Guy Raz | How I Built This
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Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Emma, bringing you this episode with Guy Raz, award-winning podcaster, author, and journalist. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. You can watch every episode at youtube.com slash talks at google.com.

Guy Raz is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of podcasting. He's created some of the most popular podcasts in the world, including How I Built This, TED Radio Hour, Wow in the World, The Great Creators, and Wisdom from the Top. Collectively, his shows reach 19 million listeners per month.

Guy joins Google to discuss his book, How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs. The book shares stories and insights from over 200 innovators on their journey to entrepreneurship. Originally published in October 2020, here is Guy Raz, How I Built This:

Thank you so much for joining us at Google. It's really a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for having me. I think if I was watching that introduction, I would say, God, I really hate that person. They just sound like an overachiever. And I would say that is the Facebook version of my life, right? The highlight reel. And of course, it sounds very impressive, but...

you know, it's there, there are lots of very difficult, challenging, um, catastrophic moments of failure throughout those times. Um, and, uh, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very fortunate to have had, um, an interesting career and to, to be able to tell stories and, um,

to do how I built this. And, and, and by the way, great news is that last year at the end of last year, I stepped down from Ted radio hour and now the show has a new incredible host named Manoush Samarody. So you should still check out this show. It's still a great show. Um, and, um,

Well, that was a good one for sure. No, thank you. You know, I just one comment, I would say I really sympathize with the fact people see your career and then LinkedIn or in your bio or Wikipedia, and they just assume that there was never a tear, never a sweat, never a dire moment. And that couldn't be further from the truth. I think every successful person has always has always had that. There were antidepressants. There were moments of lying, crying with anxiety. Yes. All those things.

I'm crying for sure. All right, let's start because I want to get through. We have so many questions that people submitted and we hope to get even more through this talk. So the first one is, let's start with the pandemic. It's such an important part of what's happening in the world right now. You have such a wide perspective. I would love to hear what for you was really surprising, both professionally and personally through this pandemic. I think I've been surprised at...

human resilience. I mean, we've seen stories and we've read stories about as certainly in this country, because it's easy. It's been easy to live in the United States for the last 50 years for most of us. And we've read stories of, you know, people living in London during the Blitz and, you know, people withstanding hardship during wartime. And of course, I wouldn't compare this to living in London during the Blitz or, you know, enduring

wartime conditions, but it's not that far off in some ways. And I think that what's been pretty remarkable to me is to see how resilient Americans can be. I think it's, and people around the world, I think it's been a really challenging time. And we have adapted. It's not ideal. I think most of us wish that we didn't have to work from home and that we could see our friends and our loved ones and our colleagues. But at the same time, I think that

we have managed as best as possible.

And so that's been pretty great. It's been a silver lining during an otherwise challenging and often bleak time. Yeah. Okay. You are now, you know, you've been a journalist your whole career. You've done, you're always interviewing people. Now you're getting interviewed. You're writing a book. How does it feel to be on the other side? Would love to hear that. And then also you're launching a book in the pandemic. So how has that experience been for you so far? Yeah. You know, um,

I love talking to people. I love pulling stories out of people. I love triggering memories. That's what I do. That's why I...

I get out of bed in the morning because I love hearing other people's stories because I think that's how we learn about the world and how we learn about ourselves and we see ourselves in the stories of others. And what I try to do with the people I interview is to humanize them. You know, the people that we venerate and might, I don't know, sort of put on a pedestal and think of as heroes are actually ordinary people who have their own anxieties and challenges and dealt with, you know, their own crises and struggles and

In my case, it's true that I've spent most of my time asking the questions, and now the tables have turned. It's

you know, incredibly heartwarming and gratifying to hear that people are interested in me because I just think of myself as, you know, we all have our own self image. You know, why would somebody be interested in me? But it is, it's really, it's, it's really nice to see that people are interested in me and in the book and in the shows that I do and in the content that I create. And it's also a chance for me to

connect with the people who are, um, are moved or touched or affected or inspired by the work I do. Um, cause that's why I do it. I, I, I do it for that reason. I do it for the, for, for you guys, for the people who are, who are here and watching and listening. Um, that's,

That's why I do it. So it's been it's been a very interesting experience so far. I will say in terms of of launching a book in the midst of a pandemic, you know, originally I would have been on a two week book tour around the country and then overseas.

