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I went from 13,000 employees to three employees in one week.

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WeWork was one of the fastest physical global growth the world's ever seen, but everything went wrong.

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We lost everything.

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In 2019, we were publicly filed at S1.

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Company valued at around $47 billion.

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The S1 showed some losses, three billion in the past three years.

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Also, the S1 revealed when you were CEO that you'd also trademarked the word we and sold it back to the company.

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That's not true.

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People sometimes think I was fired because the Wall Street Journal said so.

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Not true.

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I wanted to hear directly from you.

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What happened?

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You really want to go there?

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I'm happy to.

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The floor is yours.

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So in WeWork, the business grew faster than I could grow.

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And every step I take, suddenly the ego starts coming up.

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Oh, 20 billion valuation, billion valuation in Japan.

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On top of that, 5 billion valuation in China.

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It suddenly became about the money.

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I forgot what we were all about.

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And when I lost it, everybody lost it.

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And the next thing is we found ourselves being forced to go public when we weren't ready.

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Then you resigned as CEO of WeWork after the IPO didn't pan out.

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So I stepped down out of choice.

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And a second after I did it, we got stabbed in the back.

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And the only lesson there, if you're going to stab the king, kill.

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If you're not going to kill, I'm going to come back again.

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Why did you make that choice to go back into business again?

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Because you had money from the reports, almost a billion dollars.

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You know how hard it is.

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I now realize that in WeWork, I did a lot more things right than wrong.

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A lot more, not like 10% more, like 95%.

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Some of what I'm saying is hard for you to fully hone in on.

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But all these founders you spoke to, all this, I don't think they shared this label.

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So let's talk about it.

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So first...

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Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins.

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you

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Adam Newman, I've had the privilege of getting to know you briefly over the last couple of months.

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And it struck me almost immediately that you are unlike almost any other founder or CEO or really person I think I've ever met.

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There's a depth to you and a philosophy and a perspective that is just incredibly rare.

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My question to you is for you to be an anomaly, if we accept that.

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Am I right in thinking that you had some sort of anomalous early origin story?

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What is that, that story that shaped this man that sat in front of me?

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You know, for me first, when I get to know someone in the beginning and they say, where is it coming from?

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Who are you?

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I usually start the same.

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First of all, I'm a husband.

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It's my first job, what I'm most proud of.

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Then I'm a father.

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I'm a father of six.

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Then I'm a friend.

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Friendships are very important for me.

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And after that, I'm an entrepreneur.

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I think each one of us has a

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phenomenal soul.

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I think it's perfect.

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And I think what really we see when we look at people is the distance between where we think they're holding to where their potential is.

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And I think it's that gap between those two things that actually defines a person.

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And for me...

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Throughout my life, sometimes out of my control when I was young, and sometimes with my control when I got older, I've always been striving to close that gap.

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So you talk about not having control.

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Your early context is quite unstable from what I read because your mother suffered from bipolar.

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Can you bring me into that world so I can understand the sort of context that Adam was raised?

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Happily.

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So we'll start, like every story, it has two sides to it.

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My mom and my father are both doctors.

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And growing up, I always saw both of them taking care of the patients.

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And it would feel sometimes like the patients came ahead of us.

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For example, my sister and I, we were never sick.

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No matter how sick we were, we'd look at the man when she was an oncologist.

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And she would say, my patients are sicker, go to school.

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And that was sort of the beginning of it.

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When I was in the second grade, my parents got a divorce.

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It was very difficult for my mom, and she needed a change of scenery, so we actually moved to the United States.

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You know this photo here?

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I do.

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And this one here, you've got a kid.

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This is you as a child that is beaming with a smile, sort of ear to ear.

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Often when I see photos like that, my curiosity is what...

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what you can't see and what that young kid, that young boy there is not saying, but what he's feeling underneath all of those emotions.

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What I could tell you is I think for me, I think the challenge started in that.

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So we talked about my mother being bipolar.

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I only observed my mother's moods when we moved to the United States.

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There was no room around.

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It was only my mom and my sister and I.

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And all day she would work with the patients and at night at 8 p.m. she would come home and all hell would break loose.

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And I remember, there are many stories, but I remember this.

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She would tell my sister and I, we had to wash the dishes.

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That was our one chore.

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And we wouldn't, no matter what, because kids sometimes rebel by action when they can't rebel by words.

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And she would come home, you didn't wash the dishes, and she would take the dishes and throw them on the floor.

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And then she would cry and start cleaning the dishes and mopping them.

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And it was every night ended with some version of action like that.

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And for two years, I remember how crazy my sister and I thought the whole experience was.

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And we didn't have any friends who were sharing that experience.

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Until one day she bought this nice set of dishes.

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And she comes home again to throw the dishes.

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And we know that she's only throwing the cheap dishes.

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She's not throwing the ones that she liked.

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Which gave us a little hint that maybe there's a little more control over what's happening than this out of control situation.

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Yeah.

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So if I had to guess what was happening with these kids, because now in hindsight I know my mom and my dad very well, probably there was a lot of arguing in the house.

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Probably as a kid, because I now see my kids that are very young, I'm sure a child finds it very confusing when the parents are not aligned as a team.

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Because as a child, all you have to lean on are your parents.

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But I think the most important thing to say is

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If my mom wasn't the way she was, and if I didn't go through all those challenges that I went through growing up, and I went through a lot, we're talking about bipolar, there's a lot that comes with it.

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And we could go deeper or less, but almost every single thing, if you took a piece of paper and you had to do a check mark for every bad thing we think can happen to a little boy,

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You get to checkmark with me almost all of them, including the really bad ones that we don't like to talk about.

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As bad as that was, when I was 22, 23, I remember being very angry about my childhood.

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Only when I met Rebecca, my then-girlfriend to then-wife, she very quickly introduced me to a spiritual practice.

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The way she introduced me, by the way, was after a week of dating, she came to me and she goes, Look, you're really nice, you have a lot of potential, but you're not the guy for me.

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I was very surprised at the time.

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I was living in New York.

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My sister was the supermodel.

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We were hanging out.

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I thought a lot of myself.

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And I said, what do you mean I'm not the guy for you?

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And he said, well, you don't have a spiritual band.

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You're very focused on material things.

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You want to be successful, but you're not actually understanding the game of life.

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The guy I'm interested in is going to want true happiness and true fulfillment.

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And true happiness and true fulfillment does not come from material things.

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It was so different for anything anyone has ever told me, that instead of running away or doing this or doing that, I thought for a second.

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I said, well, how would one come to explore this spiritual life that you're talking about?

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And she said, well, you need to practice.

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And for me, that practice started being Kabbalah, but for all of us, there can be different practices.

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The thing I learned very quickly in the practice is the difference between meant to be and free choice.

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And I think a lot of people don't understand it, but how can there be, we talk a lot about in spiritual, about it's meant to be and there's free choice.

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How could there be free choice and things be meant to be at the same time?

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The way I explain it is you get to a fork in your life.

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and you choose left over right, and everything works out.

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Meant to be.

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You get to that same fork, and you choose right, and you crash on your face, horribly.

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Everybody's watching.

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And you stop, and you actually learn lessons from it.

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And you take accountability, and you say, you know what?

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Whatever happened to me happened for a reason, and I'm gonna learn from it.

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I'm gonna be stronger.

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Almost like a sword that's getting forged.

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And the more times you hit it, and the more hit you put on it, the stronger it gets.

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And then you learn those lessons and you go back into the game of life and you apply that in again.

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Suddenly you take the catastrophe or the tragedy or the curse and you make it into a blessing.

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You turn it into a made-to-be.

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When the world did crash on me as an adult, it was nothing compared to what I had to deal with as a child.

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I was like, it's okay.

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I have a wife, I have kids, I have close friends.

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We'll take a deep breath and we'll start from scratch again.

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And that kind of fortitude, I think regretfully, comes through going through very difficult things.

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So if you're listening to this right now and you're going through something really difficult and it feels dark...

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I encourage you to remember that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn.

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I feel like there's things in your early context that you haven't shared before, because you said there's things that we don't usually share.

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Not publicly, but meaning I have in front of, so I used to share everything in front of our employers that we work.

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So there's things I shared in front of 10,000 people.

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I'm not sure it ever made it to the press.

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What is missing?

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You really want to go there?

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I want to go.

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I'm happy to.

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If you're happy to, I'm happy to.

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I'll share two things that I'm not sure, but maybe could be helpful for other people that are going through similar things.

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So the hitting and stuff.

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And so when someone's bipolar, by the way, they get very angry or very happy very fast.

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When they're happy, they're the happiest.

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You have fun and everything's amazing.

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And my mom would play games with us and it was phenomenal.

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But...

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Also, and that I think happens a lot with bipolar, there's the suicide threats.

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And then there's one thing when you threaten to, so again, if you're two children and your only parent threatens to commit suicide, who's going to take care of you?

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What is going to happen if suddenly that happens?

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And I have a lot of memories, but one that just came back to me not too long ago.

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We were in the kibbutz, which is where we were living after we came back from the US.

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My mom wanted us to have a special experience, so we went to this community where everybody shares a lot of things together.

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It's also the beginning of why I love communities.

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And we get into this big fight and my mom basically says she's going to kill herself and she takes the knife.

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And I remember she's holding this huge knife.

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I'm like, no, no, don't do it.

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And I remember, I just remember feeling that I have to stop it, that it is up to me.

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And if I don't stop it, then she's going to kill herself right there in front, my sister and I.

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So I grabbed the knife and we're fighting left and right.

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And my sister is sitting right there and she's crying and she's crying.

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And I'm no, and she's saying yes, and the whole thing is so crazy.

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How old were you?

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Twelve.

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At that moment.

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That's one.

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There's more if you want to go deeper, but that was one.

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I invite you to go deeper.

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I invite you to go deeper.

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I was in between second grade to fourth grade.

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And I was sexually, I think you called molested, by an older than a teenager.

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So she was at least six or seven years older than me.

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This one, I didn't even know that what was happening was wrong.

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And many years later, Rebecca and I are in the Hamptons.

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And somehow the story comes up.

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And she goes, Adam, you understand that this is not normal for a child at that age.

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And I didn't even fully understand.

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And that taught me.

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That explained to me a lot about children.

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And again, we go back to the responsibility of parents and the responsibility of society to take care of the children and schools to understand what's happening.

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And whenever we see anyone, we're so good at walking into a room, seeing someone else and judging.

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Oh, they're not acting the way I would act.

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They're not acting right.

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They're not speaking right.

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Everybody's so busy judging everybody.

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I want to encourage every single person next time you're about to judge.

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You don't know who that person is.

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You do not know where they come from.

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You do not know what happened to them as a kid.

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God forbid they were molested.

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God forbid they dealt with all these things.

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You don't know where they started.

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You only know where you see them now.

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And it could be that if you really got to know them and you'd have known the distance they went from here to here,

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you would have been extremely impressed with them and you would have not measured them that way.

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And this is why I think it's so important for all of us when we walk into rooms to really go after unity, you and I can say the same sentence in a way that tears people apart or brings people together.

223
00:13:47.819 --> 00:13:50.639
It takes more effort to speak in a way that brings us together.

224
00:13:51.500 --> 00:13:59.782
But if we don't start acting like this, if we keep dividing and keep splitting, I'm worried.

225
00:14:01.718 --> 00:14:10.851
Sounds like as an adult, you've been able to understand that early experience and sort of create a new sort of perspective or lens on what happened to you and what it means.

226
00:14:11.431 --> 00:14:18.041
And as you said, you know, you've orientated it around the fact that it's happened for a reason, or at least there's something to have learned from it.

227
00:14:19.367 --> 00:14:20.989
Was that always the case?

228
00:14:21.449 --> 00:14:25.352
I sometimes reflect on my own experience and think that for the first season of my life, I was dragged.

229
00:14:25.872 --> 00:14:28.975
And then at some point, I got hold of the steering wheel and I was able to drive.

230
00:14:29.735 --> 00:14:33.258
And one of them was sort of unconscious and the other was more intentional and thoughtful.

231
00:14:33.639 --> 00:14:44.087
And I'm wondering through your early teens and 20s, whether you had the wisdom and the perspective that you have now on your early experiences and how that's evolved over time.

232
00:14:44.850 --> 00:14:51.415
I probably went to sleep crying every single night for probably until I was 14 or 15.

233
00:14:51.515 --> 00:14:56.099
And I remember, and if you ask my sister, what would I say?

234
00:14:56.119 --> 00:14:57.960
I completely forgot.

235
00:14:58.060 --> 00:15:04.225
She said, I told her that one day I'll become very successful and we'll take care of us.

236
00:15:04.805 --> 00:15:05.986
That was what I used to say.

237
00:15:06.066 --> 00:15:07.167
I literally didn't remember.

238
00:15:07.187 --> 00:15:08.308
This is something she told me.

239
00:15:10.247 --> 00:15:16.050
I think that's how I interpreted that control and how I'm gonna fix all these challenges that I had.

240
00:15:16.970 --> 00:15:21.892
But we launched a school, Rebecca and I, more Rebecca I helped, it's a fifth school.

241
00:15:22.612 --> 00:15:27.935
In the school we teach kids how to be connected to themselves, how to be part of something greater than themselves.

242
00:15:28.615 --> 00:15:30.356
If someone just taught me this as a kid,

243
00:15:30.916 --> 00:15:33.457
And I would have understood then that there's this bigger picture.

244
00:15:33.477 --> 00:15:39.059
I think I would have been able to handle it a lot better and skip the challenging years faster.

245
00:15:39.539 --> 00:15:45.061
Move faster into the point where I realize that I don't control what happens, but I can control how I react to it.

246
00:15:45.781 --> 00:15:47.422
So back to your point of driving.

247
00:15:49.683 --> 00:15:50.283
Are you driving?

248
00:15:51.861 --> 00:15:54.682
And now you question it, I'm questioning myself.

249
00:15:54.722 --> 00:15:55.742
I would question it.

250
00:15:55.762 --> 00:15:58.083
My follow-up question to you would be, how do you define success?

251
00:15:59.044 --> 00:16:02.465
My definition of success these days, it's funny, I was thinking about it this morning when I got on the lift on my way here.

252
00:16:02.785 --> 00:16:03.885
I thought, do you know what it was?

253
00:16:03.905 --> 00:16:07.326
Because my fiancé turned to me this weekend and she went, Stephen, I think you have enough now.

254
00:16:08.047 --> 00:16:09.947
And then she paused and then she retracted the statement.

255
00:16:10.388 --> 00:16:12.888
But it got me thinking about what enough is.

256
00:16:13.449 --> 00:16:16.550
And actually, I thought, well, it's the motion forward.

257
00:16:17.650 --> 00:16:23.073
In the pursuit of goals that matter to me, that are challenging, surrounded by people, that is the success.

258
00:16:23.093 --> 00:16:25.714
And that's like a daily thing.

259
00:16:25.774 --> 00:16:28.815
There's no podium in this game that I'm playing.

260
00:16:29.415 --> 00:16:33.777
By the way, when she said she thinks you have enough, was she referring to material things?

261
00:16:34.038 --> 00:16:34.258
Yes.

262
00:16:35.618 --> 00:16:42.281
I think society has taught us that once we gain that success, once we gain those material things, we get to this number.

263
00:16:42.801 --> 00:16:46.163
Suddenly that hole that we all fill inside of us will be full.

264
00:16:47.697 --> 00:16:53.341
Now, I know it's very hard to hear, especially for people who haven't gotten there yet, like, oh yeah, you got there already, so now you're saying it.

265
00:16:53.821 --> 00:16:55.802
I'm only gonna share with you what I have learned.

266
00:16:56.242 --> 00:17:07.450
And from all the most successful people that I know, and I'm lucky to know quite a lot of them, I have not seen one that got happy or fulfilled from attaining a number

267
00:17:08.190 --> 00:17:09.071
or a material thing.

268
00:17:09.831 --> 00:17:12.413
I don't believe that's how the game of life works.

269
00:17:13.593 --> 00:17:17.476
So when your fiance said, it's not like her, because I think she's more on the spiritual side.

270
00:17:17.916 --> 00:17:19.517
Tell her that I said, I'm surprised she said that.

271
00:17:19.817 --> 00:17:21.958
I think she had something deeper to say and she was holding back.

272
00:17:22.679 --> 00:17:27.402
When she said, I think you have enough, I would really go back to redefining success.

273
00:17:28.892 --> 00:17:31.213
So back to that, I'll tell you how I define it in a second.

274
00:17:31.233 --> 00:17:38.714
But I think if we can agree on the definition of success, then we can start having a discussion of, A, are we there and are we headed there?

275
00:17:38.814 --> 00:17:40.975
And B, how do we do better to get there?

276
00:17:41.495 --> 00:17:45.956
And if we agree on our definition of success, then now we can start working together towards the same goal.

277
00:17:46.436 --> 00:17:57.659
If one of us defines success by making the most money and the other person defines success by being the most fulfilled, the most happy, the most light that they can be, then playing two different games.

278
00:17:57.859 --> 00:17:58.659
What's your definition?

279
00:17:59.899 --> 00:18:10.782
When you're at your deathbed and you're one minute before it's all going to go and you know you're out of time, all you have left is the love that surrounds you at that moment.

280
00:18:10.822 --> 00:18:20.984
Your children, your grandchildren, your friends, your friends' children, all the love that surrounds you at that moment and all the love that you have cultivated for your entire life.

281
00:18:22.278 --> 00:18:26.719
And I think it's that love which then moves on to whatever it is that happens after.

282
00:18:27.720 --> 00:18:33.261
So my definition of success is in that last moment, right before you go, how do you feel?

283
00:18:34.202 --> 00:18:38.223
Do you feel full and surrounded by love and like life has been this amazing journey?

284
00:18:39.263 --> 00:18:40.704
Or is there regret or is there this?

285
00:18:40.724 --> 00:18:46.327
And I'll tell you the one thing that happens right before we pass away, the ego goes away completely.

286
00:18:47.047 --> 00:18:48.107
No more secrets.

287
00:18:49.128 --> 00:18:53.210
And again, in the spiritual study, you say, what's the definition of hell back to how we started this?

288
00:18:54.010 --> 00:19:02.454
You get to see, you get to glimpse for a second the ultimate potential that your soul had, how perfect it was and how high you could have gone, and where you really got to.

289
00:19:03.055 --> 00:19:05.716
And the distance between those two, that's hell.

290
00:19:08.408 --> 00:19:14.771
When you were 31 years old in 2010, and you sat down with your partner, Miguel.

291
00:19:14.911 --> 00:19:15.732
Miguel McKelvey.

292
00:19:16.132 --> 00:19:18.673
And you made this sketch on a whiteboard for WeWork.

293
00:19:19.554 --> 00:19:24.737
If I'd asked you then what your definition of success was, would you have turned to me and said love, or would you have said something else?

294
00:19:25.297 --> 00:19:26.658
I believe I would have said something else.

295
00:19:27.098 --> 00:19:28.939
So my big shift is when I met my wife.

296
00:19:29.639 --> 00:19:34.508
So by this point of this picture that you're showing me, I was four years into Rebecca teaching me about the game of life.

297
00:19:34.989 --> 00:19:36.111
So I'm starting to advance.

298
00:19:36.151 --> 00:19:37.794
So I can tell you what I was thinking.

299
00:19:38.456 --> 00:19:40.740
It wouldn't have been love, but it would have been we.

300
00:19:41.678 --> 00:19:47.562
And the point about, because it was called, if you look at that picture, it's going to say, we work, we live, we give, we share.

301
00:19:47.582 --> 00:19:47.983
I don't remember.

302
00:19:48.003 --> 00:19:49.163
I haven't seen it for like 10 years.

303
00:19:50.564 --> 00:19:52.426
It was never about desks and chairs.

304
00:19:53.066 --> 00:19:56.649
It was always about creating a world where people make a life and not just a living.

305
00:19:56.809 --> 00:19:58.730
It was about something greater than ourselves.

306
00:19:58.991 --> 00:20:06.656
If we just jump sort of backwards in time from that day by about 10 years, if I had asked you what you want to be when you're older, what would you have said?

307
00:20:06.776 --> 00:20:07.277
At 21?

308
00:20:07.617 --> 00:20:07.917
21.

309
00:20:08.157 --> 00:20:08.838
It's embarrassing.

310
00:20:08.858 --> 00:20:09.158
Yeah.

311
00:20:09.258 --> 00:20:12.140
I'll tell you, it's embarrassing though.

312
00:20:12.360 --> 00:20:14.161
I'm embarrassed for my 21-year-old self.

313
00:20:14.281 --> 00:20:15.001
What did you want to be?

314
00:20:15.081 --> 00:20:15.581
A billionaire.

315
00:20:15.901 --> 00:20:17.262
You wanted to be a billionaire at 21?

316
00:20:17.482 --> 00:20:18.343
I did regretfully.

317
00:20:18.663 --> 00:20:18.903
Why?

318
00:20:19.703 --> 00:20:23.445
I thought that making the money is going to compensate.

319
00:20:24.066 --> 00:20:26.967
I thought it was going to fill that hole for my childhood.

320
00:20:27.027 --> 00:20:28.388
What about at 16 if I'd asked you?

321
00:20:28.908 --> 00:20:30.249
I think I said millionaire then.

322
00:20:30.269 --> 00:20:31.729
I don't think I knew the word billionaire at 16.

323
00:20:31.769 --> 00:20:33.690
I think the numbers were because the world changed.

324
00:20:34.211 --> 00:20:36.172
But I thought that making money

325
00:20:36.832 --> 00:20:48.635
was going to fill that hole from the childhood that back then seemed very difficult and very aggressive and very, with all these negative words that we can use about difficult and abusive childhoods.

326
00:20:49.475 --> 00:20:51.096
And I thought that making money would solve it.

327
00:20:51.676 --> 00:20:55.377
But then I did three businesses afterwards who did not succeed until I met Rebecca.

328
00:20:55.857 --> 00:20:57.818
And Rebecca was like, you're chasing money.

329
00:20:58.198 --> 00:20:59.078
You will never have it.

330
00:20:59.718 --> 00:21:02.419
And even if you get it, it will never make you happy.

331
00:21:02.619 --> 00:21:03.779
You will never have it.

332
00:21:03.799 --> 00:21:05.940
She said, chasing money is like chasing cool.

333
00:21:06.420 --> 00:21:06.821
You're cool.

334
00:21:07.221 --> 00:21:07.901
You're just like that.

335
00:21:08.401 --> 00:21:10.282
You didn't, I don't think you're working too hard on doing it.

336
00:21:10.302 --> 00:21:10.822
Thank you so much.

337
00:21:10.862 --> 00:21:11.782
You don't like putting on shoes.

338
00:21:11.802 --> 00:21:12.663
I don't like putting on shoes.

339
00:21:12.823 --> 00:21:13.083
Please.

340
00:21:13.383 --> 00:21:13.823
It's all good.

341
00:21:14.483 --> 00:21:15.904
So she said, you're chasing money.

342
00:21:16.504 --> 00:21:17.564
It doesn't work like that.

343
00:21:17.584 --> 00:21:18.725
It's also like chasing a girl.

344
00:21:18.925 --> 00:21:21.426
You really want someone, you have to take a deep breath.

345
00:21:22.186 --> 00:21:28.950
But she said to me, even if you were to get money the way you're chasing it, it not only will not fulfill you, it will be negative for you.

346
00:21:29.450 --> 00:21:30.551
So I said, well, what should I do?

347
00:21:31.251 --> 00:21:33.192
She said, well, you're a very talented individual.

348
00:21:33.593 --> 00:21:35.614
You should figure out what your superpower is.

349
00:21:35.674 --> 00:21:38.215
It's the first time I've heard anyone use the word superpower.

350
00:21:38.255 --> 00:21:39.876
She goes, you need to take your superpower.

351
00:21:40.437 --> 00:21:43.238
You need to connect it to something that's really meaningful for the world.

352
00:21:43.819 --> 00:21:46.180
Something you're passionate about, but something that can make a difference.

353
00:21:46.680 --> 00:21:48.381
You need to bring those two things together.

354
00:21:48.721 --> 00:21:51.163
You need to only focus on making that a reality.

355
00:21:52.699 --> 00:22:12.867
employees will want to work with a company that's doing that investors want to invest in a company that's doing that and consumers want to buy from a company that's doing that the rest will for then she said success the way you you define it then that money success you think is it will fall on you from the sky more than you can ever imagine i was like i want to marry this woman i proposed three months after we met

356
00:22:13.857 --> 00:22:23.928
And the idea of we was central to this drawing that I had in front of me, which is a drawing you did on a whiteboard when you were 31 years old, 2010, with your partner Miguel after selling your company.

357
00:22:23.948 --> 00:22:24.909
I think it was called Green Desk.

358
00:22:24.969 --> 00:22:25.469
Green Desk.

359
00:22:25.669 --> 00:22:26.470
You sold it for how much?

360
00:22:26.510 --> 00:22:27.812
It wasn't like a... 1.5 million.

361
00:22:27.872 --> 00:22:28.072
Okay.

362
00:22:28.092 --> 00:22:29.093
There were three partners.

363
00:22:29.433 --> 00:22:31.936
So we each got half a million, half a million, half a million.

364
00:22:31.956 --> 00:22:32.056
Yeah.

365
00:22:32.296 --> 00:22:34.517
But our partner didn't want to pay us the whole amount up front.

366
00:22:34.917 --> 00:22:36.637
So he only gave us $300,000.

367
00:22:37.037 --> 00:22:39.398
The rest was installment over four years for Miguel and I.

368
00:22:39.818 --> 00:22:43.159
And I remember telling Miguel, Miguel, you keep the money because I'll waste it.

369
00:22:43.539 --> 00:22:44.460
First time we ever made money.

370
00:22:44.940 --> 00:22:48.141
You keep the money because I will waste it and we'll keep it for our next business.

371
00:22:48.421 --> 00:22:50.942
And the way the universe works, by the way, the universe speaks to us.

372
00:22:51.382 --> 00:22:54.363
Designs start happening and you sort of one thing leads to another.

373
00:22:54.383 --> 00:22:55.283
It's almost serendipity.

374
00:22:55.923 --> 00:23:03.133
Our first WeWork building, to get the building, the landlord wouldn't give it to us unless we gave a check of exactly $300,000.

375
00:23:03.614 --> 00:23:06.257
The same $300,000 that was sitting in Miguel's account.

376
00:23:06.678 --> 00:23:09.922
It went from there to there, and WeWork was created.

377
00:23:11.505 --> 00:23:12.325
So tell me what that is.

378
00:23:13.246 --> 00:23:14.246
Okay, we're in GreenDesk.

379
00:23:14.486 --> 00:23:16.747
Just to remind everybody what GreenDesk is.

380
00:23:17.147 --> 00:23:19.407
GreenDesk was created in May of 2008.

381
00:23:19.668 --> 00:23:21.968
The world was crashing.

382
00:23:21.988 --> 00:23:23.049
That was the downturn.

383
00:23:23.989 --> 00:23:26.910
And before it started, Miguel and I got to know each other.

384
00:23:26.950 --> 00:23:29.170
He was an architect and I had a baby clothing company.

385
00:23:29.631 --> 00:23:30.751
And we're in the same building.

386
00:23:30.911 --> 00:23:35.512
My roommate introduced us and we would just talk about doing great things.

387
00:23:35.973 --> 00:23:36.973
And there was a landlord there.

388
00:23:37.493 --> 00:23:41.376
And every day he would see me and go, Adam, your baby clothing company sucks.

389
00:23:42.137 --> 00:23:43.878
And I said, Mr. Gottman, why do you say that?

390
00:23:44.018 --> 00:23:45.580
He said, well, my wife, we have eight kids.

391
00:23:45.620 --> 00:23:46.841
She loves buying baby clothes.

392
00:23:46.881 --> 00:23:48.222
She didn't once buy from you.

393
00:23:48.502 --> 00:23:49.583
I don't know how you pay me rent.

394
00:23:50.143 --> 00:23:51.364
Your baby clothes suck.

395
00:23:52.045 --> 00:23:54.947
And I would say, well, Mr. Gottman, you own all this real estate around here.

396
00:23:54.967 --> 00:23:55.828
He goes, yes, I do.

397
00:23:55.848 --> 00:23:57.589
I said, your real estate sucks.

398
00:23:57.889 --> 00:23:58.830
He goes, why do you say that?

399
00:23:58.850 --> 00:23:59.691
I said, it's all empty.

400
00:24:00.231 --> 00:24:02.713
And we would do that for four months back and forth.

401
00:24:03.234 --> 00:24:04.355
One day he looks at me and goes, Adam,

402
00:24:05.390 --> 00:24:09.533
If I gave you one of my buildings, you keep saying that it sucks, what would you do with it?

403
00:24:09.693 --> 00:24:13.375
So he takes me upstairs and he shows me this beautiful floor plate.

404
00:24:14.115 --> 00:24:16.036
And I said to him, how much do you get in rent?

405
00:24:16.077 --> 00:24:17.057
He goes, $5,000 a month.

406
00:24:17.077 --> 00:24:17.958
I said, well, it's empty.

407
00:24:18.078 --> 00:24:19.098
But let's say you would get $5,000.

408
00:24:19.218 --> 00:24:21.080
I said, look, I'm a small business.

