value is be other people's cash cow. Everybody is struggling. Everybody is desperate to be viable from a business point of view.

And if all you are is your own cash cow, nobody's going to want to talk to you. But if you honestly are other people's cash cow, then you become a key player for all these organizations because you're making them money. Yeah. And I'm a cash cow for my publisher. I do a lot of things for my publisher that, while other writers just complain that their publishers don't promote them properly,

I realize, no, I've got to do my own song and dance, and my publisher appreciates that, and I pay for it, you know. And I benefit from it. And from a television point of view, I was Mr. Pledge Drive, right, right as soon as I could. I know. You were raising money for stations all over the country.

I was spending 20 days a year, 20 days on the road doing pledge. And to this day, I mean, I just was talking to the people at public television a week or two ago, and they said nearly 20% of all the money that they raised in pledge this last quarter was from my show for the whole system. When did you first realize? Because the show is, it's debuts in 1991, and it's super fun to watch because it's so nerdy. And I love it.

I love it for that reason. It's so, I mean, it's really special. When did you start? What did you first realize that people were recognizing you? and going, hey, there's a guy from TV. Like, do you remember that feeling? I do. Yeah, it was very, it was, I remember the first time I ever saw somebody with my book in Europe.

I remember the first time people started recognizing me from the TV show. And then the first time people from the other hemisphere would know me from seeing the TV show in YouTube and other streaming ways. But, yeah, over time that became more and more of a, a. deal. I remember coming into a youth hostel high in the Alps, and I just checking for the guidebook information and dropping in. And there was the guy who ran the hotel said, oh, there's a Girl Scout group in the dining room. They'd love to see it because they're here with your book. And I came in to the, I just interrupted their dinner and they just go, oh, there's the guy we saw on TV. We saw a show before we took our trip. And the Girl Scout leader says to the girls, girls, if it's not to

your liking, and they all go, change your liking. And that's one of my slow. in my guidebook. If it's not your liking, change your liking. So they were true blue and doing, you know, honoring my little, little slogans without me even knowing it. And that was, you know, that's pretty fun when you work really hard to realize you're having an impact that way. Meantime, you're doing these shows, which is super labor intensive. You are also going to Europe for, to lead tours. You're also up to up. You're also up. dating your guidebooks, you're traveling around now doing fundraisers for public radio stations, and you've got a family at home. And I, I mean, I imagine you're away, you were away from home for months on end throughout the year. Yeah. Yeah, it was, when I think back on it, it was tough. I mean, I was, I needed two lives. And my, you know, I worked, a lot of people work hard and it takes a toll on their families. I,

worked hard, and it was sort of addictive to be writing a business that was rising up, and it was my dream. And it was also so enjoyable. And I loved parenting. I was married to my work as well as to my family, and in that case, I was, didn't work well. And there were demands on being Rick Steves. People needed Rick Steves for a variety of reasons. And that was a big deal. In fact, my relationship with my son was difficult for several years because he really recognized that my public had hijacked his dad and his other friends had dads that didn't have a, quote, public. And I've had this attitude that if you've got in not,

I was going to say, an adoring public, but, you know, you got fans who love your work. Ricknicks. They're everywhere. Ricknicks, yeah. I mean, I feel like you owe it. to your public to take time and talk to them and to, you know, to visit them in person. And so it's a choice you make.

I mean, I can imagine that caused some tension or stress in your marriage with your wife. Yeah. She just was realizing, and I think her friends were helping her figure this out, that, you know, you've got to stop being in Rick's shadow. You know, she'd go to the grocery store and she'd buy the groceries and she'd buy the groceries, and she'd sign the check and they'd go, oh, are you, that Rick, Steve?

And I'm sure that gets really old because she's stuck with the kids and she's doing all the responsible things a parent should do. Not a mother, a parent should do, and she was doing it pretty much alone. And I was doing the family thing a lot like my dad did. My dad was out there being the big personality, conducting the band, being everybody's favorite piano technician, and going with the concerts and my mom was at home

making sure the books worked and the kids were getting their shots and all that kind of thing. So, you know, I was, that was just a choice I made and I don't know how else I could have done it, frankly. I went to the soccer games and the football games and I was very frustrated

because I wanted to be working and I didn't want to be sitting there with the other parents watching the kids kick the ball. You know, I, and it was, it was a difficult thing. Now my, I mean, my kids, as adults now, they're in their early 30s, we have beautiful relationship and I'm, I'm, they know I feel sad that there wasn't two of me and much of those years were the formative years in my business and it, and we missed a lot of opportunities. On the other hand, we did a lot of great things, too.

