从高速增长到公司困境：高增长企业家的生存哲学与商业教训

I went from 13,000 employees to three employees in one week. We work was one of the fastest physical global growth the world's ever seen. But everything went wrong. We lost everything. 2019 you were publicly filed its S1. Company valued at around $47 billion. The S1 showed some losses, 3 billion in the past 3 years. Also, the S1 revealed when you were CEO that you'd also trademarked the word we and sold it back to the company. That's not true. People sometimes think I was fired because the Wall Street Journal said so. Not true. I wanted to hear directly from you. What happened? You really want to go there? I'm like I'm I'm happy to the floor is yours. So in we work the business grew faster than I could grow and every step I take suddenly the ego starts coming up. Oh 20 billion valuation billion valuation in Japan on top of that 5 billion valuation in China. It suddenly became about the money. I forgot what we were all about and when I lost it everybody lost it. And the next thing is we found ourselves being forced to go public when we weren't ready. Then you resigned as CEO of we work after the IPO didn't pan out. So I stepped down out of choice and a second after I did it, we got stabbed in the back and the only lesson there, you're going to stab the king, kill. If you're not going to kill, I'm going to come back again.

Why did you make that choice to go back into business again? Cuz you had money from the reports almost a billion dollars. You know how hard it is.

I now realize that in we work, I did a lot more things right than wrong. A lot more. Not like 10% more, like 95%. Some of what I'm saying is hard for you to fully hone in on. All these founders you spoke to, all this I don't think they shared this paper. So, let's talk about it. So, first, you might have seen or you might not have seen, but this channel is chasing a big subscriber milestone. So, I have to ask you for a favor. Roughly 58% of the people watching right now still haven't hit the subscribe button despite the fact that you watch this channel every single week. So, could I ask you guys a favor? that 58% of you that for whatever reason haven't yet hit the subscribe button. If there was ever a time to deliver upon a favor for us, it would be right now. And I promise that I will do everything in my power to make sure that this channel gets better and better and better for you. Do we have a deal?

Adam Newman, I've had the privilege of getting to know you briefly over the last um couple of months, and it struck me almost immediately that you're unlike almost any other founder or CEO or really person I think I've ever met. There's a depth to you and a and a philosophy and a perspective that is just incredibly rare. My question to you is for you to be an anomaly if we accept that. Am I right in thinking that you had some sort of anomalous early origin story? What is that that story that shaped this man that sat in front of me? You know, for me first when I get to know someone in the beginning and they say, "Where is it coming from? Who are you?" I usually start the same. First of all, I'm a husband. It's my first job. what I'm most proud of. Then I'm a father. I'm a father of six. Then I'm a friend. Friendships are very important for me. And after that I'm an entrepreneur. I think each one of us has a phenomenal soul. I think it's perfect. 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. And I think it's that gap between those two things that actually defines a person. And for me 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.

So you talk about not having control. Your early context is quite unstable from what I read because your mother suffered from bipolar. Can you bring me into that world so I can understand like the sort of context that Adam was raised?

Happily. So we'll start like every story it has two sides to it and my mom and my father are both doctors and growing up I always saw both of them taking care of the patients and it would feel sometimes like the patients came ahead of us. So for example my sister and I we were never sick no matter how sick we were look at my she was an oncologist and she would say my patients are sicker go to school and that was sort of the beginning of it. When I was in the second grade, my parents got a divorce. It was very difficult for my mom and she needed a change of scenery. So, we actually moved to the United States. You know this photo here?

I do.