409
00:24:21.180 --> 00:24:22.000
I don't need this much.

410
00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:25.122
Let's divide it to 15 small places, spaces.

411
00:24:25.282 --> 00:24:26.963
We'll charge $1,000 each.

412
00:24:27.443 --> 00:24:28.624
We'll put a receptionist.

413
00:24:29.064 --> 00:24:30.905
We'll pay the receptionist $2,500.

414
00:24:30.965 --> 00:24:31.666
We'll get $15,000.

415
00:24:31.686 --> 00:24:33.647
That will leave us with $12,500.

416
00:24:35.168 --> 00:24:38.072
you will get 7,500 and we'll get the difference.

417
00:24:39.300 --> 00:24:40.761
And he was like, let me think about it.

418
00:24:40.821 --> 00:24:41.742
He calls me the next day.

419
00:24:41.762 --> 00:24:42.503
He goes, I love it.

420
00:24:42.583 --> 00:24:44.725
But instead of one floor, take the whole building.

421
00:24:44.745 --> 00:24:45.525
It had five floors.

422
00:24:45.565 --> 00:24:48.608
We'll put the receptionist downstairs so we can share the expenses.

423
00:24:48.628 --> 00:24:49.429
It will be even better.

424
00:24:50.510 --> 00:24:53.012
And we put five ads on Craigslist.

425
00:24:53.492 --> 00:24:54.433
We launched Green Desk.

426
00:24:54.493 --> 00:24:56.355
It was 92% full within a week.

427
00:24:56.775 --> 00:25:00.458
Started cash flowing positive, which was a new thing for me because this was my fourth business.

428
00:25:00.498 --> 00:25:01.639
Never had cash flow positive.

429
00:25:02.260 --> 00:25:05.883
Cash flowing positive within a month and became very successful very fast.

430
00:25:06.863 --> 00:25:12.608
After about six, maybe 12 months, we started thinking bigger, Miguel and I said, we'll take green this national.

431
00:25:12.968 --> 00:25:15.390
We went to our landlord, said, I'm not interested.

432
00:25:15.410 --> 00:25:16.531
We asked for $20 million.

433
00:25:16.571 --> 00:25:18.272
We said, we'll split the business 50-50.

434
00:25:18.832 --> 00:25:19.693
He wasn't interested.

435
00:25:20.314 --> 00:25:21.014
So we started.

436
00:25:21.154 --> 00:25:23.436
And very soon after, he said, I'll buy it from you.

437
00:25:23.896 --> 00:25:24.877
And we started planning this.

438
00:25:25.097 --> 00:25:26.779
And you drew this on a whiteboard.

439
00:25:26.879 --> 00:25:29.060
Miguel drew this on the wall, not even a whiteboard.

440
00:25:29.381 --> 00:25:30.422
The walls were made of glass.

441
00:25:31.042 --> 00:25:32.023
This was John on the glass.

442
00:25:32.043 --> 00:25:34.505
So all of our walls in Green Desk were also whiteboards.

443
00:25:35.386 --> 00:25:37.367
And because everybody was about creating and inventing.

444
00:25:37.748 --> 00:25:42.952
And what you see here is that social life, commercial friends is here.

445
00:25:43.733 --> 00:25:47.836
This proves the fact Ben Horowitz in the interview that you saw, he did with me in the podcast.

446
00:25:48.297 --> 00:25:50.219
He says to me, Adam, you've always had one idea.

447
00:25:50.839 --> 00:25:54.561
And then at the end, the apologist said, I didn't mean to say you only have one idea.

448
00:25:54.601 --> 00:25:55.642
Of course, you have all these ideas.

449
00:25:56.142 --> 00:25:57.023
I said, Ben, you're right.

450
00:25:57.543 --> 00:25:59.544
This is not that different from what flow is.

451
00:25:59.584 --> 00:26:04.147
This is all about the friends and all about the living and all about the working life essentials.

452
00:26:05.038 --> 00:26:09.901
well, I haven't seen this for a long time, fintech, travel, everything in between.

453
00:26:10.462 --> 00:26:15.345
So for anyone that's watching, listening and can't see, it's a circle that has lots of circles in it.

454
00:26:16.165 --> 00:26:28.654
And it says all the little circles are like travel, health, social life, friends, co-work, co-worker supporters, life essentials, work rituals.

455
00:26:29.254 --> 00:26:30.014
Work rituals.

456
00:26:30.074 --> 00:26:32.176
I can read it better than me, but that makes sense.

457
00:26:32.616 --> 00:26:34.197
And this was the idea for WeWork.

458
00:26:34.218 --> 00:26:35.178
This is the idea for WeWork.

459
00:26:35.198 --> 00:26:38.281
So sometimes people said, oh, you grew out of desks and chairs.

460
00:26:38.301 --> 00:26:39.642
You shouldn't have gone to all these categories.

461
00:26:39.902 --> 00:26:42.644
The idea started, this was before there was one desk.

462
00:26:44.406 --> 00:26:45.667
What is the essence of this?

463
00:26:46.304 --> 00:26:51.650
We wanted to make a world, at least in our opinion, that really needed community.

464
00:26:52.191 --> 00:26:56.676
This was to deliver on a mission of create a world where people make a life and not just a living.

465
00:26:57.197 --> 00:27:00.080
This was a full lifestyle life circle.

466
00:27:00.901 --> 00:27:02.383
And it was very aspirational.

467
00:27:03.412 --> 00:27:10.819
And it's how, by the way, for any one of our listeners or your listeners that is starting a business, start with a vision.

468
00:27:11.639 --> 00:27:13.201
Dream as high as you can.

469
00:27:13.221 --> 00:27:14.342
Go all the way to the stars.

470
00:27:14.362 --> 00:27:16.804
Because if you don't shoot for the stars, you're never going to get to the moon.

471
00:27:17.504 --> 00:27:17.965
Go far.

472
00:27:19.453 --> 00:27:22.135
Then take a deep breath and go back to basics.

473
00:27:22.615 --> 00:27:23.635
What do I need to do first?

474
00:27:23.715 --> 00:27:24.596
What do I need to do second?

475
00:27:24.616 --> 00:27:25.396
What do I need to do third?

476
00:27:25.436 --> 00:27:30.399
The secret of life and entrepreneurship is to be able to be in both places at the same time.

477
00:27:30.839 --> 00:27:32.520
On the one hand, I'm going to go so far.

478
00:27:33.101 --> 00:27:34.201
On the other hand, I'm just starting.

479
00:27:34.241 --> 00:27:37.043
So I better roll up my sleeves and get the broom and start brooming.

480
00:27:38.093 --> 00:27:38.793
It's both of them.

481
00:27:39.074 --> 00:27:40.455
I need to go knock on doors.

482
00:27:40.635 --> 00:27:41.815
I need to go meet people.

483
00:27:41.915 --> 00:27:46.338
I need to do whatever work needs to be done at the beginning to get the business started.

484
00:27:46.618 --> 00:27:47.659
Let's talk about both then.

485
00:27:47.799 --> 00:27:51.862
So you've got the trenches and then you've got, let's say, the clouds or the moon, as you refer to it.

486
00:27:52.162 --> 00:27:55.224
Why is it important to dream big?

487
00:27:55.844 --> 00:27:58.526
Why is the scale and the size of the dream important?

488
00:27:58.666 --> 00:28:02.228
So I believe it's the secret of manifestation.

489
00:28:02.829 --> 00:28:05.511
So when people ask me, Adam, what is the secret of manifestation?

490
00:28:05.531 --> 00:28:07.372
How do you make something out of nothing?

491
00:28:07.972 --> 00:28:10.474
I think the order is, first you have to believe.

492
00:28:11.394 --> 00:28:13.496
If you and I have a big idea, first we have to believe it.

493
00:28:14.697 --> 00:28:16.758
Then, that takes time to believe.

494
00:28:16.958 --> 00:28:18.920
True belief, by the way, do you know when belief is measured?

495
00:28:19.300 --> 00:28:19.480
No.

496
00:28:19.980 --> 00:28:21.001
When it's really tough.

497
00:28:22.142 --> 00:28:23.843
Belief is not measured on everything.

498
00:28:23.863 --> 00:28:29.467
So I remember this, and I've shared this story before, but your audience is so wide that I'm sure a lot of them haven't heard it.

499
00:28:31.773 --> 00:28:41.285
When right after the whole explosion of WeWork occurred, and it was like five days in and the whole thing was crashing on us and there's a million articles and the whole thing is happening.

500
00:28:42.106 --> 00:28:50.096
My spiritual teacher, who I haven't spoken at this point almost for two years after I studied with him for eight years, calls me, said, Adam, how are you doing?

501
00:28:50.973 --> 00:28:52.774
I said, I'm not doing so well right now.

502
00:28:52.814 --> 00:28:53.375
It's crazy.

503
00:28:53.915 --> 00:28:54.715
He said, oh, great.

504
00:28:54.735 --> 00:28:55.656
That's why I called you.

505
00:28:55.836 --> 00:28:56.737
I said, why did you call me?

506
00:28:56.757 --> 00:28:57.437
His name is Eitan.

507
00:28:57.457 --> 00:28:58.838
I said, Eitan, why didn't you call me?

508
00:28:59.358 --> 00:29:03.261
He said, I called you to make sure that you remember the two things we learned for eight years.

509
00:29:03.281 --> 00:29:05.762
I said, Eitan, we didn't learn two things for eight years.

510
00:29:05.782 --> 00:29:06.763
We studied twice a week.

511
00:29:06.783 --> 00:29:07.964
We learned endless things.

512
00:29:07.984 --> 00:29:09.404
He goes, no, you missed it.

513
00:29:09.865 --> 00:29:11.406
We learned two things.

514
00:29:12.847 --> 00:29:13.927
I said, please remind me.

515
00:29:13.947 --> 00:29:19.891
He goes, one was love thy neighbor as yourself and the rest is commentary.

516
00:29:22.034 --> 00:29:23.055
I took a second for it.

517
00:29:23.115 --> 00:29:25.678
I said, let's talk about this for a second.

518
00:29:26.159 --> 00:29:28.041
What does love thy neighbor as yourself mean to you?

519
00:29:30.965 --> 00:29:32.006
Such a famous saying.

520
00:29:32.046 --> 00:29:33.308
We've heard it so many times.

521
00:29:33.802 --> 00:29:45.912
When I think about it, the way that I understand it is to have empathy and compassion for all of the complexities, both the good, the bad, the indifferent, and that which you don't understand, which is like how I would treat myself.

522
00:29:45.952 --> 00:29:56.061
Like I understand that I'm a complex person and that I'm multifaceted and imperfect and that I have strengths and weaknesses and I'm okay with all of it.

523
00:29:56.421 --> 00:29:58.203
And in others, we're less okay with all of it.

524
00:29:58.518 --> 00:29:58.938
Beautiful.

525
00:29:58.958 --> 00:30:01.199
Let's say it a little bit different words, but that was right on.

526
00:30:01.879 --> 00:30:05.200
Love the Emperor as yourself means that you first have to love yourself.

527
00:30:06.040 --> 00:30:13.942
To love yourself, you have to acknowledge not only the great strength that you have that you love, you must acknowledge your weaknesses, your failures, your mistakes.

528
00:30:14.542 --> 00:30:18.363
And the only way you can love yourself after all of those is if you're able to forgive yourself.

529
00:30:19.003 --> 00:30:28.568
So the true secret of loving oneself is to forgive yourself, to not carry guilt, to really be able to know that all of these are lessons for you to grow and change and go to your next level from.

530
00:30:29.148 --> 00:30:30.389
Back to the sword analogy.

531
00:30:30.809 --> 00:30:35.792
You're a sword and you're getting forged and every single time you get hit, you just get stronger.

532
00:30:36.472 --> 00:30:40.936
Once you feel that and you're able to love yourself, then you're able to love everybody else.

533
00:30:41.336 --> 00:30:42.838
That was the first thing he told me we learned.

534
00:30:43.298 --> 00:30:49.483
The second thing he said to me, which we said before, is I want to remind you that the darkest moment of the night is the second before dawn.

535
00:30:50.084 --> 00:30:57.050
Belief is not measured on everything is going up and everybody's telling you what a genius you are and everybody wants to be your friend and everybody wants to be your investor.

536
00:30:57.811 --> 00:30:59.912
Belief is measured when it's all crashing.

537
00:30:59.932 --> 00:31:00.533
Belief.

538
00:31:00.653 --> 00:31:03.995
when even your friends are questioning you, when the phone is not ringing.

539
00:31:04.715 --> 00:31:19.563
And if a person is able to have true belief then, then he says to me, if you're going to be able to take this experience and really hold your belief, hold your positivity, hold your happiness, be the person I know you can be, you can't imagine what the future is stored for you.

540
00:31:19.863 --> 00:31:22.745
What did you believe in, in your hardest moment?

541
00:31:24.387 --> 00:31:37.522
in God, and in myself, in my wife, in my kids, and in the fact that even though I don't know at this moment why this thing happened, I am going to be stronger for it.

542
00:31:37.962 --> 00:31:40.665
And I remember that morning, this phone call was late at night.

543
00:31:40.685 --> 00:31:43.608
The next morning at 6 a.m., I walked down to...

544
00:31:44.249 --> 00:31:48.211
to my three, I went from 13,000 employees to three employees in one week.

545
00:31:48.811 --> 00:31:52.993
I walked down to the three employees who were my partners in the family office, not even employees, partners.

546
00:31:53.513 --> 00:31:55.173
I walked down to them and I'm smiling.

547
00:31:55.974 --> 00:31:56.614
They're stressed out.

548
00:31:56.654 --> 00:31:58.495
We would meet every day at 6 a.m. that we're done.

549
00:31:58.615 --> 00:31:59.475
We're bankrupt.

550
00:31:59.515 --> 00:32:00.035
It's finished.

551
00:32:00.075 --> 00:32:05.758
They only joined me three months before they came to manage what they thought was a five to $10 billion family office.

552
00:32:06.078 --> 00:32:10.840
And they're dealing with negative 400 million compounding interest, full bankruptcy situation.

553
00:32:11.900 --> 00:32:20.126
And I thought about them all my, not all, a lot of friends that I had that were really there with me and enjoyed with me and grew with me and made money with me.

554
00:32:20.547 --> 00:32:23.769
When I really needed that one small moment, a lot of them weren't there.

555
00:32:24.370 --> 00:32:29.654
And these three almost strangers who I didn't really know were standing right there by my side.

556
00:32:30.649 --> 00:32:32.469
And they see me smiling, I say, Adam, why are you smiling?

557
00:32:32.669 --> 00:32:34.150
They're like, they thought I really lost my mind.

558
00:32:34.210 --> 00:32:34.630
It was done.

559
00:32:35.350 --> 00:32:39.571
And I said, I'm smiling because I remember that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn.

560
00:32:40.211 --> 00:32:45.472
And I remember that belief is actually measured when things are difficult, not when everything is working.

561
00:32:45.992 --> 00:32:52.414
And I believe, and I know it's going to work out, and I don't know how, and I don't know why, but this is all going to work out for the best.

562
00:32:52.494 --> 00:32:58.715
And we're going to learn a lot from this, and it will actually prepare us when a real difficulty happens, so we're ready to go and deal with it.

563
00:32:59.295 --> 00:33:04.138
And about 10 days later, we started coming out of it in a very positive way.

564
00:33:05.059 --> 00:33:08.321
I want to go to the top of the story, because I really want to walk through some of the key moments.

565
00:33:08.361 --> 00:33:12.324
But I noticed your energy shift a little bit when you started describing those three people.

566
00:33:13.224 --> 00:33:14.845
Here's another thing that I've learned.

567
00:33:15.366 --> 00:33:17.687
If you now haven't, you're facing this as we speak right now.

568
00:33:18.168 --> 00:33:19.248
I bet you have lots of friends.

569
00:33:20.689 --> 00:33:21.730
I bet you have lots of friends.

570
00:33:21.750 --> 00:33:22.570
That's how you define friends.

571
00:33:22.651 --> 00:33:22.991
Exactly.

572
00:33:23.331 --> 00:33:24.772
Well, I'll tell you a secret about them.

573
00:33:25.155 --> 00:33:26.036
And I'm sorry to say that.

574
00:33:26.436 --> 00:33:29.638
We're only going to know which one of them are your friend and which ones are not.

575
00:33:30.759 --> 00:33:34.541
Where if, God forbid, you crash and you actually need them.

576
00:33:36.803 --> 00:33:39.044
And then I can also tell you if you're going to crash or not.

577
00:33:40.505 --> 00:33:44.708
If you go big enough, really, really big, you crash.

578
00:33:45.169 --> 00:33:47.331
Whenever someone tells you, oh, Adam, it's never going to happen to me.

579
00:33:47.351 --> 00:33:48.792
My ego is never going to get the best of me.

580
00:33:48.832 --> 00:33:50.833
I'm never, I'm always going to stay in control.

581
00:33:50.873 --> 00:33:53.135
I have a young, successful people like to say that to me.

582
00:33:53.155 --> 00:33:54.516
I say, oh, you haven't gone big enough.

583
00:33:55.356 --> 00:33:58.618
Because if you really, really, that's part of the definition of going really, really big.

584
00:33:59.819 --> 00:34:00.780
Life is not about...

585
00:34:01.564 --> 00:34:03.625
If we fall down, we're supposed to fall down.

586
00:34:04.245 --> 00:34:06.286
Life is about how we get up.

587
00:34:06.927 --> 00:34:09.948
And the more times we fall down, the more times we get to get up.

588
00:34:10.449 --> 00:34:13.970
And if you practice getting up enough times, then you might not fall.

589
00:34:14.511 --> 00:34:15.631
Then you get very good at it.

590
00:34:15.731 --> 00:34:18.253
And then you can go and really go for the stars.

591
00:34:19.353 --> 00:34:25.676
So with the friends, the reason my energy changed about those three, I didn't know them that well.

592
00:34:25.937 --> 00:34:26.737
And they stuck by me.

593
00:34:27.984 --> 00:34:29.904
I have a weakness with loyalty.

594
00:34:30.344 --> 00:34:31.085
I'm very loyal.

595
00:34:31.545 --> 00:34:35.005
So if you were there for me when things were tough, I'm a sucker for that.

596
00:34:35.205 --> 00:34:38.106
I'll be there for you, even if you mess up, to a fault almost.

597
00:34:38.546 --> 00:34:44.487
A lot of founders who start businesses have this thing that pop culture is called imposter syndrome, where they kind of do doubt themselves.

598
00:34:44.527 --> 00:34:54.689
And this sort of sits in contrast to this idea of having belief, because sometimes they don't believe, and they are plagued with insecurities and doubts, and they kind of go back and forward, and they think, really, am I the person to do this?

599
00:34:54.789 --> 00:34:55.889
I've never done it before.

600
00:34:56.529 --> 00:34:59.810
Which is, that comes with pursuing something great.

601
00:35:00.671 --> 00:35:01.791
You had never done it before.

602
00:35:02.372 --> 00:35:04.692
So what do you say to those people who are struggling with doubt?

603
00:35:04.712 --> 00:35:06.393
Because they're hearing, listen, you have to believe.

604
00:35:06.973 --> 00:35:09.875
Did you have doubt when you drew this?

605
00:35:10.115 --> 00:35:11.295
The fascinating question.

606
00:35:11.555 --> 00:35:14.757
My level of certainty was so high when I was doing WeWork.

607
00:35:15.817 --> 00:35:17.258
I was sure it was going to work.

608
00:35:17.338 --> 00:35:21.779
A lot of times I think people confused my certainty as a different word.

609
00:35:22.419 --> 00:35:26.420
I was just, I was that sure that the product is needed for the world.

610
00:35:27.280 --> 00:35:34.022
When I started Flow, which was different and came after everything and after also we had a family.

611
00:35:34.302 --> 00:35:35.523
When I started work I had no kids.

612
00:35:35.623 --> 00:35:36.483
It was just Rebecca and I.

613
00:35:36.503 --> 00:35:43.045
It was very easy to throw myself into something and work 18 to 20 hour days, seven days a week and love every second.

614
00:35:43.085 --> 00:35:43.865
There was nothing else.

615
00:35:44.625 --> 00:35:51.747
WeWork grew astronomically quickly, really atypically quickly, especially for that type of company.

616
00:35:52.268 --> 00:35:55.589
And I wanted to hear directly from you, why?

617
00:35:55.689 --> 00:35:56.329
What happened?

618
00:35:56.689 --> 00:35:59.550
What were the factors that contributed to this meteoric rise?

619
00:35:59.570 --> 00:36:02.511
I think a couple of years after you founded the company, I became a customer of it.

620
00:36:03.592 --> 00:36:05.173
both in New York, but also in London.

621
00:36:05.514 --> 00:36:06.655
What didn't I see?

622
00:36:06.715 --> 00:36:07.456
What was it?

623
00:36:07.536 --> 00:36:09.558
So WeWork started in February of 2010.

624
00:36:11.159 --> 00:36:16.084
And it's, for anybody listening, I think this is the way that it should and could work.

625
00:36:17.165 --> 00:36:23.031
I think from the first day, we were so clear, as you pointed out with The Circle, on the fact that this mission is bigger than us.

626
00:36:24.012 --> 00:36:32.384
And when you're part of a mission that's greater than yourself, urgency doesn't just become something like, oh, we have to do it now because I said so or because we said so.

627
00:36:33.085 --> 00:36:40.315
When you feel that your mission really needs to come out to the world, then you have to do it now because there's no time to waste because it's really important.

628
00:36:41.116 --> 00:36:42.937
And we just started with our first.

629
00:36:43.337 --> 00:36:46.437
And part of my energy is I bring people together.

630
00:36:46.557 --> 00:36:47.858
I really like creating community.

631
00:36:48.478 --> 00:36:54.059
But I also, I love to move fast when we're clear on the direction that we're moving.

632
00:36:54.579 --> 00:36:56.120
And I don't believe anything is impossible.

633
00:36:56.940 --> 00:37:05.462
So when you connect that mission of something being greater than yourself, speed and not accepting a no, you put those things together, then real magic happens.

634
00:37:05.562 --> 00:37:06.563
I think that's one too.

635
00:37:06.823 --> 00:37:07.883
I want an example of that.

636
00:37:08.423 --> 00:37:09.004
I'll give you one.

637
00:37:10.266 --> 00:37:11.748
Many examples, but let's start.

638
00:37:11.768 --> 00:37:14.211
Let's start early WeWork, because I think this all started weird.

639
00:37:14.231 --> 00:37:17.616
But before the example, one more thing I was going to say that made WeWork to answer a question.

640
00:37:18.117 --> 00:37:18.678
It's the team.

641
00:37:19.739 --> 00:37:21.682
The team was so dedicated.

642
00:37:21.902 --> 00:37:23.825
The team believed so much.

643
00:37:23.985 --> 00:37:24.666
It was their...

644
00:37:26.168 --> 00:37:26.989
It was their essence.

645
00:37:27.589 --> 00:37:30.632
It was their experience of being part of something greater than themselves.

646
00:37:30.852 --> 00:37:36.157
And when you can bring a group of people together to all run in the same direction, you almost can't stop anything.

647
00:37:36.177 --> 00:37:37.298
I'll give you an example.

648
00:37:37.679 --> 00:37:39.020
It's our second WeWork building.

649
00:37:39.160 --> 00:37:41.022
We need to do the floor.

650
00:37:41.502 --> 00:37:44.005
We only had $90,000.

651
00:37:44.025 --> 00:37:44.906
We didn't have any more money.

652
00:37:45.506 --> 00:37:48.969
And all the quotes were $200,000 a floor, whatever the number was.

653
00:37:49.670 --> 00:37:53.051
And I said to Miguel and to the few people there, we have to do it for this price.

654
00:37:53.091 --> 00:37:53.732
I said, you can't.

655
00:37:53.852 --> 00:37:54.692
We got five quotes.

656
00:37:54.752 --> 00:37:55.372
It's not the price.

657
00:37:55.953 --> 00:37:57.033
I said, well, how much is the floor?

658
00:37:57.073 --> 00:38:02.375
And everybody's like, the floor is between 30,000 to 45,000 where these wood floors was an important part of the design.

659
00:38:03.175 --> 00:38:03.616
I said, why?

660
00:38:03.636 --> 00:38:04.876
I said, what do you mean, why?

661
00:38:04.916 --> 00:38:05.736
These are the quotes.

662
00:38:06.097 --> 00:38:07.777
I said, well, can you break down the quote for me?

663
00:38:07.817 --> 00:38:08.557
I said, what do you mean?

664
00:38:08.838 --> 00:38:10.198
I said, well, how many pieces of floor?

665
00:38:10.638 --> 00:38:11.319
How many nails?

666
00:38:11.659 --> 00:38:12.319
How much glue?

667
00:38:12.659 --> 00:38:13.419
How much rubber?

668
00:38:13.740 --> 00:38:15.560
How many hours of work per person?

669
00:38:15.860 --> 00:38:17.101
How much does each person cost?

670
00:38:17.817 --> 00:38:18.558
No one could answer.

671
00:38:19.498 --> 00:38:22.620
So I have an idea of how we can negotiate this differently.

672
00:38:23.181 --> 00:38:28.664
I called the top three guys and said, I would like you to earn 15% above the cost.

673
00:38:28.724 --> 00:38:30.405
I think that's a fair margin, 15%.

674
00:38:30.425 --> 00:38:30.805
Do you agree?

675
00:38:31.226 --> 00:38:32.066
So of course I agree.

676
00:38:32.486 --> 00:38:33.067
It's like, great.

677
00:38:33.127 --> 00:38:34.528
And all three of them, by the way, said yes.

678
00:38:34.588 --> 00:38:35.048
I said, great.

679
00:38:35.068 --> 00:38:37.109
Well, I'm going to need to see the cost of each piece.

680
00:38:37.550 --> 00:38:38.770
I'm going to go quote it myself.

681
00:38:38.810 --> 00:38:40.091
I'm going to get to 15%.

682
00:38:40.592 --> 00:38:43.013
Very quickly, the cost went down to that first floor.

683
00:38:43.033 --> 00:38:44.334
Instead of $30,000 to $45,000, it was $12,000.

684
00:38:45.995 --> 00:38:48.485
The guy who touched me, Adam, no one's ever worked with me that way.

685
00:38:49.212 --> 00:38:52.254
Before you know it, they joined us and we had our own internal construction company.

686
00:38:52.274 --> 00:38:55.997
And we realized that only by controlling it could we get the right price and we're fast enough.

687
00:38:56.597 --> 00:39:01.321
So it's not taking no for an answer, but also using logic to really look into it.

688
00:39:01.341 --> 00:39:04.903
Now, it could be that if I looked into it, I wouldn't have been able to get a better price.

689
00:39:05.283 --> 00:39:08.406
But what I'm describing is the challenge in construction in general and globally.

690
00:39:08.786 --> 00:39:10.987
And it's part of the things that flow is solving today.

691
00:39:11.168 --> 00:39:13.249
Elon would call that like reasoning from first principles.

692
00:39:13.529 --> 00:39:14.350
I had a similar story.

693
00:39:14.390 --> 00:39:14.630
He would.

694
00:39:14.870 --> 00:39:15.711
He would call it like that.

695
00:39:15.731 --> 00:39:16.792
And from what I know...

696
00:39:17.572 --> 00:39:19.616
In flow, we look up to Ilan as an entrepreneur.

697
00:39:19.637 --> 00:39:20.719
We think he's unbelievable.

698
00:39:21.100 --> 00:39:24.166
And whenever someone gives Ilan as an example, say, no one is Ilan.

699
00:39:24.406 --> 00:39:25.549
That's not an example we use.

700
00:39:25.569 --> 00:39:27.212
We just, we look at him for inspiration.

701
00:39:28.537 --> 00:39:46.646
I happen to know that he can put an engineer, because I have a friend whose daughter works for him in SpaceX, he can put an engineer to work on one problem for six months, one screw, one connection, but the result ends up being not twice as simple as anything NASA has done, but like 500 times as simple, and cheaper, and faster, and lighter.

702
00:39:47.367 --> 00:39:48.568
So yes, it's going back.

703
00:39:48.588 --> 00:39:49.988
You can call it first principles.

704
00:39:50.008 --> 00:39:51.689
You can call it asking every question.

705
00:39:52.149 --> 00:39:57.032
But if you're the entrepreneur and you're going to run, or if you're an employee or a partner, ask why.

706
00:39:58.417 --> 00:40:04.102
People don't because they don't want to be rude or inconvenience others or they're too concerned with being liked.

707
00:40:04.142 --> 00:40:10.107
So pushing back on a supplier or, you know, conventional status quo in any way is seen to be inconvenient.

708
00:40:10.227 --> 00:40:12.308
I'm going to try to say a different reason why they're not.

709
00:40:12.669 --> 00:40:14.150
Because they don't ask themselves why.

710
00:40:14.450 --> 00:40:15.131
It's going to go back.

711
00:40:15.171 --> 00:40:17.412
This discussion can keep going back to the same basics.

712
00:40:17.433 --> 00:40:17.973
Yeah.

713
00:40:18.153 --> 00:40:20.955
A person who's comfortable asking himself, why is he doing something?

