How I Built Resilience: Live with Kevin Hart

Actor and comedian Kevin Hart speaks to Guy about the Black Lives Matter protests and offers advice to future activists, entertainers and entrepreneurs. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  We get support from US Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't. Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems.

• 0:45Guy Raz?

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• 1:30Guy Raz?

  based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2:00 AM kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one Hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people?

• 2:14Guy Raz?

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• 2:54Guy Raz?

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• 3:36Guy Raz?

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• 4:21Guy Raz?

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• 5:06Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Hey, everyone. So as many of you know, we've been running a series of conversations since March to learn how founders are building resilience during the global health and economic crisis. And we were planning to devote an entire week to the entertainment industry with guests like Troy Carter and Kevin Hart. But given the events of the past several weeks, we wanted to broaden our focus and join the conversation that's been happening across the country and around the world

• 5:50Guy Raz?

  about racial justice. And today, we're going to hear from Kevin Hart. Now, you may know Kevin as a stand-up comedian and actor, but he's also an entrepreneur, the founder of his own production company. He's a tech investor. And he's got a new audiobook out about the very topic of resilience, which we'll talk about a little later. But first, Kevin wanted to reflect on the mass demonstrations calling for racial and social justice. How are you doing? How are you? How are you feeling about everything that's going on right now?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's a, it's a, it's a crazy time. This is one of those moments in life where you, you realize that history has an opportunity to either repeat itself or be made. The things that people ignored have grown to a point where there is no getting around it now. And what was just some voices has become most voices. You're seeing a global effort in saying this can no longer happen. There's a piece of small happiness in there because when I'm witnessing mainstream America

• 7:03Speaker 01

  get involved and be vocal, that's what's been missing for a long time. So it seems as if this time around now, after the death of George Floyd and how it happened, it's so present and in your face that other people are like, oh, oh, wait, this is what people are talking about. Oh, I had no idea. Oh, that is wrong. And now people are starting to join. But I'm tired, man. I'm frustrated. You know, I wasn't my jolly self that I normally am today because you, you, you kind of just get beaten up. At, at what is.

• 7:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah. On the show, we had Troy Carter on, and he says hello, by the way, because I know you're old friends. And, you know, Troy, I asked Troy, same question I'm going to ask you, which is, do you think this time it will be different? The response will be different? And, and what he said was, if it's not, then shame on America, you know? And, and what do you think? I mean, we've seen people out on the streets for, you know, Hemet Till, all the way through to Michael Brown, to, to what's happening now. Do you feel this, this time it's different?

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Well, there was somebody that was being interviewed on CNN. It was a black man, it was a black journalist. And he said, the names keep changing, but the color of their skin doesn't.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  And that's so ridiculous. When you say things like shame on America, it's past that to me. You know, it's past the shame on you. You're talking about a world that is supposed to get better. We are all here because of the efforts that those before us put in to help allow us to do the things that we do. For me, as a black man, an entertainer, an actor, and now CEO, all the hats that I'm able to wear, they're worn because of the efforts that other black individuals, men and women, put into, put into life.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  They broke ground so that more ground could be made and more ground could be broken. So, right now, if we don't break new ground, then my kids, you know, I'm a, I'm a father of three, about to be a father of four. What am I looking at for the future of mine? If, as an adult, the response is shame on you for not doing right? That can't be anymore. We've been yelling and screaming for so long, but we need the help of mainstream America. We need the alignment. And, and that's what I felt like I'm starting to see. I'm seeing an alignment, and I haven't seen that, not in my life. I haven't seen it at this level.

• 9:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah, President Obama spoke earlier today, and he said, he said something really similar, which is that the difference between the demonstrations and the protests today versus the 1960s is there's just a really wide, like swath of people who are taking part in it. And I thought that was a really interesting observation. We are taking questions for Kevin Hart through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, so please ask away, and I'll try to get to some of them before we have to let Kevin go. So, you've got this new book out called The Decision: Overcoming Today's BS for Tomorrow's Success. A lot of people who only know you as an actor and comedian don't know that you've got a production company. I mean, you're an entrepreneur, you had a really kind of, I mean, you really kind of, it took you like 10 years to break into Hollywood, it took you a long time, and you write, you've

• 10:40Guy Raz?

