The Psychology Of Success | Guy Raz

27:02A lot of it was, you know, like there are two forks and like that was the fork I want to take, but it was shut down. So I had to take that one, but it turned out to be a better one. So I try to think about it in those terms and it becomes easier as you get older for obvious reasons, because, you know, you see each failure as a building block, a building block in growth. and you start to realize, and I think meditation and things like meditation and even yoga have helped me think about the concept of a journey rather than a destination, which I love because there is no end point. It's not like, you know, you plant a flag and you're like, aha, look at me, I'm hosting how I built this and I've created a successful business and it's all over.

27:46Like, and it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way with business. It doesn't work that way with any of the founders that I've even, you know, people who've made a billion dollars, Like they're not like Scrooge McDuck sitting in their vault, like throwing their money up, you know. They're still trying to figure out how to stay active, how to do something interesting, how to engage, how to be a part of the world. And it has become easier over time. And now I really try to take risks that I know could fail, you know, smaller risks, of course, and sometimes bigger ones. But I do try to take risks that that I think I need to take because I was thinking about this, you know, this idea of injury or or exposing yourself to discomfort or humiliation recently.

28:39I I'm very good at exercising every day. I work out every morning and I work out very, very in a very similar way. I do very similar routines. And one of the things that I've done over the last, really over the last five years as I've gotten closer to 50 is I work out with light weights, but I do very slow repetitions. So instead of just like pump weight up and down, up and down, which the older you get, the more likely you'll get injured doing that. I go very slowly, like really painfully slowly up and painfully slowly down with light weights. And after six or seven repetitions, it gets extremely hard, even with 15 or 20 pounds, you know, because you're putting so much tension on your body.

29:30But those little tears, you have to create those little tears in order to stay healthy and fit. And it's a little bit, it's a weird analogy, but it's a little bit like exposing yourself to potential ridicule with a new idea. You know, it's when I interview founders of businesses or companies, they are always putting themselves in the line, out on the line because they're coming up with an idea. Most of the time people say, well, if this is such a great idea, why didn't somebody come up with it before? And then they sort of go through a long period where it's not working and they're really kind of embarrassed about it.

30:10But eventually, you know, on the show, it eventually works out. And you can pick almost any episode of How I Built This to hear a version of that story. And I was thinking about this in the context of something that I've been doing in the last, I would say, few months. And it's putting out these videos about how I built this, about what I've learned from how I built this, about sort of lessons that I've learned in my life. might sound like a perfectly normal, ordinary thing to do in my profession, my world. But for me, it's been really challenging because the idea of making videos and putting my face out there and saying, here's a story about this or that, or here's why you should think about this or that thing in this way is hard for me because I think a lot of people in our generation look at at social media as a form of narcissism.

31:10And nobody in their teens or 20s or 30s really does. Like most people in that age bracket don't think it's weird for people to show off their bodies or to show these beautiful places around the world where they're visiting. And for me, it's harder because it's not like native to who I am, to go out and to make videos about these lessons that I've learned. But I've started to do it. And sometimes some people who have been following me or have been listening to my shows for a while have commented and they're like, this isn't you or this doesn't seem like you. And sometimes that stuff stings. But I have to remember that there's a bigger audience of people who don't know how I built this or don't know the things that I talk about.

31:58I try and remind myself that the things that I'm making and the messages that I'm delivering are designed to be useful to them, that I'm not asking for anything in return. I just want to offer up this information or this lesson that I've learned, and hopefully it will be useful for you. And that's it. And I've just got to kind of plow through it and see where it goes. And it may fail. You know, I may put these out there and it may, there may be people, more people who hate me than or hate them than like them, but it's worth trying. And so it's sort of this full circle of like, you've got to kind of test, get out of your comfort zone, be willing to fail and understand that the failure is okay.

