1007 An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Success w/Guy Raz

“Entrepreneurship isn’t about the money, it’s about a sense of purpose.”Whether you're a successful longtime entrepreneur or just considering launching your first business, this episode is for you. Award-winning journalist Guy Raz has interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs on his podcast, "How I Built This," and now he's distilled all the wisdom he's learned into a new book. Today he joins Lewis to discuss the key qualities that set the best entrepreneurs apart, the importance of focusing on mission over money, and the importance of embracing failure. For more: https://www.lewishowes.com/1007For a great deal on amazing t-shirts that Lewis wears for podcast interviews, visit https://www.cutsclothing.com/greatness Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,007 with Guy Raz.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:30Lewis Howes?

  Estee Lauder once said, "I never dreamed about success. I worked for it." And Oprah Winfrey said, "You know you're on the road to success if you would do your job and not be paid for it." My guest today is Guy Raz, and he's been studying success and entrepreneurship for many, many years. He's one of the most listened to podcast hosts in history, as the voice of the super popular How I Built This, and Wisdom from the Top, among others. Now, he's distilled the wisdom he's learned into a new book, How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs. And in this episode, we dive into whether entrepreneurs are born or made. I thought this was interesting, because I

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  never thought I would be an entrepreneur. The key skills that set successful entrepreneurs apart from the rest. The difference between focusing on money versus the mission. This is huge. What you can learn from failure, and so much more. Make sure, as you're listening, to share this with someone who you think needs to hear it. You can just copy and paste the link, lewishouse.com/1007, or copy and paste wherever you're listening to podcasts. And a quick reminder to subscribe to the School of Greatness, as well as leaving us a rating and review. Get ready, in a moment, for Guy Raz.

• 1:52Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about our guest today. He is the legendary Guy Raz in the house, the host of How I Built This, which is one of my favorite shows, all about entrepreneurship, building businesses. I feel like you're the face of public radio, but you can't really say that. You're the face, but you're kind of like the voice of public radio for a lot of people who listen on NPR and into your podcast. So, so glad that you're here, man. You've had so much success over your career as a journalist. You do an amazing job of getting to the heart of what makes people tick. So, welcome to School of Greatness.

• 2:25Guy Raz?

  Thank you. Thank you so much for such a generous introduction and for welcoming me.

• 2:29Lewis Howes?

  Of course. And, and I want to get into it about entrepreneurship because this is something you focus on a lot. I've got a big entrepreneurship audience as well. And before I ask more about you, I want to talk about just what you've learned with entrepreneurship. And this is going to be either a very vague, broad question, or something that you know the answer to right away. And I'm curious, what is the one thing, the main thing that you feel from all the interviews you've done that makes great entrepreneurs great?

• 2:58Guy Raz?

  There's a bunch of answers to that question. And, and some of them are predictable, like resilience, or a strong sense of optimism, you know, the ability to get back up when you get knocked down. And those are all true. Like, you have to have that. But the one thing, like, because not every person I've interviewed has gone to college, or is educated. They're not all book smart. They're not all charismatic. They're not, you know, they're different. They're, they're like us, right? But the one thing that, that binds every person I interview is they've all, they all either have naturally, or have learned to develop the ability to withstand rejection, to basically

• 3:39Guy Raz?

  accept that lots of people are going to say no, and keep kind of grinding through it.

• 3:44Lewis Howes?

  One of the hardest things is to deal with rejection, deal with people judging you, deal with people saying that like, this is bad, this is horrible, this isn't going to work. Because you want that confirmation. We want confirmation when we're doing something of like, yes, you're amazing, go do it. But when everyone's saying no, and you can go through it, because at some point, great entrepreneurs are going to get people to say no.

• 4:04Guy Raz?

  Yes.

• 4:04Lewis Howes?

  And at some, you've got to learn how to get through it.

• 4:07Guy Raz?

  I interviewed this guy, Topio Otana, a couple of weeks ago. And he founded this company called Calendly. Have you ever used Calendly? It's a really great.

• 4:14Lewis Howes?

  I mean, everyone for podcast interviews, it's like all we do is schedule.

• 4:18Guy Raz?

  It's best.

• 4:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Guy Raz?

  So he started this, I don't know, like six or seven years ago and um his first job while he was a college student was selling ADT home monitoring services door to door, right? So he's in Athens, Georgia. And he's this kid who was from Nigeria. He came to the US when he was 16. And he's going door to door in Athens, Georgia, selling um knocking on doors, trying to sell people home monitoring systems. And I said to him, I said, didn't you ever get discouraged with all those doors slamming in your face? Didn't you tired of hearing people saying like, no soliciting? And he said, no, because I knew that that there was a hit rate and you know, eventually uh one of those doors would open and the person would say yes, and I would make a a commission on that sale and that was more money than I ever had in my life. So it was fine. I mean,

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 5:04Guy Raz?

  It's a similar story with Sarah Blakely, who founded Spanx. Like she sold fax machines door to door. It was, she describes it as torture, you know? She, but it steeled her when it came time to starting her business, like she had to find a textile manufacturer that was willing to make a prototype of these undergarments that no one had ever seen before. And all these textile plants said no, until one finally said yes, but she was ready for that process because she had gone through like rejection exposure therapy.

• 5:35Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Yeah, like she had a PhD in rejection for, I think it was six or seven years she was doing door to door.

• 5:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:42Lewis Howes?

  And do you think it's harder for uh to get successful or to stay successful as entrepreneurs? Is it easier to like, okay, I made something work, this was success? Or is it easier once you get there to maintain?

• 5:56Guy Raz?

  It's a great question. I mean, I haven't put a lot of thought into it, but here here's what I would say. I think. Getting to a place where you have found some success, it's sort of like finding lift. It's like when an airplane, you know, takes lift. And then, and then, you know, you hit cruising altitude at thirty five thousand feet and there will be turbulence. But I think that in general, in my experience, I, I think, once you have achieved some level of success, it's easier to build on that because people have seen you succeed in some fashion or form. Like, like what I do, what you do. I mean, twenty five years ago, when I started out on radio before I was podcasting, I couldn't get on the air. Why would somebody give me a chance, you know?

• 6:41Guy Raz?

  I had no track record. I had no, no one knew who I was. Nobody knew if I was any good and I sucked, by the way.

• 6:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:48Guy Raz?