I do. Um, and this one here, you've got a kid. This is you as a a child that is beaming with uh smell sort of ear to ear. Often when I see photos like that, my my curiosity is what what you can't see and what that young kid, that young boy there is is not saying, but what he's feeling underneath all of those uh those emotions. What I could tell you is I think for me I think the challenge started in the house. So we talked about my mother being bipolar. I only observed my mother's moods when we moved to the United States. There was no one around. It was only my mom and my sister and I. 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. And I remember there's many stories but I remember this. She would tell my sister and I we had to wash the dishes. That was our one chore. And we wouldn't no matter what because kids sometimes rebel by action when they can't rebel by words. And she would come home, you didn't wash the dishes. And she would take the dishes and throw them on the floor. And then she would cry and start cleaning the dishes and and mopping them. And it was every night ended with some version of action like that. And for 2 years, I remember how crazy my sister and I thought the whole experience was. And we didn't have any friends who were sharing that experience until one day she bought this nice set of dishes. And she comes home again to throw the dishes. And we notice she's only throwing the cheap dishes. She's not throwing the ones that she liked, which gave us a little hint that maybe there's a little more control over what's happening than this out of control situation. So if I had to guess what was happening with the kids because now in hindsight I know my mom and dad very well. Probably there was a lot of arguing in the house. Probably as a kid cuz 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 because as a child all you have to lean on are your parents. But I think the most important thing to say 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 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. You get to check mark with me all almost all of them including the really bad ones that we don't like to talk about. As bad as that was when I was 22 23 I remember being very angry about my childhood. only when I met Rebecca, my then girlfriend to then wife, she very quickly introduced me to a spiritual practice. 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." I was very surprised at the time. I was living in New York. My sister was the supermodel. We were hanging out. I I thought a lot of myself. And I said, "What do you mean I'm not the guy for you?" He said, "Well, you don't have a spiritual band. You're very focused on material things. You want to be successful, but you're not actually understanding the game of life. The guy I'm interested in is going to want true happiness and true

Speaker A: fulfillment.

And

true

happiness

and

true

fulfillment

does

not

come

from

material

things.

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

and

I

said,

"Well,

how

would

one

come

to

explore

this

spiritual

life

that

you're

talking

about?"

And

she

said, "Well,

you

need

a

practice."

And

for

me

that

practice

started

being

cabala.

But

for

all

of

us

there

can

be

different

practices.

The

thing

I

learned

very

quickly

in

the

practice

is

the

difference

between

meant

to

be

and

free

choice.

And

I

think

a lot

of

people

don't

understand

it.

But

how

can

there

be?

We

talk

a

lot

about

in

spirituality

about

it's

meant

to

be

and

there's

free

choice.

How

could

there

be

free

choice

and

things

be

meant

to

be

at

the

same

time?

The

way

I

explain

it

is

you

get

to

a

fork

in

your

life

and

you

choose

left

over

right

and

everything

works

out

meant

to

be.

You

get

to

that

same

fork

and

you

choose

right

and

you

crash

on

your

face

horribly.

Everybody's

watching

and

you

stop

and

you

actually

learn

lessons

from

it

and

you

take

accountability

and

you

say,

you

know

what,

whatever

happened

to

me

happened

for

a

reason

and

I'm

going

to

learn

from

it.

I'm

going

to

be

stronger.

Almost

like

a

sword

that's

getting

forged.

And

the

more

times

you

hit

it

and

the

more

hit

you

put

on

it,

the

stronger

it

gets.

And

then

you

learn

those

lessons

and

you

go

back

into

the

game

of

life

and

you

apply

that

in

again,

suddenly

you

take

the

catastrophe

or

the

tragedy

or

the

curse

and

you

make

it

into

a

blessing.

You

turn

it

into

a

meant

to

be.

When

the

world

did

crash

on

me

as

an

adult,

it

was

nothing

compared

to

what

I

had

to

deal

with

as

a

child.

I

was

like,

it's

okay.

I

have

a

wife.

I

have

kids.

[clears throat]

I

have

close

friends.

we'll

take

a

deep

breath

and

we'll

start

from

scratch

again.

And

that

kind

of

fortitude,

I

think

regretfully, comes

through

going

through

very

difficult

things.

So,

if

you're

listening

to

this

right

now

and

you're

going

through

something

really

difficult

and

it

feels

dark,

I

encourage

you

to

remember

that

the

darkest

moment

of

the

night

is

a

second

before

dawn.

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.

Not

publicly,

but

meaning

I

have

in

front

of

So

I

used

to

share

everything

in

front

of

our

employees

that

we

work.

So

there's

things

I

shared

in

front

of

10,000

people.

I'm

not

sure

it

ever

made

it

to

the

press.

What

is

missing?

You

really

want

to

go

there?

I'm

I'm

happy

to.

If

you're

happy

to,

I'm

happy

to.

I'll

share

two

things

that

I'm not

sure

that

maybe

could

be

helpful

for

other

people

that

are

going

through

similar

things.

So

the

the

hidding

and

stuff

like

so

when

someone's

bipolar,

by

the

way,

they

get

very

angry

or

very

happy

very

fast.