Did you consider pushing it like so many people are doing, just like pushing everything to the right, hoping that it's better later? No, because this is going to last for a long time. I think this sort of pandemic and even after there's a vaccine or we feel more comfortable, I think people will still be reluctant to go to live events for a while. I think that they're, you know, I think we are we're going to live with this for quite some time. So

The reality is we had to adapt. The downside is I don't get to interact personally with the people who listen to the show and have been inspired by it. The upside is- We would be in a big room full of people for you at Google. Right. And I've been to Google's campus and have spoken there before, and it's just wonderful to be there. The upside is I've been able to have hundreds of conversations. I mean, so many since-

you know, since early August when, you know, podcasts and these kinds of events. And, and so that's been great. I've been able to talk about the book and answer questions and, and to do it efficiently because I'm not going anywhere. Yeah, no, it's totally, it's a lot more efficient. That's for sure. I know you've spoken to so many people throughout your different shows, your experience as a journalist, I think 6,000 or above.

Then you started your podcast and then you wrote this book. But your first episode, I believe, was with Sarah Blakely, who was the founder of Spanx. And I was just wondering if you could describe why you picked her, why that story. Would love to get your thoughts on that. Yeah. I mean, there was a few things, well, many things that we did very deliberately at the beginning. I thought of how I built this as, I've never thought of it as a business show.

I've always thought of it as a show about human journeys. So it's like a hero's journey. If you know Joseph Campbell and you know the notion of a hero's journey, you will find that in every episode of How I Built This. There's a narrative arc and you will hear from somebody who had a crazy idea

encountered doubters, found a mentor, the mentor died, slayed a dragon, almost died themselves. Obviously not literally, but metaphorically. And so really from the outset, I wanted this to be a show about human journeys because that's really how we learn. Whether we're entrepreneurs or acting in an entrepreneurial way or we want to introduce a disruptive idea into the world, we learn through stories, through other people's misdeeds.

mistakes and triumphs and failures and so on. And when it came to Sarah Blakely, it was a very deliberate decision. By that point, I had interviewed probably 15 or 20 people and we had 10 or 12 episodes fully produced at that point. And the reason why I started with Sarah Blakely was because I wanted to signal that this show was going to be a different kind of show, a different kind of business show. So a business show that's not really a business show, but also a business show that

wouldn't have, wasn't focused on the usual suspects. Of course, we were going to have, you know, well-known titans of industry as well. But I wanted to signal that this was going to be a show that was going to focus on a broad range of people and of subjects and of products and services, that it wasn't going to be just a tech show. In fact, very few of our episodes have been about tech companies, that it was going to be a show about

people that we could identify with. So Sarah Blakely was a very deliberate choice. And what's been interesting for us is that how I built this, despite the fact that I'm a man and, and, you know, that it is a, in the business category, we have a considerably larger audience of women than we do of men, which is unusual for most business shows. Most skew heavily towards male listeners and ours skews toward men.

women listeners. Yeah. Oh, well, that's super helpful. I did not I did not know that. So that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I think your your podcasts have gone from PETA chips all the way to Airbnb. So it's a it's a wide range for sure. In talking about the wide range, and you open with this when I did your intro.

failure is such an important component and people hear about failure. They hear it, but I don't think they really grasp it. And they see somebody as accomplished as you, you know, with everything you've done and been recognized for,

Why is failure so important, especially for entrepreneurs and failure so important for innovation? Talk to me about your thoughts around that. Well, I mean, I hear I'm talking to Google, which is where, you know, you've got, you know, the Google X and you've got all these sort of moonshot projects that and failure is rewarded. You know, we learn from failure much more so than we do from success, right?

Oftentimes, I receive a pitch from a PR person and it goes like this. We receive about 1,000 pitches a week for the show. We can only do 40 to 45 episodes a year.

And the pitch will be something like this. My client is a Forbes 25 under 20 or 25 under 25. They are a billionaire. They launched this 10 companies and sold them. They're a world-class gymnast and a ballroom dancer and on and on, just a list of successful. And when I get emails like that, I usually just hit delete because-

That's not interesting. What's interesting is to find out how this person actually struggled and what mistakes this person made. Because if I'm bringing somebody to How I Built This, implicit in their appearance on the show is that they've succeeded, right? In some way. They've had some impact on our culture in some way through a product or service that they've brought to bear, right? Yeah.

If all we're talking about is the next success and the next success and the next success, and you're listening to that and you're dreaming of building something, how can you actually relate to that? How is that going to be helpful for you? And so my job is to kind of be an avatar for our listeners, not just people who are dreaming of building a business or who are in the middle of building a business or who are in the thick of it. And that is a significant segment of our audience.

But people who work for big companies, you know, also who are thinking about

Trying to introduce an entrepreneurial idea within their organization. So my job is to be your representative and your avatar and to think what is going to serve you as a listener. How are you going to benefit from this person? Because I have access to Howard Schultz and Sarah Blakely and Richard Branson. I'm very lucky. I have that access. Not by the way, not because I'm, I'm special or smart or,

or famous or any of that, it's because I have a big audience. I'm very, we're very fortunate. - You've earned it, that's fundamental. - Well, earned it or got lucky or whatever. The point is, is that we're very fortunate. We have a big audience. And if you replaced me with Joe Smith or some random person with the same audience, they would also be able to attract these people. What I'm trying to do is to say, look, I have this access.

And I'm going to use it to benefit the people who listen to the show, because that's, that's, you know, that's my, that's my job. That's my role. And so that's, that's really, we are very deliberate in how we, you know, and how we sort of focus on failure, because of course, success is,

is embedded within the story and we will hear about it, but success is really, but failure is really where we, we can learn from that person. And that's also, it's also the, the, the touch point where that person shows their generosity, because when people can talk about their failures, they're actually showing their vulnerability and that's, that's crucial. That's key. We need to, we need to hear and see that vulnerability. Yeah.

Well, one question related to that. Do you, after all these interviews and all this experience you've had, do you think that that entrepreneurial spirit is something you're born with or it's something you develop or is it a mindset? You know, you talked about sort of discarding the 20 year old phenom. You know, what's the range of people you see, you know, describe, describe what you see relative to that. Cause I think some people feel, oh, you know, if I wasn't an entrepreneurial baby, it's done for me.

I don't believe that personally. What's your take? Yeah, I agree. I think it's nonsense. First of all, Ana, as you know, we just posted this on our Twitter page.

feed a couple of days ago, the average age of a first time entrepreneur is 45. Okay. It's not, it's not, yeah, it's, it's, it's not Larry and Sergey in a basement. They're anomalies, you know? And by the way, I don't, I don't know if either of those guys, you know, was a natural born entrepreneur, right? I mean, they were grad students who were producing and creating a really cool search engine. Most of us,

within us the capacity to be and think and act entrepreneurially. It is a mindset. And it's not a superpower. And entrepreneurs are not superheroes. They're simply using techniques and skills that enable them to

conquer fears and put ideas out into the world. So yes, there are some people who are born that way. A good example is Mark Cuban, who's been on the show. You know, at age 16, he was reading a book called How to Retire at 35. He wanted, he was determined to become a millionaire and he planned his life that way. And he did, he became a millionaire by age 30. But he's actually rare. I mean, most of the people on the show

learned how to become entrepreneurs, learned how to think and act entrepreneurially. Many of them are introverts. Many of them had to find their charisma over time. And those things are developed

Be through experiences. I mean, think about what you're doing now, Anna. If I met you 20 years ago, and I don't know for sure, but if I met you 20 years ago, there's a possibility you might have been felt uncomfortable presenting in front of a large audience. Maybe you would have been nervous about it. Maybe you would have doubted yourself. But now you've achieved a level of success over time with with hard wins. Right. You had your own business. You sold it. You went to Google. You now run this business.

this part of Google. So you have kind of grown into your charisma. The same with me, right? This is a natural progression. And so I actually fundamentally believe that entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking, these are developed and acquired skills. And you can develop them at any point in your life and career. And in fact, I'm

Many of the entrepreneurs that we interview started their businesses in their 40s, you know, some in their 50s. And most of the people I interview are over the age of 40 because it allows us to kind of really explore their mind and their experiences. And you need that time to be able to reflect and offer those experiences.

those reflections and that wisdom. Yeah, that's, that's super helpful. Cause I think there's a misconceptions on that for sure. I personally, to answer your question, I still remember the first time I had to present to 6,000 people. I wasn't really super stressed about it until I got to that moment, like T minus five. And then I just freaked out. So yeah, there's a lot you can learn.

Talking about skills, let's keep on that topic. Resilience is one of those skills. And in your book, you have many stories where it's like, oh, I was going to do a pita sandwich and then I couldn't find real estate. And so then I ended up doing pita chips and

Or I lost my business because I didn't quite protect it. I just tossed myself off or my company, you know, didn't go well. But then I ended up inventing Slack out of something I was using to do a different product. You know, so many different stories of resilience. Why do you think that's so important and how what's the best way to sort of teach that and to really get through that? Because I think it goes hand in hand with that failure topic we were talking about earlier. What are what are your thoughts on resilience?

Yeah. Resilience and failure are two sides of the same coin. Right. I really love this. I've had this really interesting experience on the show with and I talk about it a little bit in the book. I allude to a little bit in the book, which is people often ask me, what is the skill you need?

to be a successful entrepreneur? What is it that you have to have? And there are different answers to this question. You can talk about the ability to withstand fear or conquer fear. I like the word rejection.

You have to be able to accept rejection, hear the word no, and then keep moving forward until you hear yes. So I don't mean accept rejection and then just kind of bow out. I mean hear it and just keep moving forward. That's very hard for most of us to do, right? Because most of us are hardwired to want validation. I want to go to you and say, Ana, I have this awesome idea. And I want you to say, ah, it's an awesome idea. I love it.

