How I Built This - Guy Raz

I’ve always been interested in entrepreneurship and how successful people have made it to where they are today. Each person’s story has a unique twist with similar underlying lessons that can be taken from each story. Going over numerous success stories, I hope some of these ways of thinking and how to approach business are being etched in my brain. My curiosity and interest in the topic don’t even compare to that of Guy Raz’s who created his livelihood on the topic of business building and entrepreneurship. If you haven’t heard of Guy, he’s the host of NPR’s podcasts How I Built This, TED Radio Hour and Wow In the World. He wrote the book How I Built This too, which is what I want to talk about today. Both the podcast and the book unpack the success stories of great entrepreneurs, innovators and idealists. He has interviewed over 6000 people and has condensed this knowledge into an easy-to-follow book. He draws from multiple stories to help teach many of the lessons he’s learnt about entrepreneurship. I found many of the lessons helpful and insightful and I hope writing this helps them stick. 

The Call

The book is divided into 3 sections, The Call, The Test(s), and The Destination. The Call refers to entrepreneurship being your calling or rather figuring out whether it is your calling. He uses the stories of these entrepreneurs to help get the message across and I found this to be really helpful. It’s one thing to read about theories and processes and feels like you sort of understand what it’s saying, and another to get a detailed breakdown of how exactly someone else did it and why they were successful. This really resonated with me and painted the realistic picture that everything is hard work and determination. These people believed in themselves, and their ideas and they pushed themselves to the brink of failure. Don’t get me wrong, these people weren’t delusional, which could lead to catastrophic failure, but they were calculated and precise with their decisions. That’s what makes it seem achievable, with hard work, a good idea and the right systems in place you can achieve what you’re working towards.

Each chapter acts as an item on a checklist to keep your mindset in check, and the personal stories make them relatable and memorable. You’ve got to be open to new ideas and determine whether the idea is dangerous or just scary to pursue. Most of the time it doesn’t hurt to pursue it just a bit, to get a better understanding of whether it is a good idea or not. But even doing this can be scary and the entrepreneurs went through the same fears and resistance most people go through. They just manage to overcome it.

You’ve got to leave your comfort zone but do it safely. This means having a safety net in place, whether that be a full-time job or something else that enables you to take the first step without falling flat on your face. He mentions doing your research which is something I tend to take for granted. You may spot a ‘gap’ in the market, but that ‘gap’ may not really exist. You think you see it because of the information you’ve been exposed to, but if you dig a little deeper you might find that it’s been done before and failed, or the gap is a lot smaller than you first thought.   

He shares anecdotes on finding your co-founder, funding the business and aligning your values so everyone is on the same page. These are all very important steps and it’s so valuable to have a resource like this book to go back and see what successful companies did and the mistakes they made along the way. Discovering how these entrepreneurs funded their businesses at the beginning was eye-opening and shows their level of faith in themselves and their products. Some went into excessive credit card debt, while others took on huge consignment orders before they had the capacity to fulfil them.

The Test(s)

All of the entrepreneurs interviewed for this book have one thing in common, a healthy fear of failure and the ability to overcome it. This section of the book discusses all the challenges faced once the businesses were up and running. Each and every company faced some difficulties, and many people didn’t think they would be resolved. Each situation is different, but with their ability to remove emotion from each scenario they were able to make calculated decisions that put the company on a better path than it was before. Many thought their way around obstacles that presented themselves especially when competitors start to take interest in them.

Raz dissects the importance of location and how these companies got their customer’s attention. Some of these companies were entering crowded markets, but their ability to differentiate and create a buzz helped them start on the right foot. They used such innovative marketing techniques on a shoestring budget, and I learnt a lot from this section. The big decisions involved in financing, protecting what you’ve built, and pivoting are so intricate and influential to running a company. Sometimes these decisions come thick and fast, and these people were selling their products out of their homes not so long ago. It amazes me how quickly we can learn and adapt to fit the role that we’re in and make such big decisions. Pivoting is such an interesting decision to make for your company. There is a lot of pride involved and if your company is somewhat successful, then you’ve received some validation for what you’ve already achieved. Great leaders keep their egos in check and are willing to take their business in another direction if that’s what the market calls for. This usually leads to greater success than staying put.

The Destination

This section speaks about the important things that some may forget after success is achieved or even the motivation behind why you started it in the first place. Many entrepreneurs look back and have some regrets about how they went about it. It may even be as simple as not enjoying the journey and being so caught up in it all. Once they have all the money in the world, they realised it’s actually not about the money and more about feeling like they’ve made a difference. It’s about focusing on the small things in order to grow, building a company culture that they’re proud of and being comfortable knowing what you’ve built can run itself. The tricky part comes when it’s time to let go and the company has outgrown you, many want to hold on to their baby, but that could be worse for the company. It all boils down to being kind and what you do with your luck.

I learnt many lessons from all of the entrepreneurs’ features in this book. From the success stories to the failures, each story sheds light on problems I hadn’t thought of and innovative ways to overcome them. The perseverance of these people is admirable, and you can see why they are where they are today. How I Built This gets the lessons across in such a relatable way that I think they are retained better than a normal business or start-up book. If you’re interested in the topic then give it a read.