When

they're

happy,

they're

the

happiest.

You

have

fun

and

everything's

amazing.

And

my

mom

would

play

games

with

us

and

it

was

phenomenal.

But

also

when

that

I

think

happens

a

lot

with

bipolar, there's

the

suicide

threats.

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

is

going

to

take

care

of

you?

What

is

going

to

happen

if

suddenly

that

happens?

And

I

have

a

lot

of

memories,

but

one

that

just

came

back

to

me

not

too

long

ago.

We're

in

the

kibutts,

which

is

where

we're

living

after

we

came

back

from

the

US.

My

mom

wanted

us

to

have

a

special

experience.

So

we

went

to

this

community

where

everybody

shares

a

lot

of

things

together.

It's

also

the

beginning

of

why

I

love

communities.

And

we

get

into

this

big

fight

and

my

mom

basically

says

she's

going

to

kill

herself

and

she

takes

the

knife

and

I

remember

she's

holding

this

huge

knife.

I'm

like, "No, no, don't

do

it."

And

I

remember

I

just

remember

feeling

that

I

[clears throat]

have

to

stop

it

that

it

is

up

to

me

and

if

I

don't

stop

it,

then

she's

going

to

kill

herself

right

there

in

front

of

my

sister

and

I.

So

I

grabbed

the

knife

and

we're

fighting

left

and

right.

And

my

sister

is

sitting

right

there

and

she's

crying

and

she's

crying

and

I'm

no

and

she's

saying

yes.

And

the

whole

thing

is

so

crazy.

How

old

were

you?

12

at

that

moment.

That's

one.

There's

more

if

you

want

to

go

deeper,

but

that

was

one.

I

invite

you

to

go

deeper.

When

I

was

in

between

second

grade

to

fourth

grade, um

I

was sexually

I

think

you

called

molested

by

an

older

uh

than

a

teenager.

So

she

was

at

least

six

or

seven

years

older

than

me.

This

one

I

didn't

even

know

that

what

was

happening

was

wrong.

And

many

years

later,

Rebecca

and

I

are

in

the

Hamptons

and

it's

somehow

the

story

comes

up

and

she

goes, "Adam,

understand

that

this

is

not

normal

for

a

child

at

that

age."

And

I

didn't

even

fully

understand.

And

that

taught

me

that

explained

to

me

a

lot

about

children.

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.

And

whenever

we

see

anyone

we

are

so

good

at

walking

into

a

room

seeing

someone

else

and

judging.Oh,

they're

not

acting

the

way

I

would

act.

They're

not

acting

right.

They're not

speaking

right.

Everybody's

so

busy

judging

everybody.I

want

to

encourage

every

single

person

next

time

you're

about

to

judge.You

don't

know

who

that

person

is.You

do

not

know

where

they

come

from.You

do

not

know

what

happened

to

them

as

a

kid.

God

forbid

they

were

molested.

God

forbid

they

dealt

with

all

these

things.

You

don't

know

where

they

started.

You

only

know

where

you

see

them

now.

And

it

could

be

that

if

you

really

got

to

know

them

and

you

would

have

known

the

distance

they

went

from

here

to

here,

you

would

have

been

extremely

impressed

with

them

and

you

would

have

not

measured

them

that

way.

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.It

takes

more

effort

to speak

in

a

way

that brings

us

together.But

if

we

don't

start

acting

like

this, if

we

keep

dividing

and

keep

splitting,I'm

worried.

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.And

as

you

said,

you

know, you've

you've

oriented

it

around

the

fact

that

it's

happened

for

a

reason

or

at

least

there's

there's

something

to

have

learned

from

it.Was

that

always

the

case?

I

I

sometimes

reflect

on

my

own

experience

and

think

that

for

the

first

season

of

my

life

I

was

dragged

and

then

at

some

point

I

like

got

hold

of

the

steering

wheel

and

I

was

able

to

like

drive

and

one

of

them

was

like

sort

of

unconscious

and

the

other

was

more

in

sort

of

intentional

and

thoughtful

and

I'm

wondering

through

your

early

teens

and

20ies

whether you

had

the

wisdom

and

the

perspective

that

you

have

now

on

your

early

experiences

and

how

that's

evolved

over

time.I

probably

went

to

sleep

crying

every

single

night

for

probably

until

I

was

14

or

And

I

remember

and

if

you

ask

my

sister

did

what

what

would

I

say?

