Podcaster Guy Raz offers business insights at Rally

On his podcast “How I Built This,” Guy Raz is the one asking entrepreneurs questions about their journey from startup to successful business.

On Wednesday, it was Raz’s turn to answer the questions. The San Francisco-based entrepreneur and media personality, whom The New York Times described in a 2018 story as “one of the most popular podcasters in history,” was the morning keynote speaker at the Rally innovation conference, taking place this week at the Indiana Convention Center.

In a conversation with Muhammad Yasin, the vice president of marketing at Indianapolis-based venture studio High Alpha, Raz addressed a range of topics, including business lessons he’s learned from his career in journalism, podcasting and entrepreneurship.

Raz began his career as a journalist and spent his first 10 years after college at National Public Radio. During part of his time there he was an international correspondent who lived overseas for seven years and reported from 50 different countries.

The experience taught Raz how to enter unfamiliar situations, learn quickly and convey that information to others, he said, “and having to become as much of an expert as possible to transmit that to your audience is a really amazing skill to learn.”

After a while, though, Raz said he wanted to do more. The job of a journalist is to inform, but Raz wanted to inspire. “What I wanted to do was to leave people feeling empowered. And I started thinking about how to do that.”

He left NPR for podcasting in 2012, which he said felt at the time like “going into exile” because the podcasting industry was still in its infancy. “I was terrified because I thought, ‘It could be a total disaster.’”

The gamble paid off. Since then Raz has launched two media companies, Built-It Productions and Tinkercast, which between them produce podcasts that include “How I Built This,” “Wisdom From the Top” and the children’s podcast “Wow in the World,” among others.

For each show, Raz said he and his team keep a singular mission in mind: Making a show that listeners find useful.

“…Is this something that brings value to people? Does it make their lives better?” Raz said. “If we are wasting your time with any of our shows, we failed.”

In answering a question about how to deal with doubters and rejections, Raz described this as a critical skill for any entrepreneur to learn. Building a business, he said, is like “racing through just an obstacle course of ‘No’s,” and the successful entrepreneurs are the ones who can handle rejection and keep their egos in check.

A sales background is great training for developing this skill, Raz said, noting that both entrepreneur Mark Cuban and Sara Blakely, who founded the women’s apparel company Spanx, both have a background in sales.

Once startups do experience success, Raz said, they should resist the temptation to become complacent. Maintaining an innovative and collaborative mindset can help companies avoid this trap.

Raz cited the example of multinational consumer products company Procter & Gamble. “It’s a dinosaur—it’s been around since before the Civil War. But Procter & Gamble is actually an incredibly innovative company.”

One of the company’s well-known products came into existence when an employee in Procter & Gamble’s toothpaste division approached a colleague who was working to develop a plastic-wrap product. The two realized that they could use a plastic film as the delivery device for tooth-whitening ingredients, and the product now known as Crest White Strips was born.

Rally, which is organized by Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures, continues through Thursday. The event, which aims to spur Indiana’s entrepreneurship and innovation activity, is aimed at business leaders, innovators and investors from both within and outside of Indiana. Elevate Ventures says just more than 3,000 people are expected to attend.

IBJ is providing Rally updates on a dedicated blog over the course of the three-day event.