714
00:40:21.356 --> 00:40:29.983
Questioning himself or herself, seeing negative things, seeing problems, and then enjoying the process of growing out of them, will have no problem asking someone else why.

715
00:40:30.740 --> 00:40:34.041
And whenever you ask someone why and they don't want to answer you, what are you hiding?

716
00:40:34.701 --> 00:40:35.701
This is a discussion.

717
00:40:36.322 --> 00:40:41.043
I usually, when I go into topics like this, start by telling the vendor, wherever it is, I want you to make money.

718
00:40:42.143 --> 00:40:44.124
No one's trying to make you lose money.

719
00:40:44.164 --> 00:40:45.024
But we're on a mission.

720
00:40:45.584 --> 00:40:53.747
And if I'm going to pay even 20% more than I should, then that's 20% less of another building, another community, another neighborhood that Flo is not going to take part in.

721
00:40:54.472 --> 00:40:56.333
This really does make a lot of sense to me.

722
00:40:56.434 --> 00:40:59.076
We have this Slack channel in our company called Paper Walls.

723
00:40:59.476 --> 00:41:02.298
And the whole idea is that we're trying to encourage our team to push on paper walls.

724
00:41:02.618 --> 00:41:08.263
A paper wall is something that looks solid, but reveals itself to be completely made of paper the minute you try it.

725
00:41:08.283 --> 00:41:09.424
You ask why, you push on it.

726
00:41:09.884 --> 00:41:15.709
And there's a story of a kid that worked for me in one of my companies for four years, and he animates video.

727
00:41:16.209 --> 00:41:19.051
I said to him, how long is it going to take you to animate a video for us?

728
00:41:19.071 --> 00:41:19.752
That's 30 minutes.

729
00:41:19.792 --> 00:41:20.773
He said it takes nine days.

730
00:41:21.313 --> 00:41:21.513
Right?

731
00:41:21.633 --> 00:41:22.574
He worked for me for four years.

732
00:41:22.634 --> 00:41:23.975
It took him nine days to hang out the video.

733
00:41:24.275 --> 00:41:26.036
We decide we want to launch a weekly channel.

734
00:41:26.496 --> 00:41:29.458
I need him to do it in three or four days max so that the rest of the team can do it.

735
00:41:30.159 --> 00:41:31.520
I say to him, how long is it going to take you?

736
00:41:31.540 --> 00:41:32.300
He says nine days.

737
00:41:33.061 --> 00:41:38.384
And then because we'd established this culture in our company of pushing on paper walls, I said to him, why?

738
00:41:38.404 --> 00:41:40.025
Do you know what he said to me?

739
00:41:40.766 --> 00:41:43.307
I think I said something like, what would it take to do it in two?

740
00:41:44.208 --> 00:41:46.329
And he went, Stephen, you just need to buy me a new laptop.

741
00:41:46.349 --> 00:41:47.030
I have an old laptop.

742
00:41:47.890 --> 00:41:50.511
I thought, fucking hell, I've been paying him for four years.

743
00:41:51.151 --> 00:41:56.873
And he's been, think about how much time I've lost in those four years, just simply because I didn't ask that question.

744
00:41:57.153 --> 00:41:59.294
But also to your point, he never mentioned it.

745
00:41:59.914 --> 00:42:01.514
He never knew he was in a paper wall himself.

746
00:42:02.454 --> 00:42:05.455
First year of WeWork, we opened one building.

747
00:42:06.476 --> 00:42:10.737
Year nine of WeWork, we opened two buildings a day.

748
00:42:11.763 --> 00:42:18.847
in 130 cities, 50 countries, 70 languages, 100,000 square foot per building.

749
00:42:18.867 --> 00:42:24.849
So that's 200,000 square foot a day, 20,000 square meter for your European listeners a day.

750
00:42:25.490 --> 00:42:34.434
A lot of the same people who are only capable doing the one and two participants, were leaders by that time, of being able to do one of the fastest physical global growth the world's ever seen.

751
00:42:35.114 --> 00:42:35.635
Same people.

752
00:42:36.315 --> 00:42:43.181
As you learn to, in your words, go through paper rolls, as you learn that anything is possible, suddenly this is the secret of high growth and momentum.

753
00:42:43.662 --> 00:42:49.547
Whatever you can do today, if your company starts growing fast, you'll be shocked what you'll be able to do in three months, nine months.

754
00:42:49.567 --> 00:42:52.850
And in two years, you're going to look back and not believe that that was your capacity.

755
00:42:53.210 --> 00:42:56.233
And I keep telling people, and they tell me, oh, I can't do this, and this takes three months.

756
00:42:56.293 --> 00:42:58.355
I say, guys, I've seen this done before.

757
00:42:58.715 --> 00:42:59.936
Forget I know we can do it.

758
00:43:00.016 --> 00:43:00.597
It's easier now.

759
00:43:00.797 --> 00:43:01.598
I've already been there.

760
00:43:02.199 --> 00:43:03.219
Now you just need to believe.

761
00:43:03.799 --> 00:43:04.900
And it goes back to the belief.

762
00:43:04.960 --> 00:43:07.900
Then we're going to need to put the systems and the processes.

763
00:43:07.920 --> 00:43:14.662
And today with technology, and this is where I think AI is very exciting, you could shortcut a lot of these things and do a much better work.

764
00:43:15.022 --> 00:43:19.803
But back to what you said about your company, I bet, when's the last time you sat with them in a circle?

765
00:43:19.823 --> 00:43:20.363
How many employees?

766
00:43:20.683 --> 00:43:21.763
About 200 in total.

767
00:43:21.883 --> 00:43:22.883
So 200 is a big number.

768
00:43:22.983 --> 00:43:29.885
But if you took 30 of them, sat in a room, and actually asked them, what are you working on personally?

769
00:43:30.796 --> 00:43:32.717
What is your internal paperwork?

770
00:43:32.817 --> 00:43:34.078
What is your internal challenge?

771
00:43:34.198 --> 00:43:34.978
What's stopping you?

772
00:43:35.618 --> 00:43:37.139
And they got comfortable talking about it.

773
00:43:37.199 --> 00:43:39.460
And then as a group, first of all, all their peers would hear.

774
00:43:39.840 --> 00:43:41.421
And before you know it, their peers would help them.

775
00:43:41.681 --> 00:43:43.702
Hey, I remember that you said that this is a child for you.

776
00:43:43.722 --> 00:43:44.543
You're insecure.

777
00:43:44.563 --> 00:43:45.623
You don't talk in public.

778
00:43:45.943 --> 00:43:47.024
You're a little judgmental.

779
00:43:47.304 --> 00:43:48.485
You're too hard on yourself.

780
00:43:48.565 --> 00:43:49.945
Every person has another story.

781
00:43:50.706 --> 00:43:57.329
Before you know it, the moment you get them used to grow internally, it will affect your business to grow externally.

782
00:43:58.480 --> 00:44:02.683
In WeWork, the business grew faster than I could grow.

783
00:44:04.084 --> 00:44:05.805
That's where everything went wrong.

784
00:44:06.365 --> 00:44:11.669
I actually think whenever a company grows faster than its founder, one of two things will occur.

785
00:44:11.949 --> 00:44:21.536
Either it will crash, because that's what happens, or if somehow miraculously that founder is able to keep it all together, in my experience, they're not fulfilled and happy.

786
00:44:23.064 --> 00:44:25.547
And if they're not fulfilled and happy, why do it?

787
00:44:26.227 --> 00:44:32.173
How important for the founders listening and for the people that want to build or become is hard work?

788
00:44:32.213 --> 00:44:33.875
Because there's a real debate around hard work.

789
00:44:34.135 --> 00:44:37.198
You know, some people say, you know, work-life balance is the ultimate.

790
00:44:37.218 --> 00:44:39.561
Some people say if you're a founder, you've got to give 100 hour weeks.

791
00:44:40.421 --> 00:44:42.924
Ah, by the way, new answer to that question.

792
00:44:45.095 --> 00:44:49.021
It is the most important thing, but we have to define hard work.

793
00:44:49.582 --> 00:44:53.608
Hard work as a founder is not just limited to how many hours you put in the office.

794
00:44:54.409 --> 00:44:57.593
Hard work as a founder is how much time do you put on the business?

795
00:44:58.154 --> 00:44:59.396
How much time are you putting on yourself?

796
00:45:00.137 --> 00:45:02.378
As you grow, you will be a better leader.

797
00:45:02.839 --> 00:45:04.139
You will be a better money raiser.

798
00:45:04.240 --> 00:45:05.921
You will be a better express.

799
00:45:05.941 --> 00:45:07.341
You'll express your business better.

800
00:45:07.782 --> 00:45:09.523
So hard work is the only way to do it.

801
00:45:09.663 --> 00:45:10.643
And you can't be 50%.

802
00:45:10.884 --> 00:45:12.565
And here's something else that your founders know.

803
00:45:12.945 --> 00:45:19.629
When I had to decide if I'm doing flow again or not, the reason it was so hard is because I knew that there's no such thing as being 80% in or 90% in.

804
00:45:20.029 --> 00:45:22.270
Either you're 100% in and you're all in.

805
00:45:25.432 --> 00:45:26.512
or it's not going to work.

806
00:45:27.092 --> 00:45:28.393
So how important is hard work?

807
00:45:28.773 --> 00:45:29.633
Most important thing.

808
00:45:30.033 --> 00:45:30.893
What is hard work?

809
00:45:31.293 --> 00:45:32.394
Some of it is on the business.

810
00:45:32.814 --> 00:45:33.614
Some of it is on you.

811
00:45:33.914 --> 00:45:35.975
If you're married, it's also on your relationship.

812
00:45:36.195 --> 00:45:38.035
If you have kids, it's also with your kids.

813
00:45:38.615 --> 00:45:43.596
By the way, for those listeners who have kids, if you're ever wondering what you need to work on, just listen to your kids.

814
00:45:44.036 --> 00:45:44.897
They know.

815
00:45:45.477 --> 00:45:50.158
There you were alluding to this sort of magical thing that happens when one focuses on something.

816
00:45:50.178 --> 00:45:51.018
Yeah.

817
00:45:51.337 --> 00:45:53.698
You were saying if you're like 90% in, it doesn't work.

818
00:45:53.718 --> 00:45:56.239
But if you're 100% in, it works.

819
00:45:56.359 --> 00:45:59.561
What is the magic that is an obvious with that?

820
00:46:00.301 --> 00:46:02.402
When you're 100% in, there's no time for doubt.

821
00:46:03.003 --> 00:46:04.283
There's no time for questions.

822
00:46:04.303 --> 00:46:06.484
There's no time for fear because you're so in it.

823
00:46:07.878 --> 00:46:13.880
When you're, oh, I can find this work-life balance while doing it, you're not going to do something great.

824
00:46:13.940 --> 00:46:17.701
And if you are, if you were to achieve something, it's not close to your potential.

825
00:46:18.461 --> 00:46:21.082
But again, I'm redefining what 100% in meant.

826
00:46:21.362 --> 00:46:22.462
We talked about Warren Buffett.

827
00:46:22.482 --> 00:46:23.303
Was he not 100%?

828
00:46:23.363 --> 00:46:24.323
And of course he is.

829
00:46:25.236 --> 00:46:26.877
Does he have a full schedule?

830
00:46:26.937 --> 00:46:27.358
No way.

831
00:46:27.758 --> 00:46:31.581
He keeps it open so he can have the important meetings, so he can read, so he can connect.

832
00:46:33.082 --> 00:46:35.404
There are different ways to be 100% in.

833
00:46:35.985 --> 00:46:39.408
But you must, in life, in my opinion, be 100% in.

834
00:46:39.628 --> 00:46:40.628
That's why I love surfing.

835
00:46:41.910 --> 00:46:48.335
In surfing, when you're on the board on a wave, if you're not present and you're not in flow, you're knocked off that board.

836
00:46:49.002 --> 00:46:53.263
What about founders that are doing two different businesses, pursuing two different missions?

837
00:46:53.283 --> 00:46:54.863
Remember what I told you we say in Flow?

838
00:46:55.663 --> 00:46:56.364
You're not Elon.

839
00:46:57.224 --> 00:46:58.304
I would tell them you're not Elon.

840
00:46:58.464 --> 00:47:00.144
Elon can do two different, very few people.

841
00:47:00.164 --> 00:47:02.625
I know he's one of the only examples I have.

842
00:47:02.785 --> 00:47:03.425
Jack Dorsey.

843
00:47:04.125 --> 00:47:05.806
Some of the best on the planet can do.

844
00:47:06.686 --> 00:47:10.247
But it's very hard to do two businesses at the same time.

845
00:47:10.467 --> 00:47:11.387
It's hard enough to do one.

846
00:47:12.655 --> 00:47:17.138
And I guess even in those cases, they built up tremendous resources by doing one really, really well.

847
00:47:17.378 --> 00:47:20.700
Again, my question about, I don't know which founder you're thinking, but you've met people like that.

848
00:47:20.880 --> 00:47:26.524
Really, when I've met people doing two that are somewhat succeeding, they're spending no time on their own personal growth.

849
00:47:27.004 --> 00:47:35.589
So the extra time they have because they did their first business so well, they're using it to do another business, which usually in my experience is an excuse not to actually experience life for what it is.

850
00:47:36.530 --> 00:47:39.672
If you're already doing one and it's meaningful and it's fulfilling, why do you need another?

851
00:47:40.152 --> 00:47:41.133
What are you hiding from?

852
00:47:41.793 --> 00:47:43.639
What is it that you're not actually doing?

853
00:47:44.361 --> 00:47:45.144
Would be my question.

854
00:47:45.184 --> 00:47:47.652
Now, if they, maybe there's a, maybe they're a miracle.

855
00:47:48.905 --> 00:47:51.327
Hello, I wasn't able to make that finance meeting.

856
00:47:51.407 --> 00:47:53.469
Can you tell me what I missed?

857
00:47:53.569 --> 00:47:56.351
What I have in front of me is Whisperflow's new Notetaker.

858
00:47:56.391 --> 00:47:58.232
And for me, it's been an absolute game changer.

859
00:47:58.312 --> 00:48:02.476
I spend most of my life sat in very, very long meetings with lots of different teams and lots of different departments.

860
00:48:02.596 --> 00:48:12.063
In any given week, I could have 40, 50 meetings and sometimes more, but also I sit in podcasts where lots of very interesting things get said and I need to focus on the conversation.

861
00:48:12.343 --> 00:48:18.388
What Whisperflow's Notetaker does for me is it captures the entire context of everything that's happened throughout my entire week.

862
00:48:18.488 --> 00:48:18.548
It,

863
00:48:18.548 --> 00:48:21.192
It labels who the people are that said what.

864
00:48:21.352 --> 00:48:27.861
And I can ask it for things that I might have forgotten, for actions, things that I said I would do that I haven't yet done.

865
00:48:28.081 --> 00:48:31.767
It's building this sort of broader context of everything that's happening in my life.

866
00:48:32.147 --> 00:48:34.010
And it's an incredible, incredible superpower.

867
00:48:34.110 --> 00:48:39.153
I love the fact that so many of you come up to me in the street because you know I'm an investor in Whisperflow and tell me how much it's changed your life.

868
00:48:39.254 --> 00:48:41.895
It is the worst kept secret in productivity.

869
00:48:42.096 --> 00:48:47.759
If you want to give it a go, head to whisperflow.ai.com to download it right now and give it a try.

870
00:48:47.799 --> 00:48:50.301
And once you try it, I think you'll realize why we let them sponsor this podcast.

871
00:48:50.521 --> 00:48:51.022
It's amazing.

872
00:48:51.702 --> 00:48:54.584
I have a stat here that genuinely shocked me.

873
00:48:54.884 --> 00:49:01.508
It says that sales teams spend about 50% of their time on admin and manual CRM updates rather than selling.

874
00:49:01.628 --> 00:49:03.710
That is deadly for their bottom line.

875
00:49:03.810 --> 00:49:09.273
And that is part of the reason why a decade ago at my previous company, I switched to using Pipedrive, who are our sponsor.

876
00:49:09.393 --> 00:49:19.164
If you've never used Pipedrive, it is an intelligent AI-powered sales CRM, and they just launched new meeting intelligence features like an AI note-taker built right into the CRM.

877
00:49:19.284 --> 00:49:23.529
Pipedrive now automates more of the admin that stops you from doing the work that you love to do best.

878
00:49:23.669 --> 00:49:29.155
Before your meeting, it pulls deal history, email records, and previous conversations into a single brief, so you're prepared.

879
00:49:29.295 --> 00:49:30.736
and it joins your meetings with you.

880
00:49:30.856 --> 00:49:38.020
It's in there to take notes so you don't need to, and it turns those notes that it takes into accurate auto-draft CRM updates.

881
00:49:38.140 --> 00:49:40.922
100,000 companies are already running their sales on it.

882
00:49:41.022 --> 00:49:49.586
You can sign up at pipedrive.com slash CEO, where you'll get an exclusive 30-day free trial instead of the usual 14 days.

883
00:49:50.007 --> 00:49:51.367
Absolutely no credit card needed.

884
00:49:51.628 --> 00:49:54.329
Just head to pipedrive.com slash CEO to get started.

885
00:49:54.709 --> 00:49:57.331
If you're in sales and you run a sales team, I don't think you'll regret it.

886
00:49:58.808 --> 00:50:01.330
We often say, you know, on one end you're saying go fast.

887
00:50:01.370 --> 00:50:03.992
And I hear that from great founders like yourself and Elon and those guys.

888
00:50:04.012 --> 00:50:07.015
They say go fast, push on paper walls, go as fast as you can.

889
00:50:07.415 --> 00:50:11.018
But then also there's other areas where you go, you have to go slow to go fast.

890
00:50:11.038 --> 00:50:12.239
But also know your weaknesses.

891
00:50:12.599 --> 00:50:15.462
I obviously did not succeed in building great technology in WeWork.

892
00:50:15.542 --> 00:50:16.482
That is a known fact.

893
00:50:17.043 --> 00:50:20.526
So if I'm going to partner again and I'm going to build a business larger than WeWork, I'm

894
00:50:21.046 --> 00:50:21.967
Put the right partners.

895
00:50:22.227 --> 00:50:22.847
Know what you don't know.

896
00:50:23.148 --> 00:50:25.189
Know what you don't know and let them lead.

897
00:50:25.529 --> 00:50:28.411
When we hired our CTO, we had four different CTOs.

898
00:50:28.471 --> 00:50:30.092
I let Ben do the final interview.

899
00:50:30.252 --> 00:50:36.116
Okay, this is what I was going to ask because one of the things I hear from founders a lot is they know they don't know X.

900
00:50:36.196 --> 00:50:37.057
Let's say it's finance.

901
00:50:37.777 --> 00:50:40.820
And then they do an interview with someone and the person says, I'm the best at finance.

902
00:50:40.840 --> 00:50:43.662
They have no idea if they're the best at finance because they don't know finance, the founder.

903
00:50:43.842 --> 00:50:44.342
Yeah.

904
00:50:44.582 --> 00:50:50.643
So what did you do to mitigate the trap of accidentally hiring someone that you weren't able to assess their competence?

905
00:50:51.043 --> 00:50:53.444
I chose partners that say the truth.

906
00:50:54.544 --> 00:50:59.465
When Mark and Ben and I do a board meeting, and Mark is our board member and Ben joins us.

907
00:50:59.645 --> 00:51:06.486
For context, I should say, Mark and Ben are two of the world's most famous investors, and they have backed you with your new venture, Flo.

908
00:51:06.506 --> 00:51:07.966
Yeah, just for context.

909
00:51:07.986 --> 00:51:09.647
Mark and Ben have invested $470 million into Flo.

910
00:51:11.547 --> 00:51:15.934
at a series A and series B, and I, Adam, and my family personally invested $350 million.

911
00:51:15.994 --> 00:51:20.721
Because part of when we created the business together, we wanted to be aligned.

912
00:51:20.821 --> 00:51:23.685
We buy together, we sell together, we do everything together.

913
00:51:25.118 --> 00:51:25.959
We have our board meetings.

914
00:51:25.979 --> 00:51:27.200
They usually start at 8 a.m.

915
00:51:27.220 --> 00:51:27.941
They end at 5.

916
00:51:28.361 --> 00:51:29.162
Very long board meeting.

917
00:51:29.422 --> 00:51:30.423
We talk about everything.

918
00:51:30.663 --> 00:51:31.664
We love it as a team.

919
00:51:32.204 --> 00:51:33.225
We really respect them.

920
00:51:33.646 --> 00:51:35.287
We truly prepare for these meetings.

921
00:51:35.407 --> 00:51:37.509
We don't spend too much time because, again, we are really busy.

922
00:51:37.529 --> 00:51:37.950
We don't have time.

923
00:51:38.250 --> 00:51:39.251
So it's not like we spend a month.

924
00:51:39.791 --> 00:51:41.393
We go a week before.

925
00:51:42.033 --> 00:51:43.995
Look, take stock of everything we did that quarter.

926
00:51:44.015 --> 00:51:45.636
It's always shocking to see how much you did.

927
00:51:45.916 --> 00:51:47.678
Because when you're not really measuring, you're just doing.

928
00:51:48.118 --> 00:51:51.421
When you stop for a second and look what you did, like, wow, we did quite a lot in three months.

929
00:51:51.721 --> 00:51:52.422
So very useful.

930
00:51:52.922 --> 00:51:54.223
We put together our board decks.

931
00:51:54.684 --> 00:51:56.185
We send them to them a few days before.

932
00:51:56.265 --> 00:51:57.166
They actually read them.

933
00:51:57.766 --> 00:51:58.767
And then they come for the meeting.

934
00:51:58.787 --> 00:52:00.148
So it's like 8.30 to 5.

935
00:52:00.348 --> 00:52:03.031
And then when it's done, I go to dinner with the two of them.

936
00:52:03.811 --> 00:52:07.875
And the dinner starts by me saying, we sit down, usually wherever it is.

937
00:52:08.695 --> 00:52:10.357
Please tell me what I can do better.

938
00:52:11.157 --> 00:52:14.118
And the first time I asked them, they were a little bit uncomfortable.

939
00:52:14.558 --> 00:52:18.640
The second time, I literally remember Mark going like this, Mark Andreessen, like this, like he was ready.

940
00:52:19.460 --> 00:52:20.701
Ben taking out his notes.

941
00:52:22.001 --> 00:52:23.142
That's a true partnership.

942
00:52:23.562 --> 00:52:25.543
And we do it every single time.

943
00:52:25.823 --> 00:52:32.465
And when you have the previous, you said some of the biggest investors, in my opinion, A16Z, number one investor on the planet.

944
00:52:33.046 --> 00:52:38.468
And if you're an entrepreneur today and you can, that's where you want your money from.

945
00:52:39.448 --> 00:52:47.691
If you're an entrepreneur today and you take it from Benchmark, the company that took me out, that took Travis, superstar out, Jack Dorsey out.

946
00:52:47.851 --> 00:52:48.812
Travis from Uber.

947
00:52:48.832 --> 00:52:49.792
Travis from Uber.

948
00:52:50.452 --> 00:52:56.815
Jack Dorsey from Square, Twitter, Blog, and many more and many more.

949
00:52:57.735 --> 00:53:00.676
So when you choose your investors, look at their history.

950
00:53:01.216 --> 00:53:03.437
Are they the kind that support entrepreneurs like you?

951
00:53:03.517 --> 00:53:07.919
Are they going to take you to the next level or do they have a history that actually clashes with the entrepreneur?

952
00:53:07.939 --> 00:53:08.039
Yeah.

953
00:53:08.619 --> 00:53:11.341
If they have a history that clashes with the entrepreneur, park them.

954
00:53:12.361 --> 00:53:14.323
So there was two key things I pulled out from there.

955
00:53:14.343 --> 00:53:19.486
The first was around this idea of like knowing when to go fast and slow and use technology as an example.

956
00:53:19.506 --> 00:53:26.431
The second thing, which opened up the story about A16Z, is the right people and partners.

957
00:53:26.831 --> 00:53:27.451
So important.

958
00:53:27.471 --> 00:53:27.672
More.

959
00:53:27.812 --> 00:53:33.956
If I had to choose one, right investors, right employees, right partners, most important thing.

960
00:53:34.616 --> 00:53:36.136
What did you learn about employees?

961
00:53:36.656 --> 00:53:38.697
Like, what is a great team member?

962
00:53:39.757 --> 00:53:43.198
If I have a problem with an employee, there's only one person to blame.

963
00:53:43.738 --> 00:53:44.198
And that's me.

964
00:53:45.218 --> 00:53:47.139
And what are the mistakes that you made in choosing employees?

965
00:53:48.119 --> 00:53:51.140
I think it's how I was leading that I've been learning more about.

966
00:53:51.740 --> 00:53:57.061
Where I used to lead from top to bottom, I now am learning how to lead bottom to up.

967
00:53:57.361 --> 00:53:58.001
What's the difference?

968
00:53:58.661 --> 00:54:02.122
Top to bottom means you think because someone reports into you, they have to do what you say.

969
00:54:03.193 --> 00:54:03.993
But it's not true.

970
00:54:04.373 --> 00:54:05.614
This is not a dictatorship.

971
00:54:05.814 --> 00:54:06.634
They have free will.

972
00:54:06.774 --> 00:54:07.755
They can go work.

973
00:54:07.955 --> 00:54:12.457
If you hired someone that's really talented, they'll go work elsewhere, especially great lead.

974
00:54:12.477 --> 00:54:15.398
The more talented they are, the more the top to bottom does not work.

975
00:54:15.418 --> 00:54:16.678
They won't be willing to do it.

976
00:54:16.958 --> 00:54:17.419
They shouldn't.

977
00:54:17.939 --> 00:54:20.340
Great talent is not willing to be managed like this.

978
00:54:21.160 --> 00:54:27.163
Great talent wants to be inspired, wants me to see the full version of themselves even more than they see it.

979
00:54:27.243 --> 00:54:29.825
And they want the room to make mistakes, but also to grow.

980
00:54:30.285 --> 00:54:31.366
But they also need feedback.

981
00:54:32.066 --> 00:54:35.968
If you have someone amazing and they're fucking up, sorry, they're missed.

982
00:54:35.988 --> 00:54:36.688
You can swear.

983
00:54:36.708 --> 00:54:37.289
I can swear.

984
00:54:37.329 --> 00:54:38.209
My kids are going to listen.

985
00:54:38.409 --> 00:54:38.770
It's all good.

986
00:54:39.110 --> 00:54:39.770
They're fucking up.

987
00:54:40.631 --> 00:54:41.451
Are you going to tell them?

988
00:54:42.111 --> 00:54:45.613
Or because you're not comfortable with conflict, you're going to wait for 90 days.

989
00:54:45.653 --> 00:54:49.936
And every time they're going to make that mistake, you're going to get so upset that by the time you communicate to them, it's too late.

990
00:54:49.956 --> 00:54:50.316
Yeah.

991
00:54:50.776 --> 00:54:55.463
The moment they made a mistake, if you respect them, give them the feedback because that's the best thing for them.

992
00:54:55.843 --> 00:54:58.908
By the way, when you give them the feedback, give them room to give you feedback.

993
00:54:59.448 --> 00:55:03.955
If you're going to manage these employees and you want to attract the best talent in the world,

994
00:55:05.279 --> 00:55:09.020
Remember that power comes from influence, not control.

995
00:55:09.721 --> 00:55:15.743
If you think they need to do what you said because you're their boss, you've already lost.

996
00:55:16.243 --> 00:55:18.044
And it's a matter of time until it doesn't work out.

997
00:55:18.704 --> 00:55:23.586
If they're okay with it, just because you're the boss, you have to tell them what they do and they accept that power.

998
00:55:24.146 --> 00:55:27.367
They're not the right employee for you and you're not the right boss for them.

999
00:55:27.487 --> 00:55:29.308
There's no chance you're getting the best out of them.

1000
00:55:29.548 --> 00:55:38.952
One of the parts in your journey that I have reflected on a lot, because it's a fascinating story, is the day that you meet Massa at SoftBank.

1001
00:55:39.712 --> 00:55:44.974
And I'm keen to understand the context of where the business was before you met Massa at SoftBank.

1002
00:55:45.434 --> 00:55:50.096
That particular story has always inspired me for a multitude of different reasons.

1003
00:55:50.256 --> 00:55:51.517
But where was the business at?

1004
00:55:51.537 --> 00:55:52.177
Was it, what, 2017?

1005
00:55:54.318 --> 00:55:58.701
I want to tell you about the day I met Masa and I'm going to connect it to, I think, the biggest mistake I ever made in WeWork.

1006
00:55:59.242 --> 00:56:00.023
I'll bring it together.

1007
00:56:00.503 --> 00:56:02.484
Masa is one of the best investors in the world.

1008
00:56:02.605 --> 00:56:04.466
He's also one of the biggest investors in the world.

1009
00:56:05.847 --> 00:56:12.032
In my story, Masa is the hero, even though a lot of people who didn't know the story correctly might have misunderstood.

1010
00:56:12.492 --> 00:56:18.117
So in my story, Masa took a bet on me and he did amazing and he deserved to have become very successful from it.

1011
00:56:18.577 --> 00:56:19.597
And he leads SoftBank.