She

I

I

completely

forgot.

She

said

I

told

her

that

one

day

I'll

become

very

successful

and

we'll

take

care

of

I'll

take

care

of

us.

That

was

what

I

used

to

say. I

I

literally

didn't

remember this

is

something

she

told

me. [sighs and gasps]

I

think

that's

how

I

interpreted

that

control

and

how

I'm

going

to

fix

all

these

challenges

that

I had.

But

we

launched

the

school, Rebecca

and

I, more

Rebecca

I

helped.

It's

a

fifth

school.

In

the

school,

we

teach

kids

how

to

be

connected

to

themselves, how

to

be

part

of

something

greater

than

themselves.If

someone

just

taught

me

this

as

a

kid

and

I

would

have

understood

then

that

there's

this

bigger

picture, I

think

I

would

have

been

able

to

handle

it

a

lot

better

and

skip

the

challenging

years

faster, move

faster

into

the

point

where

I

realize

that

I

don't

control

what

happens, but

I

can

control how

I

react

to

it.So,

back

to

your

point

of

driving,

are

you

driving?>> Don't

know.

Now, you

question

it.I'm

questioning.I

would

question

it.You

know,

my

my

Speaker B: 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. Not publicly, but meaning I have in front of So I used to share everything in front of our employees that we work. So there's things I shared in front of 10,000 people. I'm not sure it ever made it to the press.

Speaker A: What is missing? You really want to go there?

Speaker B: I'm I'm happy to.

Speaker A: If you're happy to, I'm happy to.

Speaker B: I'll share two things that I'm not sure that maybe could be helpful for other people that are going through similar things. So the the hidding and stuff like so when someone's bipolar, by the way, they get very angry or very happy very fast. When they're happy, they're the happiest. You have fun and everything's amazing. And my mom would play games with us and it was phenomenal. But also when that I think happens a lot with bipolar, there's the suicide threats. 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 is going to take care of you? What is going to happen if suddenly that happens? And I have a lot of memories, but one that just came back to me not too long ago. We're in the kibuts, which is where we're living after we came back from the US. My mom wanted us to have a special experience. So we went to this community where everybody shares a lot of things together. It's also the beginning of why I love communities. And we get into this big fight and my mom basically says she's going to kill herself and she takes the knife and I remember she's holding this huge knife. I'm like, "No, no, don't do it." And I remember I just remember feeling that I have to stop it that it is up to me and if I don't stop it, then she's going to kill herself right there in front of my sister and I. So I grabbed the knife and we're fighting left and right. And my sister is sitting right there and she's crying and she's crying and I'm no and she's saying yes. And the whole thing is so crazy. How old were you? 12 at that moment. That's one. There's more if you want to go deeper, but that was one. I invite you to go deeper.

Speaker A: When I was in between second grade to fourth grade, um I was sexually I think you called molested by an older uh than a teenager. So she was at least six or seven years older than me. This one I didn't even know that what was happening was wrong. And many years later, Rebecca and I are in the Hamptons and it's somehow the story comes up and she goes, "Adam, understand that this is not normal for a child at that age." And I didn't even fully understand. And that taught me that explained to me a lot about children. 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. And whenever we see anyone we are so good at walking into a room seeing someone else and judging. Oh, they're not acting the way I would act. They're not acting right. They're not speaking right. Everybody's so busy judging everybody. I want to encourage every single person next time you're about to judge. You don't know who that person is. You do not know where they come from. You do not know what happened to them as a kid. God forbid they were molested. God forbid they dealt with all these things. You don't know where they started. You only know where you see them now. And it could be that if you really got to know them and you would have known the distance they went from here to here, you would have been extremely impressed with them and you would have not measured them that way. 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. It takes more effort to speak in a way that brings us together. But if we don't start acting like this, if we keep dividing and keep splitting, I'm worried.

