Transcript

Bonus Episode! Ask Guy Anything: December 2021

Hey everybody. First of all. Happy holidays, and thank you so much for being part of what we do here. We make this show For you. I don't think of this show as a business show, even though it's full of really valuable and useful advice and insights on how to start and run a successful business, big or small I think of it as a storytelling show and

What I try to do in each interview is to get inside the consciousness of each guest with the hope that they will take me and you. on the journey that led them to what they built. Anyway. A few weeks ago I asked you all if you have any questions about the show, and clearly lots of you do because we receive tons of them and we can't

But uh I thought I'd try to answer a few that represented what m most of you wanted to know. So Let me start. Uh with this one from Marley in San Diego. Marley asks How do you prepare for a guest's appearance? Is there a particular target market in mind when creating an episode? If so, who

Um all right, well Marley, great question. Um let me start with how we prepare for a guest appearance. Um We actually prepare long before we even approach the guests. So so our team, our small team spends a lot of time Um reading all kinds of publications and and websites and magazines. Looking for potential guests.

Yeah. Um, once we have have found a guest and they've agreed that they want to come on the show We do a very, very deep dive into their life story. So even before we approach the guests, we've done uh you know some pr pretty substantial work on

And um and somebody prepares a basic outline of their life and I'll I'll look through it and then I'll have a conversation with them. And just explain what the you know what we do on the show and and if they want to do it. Um And then uh they go away and then we, you know, decide if it's gonna work out and then um if it does One of our Amazing researchers.

on the show, uh will go uh and begin to do a deep dive into this person's life. So that um research packet will eventually arrive to me. It's um anywhere from forty to fifty single spaced pages. So it's a very dense research packet. So it you know, typically takes me Anywhere from five to sometimes ten hours to prepare for every single

Interview. The goal is to learn. things about the person that I didn't know and sometimes they d they didn't remember. And so my job as an interviewer is to take all that information that I have and all that reading that I've done and all the research that the team has done and given to me. You know, and essentially try and discover new things about the person which happens Each and every time, multiple times, and every single

Interview. So well prepared. then I can um I can do that. I mean answered your question about is there a particular target market in mind when creating an episode, no. Um that's the beauty of our show is that w our audience, of course, lots of people listening and lots of you listening might have your own store, you might have your own business, you might have an Etsy shop. But lots of people listening um don't. You know, they they may be inspired to one day want to start something or maybe have a h side hustle or maybe are just listening to the show because it inspires

A different way of thinking about how they do their work. Maybe for a bigger company. So there's no target audience in mind. That's the beauty of our uh our audience. It's incredibly diverse. it's it's just a really, really awesome audience and so we are so Lucky to have

All of you listening to the show. Okay. Thank you for that one, Marley. Uh okay, on to the next one. This is from ISIS in Milford, Michigan. And um ISIS asks, How do you pick guests? Okay. Um There is no simple answer to this question, because there's no formula. If there was a formula, you would just plug in A and B and C and D and then you'd get, you know, Y, right? But It's more of a an art than a science.

Broadly speaking, we look for brands. We look for uh things that that you would recognize. Something you might buy in the in a store or a a service you would use online or a product that um is relatively familiar. Obviously we've done less well known brands, but we look for Brands that have a national, maybe even an international presence, but we are based in the US and so oftentimes Many of the products are

known only to people in the in North America. So brand is something we we look for because um when people connect with it in some way or they they say, Oh I I I've heard that. Um it's more likely they'll listen to the episode. The second thing we look for is um Um does this person wanna be on the show? Is this person um self reflective? It's really important that our guests and by the way

All of our guests are founders. That's the difference between our show and another show. An o another show I do actually called Wisdom from the Top. Where I interview CEOs. Um, how I built this sometimes our guests are CEOs, but they're always founders of the business. That is crucial. That's why we don't we haven't done the story of Coca Cola or Ford, because those founders aren't alive. It doesn't mean those stories aren't great. They are great. It's just that We focus on

Founders. Um back to to where I was. So do they wanna be on the show? Um and that's important because we We ask all and the reason why I have a kind of a background conversation with every guest is to explain that We need them to be willing to surrender to the process. I use that word kind of tongue in cheek, but it's it's a term I use not sort of like surrender, this is a battle, but more like surrender to the process, trust us. We need you to totally open up.

to be able to tell your story. And it's not to embarrass you, but it's to Show that every human is a three hundred and sixty degree. you know, animal, right? We're all we're all complex and we've all done things we're proud of and things we're less proud of it, but it's important to show all those things because if every person on High Built This was this perfect buttoned up uh perfectly packaged person, uh it w it wouldn't be a reflection of reality. So

It's important that when when we get guests on that they're willing to talk about um their failures, their drawbacks, their struggles, their mistakes, even things that might be a little bit embarrassing. Because we want people to be able to relate to that. So that's really important. Um And then we look for things like struggle. It's harder for us to on this show Um to tell a story of just, you know.

Rocket success without any setbacks. And it's not to say those stories aren't legitimate or worthwhile to tell. The importance behind the reason behind that approach is we don't want a cookie cutter story. So that's it. That's basically how we pay guests. Okay, um another question from ISIS, which show has been your children's favorite, which episode? Um They uh they don't always listen to it because then they're dad.

And they're uh I'm I I'm just being honest, they just don't always want to listen to it. Um but uh but sometimes they do listen to it, especially my older son. And um they really like episodes about like food, like Tate's cookies, um Or the episode of About Logic. I think is one of their favorites. Um and ISIS says your son's favorite is the Home Depot episode. We've listened to it a thousand times. A thousand times. The Home Depot episode. Amazing. Thank you for that. ISIS. Okay. We're gonna take a quick break.