1012
00:56:19.858 --> 00:56:20.978
Masa is the leader of SoftBank.

1013
00:56:20.998 --> 00:56:24.799
So if you want a little history of Masa, Masa is the leader of SoftBank.

1014
00:56:24.959 --> 00:56:29.841
He becomes very well known to the world where he buys a tech conference actually in Vegas.

1015
00:56:30.442 --> 00:56:32.903
And he buys this tech conference for I think about 880 million.

1016
00:56:34.483 --> 00:56:41.449
And at the same time, he has his own tech businesses and he owns a phone company and he starts growing and growing.

1017
00:56:41.970 --> 00:56:45.092
He's famous to have gone to Steve Jobs and said, I'm going to take the iPhone.

1018
00:56:45.112 --> 00:56:49.116
When the iPhone just came out, he knew it was going to be a hit and I'm going to give it to every subscriber in Japan.

1019
00:56:49.516 --> 00:56:52.240
He invents the leasing model for it and gives an iPhone.

1020
00:56:52.260 --> 00:56:55.384
Then everybody signs to his service because everybody wanted the iPhone.

1021
00:56:55.705 --> 00:56:56.446
It's a lot of things.

1022
00:56:56.806 --> 00:57:01.393
And then he gives Jack Ma $20 million that over time I think becomes $200 million.

1023
00:57:01.593 --> 00:57:02.134
For Alibaba.

1024
00:57:02.154 --> 00:57:05.098
For Alibaba, which at its peak is worth about $80 billion.

1025
00:57:06.179 --> 00:57:08.820
So at the time when I meet Masa, this is 2016.

1026
00:57:08.881 --> 00:57:10.801
Let's start with the night before.

1027
00:57:11.462 --> 00:57:14.563
The night before I meet Masa in New York City, I have a board meeting the day before.

1028
00:57:15.304 --> 00:57:16.244
This is the old board.

1029
00:57:17.064 --> 00:57:18.385
And we're all sitting together.

1030
00:57:18.685 --> 00:57:20.046
I just raised at 16.

1031
00:57:20.146 --> 00:57:22.907
I raised maybe six months before at 16 billion valuation.

1032
00:57:23.667 --> 00:57:24.388
How big does we work?

1033
00:57:25.468 --> 00:57:29.590
It's about to do that year about 950 million in revenue.

1034
00:57:30.411 --> 00:57:33.172
And the reason I know is because we were doubled in revenue every single year.

1035
00:57:34.333 --> 00:57:38.477
So WeWork, the business model was working very well and the four walls were working very well.

1036
00:57:38.917 --> 00:57:41.499
What's the distinction, sorry, between the four walls and everything else?

1037
00:57:41.520 --> 00:57:42.520
You have a retail business.

1038
00:57:42.540 --> 00:57:44.302
You could have your stores could be doing really well.

1039
00:57:44.482 --> 00:57:46.064
Your state not making money.

1040
00:57:46.444 --> 00:57:47.205
And your what's not making money?

1041
00:57:47.225 --> 00:57:47.445
State.

1042
00:57:47.605 --> 00:57:49.126
So let's say you're in New York City.

1043
00:57:49.647 --> 00:57:50.868
So let's talk high growth for a second.

1044
00:57:51.248 --> 00:57:55.252
When you're growing as fast as we're growing, you're always putting new buildings on the map.

1045
00:57:55.872 --> 00:57:57.114
A new building has a ramp up.

1046
00:57:58.083 --> 00:58:02.486
Usually ramp up of a retail store or food or a restaurant could take two years, three years.

1047
00:58:02.526 --> 00:58:06.908
And we like to talk about ROI, return on investment, and how long does it take?

1048
00:58:07.368 --> 00:58:11.891
A great time to return your investment would be 24 months, 36 months, and then can grow.

1049
00:58:12.371 --> 00:58:16.733
We work at the speak was returning its money somewhere between six months to nine months.

1050
00:58:17.434 --> 00:58:19.815
And then afterwards, it's going up to 12 months and 18 months.

1051
00:58:21.049 --> 00:58:24.032
So if you're gonna grow, we grew New York City to 130 buildings.

1052
00:58:24.633 --> 00:58:25.954
So you can have 30 buildings.

1053
00:58:26.375 --> 00:58:33.843
If the following year you're adding 30 more buildings, those new 30 have to, per definition, lose money for at least the first six months, if not nine months.

1054
00:58:34.343 --> 00:58:38.487
So you could be very profitable in these buildings, but not profitable in these, because they need time.

1055
00:58:39.068 --> 00:58:43.191
Which means New York City, the city, doesn't look as a city profitable.

1056
00:58:43.631 --> 00:58:46.773
Or the country, if you're looking at your P&L, doesn't look as a country profitable.

1057
00:58:46.793 --> 00:58:51.096
Which is why in a high-growth business, you've got to get very specific and in the details.

1058
00:58:51.897 --> 00:58:55.760
And you've got to really understand what's working, what's not.

1059
00:58:55.800 --> 00:58:59.242
Even in a building, you can have one floor that's profitable because you opened it first.

1060
00:58:59.742 --> 00:59:02.925
And the new floor that you opened after, not profitable yet.

1061
00:59:03.700 --> 00:59:06.881
WeWork's technology was never able to count this way.

1062
00:59:07.662 --> 00:59:14.265
Flow's technology, if I threw it on WeWork today, I could tell you which square foot is, I forget which building is profitable or which floor is profitable.

1063
00:59:14.405 --> 00:59:18.386
I could tell you which corner is, it knows everything because it's a connected system.

1064
00:59:18.426 --> 00:59:19.327
It's not disconnected.

1065
00:59:21.148 --> 00:59:22.068
Back to what we're saying.

1066
00:59:23.764 --> 00:59:27.529
I'm sitting with the board and we decide that we want to turn the business.

1067
00:59:27.609 --> 00:59:32.155
We're going to go out and raise money, turn the business profitable and take it public.

1068
00:59:32.716 --> 00:59:33.897
How are you going to turn it profitable?

1069
00:59:34.038 --> 00:59:38.564
All you have to do in a high growth business that's working to turn it profitable is stop growing.

1070
00:59:39.559 --> 00:59:43.144
You just stop adding new buildings and you give time to all the buildings to catch up.

1071
00:59:43.725 --> 00:59:46.428
Remember, I explained that in WeWork, your problem was not demand.

1072
00:59:46.608 --> 00:59:47.229
It was supply.

1073
00:59:47.930 --> 00:59:52.937
So the moment you don't add more supply, the demand is greater than the supply.

1074
00:59:53.337 --> 00:59:54.138
Everything fills up.

1075
00:59:54.759 --> 00:59:58.842
The moment everything fills up and you didn't add anything new, you go cashflow positive.

1076
00:59:59.082 --> 00:59:59.923
As simple as that.

1077
01:00:00.724 --> 01:00:13.513
So we sit in that board and we decide that I'm going to go and raise, and the number was three to 400 million, stop the growth, meaning stop signing leases, maybe even move to management deals, something we'll talk about in floor in a second.

1078
01:00:14.474 --> 01:00:17.536
And then take it public.

1079
01:00:18.016 --> 01:00:18.937
This is 2016.

1080
01:00:19.477 --> 01:00:20.078
That was the

1081
01:00:21.497 --> 01:00:22.117
the day before.

1082
01:00:23.137 --> 01:00:33.000
The same time, at some point, Massa's right-hand guy, his name is Ron Fisher, sends an email, a text to one of our guys, and says, hey, Massa wants to come see Adam.

1083
01:00:33.480 --> 01:00:36.421
This is at the same time that Massa is raising the Vision Fund.

1084
01:00:36.701 --> 01:00:42.783
For those who don't know, the Vision Fund was his $100 billion venture fund, largest venture fund ever raised.

1085
01:00:43.483 --> 01:00:44.463
Masa wants to see Adam.

1086
01:00:44.964 --> 01:00:45.424
Say, great.

1087
01:00:45.524 --> 01:00:48.025
And we schedule 90 minutes in the morning, the next morning.

1088
01:00:48.565 --> 01:00:51.646
And we do, we do the, we get ready in the morning.

1089
01:00:51.686 --> 01:00:52.346
Masa is coming.

1090
01:00:52.406 --> 01:00:53.166
Everyone's excited.

1091
01:00:53.186 --> 01:00:54.487
And I'm like, this is amazing.

1092
01:00:54.607 --> 01:00:57.328
Maybe that investment we just talked about yesterday will come today.

1093
01:00:58.108 --> 01:01:01.209
His team says, just to let you know, there will be no discussions of investing.

1094
01:01:01.509 --> 01:01:02.389
So, okay, no problem.

1095
01:01:03.750 --> 01:01:06.530
As it gets closer to the morning, we keep getting text messages.

1096
01:01:06.631 --> 01:01:07.791
He's not going to have 90 minutes.

1097
01:01:07.811 --> 01:01:09.011
He's going to have 75 minutes.

1098
01:01:09.031 --> 01:01:10.112
He's going to have 60 minutes.

1099
01:01:10.132 --> 01:01:11.072
He's going to have half an hour.

1100
01:01:12.706 --> 01:01:14.508
And I'm like, okay, whatever it is, sounds great.

1101
01:01:15.048 --> 01:01:20.914
The same time President Trump wins for the first time, this is the end of December, and Masa had a meeting with him.

1102
01:01:20.974 --> 01:01:22.655
They wanted to talk about the future of America.

1103
01:01:23.236 --> 01:01:29.722
Said, I'm so sorry, I have a meeting with Trump, President Trump, and I only have 12 minutes.

1104
01:01:31.043 --> 01:01:37.350
Again, we all find ourselves in situations like this when, oh my God, I had all this plan and I was going to do this tour and I was going to show these numbers.

1105
01:01:37.791 --> 01:01:39.833
I'm going to do all these things and suddenly it all changes.

1106
01:01:40.754 --> 01:01:41.575
I take a deep breath.

1107
01:01:43.417 --> 01:01:45.119
Let's make it the best 12 minutes we can.

1108
01:01:45.540 --> 01:01:46.521
But I can't help myself.

1109
01:01:46.541 --> 01:01:47.782
I go, tell me something, Masa.

1110
01:01:48.838 --> 01:01:54.184
If you're meeting President, future President Trump, do you have Jared Kushner introducing you to him first?

1111
01:01:54.544 --> 01:01:56.426
He goes, Adam, it's so funny you're saying that.

1112
01:01:56.646 --> 01:01:59.029
Everybody told me that it's better if Jared introduces me.

1113
01:01:59.449 --> 01:02:00.150
I don't know him.

1114
01:02:00.170 --> 01:02:01.452
We've been trying to get in touch.

1115
01:02:02.713 --> 01:02:02.873
No.

1116
01:02:03.674 --> 01:02:04.655
I said, give me a second.

1117
01:02:05.517 --> 01:02:08.619
I'm very lucky to count Jared as one of my close friends.

1118
01:02:09.199 --> 01:02:10.760
Jared's married to Ivanka Trump.

1119
01:02:10.900 --> 01:02:15.242
Jared's married to Ivanka Trump, and he's the advisor, I think, to the president.

1120
01:02:15.302 --> 01:02:18.644
But right now, he's helping to peace both in the Middle East and in Europe.

1121
01:02:19.284 --> 01:02:21.785
So I text Jared, and I was like, Masa is here, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta.

1122
01:02:21.845 --> 01:02:23.206
We spend five minutes on that.

1123
01:02:23.226 --> 01:02:24.207
Jared says, no problem.

1124
01:02:24.247 --> 01:02:24.687
Send him.

1125
01:02:24.787 --> 01:02:26.448
I will introduce him to the future president.

1126
01:02:27.008 --> 01:02:28.189
Now we have seven minutes left.

1127
01:02:29.589 --> 01:02:31.731
I say, Masa, we only have seven minutes.

1128
01:02:31.751 --> 01:02:33.111
We're only going to stay downstairs.

1129
01:02:33.191 --> 01:02:34.432
But this is WeWork.

1130
01:02:35.501 --> 01:02:37.222
He looks at me, goes like this.

1131
01:02:38.603 --> 01:02:39.083
Smells there.

1132
01:02:39.103 --> 01:02:40.383
He goes, you know what this smells like?

1133
01:02:40.523 --> 01:02:42.324
And I'm like, oh no, what is he going to say?

1134
01:02:42.344 --> 01:02:43.685
They were serving waffles.

1135
01:02:43.725 --> 01:02:45.126
Is he going to say it smells like waffles?

1136
01:02:45.606 --> 01:02:46.546
Like, what is he going to say?

1137
01:02:46.987 --> 01:02:49.428
He goes, smells like dreams.

1138
01:02:50.068 --> 01:02:50.929
This is a factory.

1139
01:02:50.969 --> 01:02:52.569
Work is not an office space.

1140
01:02:52.689 --> 01:02:53.950
It's a factory of dreams.

1141
01:02:55.511 --> 01:02:57.452
And I'm like, he's speaking your language.

1142
01:02:57.492 --> 01:02:58.452
Oh no, not my language.

1143
01:02:58.732 --> 01:02:59.913
One step above my language.

1144
01:03:00.473 --> 01:03:03.675
He took the dreamer and went one step above the dreamer.

1145
01:03:04.627 --> 01:03:05.727
He outdid the...

1146
01:03:06.407 --> 01:03:07.248
He Adam'd Adam.

1147
01:03:09.148 --> 01:03:09.788
He killed it.

1148
01:03:10.488 --> 01:03:13.929
And I'm like, oh yeah, I have this smell of dreams.

1149
01:03:13.969 --> 01:03:15.970
No one's ever defined a business better than that.

1150
01:03:16.810 --> 01:03:18.110
And he goes, look Adam, we don't have time.

1151
01:03:18.170 --> 01:03:20.991
I'm driving up there to 50th Street, wherever it was.

1152
01:03:21.511 --> 01:03:22.651
Do you want to come with me to the car?

1153
01:03:22.691 --> 01:03:23.471
We'll talk in the car.

1154
01:03:23.591 --> 01:03:25.512
Did he not go around the building and... Couldn't have time.

1155
01:03:25.532 --> 01:03:26.092
Seven minutes.

1156
01:03:26.672 --> 01:03:28.153
We were only downstairs in the lobby.

1157
01:03:28.573 --> 01:03:29.473
The entrance, but...

1158
01:03:30.213 --> 01:03:36.475
If you had the opportunity in 2017, 2016 to walk into RHQ, the energy was electric.

1159
01:03:36.995 --> 01:03:43.698
You could not walk in there and not feel, I never felt a factory of dreams, but I felt community and people coming together.

1160
01:03:44.118 --> 01:03:46.139
It felt like people are doing their life's work.

1161
01:03:46.279 --> 01:03:47.979
It didn't feel like a work environment.

1162
01:03:48.459 --> 01:03:49.920
It felt like people are really connected.

1163
01:03:49.940 --> 01:03:55.102
And when you make a connected environment, then it really takes things to the next level and everybody wants to be there.

1164
01:03:56.032 --> 01:03:56.732
So that's what it was.

1165
01:03:56.792 --> 01:03:58.773
It's not what it is today, but that's what it was.

1166
01:03:59.313 --> 01:04:00.654
So he says, come with me to the car.

1167
01:04:00.674 --> 01:04:01.514
I said, no problem.

1168
01:04:01.994 --> 01:04:03.975
I get into the car and I remember the back of my hand.

1169
01:04:03.995 --> 01:04:05.035
They said, no investing.

1170
01:04:05.055 --> 01:04:06.715
His team said, don't talk about raising money.

1171
01:04:07.656 --> 01:04:09.496
He goes, so I start talking a bit while we work.

1172
01:04:09.516 --> 01:04:13.338
He's like, Adam, what's the number?

1173
01:04:13.978 --> 01:04:14.558
So what do you mean?

1174
01:04:14.598 --> 01:04:16.939
Because what's your valuation and how much money you're raising?

1175
01:04:17.039 --> 01:04:18.419
He goes, I'm here to do business.

1176
01:04:18.959 --> 01:04:20.420
Said, your team said like, ah.

1177
01:04:21.873 --> 01:04:22.893
I am the boss.

1178
01:04:23.593 --> 01:04:24.934
I've done this many times myself.

1179
01:04:25.594 --> 01:04:26.094
I'm the boss.

1180
01:04:26.134 --> 01:04:26.954
Let's talk about it.

1181
01:04:28.974 --> 01:04:32.255
I said, well, listen, we have our last valuation was 16 billion.

1182
01:04:32.315 --> 01:04:35.076
We have, we have, we just launched China.

1183
01:04:35.116 --> 01:04:36.376
That's a two billion dollar company.

1184
01:04:36.396 --> 01:04:38.096
We have Latin America and we're in Europe.

1185
01:04:38.416 --> 01:04:40.737
We have a global company and then we have a China entity.

1186
01:04:41.697 --> 01:04:42.277
Goes great.

1187
01:04:42.917 --> 01:04:43.737
How much are you raising?

1188
01:04:43.837 --> 01:04:45.578
I said, three to 400 million.

1189
01:04:46.178 --> 01:04:47.438
Three to 400 million.

1190
01:04:47.478 --> 01:04:47.698
That's.

1191
01:04:48.830 --> 01:04:50.010
That's not going to work.

1192
01:04:50.150 --> 01:04:51.651
Don't you want to build a global business?

1193
01:04:51.731 --> 01:04:52.491
I was like, of course.

1194
01:04:52.711 --> 01:04:53.931
I would love to build a global business.

1195
01:04:53.951 --> 01:04:55.572
He goes, don't you have a business in China?

1196
01:04:55.592 --> 01:04:56.252
I said, of course.

1197
01:04:56.272 --> 01:04:57.372
He said, what about Japan?

1198
01:04:57.392 --> 01:04:59.432
I said, I don't have a business in Japan yet.

1199
01:04:59.472 --> 01:05:01.373
He said, I think it's going to work very well in Japan.

1200
01:05:01.393 --> 01:05:02.973
I said, I'm sure it's going to work well in Japan.

1201
01:05:02.993 --> 01:05:03.794
It's working everywhere.

1202
01:05:04.234 --> 01:05:05.294
But I don't have the team.

1203
01:05:05.314 --> 01:05:07.034
He goes, what about Southeast Asia?

1204
01:05:07.094 --> 01:05:09.675
I said, sounds amazing, but I've never been there.

1205
01:05:10.275 --> 01:05:11.715
He goes, well, I think it's going to work there.

1206
01:05:11.755 --> 01:05:13.656
I said, again, I'm sure it's going to work there.

1207
01:05:14.236 --> 01:05:18.777
And before you know it, he says, I think we should do about $3 billion.

1208
01:05:21.276 --> 01:05:22.337
And I was a big number.

1209
01:05:22.637 --> 01:05:27.182
Remember, I was the night before the board, 300 to 400 million.

1210
01:05:27.922 --> 01:05:28.983
Stake lesson number one.

1211
01:05:29.524 --> 01:05:31.686
And again, I don't blame Masa for any of this.

1212
01:05:32.026 --> 01:05:33.748
Every decision I made was my decision.

1213
01:05:33.768 --> 01:05:34.529
He's an investor.

1214
01:05:34.569 --> 01:05:36.651
He saw a great business and he wanted to go big.

1215
01:05:36.771 --> 01:05:37.432
I respect that.

1216
01:05:37.472 --> 01:05:38.313
I've done it myself.

1217
01:05:38.373 --> 01:05:40.355
Not those numbers, but I've done it myself.

1218
01:05:42.755 --> 01:05:55.330
If you decide you have a mission or a vision and you're going to go raise out 300 million, and the next day someone offers you 3 billion, before you say yes, take a deep breath and ask yourself, again, that question of why?

1219
01:05:55.731 --> 01:05:56.752
And what is my intention?

1220
01:05:57.072 --> 01:05:58.434
And what is that going to do to the business?

1221
01:05:58.534 --> 01:06:00.016
And am I ready to take that much?

1222
01:06:00.997 --> 01:06:05.060
So it says 3 billion, we then keep talking about all the different needs and the different stuff.

1223
01:06:05.300 --> 01:06:10.745
It ends up after this is now we met for 12 minutes and the ride is 16 minutes.

1224
01:06:10.765 --> 01:06:16.589
So yeah, total 28 to 36 minutes, the whole thing.

1225
01:06:16.889 --> 01:06:17.189
And...

1226
01:06:24.242 --> 01:06:27.224
We agree on the, he says 4 billion, 4.2 to be exact.

1227
01:06:27.604 --> 01:06:28.505
4.2 billion what?

1228
01:06:29.145 --> 01:06:29.506
Dollars.

1229
01:06:29.666 --> 01:06:30.546
That he wants to invest.

1230
01:06:31.027 --> 01:06:36.971
In, we work TopCo, we work China, we work Japan, and we work Southeast Asia.

1231
01:06:37.251 --> 01:06:38.652
Remember, we were a cash machine.

1232
01:06:38.692 --> 01:06:45.797
You put cash into us, and we, just to, I'll go back to it in a second, but we were doing 980 million that year.

1233
01:06:46.418 --> 01:06:47.118
We hit our numbers.

1234
01:06:47.138 --> 01:06:49.700
We forecasted we're going to do 1.8 billion next year.

1235
01:06:49.740 --> 01:06:50.400
We did our 1.8 billion.

1236
01:06:50.420 --> 01:06:50.500
Wow.

1237
01:06:52.021 --> 01:06:55.324
It was working so well, the model, all you needed was cash to build it.

1238
01:06:55.404 --> 01:07:00.728
You needed to build these spaces and you needed to do, if you're going to grow that big, he had big aspirations and I had big aspirations.

1239
01:07:00.748 --> 01:07:01.569
Did you tell him that?

1240
01:07:01.749 --> 01:07:03.190
Did you tell him that it was a cash machine?

1241
01:07:03.290 --> 01:07:04.231
No, you didn't need to.

1242
01:07:04.351 --> 01:07:06.453
Did you tell him that if you put cash in, you get cash out?

1243
01:07:06.653 --> 01:07:07.213
I didn't need to.

1244
01:07:07.253 --> 01:07:09.415
Masa understands business better than most people in the world.

1245
01:07:09.836 --> 01:07:16.040
But again, it was obvious because if you looked at the history of WeWork, every single time you put money into it, it grew.

1246
01:07:16.921 --> 01:07:19.525
The mistake was we were signing leases.

1247
01:07:19.786 --> 01:07:22.430
We were taking long-term commitments against short-term commitments.

1248
01:07:23.512 --> 01:07:27.619
We should have done something else, and we'll talk about it in a second, what we should have done, and it's what we're doing in flow.

1249
01:07:29.038 --> 01:07:32.601
But this question was, there's people, because a lot of people didn't understand the money raised.

1250
01:07:32.801 --> 01:07:36.204
The money raised was to build tremendous businesses all over the planet.

1251
01:07:36.344 --> 01:07:39.607
And those businesses, the moment you stopped growing them, turned profitable.

1252
01:07:40.127 --> 01:07:41.208
Today, WeWork's profitable.

1253
01:07:41.728 --> 01:07:43.790
Those businesses, all you had to do was stop growing.

1254
01:07:43.970 --> 01:07:45.191
We were at a high growth stage.

1255
01:07:45.251 --> 01:07:46.732
That's what high growth entrepreneurs do.

1256
01:07:47.153 --> 01:07:48.654
That's what the market wanted at the time.

1257
01:07:48.674 --> 01:07:50.375
And that's what everybody knew we were doing.

1258
01:07:50.395 --> 01:07:51.816
It was not a secret what we were doing.

1259
01:07:52.297 --> 01:07:53.738
And it was growing exponentially.

1260
01:07:53.758 --> 01:07:53.858
Yeah.

1261
01:07:55.868 --> 01:07:58.450
So we ended up agreeing on 4.2 billion.

1262
01:07:58.891 --> 01:07:59.992
He takes an iPad.

1263
01:08:00.432 --> 01:08:01.493
He writes it all down.

1264
01:08:01.713 --> 01:08:03.095
This is all in that same car ride.

1265
01:08:03.595 --> 01:08:04.396
He writes it all down.

1266
01:08:04.516 --> 01:08:07.258
He signs his name and he hands me the pen to sign mine.

1267
01:08:09.000 --> 01:08:09.520
I look at it.

1268
01:08:10.902 --> 01:08:11.262
I sign.

1269
01:08:12.023 --> 01:08:14.705
He walks out of the car, says, thank you very much and goes to his meeting.

1270
01:08:15.546 --> 01:08:17.848
This is now about 54th Street.

1271
01:08:18.949 --> 01:08:20.490
Our HQ is on 18th Street.

1272
01:08:21.391 --> 01:08:22.172
I'm just standing there.

1273
01:08:25.508 --> 01:08:26.809
I can't believe what just happened.

1274
01:08:27.389 --> 01:08:28.450
It was not what I planned.

1275
01:08:32.153 --> 01:08:32.973
And I start walking.

1276
01:08:33.013 --> 01:08:34.094
I was like, I'm going to walk downtown.

1277
01:08:34.114 --> 01:08:34.895
I'm going to take a second.

1278
01:08:37.327 --> 01:08:44.270
And every step I take, because until this point, this is 2016, we were five years of mission driven.

1279
01:08:44.290 --> 01:08:46.051
You asked me about the fundamentals.

1280
01:08:46.071 --> 01:08:48.973
We had all the right fundamentals in WeWork because we had the right culture.

1281
01:08:49.453 --> 01:08:52.314
And when you have the right culture, you can deal with any challenge.

1282
01:08:52.854 --> 01:08:53.935
We were mission driven.

1283
01:08:53.955 --> 01:08:55.416
We could break through any wall.

1284
01:08:55.516 --> 01:08:56.476
We were teamwork.

1285
01:08:56.536 --> 01:08:57.637
We were related.

1286
01:08:57.677 --> 01:08:58.517
We were together.

1287
01:08:58.557 --> 01:08:59.318
We were friends.

1288
01:08:59.378 --> 01:09:00.238
We were one team.

1289
01:09:01.716 --> 01:09:04.798
And I'm starting to walk down from 54th Street to 18th Street.

1290
01:09:04.878 --> 01:09:09.360
And every step I take, suddenly, the ego starts coming up.

1291
01:09:10.221 --> 01:09:12.402
Oh, 20 billion valuation.

1292
01:09:13.312 --> 01:09:22.297
Billion valuation in Japan on top of that, billion and a half valuation in Southeast Asia on top of that, $5 billion valuation in China on top of that.

1293
01:09:22.877 --> 01:09:26.078
So a billion of that 4.2 was going to everybody, including to myself.

1294
01:09:26.579 --> 01:09:30.941
And I owned about proportionately about 25% of the company at the time.

1295
01:09:31.261 --> 01:09:32.222
So big numbers, numbers.

1296
01:09:32.242 --> 01:09:33.122
I've never seen numbers.

1297
01:09:33.522 --> 01:09:34.583
Miguel was getting a lot.

1298
01:09:34.643 --> 01:09:38.825
All our employees, the investors, many times more than they ever invested from that billion.

1299
01:09:40.970 --> 01:09:44.171
And every step that I'm taking, the ego comes up.

1300
01:09:44.872 --> 01:09:46.192
Oh, I feel so strong.

1301
01:09:46.812 --> 01:09:47.833
I feel so big.

1302
01:09:47.873 --> 01:09:50.814
You start doing your own math, 20 billion, 25%.

1303
01:09:51.574 --> 01:09:54.515
What's, that's 5 billion.

1304
01:09:54.836 --> 01:09:56.076
Then there's all the other ones.

1305
01:09:56.156 --> 01:09:57.216
What's my net worth?

1306
01:09:57.277 --> 01:09:58.317
And before you know it,

1307
01:10:00.205 --> 01:10:08.011
The guy that sat in the car was a mission-driven entrepreneur who really believed in creating a world where people make a life and not just a living.

1308
01:10:08.852 --> 01:10:12.015
Every step that I take, it goes higher and higher.

1309
01:10:12.735 --> 01:10:21.783
And by the time I walk into HQ, 18th Street, I forgot what we were all about.

1310
01:10:23.228 --> 01:10:27.414
Here's why ego is on the one hand very good and on the other very dangerous.

1311
01:10:27.714 --> 01:10:29.156
Ego and desire are the same word.

1312
01:10:29.376 --> 01:10:30.998
Big ego just means big desire.

1313
01:10:31.579 --> 01:10:34.242
Having huge desire is important to build huge things.

1314
01:10:34.663 --> 01:10:36.626
But you have to manage it and control it.

1315
01:10:37.106 --> 01:10:39.309
When I walked in, I got confused.

1316
01:10:39.790 --> 01:10:41.312
It suddenly became about the money.

1317
01:10:41.652 --> 01:10:47.934
All the stuff that Rebecca told me, all the stuff when we met, all the years of spiritual practice, everything, to the garbage.

1318
01:10:48.495 --> 01:10:50.475
And what happens when the ego gets the best of you?

1319
01:10:51.016 --> 01:10:51.816
You become blinded.

1320
01:10:52.156 --> 01:10:52.836
What does that mean?

1321
01:10:53.377 --> 01:10:56.378
You make mistakes and bad decisions.

1322
01:10:57.358 --> 01:11:01.202
And in a high growth business, you need to make 100 decisions a day.