And I just don't want somebody else to dictate what it takes to be a good dad. I had a little chip on my shoulder about that because I didn't feel like I needed to help the kids moved into the dorm, you know? I mean, move into the dorm yourself. You know, I'm busy. And if that's wrong, well, that's not wrong. It's just one person's assessment of what it takes to be a good parent. But I just miss the joys, the little magic moments, you know. You can't, I'm pretty practical about the reality that you can't do it all. And those years are fleeting years. And you can't really make up for it when your kids are in their 30s,

when you finally slow down and you realize that cat's in the cradle kind of business. You either do it or you don't do it when the kids are little. And I tell a lot of my, you know, remind a lot of my friends that, you know, I had to make some hard choices and be real careful about that. Yeah. So you did this first series, television series, with this production company for, I guess, five seasons. And then a couple of years later, you relaunched the show as Rick Steve's Europe, right? Also on public television.

And this time it was your show, right? Right. And this was going to be different. This was going to be the way you wanted to do it. Yep. I suppose creative people have had that, you know, where they're in a band and they want to be the composer. Yeah. and the manager and create the vision

and say what album they're going to do next. And I got to the point with Small World where it just, we had different visions and we weren't enjoying the collaboration. And especially when you're making TV, if you're not having fun in the field, you know, it's not going to, it's the product is going to suffer.

And you're going to grow old because of it prematurely. I mean, it's no, it's hard work to be making TV in the field. And if you're not having fun doing it, I would. wouldn't do it. So I wanted to have fun in the field. And I wanted to be in, to be totally honest, I just wanted to be in complete control. I knew what I wanted to make. Life is short. I'm spending a third of my time in Europe making TV. You see, my time in Europe is divided. It's basically a third involved with the tour program, a third involved in researching the books, and a third

involved in producing the TV shows. And that's a big commitment. What's really remarkable to me is that a lot of people don't realize this is that with all the television out in the world today, a lot of people don't really make that much money from TV. The TV in some ways is like a vehicle to promote other things you do. And my understanding of the way your business works is that television and then you started a public radio show, which you have, a podcast and radio show and all this. You go to your webpage today. There's all this free content. And my understanding is that virtually all of your revenue comes from giving tours in Europe, Rick Steve's tours, that you no longer personally lead, but tours and books. That that is like the vast majority of your revenue.

It's not the TV shows. It's not the radio stuff. It's not the content on your website. Yeah. I think the worst thing I could do is charge for the TV show because then nobody would watch it. People couldn't afford to run it. I mean, public television doesn't have much money. Yeah.

And they have to choose. I mean, my show ran every night in Los Angeles for years, every night in prime time. That's amazing. Because Los Angeles public television broke away from PBS because they couldn't afford the dues. KCT, right? KCET, yeah. And I was their favorite little guy for years. And it was free content for them that they liked and they just aired it.

Because it was free. And they had a budget reality and they said, well, we can do this and it'll cost us X or we can do this and it'll cost us nothing. and everybody likes that and it's free, so let's do it. So as long as my shows are good and popular and free, we can do no wrong. That's why our show, it just has wheels. And we work very hard.

It's got legs. I mean, we work really hard to make the shows so they are evergreen. And they get run a lot. We try to pack as much content in there so people can watch them several times and still get stuff out of it. And it works quite well.

I mean, it's really an interesting model because the content isn't what drives the business. I mean, you know, you eventually, as you grew and grew, and I think you were doing, what, tours for like 30,000 people a year by 2019 or even more? In a normal year, we take 30,000 people and 1,200 tours. I mean, it's just unbelievable. So this is, you know, and so the content that you offer, because you can go to your website now and download apps that are free. You can download free guides, like audio guides. That is really just stuff you put out there. And I hope this doesn't sound cynical because I don't think this is how you think about it.

But it really is a brilliant kind of free advertisement for the things you do sell. Yeah. Honestly, I measure my profit by how many trips do I impact. Like right now during COVID, I'm producing. I'm profitable. I'm not making any money, but I'm plenty profitable because we've created a program called Classroom Europe that lets teachers put

together little clips from our TV shows into their own playlists to teach on a certain theme. This is free. I could charge for it, but that would complicate things, and it would diminish the amount of people who could use it, and it would no longer be a celebration. So we spent a lot of money making this program. We spent a lot of money making the TV show.