  That's how it is. You suck when you start. You suck and then you suck less and then a little less and a little less. But, you know, once I started to go on air, it was like that, that domino falls. And other people's like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, you can, you can, you can do a story or, or you sure you, we'll, we'll take your, your, your pitch. And it's the same thing with, I think, with entrepreneurship, which is, once you, you know, it doesn't mean that you're gonna, if, if you start a bill, like, is Kevin Systrom gonna be able to found another billion dollar Instagram account? Probably not. I mean, that, but it, but will he continue to be successful in any endeavor he does? Yeah, and he'll also have some failures. But, you know, he has that sort of, and most entrepreneurs who have, who have achieved something, who have created something and built something,

• 7:33Guy Raz?

  even things that have failed, they have that, like, that lift, you know, that keeps them, keeps them flying.

• 7:39Lewis Howes?

  And do you think anyone could be a thriving, successful entrepreneur? I mean, like sustainably making money and having a business with customers? Do you think it's possible for anyone or some of us just not wired? Because when I was a kid growing up, I was never into baseball cards. I didn't do the lemonade stand thing. I, I never made any money. I was like an athlete and I didn't know the concept of, here's a value, here's a skill, go sell it, try to get some money. I didn't know that concept until I was twenty five and I needed to make money until it was a necessity and there was no other way. And two thousand eight happened, there was no jobs. And I was like, well, I gotta figure out what I'm gonna do to survive.

• 8:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:20Lewis Howes?

  Is it a thing that people can learn? Or is it kind of you that got it, you don't?

• 8:25Guy Raz?

  I'm a thousand percent believer that.

• 8:29Guy Raz?

  Virtually every skill that entrepreneurs have are acquired. Now, there are some people, like Mark Cuban is a good example of just a freak of nature. Like, when he was in his teens, he read a book called How to Retire at Age Thirty-Five. Okay, he wanted to become, like, he was determined to become a millionaire by age thirty. He went, he picked a college program where he could graduate in three years to save money. He instantly went to Dallas because he thought there were opportunities there. He got a job bartending at night because he knew it would stuff his pockets with tips. And in the daytime, he started selling computer software. I mean, he was a millionaire by age thirty, like, he, but he's a freak of nature, right? In that sense, I think most entrepreneurs acquire these skills over time.

• 9:13Guy Raz?

  I mean, let's go back to rejection for a moment. So some people are just naturally easier with it, right? Like, you, you remember, you probably knew, like, that guy in high school who would just ask a hundred people out on dates, and he wouldn't care if ninety-nine of them said no, because he knew that one would eventually say yes, right?

• 9:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Guy Raz?

  Now, I was not that kid, you might not have been that.

• 9:33Lewis Howes?

  I was not that kid, I was terrified of girls.

• 9:35Guy Raz?

  I was terrified, right? I was terrified of the, of people saying, like, no. So, it's sort of a weird kind of example, but, you know, the, the idea of going door to door to sell something, or pitching people on your product, going to investors, it's really hard. It requires the ability to hear no and to keep fighting. And, you know, one of the insights that I gained from, that I learned from the show is, just in this weird, it's like this weird thing that's happened, which is that I have ended up interviewing a significant number of Mormon entrepreneurs, okay? Now Mormons are a tiny percentage of the American population, like, two percent, okay? And they have a pretty significantly high rate of entrepreneurship.

• 10:23Guy Raz?

  In their, in their community, in their culture and also business success. So what is it that they're doing differently? Well, they're doing something very different than pretty much every other population in America.

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  They're like door-to-door salesmen.

• 10:36Guy Raz?

  They send their 18-year-olds to the country around the world. And they say, go live somewhere for two years and get as many converts as you can. You're gonna have to knock on a thousand doors to get five, 10 people to accept the Book of Mormon.

• 10:49Lewis Howes?

  And you have to learn the new language and speak a different language out of your comfort zone.

• 10:53Guy Raz?

  Perfectly, and you've got to pay your own way. And by the way, you have to be polite and gracious and friendly. You can't be like, why are you slamming the door in my face? Like you are a Mormon missionary. You are, you're representing the church. Like you've got to be really polite and friendly and kind. So those kids go abroad for two years. They come back to the US, Utah or wherever, they start college. They're way more equipped than your average 21-year-old to start their lives and also to start a business. And it's a story that I've heard from David Neleman, the founder of JetBlue. It's a story, you know, I've heard from Joel Clark, the founder of Kodiak Cakes, the, you know, the protein powder pancakes. He got back from his mission in Australia and he started this company, this business. He had no fear of going door-to-door to sell pancake cakes.

• 11:38Guy Raz?

  And so it's, I'm not, you know, I'm not suggesting that everybody become a Mormon. I'm saying that, what I'm saying is that it's a really interesting kind of case study. You know, I don't think the church deliberately, you know, setting its, its young people up to be entrepreneurs, but it's setting them up to be independent. And, and so that's a learned skill. I mean Mormons are not more preternaturally more gifted in, in rejection of the ability with standard rejection. They just had two years of it. So they're better at it. And I think all of us can kind of replicate that in a, in a sense.

• 12:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's, I don't know if you've read the book Influence by Cialdini, or if you've studied any of his work, but it's essentially how to influence people. And a lot of people use it in business and marketing for like their sales pages and things like that. And a lot of sites like Amazon use the strategies. One might be social proof, one is like ability. Testimonials, all that different type of stuff. And I have a lot of Mormon friends as well, who are in the entrepreneurial world. And they just all seem to be successful. I'm like, I don't know. It's amazing, but it's like they all kind of follow these principles where like you just said, it's like they're all very kind. And people want to do business with kind people. They, they listen well. Uh, you know, so you always feel like you're the most interesting person in the room when they're just asking questions and listening.

• 12:55Lewis Howes?

  They are, you know, they usually come with a gift, like they'll give you, even if it's a, a book, it's like they're giving you a gift. Where you want to reciprocate, the law of reciprocity. And it's like they're following these natural ways of like building connection and building anticipation and desire. That just translates into their life in business in a beautiful way. So.

• 13:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:17Lewis Howes?

  I, I agree. And I think if everyone went door to door for a month. You would probably gain a lot of wisdom, but imagine having to learn a new language and go door to door for two years.

• 13:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Lewis Howes?

  Without your friends, you don't speak to your friends and family for I think six months at a time or something like that.

• 13:31Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 13:31Lewis Howes?

  You're out of your comfort zone.

• 13:32Guy Raz?

  Totally. And by the way, when I was a kid and you know, this is in the, you know, in the eighties. Like school fundraisers were going door to door to sell chocolate bars. Now, of course.

• 13:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 13:43Guy Raz?

  They don't allow that anymore because of safety reasons, even though on every objective standard. Uh, the, the United States is a much safer country today than it was in the 1980s. But you know, in the eighties, my parents were like, yeah, go sell your chocolate bars. And I would just walk around the neighborhood and knock on doors and. You know, now I think it'd be a little bit harder, but um, you know, kids were kind of exposed to that um, more than they are today. Um, I, I feel like when I was a kid, not to say that like it was better when I was younger. It's just to say that these are things that, that you can do, you can instill in yourself and in the people you know.