Uh, but in a moment, uh, a question about my own Entrepreneurial journey. So stay with me, I will be back in a second. You are listening to kind of listening to how I built this, uh Ask Me Anything Uh see you on the other side.

Hey, welcome back. I'm answering a few of your questions on this episode today. We're gonna be back uh with a bunch of new incredible episodes in the new year, and I just can't wait for them, so look out for those. Um all right, let's move on to Uh this question from Micah in Alberta, Canada. Micah, love Canada. My wife, my children are Canadian. Woo, go Canada. Um Micah asks. Listening to all these stories does it m ever make you think about starting your own business?

Well, Micah, um it turns out that I do. I have two businesses. Um I don't talk about it much. I don't you know, it's I I I I don't necessarily th this show isn't about me, it's about our guests. But um but I do have um two production companies that um I've founded uh or co founded Uh, one is Built of Productions, which is involved in producing this show, and I produce a show called Wisdom from the Top, which you can also listen to and subscribe to. It's a really I love it. It's a really interesting show about leadership, management, big ideas around

What makes certain businesses work. I interview current CEOs, former CEOs, I interview really great business book authors like Jim Collins. Um we've had Ingenuity of Pepsi on it. Um we've had, you know Kenchinalt of of American Express, um just some really amazing CEOs. Also with Built of Productions produced uh a show called The Rewind on Spotify no longer do it, but a really fun show where I interviewed um

uh pop singers about their their life. Uh and then I'm I'm a uh co founder of another production company called Tinkercast. Um and this is a children's media company. And if there are any parents out there or you know any kids in your life, you might know our best known show. It's called Wow in the World. It's a science show for for kids and parents. It's a show um I started with my friend Mindy Thomas.

Almost uh five years ago. And uh it's super fun. It's uh we every episode is rooted in a real peer reviewed scientific journal article. And we explain science to kids and parents and to ourselves, and we go on on these incredible adventures. We have a time machine, we've got a giant pigeon named Reggie, we have a nosy neighbor named Dennis. uh Mindy's grandma G Force is uh

A world Champion wrestler, of course not really, but in the show. And it's super fun. We actually do a live show. We're going on the road back in twenty twenty two, so that's part of Tinkercast. We also have two other New podcasts. Um one is called How to Be an Earthling. It's about two aliens.

who are travel writers for their distant planet and they happen to end up in our galaxy and then our solar system and they crash land into Earth and they are stuck on Earth and On every episode they meet a different earthling species, which happens to be an animal species. And it's full of original music from the Pop Ups, who also do the Wow and the World theme song. They're a Incredible band. So that's there's that show and then an another new show we launched called Who When Wow, which is a biography show. We've

Told the story of Roberta Clemente and Houdini and Shirley Chisholm, an amazing people throughout history. So all those shows are designed to be listened to by parents and kids together. Uh, we do live shows as I mentioned, we've got all kinds of partnerships and publishing and we are even working on an ed tech platform. And hopefully in twenty twenty two we'll have um

our first commercial product available. So Uh so yes, indeed, I am an entrepreneur. Thank you for the question, Micah. I'm gonna do one last one. This is from Peter O'Brien in Dublin, Ireland. I d I love Love Dublin. I've been there s a bunch of times. Um Peter, I was once there on Bloomsday with my family and it was so Cool.

Uh to see everyone dressed up like characters from Ulysses in the pubs along Grafton Street. It's I've got such an enduring memory of that day. It was so fun. All right, Peter's question is, is there a fact checking process in how I built this, in the post-production process? Uh and are interviewees allowed to tell their own truth, or is time spent verifying the details? Okay, that's a great question. There is an intense fact checking process. So not only do we do A deep biographical dive into the person's life story. We also have a very detailed timeline. And oftentimes I've I'm interviewing somebody and they'll say, Well then in two thousand seven I did this and this and that and I know that that happened in two thousand six. And I will stop them mid interview and I'll say, Hey, I'm just gonna stop you, that happened in two thousand six.

So we're real really were sticklers for facts and for details about the facts. Um and we do a fact check. And post production on every show. We'll go through the And we're

fact check it. Now there are some things you just can't fact check, you know, that haven't been uh you know some was uh a thought in someone's mind, for example. Or the breakfast they ate one day. um in the public domain. So invariably it is a singular perspective from the person I'm interviewing. It's th that person's perspective, or the the two people I'm interviewing, it's their perspective.

You know, it's it's different than a documentary because in a documentary you've got multiple voicelling a story. This is an oral history. Yeah. through the voice and the perspective of one person. So there are always going to be perspectives that that other people might see differently, but we work really, really hard. to um to make it accurate and to make sure it is accurate and to make sure it is um and the the facts check out. Um

Uh Peter y uh also adds, I imagine that would be expensive and t maybe even impossible or time consuming. It is all of those things, it is expensive, it's time consuming We spend uh that's why it takes us so long to to produce an episode. And we have a small team and we put a lot of care into Um making sure that the show stands up. to scrutiny. So that's really important. There are lots of podcasts out there. Lots of really good podcasts out there that are

you know, where you hear things that may not actually Be accurate. Um And You know, For us it's really, really important. It just

We think that We have to do that. And um And so that's it. So great question. Thank you, Peter. Thank you everyone for your Awesome questions. If you would like to submit one for a future

QA session, just go to guyRaz.com and uh fill out the form. Thank you again. Happy holidays. Thank you so much for being part of our world. We love you guys. Thanks.