Building 'How I Built This' With Guy Raz: Patterns, Pivoting, And The Value Of Time

0:00The reason why I went on to create my own business and to start my own production company was really an accident of fate. My dream was to be the main news anchor for a national news program, radio program, and I wasn't picked. I was the weekend anchor, but I wasn't picked to be the weekday anchor. In 2011, no self-respecting journalist from a major news organization would go to podcasting. And that really changed my life because the most dangerous thing I could do is keep my job, actually. And the safest thing I could do is start my own business, weirdly enough, even though it was very risky to do that.

0:41Tomer Cohen:More often than not, a builder's journey is very nonlinear. My guest today has spent his career documenting those journeys and living one of his own. Guy Raz is the founder and host of the popular podcast, How I Built This. And over the years, he's interviewed hundreds of founders, leaders, and creators, uncovering what actually separates those who build something enduring from those who don't. But he didn't start as an entrepreneur. He started as a news correspondent, landing in unfamiliar cities, figuring out things under pressure, and filing stories on a tough deadline. That muscle of choosing progress over perfection became foundational when he eventually built his own company.

1:25Tomer Cohen:In this conversation, we talk about the patterns he's been studying across thousands of successful builders, why the most successful founders are often the best at forging relationships, the invisible craft behind storytelling and how to earn the trust of a listener, and how not getting the job he thought he wanted became the catalyst for building something much better. This episode is about what it really means to build something special, whether you're building a company, a product, or a story. So let's get into it.

2:02Tomer Cohen:Guy, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining me. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So, you know, we talk about the show about how every builder's journey is quite unique and in many cases very nonlinear, yours in particular. You started as a journalist and a news correspondent before you went on to become entrepreneur and build your own media venture. I'm curious about journalism initially, but then also when you look back at where you are today, what did you actually learn during those days that helped you in your work as a builder? I started out as a reporter in 1997. To me, it wasn't clear what I was going to do.

2:39I had sort of the outlines of what I thought I wanted to do, which was to, I knew I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. I knew I wanted to see the world and go to places that I couldn't go to as a tourist, see things and encounter things that would be exciting and also give me a chance to tell stories to people back home in the U.S. about what I had seen. And the vision was I would be a journalist. I'd be a foreign correspondent. I'd come back to Washington, D.C. I would I would be the anchor of a of a news show, which I was. And they sort of, you know, like sail off into the sunset doing that for the rest of my my life.

3:24That's not exactly at all how it turned out in in in a stroke of great luck. But because I could have still been doing that today, which I think would be miserable. One of the things that I have learned because I have run my own business now for 12 years, my production company built a productions when you're a journalist. You often have to be very resourceful. It'd be a terrorist attack in somewhere in Iraq and I'd have to go there or I'd land and I would be in London and I'd get a call, get to Istanbul immediately and I'd have to land somewhere and I'd have to file a story usually within a few hours.

4:04So I had to find a translator or driver if I was a place where I didn't speak the language. I hadn't been. I had to, you know, find a place to stay and bring on my gear and, you know, quickly pack and get there and then figure out how to file a story. You know, this is like 20 plus years ago when it was harder, when you didn't have, you know, internet. You had to go to internet cafes often and, you know, watch the, you know, the file sort of go bit by bit over the transom. And so that kind of resourcefulness and that kind of just having to figure things out was very valuable as I began to think about building my own business years later.

4:53Tomer Cohen:Does that also push the notion of there's no perfection? You just have to kind of deliver quickly and that kind of also goes into the builder mindset of like just get things out, get the feedback, move forward. For sure. For sure. I mean, I was a perfectly solid reporter. I was never a star reporter when I was either at NPR or CNN. When I was working on a feature story that might take a few weeks, I would really agonize over the details. But on the day to day basis, no, it's just get the story out, get the information out. I would always try to put some fun or interesting turn of phrase in a story if I could.

5:27But at the end of the day, you just got to get it out there. And over time, cumulatively, you get better and better and better. I've interviewed probably 25 ,000 people in my career. I know I'm good at it, not because I'm particularly talented or I'm smarter or better than me. I've just thrown a lot of pitches over home plate. What I mean by that is you've mastered it in the sense that you know that you can go into any conversation and draw somebody out. We've had 700, 800 episodes of how I built this now over 10 years. And I've seen founders who went to the top universities and many founders who barely graduated high school, right, or dropped out of schools or went to second tier universities or, again, didn't go at all.

