Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler (2017)

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2018

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1972, Maureen and Tony Wheeler bought a beat-up car and drove from London "as far east as we could go." They wound up in Australia, by way of Afghanistan, India and Thailand. Their notes on how to travel on a shoestring became a book, which grew into Lonely Planet — the largest travel guide publisher in the world. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," an update with Melanie Colón, a frustrated renter who created an easier way to communicate with noisy neighbors, called Apt App. (Original broadcast date: May 8, 2017) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New years is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	Hey, it's Guy here, and I just want to let you know that we first ran this episode last May.
0:32.0	And we're bringing it back because we think it will totally put you in the mood for this summer travel season.
0:37.0	Especially if you happen to be going someplace very far away in a cheap car and with not a lot of money.
0:45.0	Enjoy.
0:48.0	We had grown so fast, we had television going, we had started investing heavily into the digital side of things, a lot of staff.
0:56.0	And we were in the middle of that when 9-11 happened, and of course people stopped traveling and travel guides then just stopped.
1:04.0	Did you think that there was a possibility that the whole thing would collapse?
1:09.0	Yeah, we did have to let people go, we did have to cut back the number of books we did, and I honestly believe that the whole thing could disappear.
1:17.0	From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:31.0	I'm Guy Ross, and I'm a show today how Tony and Maureen Wheeler backpacked along the Asia hippie trail in the 70s, jotted down some notes and turned them into the biggest travel guide company in the world.
1:51.0	So much of how a company comes together happens by chance.
1:56.0	I mean, think about it, if Sergei Bryn and Larry Page never met, would there be Google?
2:03.0	Same thing for Airbnb or Instagram or Warby Parker.
2:06.0	They all happened because of a chance meeting, just a moment in time that could have passed, which is kind of the story of lonely planet guidebooks,
2:16.0	because it all started on a bench in Regens Park in London on an October afternoon in 1970. Maureen Wheeler was just looking for a quiet place to sit and read.
2:28.0	And as I was walking around the park, there was only one bench that had sun on it, and I walked around several times because on the bench, there was also a young man, and I thought if I sit in that bench, he's probably going to try and pick me up, and I really don't feel like that.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -2458 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Guy Raz | Wondery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Guy Raz | Wondery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.