We've got every right to charge for this, but I would much rather have people run it and then say, how can he afford to do this. And then it becomes a part of their teaching arsenal. And then people like us more. And, you know, without even being aggressive and calculated, you know they're going to think good about Rick Steves. When you started to get more visible, when you started become more visible and, you know, you're on the TV show and they're presumably more people interested in buying your books and then maybe even taking your tours, did you sit down and say, okay, this is the strategy. We're going to create a travel business and we're going to do all

these different things? Or did the things that eventually happen kind of just happen haphazardly? No strategy at all. You got, I always think, I kind of like this idea of in Mexico there's a volcano that just appears, you know, just a little mountain grows out of the desert, and then it grows bigger and bigger, and all of a sudden it's a mountain. There was not any plan there, and that's kind of the way we grew. We become, you know, bigger and bigger and bigger. And for me, it's, I never really wanted, I got a business degree, but I never really wanted to look in the book and say, oh, now you have a C-O, now you have a C-O, now you have a C-E-O.

I don't even know what that stuff is until it becomes apparent, oh, we need a guy to do this. And then they go, yeah, that's called a C-FO. You know, and we're just kind of going, oh, that's why they have that. When we come back in just a moment, why Rick didn't want the company to grow too big or too fast. And later, what happened when the pandemic brought his entire business to a halt? Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So by the late 1990s and early 2000s, Rick Steve's books and tours and TV show were doing so well that He and his small team were actually a little worried that they might be growing too fast. Oh, yeah. In fact, for years in my office, the big issue when we had our annual meetings and stuff was, how do we not let growth brutalize us? Because we're a gang of collaborators, of friends, like a big family in my business. And we're not as typical, we're privately held.

I always say if we were publicly held, we'd have no choice. We'd have to profit maximize. but we have ideals and it's not just making money and we didn't want to sell our soul. We didn't, you know, we wanted to maintain who we were. And that's, I mean, I remember the, I just remember when I used to take the checks to the bank myself, you know, it was not a sliver of that.

But so now we've got the power to do things. We've got the power to, you know, when I want to make a show, a TV show about hunger, I dedicate a lot of time and a lot of money to go into Ethiopian Guatemala and we finish it with, We don't have to worry about what does every dissolve cost. We make that show first class at whatever it costs, and then it has an impact. So we're just really enjoying the success we've had because of the way it lets us do a good job in the tools we use to teach the public. Rick, I don't think many people dislike you.

I think probably nobody does. But the wrap on you, one of the criticisms of you, and you know this is Rick Steve has ruined these like beautiful quaint. places because there are just masses of American tourists coming through them and and they're not special anymore. There's nothing hidden. Like writing about Europe through the back door in 1982 meant one thing. But today it's like every spot on earth, whether Cinque Terre in Italy or, you know, or, you know, the coast of Donagall and Ireland, wherever it is, there's some influencer posing, you know, posing for photographs in a field, you know, a field of lavender in province or whatever it might be. Like, it's just, you know, it's kind of a trope, but there's some truth to it, which is everything special is kind of been ruined.

Yeah, I remember there's a cartoon when it was these whalers and somebody goes, quick, harpoon it before it's extinct. And I thought, maybe that's a little bit like me. My job is to find these undiscovered places and tell everybody about them. And, you know, I've thought long and hard about this. You know, I'm the hired hand of my readers. I'm not in business to protect places that I discuss. discover. I remember once I went to a lecture with Arthur Fromer, you know, my mentor, my inspiration in so many ways. And somebody said,

you know, what's your favorite place in Rome? And he said, I've got a favorite place in Rome. I just go there for myself. It's just, and he described it so beautifully, he says, I don't tell any about it because I just want it to be for me. And I thought, Arthur, that's not what we're supposed to do is travel writers. We work really hard to find these great places and the very, very favorite places need to be more important than anything else shared with the public. as long as that place can handle the public. Some places don't want the public

or they can't handle the public, and you would be wrong to promote it in a way that overwhelmed it and made everybody miserable, the locals and the tourists. But, you know, I'm not... I used to genuinely look for places off the beaten path,

but I've been sort of... I've morphed into finding unique, authentic places that are accessible to the beaten path. That's what people want. And, you know, Paris is by no means. means undiscovered, but you can go to Paris in a way that you can enjoy it without it being a tourist trap.