32:46Like failure happens for a reason. Yeah, I hear two things in that last in that what you called a digression, although I think it was entirely relevant. But one is, yeah, getting comfortable with discomfort, the importance of risk. It's it's a prerequisite for growth and expansion. And then the other thing I heard is that you have to be keenly aware of and keep in mind as much as possible to be a little Simon Sinek about it. Your why, your purpose. Yeah. Why are you doing this? Otherwise, you don't have a North Star. Simon, by the way, I went to college with Simon and he's a friend of mine and he's such a smart person.

33:23It's just been so cool to see him, you know, how he's kind of created a world around his ideas. You know, I just got back from a trip to Italy. We did a family trip and it was so it was like it's amazing. We did this two and a half week road trip with my kids. I have two teenagers. So my wife and my kids. And it was the first time we did a family vacation. that was kind of really a touristy vacation. You know, we had guides. We went to Florence and Siena and Urbino. We learned about the Italian Renaissance. And we went to, you know, Ostia and Rome and had tours around ancient Rome. And, you know, look, admittedly, there were times where our boys were just bored on their minds.

34:07And they would just look at us and say, Mom, Dad, can we just go and walk around Rome? But what was so amazing about that trip was how people repeat themselves. I don't want to say history repeats itself, but people repeat themselves and themes repeat themselves. Like on this idea of failure, we were in Florence. So Florence, you know, has, you know, the famous cathedral. It's this black and white cathedral and it's the Duomo there. And there are these famous bronze doors on the baptistry. And they were created by this artist named Ghiberti. and you hear the story about the doors and the doors, there was this competition in Florence to build the Medicis who ran the city.

34:51They had the competition to, who wants to design the doors of the baptistry, of the cathedral? And all of these great artists, you know, raised their hands. I mean, this is a time, there was like an 80 year period where like Leonardo and Raphael and Michelangelo, like all lived, you know, and like Donatello and Giotto, But like all these guys lived at the same time. It was this incredible lowering of culture and art and science. Anyway, so all these artists, they vied for this job. And there was a guy named Brunelleschi, and he was also a pretty good artist. And he really wanted this job. And he came in second place.

35:29He was the runner-up. He didn't win this prize. It went to Giberti. And Brunelleschi was – he failed. You know, it was just a massive failure for him, personal failure. So he left Florence, which was the center of global culture. It was like the most important city in the world to be in if you were an artist because the Medicis were just throwing money everywhere. And Michelangelo was sculpting and everybody was there. He goes, this guy, Brunelleschi goes to Rome. And he kind of, you know, just to see if there was other things for him to do there. And Rome was like, it wasn't that interesting.

36:02There wasn't much going on. But at the time, there was this renewed interest in ancient Rome. and all of this excavation work was going on, you know, this is in like the Renaissance period, all this excavation work was going on. All of a sudden, this guy, Bernalewski, is like looking at the Colosseum and studying the arches. He goes to the Pantheon and he's learning about this incredible Roman engineering, this art that was lost for almost a thousand years. He learns about how Romans used cranes and other equipment to build buildings. And after about 15 years of doing this, He eventually gets work working on the Vatican, and his reputation starts to grow.

36:42Back in Florence, they're like, wait, what's going on? How did we – why did this guy leave Florence? So about 10, 15 years later, they beg him to come back to Florence to work on the cathedral, to build the dome. And he ends up building the dome of the cathedral, which is a masterpiece. And today, everybody remembers Bernalewski. I mean, Giberti is also remembered, but Brunelleschi is the guy that everybody remembers. And in order for him to be the guy who builds this beautiful, complex dome that was so – it's unbelievable to think that they built this 500, 600 years ago with no modern equipment.

37:23I mean, he's the guy that everybody remembers. But in order to be that person, he had to have that failure 15, 20 years earlier. He had to kind of go into exile to Rome. He had to do that because had he not done that, he wouldn't have learned about how the Romans engineered all these things. And he wouldn't have gained that knowledge and wisdom that enabled him to then become this great architect. And I don't know, I just it was so inspiring to hear that story because you hear that over and over again. Like even Michelangelo, the greatest, probably the greatest painter in human history. Like he was asked to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling and he was he was so crushed because Raphael got to paint the side walls.

38:04You know, Raphael was his like great rival. And, you know, and he's thinking they got that guy got to do the side walls. I got to do the ceiling. That's his masterpiece. I mean, that's why people go to Rome. They go to Rome to see the Sistine Chapel ceiling. No one's looking at Raphael. I mean, they're beautiful. The paintings are off. I'll do. But most people are just looking up, you know, for Michelangelo. This was like this personal, like crushing, you know, kind of second helpings that he got. But but you just never know. You never know why things happen the way they happen. We had a little pool party yesterday with some family friends.

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42:06That kind of brings me back to this notion of luck. And also, I think when we're talking about luck, we should also talk about, and this is a loaded word that I always wince when I hear it or say it, but let's just say privilege too, you know, because I think for the two of us, we both had a lot of quote unquote failure in our careers. This is probably true for these ancient artists and sculptors and architects too, but we had nets. We both went to fancy colleges and male in a culture where that's an advantage, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, just reassociate for me, if you will, on this notion of luck and how it intertwines with privilege as we all think about like how to succeed.

42:47It's a really hard and complicated idea because, you know, for a variety of reasons, the word has become loaded in our culture in the last few years for various reasons. Probably for me to kind of break it down, there's a lot of validity to this idea that, you know, there are people who have privileges that are honored, right, that just happen because of the way they're born. Like Prince Harry was born Prince Harry, like born a prince like that. That was there was no way around it. He couldn't aspire to be that or to do that job. That's a reality where I find nuance around that idea and that word is when it comes to.

43:34Other experiences of life, you know, I have interviewed people who like Paul English is a good example. He's the founder of Kayak, and he's a multi-billionaire, okay? And Paul is a man. He grew up in an Irish Catholic home in South Boston, but he grew up in a rough, with a rough, in a rough part of town, and had a very difficult upbringing as a child. He was thrown out of school, many, many different schools. He was eventually, he had enormous emotional problems, And it was only in his mid-20s where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But he went through hell in his life. And it's only in the last sort of 20 years where with things like meditation and yoga and medication, he's been able to find balance.

44:26So outwardly, you would look at him and say, he's got it made. He's got everything. You know, he's this really successful billionaire. But inwardly, he's had a tormented life. And I think that one of the challenges that we all face when we confront anybody, like, you know, when you like you walk down the street, you live in New York, right? You live in the city. Well, we moved out of the city to the suburbs during the pandemic. Got it. OK. But you lived in the city for a long time. And I always have this experience when I'm in New York and I kind of sometimes I'll be walking through New York City and I'll sort of pretend like I'm in a Robert Altman film where everyone you look at, then the movie like goes to their conversation or Quentin Tarantino film.

45:09And then like the movie just shifts and it's their story, you know, and because everybody you pass by is in their own movie. Like that's that's consciousness, right? Like everybody is walking around. We're the star of our own movie. and we don't know what's going on in someone's life. Like you don't know what somebody has dealt with in the last hour or week or day. Like you'll go on an airplane and you'll sit down and the person next to you might just seem like they're just a jerk or angry or they're shoving their bag under the chair. They're like taking over the, and you just like, they might be headed to a funeral.

45:51like they might be going to get treatment for cancer like you just don't know i there's that famous commencement address that david foster wallace gave like you know of course before he died like 15 years ago and he kind of touches on this idea like you're standing in line behind this woman and she's taking forever and you're just annoyed you're mad but like what what you might not know is that she's being treated for cancer just all these things that we can't know those things. We just don't have that information or that knowledge. But I think that there's this idea, yes, there are real things like outward privilege based on a variety of factors.

46:28There are also things that we don't know about people. And I think that one of the things that I think makes most people interesting and actually a way that is often a way to connect with people that you might not ordinarily think you connect with is that most people have, have had some kind of difficulty in their life or some kind of trauma or some kind of very painful experience or episode or a childhood memory that, that, you know, has, or experience that has impacted their life. And so that's very real. You know, I don't mean to minimize the notion of privilege. But I also, I also worry that if we get too hung up on that idea, it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that others might say, well, because I wasn't born with, you know, these definitions of privilege, I can never do these things.

47:29I can never, I can never make it. And, and so, you know, one of the things that I've, I've tried to do on how I built this is focus on really a diversity of stories and people from really different backgrounds. Because there are kind of lessons, maybe not lessons, but I think there are reasons to feel inspired by people who do things and create things and come from places and worlds that might not seem the path was paved for them. The flip side of this is to say that I'm a big believer in luck. You know, I think luck is one of these big intangibles. I think I'm very lucky that I went through all these failures.

48:12The luckiest thing that happened to me in my life was meeting the person who's my wife. You know, I met her at a barbecue in Washington, D.C. in 2000, the year 2000. She was a law student. I saw her there. We didn't talk. I then figured out a way to see her at another party the next day, and I did talk to her. it was a month before I left to be the NPR Berlin correspondent. I met my wife a month before I left to go to Europe and then to be abroad for seven years. How was that going to work out? Why was that meant to be? But I believed it. And here we are 25 years later. We're about to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.

48:57and if you ask me what like what I'm proudest of in my life it's not how I built this it's not the business that or it's not Tinkercast or wow in the world or any of these things that I'm super proud of I'm like I can't believe I I run businesses and I've got podcasts that lots of people listen to that has, you know, enabled me to build a life. It's my marriage, first and foremost. Like I, that to me has been the most important thing. The hardest, not hardest, actually hasn't been hard at all because my wife is just an incredibly gracious and kind person. And, you know, I'm the difficult one in our marriage, but she's just an amazing person.

49:47But that has been, you know, that's the thing I'm proudest of. But that was luck. Like, if I didn't go to that party, she almost didn't go to the next one. I was about to leave. Like, all these things shouldn't have happened. And yet that's the single thing that has changed my life and, you know, more than anything else. You talk about relationships. Among all of these titans of industry that you've, who you've interviewed, How important for those folks is the quality of their relationships? Do they tend to let the relationships wither because they're monomaniacally focused on work or are they drawing up on relationships as a source of strength?

50:26It depends, of course. It's different with every story. And there's certainly examples from the show where, you know, marriages fell apart because one of the founders was, for understandable reasons, really focused on building the business. You know, we had an episode about a brand called Parachute, Parachute Home, which makes linens and, you know, has beautiful furniture and homewares. And the founder, Ariel Kay, you know, she her marriage kind of unraveled, you know, while she was building that business. And she had, you know, little kids that she, of course, her ex-husband was also involved in raising the kids.

51:10But she was the primary caregiver and building this business with investors. And it was a lot, you know. But, you know, we've also had examples of businesses that have been started and sustained by couples. I mean, one of the best examples is Clif Bar. I mean, Clif Bar was turned into a multibillion-dollar business with two married co-founders, Gary and Kit Erickson. And they are retired now. I just recently saw them and they are one of the most incredibly happy, strong couples I know. I mean, they're pushing 40 years of marriage and they have an incredible relationship. And I think and I said this to Gary, and I think it's very true, which is that is really, you know, you could argue that's your greatest success.

52:01Not the business, but building a sustainable partnership with one person. It's hard to do. In a lot of cases, the business does get in the way. But there are also examples where it doesn't, where, you know, the founders really do figure out how to make it work, how to integrate their family into their work life. And I think that's much more common now. And you probably, you know, you have two kids? Just one, a boy. Just one. and how old is your how old is he he's nine he's nine yes it's great age i have 13 and 15 you you probably don't like delineate between work and and not work it's not like you know people might say to you oh dan what are your hours right like what are your what are the hours you work and you're like i'm always working but you're also but it's because you what you do is integrated into your life like you might be having dinner and have an idea or a thought and you might be talking to your wife and your son, but you also write something down or you might be on vacation, and you see something that sparks an idea.

