How I Built This with Guy Raz

In 2017, she put out a follow-up to Blue Ocean Strategy called Blue Ocean Shift Beyond Competing.

Your new book, your latest book is called Beyond Disruption.

So actually, our view is that disruption and what we talk about Beyond Disruption, we have this idea called non-disruptive creation or non-disruptive innovation when you create a new market beyond the bounds of an industry.

But what we started to find out in our research, we saw, yes, some cases of opening a blue ocean are disruptive like Amazon's blue ocean, but it's disruptive.

And what we're saying is you can broaden your horizon to not only look at disruption, but look at this non-disruptive opportunities as well.

It's not to take disruption down, but to open up this other part, the other end of the innovation spectrum and say, let's not forget about this too.

And then we do some research and we do some digging and we're like, well that's dumb potatoes are whole real nutrient dense food like of course you can have potatoes on the Whole30.

we put together a 40-page PDF on how to do the whole three, it was essentially our seminar packaged down into PDF format, all of the stuff that we talked about, the science behind it, the big picture recommendations, the rules of the program, how to do it, tips for grocery shopping and meal planning and we put that all into a PDF and we sold it through our website for $39.99.

It didn't hit the New York Times bestseller list right away, it was published in June, but I got the call from my publisher in September that it had gained enough traction and it made the list which was huge. I never expected that.

I still felt like I had so much to say about the Whole30 and so many different pieces of advice and tips and resources I could offer down to just the most granular, oh I'm doing the Whole30 alone, my husband's not doing it with me like how, how should I go about this or what tips do you have, I'd so much to offer that the idea for the second book came up almost immediately after the first one was published.

And you guys wrote that book, but you also your partnership your marriage was was was kind of coming apart, and I again you know don't always talk about this on the show unless it's connected to the business and this was inextricably linked because the two of you had a business together, but your personal life was coming apart.

I really like Robert A. Carrows, the year of Lyndon Johnson that became my favorite.

I think Carrow is just this amazing author. So he wrote Lyndon Johnson's life more interesting than a novel.

And also the complexity of him is really fascinating.

I felt like by reading the book, I felt like I was living the life.

And also, I think Carrow basically wrote the entire US history from the 30s to the 70s.

I also read some books you know I reread some Wattens book I read The IKEA STORY during that time and all of a sudden I don't remember which day but I started realize what was wrong about our approach was that we tried to make this group by thing work better but the fundamental reason why people were doing these group buys in the US was actually not because it was fun it was not fun the fundamental reason people were doing this was because they couldn't have easy affordable access to the food they love

So I decided to write a book which I called The Primal Blueprint, and that came out in 2009 and was an immediate big seller. Now, when I say immediate big seller, I couldn't find a publisher for it, so I self-published it.

I was writing a lot about grains and I started to think maybe grains are kind of not good for your health.

My IBS went away, my gastroesophageal reflux went away, and it was like a light bulb went on.

So I did, and it transformed my life.

And there'd been a book written a few years earlier by Lauren Cordain called The Paleo Diet, but I was really starting to write about the lifestyle.

For starters, everyone hated the name, Drunk Elephant. What's that have to do with skincare?

Most people she spoke to also hated the packaging and colors, and she was advised not to focus on higher-end retailers like Sephora.

And so I remember buying a book of all the colleges and I pretty much skimmed the entire thing to choose what schools to even apply to and was very fortunate to get into Penn.

They feel timeless, like a pair of Levi's jeans or even an In-N-Out burger.

the book Friday Night Lights that was written about the football team in my high school when I was a junior.

whose books about business -- including "Start with Why," and "The Infinite Game" -- offer guidance to founders that is especially timely right now.

First, can you just kind of outline what this idea of The Infinite Game is?

particularly for business leaders who want to try and adopt an infinite mindset.

it's a book written by Christopher McDougall, massive bestseller. Basically looked at this tribe in Mexico that runs like 70 mile distances, you know, regularly. These just to back and forth. And they run barefoot or they use these very thin rubber-soled sandals.

And so the argument in this book is that actually humans are made to run without cushioning, that cushioning which was started in the 60s and 70s. That actually is not a natural way to run.

Somebody handed you that book, right? Yeah. Did they say, hey, you know, you might want to look into this if you're getting a lot of injuries. Like what do you remember?

So my friend Simon hands me Born to Run and says, maybe there's something in here. Maybe you should try running barefoot just to see what you learn.

Somebody gave me the book E-Myth. I didn't read it on the way to China, but I read it all on the way back.

It's a story about a lady that makes pies. And so it was her hobby. She loved making pies. And so she went into business making pies, like I went into business making molds.

It kind of turned into a nightmare. Well, my life had kind of turned into a nightmare.

one of the things that he said, is that systems run the business and people run the systems.

I got off the plane. I went to the pay phone and I called E-Myth and said, I need help.

Because the whole point of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is to teach you how to think outside the bounds of a recipe.

And I think what recipes do and they are necessary is they but they make people feel like if they don't have this ingredient, this tool, this specific thing that they can't make it and right now it's like the time of substitutions and it's the time of improvisation.

My whole theory as a cook my whole philosophy, my whole thing with cooking is think about what role those ingredients and tools are playing and then figure out what else you can use so you don't have to run to the store.

Semin Nusrat, author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.

That's an excerpt from my conversation with Semin Nusrat, the author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.

a friend of mine, John Durant, who I knew from college had recently written a book called The Paleo Manifesto and become a thought leader of sorts in the burgeoning paleo movement.

I did the, you know, 10 Real Sats book.

I can just go to the library and read the 10 Real Sats.

I actually invited a good family friend of ours who is the writer of Toy Story, the first Toy Story I invited him to lunch.