How I Built This with Guy Raz

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Morra Aarons-Mele is the founder of Women Online and hosts The Anxious Achiever podcast. Morra shares how her agency pivoted during the pandemic after losing 30% of its business overnight, and how anxious entrepreneurs like herself can lead effectively in a world full of stress and uncertainty. 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...

By the time he turned 30, Tim Ferriss had figured out how to succeed at things that many people fail at—from growing a business to dancing the tango to marketing a best-selling book. He approached these and numerous other challenges by breaking them down into manageable chunks, carefully documenting his own progress, and taking copious notes. That formula is now wrapped into a hugely successful personal brand that blends optimism with discipline and includes five books and a popular podcast...