  written about this, you're a writer. And in the book, you've got this idea called Weapons, 11 Weapons of Success. Can you tell us a little bit more about the concept and how it's applied to your life?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Well, I can give you a very simplistic version and explanation, right? So people that succeed and people that find success, after they have it or find it, it becomes theirs and it's not often shared. That journey is not often shared. It's something that they put in their pocket and they just keep it with them forever. But there's so many people that want to do the same thing, which is succeed. And that doesn't mean that they have to do it your way. It doesn't mean that they have to do exactly what you did. But a story that can inform them of how you did gives them a different lens to look through.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  And unless you go search for this information, you're never going to find it. It's not offered, it's not volunteered. And that's a problem. For me, as a guy that's done so much and achieved so much, but at the same time failed, there's a mindset that I adapted along the way. And the things that I now use and value as my keys to success, or overlooking what seems to be a closed door and figuring out a way to find the key that opens that particular door, there's a thought process that goes with that. So what I do is lay it out for people to come and simply be informed.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  And you know, light bulbs go off as you get older and as you grow and you fall in love with these discoveries. So I'm talking to people about how to fall in love with the opportunity of success, with the opportunity of pushing yourself to limits that you only know that you're capable of achieving. That's what this is about. So, you know, in life, it's all about the decision. You can make a right, a left, a U-turn, you can follow the map, or you can choose to wing it and go in a different direction. It's all about your decision. How do we take responsibility for that? That's what this is about.

• 12:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, on our show, on How I Built This, we talk so much about failure with entrepreneurs because failure is more interesting than success, right? Like, we learn more through the failures of others than we do through their successes. And I really feel like the failures I've had in my career, you know, the jobs I didn't get and the directions I didn't take were blessings. They're really blessings. I mean, they're hard at the time, they were crushing. But had those failures not happened, I wouldn't be doing what I do now. Is there a failure like that in your career that was just crushing at the moment? But when you look back on it, you think, God, thank God that actually happened.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Tons of them. If I went down this list of failures, you would be, you'd be mind blown. Every TV show that I didn't get, in my eyes, was the biggest opportunity in life.

• 13:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Every pilot that I auditioned for, and it was between me and one other person. And I got it, and this is going to be the one. This is it. This is gonna launch me into whatever level of success. This is what I've been waiting on. Failed. I can go to a list of comedic opportunities where I thought that stage performance was gonna be the performance to change my life. You know, we tend to put so much pressure. Oh, my God, if I don't do good today, it's, everything's gonna be over. I'm gonna fail. They're never gonna talk to me again. I'm never gonna get another opportunity. I gotta knock this out the park.

• 14:19Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Nobody said that no other opportunities come from this. Nobody said that this is the end of you. You said that to yourself, and now you've worked yourself up. You made the decision to do that. So for me, all my failures were failures that I made so much more heavier. The reality is, they weren't that heavy. Soul Plane did not do good in the box office. And I said Soul Plane was supposed to be the movie that was supposed to make me the next Eddie Murphy. Oh, my God, they bootlegged it. How could they do this to me and my opportunity? It's over.

• 14:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  It wasn't over. That gave me some knowledge, that gave me some understanding, that gave me preparation for my next opportunity to know what to look for and what to be OK with. Your attitude changes when your knowledge changes.

• 15:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Your knowledge changes when your experiences change. And those experiences don't all have to be good. It doesn't, and it's not going to be that way. And the more you understand that, the better off you'll be.

• 15:24Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Kevin will talk about his 10-year struggle to break into the entertainment industry and the lessons he's learned along the way. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 15:42Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This, Resilience Edition. Kevin Hart has a pretty impressive resume, from blockbuster movies that have made hundreds of millions of dollars to TV development deals with major networks. He also runs a production company called Heartbeat Productions, making him one of the busiest people in Hollywood. And while we were talking last week in our live conversation, viewers had all sorts of things they wanted to ask him. We've got a lot of questions coming in from Facebook and YouTube. I'm going to ask you, this is from Norman Tabora. What advice do you have for young men of color who are trying to navigate white spaces? Let's say in the entertainment industry, for example.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  My best piece of advice for you is to understand what you can do. Once again, I can only use myself as an example. So I was told that comedy starring an African-American lead wouldn't transfer Universal. They just, they just don't. And within that conversation, after hearing it so many times, my fight became asking studios for the opportunity to be marketed internationally, for an opportunity for my movie to be shown internationally. And when we had the movie ride along, I had my tour numbers. And I said, people are telling me that this doesn't translate,

