How I Built This with Guy Raz

Miguel and Veronica Garza grew up in Laredo, Texas, in the kind of family that did almost everything together. So when Veronica realized that a grain-free diet was helping her cope with debilitating health issues, the rest of the family—all six of them—adopted the same paleo-friendly diet. Soon Veronica was making her own almond flour tortillas at home and selling them at a CrossFit gym that the Garza family had launched in Laredo. The grain-free tortillas were a hit, and by 2016, Siete...

With the wedding industry dramatically impacted by the pandemic, co-founder and CEO of Zola, Shan-Lyn Ma decided to pivot. Instead of just wedding planning, Zola would expand to include livestreaming virtual weddings as well as an e-commerce marketplace for home goods. Shan-Lyn talks with Guy about her forecast for the wedding industry this year and how to get more girls interested in entrepreneurship. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks...

Rick Steves spent the summer after high school backpacking through Europe on two dollars a day—sleeping on the floor, sneaking into museums, and subsisting on a diet of bread and jam. When he came home, he found people were hungry for tips on how to visit Europe on the cheap, so he began teaching classes, and was soon hawking a self-published guidebook out of his car. Eventually, he started leading minibus tours and hosting a travel show on Public TV, steadily growing his business even...

Six years ago, Morning Brew started out as a fun business newsletter Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief wrote for their classmates out of their University of Michigan dorm room. The company now has over 2.5 million subscribers with multiple newsletters and a podcast, and last year Business Insider paid about 75 million dollars for a majority stake in Morning Brew. Alex and Austin talk to Guy about the organic unpaid marketing they relied on in college to build up their readership, and they...

When she was just 19 years old, Melanie Perkins dreamt of transforming the graphic design and publishing industries. But she started small, launching a site to make yearbook design simpler and more collaborative. Her success with that first venture—and an unexpected meeting with a VC investor—eventually landed her the backing to pursue her original idea, and the chance to take on software industry titans like Adobe and Microsoft. Today, Melanie's online design platform Canva is valued at $6...

Music manager and entrepreneur Troy Carter spoke to Guy last June, as the pandemic was worsening and the country was shaken by racial unrest. Troy spoke about the profound impact of these events on him personally, as well as on the music industry. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times.

Over the course of ten years as a founder, Chieh Huang bet twice on the ubiquity of the smartphone. The first time was in 2010 with Astro Ape, a mobile gaming company that he founded with a few friends out of an attic. The second time was with Boxed, a mobile bulk-retailer that he co-launched in 2013 out of his New Jersey garage. Chieh and his tiny team scrambled to send out their first boxes of toilet paper and laundry detergent, gambling that they could compete with monster retailers by...

After retiring from professional soccer, Beverly Leon shifted her focus in a big way. In 2018 she founded Local Civics, an ed-tech start-up that uses game-based learning to encourage kids to strengthen their civic leadership skills. Her mission is to get students civically involved long before they're eligible to vote. She talked with Guy about the business model of an education start-up, how her business has responded to today's challenges, and why she thinks we need a more inclusive...

In 2012, 22-year-old Katlin Smith was growing restless at her consulting job, so she started experimenting with grain-free, paleo-friendly muffin recipes in her Atlanta kitchen. A buyer at a nearby Whole Foods agreed to sell Katlin's muffin mixes and placed an order for twelve bags. She then hustled to expand the business: hand-mixing almond flour and coconut sugar in food-grade barrels, slinging wardrobe boxes of muffin mix into a rental car, and standing by helplessly while shoppers...

Strava is a social fitness platform with more than 76 million users in nearly every country worldwide. Co-founders Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey spoke with Guy about the recent surge in users joining their virtual fitness community. They share how they've focused on creating new content and features to meet peoples' increased need for connection in a socially distanced world. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and...

In 2001, Mike Cannon-Brookes sent an email to his college classmates in Sydney, asking if anyone was interested in helping him launch a tech startup after graduation. Back then, entrepreneurship wasn't a popular career path in Australia; and Mike's only taker was Scott Farquhar, a fellow student who shared Mike's passion for computers and his frustration for the corporate grind. Together they launched Atlassian, a two-man tech support service that they managed from their bedrooms at all...

M. Night Shyamalan spoke with Guy as part of NPR's Storytelling Lounge at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Night is known for writing, producing and directing blockbuster films like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Split. Despite his many successes, Night shares that he still faces self-doubt, fearing every new project may be his last. He spoke with Guy about the production of his new film Old and the new season of his Apple TV Plus show Servant, both of which were filmed during the...

When Norma Kamali studied fashion illustration in the 1960s, she never expected to become a designer. So when a job as an airline clerk came along, she was glad to accept it—along with the perk of dirt-cheap flights from New York to London. On those weekend trips abroad, she discovered fashion that was exuberant and eye-catching, so she started loading her suitcase with clothing to sell in the U.S. By the 1970s, she was designing her own pieces out of a shop in New York; soon she was selling...

Fourth generation cattle rancher Loren Poncia and his wife Lisa transformed Stemple Creek Ranch into one of the few carbon neutral livestock ranches in the United States, and have since made their ranch carbon positive, sequestering more carbon than they emit. Lisa and Loren spoke with Guy about how consumers are helping drive the sustainable farming movement, and how they doubled down on online retail after many restaurants shut down. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built...

With its eco-friendly paper towels, diapers, and cleansers, Seventh Generation was one of the first—and most successful—green household brands to hit the market. But in the early 1990s, just a few years after it began as a scrappy mail-order catalog, its two founders had a bitter falling out. Alan Newman and Jeffrey Hollender have barely spoken since that time, but they generously agreed to come on the show to talk to Guy about the business they were both passionate about, and the delicate...

After starting her career at Teach For America in 1998, Elisa Villanueva Beard has served as the CEO of the non-profit for the last five and a half years. Elisa spoke with Guy about how the organization has supported its teachers who are working in nearly 2,300 schools across the country, and how educators are finding creative solutions to engage with students during this challenging school year. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online...

Judi Sheppard Missett wandered into her first dance class when she was 2, and hasn't stopped dancing since. In the late 1960s, she was teaching jazz dance in Chicago and her students—mostly young moms—complained she was acting too much like a Broadway taskmaster, when all they wanted was get in shape and have a good time. Seeing an opportunity, Judi created Jazzercise: a hybrid of aerobics and dance that ushered in a new culture of spandexed, synchronized movement and became one of the first...

As part of the band Pomplamoose, musician Jack Conte had a sizeable fan base in the late 2000s and was making thousands of dollars a month from iTunes sales. But when streaming services like Spotify took over the music scene, Jack's income dwindled. So he called up his college roommate Sam Yam, who had spent his post-college years launching startup after startup. Together, Sam and Jack created Patreon, a platform where artists' most passionate fans can sponsor them for just a few dollars a...

In 1992, Steve Ells was a classically trained chef working in a high-end restaurant in San Francisco. But after eating a burrito at a local taqueria, he got an idea: to sell burritos and earn enough money to open his own gourmet restaurant. The first Chipotle opened in Denver the following year. Bringing his culinary training to taqueria-style service, Steve Ells helped transform the way we eat fast food. Order the How I Built This book at: https://smarturl.it/HowIBuiltThis

In the late 1970s Janice Bryant Howroyd moved to Los Angeles and began temping as a secretary. She soon realized there were many other young people in situations similar to hers. So with $1,500 in her pocket, Janice rented an office in Beverly Hills and created the staffing company ACT-1. Today, ActOne Group is an international workforce management company, making Janice Bryant Howroyd the first African-American woman to own a billion-dollar business. Order the How I Built This book at:...