YouSaid · the spoken record

Tony Wheeler

lines on the record: 40
first: 2017-05-08
most recent: 2017-05-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“For me, I've got this wonderful pair of cashmere sliverts. Oh, nice. They are so cozy and comfortable on. When I get on a plane and I put them on, then I kind of can relax.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It wasn't terrible. No, it wasn't terrible. It was just really, he just wanted to know what new book we were going to do and, you know, how big was it going to be and where the maps and pictures. I mean, the books that we did were fabulous books. If you look at our covers and inside, they just got better and better looking, which was good. And a lot of that was Tony. You know, Tony would look at a book and say, you know, this needs this. You know, this is what we need to do with this. So I would say that I guess I've always said that Lonnie Planet could never have existed without Tony, but it probably wouldn't have held together as long without me.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tony, Lonnie Planet would never have existed without Tony. He was the dreamer, the vision, but he also very cannily knew how he was going to place Lonely Planet very early on. And he never ran out of that kind of mad enthusiasm, which carries you through so many things. However, he was not good at day-to-day stuff. He never wanted to sit through meetings. He never wanted to sit with bankers. He liked all his staff, but, you know, he didn't want to hear what their problems were, you know, basically.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know that skill came into it with Tony and I. There was judgment, I suppose, and the fact that we were doing something that we knew everything about.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, you cannot run a business where you bring personal stuff into the office. I mean, you can't avoid it to some extent. And it was funny. You know, at Lonny Planet, people always knew. First of all, you come and talk to me about an idea. And I'll tell you whether it's worth. Tony has what's called the five second, you've got a five second window to engage his attention. You know, it's like the lifespan of a mosquito or something. So they would come to me and say, Maureen, I think this is great. What do you think? And I'd say, I think it's good. And they say, shall I tell Tony and I'll say, yeah, let me talk to him first.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know he hasn't. But I did worry. And there was a huge amount of grief about it. It took months for me to, I still find it very hard to go back to the office. And, you know, I just, it's just hard.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I drove the sail of lonely planet more than Tony did, and I always wondered, you know, if afterwards he would really regret that.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And I said to Tony, do you have your passport? And he said no, I said no, said you know we have passports, I just go straight up to Here's Roll and get out of here.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's as sad as day of my life. One of the saddest days of my life. I remember walking to the BBC with Tony to sign the. The final paper is”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think we both felt that it wasn't the same company anymore. It was turning into much more of a digital company, and that has a way of taking over everything. It's not something I'm particularly excited about.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did have to cut back on our offices overseas. We did have to cut back the number of books we did. And it was looking, I honestly did believe that it was possible the whole thing could just disappear. Well, I've got to say.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tony's an incurable optimist. I mean, and that's one of his charms, but it's also one of the most infuriating things because we were definitely looking at a really bad time. We were looking at, we did have to let people go.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was a period when things were not looking very good. And that happened around 2000 and we had grown so fast and we reached the point where we were doing so much. We had television going. We had started investing heavily into the digital side of things, a lot of staff, a lot of, you know, we created a whole lot of desktop publishing before it was even a term. And it was eating away all of the money. The books were still selling like crazy, but we were just doing so much. And we were in the middle of that when 9-11 happened. And of course, people stopped traveling. And travel guides then just stopped.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, people everywhere you went were using Lonely Planet Guides. I mean, I used to give me a thrill, you know, even in New York seeing someone come in with a German copy, Chinese copy. You know, whatever. I used to love that.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I don't know. We've had sleepless nights all every year. I would say actually towards late 80s, early 90s, I think was more when it became obvious that this thing had its own momentum and it was carrying us as much as we were pushing it.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had moved into a kind of ramshackle office and we had a lot of kind of loose contractors. You know, they'd flowed in and out and do a bit and float out again and we paid them. By the hour sort of thing. So it was beginning to take shape in the 80s as a real business.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have two children, and every school holiday would just go Africa or Asia or wherever, and they'd travel with us for that period of time. So every time we got a chance, we'd go and travel as a family. But mainly Tony was doing the writing and the sort of the planning and all of that. And I was doing the carpentry, you know, keeping it together.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was the first All India book of that kind, you know, guide that told you everything. And there wasn't a book like that, but there was all of that huge interest in India at the time, you know. So it just took right off.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very much so. We'd also collect every brochure, every timetable, every map. I mean, we'd go with hardly anything in a rucksacks and come back with this massive pile of information.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It wasn't, we didn't have any money and we weren't making a lot of money, but we were making enough to keep on doing books”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't think it was going to be our life. I couldn't say how it could. It was still Tony and I living in a little rented house with a pile of boxes, boxes everywhere full of books. And when we, you know, we'd wrapped them, we'd address them, we'd put them in the back of the car and take them to the post office. I mean, you don't really see. Multinational conglomerate out of this. You know, I was still going down to the docks to pick the books up when they came in from the printer and then sending them out again, you know. It still felt very much like a cottage industry, you know.