Extended Moment: Guy Raz: Why 99% of Businesses Fail & This Secret Made Apple, Pixar, & Elon Musk Billions!

28:55And I would venture to say that if you talk to somebody who worked for a company like Coca -Cola, they would have probably a generally a common vision or a common view of why they do what they do. And it's not about a sugary soft drink of blah blah blah. It's about being part of something bigger that has impact. Strong cultures are places where people feel like they're working towards a common goal. We talked earlier on about failure and people's relationship with failure. What about quitting? So failure is kind of like involuntary quitting. But quitting is like when you make the decision at some point in the journey that you need to pivot, this is not working.

29:45And it seems to me like in all the stories of the people that I've interviewed that have become successful, there has been several moments where they've made a decision to quit something, which was either objectively not smart or terrifying. But I've almost come to learn that I think quitting is actually a skill that winners have managed to really sharpen. And obviously there's that phrase as now, like quitting is for losers. But the more people I've interviewed, the more I've come to learn that quitting is a bit of a skill. And I think recognizing one to quit as well. You know, in my 20s, there were periods of time where I was a reporter at NPR at the time, and there were periods of time where I was frustrated and I want to quit.

30:29But I didn't, but really got close at times because I was covering the Iraq war in Afghanistan. I was in and out of war zones. I was scared. And how do I quit at that time? My life and career would have been totally different. I don't think it would have been as interesting. I think it's important that I waited to the right moment when I did quit and stopped working for a big organization and started my own business. I needed to have that experience in my back pocket. I needed to feel like I was ready. Was it scary when I did it? When I left the safety of a big organization with insurance and a retirement plan and a guaranteed income?

31:14It was really scary. two kids, you know, my wife had a small salary. But I felt like I could take that risk because it was the right moment. There was something that told me it was the right moment. So I think it has to be a thought through process. And a lot of times people say to me, should I quit and start my own business? And I almost always say, no, start your business slowly. So 99 % with your job, 1 % business and 5 % your business, 95 % your job, then 10 % your business, then 90 % your job until you get to a point where maybe you know your entire evening and weekend is spent on your side project and then it's time.

32:00Yeah I followed a similar path in my life and I've been quite aggressive prolific quitter at the same time at like really key moments and I don't think I've ever really thought it through to a fault sometimes. But sometimes it's just been a feeling you have. Well, you feel like you've reached the end of a flow chart of options. And for me, it's like, when I can't change it and it sucks, I have to quit. Or when the effort it would take to change it isn't worth the reward on offer, so I have to quit. So I'm like, this flow chart I have in my head, and it's funny because throughout your story, you've frittered out this conversation.

32:41You've cited these moments where someone was unfulfilled. You said that three or four times. Like they were unfulfilled. They knew they could do something. They need a change. I've wondered what the role is in reaching rock bottom in your life as a catalyst for change. And I've actually said I've asked a few people whether sometimes we just need a bit more pain. Yeah. And it doesn't sound like a nice thing. But I think that rock bottom or version of that is often a catalyst for change, right? It goes back to this idea of framing. It's very hard. Failure or setbacks that are intense and severe are really hard, you know, my, but, but they are often necessary to trigger the change that needs to happen.

33:29I mean, I can tell you, I'll never forget the day, was 2011, when I found that I was still working as an employee at National Public Radio, and I was told that I would not become the weekday host of all things considered. That was my dream. I'd started there as a 22 -year -old kid hoping that one day I'd be the main anchor. It's like the today program on BBC, except in the evening. And it's all I wanted. I was a foreign correspondent and I covered 50 countries. I'd ticked all the boxes. I covered the Pentagon. I was the weekend anchor of the show. I did everything right by the book. Everything I thought I had to do.

34:14But when it came down to making a decision, I was not the person that they wanted. And that was a low point. I really believed my career was over. And during that time, while I was looking and searching, for a way to leave the news world because I was convinced I was finished. I had heard of an opportunity to create a show with the people who do TED docs. And I jumped at that opportunity. And that changed everything. That prompted me eventually to leave, to start my own business, to start creating podcasts. I would never have been in the podcast world had I done that. I would have been on the radio doing news today.

35:07And without that low point, I wouldn't have had the trigger to force me to find the next thing, to find something different that knew. And that failure changed my life. Partners, co -founders, people, talent. What have you come to learn about the importance of finding a co -founder, finding people to go into business with as it relates to where you'll end up. A lot of, I'll be 50 this year. And a lot of young people ask me, younger people ask me, what's the best piece of advice you can give me in life? And my advice is always the same. Find a partner in life. Now, different from a business partner, which I'll get to in a moment.

35:53But I want to talk about a life partner. I believe that there is a partner for everybody, whether it's through Tinder or Hinge or Bumble or at a church or at a bar or wherever. I believe there's a partner for everybody. And I believe that you are much more likely, not just that I believe, but statistically it's true, you're much more likely to be successful if you have a partner to share and build a life with. that is the single most important thing you can do as you build a life. Now, in a business, I give the same advice. You can build a business as a solo entrepreneur, and it's happened, and we have had many solo entrepreneurs on the show who've built businesses by themselves.

36:40Well, with others helping, of course, but as the only founder. It's harder, not because it's technically harder. it's emotionally harder. Because there's always going to be a point along the journey and you've experienced it and I've experienced it where you say to yourself, I suck. I'm a fucking failure. And there's no one else to say to you, you're just feeling that today. You're just feeling that now. But tomorrow, you're not going to feel that. And I, as your co -founder might feel that, and you're going to need to tell me that I don't suck. That's the beauty and importance of having a co -founder because they are there on the journey with you.

37:25You are going to go into a crucible fire when you start a business. You are going to hit moments of incredible stress, near failure, and you're going to need somebody to be there in the trenches with you. Now, can you do it alone? Yes, you can. It's just harder. And the success rates of co -founder businesses tends to be higher. And I mentioned this in my book that came out a few years ago, the legendary investor, Paul Graham, one of his criteria for investing in companies is co -founders. You have to have a co -founder because that is a stronger guarantor of success than a solo entrepreneur. What do you think people should be looking for when they're seeking a co -founder?

38:14Is it a personality thing? Is it a skill crossover? Are they looking for someone similar than themselves? And where do these co -founders come about? Where do you find them? So question I always get, where do I find a co -founder? Yeah. I mean, I think it's like dating. You know, and often times co -founders fight each other. Sometimes they know each other in college or university or at school. or they meet at a company, sometimes they are looking for a co -founder, sometimes they are looking for somebody to start a business with. And there's no sort of formula that you can just kind of take every box.

38:51I think a lot of it is instinct, a lot of it is luck. You might have two people with totally disparate skills, a technical co -founder and a marketing or operational co -founder, you know, or a fundraiser co -founder visionary and then, you know, sort of the operational side. And that might be perfect, but they might have a personality conflict. There might be some, there might be a point where they have very diverging views. And so so much of it is about compatible personalities. It's like a marriage, by the way. You can marry somebody, you can love somebody, fall in love with somebody and decide to marry somebody who is going to be more of a nurture and you're maybe more of a disciplinarian when it comes to building a family or vice versa.

39:41Really compatible sort of family building skills, but if your personalities aren't compatible, over time that marriage won't last. If you can't grow together, oftentimes co -founders when they start a business, the most successful co -founders grow together too. You know, they start a business and then they grow it together and it becomes stronger over time because they also grow together. They also learn mistakes together and figure out how to recover from those mistakes together. And in some cases, had a failed business before. We just had an episode of our show with the founders of a breakfast year called Magic Spoon.

40:25These guys met at university, Greg and Gabby, and they decided to start a company together, a protein bar company. Protein bars made out of crickets, it's called exo bars, EXO. And it was an amazing idea because crickets are very nutritionally dense, high protein, really good for the environment. don't require a lot of water, you can turn them into a tasteless powder, and they really pursue this business for seven, eight years together, and the business failed. For obvious reasons, which is, we're in our society in the United States and the West, we're not yet ready to consume insects. There's a psychological barrier.

41:13So that could have been the end of their partnership. But they decided that they wanted to continue building something together because they believed in each other and they moved on to a completely different product, also high in protein, but breakfast cereal. High protein, no sugar, low in carbohydrate, so a keto kind of brand of breakfast cereal, which is now, you know, in 20 ,000 grocery stores in the United States and may even be in the UK. But that's an example of this part, a partnership where they failed together, but which allowed them to then build something that saw success. One of the other sort of central questions I get as it relates to that starting phase is people are currently working in a full -time job.

42:03They have an idea, but they're not sure how to pivot from the full -time job to the idea. Do they quit their job and then pursue the idea? Did they stay in their job and do it part? That's conundrum of how I go from idea to execution while I'm in a full -time job that I need to keep the lights on. You talk a little bit about this in your book as well. It's idea of how you leave your comfort zone safely. Yeah, of course it depends on the company. If you're coming up with a technology and you're working at Google, it's probably a better idea to quit first because otherwise Google is going to claim ownership over that idea.

42:39And many companies operate that way where they will argue that, well, if you work for the company and you have an idea, we own it. So there are examples where you want to leave the company. But we have had so many examples on how I built this, a founders who have kept their day job while pursuing this other idea. Because they had to pay their bills, they had to feed their families. We did a story a couple years ago. This is actually a UK -based company. It's an amazing story. It's a story of a guy named Christian Tapaninaho who is from Finland and his wife, Dorena, who's Scottish. They were both sort of educational consultants in the UK.

43:25They met at college and they had like an educational consultancy and they had various jobs. But Christian was a tinkerer and he He dreamed of building something. He wasn't sure what it was. It happens that he was a home cook. And he had a problem because this is where all great businesses start. I have a problem. And maybe other people have that problem. And if lots of people have that problem, maybe I can solve it. His problem was he couldn't cook a pizza at home. Why couldn't you cook a pizza at home? It has to be really hot. That's how you get those beautiful crusty, neapolitan pizzas with the blackened crust because they cook for a minute at very high heat.

44:08Home ovens don't go that hot. What did he do? He started to pound some metal together and he built his own pizza oven that was wood -fired. Well, today that pizza oven is unipita ovens. One of the best -selling pizza ovens, home pizza ovens in the world. They're between $300 and $500. They're pretty affordable. You can, they've got wood versions, they've got gas, propane gas, they've got an electric version. These guys kept their day jobs years into building this company because they didn't know if it was going to work or not. That's a billion dollar company. An example of somebody who really didn't, you know, had one foot in one place and one foot in the other place and once this other thing was real, they felt that they could take the leap and go for it.

44:56So here's a thing. A lot of people assume that entrepreneurs are these kamikazis. You know, yo -lo, I'm gonna jump out of an airplane, no parachute and go for it. And that's a myth, actually. There are some who are like that, you know? But in general, most entrepreneurs calculate the risk. So they do take risks, but we all take risks every day. It's that they mitigate those risks by, you know, differently. So in the case of Uni, yes, I'm going to keep my day job for a little while and build this thing. And then it is a risk to jump out of my day job and to pursue this full time. But it seems now I can see where this is heading.

45:42And that's the moment where you can take that leap. It's interesting as well because that story doesn't fit the mold because there was a lot of patients. And the patient seemed to come from someone that was really focused on actually solving a problem versus getting rich. And someone that's focused on getting rich would have taken a much more kamikaze approach, I think, than someone who was really just focused on a problem they genuinely wanted to solve. And you said, oh, you know, ended up being the best pizza oven. And it's probably because he was so focused on, as I said, that he who's so focused on solving the problem that he spent, I know, five, six, seven years, making the best pizza oven and worried later about whether people would want it, or whether they would make him rich from creating it.

46:28But typically it's the other way around. With entrepreneurs that come up to me when I'm in the gym or in the street, the focus in the priority is clearly, how do I get rich? I'm thinking of selling this or I'm thinking of selling this. And I guess this brings up the question like the role of passion and genuine curiosity in creating truly valuable things, well then makes you rich or remunerates you for. So there's nothing wrong with wanting to be rich. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make lots of money. This is, it's an engine that powers innovation, right? I mean, incentives breathe innovation.

47:05And so there's a reason why the United States, for example, is one of the most, if not the most entrepreneurial society in modern history because there are incentives to grow your business. That being said, I would say about 95 % of the people that I've interviewed founders of businesses, in virtually every case, are not primarily motivated by money. Of course, money is important. We all want to have financial security. But what they're motivated by is solving a problem they have, or looking for an opportunity in the marketplace to solve a problem that lots of other people have. In virtually every case, because what I do on how I built this is I mainly interview founders of consumer products.

47:52Products that are either American sort of cultural icons or global brands. And in virtually every case, it is somebody who's trying to solve their own problem. We did a, I just story last year, a bed and amazing entrepreneur named Monique Rodriguez. regas. Her mom worked at a, as an administrator, at a hospital in the Southside Chicago. She grew up. Single mom, her dad was, you know, in out of jail, um, on drugs. And she managed to go to nursing school. So Monique became a nurse, which was a huge achievement, you know, raised by a single mom in a tough neighborhood in the Southside Chicago. Becomes a nurse.

48:32And, you know, within a couple years of doing that job was feeling unfulfilled, but she was always dreaming of something. And Monique had a problem, which was she could not find hair care products for her hair. She was black woman. She didn't, she wasn't able to find really good consumer products on the shelves. So she started to experiment with essential oils. And eventually she started to mix essential oils and play around with her hair, avocado, and, you know, judge about all these different things, or ho ho, I can't remember, no, no, it's pronounced. And she started to make Instagram videos.

49:10You know, this is like early Instagram. And she had it, you know, at the beginning, 10 followers and then 20 followers. And she would show people what she was doing with the oils and use it on her hair and show how it was improving her hair. Over time, people were writing in the comments, hey, where can I buy this stuff? Well, after a couple years of people saying that to her, she still was a nurse. She asked herself the same question, well, how can I do this? So with almost no money, she launched a brand called Myel Organics, which was hair care products for women with textured hair. Fast forward to 2023, she sold that business to Procter & Gamble for reportedly for half a billion dollars.

49:57This is a woman who started a haircare products company in her apartment in Indiana, she was in Indiana at the time, with no experience in the industry, with no connections, but just a passion to solve a problem she had. And that was the beginning of an empire. And that's a story that I see again and again. You can never ever substitute to passion with a desire for money. Passion is always gonna trump a desire for money. It eats desire for my, to paraphrase Peter Lynch, passion eats desire for money for lunch. What is breakfast? What is passion doing that just a desire for money wouldn't do along that journey?

50:41So if we think about her and that apartment, if we take her and we drive her with passion, and we see where she ends up, $500 million, and then we take her and we drive her with a desire for money, and we see where she ends up. Why would she end up in different places? What are the steps to make? Yeah, I'm not sure she would end up in different places. There's no question that money could be an engine and a motivator, but with passion and a belief in the thing that you're building, having the ability to solve the problem for many, many people. If you're building something that just solves your problem, it's not enough, that's not a business, that's a hobby.

51:18But if you build a product that solves a problem for millions of people or could potentially solve problems for millions of people and you have a passion to build it because it's solving your problem, that is going to drive you, that's going to motivate you to keep moving forward. Whereas if it's simply a profit motive and it doesn't land quickly, you're unlikely to keep with it. You're unlikely to have the patience. You're going to move on and try something else. Which is fine too. which is fine. There's something in there in also the case of the pizza guy who made the pizza ovens where because they're so passionate about it, they understand the problem so deeply that they're able to truly innovate.

52:00Whereas like if I was trying to start a pizza oven business now, frankly, I've never experienced pizza ovens before, never used one, never failed it using one, never succeeded it using one. So my information would have to come from Google. It's one of the things that I see a lot in entrepreneurs is how they manage to think for themselves, the force that makes them think for themselves, they're not just accept the conventional way of doing things. Like someone like Elon Musk is a prime example of a real first principle start from zero, sort of a blank sheet of paper. Very hard to do, because conventions like filling all of our brains, so very, very difficult to do, which there was some way of teaching that.

52:40Yeah, I mean, it is hard to do. But I also think that part of the process and part of building something is a willingness, not a desire, not a hope, not the enjoyment of, but a willingness to experience failure. That's really hard. Elon Musk has experienced a lot of failure. I mean, put aside, you know, his quirks and, you know, his is, I think, challenging parts to him. There's no single person on the planet who, I believe, who's had a bigger impact on reducing climate emissions. I mean, say what you want to about him, but between solar power and cars that are emissions free, he has had a bigger impact on global climate emissions and virtually every other individual on Earth, which is quite a remarkable thing if you think about it.

53:45You know, because a lot of people really hate him. But at the same time, he's had a huge impact on the climate. He's also had a lot of failure. You know, we did the story of PayPal on the show many years ago and told it in great detail. A Max Levchin really was the creator of PayPal. He's now the founder of Affirm. and Max, election on Peter Teal, started PayPal, Elon Musk at x .com. They merged into PayPal and they actually kicked Elon Musk out of the company. And Max, election tells the story about the day the board kicked him out as the head of the company and Elon was crushed, you know. Tesla, for the first, what, 16 years of its life, was a money -losing business.

54:30nobody believed in it. And I think part of his, you know, part of his bravado and part of his, I think, maybe part of who he is today comes from those scars of people not believing in him. I think that he, but he also was and still is prepared for failure. I mean, when a rocket launches and fails, he doesn't like it, but he moves on and he, you know, he goes, he continues. I did an interview not that long ago with Hillary Swank. She was 17 or 16 when she came to Los Angeles with her mother from Washington State to become an actor. Penny, I mean, literally penniless. They literally slept in her mom's car for weeks at a time while she went to high school and then auditions.

55:24I mean, they were, they had no money. She went to audition after audition. We get bit parts here and there only at the age of 25 that she get a breakthrough role on barely Hills 90210. It was in the 90s. It was the height of that show's popularity and she finally gets a recurring role on a television show. It's a massive breakthrough. What happens? 16 episodes in, they kill her character. Her contract is done. She's out of work. Her entire career blows up and she's finished. And she was devastated at the time. She thought her career was over because that was the ticket to cruising altitude in Hollywood.

56:06A couple weeks later, her agent calls her and says, Hey, there's an indie film. They're doing an open audition. It's not a lot of money, but it's something. You know, why don't you go do it for an audition? This isn't small Indie crew. She auditions for the role. And she gets it. She gets off for the role. And it's gonna pay her nothing. She's gonna make like three to five grant on this film. But she has no other options. And she had the time because she wasn't doing that or two or no anymore. So she could actually do this role. Well, the role was his brand and Tina. The film was Boystone Cry.

56:40She was nominated for the Academy Award, became one of the youngest nominees and then winners of the Academy Award that year and was catapulted into global startup. And then a few years later, one or second Academy Award is back to the actress in the company of Merrill Streep and Sally Field and a few others. I mean, an amazing story. Had she not had that failure on I know 210 or what felt like a failure at a time at the time. She would never have had the opportunity to audition for this film. What can we learn from these stories and these people? We can learn that failure can be a blessing, and it's all about how we frame it.

57:24Now, I'm not saying I am perfect at this. I hate failing. When I fail, it's painful. When I have failed in my life and career, it's been really hard. The hardest part about it is reframing it. And that's what takes all of my strength, energy, I think for anybody, to reframe it, and to try and convince yourself that there's a reason, there's a plan, whether it's God or a force or karma or something. There's a reason why it's happening. And in my life, in every case of failure, every case, it's happened for the right reasons. That an opportunity came about because that failure moved an obstacle aside.

58:15Because of how you framed the failure, because of what you did after the failure, because it's conceivable that if you take any one of your big failures in your life and you had down tools, you'd let the failure get the best of you. then it wouldn't have turned. And this is kind of what I was thinking, as you're saying about the force or the God or whatever, it's maybe we are the force and we are the God. And I know I don't know, I'm not meant to sign MacNars assist or anything, but it's just thinking there's probably a couple of stories of people that had their character killed in a movie that decided forget this.

58:48And we don't tell those stories now because they said forget this, so they didn't get the Academy Awards. But in that story, she sounds like she was her own force. She made the decision that and it's interesting because in that moment when you find out your character's killed and you come home and tell your friends your character's killed and you feel the shame There's there's no apparent light at the end of the tunnel No, so it can't be that it can't be that that drives you on it's got to be something else It's got to be something else and it is but but it is a force. I mean, you know, I this is not a show about faith or religion So it depends on what anyone believes in but I I'm a believer in faith.

59:25I believe in it. I don't think that it happens without intervention on our behalf. On our, that we put effort into it, but whether you believe or not, whether you believe in a higher power or not, I believe in a force. And it doesn't happen automatically. We also have to engineer it. But I believe that there is some kind of guiding force. One interview I did about a year and a half ago is a Tom Hanks. And Tom Hanks is probably the greatest living actor maybe in the English language. He is the Spencer Tracy of his generation. He's been in so many films, he's won so many Academy Awards. When he was ready to start his career, his acting career, He desperately wanted to be in a very prestigious Shakespeare Festival in Sacramento, California.

1:00:22And that was going to launch his career. And he didn't get any rules. He didn't get a single part. And so he had to find other acting rules. One day, he finds out about an open audition for a new sitcom that ABC was going to possibly produce. A pilot show based on two guys living in an apartment together in New York. Show is called bosom buddies. He auditions for the part. Hundreds of people are auditioning. Tom makes this a nobody. He gets the part. But now they're just going to make a pilot. They make the pilot. And the show actually gets launched. But even then, there was no guarantee that after that show ended, his career would continue.

1:01:10His co -star Peter Scalari did not have as successful a career as Tom Hanks did. Tom Hanks was on that show, but his buddies for a few years. It was moderately successful, but he became the superstar. And his career began as a series of failures. And so part of it is his own will, the sheer will of just keeping on, part of it is fate, part of his luck. part of it as God or whatever you want to call it. There's something there that said to him, these failures are going to be important for you. You're going to need them in order to get to the next place. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead.

1:01:59And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is net suite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform. You'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place. Their technology has been a real game changer, especially for my team at Flight Studio. As over the last year, we've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode. We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors.

1:02:34Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future -proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to NetSuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning. That's NetSuite .com slash Bartlett. What are you thinking about the subject of work -life balance? You know, you've interviewed a lot of very successful people, billionaires. They apparently have it all as it relates to sort of material success. But it must have sort of illuminated the sacrifices they've made in other areas of their life. What have you come to learn is most important.

1:03:09And what is the warning that you might pass down the ladder to other people that are looking up and thinking, I want to be a billionaire like Richard Branson or someone else that's wildly successful? I mean, there's always the perception that we have or outsiders have of the founder and and the internal perception that within the family. And so we saw Steve Jobs differently than Steve Jobs family saw him. I think he was loving father and partner and was seen not as Steve Jobs founder but Steve Jobs the dad. There's no question that in many examples and many interviews I've done, the sacrifices that the founders have made to build their businesses have meant that their personal lives have been challenging.

1:03:58The marriages have collapsed. They've had difficult relationships. Their children's happened for sure. Is this a big regret you see in the people that you've spoken to? Sometimes, I think sometimes there are some cases where there's a bit of regret around that, around missing big chunks of their kids' lives. Isaac Larian, who's a wonderful man and very close to his kids, he because of the success of the Brat Stalls and the threat that it posed to Mattel, he became the subject of endless lawsuits and then counter lawsuits with Mattel. So he was wrapped up and tied up in court cases with Mattel, the maker Barbie, for virtually a decade.

1:04:47When he finally won on appeal, the last judgment, I think he won about $300 million on judgment against Mattel. His son was asked by a reporter, aren't you so happy that your dad won? And he said, I'm sad because I didn't have my dad around for 10 years because he was wrapped up in the trial. And of course, Isaac was there for his family, but the point is that there are massive sacrifices. You know, and in my case, you know, in a much smaller version of a business I run, I have always wanted to be and I've always tried to be there for every sports game for every school event for every parent teacher conference.

1:05:34We as a family have dinner together every night. We run a family meeting every Sunday night. My kids don't love it, but we sit down and we talk about the week ahead. We talk about our goals of the week. We go over, it's just gonna sound a little earnest, but we have a codified list of family, our family values that we wrote down. We all, four of us wrote them down and decided what our family is. What kind of things are on there? Gratitude, generosity, forgiveness. So if, which has happened the other day with my son, he got really mad at me because I yelled at him and I apologized. And I said, I'm sorry, that is stressful day.

1:06:23And he was still mad and I said, hey, on our family values is forgiveness. Remember, it says forgiveness, except an apology and move on. Curiosity, respect, taking responsibility, there's value in reminding yourself about the things that you aspire to be. And I think in the case of a family, to build a strong family, it takes work and commitment and time. And that means that you're going to sacrifice other things in order to achieve that. Why are you still doing what you're doing? Because if you're 15, almost 15 years in, right? How I built this were eight. Been podcasting. Yeah, yeah, 2012 started.

1:07:19Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I am really privileged because I get to learn every day. I get to learn from people that I talk to and exchange ideas with people. And I essentially have created a life for myself where I'm I earn a living from learning, which is an amazing place to be. Every day is different. And what motivates what I do is going back to the beginning of our conversation is knowing that I can create something of value for people, for free. You know, when I, when I, the impetus for how I built this came from an experience I had now 15 years ago when I was on a, I had a sabbatical year and I took a business school class and on the first day they handed us a case study part A and it was about Starbucks and Howard Schultz.

1:08:37And I devoured it. It was fascinating. And then the story ended, but you had to wait four days for the classic to come back to get part B. And it was fascinating. I didn't know about the case study method. I didn't know that's how they taught business school. What I realized soon after was two problems. The first is the case studies were thin. They weren't comprehensive. And the second problem is they were only accessible to students at Harvard Business School or to other business schools who were paying $120 ,000 a year. And I knew then at that moment that I could do the same thing as a storyteller for free, make these case studies even better and make them available for free.

1:09:23And that was the genesis of how I built this. It was never a show for entrepreneurs or budding entrepreneurs. It was always a show for people who were interested in building a creative life. It's always what it's been about. And that's what motivated me then, and that's what motivates me now. When I hear from somebody who says, and I hear this all the time, I started business. We started to hit a really rocky patch. We didn't think we would make it. And that week I listened to Tom Ranks of Sunbomb, or I listened to Ariel Kay of Perchard. I listened to whatever episode I listened to, and I listened to it, and I felt exactly what she felt at that moment when her business was collapsing, was crumbling, and I thought, okay, we can keep going.

1:10:14And I hear that all the time. Because the show is not about heroes. It's not about superheroes. It's about ordinary people who built incredible brands and how they did it. And they didn't do it because they're superheroes. They did it because they're human. And I want everybody who listens to the show to be able to relate to anybody on the show, whether it's Richard Branson or Howard Schultz or Sarah Blake, whoever we have on the show, they're humans that are just like the people listening. Who's been your, and I get asked this all the time, and it's a very awful question, but I'm going to ask you because I get it so often.

1:10:56What has been the interview that has stayed with you in the most profound way? Or the first interview that stayed with you in a profound way? I have to qualify it the answer because there are elements of every interview I do that stick with me that are powerful. The story tells you about Isaac Larian and the know or his childhood in Iran or whatever it might be. elements of Gary Erickson's story, the founder of Cliffbar, I mean Howard Schultz's story, growing up in a housing project in Brooklyn. So it's impossible to tell you what's the one interview at a 500 that stuck with me the most because there are elements that I remember and connect with about, you know, connect to with every interview.

1:11:47And I keep in touch with many of the founders who had been on the show. But I think recently, one of the most powerful interviews we've done in terms of the scope and the creativity has been the story of Sunbomb, which is a suntan lotion. It was started by a guy named Tom Rinks. And Tom wanted to create a suntan lotion brand that could be disruptive in the marketplace. And he drew elements from all of these disparate influences, you know, Japanese streetwear and surfboard culture. And he even, even though he was in Holland, Michigan, he got a mailbox in Cocoa Beach, Florida because he wanted to put Cocoa Beach, Florida as the address in the back of the bottle.

1:12:38He was influenced by all these different things and put them all together to to build a brand that eventually sold to Assie Johnson for hundreds of millions of dollars. It's stories like that, and there's so much more to history, but there's stories like that where you begin to understand how people took all of their life experiences and put them together, start to put the puzzle pieces together to build something enduring. How many kids have you got? Two. How old are they? 12 and 14. From all the interviews you've done with hundreds of people, you know, 500 extreme extreme successful people, tens of thousands of others, if there was just one message that you think would be most useful for those two young kids as they go off into their lives, if they are to listen to this in 10 years time, 20 years time, what would that message be?

1:13:34Find a partner to build your life with. It doesn't have to be a romantic partner or a lover or it can be a sibling or a close friend. But if you can find a partner to build a life with somebody you can support and who can support you, you are infinitely more likely to build a happy life. Hi, thank you. Thank you so much for so many things. Thank you so much for the inspiration. You've been in a huge inspiration to our show since the very, very beginning, in fact, my producer and the co -founder of this show, Jack, who I started this with, he, from day one, has been talking about your show, not just in a sense of learning from a great podcast, who makes content in a really value -loaded way, but from the stories you've told, because the stories you've told on your show as well have been, he, I mean, Jack and myself have continually cited as, as, um, have left breadcrumbs for people like us that are building things.

1:14:37Kind of like what you said. They've given us key insights and nuggets at certain moments when we face with certain challenges on how to navigate. And, and you'll never get to see the value that that's given to so many people. But I just want you to know that I'm one of them. That Jack is one of them and that we're very appreciative for that and also for your time today. So thank you so much, Guy. Thank you.

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