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How I Built This with Guy Raz

Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.831.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2022

⏱️ 81 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Starting a business with your spouse can either bring you closer together or tear you apart. For Arran and Ratana Stephens, their business has lasted for nearly 40 years, and their marriage has thrived for much longer. As business partners, they seem perfectly matched: he’s the hard-charging visionary, she’s the practical, business-minded one who sometimes has to talk him out of a bad decision. But in 1985, Arran made a very smart move: seeing how organic food was starting to take off, he mixed up his first batch of Manna bread in a bathtub and started selling it, eventually expanding to national distribution. From there, he and Ratana pivoted to breakfast cereal, initially purchasing a factory that couldn’t make a single cornflake. Today, Nature’s Path sells organic cereals, tortilla chips and other snacks in more than 50 countries around the world. 

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Transcript

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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.

0:10.0

April 6, 1990.

0:15.6

We had bankers and lawyers and VIPs.

0:19.2

We had Minister of Agriculture was there and other bigwigs.

0:23.9

We could not get the equipment to produce a single cornflake.

0:28.3

You just spent $6 million.

0:30.3

What do you mean you can't get it to produce cornflakes?

0:32.3

Or any flakes?

0:34.3

You turn the machine on and it starts going,

0:36.3

Does it actually do that at least?

0:38.3

Yes, it would do that.

0:40.3

But the product was seized up inside of the extruder barrel.

0:43.3

And it wouldn't come out.

0:44.3

It could not.

0:45.3

Oh my god.

0:46.3

It did not work.

0:54.3

Welcome to How I Built This.

0:56.3

I'm Guy Raaz and on the show today,

0:58.3

How Aaron and Rotten Estevens sprouted their first organic grains in a bathtub

1:03.3

and grew that business into nature's path.

1:06.3

A cereal and stack brand that's now sold in more than 50 countries around the world.

...

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