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, the first line is a lovely planet, and I wish you would stop singing. And he said, well, lonely planets even better. And I said, how? And he said, well, it just sounds better. So I said, yeah, okay.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we'd sit there quietly while they're all being incredibly cool around us and think, oh God, this is interesting, you know?”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Catalog, we were actually really boring. We didn't do a lot of that stuff at all occasionally, but very rarely. In fact, it was years later, you know, Lonely Planet became better known. All these people who were using Lonely Planet, you know, and they were really cool people. It was cool people used Lonely Planet. Antony and I would be at the cafe and all the cool people, but we just didn't look cool. And yet we were the ones who've done these books. You were written the book.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very brief. But I went into what we got our big break, I suppose. I went into one bookshop and she said, and I said, do you want to buy this book? And she said, so what company are you with? And I said, Lonely Planet. She said, I've never heard of them. And I said, no, you wouldn't. And I showed her the book. And she said, oh, what's your telephone number in case I want to get more books? Now we didn't have a telephone. So I had to give her my work number. Anyway, she called me and she said, my flatmate is a journalist and she wants to interview you and your husband on television. So we went on television to talk about our trip and doing this book. And that was our first big publicity thing, wasn't it?”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was working in an office where I was able to get my typewriter and bring it home at night and I borrowed a guillotine when we were trimming all the books and I'm one of those massive staplers. So we stapled the book together. So in a way we were able to get enough equipment to do this. We had it printed, but it was a very basic little book. It was actually done, it really was done on our kitchen table because actually we only had a kitchen, a kitchen and a bedroom.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Tony has all the great ideas, like let's travel around the world and let's do guidebooks. I mean, I always say Tony's the architect and I'm the carpenter. So he said, look, we should do a book.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and a little kind of corner shop, but they did sandwiches and things, and at the end of the day, they let me take the sandwiches home that were left, so we ate. And I worked there for a little while until we, and then we both, you know, got good jobs.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're crossing the Sydney Bridge on our last ride, and I said, and it was not long after Christmas, so it was quite closed, holidays. And I said to Tony, how much money have we got left? And he would have his hands barking out and he said, we've got 27 cents. And I said, well, how much is that in English money?”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The only time I think I got really, we had a huge storm in the boat, and if I had had more sense, I'd have been terrified, but we were so busy hanging onto the boat. And then we got to Australia. And I remember standing on the yacht looking at this coastline that had nothing on it. Nothing at all. We had come in at a place that was miles from anywhere and there was nothing. And I thought, there's snakes. There's spiders. I don't even know what kangaroos bite you. I have no idea. You know, what are we doing here?”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had to do everything as cheaply as possible, so it was third class rail and it was hitchhiking. We hitchhiked from Bangkok all the way to Singapore to get down there. And then we went across by boat to Jakarta and then we went by Bas to Bali. And then in Bali we were really run out of luck. The airline that was supposed to, that we were supposed to have tickets on to take us to Australia broke down and didn't have any more planes. And so we met this New Zealander who had a little yacht and he was looking for crew to get down to Australia. So we got on his yacht and crewed to Australia.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but you managed, and actually, you know, what was great is that you could travel for weeks without seeing another Westerner. But then suddenly you'd pile in somewhere like Kabul or somewhere, you know, or Herat, and there'd be others. And you just spent maybe an afternoon just trading information. When you get here, this place is good, this place isn't. You'd swap information that way. It was just like old-fashioned communication”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not that hard. I mean, if you walk into a bus station in Afghanistan and you're kind of pointing towards the border, somebody will put you on the right bus. If you're wandering down a street with a bag and you're looking, you know, you look like you're lost, someone will point you towards a hotel or you'll see something that looks like a hotel.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You just keep driving. You go into migrate to the border with Turkey and around, then you go right across Iran, then you go right across Afghanistan, and then you just keep going through Pakistan and then you go through India, and then you couldn't get across. You had to fly across Burma.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tony's proposal was very prosaic. It was May. We were in May. And he said, I will have known your year on October the 7th. And he said, we should get married. And I said, you don't get married because you've known each other for a year. And he said,”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And on the way home, he got lost. And we wandered around for quite a while before I realized he was lost because Tony just sets off really confidently and keeps going thinking he's going and not be the right direction. And the thing is, that's been our entire lives together.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, I turned around and looked at him, and I was about to say get lost. And then he's got nice eyes, and I liked him. So I said, I don't know. I haven't been here that long.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. So I walked around a few times and I thought, damn it, this is 1970. I can sit wherever I want. So I sat in a sunny bench and turned my back to the young man and started reading my book”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had grown so fast we had television going, we had started investing heavily into the digital side of things, a lot of staff, and we were in the middle of that when 9-11 happened, and of course people stopped travelling and travel guides then just stopped”
2017-05-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lonely Planet: Maureen & Tony Wheeler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT