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

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Guy, how many people have you interviewed in your life?

Guy Raz (0:59)

I would say over 20,000.

Steven Bartlett (1:03)

And you started a smash hit iconic show called How I Built This. Why? What's the mission behind that show?

Guy Raz (1:11)

I wanted to give people access to the greatest entrepreneurs I could find in ways that they might not have access to them. And I wanted that wisdom and those stories to be available to anyone at any time for free forever.

Steven Bartlett (1:34)

Give me an idea of the kinds and calibre of people that you've interviewed over those 20,000 interviews.

Guy Raz (1:41)

Oh, everything, everybody from, you know, rural sheepers in Afghanistan to soccer players in Europe, to celebrities in the United States, or leaders, entrepreneurs and founders of businesses, to ordinary man on the street conversations.

Steven Bartlett (2:04)

I'm really curious, you know, when we talk about building something, the seemingly impossible, most difficult part of building anything seems to be going from zero to one. And you've sat with people who have gone from having an idea to putting that idea in motion. And it's not a huge journey to travel, but it seems like the hardest journey to travel because it requires so much of a shift in mindset, it requires the confrontation of fear and apparent danger. And there's something about these people that makes them decide that it's better than not starting. Taking the action is better than not taking the action. Have you been able to figure out what that is in people and how we can cultivate it?

Guy Raz (2:45)

There are several sort of the Venn diagram of founders coalesces around a few common traits that, by the way, many of us have intuitively, naturally, or can develop, right? So curiosity is an obvious one, just this desire to grow and to learn and to look around you, and to try and absorb the lessons around you. But the other ones are a little bit more hard edged, like a fear of regret of not trying something. So many years ago, I interviewed a guy named Jim Cook. I've actually interviewed him recently again. He really kind of revolutionized the beer industry in the United States. Like the reason why Europeans drink American beer today is because of Jim Cook. Like in the 80s, it was a joke, right? There was actually a famous Monty Python sketch where it's something about, rather drink pissed than American beer, something like that. Well, in the 80s, he kind of revived the beer industry in the US with a beer named Samuel Adams. And he really kind of supercharged what became this craft brewing industry in the US, IPAs and all these really interesting beers that to this day are some of the greatest in the world. And he started his business, Sam Adams, in his 30s. He was a consultant for Boston Consulting Group. He was making a good salary. He had a family, but there was something about his life that felt unfulfilled. And part of that was he wanted to build something on his own. He wanted it to be his. He didn't want to work for somebody else. And he felt that if he didn't try, if he just continued on, at BCS, he would make a lot of money. He would make millions of dollars and he could have a very stable, good life. But he felt like he would be unfulfilled if it wasn't his own thing, that he had to try. So he took a risk. He left. But he felt that if he didn't take the risk, it would be dangerous. And he actually uses this paradigm, dangerous versus scary. It was really scary to leave his job at BCS.

But it would be dangerous if he stayed, because the danger would be that one day he'd get out of bed and he'd be 60 and he would regret not having tried. And I think that's a big factor for a lot of founders, this idea that they don't want to feel intense regret. And so they're willing to take the risk, even though it might be catastrophic. The idea of building something, of owning something, of creating something yourself that is yours, is a hugely powerful pull. And that's, it's like, it's like, you know, that's that magnetic field that they're all attracted to. They're all kind of moving in that direction. I think many of us who are entrepreneurs or aspire to be entrepreneurs feel that magnetic pull.