• 17:03Speaker 01

  but look at my box office ticket sales. It does. My numbers internationally are just as strong domestically. All I'm asking for is an opportunity. And I fought for that opportunity. And the studio finally met me and said, we're going to give you a try. And when it gave me a try, I said, I'm gonna follow the pattern of what Will Smith and Tom Cruise did. I wanna go. I wanna go over there with this try. Send me over and let me market, let me promote, let me do everything I possibly can. And I went and I did the work. I went and did junkets and did every interview and shook every hand and took every picture. And a movie came out and the movie had success. And it didn't mean that I was an international star. It meant that I showed that I can get success, but I'm nowhere near where I need to be.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  So every movie, I became repetitive with the same effort and even more. I wanted to go over there longer. I wanted to do a bigger junket, a bigger tour, shake more hands, take more pictures, make a bigger premiere until it caught up to what I thought my comedic likeliness was on an international scale. And after putting all of that in, you look up today and my movies translate. And it's not because I just happened to just, they just put it up and people said, oh, we're gonna see it. I put the work in. I had to work those markets the same way that I worked the domestic ones. And it didn't come easy. So the challenges are, we're behind the eight ball.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, it's a tougher, it's a tougher journey for us than it is for others. And that's what we're seeing now in HD in the world. So the only way to break that mold is to grind and fight and be a part of the conversation of change. And you can't be a part of that conversation if you're not a part of self-belief. So have the belief in yourself as well.

• 18:52Guy Raz?

  Um, it's a question going back to what you were talking about earlier, um, from Leo Avila, um, via Facebook. And he asks, how do you overcome the fear of failure? Cause a lot of people are scared of it, understandably, Kevin, you know, if you've got so much to lose and you go into an enterprise or business or you have an idea, I mean, it can be really scary.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  For me, I've seen the bottom. And when you've been to the bottom, you know that the bottom isn't that bad, right? The, the bottom is the place that you start from and that you work from. The fear comes in losing what you have or not accomplishing something to get you more. So there's a fear and there's a want that's attached to that. The reality is, if it doesn't happen, then what? We all have the ability to figure it out. I thought I was going to the NBA. In high school, I played varsity basketball. You could not tell me that I was not going to the NBA. Nothing else was an option. I didn't go to the NBA.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  The day when I realized, you know what? I'm not that good at this game that I thought that I was good at all these years. I gotta figure it out. There's several doors out here and those doors are meant to be open. You can't act as if a door being closed is life ending. It's not. You can always retake a test. You can always go back to school. You can always strengthen your mind if you can strengthen your body. And if you're in a situation where your options are very limited because of surroundings, then find out the people that were in those same surroundings that have possibly made it out and find out how. That's information. Apply it. Turn that stuff into a muscle. Turn it into a muscle. It can be done.

• 20:40Guy Raz?

  I think, I think Leo got a great answer to his question. Kevin, you're, I mean, put on an entrepreneurial hat for a sec. I mean, you're involved in so many ventures. You've got the streaming service and a production company. You, you're doing so many other different things. From your perspective, what role do entrepreneurs and the business community have right now to play in really finally addressing the issues of police brutality and racial injustice? Because it, it seems like you can't be silent. I mean, being silent is taking a side.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Being silent is, it's catastrophic. Your silence basically says that you're not aware and you don't care. And that means that you're okay and you're content with the way that things are. And if you are, it's a problem because we all know that the way things are is wrong. I mean, it's wrong. So as an entrepreneur, that means that you're a person that moves different. You're a person that creates. You're a person that evolves and you evolve because of this crazy ambition that entrepreneurs have. So when you are a part of that, that means that you're a part of groundbreaking behavior. You're a part of change. You're a part of progression.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  This conversation that we're having now about social injustice is based around change needing to happen. It aligns itself with the definition of an entrepreneur.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  So to our young people that are in that space, this is a very important time for us all to not be the smartest people in the room, but to be together. That's the important thing. It's about us really holding hands and going, you know what? I hear you. I understand. And when you understand, that means you're on the side of change. So to all entrepreneurs out there, I beg you and urge you not to be silent. Saying nothing is the worst thing ever. It's literally the worst thing that you can do right now.

• 22:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Kevin Hart, so great to have you on. So much wisdom and so much to think about. And we really appreciate it. Thank you.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Thank you, man. Thanks for having me. And to all the listeners, I would just say thank you. And my assumption is that you guys are taking the side of just being a part of the change.

• 23:08Guy Raz?

  Thanks, Kevin.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Thank you, man.

• 23:10Guy Raz?

  That's from my conversation with actor, comedian, producer, and entrepreneur Kevin Hart. To see our full interview, you can go to facebook.com/HowIBuiltThis. And if you want to see all of our past live interviews, you can find them there or at youtube.com/NPR. If you want to find out more about the How I Built This Resilience series or other virtual NPR events, you can go to nprpresents.org. And of course, you can check your feed every Monday for a brand new, full-length episode of How I Built This. This episode was produced by Candace Lim with help from John Isabella, Julia Carney, Gianna Capadona, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, and I'll see you in a few days. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.