• 14:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Why is it so hard for us to learn about how to manage rejection? If that's the main skill, the number one key to success for a lot of these people is they, the ability to overcome rejection, why is it so hard for us as humans to, to deal with that?

• 14:28Guy Raz?

  Well, there's a, a really famous professor at Harvard named Ron Heifetz. He's a, teaches a course on leadership and he has this concept where he basically, he looks at successful and highly effective leaders and basically what they do is they're able to kind of step out of their own bodies and stand on a, like a proverbial balcony and look down at themselves in the situation they're in. Like Barack Obama is a really good example of this. He can just remove himself from a situation and just look and assess the whole situation. And it's almost like you've hired an outside consultant to tell you what you're doing wrong. Most of us don't do that. It's very hard to do that. It requires a lot of practice and training. I don't do that, you know?

• 15:08Guy Raz?

  And, you know, I think we, we tend to hope that the product or the idea or the concept that we're talking about will be validated by the people we know or even people we don't know because we believe in it. And I think for most of us, um, our, our, our passion and our belief and our connection and commitment to that can be fairly easily shattered if enough people are like, this sucks or this is stupid. But, but what I think this kind of rejection slash going to the balcony technique does is it enables you to take the long view and to say, no, you know, I, I mean, here's a, here's a great example. Tristan Walker, one of my favorite entrepreneurs I ever interviewed, he started this company called Bevel. Okay.

• 15:51Guy Raz?

  Now here's, here's the thing that most white men don't know. Uh, most white men go and buy, who shave, go and buy a razor. You get the Gillette five blade or six blade or eight blade.

• 16:01Lewis Howes?

  Mach three, mach seven, whatever.

• 16:02Guy Raz?

  And you like it because it got, has five blades and shaves your skin and it actually shaves under your skin. Well, if you have. You know curly hair and many African American men do that's not actually good for your skin and so shaving is really you know as Tristan explained it's very traumatic especially when young black men start to shave because they

• 16:25Lewis Howes?

  You break out you get bombs.

• 16:26Guy Raz?

  Razor bombs and scars and there you know there are no products that have spoken or or have really been developed for young black men and so he set out to build a razor it's called the Bevel and he didn't want to be like this razor that you found at like the bottom of the ethnic aisle he wanted it to be like an iPhone he wanted to be a beautiful razor and like a beautiful box that was right there next to Gillette and whatever else and was as premium and you know he had a lot of people saying there's no market for this or you know even though he knew that African Americans spend more on beauty products proportionally than almost any community in America he really and what he said to me was you know I said how did you how were you able to keep going when

• 17:11Guy Raz?

  you kept hearing no when you when when there are people were saying you know this is this is going nowhere and he said I kept going because I knew that if I couldn't make this work nobody could make this work and it was never going to see the light of day but I also knew that it had to see the light of day because because I needed it for me and I knew I knew a lot of other men needed it for them too and it's just such an inspiring idea you know

• 17:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah I love this idea of you know the great entrepreneurs who find a problem for themselves or for someone close to them that they're like okay this doesn't work for me anymore this doesn't work for this situation and I need to find a better solution what if we did this that's where the idea usually spawns from do you think the greatest entrepreneurs are more focused on money or on the mission?

• 17:59Guy Raz?

  Look I think without without question is the mission okay without question and and there's nothing wrong with pursuit of money I mean it's perfectly fine and it's it's it's the engine of capitalism and a free market but you know

• 18:14Guy Raz?

  At a certain point, what I've found with the people I've interviewed is that money is really, at a certain point, there really isn't much more that it's gonna, it's really not gonna improve your life much more. You know, Stuart Butterfield, the founder of Slack, has a great, his great explanation for what it means to be wealthy. You can go to a restaurant, order anything you want. You can basically go on vacation, or wherever you want, and you're not worried about debt. And those three factors, basically, his argument is, once those are taken care of, you are essentially wealthy. I mean, you are, and there really isn't much else that's gonna improve your, you know, your life, or your anxiety, or your feeling of security. And I think that

• 18:58Guy Raz?

  most entrepreneurs, certainly the vast majority that I've interviewed, are 100,000% motivated by mission. I mean, here's, and here's actually the best piece of evidence for that. A lot of founders will eventually exit and sell their companies, right? And I think a lot of, a lot of people imagine that, okay, you have a company, and then you sell it, and then you've got $100 million, and then you're gonna go lie on a beach in the Caribbean and sip pina coladas all day, right? The reality is, if you did that, you would eventually become very depressed. You'd actually just begin to die, right, and wither. And most of the people I've interviewed, they wanna work

• 19:41Guy Raz?

  until the very end, until, even, even when they have enough money for three generations behind them. Because it isn't about the money, it's about a sense of purpose, it's about camaraderie, it's about community and a mission. You know, I, I mean, this is, this might be weird for some of your viewers to, and listeners to hear, but I used to be a foreign correspondent. I covered the Iraq War, I covered the Afghan Wars, I covered Israel-Palestine. That's what I did before, you know, this is 15, 20 years ago. And I spent a lot of time in Iraq, 2003, 2004, 2005. And every time I would ask, you know, soldiers, what is it that like, why are you here? Why'd you sign up for this, you know? And they'd say, oh, you know, to serve our country and blah, blah.

• 20:24Guy Raz?

  I said, no, but why are you here? What, what is, what's keeping you here? Because you know, this war is problematic and it can't just be about the flag. It can't just be about, because you know, part of you knows that what you do here isn't necessarily going to be reckoned, you know? People in the US are, are, they don't even know what's going on here. What is it? And, and you get the same answer time and again. It's, it's to protect the guy on the left and on the guy on the right. I'm here to make sure nobody shoots him and nobody shoots him. That's, that's, it's, it's about connection, camaraderie, mission, purpose. And it's the same thing with business.

• 21:03Lewis Howes?

  So you think what motivates people most is the connection of the idea or the product or the service to the people you're working with or your customers or media?

• 21:12Guy Raz?

  All of it, all of it. I think it's, it's like a Maslow's hierarchy, you know? All of it. And, and it's, it's the people you work around. I mean, how many times have you, have you encountered somebody who is very successful? And then they left their job or they retired and then they don't have that daily interaction. They don't have, you know?

• 21:34Lewis Howes?

  What's happened to sports a lot where you're, you know, as a former athlete, you, you see a lot of guys get depressed after they retire and they might've been an all-star, an all-pro bowler, or whatever it may be, a Super Bowl champion, made $10 million contract, but then within a couple of years, they're very depressed. They're, they, they talk about missing the brotherhood or the, the locker room because of the camaraderie and the connection. And when you don't, when you have connection for so long and then you go in isolation, it becomes very lonely.