1323
01:11:01.802 --> 01:11:04.545
And as we said before, at least 98 of them need to be correct.

1324
01:11:05.585 --> 01:11:10.230
Suddenly you're blinded and suddenly only 95 of them are correct or 90.

1325
01:11:10.890 --> 01:11:15.414
Those mistakes, because you're growing so fast, the mistakes grow very fast also.

1326
01:11:16.055 --> 01:11:18.137
The other thing, we were a company led from the top.

1327
01:11:18.217 --> 01:11:19.778
All great companies are led from the top.

1328
01:11:20.299 --> 01:11:22.801
The one that I lost it, everybody lost it.

1329
01:11:24.382 --> 01:11:26.064
And it just spread.

1330
01:11:26.805 --> 01:11:29.108
And the moment starts, that's the beginning of the end.

1331
01:11:29.449 --> 01:11:32.272
And look, it took three years after that for everything to unfold.

1332
01:11:32.753 --> 01:11:36.137
But it was that moment that was the moment that went.

1333
01:11:38.480 --> 01:11:45.563
Is there anything that could have been said or done to have made you when Masa offered you that $4 billion in that cab?

1334
01:11:45.763 --> 01:11:46.584
Are you ready for this?

1335
01:11:47.044 --> 01:11:47.945
Sure.

1336
01:11:48.105 --> 01:11:48.905
I used to be closer.

1337
01:11:48.925 --> 01:11:52.327
We don't speak as much anymore today.

1338
01:11:52.347 --> 01:11:56.529
I used to be much closer to Mark Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.

1339
01:11:57.589 --> 01:12:05.333
He heard about Masa's offer and he called me and said, Adam, I only know you for a little bit and I know you're not going to listen to my advice.

1340
01:12:06.177 --> 01:12:09.179
but I want you to fly to Japan and say no to Masa.

1341
01:12:10.721 --> 01:12:13.523
I want you to take your company public.

1342
01:12:13.543 --> 01:12:14.544
What was your last valuation?

1343
01:12:14.584 --> 01:12:15.144
I said 16.

1344
01:12:15.164 --> 01:12:16.025
He goes, great.

1345
01:12:16.485 --> 01:12:18.787
I want you to take your company public for 5 billion.

1346
01:12:19.548 --> 01:12:21.749
I want you to sell 20% of it a billion.

1347
01:12:21.769 --> 01:12:24.051
And I want you to learn how to be public CEO.

1348
01:12:24.612 --> 01:12:25.733
I promise you two things.

1349
01:12:25.893 --> 01:12:29.756
One, because your last valuation was 16 at 5, everybody's going to think this is a great deal.

1350
01:12:29.776 --> 01:12:31.177
People are going to rush to invest.

1351
01:12:32.667 --> 01:12:33.368
including myself.

1352
01:12:33.728 --> 01:12:34.889
Everyone's going to rush to invest.

1353
01:12:35.409 --> 01:12:38.692
You'll learn because it's very different to be public CEO and a private CEO.

1354
01:12:38.712 --> 01:12:39.792
You're going to learn about profitability.

1355
01:12:39.812 --> 01:12:42.254
You're going to learn all these things because I think you're a very fast student.

1356
01:12:42.755 --> 01:12:45.797
And I guarantee you, before you know it, your valuation will be much larger.

1357
01:12:47.318 --> 01:12:49.159
And he said, but I know you're not going to listen to me.

1358
01:12:50.821 --> 01:12:51.301
And I didn't.

1359
01:12:51.741 --> 01:12:53.743
Was there a world that I could have said no

1360
01:12:55.349 --> 01:12:58.971
Not the kind of person that I was then and not with the tools I have.

1361
01:12:59.632 --> 01:13:00.392
Why didn't you listen to him?

1362
01:13:01.353 --> 01:13:02.553
We didn't know each other for long enough.

1363
01:13:03.194 --> 01:13:06.496
I think it takes a lot of trust to listen to when someone gives you a counter advice.

1364
01:13:06.556 --> 01:13:11.259
And by the way, there was another person also who said no, but we'll put that aside for a second.

1365
01:13:11.619 --> 01:13:13.260
But here's what I think is more important about it.

1366
01:13:13.560 --> 01:13:14.561
Let's say I said no.

1367
01:13:15.432 --> 01:13:16.832
And let's say WeWork would still be around.

1368
01:13:16.852 --> 01:13:18.893
WeWork would be a $100 billion company today.

1369
01:13:18.993 --> 01:13:20.093
Corona would have happened.

1370
01:13:20.514 --> 01:13:23.054
We would have renegotiated all of our leases.

1371
01:13:23.074 --> 01:13:24.795
That of leases would become management deals.

1372
01:13:25.375 --> 01:13:28.176
And we would have led the return to office.

1373
01:13:28.216 --> 01:13:30.376
We would have led that concept because obviously people work.

1374
01:13:30.397 --> 01:13:33.057
I know we spoke about it much better face-to-face than remote work.

1375
01:13:33.577 --> 01:13:36.838
And we would have been the leaders of the movement of return to office.

1376
01:13:36.898 --> 01:13:38.099
And WeWork was a great company.

1377
01:13:38.439 --> 01:13:40.440
And even it would have launched WeLive.

1378
01:13:40.780 --> 01:13:41.860
So a version of Floa.

1379
01:13:43.070 --> 01:13:46.431
But I, Adam, wouldn't have learned all those lessons.

1380
01:13:47.472 --> 01:13:49.753
I wouldn't be, I am so much happier today.

1381
01:13:50.213 --> 01:13:56.375
Even as we're speaking, I'm not the same as you're like, everything you're talking to about makes me feel full.

1382
01:13:56.495 --> 01:13:57.595
Even the challenging parts.

1383
01:13:57.796 --> 01:14:01.857
I am so happy that they happened because they made me exactly who I'm meant to be.

1384
01:14:02.697 --> 01:14:04.218
Falling is not bad.

1385
01:14:06.735 --> 01:14:09.499
That's the thing that you and I are actually talking about.

1386
01:14:09.960 --> 01:14:13.064
Falling is probably the most important part of life.

1387
01:14:13.825 --> 01:14:18.852
And most of us learn a lot more from falling than we do from succeeding.

1388
01:14:19.713 --> 01:14:22.056
The thing that's bad is not when you fall.

1389
01:14:22.577 --> 01:14:23.278
It's how you get up.

1390
01:14:24.239 --> 01:14:27.341
If you just fell and you're, oh no, everybody saw me fall.

1391
01:14:27.601 --> 01:14:31.763
I'm not going to hide under the covers for four years until everybody forgets whatever it is that happened.

1392
01:14:32.323 --> 01:14:33.364
That's what's horrible.

1393
01:14:33.484 --> 01:14:34.764
That leads to the tragedy.

1394
01:14:34.824 --> 01:14:35.865
That leads to the trauma.

1395
01:14:36.285 --> 01:14:39.147
If you fell, you look around, you're like, wow, everybody saw.

1396
01:14:40.187 --> 01:14:43.729
You clean up, you get up and you say, let's do it again.

1397
01:14:44.549 --> 01:14:50.412
If you have that in you, nothing will stop you and it might take 10 times and 20 times and 50 times.

1398
01:14:50.832 --> 01:14:53.734
But if you fall enough times, then you might avoid falling.

1399
01:14:54.808 --> 01:14:56.971
there should be a button just down below here.

1400
01:14:57.011 --> 01:14:59.374
And if it says subscribe, you're already subscribed.

1401
01:14:59.455 --> 01:15:02.299
If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet.

1402
01:15:02.619 --> 01:15:05.002
And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favour and hit that button.

1403
01:15:05.042 --> 01:15:06.324
It helps the show more than you know.

1404
01:15:06.805 --> 01:15:10.771
And according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button.

1405
01:15:10.931 --> 01:15:11.451
Thank you so much.

1406
01:15:12.854 --> 01:15:15.516
I'm thinking also about a founder that's 21 years old.

1407
01:15:15.536 --> 01:15:17.937
They've got a startup or an idea that they want to start.

1408
01:15:18.718 --> 01:15:23.801
Like when I was 21 years old, my mum tells me, well, 18, if you do this, I won't speak to you again.

1409
01:15:24.121 --> 01:15:26.542
She was warning me against business because she had struggled in business herself.

1410
01:15:26.562 --> 01:15:28.063
So that's a proxy of love, I guess.

1411
01:15:28.583 --> 01:15:31.445
And then you've got other people here telling you that it's going to be amazing and you're going to make millions.

1412
01:15:31.805 --> 01:15:35.968
When you're in that situation and you've got noise, how do you find the signal?

1413
01:15:36.448 --> 01:15:36.908
Two ways.

1414
01:15:37.489 --> 01:15:37.689
One, two.

1415
01:15:39.613 --> 01:15:41.133
they have to go back to the mission.

1416
01:15:41.874 --> 01:15:52.676
So if one had a mission, and then someone offers them something, and it's off mission, and you're like, oh, I'm going to do it anyway because it's good money, but it's off mission, that already is a warning sign.

1417
01:15:53.056 --> 01:15:58.397
But I think the other one, which is something that I have more today than I used to back then, one needs a practice.

1418
01:15:59.058 --> 01:16:02.138
Part of the way to try on the noise is with a practice.

1419
01:16:03.079 --> 01:16:07.320
I've been enjoying meditating lately in the past year, and I've been getting better and better at it.

1420
01:16:07.400 --> 01:16:09.100
And meditating is something that takes time.

1421
01:16:10.220 --> 01:16:12.321
meditating helps drown the noise.

1422
01:16:12.781 --> 01:16:18.022
And then the thoughts that I do get while I meditate tend to be very healthy thoughts that are headed in a good direction.

1423
01:16:19.223 --> 01:16:19.803
There's many things.

1424
01:16:19.843 --> 01:16:21.043
I do the hyperbaric chamber.

1425
01:16:21.423 --> 01:16:29.986
Steve Jobs talked about meditation and his sort of spiritual practices, and it's something that I actually, in the last year, I started really looking into.

1426
01:16:30.906 --> 01:16:33.847
When I say looking into, I mean, I started looking into what he did and why he did it.

1427
01:16:34.207 --> 01:16:37.948
Because he's someone that I look at and go, it was like he was able to see around the corner.

1428
01:16:38.928 --> 01:16:47.373
And for a guy running a big company, how was he able to make these really unpopular calls today that proved out to be true tomorrow?

1429
01:16:48.153 --> 01:16:53.216
And, you know, one of the conclusions I arrived at is that he spent just as much time in the trenches as he did in the clouds.

1430
01:16:53.996 --> 01:16:54.176
I.e.

1431
01:16:54.256 --> 01:16:57.158
he stood away from the picture enough so he could see the full picture.

1432
01:16:57.998 --> 01:17:12.822
And that's something that I thought, oh, gosh, that kind of correlates to what you were saying earlier about your redefinition of hard work, not just being in the office and being there, you know, 24-7, but actually when you're on the surfboard, you're doing hard work because you're giving yourself time to see the full picture.

1433
01:17:13.142 --> 01:17:19.983
And when you're honest with yourself about your weaknesses, like I spoke about my speech, it can elevate things, but it could also break things.

1434
01:17:20.003 --> 01:17:21.224
We've seen that happen before.

1435
01:17:21.804 --> 01:17:25.645
So hard work is also personal growth is very hard work.

1436
01:17:26.345 --> 01:17:31.286
And most people don't have the courage to even look in honestly, let alone change.

1437
01:17:32.867 --> 01:17:43.930
What is the exact mechanism that you think would result in me being more successful at 40, in business let's say, if I did exactly what you said and focused on personal growth?

1438
01:17:43.950 --> 01:17:49.111
I'm going to have to start by redefining, the moment you said in business, I'm going to have to push back on it.

1439
01:17:49.451 --> 01:17:51.812
We are not going to measure your success just in business.

1440
01:17:52.532 --> 01:18:00.075
We're going to measure your success in life, in relationship, in friendships, in effect on the world, and in business.

1441
01:18:00.195 --> 01:18:01.335
Do you know why I'm asking this question?

1442
01:18:01.435 --> 01:18:10.939
Because there will be some people that are listening right now, and they have heard, you know, founders come on, and people say, you need to just take a moment, meditate, do these things, focus on personal growth.

1443
01:18:11.499 --> 01:18:18.862
And for whatever reason, because of their trauma, because of how they are raised, the lens that they will receive that message through, or the thing that will be the carrot,

1444
01:18:19.542 --> 01:18:23.124
will be a promise that it will make them better at the thing they currently care about.

1445
01:18:23.164 --> 01:18:26.947
Now, we might be tricking them a little bit because we're going to get them to do the work and they'll realize that other things matter.

1446
01:18:27.527 --> 01:18:29.568
But just for those people that have that lens.

1447
01:18:29.588 --> 01:18:33.351
We're going to say something, and I hope people have said it here before, but I'm not sure they did.

1448
01:18:33.791 --> 01:18:34.832
But tell me if people said it.

1449
01:18:35.672 --> 01:18:44.658
We're going to, all these founders that are listening, falling is not just okay, it's the best thing that ever happened to you.

1450
01:18:45.857 --> 01:18:51.019
If these founders can all redefine success, think about if in school, instead of learning about all the successes.

1451
01:18:51.039 --> 01:18:54.641
I spoke about Steve Jobs and he's a real hero of mine.

1452
01:18:55.221 --> 01:18:56.462
But would I have wanted his life?

1453
01:18:58.118 --> 01:18:59.399
How old was he when he passed away?

1454
01:19:00.180 --> 01:19:02.181
How was the relationship with everybody around?

1455
01:19:02.821 --> 01:19:03.962
How did he affect people?

1456
01:19:04.523 --> 01:19:05.123
Now, I don't know.

1457
01:19:05.163 --> 01:19:05.784
I wasn't a friend.

1458
01:19:05.804 --> 01:19:06.284
I don't know him.

1459
01:19:06.304 --> 01:19:08.045
And I am not judging or measuring.

1460
01:19:08.225 --> 01:19:13.509
I'm just telling you, we cannot measure a person just through their business achievements.

1461
01:19:14.070 --> 01:19:15.791
We must look at people holistically.

1462
01:19:15.891 --> 01:19:19.113
So I'm telling all these young founders, forget, take time to meditate.

1463
01:19:19.514 --> 01:19:20.694
You asked how I do it.

1464
01:19:20.754 --> 01:19:21.995
And I said, how we quiet the noise.

1465
01:19:22.035 --> 01:19:23.116
And I answered meditation.

1466
01:19:23.496 --> 01:19:25.238
But that is not my first advice to them.

1467
01:19:25.798 --> 01:19:33.220
My first advice to all of us, by the way, you talk a lot about 21 year olds with AI coming and everybody's about to be a founder.

1468
01:19:33.300 --> 01:19:34.580
Everybody can start a business.

1469
01:19:35.020 --> 01:19:35.820
It's true for everyone.

1470
01:19:35.840 --> 01:19:38.561
It's true for 12 year olds and it's true for 60 year olds.

1471
01:19:38.601 --> 01:19:40.221
This is for everyone.

1472
01:19:41.382 --> 01:19:47.903
Have the courage to actually look inside and say, where can I become a better version of myself?

1473
01:19:48.463 --> 01:19:50.964
Don't work on three things, work on one thing.

1474
01:19:51.884 --> 01:19:53.425
And choose that thing and work on it.

1475
01:19:53.465 --> 01:19:57.007
And by the way, if you do, when you fix it, how are you going to know that it's better?

1476
01:19:57.027 --> 01:19:59.208
Because you're going to see the next thing you need to work on.

1477
01:19:59.448 --> 01:20:00.349
It is like an onion.

1478
01:20:00.749 --> 01:20:04.371
And every time you peel it, you will see another layer and another layer and another layer.

1479
01:20:05.071 --> 01:20:06.952
That is the advice I'm actually giving them.

1480
01:20:07.172 --> 01:20:08.313
And I'm promising them.

1481
01:20:09.013 --> 01:20:12.696
that if they look deep enough, what they're going to find is their calling.

1482
01:20:13.456 --> 01:20:19.481
And when they find their calling, when you match that calling with that energy of wanting to be a founder, that's when everything works.

1483
01:20:19.881 --> 01:20:31.710
As we are able as human beings to do that, find our true journey, find our flow, the world is open for us.

1484
01:20:33.351 --> 01:20:34.852
So let's zoom back into the story.

1485
01:20:34.872 --> 01:20:37.214
You're walking down towards 18th Street.

1486
01:20:39.160 --> 01:20:40.140
You've just raised all this money.

1487
01:20:40.300 --> 01:20:41.081
You feel like a king.

1488
01:20:41.221 --> 01:20:41.781
That's the way you did it.

1489
01:20:41.801 --> 01:20:42.201
Not just on paper.

1490
01:20:42.341 --> 01:20:42.481
Right.

1491
01:20:42.561 --> 01:20:44.341
It just, it didn't actually happen yet.

1492
01:20:44.781 --> 01:20:47.902
What was, you said over the next year, that was the start of the end.

1493
01:20:48.142 --> 01:20:50.343
Over the next three years, decisions changed.

1494
01:20:51.103 --> 01:20:52.223
Specifically in terms of business.

1495
01:20:52.243 --> 01:20:52.944
It became about money.

1496
01:20:53.164 --> 01:20:53.804
It became about money.

1497
01:20:53.824 --> 01:20:54.784
It became about valuation.

1498
01:20:55.064 --> 01:20:55.324
And that was.

1499
01:20:55.384 --> 01:20:56.084
It forgot the mission.

1500
01:20:56.424 --> 01:20:57.245
That was a slippery slope.

1501
01:20:57.325 --> 01:20:58.045
It's not my truth.

1502
01:20:59.005 --> 01:21:01.286
And that means that you grew even faster?

1503
01:21:01.886 --> 01:21:03.207
You opened up even more leases?

1504
01:21:03.527 --> 01:21:05.068
We blew up.

1505
01:21:05.088 --> 01:21:06.068
We went even faster.

1506
01:21:06.088 --> 01:21:06.788
We went really fast.

1507
01:21:06.828 --> 01:21:08.049
We went very fast.

1508
01:21:11.518 --> 01:21:21.561
One of the things that I read or something from when I was doing the research is that you had lots of sort of tangential ideas at that time, maybe because of the money, things like surfing and...

1509
01:21:21.861 --> 01:21:22.401
Fake news.

1510
01:21:23.542 --> 01:21:25.242
This was before WeWork ever started.

1511
01:21:25.322 --> 01:21:26.282
I had all these ideas.

1512
01:21:26.522 --> 01:21:36.605
Anybody who tells the story that we had a lot of ideas in 2016 because we raised money doesn't know that this was done before WeWork ever started in a green desk office.

1513
01:21:37.026 --> 01:21:38.306
And all the ideas we had...

1514
01:21:39.403 --> 01:21:39.963
We're right here.

1515
01:21:40.404 --> 01:21:41.764
This doesn't look like focus to me.

1516
01:21:41.784 --> 01:21:44.386
I feel like if I showed my investors this now, they would shout at me.

1517
01:21:44.826 --> 01:21:45.226
Could be.

1518
01:21:45.547 --> 01:21:49.009
Today I would choose, what is the real focus of all these things?

1519
01:21:49.569 --> 01:21:50.049
The person.

1520
01:21:51.070 --> 01:21:54.512
And if we can actually, and I would do, today I would do it one foot ahead of the other.

1521
01:21:54.632 --> 01:21:56.133
It's a little bit more like we're doing flow.

1522
01:21:56.193 --> 01:21:59.635
But when you build a business, it's art, not science.

1523
01:21:59.955 --> 01:22:04.698
If you're going to have some investor who tells you, oh, you put this first and this second and this third, they're limiting you.

1524
01:22:05.258 --> 01:22:08.120
You do need to have a very strong foundation.

1525
01:22:09.025 --> 01:22:12.490
And that's, as you said before, both as a human being and as a business person.

1526
01:22:12.510 --> 01:22:17.937
So for anyone that can't see, you just circled the sort of stick person in the middle of all of these ideas.

1527
01:22:18.357 --> 01:22:20.460
And you said, really, I would have focused on this person.

1528
01:22:20.480 --> 01:22:23.624
I would really have focused on the person and only added things that made...

1529
01:22:24.165 --> 01:22:26.906
So we had a mission, create a world where people make a life and not just a living.

1530
01:22:27.106 --> 01:22:27.286
Yeah.

1531
01:22:27.406 --> 01:22:30.908
We should have just only added things that are in support of that mission.

1532
01:22:31.368 --> 01:22:33.609
It reminds me of Amazon and Jeff Bezos.

1533
01:22:33.649 --> 01:22:36.110
Their famous saying of working backwards from the customer.

1534
01:22:36.351 --> 01:22:37.691
And what's the customer's pain points?

1535
01:22:37.751 --> 01:22:43.074
I've just, we just hired a wonderful person, our CTIO from Amazon.

1536
01:22:43.354 --> 01:22:44.174
She's called Arda.

1537
01:22:44.534 --> 01:22:48.616
And she says to me that at Amazon, there's always a, you know, often an empty seat to the meetings.

1538
01:22:49.136 --> 01:22:49.957
And that is the customer.

1539
01:22:50.237 --> 01:22:52.898
So they leave an empty seat so that they can make the decisions and,

1540
01:22:53.378 --> 01:22:54.939
through the lens of this person.

1541
01:22:55.019 --> 01:22:56.099
So they're always in every meeting.

1542
01:22:56.119 --> 01:22:57.840
So you don't get distracted of who you're doing it for.

1543
01:22:58.820 --> 01:22:59.821
And that's kind of what you described.

1544
01:22:59.841 --> 01:23:02.742
It's actually become, you know, since she's joined our business, it's always friend of mine for all of us.

1545
01:23:02.802 --> 01:23:04.123
It's just like work backwards from the customer.

1546
01:23:04.543 --> 01:23:06.804
Because sometimes you might work forward from your own ego.

1547
01:23:06.824 --> 01:23:07.724
Like, I like that.

1548
01:23:08.504 --> 01:23:10.245
Remember, I'm going to give you my best advice.

1549
01:23:10.345 --> 01:23:13.567
I've met, I've had the pleasure to meet Mr. Bezos and he's phenomenal.

1550
01:23:13.887 --> 01:23:16.708
And he's one of the best operators on the planet by far.

1551
01:23:17.828 --> 01:23:18.689
Some would say the best.

1552
01:23:20.770 --> 01:23:21.770
My best advice for you,

1553
01:23:23.323 --> 01:23:26.044
build a culture that is authentic and true to you.

1554
01:23:26.564 --> 01:23:31.306
So I love that you're focusing on the customer, but I can tell as we're speaking, you're very honed in on your user.

1555
01:23:31.886 --> 01:23:36.308
Multiple times you've told me how your listener is going to interpret what we're saying.

1556
01:23:36.828 --> 01:23:38.408
You are aligned with your listener.

1557
01:23:38.669 --> 01:23:39.629
I have no doubt about it.

1558
01:23:40.189 --> 01:23:41.990
Isn't that a form of working backwards from the customer?

1559
01:23:42.010 --> 01:23:46.212
Because I'm sitting here thinking about 21-year-old Dave, Jenny, I'm thinking about, and every time you answer a question.

1560
01:23:46.252 --> 01:23:47.212
Again, I'm sorry.

1561
01:23:47.232 --> 01:23:48.393
I don't want to.

1562
01:23:48.753 --> 01:23:49.554
No, please do that.

1563
01:23:49.594 --> 01:23:52.835
No, we're being very, I'm repeating myself and I don't mean to be boring.

1564
01:23:52.895 --> 01:23:56.777
And if this was, if we did this podcast three years ago, maybe I would go all over the place.

1565
01:23:57.818 --> 01:24:02.360
If you actually today went to the depth of your truth, what is your correction?

1566
01:24:02.580 --> 01:24:03.580
What do you need to work on?

1567
01:24:03.760 --> 01:24:04.501
Where are you going?

1568
01:24:05.176 --> 01:24:12.423
And when you found that, and then you brought that back into your team, I am telling you, I don't even know how far it would be.

1569
01:24:12.703 --> 01:24:14.665
So you're saying I don't need to work backwards from the customer.

1570
01:24:14.685 --> 01:24:15.466
What are you saying?

1571
01:24:15.806 --> 01:24:17.648
I'm saying your truth has to be yours first.

1572
01:24:17.768 --> 01:24:19.249
I'm not pushing against this theory.

1573
01:24:19.329 --> 01:24:20.250
Of course, we need to work.

1574
01:24:20.390 --> 01:24:21.592
Again, my truth.

1575
01:24:22.212 --> 01:24:24.254
I know a lot of times people keep telling me what the customer wants.

1576
01:24:25.115 --> 01:24:27.297
I, Rebecca and I build what we think is correct.

1577
01:24:27.477 --> 01:24:28.218
You don't listen to the customer?

1578
01:24:28.238 --> 01:24:28.718
No focus groups.

1579
01:24:28.758 --> 01:24:29.199
No way.

1580
01:24:29.519 --> 01:24:34.426
There's a famous saying, I think it's Henry Ford, if I asked a customer, they would have asked for faster horses.

1581
01:24:34.827 --> 01:24:35.768
Never invented the car.

1582
01:24:37.306 --> 01:24:39.367
No, you know what you want.

1583
01:24:39.647 --> 01:24:41.788
I think it's about finding our own truth.

1584
01:24:42.648 --> 01:24:45.509
I think when a person finds his own truth, they can express it.

1585
01:24:45.669 --> 01:24:48.010
Of course, I'm not going to tell you we shouldn't listen to the customer.

1586
01:24:48.030 --> 01:24:49.051
In Flow, we have a lot of things.

1587
01:24:49.851 --> 01:24:53.692
I could tell you 10 things that the customer has pointed out to us that, of course, are right, and we do.

1588
01:24:54.193 --> 01:24:55.293
But again, we have an opinion.

1589
01:24:55.353 --> 01:25:00.195
If we listen to our customer at Flow, we'll have prettier buildings so more influencers can take more pictures.

1590
01:25:00.661 --> 01:25:03.423
So you're saying hear your customers, but don't always listen to them.

1591
01:25:04.223 --> 01:25:04.943
Is that a distinction?

1592
01:25:05.084 --> 01:25:07.645
I'm saying, do you know yourself?

1593
01:25:08.525 --> 01:25:20.072
I'm saying everyone rushing, building all these businesses when they don't even know who they are leads us to going into dinners and talking about nothing, going into parties and doing whatever it is that we're doing.

1594
01:25:21.153 --> 01:25:26.536
And instead of living life to the potential, life is so beautiful and amazing and full,

1595
01:25:27.296 --> 01:25:35.481
that if you're going to now be busy listening to your customer because you want to build a business because you want to make money, not only do I think it's not going to work for you, where's the fun in that?

1596
01:25:36.181 --> 01:25:38.783
I think I'm asking this in part selfishly for myself.

1597
01:25:38.823 --> 01:25:40.044
Okay, for you, I'm ready.

1598
01:25:40.364 --> 01:25:50.410
So at a stage in my business, you know, where we're being offered lots of money from lots of people, our last valuation was about 450 million or something like that.

1599
01:25:50.890 --> 01:25:53.092
And so I reflect on your story a lot because...

1600
01:25:54.232 --> 01:26:00.134
I, although the numbers were wildly different, you were at a moment where, you know, you could raise whatever money you wanted.

1601
01:26:00.314 --> 01:26:05.835
And with that comes opportunity and distraction dressed in the same dress, potentially.

1602
01:26:06.235 --> 01:26:09.156
And in this particular season of your story, I go, oh, Adam, like, bought this.

1603
01:26:09.336 --> 01:26:12.257
Apparently you bought, like, a surfing thing and a thing over here.

1604
01:26:12.317 --> 01:26:14.797
Let's say something just because you said it, because I love it.

1605
01:26:14.998 --> 01:26:20.119
The surfing thing we bought for $7 million was 48% of a company called Wavegarden.

1606
01:26:21.250 --> 01:26:24.392
We bought it because we thought you could build amazing communities around surf.

1607
01:26:25.112 --> 01:26:33.056
Wavegarden today does north of, as far as I know, north of 500 million in sales for 2027.

1608
01:26:33.076 --> 01:26:34.717
I think this year, maybe around 250.

1609
01:26:34.997 --> 01:26:36.438
They're extremely successful.

1610
01:26:37.138 --> 01:26:38.439
The founders are so happy.

1611
01:26:38.479 --> 01:26:45.506
I saw them not too long ago because when I stepped down, WeWork famously sold it back to them for $5 million, even though it was worth so much more.

1612
01:26:45.927 --> 01:26:47.348
They own 100% of their business.

1613
01:26:47.528 --> 01:26:48.649
Their business is thriving.

1614
01:26:49.210 --> 01:26:57.178
And I stand behind, and I'll tell you again today, the best amenity, if we wanted to build a big global community, real estate, best amenity number one,

1615
01:26:58.303 --> 01:26:58.563
School.

1616
01:26:59.004 --> 01:27:01.406
Because if you have a great school, everybody wants to live around great school.

1617
01:27:01.426 --> 01:27:02.167
Let me double click there then.

1618
01:27:02.487 --> 01:27:08.492
Even though Wavegarden was a great idea, like great, spotted a great business that went on to be very, very successful.

1619
01:27:10.354 --> 01:27:14.297
In our situation, there's lots of those.

1620
01:27:15.158 --> 01:27:16.259
And I would end up-

1621
01:27:17.686 --> 01:27:21.268
Yeah, like in my world, there's lots of these like, we could do that and that and that.

1622
01:27:21.288 --> 01:27:22.009
And do you know what?

1623
01:27:22.189 --> 01:27:23.610
Objectively, maybe they're all good ideas.

1624
01:27:24.490 --> 01:27:29.713
But when we talked about this point of focus, I would then be splitting myself 10%, even though they're great.

1625
01:27:29.733 --> 01:27:30.734
I have a great answer for you.

1626
01:27:30.894 --> 01:27:35.077
Best recommendation to you would be the same one I gave you when we spoke about your fiancé.

1627
01:27:35.922 --> 01:27:38.124
I think you need a little bit of time for yourself for a second.

1628
01:27:38.724 --> 01:27:41.666
I think you need to soul search and see exactly where you want to go.

1629
01:27:42.207 --> 01:27:43.448
Ask yourself what I just said.

1630
01:27:43.528 --> 01:27:45.189
Assume that in six years you're huge.

1631
01:27:46.450 --> 01:27:48.091
What for and why?

1632
01:27:48.852 --> 01:27:55.437
And when you answer what for and why, then go back to the day and say, well, who's the right partner to get me there?

1633
01:27:57.153 --> 01:27:58.575
That's the only way to make that.

1634
01:27:58.595 --> 01:28:04.722
Because if you make your decision based on anything else, you might suffer what happened to me, God forbid, and we don't need this for you.

1635
01:28:05.523 --> 01:28:07.746
First, understand who you are.

1636
01:28:09.087 --> 01:28:15.015
Then, decide where you want to go because of it.

1637
01:28:15.796 --> 01:28:18.660
Then go back to all of the investors and see who is the right investor.

1638
01:28:18.680 --> 01:28:21.044
And again, I want to say it again, I think it's worth it.

1639
01:28:21.144 --> 01:28:22.986
I think you should choose all of us.

1640
01:28:23.006 --> 01:28:31.599
You should choose our partners, our friends, and our business partners based on how they will treat us in our worst day when we show the worst, not the best.

1641
01:28:32.617 --> 01:28:40.339
If I don't pause for a second and I don't do the work and I don't get clear on what my mission is and why I'm doing it before I make these decisions now.

1642
01:28:40.359 --> 01:28:40.879
To grow.

1643
01:28:41.099 --> 01:28:41.500
To grow.

1644
01:28:41.520 --> 01:28:43.120
Yeah, and that could be for anyone listening.

1645
01:28:43.160 --> 01:28:44.020
That's at the start of their journey.

1646
01:28:44.040 --> 01:28:44.700
It's going well.

1647
01:28:44.720 --> 01:28:47.481
They're being pulled by opportunity, not by mission.

1648
01:28:49.382 --> 01:28:56.104
What is the mistake around the corner there that I'll end up making that you referenced that you said you made that I can't currently see?

1649
01:28:56.324 --> 01:29:00.465
So I think the rule of thumb that we gave is, well, we've said a few things.

1650
01:29:01.521 --> 01:29:07.906
If your business started with a mission, then you're already doing better than most because a lot of people don't have a real mission.

1651
01:29:08.526 --> 01:29:10.868
So first step, you needed to have had a real mission.

1652
01:29:11.388 --> 01:29:17.093
Now let's say you actually had a real mission and you found that truth and now you're there and now this growth is offered for you.

1653
01:29:18.247 --> 01:29:33.192
If the growth of the business is going to grow faster than you're capable of handling, handling is ego, handling is money, handling is relationships, there's a lot of handling, we can translate it in many ways, then in definition, something is going to crack.

1654
01:29:33.752 --> 01:29:35.293
There will be a short circuit.

1655
01:29:35.953 --> 01:29:43.316
So before you jump on that growth without understanding that growth, you have to make sure that you're ready for it and that it's actually correct for you.

1656
01:29:44.391 --> 01:29:48.515
What is the most effective practice you've ever deployed to know yourself better?

1657
01:29:49.597 --> 01:29:51.198
For me, Adam, it's just my truth.

1658
01:29:51.919 --> 01:29:59.067
About 10 years ago, I started keeping Shabbat, which for those who don't know, it means that on Friday, we disconnect from technology for 25 hours.

1659
01:30:00.909 --> 01:30:05.734
And I just spend my time with my family, my friends, and taking part of something greater than myself.

1660
01:30:06.695 --> 01:30:10.819
That this connection actually makes a lot more connection than anybody understands.

1661
01:30:10.839 --> 01:30:13.902
So the best practice I can suggest is technology Shabbat.

1662
01:30:14.283 --> 01:30:14.943
Forget religion.

1663
01:30:14.963 --> 01:30:16.405
This has nothing to do with religion.

1664
01:30:16.985 --> 01:30:21.890
If you take 24 hours off of your phone, completely off, put it aside.

1665
01:30:21.910 --> 01:30:23.192
We say put it in a cookie jar.

1666
01:30:24.435 --> 01:30:25.736
Here's what I forecast.

1667
01:30:25.776 --> 01:30:27.977
When's the last time you were off your phone for 24 hours, by the way?

1668
01:30:27.997 --> 01:30:28.478
Oh, God.

1669
01:30:28.718 --> 01:30:29.018
Oh, God.

1670
01:30:29.038 --> 01:30:30.999
Okay, we're going to have to lead by example.

1671
01:30:31.019 --> 01:30:34.141
So we're going to ask people, this is connecting, by the way, to my idea.

1672
01:30:34.201 --> 01:30:35.602
We're going to have to lead by example.

1673
01:30:35.902 --> 01:30:37.804
So here's what I suggest to the founders, to everyone.

1674
01:30:38.984 --> 01:30:42.046
Choose a day, make it Saturday, make it Sunday, make it middle of the week.

1675
01:30:42.066 --> 01:30:43.007
It's easier on the weekend.

1676
01:30:43.187 --> 01:30:44.428
Make it the day that's true for you.

1677
01:30:45.529 --> 01:30:50.332
And take your phone away for 24 hours and put it in a place that you genuinely are not going to touch it.

1678
01:30:50.352 --> 01:30:51.953
Give it to a friend if you can't trust yourself.

1679
01:30:53.430 --> 01:30:59.316
The first two hours, the amount of times your hand is going to go to your pocket, thinking your phone is there, will show you how addicted you are.

1680
01:30:59.516 --> 01:31:00.697
Because it's an actual addiction.

1681
01:31:01.378 --> 01:31:10.086
But then what you'll notice, especially if you scheduled it in advance, you planned a dinner with your friends, some activities that include going out to nature, little things.

1682
01:31:11.167 --> 01:31:13.790
From my experience, when those 24 hours are over...

1683
01:31:15.175 --> 01:31:17.216
and you take back that phone, two things will happen.

1684
01:31:17.436 --> 01:31:21.257
One, you're gonna feel amazing at hour 22, 23, 24, amazing.

1685
01:31:21.657 --> 01:31:26.578
You're gonna take out that phone and it's gonna take you exactly 10 minutes to drop back down to the wrong frequency.

1686
01:31:27.079 --> 01:31:27.499
That's one.

1687
01:31:28.119 --> 01:31:37.582
Two, some of the best ideas you've had in some time are gonna come to you, including who you should be surrounded with, but business you should focus on, what is your next move?

1688
01:31:38.563 --> 01:31:50.278
For me, the best practice is that 24 hours once a week, and again, remember, I have six kids, I'm married, that 24 hours where it's us together has been phenomenal.

1689
01:31:50.899 --> 01:31:56.306
And I think in front of everyone, if you committed to do 24 hours one time,

1690
01:31:57.285 --> 01:32:02.467
And then report back to all of us, A, how hard it was, which will be a definition for the addiction.

1691
01:32:02.867 --> 01:32:04.348
But B, was it positive?

1692
01:32:04.748 --> 01:32:07.289
Because you talk a lot about giving your listeners tools.

1693
01:32:07.909 --> 01:32:10.470
Well, I think we should test the tools on ourselves first.

1694
01:32:11.030 --> 01:32:13.471
And only if they work, we should really recommend them for everybody.

1695
01:32:14.051 --> 01:32:17.353
But I have a feeling it would be amazing for you and even better for your fiancé.

1696
01:32:17.953 --> 01:32:18.853
I have a feeling you're correct.

1697
01:32:18.873 --> 01:32:19.734
I bet she wants it, by the way.

1698
01:32:19.894 --> 01:32:20.914
I bet she's even asked for this.

1699
01:32:20.934 --> 01:32:22.015
She's asked me a million times.

1700
01:32:22.035 --> 01:32:24.235
Well, why haven't you said yes if she asked you a million times?

1701
01:32:24.255 --> 01:32:24.616
Oh, gosh.

1702
01:32:25.856 --> 01:32:27.439
Why haven't I said yes?

1703
01:32:27.479 --> 01:32:28.400
What's the answer?

1704
01:32:29.282 --> 01:32:30.924
Because I don't see the upside.

1705
01:32:30.944 --> 01:32:33.108
It's because you're religious, not spiritual.

1706
01:32:35.095 --> 01:32:56.162
whenever someone can change something i think they're religious i keep telling to people on spiritual not religious i'll change i can change i can go i'm not stuck in a box whenever you're stuck in a box and you're not ready to change something of course you can't see the upside give you an example fasting have you ever fasted yes does your brain get very clear fasted from water and food or just water just food

1707
01:32:57.382 --> 01:32:58.043
Both, yeah.

1708
01:32:58.163 --> 01:32:59.824
Have you ever done a whole day no water, no food?

1709
01:33:00.144 --> 01:33:00.444
Yes.

1710
01:33:00.664 --> 01:33:02.405
I've done ketosis as well.

1711
01:33:02.765 --> 01:33:04.026
Ketosis also was a little different.

1712
01:33:04.266 --> 01:33:09.990
Have you noticed when fasting after 12 hours, 18 hours, 24, depending how clear your head becomes?

1713
01:33:10.958 --> 01:33:11.998
Your body doesn't want it.

1714
01:33:12.638 --> 01:33:17.240
Your body doesn't see an upside in it, but you've tested it and you know that you get clarity from it.

1715
01:33:17.260 --> 01:33:19.060
You know that there's a benefit to it.

1716
01:33:19.960 --> 01:33:20.640
Same thing here.

1717
01:33:21.180 --> 01:33:29.683
Saying I don't see the benefit of putting my phone away from 24 hours is the way an addict will speak about I don't see the benefit of stopping to take the drug.

1718
01:33:30.563 --> 01:33:35.944
Trying it and after doing it two, three times, being like that didn't work for me, I respect that.

1719
01:33:36.384 --> 01:33:38.945
But you, by the way, I think you know that it would work.

1720
01:33:39.725 --> 01:33:42.647
Yeah, this is what I was going to say is like, conceptually, of course, I know it's going to work.

1721
01:33:42.687 --> 01:33:44.969
I've like sat here with the neuroscientists that have done the studies.

1722
01:33:45.790 --> 01:33:50.933
I think there was probably a more honest answer that I've just sort of uncovered, which is it would be very uncomfortable.

1723
01:33:51.594 --> 01:33:53.535
And even the thought of it is like really uncomfortable.

1724
01:33:53.695 --> 01:33:54.916
But now you and I are going somewhere.

1725
01:33:55.136 --> 01:33:56.277
How do we know what to do in life?

1726
01:33:56.678 --> 01:34:00.620
Whenever we feel that we're in a crossroad, the decision one is comfortable, one is not.

1727
01:34:01.321 --> 01:34:03.383
Keep going after the uncomfortable one.

1728
01:34:04.163 --> 01:34:07.346
Path of most resistance, path of least resistance.

1729
01:34:07.966 --> 01:34:10.088
Always go after the path of most resistance.

1730
01:34:10.549 --> 01:34:12.070
Long journey, short journey.

1731
01:34:12.370 --> 01:34:13.171
Go after the long.

1732
01:34:13.311 --> 01:34:14.112
But you know what happens?

1733
01:34:14.492 --> 01:34:15.293
It takes less time.

1734
01:34:15.833 --> 01:34:18.295
It ends up being easier and has a lot more value.

1735
01:34:18.776 --> 01:34:20.257
There are rules to the game of life.

1736
01:34:20.658 --> 01:34:21.718
No one taught us.

1737
01:34:22.439 --> 01:34:39.538
so I we go back to the wait are we getting a commitment I need a commitment if your fans is listening can we do one can we do one time we can do one time okay perfect we can do one time can we make sure to do it this month in September well that's a great question um yes we can if it's uncomfortable yes yes we can just before I shake

1738
01:34:40.179 --> 01:35:04.769
because we're going to we both keep our words can I define let's define define it you just said something I teach my kids before you if you're having a problem keeping your word do a better job defining it before you ever say it so go right ahead it's not going on my phone or my computer or any electronic device for 25 hours that's it you can drive you can turn on the lights do everything else I can talk about business do everything no no we're not asking you pen and paper I'm not asking you to keep Shabbat

1739
01:35:05.429 --> 01:35:07.630
I said technology, Shabbat.

1740
01:35:08.190 --> 01:35:09.330
We're just going off.

1741
01:35:09.390 --> 01:35:10.530
I can brainstorm on a whiteboard.

1742
01:35:11.051 --> 01:35:11.591
Encouraged.

1743
01:35:12.271 --> 01:35:13.371
Encouraged to brainstorm.

1744
01:35:13.691 --> 01:35:16.912
Now, again, next level will be we'll take business out of it so you can really connect.

1745
01:35:16.932 --> 01:35:17.772
But let's do the first.

1746
01:35:17.792 --> 01:35:19.193
Okay, so wait, let's define it.

1747
01:35:19.233 --> 01:35:22.874
No screens, which includes your computer, your iPad, your... Watch, whatever, yeah.

1748
01:35:22.914 --> 01:35:23.974
Yeah, watch, good, I like it.

1749
01:35:24.334 --> 01:35:26.195
Does your car have like a big screen?

1750
01:35:26.215 --> 01:35:27.575
Because some of the cars are like big iPads.

1751
01:35:27.655 --> 01:35:30.496
I won't be in my car because I'll be in Europe in September, so... We're done.

1752
01:35:30.516 --> 01:35:30.956
Okay, great.

1753
01:35:31.276 --> 01:35:31.536
Deal.

1754
01:35:31.816 --> 01:35:32.016
Deal.

1755
01:35:32.096 --> 01:35:32.997
I'll let you know how it goes.

1756
01:35:33.237 --> 01:35:34.417
Let all of us know how it goes.

1757
01:35:34.597 --> 01:35:34.877
I will.

1758
01:35:35.058 --> 01:35:35.798
Now we can go back.

1759
01:35:36.079 --> 01:35:39.422
So let's go back to this, because I really wanted to nail this point of focus.

1760
01:35:39.482 --> 01:35:39.882
Please do.

1761
01:35:40.202 --> 01:35:40.663
I'm obsessed.

1762
01:35:40.683 --> 01:35:41.764
I'm pretty obsessed with this point of focus.

1763
01:35:42.004 --> 01:35:47.670
In part, I remember this Johnny Ives video I watched where Johnny, I've sent it around for the last couple of years to all of my team.

1764
01:35:47.710 --> 01:35:50.572
Johnny says, Steve had this remarkable ability to focus.

1765
01:35:50.693 --> 01:35:54.576
And he said, focus isn't saying no to things you remotely don't want to do any way.

1766
01:35:54.897 --> 01:35:55.057
It's...

1767
01:35:55.377 --> 01:36:02.363
It's saying no to things that with every bone in your body you want to do and you wake up thinking about, but you say no to them because we're going to do this.

1768
01:36:02.464 --> 01:36:08.209
And famously, in Steve Jobs' story, when he came back into Apple after being fired, he was sat in a room with all of his executives.

1769
01:36:08.229 --> 01:36:10.191
They've all got a million-ish initiatives they're working on.

1770
01:36:10.551 --> 01:36:13.534
And famously, he goes up to a whiteboard and draws four things.

1771
01:36:13.554 --> 01:36:14.915
Like, I think it was a four-quadrant thing.

1772
01:36:15.275 --> 01:36:16.897
And he says, this is what we're going to do.

1773
01:36:17.117 --> 01:36:18.238
Everything else is cancelled.

1774
01:36:18.418 --> 01:36:19.039
Cancelled at the few months.

1775
01:36:19.819 --> 01:36:26.785
One of the things that I concluded from the period after you'd raised all this money was that there was a lack of focus because you ended up doing lots of things at the same time.

1776
01:36:27.465 --> 01:36:30.788
And that's something that I find myself almost like the foothills of being tempted to do.

1777
01:36:31.748 --> 01:36:33.730
So that's why I wanted to ask you the question.

1778
01:36:33.810 --> 01:36:34.390
Let's answer it.

1779
01:36:34.431 --> 01:36:37.253
So first of all, we talked about superpowers and superweaknesses.

1780
01:36:38.138 --> 01:36:40.179
I cannot tell you that my superpower is focus.

1781
01:36:41.220 --> 01:36:43.641
It's not my superpower.

1782
01:36:43.761 --> 01:36:45.763
I actually have the opposite of it.

1783
01:36:46.203 --> 01:36:51.906
My challenge is, and Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen helped me understand this, I'm very good at zero to one.

1784
01:36:52.567 --> 01:36:55.048
So the problem with many entrepreneurs have a lot of ideas.

1785
01:36:55.068 --> 01:36:57.770
The problem with me having a lot of ideas, they actually become a reality.

1786
01:36:58.531 --> 01:37:03.393
So one entrepreneur has, Ben was telling this to me, said another entrepreneur is going to come with nine new ideas.

1787
01:37:03.474 --> 01:37:05.335
And the next board meeting, maybe he did one of them.

1788
01:37:06.015 --> 01:37:06.835
You have nine ideas.

1789
01:37:06.855 --> 01:37:08.016
We didn't say anything in the board meeting.

1790
01:37:08.036 --> 01:37:08.916
We come next board meeting.

1791
01:37:08.936 --> 01:37:10.016
There's nine new businesses.

1792
01:37:10.997 --> 01:37:13.818
So focus is something that I need to work on.

1793
01:37:14.038 --> 01:37:15.118
So now let's go a little deeper.

1794
01:37:15.298 --> 01:37:17.219
And this is how I do my own personal growth.

1795
01:37:17.939 --> 01:37:18.699
I'm a creator.

1796
01:37:19.240 --> 01:37:20.080
I'm not a protector.

1797
01:37:20.760 --> 01:37:22.061
I'm really good at creating.

1798
01:37:22.321 --> 01:37:23.721
I'm not that great at protecting.

1799
01:37:24.481 --> 01:37:29.863
Rebecca's grandfather famously said, it takes one lion to make a fortune and 10 lions to watch it.

1800
01:37:30.143 --> 01:37:31.184
His name was Andre Hertz.

1801
01:37:31.844 --> 01:37:34.225
One lion to make a fortune, 10 lions to watch it.

1802
01:37:34.405 --> 01:37:35.145
Very smart saying.

1803
01:37:37.282 --> 01:37:46.969
Because I'm now aware that I'm more a creator than a protector, there needs to be someone else around the table, on the team, whose job is to say, Adam, sounds great.

1804
01:37:47.529 --> 01:37:50.692
And maybe we should do it in three months, or in six months, or in nine months.

1805
01:37:50.712 --> 01:37:56.076
But right now, we really need to focus not on one thing, I'm not a one thing kind of guy, but let's say on three things.

1806
01:37:56.896 --> 01:38:00.240
Where other people can only do one at a time, I'm probably very good at three to five.

1807
01:38:00.680 --> 01:38:06.966
But once you go above that number, 10 to 15, which I could fall into that trap, not going to succeed.

1808
01:38:07.006 --> 01:38:14.093
So for me, with my personality, I would have to surround myself with people I trust to say, no, did you have that at WeWork?

1809
01:38:14.594 --> 01:38:16.115
A little, but not really.

1810
01:38:16.955 --> 01:38:22.919
Because again, remember, back to that horrible moment where I walk back into the office and the ego got the best of me.

1811
01:38:23.399 --> 01:38:25.701
What happens next when you lose yourself?

1812
01:38:26.341 --> 01:38:28.283
You start attracting the wrong people.

1813
01:38:29.176 --> 01:38:32.818
So the people that were hired after that were just there for the money.

1814
01:38:32.858 --> 01:38:36.681
The energy that was being projected was, let's go public, let's do this, let's do that.

1815
01:38:37.321 --> 01:38:39.743
The energy that's projected was wrong.

1816
01:38:40.323 --> 01:38:41.784
You filed for an IPO.

1817
01:38:42.944 --> 01:38:47.847
And I think SoftBank invested a further $2 billion into WeWork.

1818
01:38:47.867 --> 01:38:49.308
So you really are trying to get to the story.

1819
01:38:49.348 --> 01:38:53.071
The challenge with what you're trying to do is there's so much context to the story missing.

1820
01:38:53.411 --> 01:38:54.472
I'll give you the little piece.

1821
01:38:54.492 --> 01:38:54.992
The high level.

1822
01:38:55.501 --> 01:38:56.162
No, I understand.

1823
01:38:56.242 --> 01:38:57.243
I'm all good with that.

1824
01:38:57.363 --> 01:38:58.964
I'll give it to you if this is your podcast.

1825
01:38:58.984 --> 01:38:59.485
No, no, no.

1826
01:38:59.505 --> 01:39:01.186
I'll tell you what I want to get.

1827
01:39:01.206 --> 01:39:01.707
I just want to end this.

1828
01:39:01.727 --> 01:39:07.212
Tell me what you're going after, and then I'm going to tell you something that I mentioned once, but no one has your viewership, so we'll mention it again.

1829
01:39:07.332 --> 01:39:08.653
I want to close this now.

1830
01:39:08.713 --> 01:39:09.614
Yeah, I'll close this for you.

1831
01:39:09.834 --> 01:39:10.535
I'll close this for you.

1832
01:39:13.738 --> 01:39:15.779
So we, Masa gives the money.

1833
01:39:16.220 --> 01:39:16.360
Yeah.

1834
01:39:17.311 --> 01:39:20.032
We lose our mission a little bit, but he's very clear what he wants.

1835
01:39:20.052 --> 01:39:20.872
He wants the fastest.

1836
01:39:20.892 --> 01:39:22.432
He wants the largest company on the planet.

1837
01:39:22.612 --> 01:39:23.372
A trillion dollar company.

1838
01:39:23.432 --> 01:39:24.612
I can deliver big company.

1839
01:39:25.093 --> 01:39:27.873
I can, by then, back then, by the way, no one said numbers like that.

1840
01:39:27.893 --> 01:39:30.434
Today, we've seen companies five years old that are getting to those numbers.

1841
01:39:31.094 --> 01:39:32.434
See, look how the world's moving.

1842
01:39:32.474 --> 01:39:38.375
What was impossible and no one could talk about and made fun of 10 years ago, suddenly it's everyday reality.

1843
01:39:38.675 --> 01:39:44.036
Not a big word anymore, but it's a huge number, obviously, and very few companies are going to be there and stay there.

1844
01:39:44.717 --> 01:39:46.497
But more, as time moves forward more and more.

1845
01:39:47.577 --> 01:39:50.681
Masa Invest, and the money ends up coming in only in 2017.

1846
01:39:50.781 --> 01:39:56.627
It takes quite a long time between when the investment is offered in 2016, that piece of paper, to the money coming in in 2017.

1847
01:39:57.208 --> 01:40:00.672
But we deliver on our $960 million in sales.

1848
01:40:00.712 --> 01:40:05.498
In the following year, we deliver on our $1.8 billion or $1.92, whatever the exact number we said.

1849
01:40:06.239 --> 01:40:06.979
We hit our number.

1850
01:40:07.996 --> 01:40:12.281
And Masa comes and says, wow, you really delivered on your numbers.

1851
01:40:12.442 --> 01:40:15.165
Of course, Masa-san, we always deliver on our number.

1852
01:40:16.086 --> 01:40:19.610
And he said, well, Adam, I've invested with Vision Fund, a lot of companies.

1853
01:40:19.630 --> 01:40:21.412
Everybody promised me to double the revenue.

1854
01:40:21.713 --> 01:40:22.994
You're one of the only ones who did it.

1855
01:40:23.555 --> 01:40:24.756
I said, well, that's what we did.

1856
01:40:24.796 --> 01:40:26.157
I said, well, so our expenses grew.

1857
01:40:26.177 --> 01:40:27.498
He said, I have no problem with the expenses.

1858
01:40:27.518 --> 01:40:31.960
When the time is right, we'll stop the growth and profitability will catch up.

1859
01:40:32.001 --> 01:40:34.522
As we explained, that happens in businesses that are actually successful.

1860
01:40:35.383 --> 01:40:38.225
And he comes and basically comes up with this idea.

1861
01:40:38.245 --> 01:40:41.827
He says, how about we buy your investors are going to want an IPO and they're going to want an exit.

1862
01:40:41.847 --> 01:40:42.768
They're going to want focus.

1863
01:40:43.748 --> 01:40:45.550
I have no problem with how wide we're going.

1864
01:40:46.311 --> 01:40:48.774
How about we buy the company for 20 billion?

1865
01:40:49.255 --> 01:40:51.377
And this is the story that a lot of people don't understand.

1866
01:40:52.178 --> 01:40:57.224
How about I buy the company, I'll give it a 20 billion dollar valuation, which is very similar to the valuation it came in before.

1867
01:40:57.885 --> 01:40:59.567
But I said, 20 billion, isn't it a little low?

1868
01:40:59.587 --> 01:41:01.589
He said, no, no, 20 billion of actual cash

1869
01:41:02.350 --> 01:41:09.272
We'll give $10 billion to the investors, and we will put $10 billion on the balance sheet.

1870
01:41:09.833 --> 01:41:10.773
In the bank account, basically.

1871
01:41:10.793 --> 01:41:11.553
In the bank account.

1872
01:41:12.013 --> 01:41:13.074
You add them one sale.

1873
01:41:13.534 --> 01:41:15.354
Your employees can sell some so they make money.

1874
01:41:15.474 --> 01:41:16.635
All the investors are out.

1875
01:41:17.135 --> 01:41:19.476
You and your management team will go down to 30%.

1876
01:41:20.036 --> 01:41:24.978
Me and the new, me, SoftBank, Vision Fund, whoever is going to do it, will own 70%.

1877
01:41:25.378 --> 01:41:29.819
And when you hit goals that we agree, you and the management team will go from 30% to 51%, and we will go to 49%.

1878
01:41:32.897 --> 01:41:34.899
And I understand that we're growing too fast.

1879
01:41:35.039 --> 01:41:38.382
And I understand that we'll have too much expenses, but I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

1880
01:41:38.703 --> 01:41:41.926
And I don't care because I think this is going to be one of the biggest companies in the world.

1881
01:41:43.047 --> 01:41:45.369
This happens is a very important part of the story.

1882
01:41:45.890 --> 01:41:47.631
This happens in March of 2018.

1883
01:41:49.948 --> 01:41:51.448
This is before the IPO.

1884
01:41:51.468 --> 01:41:53.369
You can't bring this story back if you don't understand this part.

1885
01:41:53.409 --> 01:41:54.849
March of 2018, he only invested.

1886
01:41:54.869 --> 01:41:56.269
The money really came in in the middle of 2017.

1887
01:41:56.309 --> 01:41:57.670
We're like you too.

1888
01:41:57.930 --> 01:41:59.330
This is only a year after he's with us.

1889
01:41:59.770 --> 01:42:00.510
He's on the board.

1890
01:42:00.550 --> 01:42:01.310
He has two boards.

1891
01:42:01.330 --> 01:42:02.891
They know everything that's happening in the company.

1892
01:42:02.931 --> 01:42:03.511
No secrets.

1893
01:42:05.791 --> 01:42:07.472
I take the offer to our board.

1894
01:42:08.032 --> 01:42:09.612
Say, look at this amazing thing.

1895
01:42:09.652 --> 01:42:12.333
Remember, they invested pre-money valuation of 84 million.

1896
01:42:14.077 --> 01:42:15.098
This is 20 billion.

1897
01:42:15.398 --> 01:42:16.739
They invested at 84 million.

1898
01:42:17.319 --> 01:42:20.382
By this point, they've already pulled out because of all the secondaries.

1899
01:42:20.542 --> 01:42:23.644
They've already pulled out somewhere between 300 to 500 million.

1900
01:42:23.684 --> 01:42:27.287
I'll check the exact numbers so you have it maybe even more, maybe even 700 million by this.

1901
01:42:28.108 --> 01:42:33.532
They've pulled out a lot, whatever the number was, at least 350 million on an investment of 21 million.

1902
01:42:35.453 --> 01:42:36.814
I take it to them, the offers.

1903
01:42:36.854 --> 01:42:38.295
It must have sounds like a great offer.

1904
01:42:38.936 --> 01:42:42.879
But I, Adam, I'm going to stay in the company, I'm in the management team, so we can't make a deal like this.

1905
01:42:43.617 --> 01:42:47.640
So in boards, when someone has a deal that they're staying behind, you need to create a special committee.

1906
01:42:48.221 --> 01:42:49.682
And a special committee is created.

1907
01:42:51.003 --> 01:42:59.349
The board member from Benchmark and another board member that we had in the that we had, which out of respect to him, I'm not saying his name.

1908
01:43:01.518 --> 01:43:02.799
And they create a special committee.

1909
01:43:03.559 --> 01:43:09.263
And they decide to negotiate a $20 billion all cash deal that would have made money for everyone.

1910
01:43:09.283 --> 01:43:10.644
Remember, Masa came in at 20.

1911
01:43:10.684 --> 01:43:12.986
He's the only one who's not making money from this deal and he's staying.

1912
01:43:13.026 --> 01:43:18.009
And everybody else came in at $50 million, $100 million, $400 million, $1 billion.

1913
01:43:18.509 --> 01:43:19.410
Everyone's making money.

1914
01:43:20.762 --> 01:43:24.525
And there, and this word is a dangerous one, but it's greed.

1915
01:43:25.186 --> 01:43:29.749
Because the company at that point is losing, well, $2 billion a year.

1916
01:43:30.530 --> 01:43:33.252
Forecasted to lose over $3 billion the next year.

1917
01:43:34.153 --> 01:43:35.214
He knows the forecast.

1918
01:43:35.274 --> 01:43:39.718
He wants to put $10 billion to give it run rate of three years so we can build whatever we want between the two of us.

1919
01:43:39.758 --> 01:43:40.939
He'll be the majority shareholder.

1920
01:43:42.460 --> 01:43:49.966
They say no and negotiate a $20 billion deal from March till October.

1921
01:43:51.300 --> 01:43:54.282
For a company losing $2 billion, I don't know how you value companies.

1922
01:43:54.302 --> 01:43:58.705
We can talk about how we should value companies because there are very valuable companies who are losing money, of course, at high growth.

1923
01:43:58.765 --> 01:44:01.487
But still, they have a company losing $2 billion.

1924
01:44:02.327 --> 01:44:05.429
Masa's son is offering them $20 in return for that.

1925
01:44:06.009 --> 01:44:06.390
Pleasure.

1926
01:44:07.971 --> 01:44:12.033
And they negotiate these two special committees, special board members.

1927
01:44:12.534 --> 01:44:15.415
Now, I'm not part of it because I'm staying in the deal, so I have zero part of it.

1928
01:44:16.896 --> 01:44:19.438
In a normal world, if I were to sit on your board,

1929
01:44:20.773 --> 01:44:26.136
And I'm sitting on your board and someone comes and gives this crazy offer to buy me and all the other friends out.

1930
01:44:26.696 --> 01:44:28.898
And I invested in you now in this 400 million.

1931
01:44:29.218 --> 01:44:30.819
And you gave me a deal at 20 billion.

1932
01:44:31.059 --> 01:44:33.800
And I'm making 2-3 billion on my 50 million.

1933
01:44:34.741 --> 01:44:36.822
First, I come to you and I say, Stephen, thank you.

1934
01:44:37.622 --> 01:44:40.384
Thank you for being such a great entrepreneur and doing this for me.

1935
01:44:40.524 --> 01:44:41.124
That's number one.

1936
01:44:41.164 --> 01:44:42.485
But number two, I say, Stephen.

1937
01:44:43.488 --> 01:44:45.990
I'm a little offended that you don't want me with you anymore.

1938
01:44:46.270 --> 01:44:47.271
Is this really what you want?

1939
01:44:47.992 --> 01:44:50.614
And if you would tell me, yes, Adam, this is what I want.

1940
01:44:50.994 --> 01:44:51.735
This is how A16C.

1941
01:44:51.755 --> 01:44:53.116
This is why they're so amazing.

1942
01:44:53.136 --> 01:44:54.077
They go with the founder.

1943
01:44:55.117 --> 01:44:59.341
I'll tell you, Stephen, it's not what I wanted, but I'm grateful for all the money you've made for me.

1944
01:44:59.761 --> 01:45:02.403
You've worked extremely hard and I wish you good luck.

1945
01:45:02.804 --> 01:45:05.326
And maybe next time when you do your next business, come back to me again.

1946
01:45:07.067 --> 01:45:07.728
They don't do that.

1947
01:45:08.500 --> 01:45:10.162
They don't ask me what I want, what I do.

1948
01:45:10.182 --> 01:45:13.605
They negotiate because they think they can push myself from 20 billion to 30.

1949
01:45:13.645 --> 01:45:14.906
Their number was 32 billion.

1950
01:45:15.086 --> 01:45:16.127
They don't know how they invented it.

1951
01:45:16.868 --> 01:45:18.169
They were thinking 100 billion.

1952
01:45:18.669 --> 01:45:22.533
Remember, they're the same one sitting around the board that never gave the feedback on the technology.

1953
01:45:22.573 --> 01:45:23.574
They've never done any of...

1954
01:45:25.516 --> 01:45:28.418
They have one thing in their eyes and one thing only, and that's dollar signs.

1955
01:45:29.279 --> 01:45:33.964
But the problem with greed and dollar signs, if you're greedy, you even lose what you have in your hand.

1956
01:45:34.774 --> 01:45:36.274
So they're negotiating this 20 billion.

1957
01:45:36.294 --> 01:45:38.695
I must have from the first day said, guys, this is my final offer.

1958
01:45:38.975 --> 01:45:41.596
There is no 21 billion, even 20 is crazy.

1959
01:45:42.056 --> 01:45:45.617
It's as high as I'm going to go because I believe in Adam and I believe in me and we're going to build together.

1960
01:45:46.637 --> 01:45:47.818
They do that until October.

1961
01:45:49.278 --> 01:45:52.259
And somewhere around the end of September, beginning of October,

1962
01:45:53.472 --> 01:45:54.633
They realize he's not moving.

1963
01:45:55.233 --> 01:46:01.176
Stock market is starting to go down and Japan and this, and these growth businesses are starting to take a hit.

1964
01:46:01.716 --> 01:46:05.918
They see that things are changing, then they decide to engage and actually negotiate the deal.

1965
01:46:06.378 --> 01:46:10.280
By the time they're done to document since December 24th, 2018.

1966
01:46:11.881 --> 01:46:16.463
SoftBank stock is really down for reasons that had nothing to do with us.

1967
01:46:17.103 --> 01:46:21.508
There is no world in which they could do a $20 billion cash deal and Masa still stays in his place.

1968
01:46:22.068 --> 01:46:25.211
And Masa calls me and said, Adam, I'm so sorry.

1969
01:46:25.852 --> 01:46:27.474
I cannot do the deal anymore.

1970
01:46:28.074 --> 01:46:29.055
It was offered in March.

1971
01:46:30.156 --> 01:46:35.222
Again, what these two board members should have done is gotten on a plane the next day, came to Masa's son and said, Masa,

1972
01:46:35.722 --> 01:46:36.262
Please sign.

1973
01:46:36.362 --> 01:46:37.563
You know everything about the board.

1974
01:46:37.603 --> 01:46:38.323
You're in the board.

1975
01:46:38.403 --> 01:46:39.343
You don't need any diligence.

1976
01:46:39.743 --> 01:46:40.623
Here's our bank account.

1977
01:46:40.883 --> 01:46:41.724
Here's the signature.

1978
01:46:41.744 --> 01:46:43.324
We're disappointed we're not staying with Adam.

1979
01:46:43.344 --> 01:46:46.325
But if that's what he wants and that's what you want, good luck to both of you.

1980
01:46:46.385 --> 01:46:47.705
Thank you for the very fair price.

1981
01:46:48.265 --> 01:46:51.806
We'll take our benchmark at the time, at least 2.4 billion they would have put.

1982
01:46:51.826 --> 01:46:53.667
We'll take our cash and walk away.

1983
01:46:54.650 --> 01:46:54.810
No.

1984
01:46:55.710 --> 01:46:58.552
No, Travis said very, in an interview, I just saw.

1985
01:46:58.792 --> 01:46:59.212
Travis.

1986
01:46:59.292 --> 01:47:00.092
Travis Kalanick.

1987
01:47:00.472 --> 01:47:02.393
Being the CEO of Ubi, the founder of Ubi.

1988
01:47:02.713 --> 01:47:05.795
And he said that being an entrepreneur is like playing eight-dimensional chess.

1989
01:47:06.435 --> 01:47:08.656
Being a venture capitalist is like watching the game.

1990
01:47:09.616 --> 01:47:14.278
Again, remember, as you're choosing your investors, choose the one who play eight-dimensional chess, not the watchers.

1991
01:47:14.538 --> 01:47:15.479
So they didn't do that.

1992
01:47:15.599 --> 01:47:16.399
Masa calls me.

1993
01:47:16.579 --> 01:47:17.259
It's December.

1994
01:47:17.359 --> 01:47:18.500
He says, I can't do the deal.

1995
01:47:18.720 --> 01:47:19.801
And I actually understand him.

1996
01:47:20.561 --> 01:47:23.122
I actually say, I understand because they did waste all that time.

1997
01:47:24.210 --> 01:47:25.871
Then I found myself in trouble.

1998
01:47:26.492 --> 01:47:31.015
Because from when he offered the deal, remember, he was going to have 70%, we were going to have 30%.

1999
01:47:31.055 --> 01:47:32.916
And the goal was a revenue goal that we needed to.

2000
01:47:33.337 --> 01:47:35.098
We were already all working towards that goal.

2001
01:47:35.118 --> 01:47:35.999
We signed the leases.

2002
01:47:36.019 --> 01:47:36.859
We made the commitments.

2003
01:47:37.240 --> 01:47:38.060
We were already rushing.

2004
01:47:38.621 --> 01:47:44.925
We found ourselves in a way that if we weren't to, he gave the $2 billion because to try not to really ruin the business.

2005
01:47:44.945 --> 01:47:46.647
He's already put a lot of money in the business already.

2006
01:47:49.269 --> 01:47:51.270
We found ourselves being forced to go public.

2007
01:47:52.638 --> 01:47:55.680
So we actually went public when we weren't ready.

2008
01:47:56.900 --> 01:47:58.021
That's what actually happened.

2009
01:47:58.041 --> 01:48:02.743
So it's very important, this piece of the story, because without that context, then you don't understand.

2010
01:48:02.783 --> 01:48:04.825
And again, it's back to all the founders you're talking about.

2011
01:48:05.665 --> 01:48:16.271
You got to choose your investors wisely, because if you choose the wrong investors, when the time counts for that big move, if they're not going to prioritize you, they're going to do what's best for them and everybody's going to lose.

2012
01:48:17.115 --> 01:48:17.975
Why weren't you ready?

2013
01:48:19.176 --> 01:48:19.836
To go public?

2014
01:48:19.997 --> 01:48:20.917
Yeah.

2015
01:48:21.217 --> 01:48:22.678
Now you're going back to systems.

2016
01:48:23.218 --> 01:48:24.699
We were growing way too fast.

2017
01:48:24.879 --> 01:48:25.059
Yeah.

2018
01:48:25.840 --> 01:48:29.081
Our tech was not catching up with us, so we couldn't measure things correctly.

2019
01:48:29.261 --> 01:48:32.483
We, there's this thing called SOX compliant when you go public.

2020
01:48:34.668 --> 01:48:39.991
Our systems weren't able to do the thing I told you before, to show that one building is profitable, but the neighborhood is not.

2021
01:48:40.511 --> 01:48:42.452
One city is profitable, but the state is not.

2022
01:48:42.472 --> 01:48:43.953
It wasn't able to divide.

2023
01:48:44.433 --> 01:48:48.295
But now, in hindsight, connecting to what we talked today, I, Adam, wasn't ready.

2024
01:48:49.056 --> 01:48:51.597
And if the founder is not ready, the business is not ready.

2025
01:48:51.637 --> 01:48:53.358
By the way, I tried to push not to go public.

2026
01:48:53.398 --> 01:48:54.959
Master called me, said, please don't go public.

2027
01:48:56.119 --> 01:48:56.600
All day.

2028
01:48:57.320 --> 01:49:04.041
people around me, some of them that came after this point and not all, but a lot of them were all go public, go public, go public.

2029
01:49:04.061 --> 01:49:07.222
I was getting pushed by the wrong people back to surround yourself with the wrong people.

2030
01:49:07.982 --> 01:49:08.742
But we weren't ready.

2031
01:49:09.042 --> 01:49:12.223
But the timeline is pretty crazy because obviously COVID is around the corner here.

2032
01:49:12.323 --> 01:49:13.923
It's called COVID-19 for a reason.

2033
01:49:14.003 --> 01:49:15.783
And we're in, that's at the end of 2018.

2034
01:49:15.803 --> 01:49:17.924
You file.

2035
01:49:18.164 --> 01:49:21.284
In January, SoftBank does invest a further $2 billion into WeWork.

2036
01:49:21.444 --> 01:49:23.625
That $2 billion was because they passed on the deal before.

2037
01:49:23.665 --> 01:49:24.785
It's not because we filed.

2038
01:49:25.880 --> 01:49:27.621
So that was kind of a, I guess, compensation.

2039
01:49:28.481 --> 01:49:31.303
Respect between Masa and myself.

2040
01:49:31.463 --> 01:49:34.645
Another great deal that Masa sent it, that he didn't have to.

2041
01:49:35.826 --> 01:49:43.870
In May 2019, you have almost 500 locations, 400,000 members, 12,000 employees around the world.

2042
01:49:44.571 --> 01:49:47.752
And then in August 2019, WeWork publicly filed its S1.

2043
01:49:49.033 --> 01:49:51.214
The company valued at around $47 billion.

2044
01:49:52.415 --> 01:49:54.456
The WeWork, the S1 showed some losses.

2045
01:49:54.916 --> 01:49:56.717
A lot of losses, not some losses.

2046
01:49:56.737 --> 01:49:57.297
Showed the truth.

2047
01:49:57.518 --> 01:49:58.518
The company was losing money.

2048
01:49:59.098 --> 01:50:07.783
Showed that WeWork had lost $690 million in the first six months of 2019, bringing the total losses to almost $3 billion in the past three years.

2049
01:50:07.863 --> 01:50:12.626
WeWork was making losses of $219k every hour it operated.

2050
01:50:13.226 --> 01:50:16.948
The S1 revealed that you'd also trademarked the word we and sold it back to the company.

2051
01:50:17.488 --> 01:50:18.149
That's not true.

2052
01:50:18.209 --> 01:50:18.809
Which you deny?

2053
01:50:18.829 --> 01:50:19.810
No, no, it's not.

2054
01:50:19.830 --> 01:50:20.230
It's not true.

2055
01:50:20.390 --> 01:50:21.271
No, no, no, it's not denying.

2056
01:50:21.791 --> 01:50:24.253
If you want, we can talk about there's a story, but that's not what happened.

2057
01:50:24.273 --> 01:50:25.174
No, no, if it's not true, it's not true.

2058
01:50:25.214 --> 01:50:26.655
I don't really care about the stuff.

2059
01:50:26.935 --> 01:50:27.075
Yeah.

2060
01:50:27.095 --> 01:50:32.119
But again, all these little details, just so we understand, just for the founders who are watching, right?

2061
01:50:32.139 --> 01:50:35.261
So now you're telling a story about something that happened to me.

2062
01:50:35.702 --> 01:50:38.884
There's supposed to be huge emotion that I'm supposed to have with this.

2063
01:50:41.017 --> 01:50:46.019
Even if it's not correct, if it's what people said, some of it is correct, not correct, so much context is missing.

2064
01:50:46.399 --> 01:50:47.039
Not the point.

2065
01:50:47.339 --> 01:50:51.500
Life is not about what other people say or what the press say or even what you say.

2066
01:50:51.520 --> 01:50:53.541
It's about what kind of person I know I am.

2067
01:50:54.021 --> 01:50:56.562
And the reason I want to tell this to you and to the listeners is...

2068
01:50:57.302 --> 01:50:58.582
We can all be that person.

2069
01:50:58.942 --> 01:50:59.462
Please keep going.

2070
01:51:00.083 --> 01:51:06.784
September 2019, WeWork announced it was postponing its IPO as a result of investors questioning the company.

2071
01:51:07.384 --> 01:51:10.605
And then, I mean, around this time, COVID shows up.

2072
01:51:10.645 --> 01:51:17.666
But then you resigned as CEO of WeWork in 2019 after the IPO didn't pan out.

2073
01:51:18.307 --> 01:51:19.567
So that's not why I resigned.

2074
01:51:19.587 --> 01:51:20.267
So I stepped down.

2075
01:51:20.487 --> 01:51:24.708
And what people don't know is I had full control over the board and the votes.

2076
01:51:25.348 --> 01:51:26.809
So I had to choose to step down.

2077
01:51:27.310 --> 01:51:30.172
People sometimes think I was fired because the Wall Street Journal said so.

2078
01:51:31.073 --> 01:51:31.473
Not true.

2079
01:51:31.934 --> 01:51:33.195
Step down, I had full control.

2080
01:51:33.355 --> 01:51:35.977
Control the board and control the... Why did you step down?

2081
01:51:36.618 --> 01:51:40.962
So if when people understand the context, and again, this is an old story, but I'm happy to go there.

2082
01:51:42.523 --> 01:51:48.528
The only reason a person in control chooses to step down is because they think that it's the best choice.

2083
01:51:49.510 --> 01:51:56.273
At the time, and again, this is part, by the way, of the play, this is the same playbook, but now we're going to say his name again, Travis, the founder of Uber.

2084
01:51:56.873 --> 01:52:00.615
Famously, Bill Gurley comes and puts a piece of paper in front of him.

2085
01:52:00.695 --> 01:52:01.335
He's Bill Galley.

2086
01:52:01.495 --> 01:52:06.497
He's one of the benchmark partners.

2087
01:52:08.838 --> 01:52:17.282
He famously puts a piece of paper in front of him, I think, and either you step down or we do this, this and this, some threat that makes him step down.

2088
01:52:18.685 --> 01:52:23.088
I have a different version of it, but they're pushing me very, very hard to step down.

2089
01:52:23.188 --> 01:52:25.329
And at the beginning, I'm like, I'm not stepping down.

2090
01:52:26.050 --> 01:52:30.172
And then I have a meeting with one of the heads of the two biggest banks in the world.

2091
01:52:30.873 --> 01:52:33.815
And he sits with me and he says to me, Adam, if you step down...

2092
01:52:34.615 --> 01:52:41.458
Then we will fund $2 billion into WeWork, which will give it time to move profitable.

2093
01:52:41.918 --> 01:52:44.340
Step down, by the way, from being CEO, become chairman.

2094
01:52:44.840 --> 01:52:47.841
And I at the time had personal debt, which is a story for another time.

2095
01:52:48.281 --> 01:52:52.563
But I had personal debt of $460 million to that bank and to other banks.

2096
01:52:52.783 --> 01:52:54.424
And I said, but what about my personal debt?

2097
01:52:54.444 --> 01:52:55.685
My board member was next to me.

2098
01:52:56.045 --> 01:52:57.886
And the guy who runs my family office was next to me.

2099
01:52:58.246 --> 01:52:59.686
We said, what about our personal debt?

2100
01:52:59.807 --> 01:53:02.328
And he said, don't worry about it.

2101
01:53:03.348 --> 01:53:04.349
We'll figure it out.

2102
01:53:05.270 --> 01:53:13.437
There was also an advisor to my board, and he came in front of the whole board, and he said, I spoke to the bank.

2103
01:53:13.497 --> 01:53:14.458
They said, it's all good.

2104
01:53:14.538 --> 01:53:15.399
Everything will work out.

2105
01:53:16.159 --> 01:53:19.843
So I stepped down out of choice because I thought it was going to fund WeWork.

2106
01:53:20.652 --> 01:53:23.255
I thought it was going to take care of Massa.

2107
01:53:23.355 --> 01:53:24.876
I thought it was going to take care of the employees.

2108
01:53:25.337 --> 01:53:26.878
I thought it was going to take care of everybody.

2109
01:53:27.018 --> 01:53:29.160
And it sounded like it was in the best of everybody.

2110
01:53:29.501 --> 01:53:30.502
But I wasn't going away.

2111
01:53:30.522 --> 01:53:33.805
I was just stepping down from being CEO and becoming executive chairman.

2112
01:53:34.365 --> 01:53:35.386
I do the board call.

2113
01:53:35.967 --> 01:53:36.707
I step down.

2114
01:53:37.248 --> 01:53:40.771
And 10 minutes later, a legal letter comes from the bank.

2115
01:53:41.552 --> 01:53:50.450
And basically says, because of your breach of contract, because it's change of control, something very technical, something we talked about to them before, and they said no problem, but we didn't have it in writing.

2116
01:53:51.071 --> 01:53:51.893
Because of your...

2117
01:53:54.038 --> 01:53:55.079
breach of contract.

2118
01:53:55.139 --> 01:54:03.789
And because you had the change of control, you now have 15 days to pay us back our debt, that 460 million, or we will take your shares.

2119
01:54:04.269 --> 01:54:12.298
And because of my super voting rights, my shares were five to one, which means that by taking away my shares, they would have taken control over the company.

2120
01:54:13.238 --> 01:54:16.839
Now, what I'm describing to you, and you talked a lot about founders, but you didn't know a lot of the names.

2121
01:54:17.299 --> 01:54:21.701
It's important to know the names and the history because I'm not describing to you something that happened for the first time.

2122
01:54:22.241 --> 01:54:25.622
This famously happened to multiple entrepreneurs in history.

2123
01:54:25.962 --> 01:54:27.982
This used to be the venture capital playbook.

2124
01:54:28.363 --> 01:54:31.063
Today, there is a new crop of venture capitalists, and they're very different.

2125
01:54:31.123 --> 01:54:36.645
But old school venture capital, a lot of times, this is how it used to go.

2126
01:54:38.246 --> 01:54:39.266
That was the surprise.

2127
01:54:43.247 --> 01:54:45.371
I stepped down because I thought it was the best for everybody.

2128
01:54:45.531 --> 01:54:48.977
And a second after I did it, we got stabbed in the back.

2129
01:54:49.518 --> 01:54:51.781
And the only lesson there, if you're going to stab the king...

2130
01:54:52.955 --> 01:54:53.175
kill.

2131
01:54:54.116 --> 01:54:57.619
If you're not going to kill, we're going to take a deep breath.

2132
01:54:58.620 --> 01:54:59.762
We're going to learn our lessons.

2133
01:55:00.582 --> 01:55:02.424
We're going to know what's really important in life.

2134
01:55:03.065 --> 01:55:03.925
We're going to come back again.

2135
01:55:05.307 --> 01:55:07.048
And that's what actually happened there.

2136
01:55:07.068 --> 01:55:10.852
And the only reason the story is a little challenging for you is because we never corrected it publicly.

2137
01:55:11.493 --> 01:55:13.655
And the reason we corrected some of it, but not all of it.

2138
01:55:13.715 --> 01:55:16.177
And the reason we didn't correct it publicly, for what?

2139
01:55:16.197 --> 01:55:16.577
For what?

2140
01:55:16.597 --> 01:55:17.178
For what?

2141
01:55:17.278 --> 01:55:29.650
The best way I can talk about the past is by what I do today, by how we're speaking right now, by how my kids are, by the businesses I build, by the nonprofit I do, by the friendships I have, by the relationships I hold.

2142
01:55:30.430 --> 01:55:41.140
And the reason a lot of entrepreneurs come to take money from us, and again, we don't invest anymore, but we have a huge inbound of people wanting us to invest in them, is because we don't talk about our successes all the time.

2143
01:55:41.460 --> 01:55:42.581
We talk about the lessons.

2144
01:55:43.362 --> 01:55:47.183
Measure us by how we're going to be next to you when time is very tough.

2145
01:55:48.063 --> 01:55:49.443
So that's what actually happened there.

2146
01:55:49.623 --> 01:55:51.503
And I found myself out of it very quickly.

2147
01:55:51.543 --> 01:55:54.924
And from there, without making the story confused, Masa came.

2148
01:55:55.344 --> 01:55:56.284
Masa saved the day.

2149
01:55:56.804 --> 01:55:59.485
He paid the debt to all the banks, 460 million.

2150
01:55:59.885 --> 01:56:02.725
And in return, I gave him my control of the company.

2151
01:56:02.765 --> 01:56:07.226
I gave him whatever he asked for because we were done and the company was done.

2152
01:56:07.846 --> 01:56:08.886
And he came to save it.

2153
01:56:09.147 --> 01:56:11.327
And then the rest was running under them.

2154
01:56:12.508 --> 01:56:15.612
You get an email from the bank within sort of, I think it was nine minutes I read.

2155
01:56:15.772 --> 01:56:16.193
Nine minutes.

2156
01:56:16.714 --> 01:56:21.100
Nine minutes asking for you to immediately repay, I think, was it about $450 million?

2157
01:56:21.120 --> 01:56:24.384
$450 million compounding daily because you're in default.

2158
01:56:25.437 --> 01:56:27.399
Just for anyone that doesn't know what compounding daily means.

2159
01:56:27.459 --> 01:56:28.500
So I have 435...

2160
01:56:28.820 --> 01:56:33.144
If you read it, it's only for my Rick Rubin interview, because the first time I said it was only a few months ago.

2161
01:56:33.264 --> 01:56:34.024
I never spoke about this.

2162
01:56:34.285 --> 01:56:34.525
Okay.

2163
01:56:34.865 --> 01:56:36.487
Compounding daily means every day...

2164
01:56:36.507 --> 01:56:44.013
So if you have debt of 10% annual, or let's do 12, so it's easy, which would calculate to 1% a month just to keep things really easy.

2165
01:56:44.554 --> 01:56:48.617
Compounding daily is when your debt suddenly goes back then, I think it's 5% became 50%.

2166
01:56:50.139 --> 01:56:52.721
15 and you calculate it on daily increments.

2167
01:56:52.761 --> 01:56:59.286
So each time it compounds again and again and again, it ends up that when you do the calculation for the year, it's more than the debt number.

2168
01:57:00.167 --> 01:57:01.749
Your debt is growing by more than a million a day.

2169
01:57:02.484 --> 01:57:03.024
No, it's not.

2170
01:57:03.044 --> 01:57:04.005
We would have to do the math.

2171
01:57:04.045 --> 01:57:04.825
It's not a million there.

2172
01:57:04.845 --> 01:57:06.026
But let's say it's 15%.

2173
01:57:06.066 --> 01:57:07.567
Let's just use clean numbers.

2174
01:57:07.987 --> 01:57:11.389
Let's say it's 15% over 400 million, which would have been 60 million.

2175
01:57:11.809 --> 01:57:13.250
It's actually more than 60 million.

2176
01:57:13.390 --> 01:57:16.331
And if you divide it to it, it's huge numbers that we don't have money to pay.

2177
01:57:16.772 --> 01:57:17.832
Okay, so you have no money.

2178
01:57:17.992 --> 01:57:18.312
No money.

2179
01:57:18.572 --> 01:57:21.194
And the bank have asked you for 400, let's say 450 million.

2180
01:57:21.234 --> 01:57:22.855
And gave us 15 days to pay.

2181
01:57:22.935 --> 01:57:24.095
Giving you 15 days to pay.

2182
01:57:24.135 --> 01:57:25.096
Or they take everything.

2183
01:57:26.453 --> 01:57:28.074
You say, this is what broke me.

2184
01:57:28.934 --> 01:57:29.654
When did I say that?

2185
01:57:29.674 --> 01:57:30.815
I think you said on the podcast.

2186
01:57:30.915 --> 01:57:32.875
Yeah, you said on the podcast, you said, this is what broke me.

2187
01:57:33.115 --> 01:57:33.596
That was a direct quote.

2188
01:57:33.616 --> 01:57:37.917
I don't know if I meant, I wonder if it meant I was broke, because I don't think that's what broke me.

2189
01:57:38.117 --> 01:57:41.978
You described waking up in the middle of the night crying because you thought you had lost everything.

2190
01:57:42.098 --> 01:57:43.099
Yes, that's more accurate.

2191
01:57:43.759 --> 01:57:45.840
So at the moment when that happens, we were okay.

2192
01:57:46.640 --> 01:57:50.908
Few days later, I wake up in the middle of the night next to Rebecca crying.

2193
01:57:51.609 --> 01:57:52.971
Now, we talked about my childhood.

2194
01:57:53.072 --> 01:57:54.414
We talked to you and I today about my childhood.

2195
01:57:54.474 --> 01:57:55.476
We didn't get the tears out.

2196
01:57:55.916 --> 01:57:56.377
I don't cry.

2197
01:57:57.119 --> 01:57:57.760
Not for that.

2198
01:57:59.855 --> 01:58:01.496
First time Rebecca ever sees me cry.

2199
01:58:02.237 --> 01:58:04.098
She looks at me and she's like, why are you crying?

2200
01:58:04.839 --> 01:58:06.120
And I said, we lost everything.

2201
01:58:06.940 --> 01:58:07.921
I think that's what I said there.

2202
01:58:08.021 --> 01:58:08.942
I said, we lost everything.

2203
01:58:08.962 --> 01:58:10.202
She goes, what do you mean everything?