But you know, I wonder, Rick, I mean, you've probably seen how influencers on social media travel around Europe, around the world. And oftentimes they're not really there to see it, but basically to be seen, seeing it, right? Like they post pictures of themselves, like posing in this or in that place sometimes as a way of getting travel perks, right? And I mean, you've seen those kinds of posts, right? Yeah. I mean, just last year, I was traveling around Europe,

and it occurred to me, I went to like four places in a row where there was this Instagram phenomenon, this is whatever it is. And I was in Muran in Switzerland, and people were lining up to stand on a stump in Mirren to get a photograph with the famous mountain behind them,

and they're literally lining up to get this photograph. And then I go to the Cinque Terre in the Italian Riviera. And there's five towns. Nobody goes to Monorola. And all of a sudden, Everybody's going to Monarola, and they're on the spit out in the waterfront in Monarola, and there's a big crowd on the spit in Monarola,

and I ask my local friend, what is that? And he goes, that's the Instagram spot. Everybody goes there to get their picture. And they don't even know the name of the town, you know. And I'm just so thankful that I don't, you know, when I go to the Lou, if I'm not putting on my shoulder pads and getting a selfie in front of the Mona Lisa, I've got some serious art appreciation to do.

So that's a different world. And those people are scrambling to make it in that world. And that's fine with me, but it has nothing to do with my work as a travel writer. This past year has been a really tough year for the travel industry. And I know that a couple of months ago you put out an open letter basically explaining the situation of your business. You have had basically zero revenue since the pandemic shut down travel. and you have had to, in order to avoid layoffs, I guess you basically have everybody on your team working 60% or something like that.

Yeah, we're between 60% and 70%. Everybody still gets their health care, but we're having to trim our sales. So how are you paying people if you have no revenue? Well, for 30 years, I've had revenue, and I'm privately held, so I am the only stockholder. And, you know, if you're publicly held, when you make money one year, the way, if I understand it correctly, that money is gone. disperse it through your stockholders.

But I've just been the only stockholders, so I've collected a lot of money over 30 successful years in a row. I mean, not that we're any giant mega corporation, because I'm not interested in going public and just becoming bigger than we are. I mean,

when we peaked in 2019, I think our gross revenue was $100 million with 100 employees. Unbelievable. And it's, okay, I got two years that are terrible. Well, if you've got 30 good years and then two terrible years, I can take those lumps and I owe it to my staff. I mean, they've been with me through all these successful years. I'm not going to just say, oh, now I'm not making money. You guys are all

gone. I need to spend whatever it takes to keep my team together because we will throttle up. Will it be late 2021 or it will be 2022? I don't know, but we're going to be here. We're going to be ready. We've weathered many storms over the last 40 years as a travel company and Rick Steve's Europe will be here after the pandemic. And I know that the demand for travel doesn't dissipate. It backs up. And, you know, the economy may be tough. And, you know, there may be some changes in how we travel.

But, you know, there will be travel. And Rick Steve Sherip will be here with guidebooks and with tours when it breaks open. And the worst thing for me to do as an ethical employer would be, sorry, I'm not making any money. You guys are all unemployed now. And just from a smart businessman point of view, I want to have my team together. You know, there's something really,

and I've been thinking about this lately. There's an intangible value of having the team together. It's like a baseball team or something. You know, you need that shortstop. You need that picture. You need that cleanup hitter. What do you think the future of travel

is going to be like? I wonder about this a lot because I live in California and the Bay Area, and I have really, rediscovered this part of the country. I mean, a lot of hiking, a lot of just spending time in nature and really discovering places that I hadn't been to and actually wondering, and my wife and I have talked about this and sort of wondering, like, why are we travel so much every year?

Maybe we should travel less. And I wonder what you think the future of travel is going to look like post-COVID. Yeah. I'm pretty convinced that the essence of travel will come back. You know, Rick's Steve's travel is the opposite of social distancing. You know, I go to Paris to be kissed on the cheeks, and I go to Rome to pack into those piazzas and do the Pasejata strolling in the pedestrian boulevards, licking a nice cream cone and checking out the crowd.

I go to the pubs in Ireland to cling glasses with people who really believe that strangers are just friends who've yet to meet. And I think that will come back. I think it'll be incremental, but I think we are on a glide path to normalcy. I also am concerned that the little moms and pops that make travel so fun can survive this because the big businesses will survive it.

But I do not want a future where everything comes to me in a cardboard box on my doorstep and where every strip mall is just filled with chain restaurants. I don't want that. I don't want that in my regular life and I don't want that in my travel life. And the challenge will be can the small mom and pops, the little entrepreneurial ventures, the little passionate life work of people about their small museums that they run. Will this still be standing after COVID? And I hope that it will be.

Rick, for a 65-year-old guy, you are remarkably self-aware of your privilege and your, if you talked about what it means to be a white man in the world. and you have been pretty open about your progressive politics. You wrote a book called Travel is a Political Act. In 2009, you've updated it, I think just a couple years ago. Do you think because you have spent so much time overseas seeing other cultures and talking other people that it's actually made you more progressive politically? Hmm.

I love how travel. opens you up to the world. And I think it does make you more progressive. I've always been aware that culture shock is a challenge for travelers. And just this last few months, I've been thinking about how culture shock is a positive thing. It's the growing pains of a broadening perspective.

And I'm so aware of the gap between rich and poor. I'm so aware that my daily latte costs a day's wages for the less privileged 50% of humanity. Half of our planet is trying to live on $5 a day. I think it's so interesting how you learn about your country a lot of times by leaving at it and leaving it and looking at it from a distance. So this is all, to me, you know, my travel teaching has morphed.

We talked about it. In the very beginning, I said, European travel cheap. It was just budget tricks, you know, and since then it has morphed. Gradually, gradually, gradually over the years. And now it is getting out of your comfort zone and gaining an empathy for people who live differently and see things differently than we do. You know, for somebody who really kind of started this as a passion project, right? You never, I can't imagine you ever anticipated getting rich off of what you do.

But you did. I mean, this is a business that in 2019 generated $100 million a year, a staff of 100 people. I mean, you probably have enough money to retire several times over. Is money, was money ever important to you? Is it important to you? Are you uncomfortable when I say, you know, you're a rich guy? No, when I was a kid, I wanted to get A's. As a businessman, you get A's by making money.

I pride myself in paying my staff well and taking care of my staff and providing a working environment that helps people feel good about what they're doing and not just earning a paycheck, but contributing in a positive way. And I like to make money. When I make money, I can do things that

give me power to do stuff that I think is worthwhile. Like what? I like to pay the rent for my local symphony. So my symphony has a tough time financially like most symphonies. And I just thought, how about if one of your fans just paid the concert hall rental fee

all year long every year? So I've committed myself to doing that. I care about homelessness. I try to make sure people can find an affordable hotel when they're traveling in Europe. And I know a lot of people will never see their name on a plane ticket because life is just tough for them. And if we've got money for traveling, we should have money to house people here in our country. So I bought a 25-unit apartment building. That's in Edmonds, Washington, right? In Edmonds, yeah, north of Seattle. And I thought a lot of, you know, well-off people have money as a nest egg sitting in the bank making interest. why not take that capital and buy an apartment complex

and then give it to the YWCA or some organization like that to house people and you still own it but your money is doing something good instead of sitting in the bank. Eventually I just gave that building to the YWCA and now I go to sleep knowing that my hard work has resulted in the YWCA owning in a 25-unit apartment complex that is housing 25 single moms. In this case, people who have had problems with

drug addiction, and they were not able to be with their kids, and now they can be with their kids. Do you give yourself some luxuries? Like when you travel, do you travel first class in a flat bed? I've never paid for anything other than economy on an airplane ticket if I get pumped. You just get upgraded because of your miles. No, I don't do miles. I've never collected miles or anything like that. I don't want to try to defend it because I don't know for sure why I don't like it, but I don't bother with miles that they really, I don't like miles. So when you fly to Europe, you fly an economy class. Oh yeah. I fly way back there. And you just, somebody just sits next to you and they're like, wait, aren't you Rick Steves? I just sit

there like a Norwegian Bernie Sanders with my noise reduction headphones on looking at my laptop for eight hours. How do you prevent people from giving you a bunch of free stuff or trying to influence your decision by making, because you've got to be recognized now everywhere you go. It's not like you're an anonymous critic. I mean, it's... I take it personally because you've got to earn your way into a Rick Steve's book. You can't get in there because you gave Rick a nice bottle of wine or that your cousin's already in there. You've got to earn it.

I owe that to my readers. So it is a constant battle. And I get free rooms when I travel. Nobody would charge me for a room when I go to their hotel because I send them a quarter of their business all year long. But I am very tuned in to the fact that I cannot let that corrupt me. If things go south, that hotel, even if it's run by friends of mine, is out of the book. And it breaks my heart.