• 22:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm sure that's, that I'm, there's no doubt in my mind. I mean, just, I just watched that Michael Jordan documentary a couple of months ago and ESPN is so, so beautiful. And, you know, seeing some of those old Chicago Bulls, Bulls players, you know, the, the lesser knowns, not the Pippens and the Jordans, but the lesser knowns. And yeah, I mean, you know, they're not, um, that no one's hounding them for autographs. They're not getting on planes or not. I mean, some of that I'm sure they don't miss, but some of it is, it's being part of a team, you know, being part of something bigger than yourself.

• 22:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I'm curious, what do you think entrepreneurs are afraid of more? Fear of failure or fear of success?

• 22:43Guy Raz?

  I think that most of the people that I've interviewed, and I would take a sort of go on a limb and say most of us, I think are more afraid of failure, which is actually not a good thing. Because failure is, especially manageable failure, is something we all have to experience and embrace. I think that that we all in our minds have this idea of what it means to be successful. And and the reality is that success is not, it's not, it's not an endpoint. You know, it's not like you do something and then you wake up and you say, you know, you you blow the trumpet and say, da da da da, I'm successful and that's it. You know, it's like, and it's like exercise, you know, like I exercise every day.

• 23:28Guy Raz?

  I I don't love exercising every day, it's not that fun. But I can't just like, my kids will say, Daddy, you're you're healthy, why, why, why? I'm like, you can't just like get to a point and say, all right, I'm healthy, I'm done. Because then you start to decline the next day. And I think it's a sort of a similar concept, which is, you know, success is a constant process and a constant journey. You know, I I think by nature, most of us are more oriented toward toward succeeding. And and we, most of us fear failure. But of course, it's that creates a whole other series of issues. You know, one of the things that I love about how I built this is, the people I talk to is,

• 24:10Guy Raz?

  and I've said this on the show, I think failure is just infinitely more interesting than success. You know, when we get a lot of, you know, we, you know, you get a lot of pitches. I'm sure you get these too from from from people who are like, hey, my client, they were the Forbes 20 under 20. They were this, they're this, they were this, they were the Nobel Prize, you know, whatever, like all these accolades. And that's, that's great, you know, like I'm, I'm, I'm totally down with that. But I want to learn from somebody who's like, here's where I screwed up. I'm gonna tell you what a dumb idiot I was.

• 24:44Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:45Guy Raz?

  Because that's when we learn. And I think that, and and that's really where people are at their most generous, when they're really kind of talking about their failures. And it allows us to kind of get a window into their soul that we need to have to help us when we are struggling with with failure.

• 25:04Lewis Howes?

  What would you say is your greatest failure then?

• 25:07Guy Raz?

  Well, I'll start by saying almost every day being in this profession, there's some failure, right? Whether it's people not wanting to be on the show or whatever. I mean, obviously, now it's gotten much easier as I've grown. But you know, my, my dream, my real dream in life, when I was a younger reporter, was to be the main anchor, news anchor on NPR. I wanted to be the guy reading, telling the news on All Things Considered or Morning Edition, you know, because I thought that was important. Like, when I came to NPR as a, you know, as a younger man, when I was 22, my parents didn't know what it was, you know, but I, I wanted, I think part of us, some of us are motivated by wanting to make

• 25:47Guy Raz?

  our parents proud, or whatever it might be. And, um, so that was really what I thought I wanted to do. And I, I ticked all the boxes, you know, I was a foreign correspondent, I covered wars, I, I went to CNN and I was on, on television for two years, covering Israel, Palestine, I'm, I covered the Pentagon.

• 26:06Lewis Howes?

  You risked your life for this job.

• 26:08Guy Raz?

  Right. I got the weekend job, I, I did a fellowship at Harvard, you know, I ticked all the boxes. I did the, I was the weekend anchor for the news program, the weekend host.

• 26:16Lewis Howes?

  You were so close, the weekend anchor.

• 26:18Guy Raz?

  So close, so close. But I wasn't, I wasn't chosen, you know, and that was a real blow for me. That happened in, in 2011. And I thought, you know, maybe, maybe it was time for me to find a new career. I mean, maybe, maybe I wasn't cut out for this, you know?

• 26:33Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 26:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, look, it was very, very hard because I really wanted that. And the reality is that in the news business, there are managers and programmers and executives, and they have their own vision. And, and it's, it's a perfectly reasonable vision. And I wasn't part of that vision. And it was a time in my life where I, I really was trying to figure out what to do with it. And just very luckily, um, TED, as in the TED conference people, had approached NPR and wanted to collaborate on the show. And I, I heard about it and I raised my hand and I said, I'll do that. And so I kind of left the news world in 2012, entirely left it. And that was a failure. And you know, that was like, I mean, I still have emails from,

• 27:18Guy Raz?

  you know, really prestigious colleagues in Washington DC when I used to live there, who were like, you're going to do a what? A podcast? What is that? Who listens to that?

• 27:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 27:28Guy Raz?

  Why would you give up hosting the weekend news program?

• 27:31Lewis Howes?

  You're so close to the main, the main show. Yeah.

• 27:34Guy Raz?

  Oh, they would say, what? You have a massive audience. And we did. We had 3 million people listening on the weekends on the radio. Now that's changed a lot. Obviously, the radio audience has been in decline. But so I kind of, I was kind of in the wilderness in 2012. You know, I kind of went into exile and I didn't really know if TED Radio Hour was going to be successful. I didn't know.

• 27:54Lewis Howes?

  And this was launching as a podcast?

• 27:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, because I started in January 2013. So you started in 2012.

• 28:01Guy Raz?

  The show, the show launched in March of 2013, TED Radio. Well, it was a relaunch of the show, really. So it.

• 28:08Lewis Howes?

  So we launched about the same time in a space when, and this was before there was a million podcasts like there is now. I think we hit a million podcasts on Apple recently. And I think there was not even 100,000 shows or something. And it was something that you couldn't even find. It was like you had to go to an app on iTunes.

• 28:27Guy Raz?

  Plug in your phone.

• 28:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it was. We were, we were getting on when no one was listening, essentially. Uh, there was a couple of that big people before us, Joe Rogan's and some other tech podcasts, but it wasn't a big thing yet.

• 28:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Lewis Howes?

  So you said, I'm going to leave NPR, the biggest show that there is in this space, and go launch this little podcast thing with Ted.

• 28:52Guy Raz?

  Well, I mean, I launched it. I was launching it within NPR. So it was.

• 28:56Lewis Howes?

  Okay, got you.

• 28:57Guy Raz?