53:10And it's, it's not like, you know, it's not like work and, and, and family time have to always be totally separated. I think if they're also integrated, that can work as well. And, and that's sort of the way I live my life. Like I will, Well, you know, sometimes if I go and do a live show, I'll, you know, my family can come. They'll come. You know, we'll just hang out. We'll go to Chicago for the weekend and do something fun and I'll do the live show and, you know, stuff like that. So I think there are ways that many founders have figured out how to kind of balance that the personal side with the business side.

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56:04What conclusions have you drawn after having done all of these interviews and running your own companies about how hard one should work. I ask this because I'm personally curious, but also there seem to be some generational differences on this that I think are very interesting. And I try to approach not from the standpoint of a grumpy old man who's saying, well, these kids don't take work seriously, but more like, huh, I wonder if these kids are onto something when they stress a stronger delineation between work and the rest of life. It's a personal decision, right? And I hope it's okay if I, I know you're the interviewer here, but if I can ask you a question, which is because I read your book when it came out and I remember when that book came out and it was so, not only did I love it because it was funny and it was very, very funny and really well-written and I learned a lot, but also I remember reading that book and thinking this is a journalist who's not, who's an entrepreneur, like somebody who's actually, and there were very few models of that.

57:08You know, there was like David Pogue had done some stuff and there was this guy at ABC, um, Abram, Dan Abram, I don't know. He also did some stuff and he created businesses. So there were like a few models of that, but most people in our profession were like stuck. We like had the handcuffs on and like, we were like, well, what else could I do? You know, I don't know how to run a business. Like most people go into journalism and they think, well, I don't know how to run a business. And the reality is most of them could, because there are so many things you learn as a journalist. You have to be nimble.

57:40You learn a bunch of different skills. You have to come up with a story on deadline and figure out how to get there quickly. Like you have to solve a lot of problems. So there are a lot of things that you intuitively learn as a reporter or journalist that actually can work in running a business. But I remember reading that book and thinking that this is not, this is another person who's going to make that transition. Who's like, and I was looking at those models because I knew that I didn't want to be sort of part of, of, I don't want to work for a big, I don't want to work for a company. I want to work for myself.

58:09I wanted, I didn't want to rely on the beneficence of a media organization or any organization to determine my fate, you know, to say one day, well, we've got a hundred layoffs and, you know, you know, or, or whatever it might be. I didn't want to be in a position where one day I'd wake up and be like, I am screwed if I lose this job. That was a direction that I, that was sort of a decision I took more than 10 years ago to create my own business. And, and again, like, looking at, like your book, and then, you know, and, and other people who are doing things like that, and I eventually wrote my own book, and then, you know, created my company, I sort of tread lightly here carefully here, because for me, work is I love what I do.

58:48You know, I'm very lucky. I get to talk to people and ask them about their lives and have these really intimate conversations and listen. Like what you're doing now is what I get to do every day. And I don't talk most of the time. I don't need to talk most of the time. And I have found and I think, you know, one of the gifts of this career of being, you know, of getting to be a journalist, I don't call myself a journalist anymore, but having been steeped in that world is you have to listen. You have to learn how to listen. You know, listening is way more important than talking. And the benefits of listening, which you get out of that, I mean, you know, I'm not the first person to see this or books about this.

59:34But the benefits are infinite to sit and to listen to somebody's ideas and then to engage with them and ask them questions is it is a privilege, you know, to be able to call somebody or call on somebody and sit down with them for, you know, on our show, in our case, three hours on how I built this and really interrogate their lives in not not in an adversarial way, but in a in a very granular and intensive way. it creates a bond with somebody. Like even this conversation, we'll talk over the course of this conversation. And like, I've never met you, but I've read your book and I know a little bit about you.

1:00:12If I saw you on the streets in two years, I would say, let's go get a coffee. Let's sit down, hang out because we've had this conversation. The thing is that that's amazing is, and you know this, when you listen to somebody and you ask them questions, our brains are wired to want to like you. Dale Carnegie wrote about this in How to Win Friends and Influence People. There's a whole chapter in there about ask questions, ask people about their lives because that will make them more interested in you. And it's true. I develop these bonds with people because that's just what happens when you're asking somebody to share these intimate details of their lives.

1:00:59And I think you can apply that in, you don't have to be a journalist or reporter or host a podcast to do that. Like you can apply that to an encounter at a dinner party or at a party, you know. And when I, by the way, when I do go to parties and I still feel awkward in social situations, even though I've gotten a little better at it, my default is to just ask people a lot of questions. And the challenge now is that usually people say, are you just, are you interviewing me? Are you like doing your podcast thing with me? But it really is a way to build a connection with somebody. And so I don't put like a limit on work.

1:01:38I went to Italy and I write a newsletter every week and I was still writing that and still taking down notes for ideas and still talking to the teams that I work with because it's just integrated into my life. So – but I think everybody has to make their own decision. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying I don't answer emails after six and I don't answer emails on the weekends. Like that's also very healthy. But it all depends on on how you structure it in your own life. And so for me, it's everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. There are so many similarities. First of all, that anytime I ask people questions, which I think is a great way to make relationships, I often get, are you interviewing me?

1:02:22I mean, that happens to me all the time. So just a plus one on that. But back to the work-life balance piece of it, you know, I'm in the exact same situation. I love what I do so much. And so I'm always thinking about it and in some sense always working. And also while I'm working, I'm also living my life and doing what I want to do. And so it's a very blurry line. I think where it gets complicated, there are two places for me at least. One is to what extent am I motivated by fear or anxiety or taking on too much as a consequence of that? And then the other piece of it is, what am I expecting for my teams?

1:02:58Because for them, all I can expect from them is to do the best at the job that we've agreed upon that they're supposed to do, not that it should be as all-encompassing for them as it is for me. And so I don't want to send them the signal that since I'm working all the time, they should be too. And I think that communicating that is critical. You know, there's this something that you just said that is so important and that triggered this thought in my head, which is around this idea of scale versus sustainability, right? And so in the world of how I built this, so many of the conversations are about scale.

1:03:38Like I started this farmer's market stand and I scaled it into Tate's Cookies and sold it for half a billion dollars to Mondelez. You know, or I mean, that's not the story Kathleen King told, but that's that's basically the story. Or, you know, Starbucks was six like coffee shops that that didn't actually brew coffee, but just sold beans. And today it's the largest, the second largest quick service restaurant in the world. Right. It's scale, scale, scale, scale. You know, you start, you get investors and they want you to turn to a billion dollar company. The thing is, is that scale isn't always the answer and scale isn't always a sustainable answer.

1:04:12And it's not always a healthy answer. We did an episode of the show a couple months ago, and it was with Dominique Ancel. And you'll know who he is because of You Live in New York and his famous bakery, the Dominique Ancel Bakery. And this is the guy who invented the cronut, okay? And basically, the backstory is he was an amazing pastry chef. He had worked for Daniel Balud in New York. And then he struck out on his own. He opened a single bakery. And one day, he came up with this thing called the cronut. And he just started serving it. And then within days, and this is in like, you know, the late 2000s, lines started to form in front of the bakery until they were like two or three blocks long.

1:04:51I mean, within weeks, like camera crews were in front of this bakery watching people wait in line. I still don't understand why people wait in line for anything. Like there's virtually nothing worth waiting in line for two hours. Have you ever had a cronut? Yeah, they're great. It's fucking delicious. They're amazing. I would wait. but but two but two hours you wouldn't wait for two hours you would just say you know what i'm gonna wait until this dies down i'll come back in six months and almost immediately after this happens he is approached by every you know every investor and person under the sun clutching cash and saying dude you've got to open a factory and just start making cronuts and every super market should be selling cronuts and cronuts here and cronuts there just like license it license your name.

1:05:37And, and then others were saying, you got to build bakeries all over the world. And he started to do that. You know, he had, he built, he built like three more bakeries in New York. He built one in LA. He built a few in Hong Kong, in Japan, in Las Vegas. He started to expand and expand. That was the playbook. You expand. And all of a sudden he woke up one day and he was like, I had, you know, over a thousand employees. I, I didn't feel connected to what I was doing. um the work wasn't satisfying i wasn't seeing my family i wasn't our there were all kinds of things that were happening and he was kind of given the gift i say gift in air quotes of the pandemic because the pandemic really had an impact on the businesses and forced him to shut down many of the bakeries but when they came out of it what he realized was he didn't want to do any of that and today Dominic Ancel has a bakery I think two locations in New York and one in Las Vegas and that's it they don't license a cronut they don't you still have to go you can order them to be delivered to your house but in general you still have to you know buy most of the pastries they sell on site it's a sustainable business it's successful it's not a hundred million dollar business you know it was going in that direction of being, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars.

1:07:01Today, it's a business that is very successful, sustainable. It's got a really, you know, solid team working on it. Dominique Ancel is really happy and proud of what he's doing. And I think that there's so much, and what I love about that episode is that scale isn't always the answer. Like, oftentimes, you can build a much more interesting, fulfilling, and rich life by doing something well. If you're bringing in$10 million a year or$5 million a year,$1 million a year, like, does it really make a difference if you're going to bring in two or five or 100 times that if your life is going to be a nightmare?

1:07:41And I think the answer in most cases is no, I really do. And so to me, there are a lot of reasons why it makes sense to really, you know, even if you or I like love what we do and we're always doing it, like not everyone around us wants to do it all the time. And that's that's understandable. I identify with this Dominique Gensel story so much because we have a successful business that's sustainable, you know, and that and in which everyone around me, I believe, because I talk to them a lot, you know, is able to have a pretty healthy work life balance. It's not probably not all the time. And and certainly there are moments of stress.

1:08:27But I think that in general, that's important to most of the people I work with. There's a lot in that that idea of that scale that doesn't always have to be the answer. And it's not just about entrepreneurship. It's about how one approaches a career. Generally, there are a lot of messages from the larger culture bombarding us. Certainly when you and I were growing up, you know, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous MTV Cribs, that you got to go for it. You got to be big. You want to, you know, I bought that. But actually you can have it. It really is individual and it kind of goes back to what you were saying about work-life balance.

1:09:00It's up to you. You can have a great life with modest career ambitions. You don't have to follow anybody else's script. And so really just pick the path that's going to scratch your particular itch. Dan, do you know the happiest person and the most fulfilled person and actually in many ways really my model for aging well is my mother. My mother is a remarkable person. So is my dad too, but I just talked about my mom for a minute because I don't want my dad to get mad at me. Dad, I love you. My parents are, they're no longer married. They're still cordial and stuff, but they got divorced 30 years ago.

1:09:39My mother, she lives in a very simple one-bedroom condominium with her partner who she's been with for 20 years and lives off, I kid you not, you know, about$1 ,000 a month between them. And they have an incredibly rich life. I mean, she knows she takes long walks every day, hikes. She teaches five or six yoga classes a week. She's almost 78 years old. She's incredibly fit. She eats very simple food. She doesn't, she's not interested in going out to dinner and having fancy meals. They travel, but they travel really cheaply. I mean, they stay at youth hostels. They camp. They fix everything in their house.

1:10:24They have an incredibly rich, like Robert Waldinger, who you know well, right? And he led the famous Harvard study about happiness. And his conclusion was my mom's life, that the more relationships you have, is the best determinant of happiness as you age. And I can walk around Venice. She lives in Venice, California. She knows everybody. Everybody knows my mom and they love her. And it's not that she was born, you know, happy and smiling and always joyful. Like she's worked at it. You know, she really has. She's practiced yoga for 50 years. But she's also really worked at reminding herself why she has reasons to be happy, even with difficult things that have happened in her life and, you know, trauma that she grew up with as a child.

1:11:18She really does things like practice gratitude. And so living the life she lives without the complexities of, you know, of endless, you know, financial obligations and entanglements and properties. And, you know, she just, she really, what matters to her is friendships, relationships, experiences, her family, her kids, her grandkids, and teaching. You know, she spends a lot of time teaching senior citizens how to get healthier, how to do yoga. She teaches all these yoga classes every week. She's, and so to me, the idea of having a lot, you know, needing a lot, and it's a cliche, I know, but it's true.

1:12:05I mean, I, I see that with her. I mean, she lives on very little money and I don't know anybody happier or fulfilled than my mom. There's a lot to be learned from your mom. There's no question. Let me ask one more relationship related question. The title of the show is How I Built This. Does that overlook the fact that nobody does anything on their own? Yeah, it's a horrible title. It's a horrible name. And if I could rename it, I would. And although that being said, the original name that I had for the show and God, thank God somebody was watching over me that that that for some reason this name was already registered.

1:12:42But God, I would be so embarrassed if we were talking about the name of that of the show today was I want to call it The Hustle. And thank God that name was taken because I would be really embarrassed because it's not about hustlers. It's about people who work really hard and fail and fail and fail and fail. It's not, of course, a show about how I built this. It's a show about risk-taking and creative thinking and struggle and setbacks and failures. And every episode, you learn about the people around the founder who helped them create it. But there's no question that, you know, there's no example that I can think of on our show or really in modern history of anything being built by one person.

1:13:30You think about great creative founders and, you know, a good example is Elon Musk. Forget about his personal, you know, foibles or his politics or whatever for a moment, but just as a, you know, an ideas person, right? I mean, he was a force that drove X, which became PayPal and obviously Tesla and SpaceX and solar companies, whole drilling companies. He didn't actually found Tesla. He joined Tesla and bought into it and then turned it into what it became. He did not do any of those things alone, and he would acknowledge that. I mean, PayPal and X, that involved Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman and all these incredible people who are part of that process.

1:14:21Even Tesla, you know, he had great designers and great engineers around him. So there's no question that the success of a founder is also the luck of the people that you find around you that you bring in. Because sometimes, you know, you bring somebody in and they're not the right person. So I acknowledge that the name How I Built This is not exactly or entirely accurate. It's not an accurate reflection of what the show is about. But as you know, in our business, sometimes we shortcuts to just make a punchier point. So would I rename it if I could? Probably. But at this point, we have the name and everybody knows it.

1:15:04And we do our best to mitigate that in the storytelling. I don't think it's a terrible name at all. Well, guys, it's so cool to talk to you. You do such great work. So it's really cool to have you on this show. Just before I let you go, can you remind everybody of the names of your various podcasts and the book that you mentioned that you wrote? And just because I suspect people are going to want to get more from you after hearing you. Thanks. Yes. How I Built This is my show about founders of companies of some of the most well-known companies and brands in the world. I do a show called The Great Creators, which is similar to How I Built This, but it's with actors and musicians.

1:15:41So like Tom Hanks or Jason Sudeikis or Bjork. And then I do a children's show called Wow in the World. And it's a kid's science podcast for kids age three all the way to 12. And that comes out twice a week. And those are my shows. My book also is called How I Built This. And then we've got a bunch of books throughout the world. And all of those are available at bookstores or Amazon. So you can search How I Built This or Wow in the World and you will find them there. So cool to meet you, albeit virtually. Guy, thank you for coming on. Thank you, Dan. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show.

1:16:1810 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one quick ask before I let you go, head on over, please, to danharris.com to sign up for my weekly newsletter. Every Monday, I drop a little bit of goodness into your inbox. Mondays, especially Monday mornings, can be super stressful. So that is when I drop in one useful nugget that you can operationalize in your life immediately, either from ancient wisdom like Buddhism or from modern science.

1:17:02It's short. It's easy to read. It's worth it. It's free. Sign up at danharris.com.

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