But what happens if I come to you and I say, I have this awesome idea. And you say, well, I don't know if it's going to work. It doesn't quite fit.

I know that doesn't happen at Google because at Google, every answer is yes, let's do it. Right? Am I right about that? Not quite, but there's a lot of that. There's a lot of that. It's a much more encouraging place than other places. That's for sure. Right. But in many corporate environments, you know, that's the experience people have. Or, you know, you have a product or service you want to bring out to the world and you want people to love it right away.

Well, how do you develop the ability to hear no, or I don't know if that's going to work or yeah, that's quite right. But to keep plowing forward. Well, one of the ways that I've experienced this is through some of the entrepreneurs I've interviewed, many of them who were entrepreneurs.

in sales, who started out in sales, or had experience in sales. One of these examples is Tope Awatana, who founded Calendly. Calendly, as many of you know, it's a scheduling service, right? It's a scheduling, you know, I know you guys use Google Calendar, but you don't use Calendar. But he was, he's an immigrant from Nigeria. He came to the US at age 15, finished high school, went to the University of Georgia. And his first job in college was selling

ADT alarm systems door to door. And he went to 500 doors a week. Now imagine this kid knocking on 500 doors a week in Athens, Georgia. 490 doors were slamming in his face. At least.

But he learned that once he got a sale, it actually made all those 490 slam doors worth it because he had no money and it was like a huge commission. And it really drove him to just keep knocking on those doors.

He then went into software sales and did that for 10 years. And again, you know, a lot of no's, a lot of rejection. Sarah Blakely of Spanx, she sold fax machines for seven years to office parks, in office parks, door to door. She heard so many no's, so many no soliciting, you know, please leave the property. Those daily indignities and those daily rejections, they essentially inoculate you over time.

And they help you build the kind of resilience you need to have when it gets really hard. And so it's connected to all kinds of failures. I mean, failure is very hard. It's not fun. Nobody likes it. But if you can kind of reframe and reorient the way you think about it, it's very hard. You know, I'll give you an example. Right now, as in real time, I had a failure this week.

I'm going to tell you what it was. Let's see. Let's hear it. My book did not make the New York Times bestseller list. Okay. And we sold enough books probably to make it in a normal time. But it's not a normal time. Every book on that list is a Trump book for anti-Trump. Okay.

And by the way, if you do want to help me make the list, I need you to buy the book. If people are asking questions, they're going to get it for sure. It supports our show. Buy it for friends. Buy it for loved ones. It supports NPR. It supports our show. And it helps. So that's a failure. But we have to keep pushing forward, right? But that's a great example. Why is the expectation that every book will hit that list immediately? Well, it's just one of those things. But it also helps to generate more excitement and interest in a book.

So it's one of those milestones. Now, we might make another list, maybe a Wall Street Journalist or another list, and that's great. But the point is, is that those failures sting in real time. They do. But you have to figure out a way how to reframe, reflect on them and figure out how to keep moving forward. And in my case, the reason why when I encounter failures and we do all the time with how I built this, with other projects that I kind of we start and they don't quite work out.

It's easier to deal with now because I've had so many throughout my career, small, medium and big ones that have helped me to withstand them better when they happen. It doesn't mean it's easier. It's like you get a flu shot, right? And you still might get the flu, but it's probably slightly less severe than it would be if you didn't have the flu shot. That's what failure is. It's it's

It's like a series of little flu shots that you actually need to understand how to withstand the really tough times when you're building something. And it's crucial. It's essential. You cannot succeed without failures. I totally agree. One question I had for you, as I was reading your book, a lot of your stories thus far were U.S.-based. How do you see...

How do you see the role of the US in innovation, of Silicon Valley in innovation? What are your thoughts around that, especially with a pandemic, just in general, how the world is shifting? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons why most of our stories are US-based, I mean, there are a number of reasons. The US, for a variety of reasons, has been kind of the center of entrepreneurship in the world for a long time. That's changing, of course.

The other reason is we are a U S based show. So the bulk of our audience is U S based. So, you know, just like any, you know, Oprah or, or the tonight show or whatever, um, you've, you naturally focus on U S, um, companies and brands, but, um, I am very interested in, I mean, there's some incredibly powerful brands overseas that we don't, you know, I mean, in Turkey, in India, obviously in China, um, in Brazil, in Mexico, um,

And, you know, I think that that the the world of entrepreneurship is shifting so quickly and it's in the center of gravity is changing so quickly. You know, we think of.

If we think of the United States as a center for entrepreneurship, it's not wrong, right? Lots of people have come here for the last 200 years and certainly the last 50 years to start businesses. So many people have come from Asia and Africa and Latin America and Europe, right, to the United States because in their countries, there was a time when to start a business, it was very difficult. There was a lot of red tape. Maybe you had to pay somebody off.

Maybe you had to know somebody, have a connection. It wasn't easy to start a business. And in the U.S. traditional, right? It wasn't even a thought. Yeah. And in the U.S. traditionally, it was. That's changed a lot over the past 20, 30 years, especially because.

In the United States, we've actually seen a decline in entrepreneurship over the past 30 years, believe it or not. We have fewer entrepreneurs today than we did in the 1980s and the 1970s. Why is that? There are many reasons why. I will offer you my theory. It's because of health insurance. Americans get their health insurance from their business, their companies where they work. So more and more Americans have

have migrated to work for large companies where they can receive their health insurance in Europe, in Australia, in Asia, Asian countries where there's universal healthcare. There's a great, amazing out, you know, a culture of entrepreneurship because you can do it. You can take that risk and you still have health insurance. So actually one of the, one of the conversations I'd love to see happening in this country is the

is around the connection between health insurance and entrepreneurship. I mean, if you believe that entrepreneurship is the engine of innovation, which I do, and you are pro-entrepreneurship and you are truly pro-business, there's a very strong argument to support universal healthcare. Because when people have healthcare and they don't have to worry about getting it from their employer, they can go start a business. They can go create something, put something out into the world. And it's a very compelling argument, I think,

to support this idea of

of, you know, giving people some kind of assurance that, you know, they'll have healthcare despite the risks and challenges they take. But I think that, you know, we're looking at a world where, you know, some of the most innovative ideas are going to be coming out of China, are going to be coming out of India, out of Europe, Africa. I mean, we're already seeing it. So I'm super excited about, you know, about what's happening in a lot of those other countries. And, you know,

you know, and we'll see where it goes. Well, this is why Google is very committed to innovating. That's why we do a lot of moonshots for that very purpose. I have two questions that I have to get out before we go to the audience. So we're going to try to do a little bit of rapid fire. You talked a lot about scary versus dangerous. Can you expand on that quickly? And what is the difference between those two and why does it matter? Yeah, doing scary things is like...

You sitting here doing this, moderating this event in front of lots of people. Right. That's scary, but it's not dangerous. It's not right. And so this really comes from a conversation I had with Jim Cook, the founder of Sam Adams Beer. He was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. He had a safe job. He had the golden handcuffs making lots of money, but he wasn't happy. And he knew that if he stayed in his job for the rest of his life, he would be miserable. That was dangerous. Right.

Right. Because he would wake up one day and regret that he didn't take the leap. It was scary to leave his job and to start a beer company at a time when nobody had any respect for American beer in the early 80s. It was really scary.

But it was dangerous not to do it. And that's the difference. Okay. That's super fair. One other thing I wanted to just touch on really quickly. You have Wow in the World, which is obviously a different show. That is the first ever sort of podcast for targeted, you know, for children. NPR show. NPR show. Yeah. Yeah. I produce it and we work with NPR and they distribute it. So first time NPR has ever distributed a kid's show. Yeah. Yeah.

Great. And so and it's doing really well. So I wanted to ask you a couple of things. One of them is you with all the experience and stories, all those stories that you have and that you've thought about and really reflected on. What's the advice you kind of give to your children? What is like the thing that you've been trying to sort of really inculcate in your children?

And was that the inspiration for the show? And what are you trying to do with that show? How can we help? You know, tell us a little bit about the efforts for children there. Wow in the World is a cartoon for the year. It was designed for one very specific reason. It was designed to get kids to put their screens down and

and to raise their eyes up to the sky and to look at the stars and ask, how far away are those stars? Can we ever go there? And the answer is no, of course, it would take us 25,000 years to get to the closest star, but it's still a question you should ask. I found awe and wonder. I rediscovered it when my children were born, when they, when we were walking down a sidewalk and they saw something crawling and they were like, daddy, look at that. That changed my world to change my life. And wow. And the world is designed was designed.

was designed to get kids to put their screens down and to to put the screen in their mind it's a television show in their mind if you if you've got a kid between the ages of four and twelve in your life tell them about wow in the world it's a every episode is rooted in a peer-reviewed scientific journal article okay we translate that for children in a we go back in time i i do with my my co-host mindy thomas we we go underwater we go into space we

Flying a Giant Pigeon. We launched a show three years ago. We're very fortunate. It's the number one kids podcast in the United States. Congratulations. And it is super exciting. We love doing it. If you want to support us, if anybody wants to support us, the best way to support us is to listen to the show, tell people about it. And if we can partner with Google, we'd love to do it. So let us know. And what's the advice that...

I feel like you remember a few things your parents tell you, but there were a couple that were just so prominent. After all this experience, what are you trying to inculcate in your children? Something very simple. And I think a lot of parents do this intuitively. It's follow your curiosity, right? Yeah.

follow your curiosity is going to lead you down so many different paths and rabbit holes. And it's going to unlock all of these new ideas and passions that you didn't even know you had. So right now, my son, my 11 year old, he's really interested in building a gaming computer. Okay. Do I love that he plays video games? No, not really. I don't love it. It's not my favorite thing, but he's so excited about

buying the components and building a gaming computer, and we're going to do it. And it's awesome. There's a lot to learn about that. There's a lot to learn, right? Yeah. Okay, great. I think we're going to go to questions. So to the audience question. So again, if you ask a question, you know, we'll definitely be giving you a copy of Guy's new book, which is unbelievably great. Okay, so we have a question from Nicholas Van Vliet.

Which H-I-B-T interview was the toughest interview for you? You mentioned that you wanted to humanize these entrepreneurs. Were there any anywhere that was actually pretty tough to do? You know, I've had some tough interviews earlier on, and part of that was because

We didn't really fully prepare the person for the interview. And that's our process is very different now. So I'll answer this briefly. Yes, that I would say one of the toughest interviews I have had was with Jan Winner. Jan Winner is the founder of Rolling Stone magazine. He was tough to humanize.

I'll be honest. I mean, and then, you know, a few months after that episode came out, there were some allegations about his behavior at Rolling Stone. And that was unfortunate. We don't have 100% perfect record, but we have a pretty good record on how I built this sort of filtering out for people.

certain qualities. We look for kind entrepreneurs. We look for entrepreneurs who represent the best of entrepreneurship because our show represents entrepreneurship to a lot of people. But we don't spend a whole lot of time trying to convince people. We really want people to come on the show only if they want to come on the show. And also,

As you can imagine, if you listen to how I built this, there are some omissions. There are some, you know, titans that many of you know of who are not on the show. And there's a reason why, because in some of those cases, they have approached us. Their staffs have approached us, and we're very excited to interview them. But they come with conditions. You can't ask about this. You can't ask about that. And no talking about this.

And my answer to that is I totally get it. I respect you. I completely understand, but we can't do that because our audience won't accept it. And I can't do this. If, if, if we, if we're rigging this game, right, you have to come with an open heart and open mind. You have to be willing to surrender to the process. And if you can do that,

We welcome you with open arms and we want you on the show because we will contextualize your life, your ups, your downs, the mistakes you made, the decisions, the good decisions, the bad decisions. So that's crucial and key. Now, before every interview I do, and I've done this now for three years, I have a half hour conversation with every single person weeks before they join me in the studio. And I say this exact same thing I've just told you.

No conditions. We need you to surrender. We need you to come with a sense of generosity. And we want you to do it. We want you to come. Do you have people fall out during that process? Occasionally, very rarely, but occasionally. And look, I'm very clear with them. I'm like, I don't want to pressure you to come on. I don't, you know, and it's an off the record conversation. And, you know, and I know we're going to know a lot about you. We do a very deep dive. We are going to do, we even do a background check on you. We know as much as we can know about you.

And it's not to embarrass you. It's to contextualize your life and also to protect us because we represent – we have to represent integrity. So we have to make sure that the person who's coming on, if there was something that happened in their life that maybe missed the mark, we want you to explain and talk about it in an open and generous way.

No one's perfect. No one is perfect. Larry and Sergey aren't perfect, right? They're good guys. Nobody. I'm not. We're all flawed. We're all flawed, right? And so we have to, but we all need to be contextualized. That's really important, you know, and that's what I'm trying to do on the show. That's fair.

All right. Should we get, let's see, let's get the second question here. It's from Nipit Modi. What changes have you seen in podcasting the last few years? And where do you see podcasts going in the next five years? Have you considered lending your voice to an audio book or storytelling podcast? I think you do that already. You can buy my audio book. How I built this. I have narrated it. Yes. And I think you narrate it.

Including some children's shows as well. Yep. And, you know, I do well in the world. And so where do I see podcasting going? I, I, I see it being consolidated similar to television, right? I see the kind of the Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, you know, model coming, coming online. I don't know if that's the YouTube TV model. I, I,

I don't know if that's, I think it's inevitable. If you were to ask me if that's what I prefer, the answer would be no. I wish that podcasting would be free and open and available to everyone forever. But the reality is that, you know, this is also a business and these shows have to become sustainable. How I built this, we work with NPR. So it's distributed by NPR. NPR has a public service mission called

to make their content free. But you know, it's not easy. And by the way, I'm going to tell you right now, if you want to support

how I built this, in addition to buying the book, please contribute to your local public radio station. Right now is a really difficult time for public radio stations. They are really suffering with this economic crisis and they need your help. If you listen to KQED in San Francisco or KCRW in LA, whatever it is, wherever you are, please do contribute because that money actually goes to enable NPR to make and pay for shows like How I Built This, which I hope

bring some benefit and joy to your life. Like if you have a great pair of shoes or earbuds that you love, I think how I built this also brings joy and value to your life. So public radio, super important to support. But I do think that in, you know, in, in the future, podcasting is going to be more, even more disaggregated and more,

more of it's going to be behind paywalls. And my pledge to you is how I built this will not. You will always get it for free. We just need you to support it. We need you to voluntarily support it. Great. Thank you. We definitely will do that. All right. We're going to go to a third question here from Tim Anderson. I've loved listening to the resilience edition of how I built this episodes recently. How do you think COVID will impact entrepreneurship over the next five years and over the next 15?

It's going to have a huge impact. I mean, it's going to change the way we work, how we work, where we live. I think it could have the upside to it is that it could kind of disaggregate, you know, create this sort of disaggregated, you know, superstar cities. We've had, you know, San Francisco, Bay Area, New York.

Boston, Los Angeles. Well, could Boise, Idaho, could Omaha, Nebraska, could other parts of the country benefit from more remote work, people living there and working for Google and Apple and other big companies? So I think that's going to be a huge change. I also think that there will be, I hope, significant moonshot changes that come out of this moment. Because look, if you think of the pandemic as like a dry run for everything

And actually, here in California, we haven't had a dry run. We've had a real-time experience with Chapter 1 of climate change. If you think of the pandemic and climate change as like alarm bells going off saying, hey, humans, you have got to pay attention now.

We need huge, huge moonshot swing for the fences kinds of products and ideas, you know, like Impossible Foods is a great example. You know, Pat Brown is trying to get people not to consume animal meat, but to make meat from plants because 15 percent of global climate emissions come from livestock production. Here in California, the governor has just announced he's going to ban livestock.

combustion engine vehicles in 15 years. That's crucial. We have to support that. And companies like Google and Microsoft and Apple, huge companies that can scale things, we have to do these things. We have to think of things in a big way. So my hope is that we will start to see people really come out of the woodwork

with big dreams and ideas on how to confront the challenges we face. It may be a combination of, of, you know, of legislation, but also things like geoengineering, which scares me, but I, I, you know, we may, we may have to start thinking about that. So that's my hope. My hope is that this, this time and place has been a kick in our butts. And if you're watching, I hope it's kicking your butt. And I hope that maybe you...

Yeah, definitely swing for the fences moment. All right, let's do another question for you. How much does confidence play in the role of being successful? I think confidence is hard one. You know, I'm a big believer in self-doubt and in interrogating everything about what you do all the time. Not to undermine yourself, but to make what you do or how you think better. So for me, my example is I don't have fixed goals.

unmovable beliefs about most things. I mean, yes, I have views about certain topics and ideas, but I really am open to learning about a variety of issues and open to changing my mind. I mean, I think that's one of the gifts that we have as humans, right? And when it comes to confidence, I think confidence is one of those, it's not like a fixed immovable thing.

I think there are days where we are more confident than other days. There are days where we are, we have more self-doubt, but it's a work in progress. It's like what I talked about earlier with rejection. It's a practice. It requires effort and time and experience. You know, I am infinitely more confident at age 45 than I was at age 35 and 25.

Um, and hopefully it will be more confident. I look at my mom who's almost 80 and she's unbelievably confident because she's like, you know, she's like, I apologize for, I lived a great life and I'm doing fine. And I, I don't worry about what people think about me anymore. I'm almost 80, you know, you know what I mean? Or 75. So I, I think that confidence is something that comes with time and practice and those, those

Little victories and those little failures that you learn from to get to those little victories. Okay, great. Let's do, I think, one more audience question or maybe two. We'll see. Lydia Barrios is asking, there are thousands of impressive founders globally. What criteria do you use to determine which guests to bring to HIVT? Number one, kindness.

We look for kind founders. We look for founders who operate with integrity, who treat their employees well, who are as good of corporate citizens as possible. I mean, we're in a time where there's a lot of mistrust of corporations and big organizations. So we are really trying to be careful. No one's perfect.

We look for really good stories. We look for struggle. We look for people who didn't come from money or who didn't have easy access to it. We look for people who have built generally brands and services

products and services that we recognize that are available. So we don't do a whole lot of like B2B companies or back end technology. Those are great and interesting, but there are plenty of other shows that focus on that. We how I built this focus is primarily on consumer facing goods and services. So

So that's essentially how we decide. Great. Okay. And let's take one more audience question from Natasha Hammond. Who is the one person you have not interviewed that you would want to?

Now that I'm here, I would say Larry and Sergey. Let's bring them on. We have it. We approached them a few years ago. I think I saw Sergey at a TED conference and he was like, yeah, sure. But, you know, I think we'd love to have them on. So if you guys have any wins, start emailing them now. Okay, I will immediately after this. Larry and Sergey right now. Perfect. Okay. Talking about Larry and Sergey, what is your favorite Google product? We ask this of all of our guests.

I can't live without the search engine. It's pretty great. That's good. It's pretty awesome. I'm using Google Chrome right now. I actually uploaded – I started using Google Chrome in like 2008.

So, or a relatively early user. So those are two products. We have a Google Home at home. One of my kids has a Google Home. The other one has an Amazon Alexa. So they fight against each other. And of course ours is way better because that's my product. So, of course. And it's great. The Google Home is on all the time. And unfortunately, my 11-year-old is connected to Spotify account to it. So I hear a lot of like,

really bad words coming out of it, like hip hop and stuff. And the other day, can I say a bad word on this? The other day, I caught my kids in their room asking their Google Chrome, Google, okay, Google, what does shit mean? What?

What was the response of the assistant? Yes. And the assistant was like, a colloquial term for excrement or something like that. It was something like that. It was very earnest. So I appreciated that. They were laughing. We try to keep it very clean. The team does a really good job of that. So thanks for the feedback. My favorite Sun story with the Google Mini, which is probably what you have, the speaker was...

He asked something and it was very early on. I had a prototype. We didn't have that answer. So I said, oh, you can go to the computer and type it. And he's like, what do you mean? I have to type it? Why? Like, why would I ever have to type anything? And it just was a moment for me to realize how much expectations are changing in a very quick manner. Yeah.

Guy, one other question for you. You've written this book, you've done this show. What are you hoping, what's the message you want people to take from your book as they read it? What's the lesson you're hoping to leave the community with as you wrote this book? I want this book to inspire creative thinking, whether we call it entrepreneurial thinking or not. That's what I am calling it.

It's really a mindset. I mean, the book can, it's designed for somebody who's thinking about starting a business, who is starting a business, or just wants to be inspired by people who do, but also by people who want to put out

a disruptive idea into the world. And it might be an idea in your workplace, maybe a product or service that you'd like Google to offer. It's really designed to trigger thoughts and ideas and creativity, then I've done my job. Yeah. Okay, great. With that topic, do you think there's

more we could be doing at Google, just in general in the community, to elevate entrepreneurship in sort of the underrepresented minority groups like Blacks and Latinx? That's a really big, you know, obviously with social injustice and everything that's happening in the U.S. and in the world, really, because it's really a worldwide thing now. What could we do more for entrepreneurship and innovation there?

Well, one thing you could do, actually, I mean, there's lots of things you can do. And you probably are doing some things because Google, of course, has the ability to scale things in a huge way with all of its resources. But aside from from, you know, creating very clear programs to identify and help.

of color. We are actually, how I built this, we are actually launching right now a new initiative where we will select 60 entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities around the country. We're going to launch this in 2021. And we're going to launch this in 2021.

And we are looking for people who have an idea to bring out a service or a product that solves a problem in their community. And we are going to give each of these people, every person we choose will get $10,000. And then we will have like a panel of people who've been on the show evaluating their pitches and the winner will get $50,000.

We're looking for money to support that. So if Google wants to support that, we would love that. And that initiative is going to be part of the How I Built This Summit in 2021, which will be virtual. So we're...

That's great. We're planning that now. And it's going to be we've had this amazing fellows program for how I built this for the last three years. You know, 80 percent of our fellows have been women and people of color and from underrepresented communities has been an amazing program. And now we want to take it to the next level.

Yeah, that's really fantastic to hear and definitely wish you the best of luck as you build that. I know we've talked about several areas for Google to help partner. Google was built on innovation and that is what we try to do every day in many different ways from moonshots to small wins, which are also sometimes very hard, you know,

hard one. So we'll definitely connect with you on that. I want to thank you for joining us today at Google. I want to congratulate you on what is an incredible career and impact to the community and also on your book. I love reading it. I actually did buy some copies and sent them to my family, my brother and my sister. Both run startups.

as does my dad. And so they all have a copy. It's on its way to Costa Rica, so it'll make it to Latin America, probably the first copy in Costa Rica. But really, congratulations and thank you for having us. And really continue everything you're doing. It's making a really big difference. And congratulations again. Thank you. Thank you, Ana. Thank you to the Googlers watching. Really appreciate it. You guys do great work. And when I can come visit there post-pandemic, I'd love to come.

Thanks for listening. You can watch this episode and tons of other great content at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.