  Collaboration. But I left the news side of NPR, which was the most important part of NPR.

• 29:02Lewis Howes?

  Right. It's the thing that everyone knows about, listens to.

• 29:04Guy Raz?

  And that's whatever. And like, if you're a journalist, that was what you wanted to do, you know, and.

• 29:10Lewis Howes?

  It's like the highest level of respect.

• 29:11Guy Raz?

  The highest level of respect. And it was Washington DC. And it's, you know, all these things. And here I am doing this podcast and like, you know, it's like the, it's like the backwater of NPR at that time, you know? Um, of course, now the tables have turned a little bit, but that, that was really an enormous failure. But here's the thing, as with almost every failure I've had, it's happened for a reason. It's like a hidden blessing. It's like if that didn't happen and I pursued that path, I don't, I don't, you know, I don't know how happy I would be doing the news, especially today. I think the news is just, it's really hard, you know, it's a hard time in, in, in our country.

• 29:54Guy Raz?

  News is really important. I have a lot of respect and admiration for my colleagues who do that. But that failure really kind of saved me.

• 30:01Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting you say this. The more I hear about this and think about it, I reflect back on all my challenging times, adversity times, whether it be personal life, relationships, career, business, sports, and just like injuries and asking why did this happen in the time. But always when I think forward and I give myself hindsight now, a year out from that moment, something always good seems to happen if I lean into the moment, if I embrace, if I find the higher purpose and meaning, if I take the next step. I'm curious, so 2012, 13, you were looked at as like a failure. But it's given you so much because you leaned into that. Do you feel like you need to fail more then

• 30:45Lewis Howes?

  in order to take it to another level? And you need to be criticized more, judged more, you know, looked down upon from colleagues? Is there things that we need to be keep doing to embrace failure?

• 30:58Guy Raz?

  I mean, look, I think nobody wants to be looked down upon and judged and because it's hard, right? It weighs on you after all.

• 31:05Lewis Howes?

  It's not fun.

• 31:06Guy Raz?

  I think we all crave, we all want to do something that people appreciate and enjoy. Criticism is really important. I think giving criticism is hard and, and I don't think, I don't think a lot of people are good at it, you know, most, especially in the era of social media, like criticism is really actually abuse, right? Like, but constructive criticism is great and super helpful. I mean, I, I think that, that for the most part, you know, we all, you know, we all really need to understand that failure and failing.

• 31:42Guy Raz?

  Is is crucial to growth. It's absolutely fundamentally crucial. It's like a part of you has to be defeated in order to be reborn in a stronger way. You know, this is a concept in nature, you know, that we have to withstand strenuous and difficult things, and they may not be physically strenuous or physically difficult, but emotionally, you know, and I think that there's really something to that. I mean, the other side of it is that I don't, I don't know if we, we constantly need to, you know, seek out failures just for the sake of failing.

• 32:22Guy Raz?

  But I do think that there's something really powerful about failing and about figuring out how to harness that energy into fuel inside of you to just push you. It's really hard. I don't, you know, I, it's taken me four decades of my life to, to, to be able to develop this, but to use it to kind of fuel just a real desire to make it, to succeed, you know? And some people, it's manifested as anger, which can also be destructive. But I think that, that if there's a way to kind of harness that energy to drive your passion, you know, um, it's not a great example, but Michael, going back to Michael Jordan

• 33:04Guy Raz?

  again, you know, his famous Hall of Fame speech, right? Where he talks about all these slights throughout his career, which is crazy because, I mean, come on, he's the greatest basketball player of all time. Does he really have to complain about slights? But, you know, he says, oh, Dean's coach Smith didn't, didn't start me, or this coach didn't pick me, or that player said this. He's like, it was just another log in the fire. You remember that speech?

• 33:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 33:28Guy Raz?

  Another log in the fire. Now, that's

• 33:31Lewis Howes?

  Someone like Tom Brady, like Tom Brady kind of lives with it. I was one of, you know, I was in draft in the first few rounds. I wasn't a starter. I was all these things where he still kind of lives with that fire 20 years later this season.

• 33:42Guy Raz?

  And, and, but the thing about Tom Brady and even Michael Jordan, I mean, is that they also benefited from luck, right? I mean, in Tom Brady's case, the guys before him got injured. And, and of course he had to have that luck in order to, and he had to embrace that and, capture that luck and then kind of rise to the occasion, which he did. But I under, I understand that. I mean, I understand that kind of You know, that feeling of being an underdog and in kind of motivating you to to push forward. And and I think if if it's done right, it can be healthy. It can also be unhealthy if it's if it's not done right. You know, I think and and while I have so much admiration for Michael Jordan, that Hall of Fame

• 34:24Guy Raz?

  speech is, you know, it's a little bit problematic because, you know, at that point in his career, he's got to stand up and say, you know, he knows the greatest of all time and everybody in that room did too, you know, and be gracious.

• 34:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I'm curious, what's the biggest fear you still haven't conquered yourself?

• 34:39Guy Raz?

  It's it's hard, it's sort of hard to pinpoint a specific thing because like, would I ever go bungee jumping or parachute out of an airplane?

• 34:46Lewis Howes?

  More like a more like an internal fear, like a not a fear of heights or spiders type, but a a psychological fear, let's say.

• 34:54Guy Raz?

  I mean, I covered wars, you know, I covered five wars and was in several really scary situations. But as a reporter, for some reason, I I never really experienced, I mean, I was I was often nervous and and scared, but never kind of scared in a debilitating way, like I couldn't make it through. It wasn't pleasant. I think when I really got scared was after I had children and I realized that for the rest of my life, I will always be worried about them. I will always, you know, my my son, my oldest son, who's now 11, six weeks after he was born, we were in Florida and we took him to to visit friends and someone held him and

• 35:39Guy Raz?

  he got uh he got sick, he had a temperature, a fever, which is really bad if you're under three months old, like if you're because especially if it's meningitis, because meningitis will kill a baby really quickly. So we took him to a hospital in Florida and they as a instantly before they do anything, they give babies antibiotics. If they're under three months, they just give them antibiotics just in case it's meningitis. They gave him antibiotics and we're waiting there and then like an hour later, an administrator from the hospital walks into the room and my wife is a lawyer and she knew that something was up. They had given him an adult dosage.

• 36:19Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 36:19Guy Raz?

  Antibiotics.

• 36:22Guy Raz?

  A hu- a hundred eighty pound adult, this was a-

• 36:25Lewis Howes?

  Oh my goodness.

• 36:26Guy Raz?

  This is a ten pound baby.

• 36:28Lewis Howes?

  Oh my goodness.

• 36:29Guy Raz?

  So they, so they, I mean, we got in an ambulance and they rushed us to Children's Hospital in Fort Lauderdale. And we were there for four days just to monitor him.

• 36:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh my god.

• 36:39Guy Raz?

  And they told us nothing. They were freaking out that we would sue them. So they buttoned up and they told, and me, I mean, we didn't know what was gonna happen. Like, is, could there be renal failure? I mean, it ended up okay. Ultimately, he's fine.

• 36:53Guy Raz?

  But that was terrifying. That, and that never leaves, you know? I, I, when I travel and I'm away from my kids, you know, I'm, I have these irrational fears and I think that it's just kind of part and parcel of being a parent and something that, for me at least, is something I don't think I'll ever conquer.

• 37:13Lewis Howes?

  Well, maybe you're not supposed to conquer that fully. I don't know, as a parent, I'm not a parent yet, so I don't know what that would feel like. But maybe you should always have a sense of, you know, checking in and making sure that they're healthy and happy and otherwise you're neglecting your kids. I don't know.

• 37:28Guy Raz?

  I check in with them every day, so yeah.

• 37:30Lewis Howes?

  Is there, is there anything in your career or your, with your business or your shows, your books that you feel like you haven't overcome yet? Cause you've built this massive, you know, podcast empire. Uh, you're so well respected in the space. I mean, is there anything that you haven't overcome in that space?

• 37:48Guy Raz?

  I mean, look, I, I, I mean, there's lots of things and, and I guess for me, the question is, what is it that I want to overcome? You know? As with anything, as with any business, as with any concept. Um, you know, how I built this, there's always, there's always the danger that people just won't be interested in it anymore. That it, it, you know, and I actually had that feeling when the pandemic started. You know, I thought, oh my God, cause right after the pandemic started, we saw a drop off in our audience.

• 38:14Lewis Howes?

  So do we. I think everyone saw a drop, right?

• 38:16Guy Raz?

  And I, and I said to my team and to my wife, I said, is this economy gonna mean that people are not gonna be interested in entrepreneurship? Are we, is this a tone deaf conversation to be having? And I was really interrogating my, what I believed. Now, of course, it's been okay, it's worked out and, and we, our audience has grown significantly since then. But I, I will say that- I don't take that for granted, you know, I I'm constantly trying to interrogate what we do because I do, I know that eventually, you know, there may, they might, may not be interest. At the same time, I probably could, if I made other choices in life,

• 38:55Guy Raz?

  be even bigger or make more money or, you know, do more deals and there's a trade off for those things, you know, and for me, the trade off is less time with my kids, you know, and my, and my family like that is, that's just incredibly valuable time. And so I think that one of the things that I probably will not overcome is just scaling what I do even bigger because I need, I need to have a manageable life, you know, I need to, I need it to be. And, and for me, it, it's like my number one priority and the source of my identity is being a dad. It's not being the host of How I Built This.

• 39:39Lewis Howes?

  Really? That's interesting. So do you feel like you'll, you'll say no to certain big opportunities potentially if it's taking too much time away from being a father for a six to 12 month window? Or would you maybe take on some of those opportunities?

• 39:54Guy Raz?

  Nope. No, and I've said, I've said no to some of them, you know.

• 39:59Lewis Howes?

  Big, big deals, yeah.

• 40:01Guy Raz?

  But, I mean, look, you know, I mean, I, I feel very fortunate and I feel like I get to do like, like what you do, like I get to do what I love, you know, I love what I do. It's so, I get, I, I get to talk to interesting people and learn from them. And take, take those ideas and lessons and apply them to my life. And that's, that's worth a lot. It's worth a lot.

• 40:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What's missing in your life?

• 40:28Guy Raz?

  I think what's missing in my, well, right now, it's missing in my life, of course, is connection, right? With fam, with, with, with people in my immediate family. I, you know, we're, we're lucky because it's the four of us, my wife and my two children. So we get to be together. But I, I, I think that if there was anything missing from my life, it would be, I'll just say it at the risk of offending some, some listeners and viewers, but it's not, it's not just what's missing in my life. It's what's missing, I think, in the lives of a lot of us, which is. I'm really sad about the state of affairs in our country. You know, I'm really upset about it. I think that our country is better than this.

• 41:14Guy Raz?

  I think that we have really destructive and cruel leaders.

• 41:22Guy Raz?

  You know, and people in the White House who are just mean, they're just cruel. And that that distresses me. I I I lived overseas for for, you know, eight years and God, you know, people around the world really were inspired by America and about and by the ideals that we that we we have and we talk about. And so much of that's really been kind of called into question and and in the last four years. And much of that has to do with the behavior of the current occupant of the White House. So that that's what I'm missing. I'm missing better leaders for for our country and and I'm hoping that hoping we'll have that.

• 42:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's been really challenging for me. I'm such a in person. Connection type of guy where I just want to be around people. And so it's, you know, it's a challenge to completely, you have to shift your identity.

• 42:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 42:21Lewis Howes?

  In a time like this to say, OK, because if you say I'm a people person, I'm around people, you're always going to be suffering or struggling if you're not having what you want. So I almost need to mentally shift my identity and say, I am with me and my girlfriend, and we're just not going to see people, or it's going to be with the distance, or it's just not going to be the same way. And I need to be OK with it. Otherwise, I will suffer by holding on to this identity that I no longer have in this moment. And hopefully, we can go back at some point and I can reenter that identity that I loved. Louis, you are an extrovert. Extreme extrovert, and I love people. I love to just sit around, listen to people, hang with people,

• 43:00Lewis Howes?

  play sports with people, love it. And to not have that is like taking away oxygen in my lungs. Yep. And so it's very challenging when you ha- you're used to having something and you don't have it in, in general. And so we've got to, we've got to constantly shift, otherwise we'll be miserable and unhappy. Right. So I've had to learn how to enjoy, as opposed to going to workout classes or the gym, I'm like a distance runner now, which I never wanted to be because I didn't like distance running, but I'm like enjoying the process of Yeah. the struggle, the pain. I'm like, okay, what can I gain from this? And I'm enjoying isolation more and being alone.

• 43:39Lewis Howes?

  And what can I gain from this as opposed to this is killing me and this is, it's not fun, but it's, you gotta do it. Right. So my girlfriend's in Mexico right now because of her visa, because it's very hard to renew her work visa right now. So she's there for a month. I'm supposed to go visit her, but I may not because of Corona. And it's like, I may not see her for three months. I don't know. That's not fun to be a FaceTime relationship. We've all got a, we've, I think identity is a big thing. We've got to constantly be willing to shift it if we, we want to be happy. And you being this identity of like, okay, I'm the, the weekend guy and I want to be the morning guy. But you shifted your identity Yep. into trying something else and you were able to create incredible results that impacted people with this new identity.

• 44:24Lewis Howes?

  And I think that's something that's really inspiring that you've done. What do you think has been some of the keys to the podcasting world is a world that so many people are trying to get into now. It is a entrepreneurial business Yep. in itself, people that have podcasts. Yep. I've built my entire business off of the podcast and I have books and I have events and courses and membership and code, all these different things. Yep. But it wouldn't have happened without a show and an audience that said, we want more. What do you think has been your success to building this platform, especially when it wasn't big? And then when you've launched How I Built This? And how did you continue to rise after the kind of dip in the early pandemic?

• 45:08Guy Raz?

  You know, one of the things that that I would say I agree with you that that there is an entrepreneurial, real entrepreneurial sort of element to podcasting. And in some ways is why I wrote this book, you know, How I Built This, because I wanted to kind of offer a roadmap for people who want to build a business or are thinking about it, or just want to be inspired by the stories of people who've done it. And I think that, you know, in our case, really what we're doing is, is, I mean, it's very similar to what you're doing, right? It's a simple conversation. It's a single narrative. And we're basically telling a story over the course of that hour. And it's designed, really deliberately designed to to kind of send a signal

• 45:52Guy Raz?

  to the people listening that this person is not that different from you. You know, the the only difference is is that they put on the cape. They went into the phone box and put on the cape. You know?

• 46:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:02Guy Raz?

  That's what I want.

• 46:03Lewis Howes?

  They went for it.

• 46:04Guy Raz?

  They went for it. And that's what I want people. I want this show, I want How I Built This, to inspire people to think that way, because I actually, I really believe, and, you know, again, one of the the motivating factors behind writing a book was, like, I believe in entrepreneurship. I think it's an incredibly fulfilling way to live your life. You know, you, you, you, you are in control, more or less, of your own destiny, right? And you're your own boss. And it's, and you're also employing, some often employing people and providing a good, you know, living for other people. I mean, it's actually a great. Way to live your life. And, and, and most of the time, when I think of somebody who listens to the show,

• 46:49Guy Raz?

  I'm not thinking of people who are scaling mega billion dollar companies. I'm thinking of somebody who's got an Etsy shop, you know, or somebody who's running an HVAC company, you know, a small business that is doing something for the community or is meaningful to people or is employing people like that to me is, is what it's all about. And I, you know, I think that with our show, what we really did was, especially after the pandemic, was we just followed our community, you know, our community was freaking out. Our community was saying, holy, you know, what is happening? And are we going to survive this? You know, is my business going to survive this?

• 47:32Guy Raz?

  And so, you know, pretty soon after we, you know, we all went remote and my whole team started working from home. I said to them, look, we've got to meet, we've got to meet our, our listeners where they are. Let's, let's go on video. Let's do a live video chat. Let's bring on our old guests and just ask them how they're coping with the situation. Just, let's just build a community and we just slapped it together on Facebook Live. And now, you know, five months later, it's a, it's a show. It's how I built this resilience series, which we do twice a week. We've had, you know, just amazing people. We've had, you know, Stuart Butterfield from Slack and other people. We had Brian Chesky of Airbnb and he was really candid, you know, he was like,

• 48:18Guy Raz?

  this has been the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with. I had to lay off 2,000 people.

• 48:22Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 48:23Guy Raz?

  You know, it's been.

• 48:24Lewis Howes?

  No one's renting home. Yeah. No one's traveling. No one's, yeah.

• 48:27Guy Raz?

  Their business went down 80%.

• 48:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 48:31Guy Raz?

  In the first month, you know, of the pandemic. So.

• 48:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 48:34Guy Raz?

  But, but it's been an, an awesome opportunity for our community and our listeners to kind of gather around and say, I'm not alone. You know, I've got, I'm watching this person and they're go, they, they may be at a different level. They're going through something similar to what I'm going through.

• 48:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What do you think is the, the hardest stage of entrepreneurship? The, the kind of idea conception stage, because everyone says, oh, I had the same idea five years ago. Is it the launching of the idea? Is it the, okay, now it's out there. How do we grow and scale it? Or how do we maintain the success? What, what do you think is?

• 49:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, the easiest part about coming up with a business idea is coming up with the idea. So there's a ton of great ideas. It's the easiest part because you're at home and you might be talking to a friend and you're like, dude, I have this idea and you're like, it's gonna be amazing and everyone's gonna drink it. It's gonna be available at Walmart and a Target and we'll have these awesome logo. And we'll have events and we'll go to the beach and we'll give it away. And that's the easiest part of the business. The hard part is the next day when you, when you actually start writing the business plan. And then you go and like try to seek out some funding. Find a manufacturer. A manufacturer and then a distribution network.

• 49:57Guy Raz?

  You know, there's a great African proverb. It is, it's something like the only way to eat an elephant is one small bite at a time. And this applies to a business. The only way to create and then sustain a business is to tackle one problem at a time. You do one and then you jump to the next lily pad and then you jump to the next one. And, and I think that's really true. I mean, and, and you know, that again, you know, with, with, with the book, I'm trying to basically put together all of the mistakes that were made along that journey to say, hey, every mistake is made a million times a day. The same thing you're doing is already, somebody already made a mistake and they figured out how to solve it. So here, the book, here's the answer in the book.

• 50:43Guy Raz?

  But, but really it's this idea that, you know, you break it down one step at a time and it's hard. You know, building a business, every step of the way is hard. You know, right now, you, you look at a company like Zocdoc, okay, it's valued at $4 billion. You talk to Oliver Karas, it's just as hard today than when it was valued at $1 million. It's really hard. I mean, bigger company, bigger problems. It's very successful, but you know, they've kind of had to pivot. Because of of COVID and focused on telemedicine. So I think that that, you know, it's it sort of goes back to what I said earlier, which is you don't just reach a destination

• 51:23Guy Raz?

  and and blow the trumpet. It's it's a constant process of keeping that airplane, you know, at 35,000 feet.

• 51:32Lewis Howes?

  There's there's challenges every year and you have to find the the solution to those challenges constantly. Just because you've solved one problem of the initial idea doesn't mean there aren't a dozen other problems that come every single year that you need to reinvent how to solve and make a better solution to. So this is this is the the risk of being an entrepreneur is the amount of problems that you need to solve and investment and money and time and energy into this one idea. But the reward can be very high because you pay the price for that risk if it works out. So that's the that's the benefit and the the cost, I guess. Your book is really exciting. I'm excited for this to be out into the world. It's called How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World's

• 52:17Lewis Howes?

  Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs. So people can go get that right now. They can pick it up. They can preorder it. They can get it. It's all over the place. You're on Instagram, Guy Raz, Twitter as well. Is there anywhere else? And How I Built This podcast is amazing. It's one of my favorite. I actually don't listen to many podcasts myself, but I listen to yours.

