The Psychology Of Success | Guy Raz

A podcast pioneer on failure, resilience, luck, work/life balance, and the power of questions. Guy Raz https://www.guyraz.com/ has been instrumental in creating some of the most iconic podcasts in the world, including Wondery's How I Built This https://home.wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this, Wow in the World https://tinkercast.com/all-podcasts/wow-in-the-world/ and TED Radio Hour https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour. The New York Times has described him as "one of the most popular podcasters in history." We talk about: The challenge – and gift – of failure Getting comfortable with discomfort and risk The notion of luck The balance between your relationships and your work Why scale isn't always the answer Success vs. happiness And much more Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. When you look at somebody who is happy and successful in their career, it can be fascinating to ask, how did they do that? I'm not just talking about the tactical business decisions, or who they knew, or where they went to school. I'm talking about how did they manage their mindset through the ups and downs? How did they know when they were on the right path? How did they choose their partners? How hard did they work? And what did they have to sacrifice? In other words, I'm talking about the psychology of success. Today, I'm going to talk to somebody who has achieved enormous success through investigating this very process. Guy Raz is a pioneering podcaster, and perhaps his signature show, he's got several shows,

• 0:47Dan Harris?

  but his, probably his most famous show is called How I Built This, where he talks to titans of industry about how they got there. In the process of making the show, Guy has become a titan of the podcasting industry. His other shows include Wow in the World and The Great Creators. He's also written a number of books, including one called How I Built This. We first aired this episode in January of 2025, and we're bringing it back now because you loved it then, and so I suspect a lot of you will love it now. In this conversation, we talk about the challenge and gift of failure, getting comfortable with discomfort and risk, the notion of luck, the balance between your relationships and your work, why scale is not always the answer, success versus happiness, and much more. We'll get started with Guy Raz right after this.

• 1:32Dan Harris?

  Guy Raz, welcome to the show.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

• 1:36Dan Harris?

  I'm excited. It's a big get for us. So, thanks for making time. I want to talk about success, for lack of a better word, but one, one thing that's interesting in your work and in your life is that you spend a lot of time talking about what some people think of as the inverse of success, which is failure. You get these big titans of industry on your show, and you press them to talk about failure. And then I know failure has been a, a real theme in, in your discussions of your own career. So, before I ask you a specific question, does that, does that insight land for you?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Thousand percent. Yes. It's, it's, it's, it's sort of the story of my life, and I think the story of, of a lot of people's lives, and I, I try and think about it so I don't, it doesn't become this kind of pathology of like self-victimhood, you know? But, but I, I try to use it as a motivator, because I think failure in my life has been really hard, but it's also been an incredible gift, which sounds like, you know, like a motivational speech, but, but it's true. It's been true in every case. Like, there's a force that's, that at certain points in my life, and I think a lot of people can relate to this, is like, you will fail. You

• 2:52Speaker 01

  will suffer during this failure, but don't worry, it has to happen. And, and I find that theme recurring again and again in almost every interview I do on my shows.

• 3:06Dan Harris?

  I want to talk about what you've learned from other people's failures, but let me just stay with you for a second. What are the failures that have been instructive and, and useful, although painful, for you?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  The profession that you and I kind of chose and got into is full of just like small, daily failures, right? Just trying to get a story, contacting somebody who won't talk to you, not getting an assignment. It's full of strong personalities and egos and, and all those things. For me, I, I always wanted to be, not always, but for a long time, from the time I was pretty young, you know, like in middle school, I was, I wanted to be a journalist. I was a student journalist in middle school. I was the editor of my high school paper. I was an editor of my college paper. Like, that's really what I wanted to do. There was something about that profession, not something, I knew what it was that appealed to me.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  And, and I think you could probably relate to this, which is, at my core, and I've, I've grown, I'm almost 50, so I've, I've learned to kind of navigate the world, but at my core, I'm socially awkward. I'm, I'm introverted as well. Whether it was justified or not, I always felt a little bit like an outsider, a lot, for, for a variety of reasons, and I'm not entirely sure why, but I always did. And being a reporter to me, whether it was holding a notepad or a microphone, it was like this magic-like tool that all of a sudden enabled me to, to not be, it was like Clark Kent going into a phone booth. Like, he just put the cape on, and then he could fly?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Like, I had this notepad, I had this microphone, and it was like permission to talk to anybody, to ask anybody a question, because it wasn't, probably because it wasn't about me, it was about the mission or the purpose that I was serving, which was to tell the story. And so, for me, pursuing journalism, becoming a newspaper reporter, it was like, it was like a way for me to actually try to be a normal human being, you know? To try and, and so, that was really what I wanted to do. And, and from, you know, from the beginning of my career, really early on, I mean, my, the, where I landed was the result of failure, because I really had no intention of going

• 5:26Speaker 01

  into broadcasting. I really wanted to be a print reporter. That was my dream. But, you know, in, in 1997, that was a tough job to get, you know? I, I mean, I applied to every single magazine and newspaper you can imagine, you know, from the New York Times, the Washington Post, to the Boston Globe, and the Dallas Morning News, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and the LA Times for internships. Papers that are sort of barely around anymore today, The New Republic, The Nation Magazine. I got one interview, and it was with The Nation Magazine, but I, I didn't get that internship. I didn't get any of those jobs. I, I had graduated college, and I, I didn't get a single one. I just, you know, it was rejection after rejection.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  And so, I, I moved to, and NPR too, by the way. I had applied to NPR to be an intern twice and didn't get it. And so, I moved to Washington DC when I was 21, and just started temp work. I, I went to a temp agency, and this was at a time where I described this to people in their 20s, and they're like, wait, what? That was a job? It was a job called data entry, where you actually typed things into a computer so that, that the, the files, the paper files could be digitized, and humans would just type all day, you know, right? And you got paid like eight bucks an hour, which in like 1997 was a lot of money. And I happened to, to move to Washington DC to, to do that job, because I had some friends from college there.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  And about, about two weeks after I arrived, I got a phone call from my dad, who received a phone call on his answering machine, from somebody at a place called NPR, which he didn't know what it was, because he didn't, I didn't grow up listening to NPR. My parents didn't know what it was. He said, somebody from PPR, NPR, left a message, and I scrambled. Long story short, is I, they, they had an intern that they had selected for the fall of that year, who dropped out because he got a paying job, and, and they basically went to HR, got a pile of resumes, and, and they just started going through them, calling them. And I called back right away, and they said, and I said, I'm in Washington DC. Can I come in for an interview? And that was it. I talk a lot about, on How I Built This, I talk a lot about luck, which

• 7:38Speaker 01

  I'm a big believer in, and that was it. I mean, I, I got an internship because I was there. I was a warm body, and I was the first one in, and I connected with the producer who was hiring. And that is what, that's why I went into broadcasting. I mean, that was the first kind of, not lesson I learned, but the first result of failure was that actually, it was meant, sort of meant to happen. I was not meant to go work at those places, because I landed in broadcasting and, and started at NPR as an intern in 1997.

• 8:10Dan Harris?

  I want to come back to luck, but let me just stay with failure for a second. One of the things I've read about you and from you since I heard you were coming on, and I started prepare, preparing for this, and this really resonated with me as somebody who's spent a lot of time in broadcast journalism, is that you felt like you got passed over for a lot of big jobs within NPR as your career progressed. Am I, am I reading you correctly when I say that?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, and I think this is, this is a really common experience for people in that profession. This is a weird, competitive, it can be cutthroat environment. NPR was a little bit different. You know, I was at CNN for a couple of years. I, I had left NPR and had gone to CNN as a reporter, which was much more cutthroat. I mean, it was a completely different environment. I wasn't, wasn't prepared for the world of television, but it was interesting, and I, and I still remember that time with some fondness. But yeah, I mean, I, you know, my dream was to, I wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and I got to do that. I got to spend almost seven years overseas for NPR and then for CNN.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  And it was just an incredible experience. Well, I mean, there's no other way to describe it. I, I was able to cover four wars: Iraq and Afghanistan, the Balkans, Israel-Palestine. I went to places that I'd never go to as a traveler: Kosovo and Kashmir, Kazakhstan. I mean, all of these unusual places where I was able to really, you know, see and experience things that I don't think, I know I would never have been able to do if I wasn't there as a reporter and journalist. And eventually, when I came back to the United States in 2007, I had left CNN in 2006, and I didn't have another opportunity. I didn't have another job there. They, they, they

• 10:03Speaker 01

  offered me a position to stay in the Middle East, and I, I needed to come back to the United States. I was married. My wife was starting her career as a lawyer. We had to come back. And, and so, I came back to Washington DC, kind of with my tail between my legs, begging NPR for a job. And at that time, you know, I had left a couple of years before, because I went to CNN, and, and they were sort of like, okay, well, see you later. And they did give me a job, a temporary job, when I came back. And this was, this was a really difficult period in my career, because I had been overseas for seven years at that point, had covered all these wars and filed hundreds of stories. I was on CNN.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  And the job I got when I returned to Washington DC was to write web copy for the foreign desk at NPR. And it was a really humbling, and I use that word carefully, because a lot of people use that word a lot. You know, I'm humbled to receive this honor, and I'm humbled to receive this, and you're like, no, you're not humbled? Why are you humbled to receive the honor? Just, just own it. But it was, it was humbling and, and, I don't want to say humiliating, but a little bit. It was, it was hard, because I, I was coming back into the building in 2007. I was writing web copy, you know? And at the time, you know, I had just come off from

• 11:23Speaker 01

  You know, being a reporter and traveling the world and, and nothing wrong with writing web copy. It was just like, it, it was very, very hard for me. And but it was also a really important lesson because I had to just buckle down and do the best I could do and work really hard at doing a good job. And it took a couple of months, but eventually I was able to sort of slowly get back on the air. You know, I went through this, this sort of period of time where, where I, what I really wanted to do, where I really wanted to be was, was an anchor. I wanted to be the host of, of a news program, like All Things Considered. I had really tried for years to, to get on the air and to become a host on, on different shows. And it was very hard. I mean, I, I, I couldn't convince the powers that be at

• 12:07Speaker 01

  the time to give me that chance. And look, they weren't wrong. I don't always sort of present as the most charismatic or the warmest person in, you know, in, in, in different settings. I think I'm just introverted. I bring everything I can bring to the show, to the microphone, to the interview. And it was really hard for me to convince bosses there to give me a shot to be a host, you know, it was, and at the time, like they were the gatekeepers. There were periods in my career where I really, I was constantly looking for other opportunities. Like, should I, should I do this kind of work? Should

• 12:47Speaker 01

  I, I would be looking around for, for work outside of journalism. But eventually, I did get to host Weekend All Things Considered as a sort of, as a trial run. The, the short version of it is the executive who denied me the opportunity to do it left NPR. And so all of a sudden, you know, I, the window was open and I could, I could, I could do it. I was given a chance to do it. And I, I was, you know, basically ended up doing that job for a couple of years. And I really threw myself into that job. It was a, you know, like it was a weekend show. It was on Saturday and Sunday from five to six, a

• 13:27Speaker 01

  really small audience. But it was an amazing, the amazing thing about it was that because the, the executives and the leadership at NPR didn't listen to that show, we could really experiment. And it was this really magical time in my career because I was working with a really talented, young producer. We were both younger. We started to build a team with like interns and just recent college grads who were really smart, many of whom are still in public radio, many of, many of whom I'm still very much in touch with today. And we started to experiment. We started to do things that were just kind of weird.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, remember, um, Craig, the late show guy from CBS? Ferguson? Ferguson, yes. He would do all these weird things, like bring out puppets and stuff on his show because it was the late, late show that, that, you know, he had a smaller audience. We were able to do some weird, kind of quirky things on the show. And it was really, really fun. And what I really wanted to be, what I wanted to do, what I thought I wanted to do was to be the, the weekday host of that show. That was my dream. You know, I'd grown up like worshipping people like Robert Siegel and Noah Adams and, and Linda Wertheimer, who I worked with and worked for. I thought you had to tick all these boxes to do that job. You know, you had to cover Washington, you had to be

• 14:54Speaker 01

  a foreign correspondent, you had to, you know, get experience, you had to do a lot of reporting. And then you got to a point and you could, you know, maybe, maybe do this job. When there was an opportunity, an opening to do that job, this is about 2011. You know, I had sort of, this was my moment, you know, I had, I'd waited for this moment my whole career. And I thought this was it. This was, this was, this is gonna be the thing I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. And I didn't get it. And not only did I not get it, but the way it was delivered to me was hard. You know, I was,

• 15:35Speaker 01

  I was given some really tough feedback. And, and, and essentially, the feedback I was given was that I didn't have the warmth of a Scott Simon or Susan Stamberg. I didn't have that kind of ability to connect with people. And I, I didn't believe that. I didn't, I didn't agree with that. I, it, it was very hurtful to me. But it was also, again, would prove to be this incredible gift because that decision, basically coupled with my just overall feeling like I, I wasn't, I was not that interested in news as, as

• 16:18Speaker 01

  much, kind of prompted me to look outside. You know, you, you'll remember this. I mean, around 2011, already, I mean, it was way less polarized than it is today. The country was way less polarized. But there already was a lot of polarization. You know, it was the Obama era. There was a lot of anger from different parts of the country. There was the Occupy movement. There was a Tea Party movement. There, there was this, and we were, I was already feeling like the feedback I would get from listeners occasionally was starting to get a little bit angry. And I wasn't that interested in it. I didn't feel like, like telling the news or reporting on the news wasn't necessarily moving the needle. I didn't feel like I was having the impact that I wanted to have when I first

• 17:02Speaker 01

  got into the profession. Because I think a lot of people in this profession who go into journalism, go into it because they want to maybe make the world a better place or see if they can tell stories that, that, that give people a better sense of how other people live or, or, you know, perspective on, on, on how other people think. And I started to, to wonder whether there was another way for me to do that. And when I didn't get that job, it really prompted me again to think about, what is it I want to do? And again, I started to look for work outside of media and journalism. I started to look for anything that, that could be interesting. And what happened was, at that time, there was, the podcasting had existed, but nobody was really listening to it. You

• 17:47Speaker 01

  still had to plug in your iPod to a computer and download it. And, you know, it, it was, it was clunky and it was just this weird kind of thing. I mean, there was, there was Marc Maron, Joe Rogan was there, but it was still very niche, right? But there was, NPR was, was starting to, to look into this more deeply. And at the time, TED, the organization TED, the TED Talks company, they approached NPR and they said, hey, you know, we want to start a podcast, but we don't know how to do it. And I had heard that they had approached NPR about this. So I kind of raised my hand and said, look, I think I can make this happen. I think I can create something. Initially, the TED people were skeptical of me because I wasn't a science person. I didn't have a science background. And I went through

• 18:32Speaker 01

  this very long process of trying to, you know, of sort of trying to show them that I thought I could turn this into something interesting. And in the end, they agreed. And, and I, I was, I was brought on to help kind of build this show. And that, for me, was a transitional moment because I thought, you know, this is a way for me to kind of figure out what to do next. 2011, podcasting was still, it was just weird, you know? And I remember when I left the news side of NPR and I started in podcasting, I got emails from, you know, some of my very prominent colleagues at NPR. And they were like, podcasting? Who is, I, I still have an email from somebody you know. Who is gonna listen to one topic

• 19:14Speaker 01

  for an hour? Who, how, how do you keep talking about something for an hour? And I, I did not disagree. I wasn't going into that world thinking, oh, I'm gonna show them. I was going into it thinking, well, we'll see how long this lasts. Because, you know, even though I was hosting Weekend All Things Considered, it still had an audience of 3 million people. I mean, it's because broadcast, broadcast terrestrial radio. So, you know, there were some people driving their cars. At the time, it still had a large audience. Today, you know, the, the radio audiences have plummeted. But at the time, it was still significant. And I started, we started this show. We were getting some attention, again, in a niche

• 19:55Speaker 01

  way. But slowly, slowly, slowly, we started to get, gain more and more momentum. And then, of course, 2014 happens, Serial, the podcast Serial comes out. And it, it's kind of this watershed moment, to coin a phrase, in our industry. And it, it just, podcasting blows up. All of a sudden, it becomes this mainstream thing. And we were making the show TED Radio Hour, which was a really great show. It was a combination of TED Talks and interviews I would do with people who gave the talks, with really cool production. I had, you know, worked with the same team that many of the people who worked with me on, on Weekend All Things Considered came with me to that show. And, and that was it.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  I mean, that, that's how my, my sort of, you know, entree into the world of podcasting began. It began as, you know, as a failure again. Like, I didn't get this thing that I thought I wanted to do, that I wanted to be, that I thought I would do this for the rest of my life. But if that happened, I wouldn't be doing what I do now. I would, it would be a completely different world and life that I live. I would probably be living in Washington DC and, and covering the news, which I think would be, is, is a really difficult job to do and a job that frankly, I, I'm not that interested in doing. So it was a blessing. Again, I go back to that, that weird aphorism, you know? But

• 21:19Speaker 01

  it was, it was a blessing. I, I, and I recognize it now. As hard as it was at the time, I mean, I was depressed and miserable and felt like a failure. And it was meant to be.

• 21:29Dan Harris?

  With summer winding down and all of us returning to our routines and some of us returning to school, or returning our children to school, this feels like an appropriate moment to hit reset. And I don't mean like a full, comprehensive, panoramic reset of everything in your life, just like small, marginal changes you can make in your life that can make a big difference. And so that's what we're focusing on right now over on my app, 10% with Dan Harris. This September, we'll be joined by Diana Winston, who's the director of UCLA's Mindfulness Center and the author of a book called The Little Book of Being. The LA Times has called her one of the best-known mindfulness teachers in the country. Once you hear her, you will understand why. And you can practice live

• 22:10Dan Harris?

  with Diana right inside the 10% with Dan Harris app, starting on September 8. And then later in September, we'll be dropping a brand-new meditation challenge from Diana, all in the theme of resetting. More on that in just a couple of weeks. For now, though, if you could use just a little bit of a reset and you want to hang out and meditate with me and Diana and many other folks, you can sign up for my app at danharris.com. We will be right back. Most of us can remember being about 15 and feeling completely invisible, or worse, extremely visible, but for the wrong reasons. I remember one year, when I was a teenager, I had a pimple in the crevice of my nose for the entire year. I didn't like that.

• 22:53Dan Harris?

  Either way, even if we have painful memories of that age, most of us tend to soften it in memory, and it was actually harder than we remember it now. That is the territory of Carrie, now streaming on Prime Video, the first-ever television adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie. Eight episodes from Mike Flanagan, with Stephen King as an executive producer. Flanagan had described this show as a tragedy. It's about a girl who doesn't feel seen by anyone, and about how small, everyday acts of unkindness compound into something nobody meant to cause, which happens now at a speed and scale that would have been unimaginable not long ago. What I really appreciate about the show is that the show takes Carrie seriously

• 23:36Dan Harris?

  as a person, rather than as some sort of symbol. And the season keeps circling around one major question: Are you watching the making of a hero, a villain, or something more complicated than either of those options? Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video.

• 23:59Dan Harris?

  God, I mean, there are so many similarities between our stories. I mean, I, you know, I was in TV at ABC News, and I worked the weekends, never quite cracked into the week. I did get a job as the anchor of Nightline, which was a weekday show, but not really one. It wasn't Good Morning America or the Evening News, which is what I had been gunning for my whole career.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Right. Because that's what we're conditioned to, right? You get there as a young person, and you're like, you saw Peter Jennings, right? Was he there when you started?

• 24:30Dan Harris?

  Yeah, he was. He was my mentor.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  And he's the guy. And you think that that's... And your parents are probably, were probably so proud of you. Like, my parents were so proud of me. They didn't know what NPR was, but then they started hearing me on the radio, and their friends would say, "Your son's on the radio." And they were so proud. And, you know, my parents are not intellectuals. They're very smart, but they're not NPR, public radio people. And so for me, it was like, God, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna get to this place, right? Because we think that's the thing that you should be going after.

• 24:58Dan Harris?

  So what's the lesson about, for somebody listening, about failure? How should we view and respond to failure?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  It's really hard, because I can't say that I respond well to it when it happens. I do my best to meditate as consistently as possible, and not as consistent as I should be, and probably, certainly not as you. But, by the way, I will say, when I do consistently meditate and do things like breath work, my brain is just better, it's more resilient. It responds to these things in a better way. But I hate failure. You know, there's a line, there's that famous Tom Brady line. He's like, "I hate losing more than I love winning." And there's something about that line that I understand. I mean, there's this kind of instinctive feeling that a lot of us have, I think a lot of people share, which is failure

• 25:51Speaker 01

  or losing is really, really hard. And it's scary. And then business can be catastrophic. What I have tried to learn over the years, and to kind, as I've gotten more experienced with failure, and as I have, as I've seen what has happened in the aftermath of it, I really do try and think about it as something that's supposed to happen. You know, I know, and I don't talk about this because it's just so private. And in the world that, you know, I kind of live in, which is, you know, the Bay Area, and I don't talk about religion, but I do believe in God, you know? And again, I'll just stop there, because I know it makes

• 26:34Speaker 01

  some people uncomfortable, or whatever. But I just, I feel like there's a reason why things happen. And it's not like predestination, or, you know, a plan or something, but there's, there are elements of that that I kind of hold on to that do help me through those moments, because I've seen it happen in the past. You know, there have been so many jobs and opportunities that didn't come my way, but had they come my way, that path would not have been as rich and meaningful and fulfilling as the one that I eventually took.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  And I, and I don't attribute that journey, that direction, to like, my fortitude, or my, you know, my brilliance. I mean, a lot of it was luck. A lot of it was, you know, like, there are two forks, and like, that was the fork I wanted 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,

• 27:56Speaker 01

  which I love, because there is no endpoint. 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. Like, 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 have made a billion dollars. Like, they're not, they're not like Scrooge McDuck, sitting in their, you know, 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 part of the world. And it has become easier over

• 28:32Speaker 01

  time. And now, I really try to, I 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 I think I need to take, because I was thinking about this, you know, this idea of injury, or exposing yourself to discomfort or humiliation recently. I'm very good at exercising every day. I work out every morning, and I work out 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

• 29:14Speaker 01

  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. But those little

• 29:53Speaker 01

  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 on 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. But eventually, you know, on the show, it eventually works out. And there, you can

• 30:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  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 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 social media as a form of narcissism. And nobody in their

• 31:33Speaker 01

  teens or twenties or thirties really does. Like, most people in that age bracket don't think it's weird for people to show off their bodies, to, you know, to show these beautiful places around the world where they're visiting. And for me, it's harder because I, it's not like native to who I am to go out and to make videos about, about these lessons that I've learned. But I've started to do it. And sometimes, some people who have been, you know, 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, who don't know

• 32:17Speaker 01

  how I built this, or don't know the things that I talk about. I 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, this lesson that I've learned, and hopefully it will be useful for you. And that's it. And, 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, but it's worth trying.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  And so it's sort of this, 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. Like, failure happens for a reason.

• 33:11Dan Harris?

  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.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:35Dan Harris?

  Why are you doing this? Otherwise, you don't have a North Star.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Simon, by the way, I went to college with Simon, and he's a friend of mine. And he's such a smart person. It'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 and these, we learned about the Italian Renaissance, and we, we went to, you know, Ostia and Rome and had

• 34:22Speaker 01

  tours around ancient Rome. And, you know, look, admittedly, there were times where our boys were just bored out of their minds. And we, and they would just look at us and say, Mom, Dad, or 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.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  And, and you hear the story about the doors. And the doors, there was this competition in Florence to build, the Medici's who ran the city, they 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, like, all these guys lived at the same time. It was this incredible flowering 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

• 35:47Speaker 01

  really wanted this job. And he came in second place. He was the runner-up. He didn't win this prize. It went to Ghiberti. And Brunelleschi was, he failed, you know, he, it was, 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 Medici's 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, there was other things for him to do there. And Rome was like, it wasn't that interesting, there wasn't much going on. But at the time, there was this renewed interest in ancient Rome, and all of this excavation

• 36:32Speaker 01

  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 Brunelleschi 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, this art that was lost for almost a thousand years. He learns about how Romans used cranes and other equipment to build buildings. And about, after about 15 years of doing this, he gets, he eventually gets work, working on the Vatican. And his reputation starts to grow. Back in Florence, they're like, wait, what's going on? How did we, why did this guy leave Florence? So about, you know, 10, 15 years later, they

• 37:14Speaker 01

  beg him to come back to Florence to work on the cathedral, to build the dome. And he ends up, he ends up building the dome of the cathedral, which is a masterpiece. And today, you know, everybody remembers Brunelleschi. I mean, Ghiberti's 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 five, 600 years ago with no modern equipment. I mean, he's the guy that everybody remembers. But in order to be that person, he had to have that failure, you know, 15, 20 years earlier. He had to kind of go into exile to Rome.

• 37:54Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  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, you know, 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. You 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 gotta do the ceiling? That's his masterpiece. I mean, that's why people go to Rome. They go to Rome to see

• 38:38Speaker 01

  the Sistine Chapel ceiling. No one's looking at Raphael. I mean, they're beautiful, the paintings that Raphael did, but most people are just looking up. You know, and 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.

• 38:59Dan Harris?

  That 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 free associate 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.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  It'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, I mean, there's a lot of validity to this idea that, you know, there are people who have privileges that are unearned, right? That, that just happened because of the way they're born. Like, Prince Harry was born Prince Harry. Like, he was born a prince. Like, 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

• 40:25Speaker 01

  around that idea and that word is when it comes to... Other 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's, you know, 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 twenties where he was

• 41:09Speaker 01

  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. So 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?

• 41:44Dan Harris?

  Well, we moved out of the city to the suburbs during the pandemic.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Got it. Okay. 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, I'll be walking through, through New York City and I'll, 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 and then like the movie just shifts and it's their, it's their story, you know, and because, 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

• 42:28Speaker 01

  the last hour or week or day. Like you, 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. Like 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 it 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 and 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

• 43:13Speaker 01

  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. There are also things that are, that we don't know about people. And I think that one of the things that I, 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

• 43:54Speaker 01

  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, 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, this, these definitions of privilege, I can never do these things. I 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, and people from

• 44:38Speaker 01

  really different backgrounds, because I, there are kind of lessons to, not maybe not lessons, but I think there, there are reasons to feel inspired by, you know, people who, 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 am a big believer in luck. You know, I think luck is a, and one of these big intangibles. I think I'm very lucky that I went through all these failures. The luckiest thing that happened to me in my life was, was meeting the person who's my wife. You know, I met her at a barbecue in Washington DC and in 2000, the year 2000, she was a law student. I saw her there. We

• 45:21Speaker 01

  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? How, 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. And 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

• 46:06Speaker 01

  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, a life. It's my marriage, first and foremost. Like I, that to me has been, has been the most important thing, the hardest, not hardest, actually hasn't been hard at all, because my wife is, and just an incredibly gracious and, and kind person. And, you know, I'm the difficult one in, in our marriage, but she's just an amazing person. But 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,

• 46:51Speaker 01

  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.