But I have happened to drop hotels run by friends of mine because it's no longer what used to be when it earned a spot in the book. Do you think that your audience is getting older, or do you think that you are still appealing to, like if you're a young traveler today, like when I was 20 and I went all over Europe, why would you. use a Rick Steve's guide versus a let's go or a rough guide or a lonely planet. Yeah, my staff is tuned in to generational changes and so on. I find

it kind of boring. Maybe it's because I'm the old generation, but I want to produce content. I think if content is fundamentally helpful and if it's well designed and if it's affordable, the format can be devised after the fact to fit,

the consuming habits of this generation or that generation. So is it an electronic book or a book in print? Is it an app or all that kind of stuff? I don't know. I just want to produce the content. You know, our guidebooks are the best. Before COVID hit, my publisher was so excited. He showed me the sales chart.

And 25 of the top 30 guidebooks and published in the United States for Europe had Rick Steve's on the cover. Wow. And I think that is more fundamental than what generation is using it. I mean, what's interesting about your business, right, is that it's a travel business, but it's around the name of this person, Rick Steves, right? And normally you would say, well, you know, once Rick Steves is no longer part of the equation, there's no business. But, but I mean, Rick Steves is like Frommers or Lonely Planet, right? It's you, but it's something else, too. It's actually, I mean, what's interesting to me about your business is that it can survive.

without the person, Rick Steves. Yeah. I've wanted to get to the point where the business could survive without me. And I think we're at the point now, and I'm really happy about that, that we've got a team where the company is viable without me.

On the other hand, it's a shame when a company is named after a person because then you have other people that should have the potential to be the public face of that company, But it's kind of awkward to say, you know, here's John Doe, who is speaking for Rick Steves. It would be nicer if the company was just called Europe through the back door, and then John Doe would not be not Rick Steves. But that's not a problem right now because Rick Steves is still having fun being Rick Steves. When you think about the arc of your career and what you've built, the top-selling business,

the top-selling travel books for Rick Steve's books, $100 million in revenue at your peak. How much of that success do you attribute to how hard you worked and how much you put into it? And how much do you think it had to do with luck? Oh, I think a lot of it is how hard I work. I just, I've dedicated, I've basically, I'm not at all complaining about it, but I've given my life to this business. I always work on Saturday. I work every night until 10 o'clock. So I'm loving my work, but not everybody can love the work the way I'm blessed to love the work.

I believe in what we're doing, and I got my name on the cover. And I like to be America's traveling guinea pig. I like to make mistakes, take careful notes, and come home and help people learn from my mistakes rather than their own so they can have a better trip. Earlier in the conversation, you were so candid about your family and your personal life. And I understand you're in a new chapter there as well that you and your wife had divorced divorced some time ago. I guess it was pretty amicable. But you now have a new partner.

I think her name is Shelly, who's actually a Lutheran bishop. And it sounds like even though you're not traveling as much as you normally would, it sounds like you're in a really good place. Yeah, I'm so thankful. and she's been able to introduce me to things that I would have never, ever taken seriously before COVID. I've got an apron now. I cook. I know how to use the stove.

I'm walking dogs. Shelly's got a couple of dogs, and, you know, I would have thought that'd be a deal breaker for anybody who's going to be my girlfriend, but no, these dogs are very important part of our life. So it's totally new to me, and it reminds me there's more to life than travel, and I'm really thankful for that.

that's Rick Steves, founder and owner of Rick Steves Europe. And by the way, there's one thing you might be kind of surprised to hear about Rick. He's a pretty big advocate for smoking pot. I love marijuana, but I talk more than I smoke. Let's put it that way. It takes time to smoke marijuana. And many years, my New Year's resolution is to smoke more pot. And as resolutions go, you fail.

But I've spent a lot of time and a lot of money helping legalize marijuana. I love the idea that the nerdiest, most earnest Lutheran guy like you is also this huge marijuana advocate, too. Oh, if Martin Luther was around today, he'd be a pilot. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you are not already a subscriber, please do subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to write to us, our email address is hibt at npr.org. And if you want to follow us on Twitter, we're at How I Built This or at Guy Raz. And on Instagram, you can follow me at guy.org.

This episode was produced by Rachel Fockner with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. Thanks also to Liz Metzger, Farah Safari, Darith Gales, J.C. Howard, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Janet Ujung Lee. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR. are.