2204
01:58:10.723 --> 01:58:11.804
I was like, everything.

2205
01:58:12.284 --> 01:58:13.044
She goes, the cars?

2206
01:58:13.064 --> 01:58:14.626
I said, the wheels on the car.

2207
01:58:15.226 --> 01:58:15.666
Everything.

2208
01:58:16.587 --> 01:58:20.310
I goes, yeah, but remember we said you're going to put 100 million on my name just in case.

2209
01:58:20.330 --> 01:58:21.591
I said, yeah, I remember.

2210
01:58:22.011 --> 01:58:23.172
She goes, and at least we have that.

2211
01:58:23.192 --> 01:58:24.893
I said, I never did it.

2212
01:58:25.759 --> 01:58:26.540
I said, you never did that.

2213
01:58:26.600 --> 01:58:27.501
I said, never did.

2214
01:58:27.521 --> 01:58:28.703
He said, okay, but it's no problem.

2215
01:58:28.723 --> 01:58:30.245
You didn't sign a personal guarantee.

2216
01:58:30.265 --> 01:58:32.328
We said you'd never sign a personal guarantee.

2217
01:58:33.610 --> 01:58:35.132
I said, I signed the personal guarantee.

2218
01:58:35.152 --> 01:58:37.475
It's a long story how that happened, but I signed.

2219
01:58:38.965 --> 01:58:41.786
Again, this is why who you marry is so important.

2220
01:58:42.647 --> 01:58:55.032
How many partners do you know who a second ago thought they were worth whatever that number was and lived a high life and find out in one minute, no preparation, that not only is it all gone, it's all gone.

2221
01:58:55.192 --> 01:58:59.934
And on top of the fact that it's all gone, the promises that was made to them in the relationship were not kept.

2222
01:59:00.514 --> 01:59:04.717
So it's gone and money was not put aside and a personal guarantee was signed.

2223
01:59:04.737 --> 01:59:07.340
Because if I'm signing a personal guarantee, I'm signing for both of us who are married.

2224
01:59:07.980 --> 01:59:11.163
And a personal guarantee was signed that was agreed to not to sign.

2225
01:59:12.103 --> 01:59:14.165
This is why you have to choose your partner really well.

2226
01:59:14.265 --> 01:59:19.069
Choose your partner for the day something like that happens, not for any other day.

2227
01:59:20.570 --> 01:59:24.293
I'm lucky that I chose well or she chose me or the universe chose us.

2228
01:59:25.174 --> 01:59:28.597
She looks at me and she goes, hmm.

2229
01:59:29.809 --> 01:59:31.749
Okay, this is a surprise.

2230
01:59:32.850 --> 01:59:34.650
My mom owns a house in upstate New York.

2231
01:59:34.670 --> 01:59:35.870
She bought it 30 years ago.

2232
01:59:35.910 --> 01:59:36.790
She has no mortgage.

2233
01:59:37.251 --> 01:59:38.311
Let's go live with my mom.

2234
01:59:39.151 --> 01:59:40.531
Take a few months, think about it.

2235
01:59:40.551 --> 01:59:43.492
If you want to go back into business, I know you'll be successful.

2236
01:59:44.252 --> 01:59:47.413
And if you don't, we'll move to Costa Rica.

2237
01:59:47.773 --> 01:59:48.673
I will homeschool.

2238
01:59:49.093 --> 01:59:51.693
And we will serve every morning and serve every night.

2239
01:59:52.154 --> 01:59:53.134
And we'll have a great life.

2240
01:59:53.434 --> 01:59:55.394
Both cases, don't worry about it.

2241
01:59:57.935 --> 01:59:58.795
And at that moment,

2242
02:00:00.448 --> 02:00:02.869
This is when I think I grow up for the first time.

2243
02:00:03.449 --> 02:00:06.710
And you asked about this and I was weird talking, you're helping me understand something.

2244
02:00:08.530 --> 02:00:10.391
You talked about the child and the pain.

2245
02:00:10.831 --> 02:00:15.552
As a child, when we're facing these very difficult things, we have no one to count on.

2246
02:00:16.433 --> 02:00:17.133
Only our parents.

2247
02:00:17.913 --> 02:00:20.874
For a moment, I think I was the child again crying.

2248
02:00:22.720 --> 02:00:27.921
But I wasn't a child anymore because I had an amazing wife and kids that I could lean back on.

2249
02:00:28.682 --> 02:00:44.806
I have my back even if I messed up, even if I didn't keep my word, even if I didn't do things the way they're supposed to, even if I took all the potential in the world and messed it up or lost it, even though it was ours for the taking.

2250
02:00:46.108 --> 02:00:49.690
And the moment I realized that, I felt a little stronger.

2251
02:00:50.511 --> 02:00:51.131
I felt better.

2252
02:00:51.151 --> 02:00:53.152
I stopped crying.

2253
02:00:53.432 --> 02:00:54.353
I was like, okay.

2254
02:00:55.613 --> 02:00:57.575
But Rebecca sees that I'm still not smiling.

2255
02:00:59.356 --> 02:01:03.158
She goes, by the way, when I met you, you were broke.

2256
02:01:04.439 --> 02:01:06.500
I think you're much more sexy when you're broke.

2257
02:01:07.360 --> 02:01:08.501
Then I smiled.

2258
02:01:08.601 --> 02:01:09.602
Now I was happy.

2259
02:01:10.550 --> 02:01:15.373
Then I walked downstairs and now you're completing the story from before that morning after when I go to my three employees.

2260
02:01:16.154 --> 02:01:17.695
Two things happened before that morning.

2261
02:01:18.175 --> 02:01:23.219
One was the story with the spiritual teacher who taught me that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn.

2262
02:01:23.599 --> 02:01:26.401
And that belief is measured when we're down, not when we're up.

2263
02:01:26.942 --> 02:01:35.187
And two, I knew that I could rely on Rebecca, which means I had a foundation and I had a real partner and I can make it through anything.

2264
02:01:36.308 --> 02:01:38.690
So when those...

2265
02:01:39.010 --> 02:01:40.691
When my three employees said, why are you smiling?

2266
02:01:41.211 --> 02:01:42.212
They didn't add everything.

2267
02:01:42.692 --> 02:01:45.794
I told them the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn, and I believe.

2268
02:01:46.335 --> 02:01:49.376
But I also told them, and my wife thinks I'm sexy.

2269
02:01:53.259 --> 02:01:58.482
For a kid that didn't have much stability, that was a moment where you realized your foundation was probably rock solid, I think.

2270
02:01:59.723 --> 02:02:00.943
I go back to where you started.

2271
02:02:01.604 --> 02:02:05.246
Biggest decision any of us can make in our life is who is our partner.

2272
02:02:06.187 --> 02:02:07.328
And how do we know who they are?

2273
02:02:07.588 --> 02:02:08.588
We now said two things.

2274
02:02:08.848 --> 02:02:12.110
One, do they make us the best version of ourselves?

2275
02:02:12.290 --> 02:02:20.714
Two, how will they be in that very tough day if everything was gone and all that is left is not only our nice side.

2276
02:02:21.254 --> 02:02:23.375
We talked before about the dark side and the light side.

2277
02:02:23.855 --> 02:02:27.517
How are they gonna treat us if for a moment it's just the dark side?

2278
02:02:27.977 --> 02:02:31.459
If the light is not turned off, but diminished.

2279
02:02:32.119 --> 02:02:37.032
I can see all the emotion in your face when you recount that moment and how much that means to you.

2280
02:02:38.777 --> 02:02:40.361
Probably more so than anything else you've said.

2281
02:02:41.100 --> 02:02:44.042
Sometimes Rebecca is quick to anger with me.

2282
02:02:44.982 --> 02:02:46.523
And I can be upset for a second.

2283
02:02:47.083 --> 02:02:58.710
But when I have a second to take a deep breath and remember how, what a great wife I have and what a great partner I have, there's nothing she can do that can actually keep me upset for more than a little bit.

2284
02:02:59.370 --> 02:03:02.652
Because our relationship has been testing fire.

2285
02:03:04.970 --> 02:03:17.135
There's another remarkable story I remember you saying about her giving you some advice to stand your ground in the post-WeWork era where there was negotiations still going on about, I think, your compensation that you're going to get.

2286
02:03:17.235 --> 02:03:19.976
And she gave you some really, really good advice about standing your ground.

2287
02:03:20.137 --> 02:03:20.517
She did.

2288
02:03:21.357 --> 02:03:23.898
What was that, for those that haven't heard that story?

2289
02:03:24.739 --> 02:03:27.620
It inspired me because, you know, I do tend to think my fiancée's always right.

2290
02:03:27.660 --> 02:03:29.321
So when I heard that, I thought, huh.

2291
02:03:29.521 --> 02:03:33.383
So first of all, it's very hard to stand our ground when we think we have a lot to lose.

2292
02:03:34.364 --> 02:03:35.344
It's back to that fear.

2293
02:03:37.305 --> 02:03:38.846
Rebecca has many superpowers.

2294
02:03:38.986 --> 02:03:41.287
One of them, she has no fear.

2295
02:03:41.748 --> 02:03:42.228
To a fault.

2296
02:03:42.988 --> 02:03:43.729
She's all truth.

2297
02:03:44.509 --> 02:03:46.370
She sees people for who they are.

2298
02:03:47.498 --> 02:03:50.420
And therefore she's honest and she's not afraid of her truth.

2299
02:03:50.480 --> 02:03:54.643
If someone's not going to be our friend, if someone's not going to talk to us because of it, she doesn't care.

2300
02:03:55.384 --> 02:03:56.364
She calls it as it is.

2301
02:03:57.165 --> 02:04:01.508
And at the end of this whole negotiation, when it came time to finish everything,

2302
02:04:03.413 --> 02:04:12.780
My litigator at the time, today is my partner, his name is Eric Seiler, he called me and we talked and we said and said, I think we can get to a deal.

2303
02:04:13.300 --> 02:04:15.182
And we talked about the deal and we got to the deal.

2304
02:04:15.682 --> 02:04:17.063
With her, between her and her.

2305
02:04:17.363 --> 02:04:21.826
So fast to finish for the story for everyone, I stepped down, the world,

2306
02:04:23.067 --> 02:04:24.308
I get the letter from the bank.

2307
02:04:24.368 --> 02:04:25.029
We have nothing.

2308
02:04:25.149 --> 02:04:30.933
Masa-san comes in, saves the day, funds the company, funds us, pays our debt.

2309
02:04:30.953 --> 02:04:33.815
But we don't get money, but we don't get the big number.

2310
02:04:34.496 --> 02:04:44.062
And agrees in April 1st, 2020, to pay myself and all the other investors $3 billion cash, out of which we would have been 30%.

2311
02:04:44.103 --> 02:04:45.924
So $1 billion for us.

2312
02:04:47.525 --> 02:04:49.607
Corona happens really in March.

2313
02:04:50.637 --> 02:04:56.781
And on the last day of March 2020, we had a letter from SoftBank saying that this is force majeure.

2314
02:04:57.102 --> 02:05:04.827
For those of you who don't know what force majeure means, it's when an event happens that's greater than life, that's out of control, like a flood or something.

2315
02:05:04.927 --> 02:05:11.532
Force majeure, force of nature, something unexpected, and they don't have to pay the money, and they don't send the $3 billion.

2316
02:05:12.172 --> 02:05:15.173
I remember by this point I've taken so many hits.

2317
02:05:15.233 --> 02:05:16.874
At this point, I'm already practiced.

2318
02:05:16.914 --> 02:05:20.275
I look up to the heavens and I say, thank you, God.

2319
02:05:20.815 --> 02:05:22.235
What do we need to learn from this one?

2320
02:05:22.275 --> 02:05:23.516
This one I'm already ready to learn.

2321
02:05:23.556 --> 02:05:27.377
And the lesson there was apparently litigation is what we need to learn from this one.

2322
02:05:27.777 --> 02:05:29.658
And we go into very complicated litigation.

2323
02:05:30.298 --> 02:05:35.439
When the litigation ends with a settlement of a billion and a half, so instead of the three billion, it ends up being half.

2324
02:05:35.779 --> 02:05:37.360
So everybody gets half, but it's done.

2325
02:05:39.962 --> 02:05:44.444
We negotiate a certain negotiation and was going to take a certain time for the money to come in.

2326
02:05:45.204 --> 02:05:47.445
And Rebecca was just about to give birth.

2327
02:05:47.505 --> 02:05:49.486
This was four days before she was giving birth.

2328
02:05:51.007 --> 02:05:56.629
And I walk in with my best friend, Andrew Finkelstein, who was there with me for this whole experience.

2329
02:05:56.909 --> 02:05:59.770
And we walk into, because this is Corona, so everything's on Zoom.

2330
02:06:00.110 --> 02:06:02.911
So Eric Seiler, the litigator, is in his house in New York.

2331
02:06:03.011 --> 02:06:03.832
We're in the Hamptons.

2332
02:06:04.292 --> 02:06:05.012
They're in Japan.

2333
02:06:05.072 --> 02:06:06.073
Everybody's all over the place.

2334
02:06:07.243 --> 02:06:14.668
And we walk in to tell Rebecca the settlement that we agreed and we settled, but the money will come in two months and this will happen and that will happen.

2335
02:06:16.649 --> 02:06:17.529
And she says, no.

2336
02:06:18.490 --> 02:06:21.192
And we're supposed, if we don't close the deal, Monday, we're going to court.

2337
02:06:22.092 --> 02:06:24.714
And court was not, A, not going to be great for anyone.

2338
02:06:25.494 --> 02:06:32.338
And B, it wasn't great for WeWork because if we weren't going to go to court, another investor was going to come.

2339
02:06:32.358 --> 02:06:34.560
They're going to take the WeWork at least to the chance.

2340
02:06:34.580 --> 02:06:34.840
Yeah.

2341
02:06:37.321 --> 02:06:42.244
and she goes, no, we've already had, they were supposed to pay April 1st for 2020.

2342
02:06:42.264 --> 02:06:43.164
They didn't pay.

2343
02:06:43.504 --> 02:06:44.185
The 3 billion.

2344
02:06:44.225 --> 02:06:44.665
The 3 billion.

2345
02:06:45.065 --> 02:06:49.447
Why are you now settling the 3 billion with another agreement to delay payment again?

2346
02:06:49.888 --> 02:06:50.628
What if they don't pay?

2347
02:06:51.108 --> 02:06:52.369
And now you missed your court date.

2348
02:06:53.827 --> 02:06:56.127
Either they pay and then they're settled.

2349
02:06:56.267 --> 02:06:58.248
We'll all say thank you and everybody will walk away.

2350
02:06:58.268 --> 02:06:59.128
And it's not just paying to us.

2351
02:06:59.148 --> 02:07:01.608
That billion and a half is to all the employees and all the investors.

2352
02:07:01.929 --> 02:07:03.989
It's half a billion to us and a billion to everyone else.

2353
02:07:04.829 --> 02:07:10.230
Either, and I know for all of us listening, that these are outrageously large numbers.

2354
02:07:10.290 --> 02:07:12.210
I completely acknowledge and understand.

2355
02:07:14.111 --> 02:07:15.151
Either they pay or they don't.

2356
02:07:15.451 --> 02:07:16.751
And I say to her, what do you want to do?

2357
02:07:16.771 --> 02:07:17.491
We agreed on it.

2358
02:07:17.791 --> 02:07:20.632
And she goes, tell them you agreed on it, but your wife didn't.

2359
02:07:21.712 --> 02:07:24.693
And she goes, you didn't do the money aside that we talked.

2360
02:07:24.894 --> 02:07:26.234
You signed the personal guarantee.

2361
02:07:26.554 --> 02:07:27.475
It's not just your money.

2362
02:07:27.535 --> 02:07:28.355
This is our money.

2363
02:07:28.795 --> 02:07:30.156
And I don't accept the settlement.

2364
02:07:30.776 --> 02:07:33.718
Go back and tell them that either they pay it.

2365
02:07:35.039 --> 02:07:37.161
Tomorrow's, this was like a Thursday, this was Wednesday.

2366
02:07:37.982 --> 02:07:41.085
Before, we had a Schedule C section, so Friday, 8 a.m.

2367
02:07:41.666 --> 02:07:45.770
Either they pay it before Friday, 8 a.m., or we'll see everybody in court on Monday.

2368
02:07:46.231 --> 02:07:51.616
And she said also tell them that any horrible thing that's ever been said about you has been on the press and public.

2369
02:07:52.137 --> 02:07:52.877
It's all out there.

2370
02:07:53.098 --> 02:07:53.418
So...

2371
02:07:53.618 --> 02:07:59.660
Eric Seiler calls me and he says, I tell, so actually Rebecca called him and he said, Adam, I have a question for you.

2372
02:07:59.680 --> 02:08:00.421
Who do I work for?

2373
02:08:00.481 --> 02:08:01.221
You or Rebecca?

2374
02:08:01.781 --> 02:08:03.782
I said, well, you work for me and I work for Rebecca.

2375
02:08:03.822 --> 02:08:08.004
So you work for Rebecca because that's what I thought because she called me and told me I'm a lousy lawyer.

2376
02:08:08.304 --> 02:08:09.404
I said, you're not a lousy lawyer.

2377
02:08:09.424 --> 02:08:10.825
She just doesn't like our settlement.

2378
02:08:11.165 --> 02:08:12.626
But we did get to a resolution.

2379
02:08:13.666 --> 02:08:14.707
I go, what do you think we should do?

2380
02:08:14.787 --> 02:08:16.027
He said, you have no choice.

2381
02:08:16.047 --> 02:08:17.148
You should tell them there's no deal.

2382
02:08:17.168 --> 02:08:18.149
I said, what are they going to do?

2383
02:08:18.169 --> 02:08:19.189
He said, they're going to explode.

2384
02:08:19.730 --> 02:08:21.351
Said, and then, I don't know.

2385
02:08:21.731 --> 02:08:25.833
Either they'll meet you in court and this was a horrible decision or they'll break and send the money.

2386
02:08:26.213 --> 02:08:27.454
Said, what do you think is going to happen?

2387
02:08:27.974 --> 02:08:29.635
Said, I've never been in this position.

2388
02:08:29.996 --> 02:08:30.976
Said, I don't know.

2389
02:08:32.017 --> 02:08:34.118
Said, OK. Got on the phone.

2390
02:08:34.138 --> 02:08:35.299
We told them what we told them.

2391
02:08:35.419 --> 02:08:37.520
They hung, they screamed, bah, bah, bah.

2392
02:08:37.540 --> 02:08:39.401
We're going to sue you for this and sue you for that.

2393
02:08:40.882 --> 02:08:41.747
They hung up the Zoom.

2394
02:08:42.490 --> 02:08:43.495
I called Eric, what now?

2395
02:08:43.575 --> 02:08:44.459
He goes, now we wait.

2396
02:08:45.243 --> 02:08:45.605
Okay.

2397
02:08:46.307 --> 02:08:48.707
Two hours later, Marcelo calls.

2398
02:08:48.827 --> 02:08:51.988
And Marcelo is not the person who made the original investment in me.

2399
02:08:52.068 --> 02:08:56.149
Marcelo Klor, at the time, he was a very big personality in SoftBank.

2400
02:08:56.169 --> 02:08:57.209
Today he has his own business.

2401
02:08:57.809 --> 02:09:01.810
Every time that I've had an interaction with me, he's always kept his word and always did the right thing.

2402
02:09:01.870 --> 02:09:04.290
Even when I didn't agree with him, he told it to me straight.

2403
02:09:04.370 --> 02:09:06.811
I respect him a lot.

2404
02:09:07.671 --> 02:09:08.751
And Marcelo calls me.

2405
02:09:08.811 --> 02:09:09.671
He's on the walker.

2406
02:09:09.691 --> 02:09:10.671
He's like a tall guy.

2407
02:09:10.711 --> 02:09:11.892
He's on this walker.

2408
02:09:12.472 --> 02:09:13.332
He goes, call Rebecca.

2409
02:09:13.352 --> 02:09:13.472
Yeah.

2410
02:09:14.072 --> 02:09:15.237
I was like, are you sure, Marcelo?

2411
02:09:15.257 --> 02:09:16.683
She's like on the couch, call Rebecca.

2412
02:09:16.763 --> 02:09:17.406
I was like, okay.

2413
02:09:18.245 --> 02:09:22.467
I call Rebecca, she's coming in again, right before birth.

2414
02:09:23.408 --> 02:09:28.731
And she's standing there next to me, and her sister goes, Rebecca, I wanted to tell you that you and Adam were ahead of your time.

2415
02:09:29.411 --> 02:09:30.412
He's so correct.

2416
02:09:30.652 --> 02:09:32.413
He said, the world is lonely.

2417
02:09:32.613 --> 02:09:34.114
The world is disconnected.

2418
02:09:34.294 --> 02:09:37.455
People need we, people need to bring people together.

2419
02:09:37.555 --> 02:09:38.696
People need community.

2420
02:09:39.617 --> 02:09:41.338
You're 10 years ahead of your time.

2421
02:09:41.518 --> 02:09:42.398
I don't think we were 10 years.

2422
02:09:42.438 --> 02:09:45.300
I think we were five years ahead of our time because the world's moving so fast.

2423
02:09:46.409 --> 02:09:50.053
Because I just want to tell you, the money will be in the bank before you give birth.

2424
02:09:50.333 --> 02:09:52.215
I'm sorry we had to go through all of this.

2425
02:09:52.235 --> 02:09:53.256
This is just business.

2426
02:09:53.776 --> 02:09:54.957
Nothing here was personal.

2427
02:09:56.499 --> 02:09:57.460
We'll take the keys.

2428
02:09:57.680 --> 02:09:59.702
Hopefully we do well by the company, but we're good.

2429
02:10:00.873 --> 02:10:01.533
Gets off the Zoom.

2430
02:10:02.173 --> 02:10:02.573
I look at her.

2431
02:10:02.593 --> 02:10:03.074
I say, now what?

2432
02:10:03.094 --> 02:10:04.414
She goes, fine, sign the documents.

2433
02:10:04.454 --> 02:10:07.615
I said, but you said we can't do it if the money's not in.

2434
02:10:07.915 --> 02:10:08.915
She goes, no, no, we're all good now.

2435
02:10:09.735 --> 02:10:10.295
We signed.

2436
02:10:11.196 --> 02:10:14.176
At 4.30 a.m., the money hits the account.

2437
02:10:14.696 --> 02:10:15.877
We all get on a Zoom.

2438
02:10:16.517 --> 02:10:20.158
At 8 a.m., I'm in Mount Sinai Hospital, great hospital.

2439
02:10:21.318 --> 02:10:23.019
Rebecca is giving birth to Moses.

2440
02:10:24.639 --> 02:10:25.839
Everybody took a deep breath.

2441
02:10:28.220 --> 02:10:28.900
And we're here today.

2442
02:10:30.982 --> 02:10:34.583
Adam, I have, I'm going to wrap up, but I have these five pieces of empty card.

2443
02:10:35.363 --> 02:10:38.003
And I wanted to give you the opportunity to write on it.

2444
02:10:38.063 --> 02:10:39.544
Are you okay with writing or shall I write it for you?

2445
02:10:39.584 --> 02:10:40.284
You'll write for me.

2446
02:10:40.304 --> 02:10:40.904
I can write for it.

2447
02:10:40.944 --> 02:10:41.684
With my dyslexia.

2448
02:10:41.884 --> 02:10:42.724
Okay.

2449
02:10:42.884 --> 02:10:48.745
Just the five most important lessons that you have learned over since the beginning of WeWork.

2450
02:10:49.146 --> 02:10:50.446
Well, I guess from the beginning of your early years.

2451
02:10:50.466 --> 02:10:53.186
How about we just do the five lessons I feel we learned today by talking?

2452
02:10:53.306 --> 02:10:53.506
Sure.

2453
02:10:53.906 --> 02:10:54.467
Lesson one.

2454
02:10:55.047 --> 02:10:56.327
Choose your life partner.

2455
02:10:56.347 --> 02:10:56.447
Okay.

2456
02:10:57.107 --> 02:11:01.331
friends and business partners for the worst day in your life, not for the best.

2457
02:11:01.991 --> 02:11:02.151
Okay.

2458
02:11:03.612 --> 02:11:04.093
Great advice.

2459
02:11:04.873 --> 02:11:08.917
Listen to life is not about when we fall down.

2460
02:11:09.557 --> 02:11:10.658
It's about how we get up.

2461
02:11:11.359 --> 02:11:11.639
Okay.

2462
02:11:11.799 --> 02:11:12.179
Number two.

2463
02:11:13.340 --> 02:11:16.883
Choose the life partner that will make you the best version of yourself.

2464
02:11:17.564 --> 02:11:20.406
The one that you need, not the one that you think you want.

2465
02:11:21.227 --> 02:11:21.527
Okay.

2466
02:11:22.856 --> 02:11:25.297
Control doesn't come from power.

2467
02:11:25.877 --> 02:11:26.958
It comes from influence.

2468
02:11:27.538 --> 02:11:32.220
And influence needs to be errant every single day from the beginning.

2469
02:11:33.240 --> 02:11:38.562
And last but not least, we all have a destiny and a journey.

2470
02:11:40.392 --> 02:11:44.333
get to know yourself so you can start living yours.

2471
02:11:45.313 --> 02:11:45.873
That one's for you.

2472
02:11:46.374 --> 02:11:48.854
Yeah, I thought so.

2473
02:11:48.874 --> 02:11:49.714
Adam, thank you so much.

2474
02:11:49.874 --> 02:11:54.376
I couldn't be more excited by all the wonderful things you're doing at Flow at the moment.

2475
02:11:54.856 --> 02:11:57.976
Got some wonderful photos here of like the team and I've looked into the business.

2476
02:11:57.996 --> 02:11:59.177
I also had your partner,

2477
02:12:00.577 --> 02:12:02.279
your partner, one of the greatest investors of all time.

2478
02:12:02.499 --> 02:12:25.559
Ben Horowitz will write me this beautiful letter where he talks about the amazing journey he's had with you, why he backed you, and how amazingly collaborative you've been, what a sponge you are for learning, and how he strongly believes that you are now building a generational business that will change the world, and how proud he is to be associated with a man like you.

2479
02:12:25.659 --> 02:12:26.320
He tells us all,

2480
02:12:26.900 --> 02:12:27.481
Ben Horowitz.

2481
02:12:28.121 --> 02:12:31.064
We should never judge a founder by his worst moment.

2482
02:12:32.706 --> 02:12:38.451
But with Adam, that was easy because his light shined and shines so brightly.

2483
02:12:39.332 --> 02:12:41.854
You have over-delivered in every sense of the

2484
02:12:46.317 --> 02:12:46.697
Thank you, Adam.

2485
02:12:46.717 --> 02:12:47.217
It's beautiful.

2486
02:12:47.877 --> 02:12:50.178
I want Steven to thank you.

2487
02:12:50.198 --> 02:12:55.159
I know we had a real discussion because I learned a few things for the first time.

2488
02:12:56.319 --> 02:12:59.699
And you made me talk out loud about a few things that I've almost never had.

2489
02:13:00.479 --> 02:13:01.300
I appreciate it.

2490
02:13:01.660 --> 02:13:04.020
And I'm going to think about it and I'm going to learn from it.

2491
02:13:04.320 --> 02:13:05.120
What's your last word?

2492
02:13:05.160 --> 02:13:08.761
Is there anything at all that you wanted to leave the audience with?

2493
02:13:10.541 --> 02:13:14.702
We all came to this planet with a purpose and a destiny.

2494
02:13:18.388 --> 02:13:21.350
We started this life as this perfect light.

2495
02:13:23.231 --> 02:13:28.635
Noise came, challenges came, people came, ego came, everything came.

2496
02:13:29.715 --> 02:13:41.082
It is up to all of us to have the courage to look inside, see whatever are the things that are stopping us from really becoming the best version of myself, of ourselves.

2497
02:13:42.283 --> 02:13:50.532
Surround ourselves with the right people, with the right family, both real family, spiritual family, whatever you consider your best and closest.

2498
02:13:51.633 --> 02:13:56.999
And go and chase your dream, your journey, your truth.

2499
02:13:57.499 --> 02:14:07.828
And I know as a fact that if you go through the process, if you remember that life is not about how we fall and how many people saw us fall, it's genuinely about how we get up.

2500
02:14:08.468 --> 02:14:24.862
And if you have the courage to really be the full version of yourself, and you're truthful about not just your strength, but also the weaknesses, and if you remember that it truly is a journey, that when you get to that last few minutes of your life, you're going to look around,

2501
02:14:25.362 --> 02:14:31.744
You're going to be surrounded by loved ones and by a lot, a lot of love that you've created and cultivated for your entire life.

2502
02:14:32.524 --> 02:14:37.685
And that you're going to live this world and this planet much better than it was before you came.

2503
02:14:38.185 --> 02:14:43.327
I wish you and all of us good luck at this journey of life.

2504
02:14:45.227 --> 02:14:45.487
Amen.

2505
02:14:45.907 --> 02:14:46.147
Amen.

2506
02:14:47.028 --> 02:14:47.328
Thank you.

2507
02:14:47.448 --> 02:14:47.708
We're done.

2508
02:14:47.968 --> 02:14:48.328
Thank you.