• 47:04Dan Harris?

  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 upon relationships as a source of strength?

• 47:22Speaker 01

  It depends, of course. It's different with every, with every story. And there's certainly examples from the show where, you know, marriages fell apart because, 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 sort of furniture and, 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, her ex husband

• 48:04Speaker 01

  was also involved in raising the kids, but she was the primary caregiver and building this business with investors. And it was a lot, you know. But at the, you know, we've also had examples of businesses that have been started and sustained by couples. I mean, the, the, one of the best examples is Cliff Bar. I mean, Cliff Bar was turned into a multi billion dollar business with two married co-founders and 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, they're, they're pushing 40 years of marriage

• 48:45Speaker 01

  and, 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. Not the business, but, but building a, a sustainable partnership with one person. It's, it's, 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, 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, you probably, you know, you, you have two kids?

• 49:28Dan Harris?

  Just one, a boy.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Just one? And how old is your, how old is he?

• 49:32Dan Harris?

  He's nine.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  He's nine, yes. That's a 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. And it's, it's not like, you know, it, it's not like work and, and, and family time have

• 50:13Speaker 01

  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, I live my life. Like I will, you know, sometimes if I go and do a live show, I'll, you know, my family can come, they'll come, you know, they'll, 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, and stuff like that. So I think there are ways that, that many founders have figured out how to kind of balance that, the personal side with the, the business side.

• 50:47Dan Harris?

  What 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 seemed 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 on to something when they, you know, stress, you know, the stronger delineation between work and the rest of life.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  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, was so, not only did I love it because it was funny, it was very, very funny and really well-written and I learned a lot, but also I, 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, you know, there was like David Pogue had done some stuff and there was this guy at ABC, Dan Abrams, I don't know, he also did some stuff and he created businesses.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  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, you 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, 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

• 52:45Speaker 01

  I knew that I didn't want to be sort of part of, I don't want to work for a big, I don't want to work for a company. I wanted to work for myself. I 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, 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 were doing things like that. And I eventually wrote my own book and then, you know, created my company.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  I sort of tread lightly here, carefully here, because for me, work is, I love what I do. You 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, I have found, and I think, you know, one of the gifts of, of this career of being, you know, of getting to be a journalist, I don't call myself a journalist anymore, but, but having been steeped in that world is you have to listen, you have to learn how to listen, you know?

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Listening is way more important than talking and the benefits of listening, what you get out of that, I mean, you know, I'm not the first person to say this or books about this, but the benefits are infinite to sit and to listen to somebody's ideas and then to engage with them and to 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 a, in not, not in an adversarial way, but in a, in a very granular and intensive way, you, you, it creates a bond with somebody. Like even this conversation, we'll, we'll talk, you know, over the course of this conversation.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  And like, if I, I've never met you, but I've read your book and I know, I know a little bit about you. If I saw you on the streets in two years, I would say, let's, let's go get, get a coffee. Let's just sit down and hang out because we've had this conversation. The, the thing is that's amazing is, and you know this, when you, when you listen to somebody and you ask them questions, our brains are wired to want to like you. And Dale Carnegie wrote about this in How to Win Friends and Influence People. He's like, there's a whole chapter in there about like, ask questions, ask people about their lives because that will make them, you know, more interested in, in, in you. And it's true.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  I developed these bonds with people because that's just what happens when you're asking somebody about, to, to share these intimate details of their lives. And 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, even though I've gotten a little better at it, I, 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.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  And so I, I don't put like a limit on what I, on work. I 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, 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.

• 56:56Dan Harris?

  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? I 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?

• 57:38Dan Harris?

  And then the other piece of it is, what am I expecting from my teams? Because for them, I can't, all I can expect from them is to do the best at, at the job that we've agreed upon, that they're, 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.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  And I think that, that communicating that is critical. You know, there's this, something that you just said that, that, that is so important and that triggered this, this thought in my head, which is around this idea of scale versus sustainability, right? And so in, in the world of how I built this, so many of the conversations are about scale. Like 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, of 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.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  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 and it's not always a healthy answer. We did an episode of the show a couple of months ago and it was with Dominique Ansel and you'll, you'll know who he is because of, you live in New York and his famous bakery, the Dominique Ansel Bakery. And this is the guy who invented the cronut, okay? And, and basically the backstory is he was an amazing pastry chef. He had worked at, you know, for Daniel Balloud 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 a cronut and he just started serving it.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  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. I 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, like there's virtually nothing worth waiting in line for two hours or.