6:15And the thing that I find again and again that makes somebody successful is can they build relationships? I do think in most cases for most founders, for most people who are building something, it's really about figuring out how to forge a connection with somebody and how to build a relationship with somebody, how to create touch points. I find that the most successful entrepreneurs are often really likable people. they're very good at making people feel comfortable and building connections.

6:48Tomer Cohen:I know you don't do many interviews, but I think what you've built is remarkable. So I'm curious for yourself, with that transition from being a journalist into an entrepreneur builder, was that always in the back of your head or was that more serendipitous? There was a moment that was, you know, things clicked and you're like, okay, I think this is time for me to do something else and I would like to try this one out. So in my case, when I started the show, there was skepticism from people in, you know, that I knew in media who were like, oh, this is going to be pro-business or, you know, you're just going to be burnishing the credentials of these people in business.

7:22And for me, it was always about the listener, that I knew there are many, many people in the United States who don't care about what the news is of the day. They're building something. They're focused on a business. And they could really use some help. and they could really use some advice. So I knew that if I could get, you know, people like Howard Schultz or, you know, the founders of Airbnb or Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, and those were my early guests, if I could get them and get them on the show talking about their lives and talking about the moments when people wouldn't take their calls, right?

8:01That would be really valuable for founders today. And you think, well, these people were always successful And that's not the case at all. They actually had to really work hard to convince people that they had something valuable that they were trying to bring into the world. And that was what I was trying to do with the show. It wasn't part of a long, like sort of grand plan to start a business. I mean, I was always interested in businesses, and I grew up the child of entrepreneurs. My parents had a small jewelry business, you know, moderately successful, not a big one. But I had a great career as a journalist.

8:40The reason why I went on to create my own business and to start my own production company was really an accident of fate. I you know my dream was to be the main news anchor for a national news program radio program and I didn't get I wasn't picked I was the weekend anchor but I wasn't picked to be the the weekday anchor this was back in 2011 and that really put me on a spiral you know I I've done everything right I've been a foreign correspondent I covered six wars I traveled and reported from 45 countries I was the youngest foreign correspondent in the history of NPR at the time when I started when I was 25.

9:23So – and again, all that is totally irrelevant, by the way. Being the youngest this and that, it means nothing. But I thought I had ticked all the boxes. And when I wasn't picked, it was a crushing blow. And so at that time, I was really looking to get out of the world of journalism because I thought I was kind of washed up. You know, here I was. I was 36, 37, and I had to find something new. I had two kids. And I really needed the salary. You know, I needed the money. I was dependent on doing that work. In 2011, podcasting was where, you know, no self-respecting journalist from a major news organization would go to podcasting.

10:01And actually, when I had an opportunity to work with TED, the TED Talks people, and sort of create a show that became known as the TED Radio Hour, I kind of did it thinking it was a transition out. You know, I would do that and then find out, figure out what my next career move was. But that show turned out to be incredibly popular and successful, and I was able to create this amazing – with an amazing team of people, a show about what it meant to be human. And that really changed my life because even though I went into podcasting – and there were many people I knew back at that time who were like, so what's a podcast and who listens to something for a whole hour?

10:38I mean I had – I had gone from hosting a weekend radio show with five million listeners, right? It's a lot of people. By the way, no, I mean, the audience, radio audience has declined dramatically since then. But this is 15, 16 years ago to now, you know, going and doing a podcast. And people were like, what is that? Who listens to that? And I started to see that already 15 years ago, that that is actually, you know, that actually the most dangerous thing I could do is keep my job, actually. And the safest thing I could do is start my own business, weirdly enough, even though it was very risky to do that.

11:15And I got that insight from an interview I did with a guy named Jim Cook. And Jim Cook, he started Boston Beer Company, which makes Sam Adams. And he was on How I Built This. But, you know, Jim Cook has this idea, which is you can either do something safe or something dangerous. And for him, it was he was working at Boston Consulting Group. He was making a lot of money, but he knew that if he didn't start his own business, he would regret it one day. And so for him, it was it was safe. It felt safe to stay at Boston Consulting Group and, you know, do that work. But actually, it was very dangerous because he knew that one day he would wake up and regret it and it would have been too late.

12:03And so in my case, that's what happened. I started a production company by accident, really.

12:11Tomer Cohen:I'm curious now about your craft because your craft is quite unique. and um before i go into my favorite show of yours which is wow in the world which is kind of our uh stapler for drives but with the kids with you know your kind of marquee one is how i build this show and it's like across all of your shows this kind of this intersection of storytelling which is really unique there's always learning in every show uh there is always it's entertaining so it's It's not just, you know, it's not just aging vegetables. You eat vegetables that actually taste really good. But it's all coming together.

12:49Tomer Cohen:And when people zoom out in a day and age where everybody can actually start a podcast, I'm curious, in your mind, what are the kind of invisibles that goes into creating a great episode or a great show? I think the most important and the most critical factor is this. And it applies to every show I do or have done. Right now, I'm only focused on How I Built This, which is our show about founders and Wow in the World, which is a show that we do. For those who don't know, it's a science show for kids, but it's like a story. It's like a fantasy. I'm a character in the show. There's a whole – my name is Guy Raz in the show, but there's a whole – Actually, it's Guy Raz.

13:29Exactly, yes. And it's very silly. It's like a cartoon for your ear. So it's not a visual. It's very visual even though it's a podcast. It's a really – it is like a cartoon. and we, you know, go back in time. We have a giant pigeon. We have a time machine. We have a grandmother who is a wrestler and an annoying neighbor named Dennis. And there's a whole cast of characters in this world. And we travel, we go to all kinds of places. But every episode of that show is rooted in a peer-reviewed scientific journal article. I mean, we take scientific journal articles and we translate them for kids aged three to 12.

14:04I did a show called The Great Creators where I interviewed celebrities about their lives and a show called Wisdom from the Top. I've done a music show called The Rewind. And this is it. It is, I have 14 hours of my day, right? When I'm awake, something like that. I mean, I'm not asleep for 10, but let's just say 14 hours, 15 hours of the day. That is, I'm awake, right? And so I've got to work and exercise and eat and spend some time with my family in that period of time. And so time is really valuable. And so when I am asking somebody to give me an hour of their time or once a week or maybe twice a week, I'm asking a lot of you.

14:51I'm not asking you to pay me. I mean, it's all ad supported. you know wow in the world we are also a little bit listener supported but it's it's i'm asking you to give me the most valuable thing you have which is your time and so i'm saying listen to my show and if i am asking you to do that i have to give you something of value back because you're giving me something of value and so every episode we do of how i built this of wow in the world of every show and i've been doing this a long time i go into every interview extremely prepared and also really focused on making it work and we do a lot of work going into the episode to make sure it's going to work because it has to be something really special is this like an expectation setting

15:41Tomer Cohen:with the guest with the founder or is this something you do a prep session when you're just trying to assess like, okay, I can see the authenticity opening up there? We do a lot of research even before we approach somebody. So we spend most of our time. I mean, I interview people for the show. That's a long interview. And then it goes through multiple edits. And it goes through mastering. And then we add music. That happens later. But a lot of the work happens beforehand, even before we reach out to the founder. So, you know, we know that we come across a story that looks really, really interesting and promising.

16:18We'll reach out to the founder. And, you know, we – but before we do that, we'll look to see have they done any other interviews, other videos of them out there. Have they written anything? And we try to assess whether they might be the right fit. And then once we do that and we've all agreed let's approach this person, I then do a final call with them. And it's really just to see if they understand what we need and what we expect. Because if they don't feel comfortable, if somebody comes on and says, look, I'm just not going to talk about these things or these things or these things, my answer is always the same.

17:00It's I totally get it. I am a very private person myself. So I hear you. But those things that you don't want to talk about are in the public domain. and people are going to want to hear about them, and I think will want to learn about them. But if you don't feel comfortable talking about them, I get it. We're not the right fit for you. When you do or do feel comfortable, want to talk about it and get back in touch, and let's see if we can get you back on the show.

17:28Tomer Cohen:I want to shift a bit to Wow in the World because it is a truly remarkable show in the sense of I don't think there's anything like it. And then I saw a few who copied the format after, But it's still, the original is still much, much better. I'm curious, what did creating content for kids teach you that maybe adult audiences need more? Because for one, I really enjoyed the show. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, you know, that show was also, it was built out of just a personal, you know, just scratching a personal itch. My friend Mindy Thomas, who I've known for a long time, was a DJ, still is, a DJ on a kids channel on SiriusXM.

18:11And I met her back in 2013. And I loved her personality on the show. My kids would listen to the show. And we both kind of together came to this view that we wanted to create something that wasn't a screen for our kids. We're all now screen zombies. But that was really it. It was let's start a show. And we both knew how to make this stuff and we both knew kind of what we wanted to do. And Mindy is really just a creative genius. I mean she just has endless ideas. And we spent a long time coming up with this concept of let's build a world. Let's build a cartoon for the year, a fantasy. Every episode is a story.

18:56So a kid listening is just listening to an episode of a cartoon. But they're learning real science. I mean, they are learning about, you know, a new discovery on a shark that can cure cancer. Or we might be going to a wrestling match with our grandma, Grandma G-Force, as one of the competitors. Or we might be going to a giant convention, you know, for toilet supplies. It's all kinds of silly things. And we made it very deliberately for adults and kids. We wanted a show that could connect to parents and kids at different levels. So there are jokes in the show that kids will never understand and will just pass them by.

19:36They won't even notice them, but the adults will notice them because we're making a reference to something that like a Gen X parent or a millennial parent might get or a grandparent will get. But the kid has no idea what we're talking about, and they're just listening to it, and then they're laughing at things too. So it was really deliberately designed to be a co-listening experience where we wanted the parent to be like, hey, this is really good for the kid. But, you know, there's lots of things that are good for kids. Like I think Disney songs can be good for kids, but it can drive you crazy as a parent in a car listening to that again and again.

20:13So we wanted to make something where, you know, you go on a long drive with your kids and you as a parent would be laughing and you would enjoy it too. And it would be really fun. And so that also shaped how we wrote it, how we still write it today.

20:26Tomer Cohen:Would love your take on trust from a different angle. You build a career around nuance, long-form storytelling, trust, like you said. What responsibility do you think news have? And in general, this kind of, you know, this kind of masses of media creators have today to actually reduce polarization? I don't know. I don't know. And I think part of the reason why it's such a challenge is that it used to be fairly clear. If you were working for CNN or The New York Times or The Washington Post or Fox News or whoever, you know, whatever organization, there was some editorial structure. There was some accountability, right?

21:09Like if you hated what they were doing, there was a number to call. And there were ways to at least hold them accountable, right? The idea of what or who a journalist is today is very different because there's no qualification. I mean you can get a journalism degree. I don't have one. But that's not – it's not like being a doctor where you have to be board certified, right? Anybody can call themselves a journalist. So you can be a YouTuber spouting about anything you want and accumulate a significant audience based on conspiracy theories or – we are – and I hope it doesn't sound too dark because I am optimistic with an asterisk about the future.

22:02I don't know what the answer is. I think that – I think the answer is we have to be really vigilant as consumers of content. You know, I don't – even things I read in mainstream newspapers, I go back and I check other sources to see if other people are saying the same things. It's just harder. You know, it's much, much harder. So the information age, right, that we're definitely very much in the middle of has been incredible. It's been – I mean we've had access to infinite knowledge and information, but it's also incredibly disruptive, right? When all of a sudden people have this sort of flood, this tsunami of information coming at them, and they don't know what's real and what's not.

22:59and so we kind of have to we kind of have to be vigilant we have a responsibility to do that how do we do that in a bigger way i don't know when i figure it out i'll come back on your show

23:11Tomer Cohen:and i'll tell you i do want to end on a more positive note so um you've interviewed so many people uh the founders you met across the board you've seen so many ideas and ventures come to life. You've seen fellow stories. I'm curious, what do you personally hope people will build because of your work? There's not a specific product. I mean, I think the sort of perfect in a perfect world, like in the end of the movie, I would say I want somebody to build something that's going to save civilization. It's going to change our world in ways that will benefit all mankind. And of course, that would be great.

23:50But that's not what I'm after. What I'm after is I want to inspire people who listen to the show to pursue something that they really believe in. That's it. That's what I want them to do. It doesn't even have to be a product or service, but to believe in themselves. I mean, it sounds like a cliche or, you know, some some, you know, nonsense aphorism, but I do. I mean, I am somebody who throughout my life did not believe in myself for a variety of reasons and have felt, you know, have felt that lack of confidence in many, many instances in my life. And so if I can help deliver this feeling in somebody, even if it's ephemeral, that yes, I can actually do something, that I can overcome my circumstances or I can stop making excuses about why I can't do this or what the obstacles are in front of me.

24:59That's what I want to do. I don't want people to ever think that they're locked and trapped in their situation. I really want people to hear this show and think, you know, to hell with it. Like I can do this. That person did it. I can do this.

25:15Tomer Cohen:that's a great name for a show Guy this was wonderful thank you for so many insights I personally feel like I've learned a lot and I'm sure people would be feeling the same way thank you so much I hope it's helpful this was an unusual building one conversation and I really enjoyed it Guy brings insights not only from his own experience but also from the experience of others a few takeaways really stood out number one make the value exchange unfair. Guy talked about being worthy of your user's intention. When someone listens to your show, they're giving you the most sacred resource they have, their time.