• 52:36Guy Raz?

  Thank you.

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

  And I think it's very inspiring, well-produced, the music, you do a great job of narrating and interviewing. So it's where I get a lot of my guest prep for the interviews I do because we have a lot of same people on our shows. And you've got the book, you've got everything there. Is there anything else I'm missing about how we can support you the most?

• 52:55Guy Raz?

  That's awesome. I mean, any and if anybody wants to buy the book or preorder before the 30th of September, I will send you a signed book plate.

• 53:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 53:05Guy Raz?

  On my website, guyraz.com, G U Y R A Z dot com, or howibuiltthis.com. And yeah, I mean, I'm I'm in all those places, Instagram, guy dot Raz, Twitter, guy at Guy Raz.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 53:17Guy Raz?

  And I do my best to engage with people.

• 53:21Lewis Howes?

  You're engaging on social media.

• 53:23Guy Raz?

  As much as possible.

• 53:24Lewis Howes?

  Okay, great.

• 53:25Guy Raz?

  Not too much, not too much, you know.

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  But make sure you guys, if you enjoyed this, make sure, I've got a couple of questions for you to, to, to finish this off. But if you guys enjoy this, make sure to pick up a copy of the book. Um, and also take a screenshot of this and post it on your Instagram story or post it on Twitter and tag Guy as well.

• 53:42Guy Raz?

  And I will like that.

• 53:44Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 53:44Guy Raz?

  I will.

• 53:45Lewis Howes?

  Hopefully respond to there. Uh, I got a couple of questions left for you, Guy. One is, uh, called the three truths. I ask everyone at the end, so imagine you've accomplished all of your dreams and you've lived as long as you want to live. But eventually you've got to shut the lights off to this, to this life. You've overcome all the challenges and fears that have come your way. You've embraced them to learn and develop the new skills. And for whatever reason, hypothetically, you've got to take all of your body of work with you to the next place. So all of your recordings and books and audios and anything you've ever done, speeches, videos, they're all with you in the next place. So no one has access to your content anymore. However, you have got a piece of paper and a pen before you shut the lights off on your life.

• 54:29Lewis Howes?

  And you get to write down three things you know to be true from your existence, from your experience, from your life. Three lessons you would leave behind, and this is all we have to remember you by. What would you say are your three truths?

• 54:44Guy Raz?

  Fatherhood.

• 54:47Guy Raz?

  Love. And truth.

• 54:51Lewis Howes?

  Why fatherhood number one?

• 54:53Guy Raz?

  Because it's, it's a hard thing to talk about because of course not everybody is a parent and not everybody has the opportunity to be a parent. Um, and so I'm, I try to be sensitive when I'm talking about it, but, um, for me, it's, um, it opened my eyes to, to the world again. You know, I, I think when I, I remember when my, my son started, my first son started talking and he would look at the stars and he would say, How long would it take us to get there? And I just thought, man, like, man, like, my mind is blown. Like, that little kid just asked me a question that I haven't thought about since I was maybe five. You know? It just reawakens your, for me, it reawakened my sense of awe. And it, it, it actually enabled me to do what I do today.

• 55:36Guy Raz?

  Because I, I, I do what I do well because I'm a curious person. And I'm a curious person because I choose to be. This is not a gift that I was given. This is not a special, super talent. This is not something I have that other people don't. I choose to be curious. Anybody can choose that. Having children helped me choose that.

• 56:01Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful. Yeah, I'm not a father yet, but I hope to one day become one. And I know there's gonna be a lot of beautiful things that come with that. So exciting stuff. Fatherhood, love, and truth. What would you say is your truth?

• 56:15Guy Raz?

  My truth is, is sort of the North Star of, of what I try to be. I mean, look, all of us have and live different versions, slightly different versions of who we are. Right? And the best version of who I am, like, the best person that I am is the person I'm on How I Built This. Like, that is the person, that is authentically who I am, but at my best. And I don't always, I can't always be my best. Sometimes I'm in traffic and I'm frustrated. Sometimes somebody cuts me off and I honk my horn. Sometimes, you know, I'm about to get in a parking spot and somebody grabs it. You know, all the things that happen to all of us.

• 56:55Guy Raz?

  But I, I really think of, of that version of me as the truest version of me. And also what I aspire to be, you know? Um, because we can't always, we're not always kind, we're not always generous, we're not always forgiving, we're not always compassionate. But I think all we can do is try to live that, to, to, to live that way. And to be true to the values that we aspire to, or that we, the, the way we sort of self-define. And for me, when I think of truth, I think of it as an aspirational, like, these are, this is sort of an aspirational. Pursuit.

• 57:38Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Yeah, it's beautiful. I want to acknowledge you, Guy, for, for constantly showing up. You, you've been showing up for decades, trying to serve people at the highest level from, you know, as a reporting on wars to now reporting on business and entrepreneurship and, and the human spirit. And I think you're, you've set an amazing example in a bar for people on how to live a good life and how to do a job well. And to constantly be curious. So I'm grateful for you. You're a big inspiration to so many, including myself. And my final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

• 58:15Guy Raz?

  My definition of greatness is making sure that the people that you have the power to influence inhabit and live on this planet with kindness and a sense of responsibility. And in my case, the only thing, the only job I have to do in life, it's not to make great shows, it's not to be a well-known podcaster, you know, it's none of those things. I, I have one purpose. It is to, as best I can, instill as many of the values that I think are important,

• 58:57Guy Raz?

  that I hold dear, to instill those values to my, in my children. And that if they grow up and they are kind and responsible and good humans, like that is, I've done my job. That's it.

• 59:14Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Guy, thank you so much for being here, man. Appreciate it. Make sure you guys go get the book. Check out the show. You're a legend. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And if it was meaningful in your life today, then make sure to share this with a friend because sharing always makes you feel better as well. And stay connected with that friend. Ask them, hey, what did you enjoy from this episode? What did you learn? What was your big takeaway? Stay connected and accountable with each other. And if this is your first time here, please click the subscribe button right now on Apple Podcast and leave us a rating. And review and if you want inspirational messages from me texted to you every single week, then just text me the word podcast to 614-350-3960. Again, if you want inspirational

• 59:59Lewis Howes?

  messages, we send these out every single week to your phone. Text the word podcast 614-350-3960. And I want to close with a quote from Chris Gilbo, good friend of mine, who said, "If Plan A fails, remember, there are 25 more letters." I'm so grateful for you. I hope you enjoy this episode. And if this inspired you, please let me know over on social media at Lewis Howes. As always, if someone hasn't told you lately, I'm here to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.