• 59:48Dan Harris?

  Have you ever had a cronut?

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're great.

• 59:50Dan Harris?

  It's fucking delicious.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  They're amazing.

• 59:53Dan Harris?

  I would wait.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  But, but two, but two hours, you wouldn't wait for two hours. You would just say, you know what, I'm going to 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 on this unclutching cash and saying, dude, you've got to open a factory and just start making cronuts and every supermarket should be selling cronuts and cronuts here and cronuts there, just like license it, license your name. And, 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.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  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. The work wasn't satisfying. I wasn't seeing my family. I wasn't, 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.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  What he realized was he didn't want to do any of that. And today, Dominique Ansel 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 to, 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. Today, it's a business that is very successful, sustainable. It's got a really, you know, solid team working on it. Dominique Ansel is really happy and proud of what he's doing.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  And I think that there's so much, and what I love about that episode is that scale doesn't always, 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, $5 million a year, $1 million a year, like, does it really make a difference if you're gonna bring in two, or five, or 100 times that if your life is going to be a nightmare? And 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

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  us wants to do it all the time, and that's understandable. I identify with this Dominique Ansel 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. Not, probably not all the time, and certainly there are moments of stress, but I think that in general, that's important to most of the people I work with.

• 1:03:15Dan Harris?

  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 there, you gotta go for it, you gotta be big, you wanna, you know, I bought that. But actually, you can have, it really is individual, and it kind of goes back to what you were saying about work-life balance. It's, it's up to you. You can have a great life with modest career ambitions, and you don't have to follow anybody else's script, and so really just pick the path that's gonna scratch your particular itch.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  Dan, do you know the happiest person and the most fulfilled person? And actually, in many ways, really, my model for, 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 me 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, you know, cordial and stuff, but they got divorced 30 years ago. My mother, you know, 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.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  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. They have an incredibly rich, like, like Robert Waldinger, who you know well, right? And he led the famous Harvard study about happiness, and his, his conclusion was my mom's life, that the more relationships you have, it is the best determinant of happiness

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  as you, 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, and, but she's also really worked at, at reminding herself why she has reasons to be happy, even with difficult things that have happened in her life, and, and, you know, trauma that she grew up with as a child. She really does things like practice gratitude. And so, living the life she lives without the complexities of, you know, of endless,

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  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. I mean, I, I see that with her.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  I mean, she lives on very little money, and I don't know anybody happier or fulfilled than my mom.

• 1:06:58Dan Harris?

  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?

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a horrible title, it's a horrible name. And if I could rename it, I would. Although, that being said, the original name that I had for the show, and God, thank God, somebody was watching over me, that, that, for some reason, this name was already registered, but God, I would be so embarrassed if we were talking about the name of that, of the show today, was, I wanted 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, it's not, of course, a show about how I built this. It's, it's, it's a show about risk-taking and creative thinking and struggle and setbacks and failures.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  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, in modern history, of anything being built by one person. You think about great creative founders, and, 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, you know, X, which became PayPal, and, and obviously

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Tesla, and SpaceX, and, you know, solar companies, whole drilling companies. He didn't actually found Tesla, he joined Tesla, you know, 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, I mean PayPal and, and X, that involved Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman and all these incredible people who, who were part of that process. Even Tesla, you know, he had great designers and great engineers around him. So there's no question that, that the success of a founder is also, is also the luck of the people that you find around you, that you bring in, because sometimes, you know,

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  you bring somebody in and they're not the right person. So I acknowledge that the name How I Built This is, is not exactly or entirely accurate, it's not an accurate reflection of what the show is about, but as, as you know, in our, 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, and we do our best to mitigate that in, in the storytelling.

• 1:09:52Dan Harris?

  I don't think it's a terrible name at all. Guy, it's so cool to talk to you, you do such great work, so it's really cool to have you on the 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 gonna want to get more from you after hearing you.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  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, so 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 kids' science podcast for kids aged 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 through Wow in 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.

• 1:10:53Dan Harris?

  So cool to meet you, albeit virtually, Guy. Thank you for coming on.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Thank you, Dan, thanks so much, thanks for having me.

• 1:10:59Dan Harris?

  I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% 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 Cashmere 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

• 1:11:43Dan Harris?

  wisdom like Buddhism or from modern science. It's short, it's easy to read, it's worth it, it's free. Sign up at danharris.com.