Speaker B: 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. And as you said, you know, you've you've oriented it around the fact that it's happened for a reason or at least there's there's something to have learned from it. Was that always the case? I I sometimes reflect on my own experience and think that for the first season of my life I was dragged and then at some point I like got hold of the steering wheel and I was able to like drive and one of them was like sort of unconscious and the other was more in sort of intentional and thoughtful and I'm wondering through your early teens and 20ies whether you had the wisdom and the perspective that you have now on your early experiences and how that's evolved over time. I probably went to sleep crying every single night for probably until I was 14 or 15. And I remember and if you ask my sister did what what would I say? She I I completely forgot. She said I told her that one day I'll become very successful and we'll take care of I'll take care of us. That was what I used to say. I I literally didn't remember this is something she told me.

Speaker A: But we launched the school, Rebecca and I, more Rebecca I helped. It's a fifth school. In the school, we teach kids how to be connected to themselves, how to be part of something greater than themselves. If someone just taught me this as a kid and I would have understood then that there's this bigger picture, I think I would have been able to handle it a lot better and skip the challenging years faster, move faster into the point where I realize that I don't control what happens, but I can control how I react to it. So, back to your point of driving, are you driving?

Speaker B: Don't know. Now, you question it. I'm questioning. I would question it. You know, my my

Speaker A: follow-up question to you would be, how do you define success?

Speaker A: But when she said she thinks you have enough, was she referring to material things?

Speaker A: What's your definition?

Speaker A: When you were 31 years old in 2010 and you sat down with your partner Miguel

Speaker A: At 21.

Speaker A: I'm embarrassed for my 21-year-old self. What did you want to be?

Speaker A: So she said, "You're chasing money. It doesn't work like that. Also like chasing a girl. You really want someone. You have to take a deep breath." 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." So I said, "Well, what should I do?" She said, "Well, you're a very talented individual. You should figure out what your superpower is." It's the first time I've heard anyone use the word superpower. She goes, "You need to take your superpower. You need to connect it to something that's really meaningful for the world. Something you're passionate about, but something that can make a difference. You need to bring those two things together. You need to only focus on making that a reality. 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 a will fall on you from the sky more than you can ever imagine. I was like I want to marry this woman. I proposed 3 months after we met."

Speaker B: And the idea of we was central to this drawing that I have 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. I think it was called Green Desk.

Speaker A: Green Desk. You sold it for how much? It wasn't like

Speaker B: 1.5 million. There were three partners. So we each got half a million. Half a million. Half a million. But our partner didn't want to pay us the whole amount up front. So he only gave us $300,000. The rest was installment over four years for Miguel and I. And I remember telling Miguel, Miguel, you keep the money cuz I'll waste it. First time I ever made money. You keep the money cuz I will waste it and we'll keep it for our next business. And the way the universe works, by the way, the universe speaks to us. The signs start happening and you sort of one thing leads to another. It's almost serendipity. Our first Weiwork building to get the building, the landlord wouldn't give it to us unless we gave a check of exactly $300,000. The same $300,000 that was sitting in Miguel's account. It went from there to there. and my work was

So tell me what that is. Okay, we're in Greenesk. Just to remind everybody what Greenesk is, Greenesk was created in May of 2008. The world was the world was crashing. That was the downturn and before it started, Miguel and I got to know each other. He was an architect and I had a baby clothing company and we're in the same building. My roommate introduced us and we would just talk about doing great things and there was a landlord there and every day he would see me goes, "Adam, your baby clothing company sucks." And I said, "Mr. Gutman, why do you say that?" He said, "Well, my wife, we have eight kids. She loves buying baby clothes. She didn't once buy from you. I don't know how you pay me rent. Your baby clothes suck." And I would say, "Well, Mr. Gutman, you own all this real estate around here." He goes, "Yes, I do." Said, "Your real estate sucks." He goes, "Why do you say that?" Said, "It's all empty." And we would do that for four months back and forth. One day he looks at me goes, "Adam, if I gave you one of my buildings, you keep saying that it's sucks. What would you do with it?" So he takes me upstairs and he shows me this this beautiful floor plate. And I said to him, "How much do you get in rent?" He goes, "$5,000 a month." Said, "Well, it's empty, but let's say you would get $5,000." Said, "Look, I'm a small business. I don't need this much. Let's divide it to 15 small places spaces. We'll charge $1,000 each. We'll put a receptionist. We'll pay the receptionist 2500. We'll get 15,000. That will leave us with 12,500. You will get 7,500 and we'll get the difference." And he was like, "Let me think about it." He calls me the next day. He goes, "I love it, but instead of one floor, take the whole building. It had five floors. We'll put the receptionist downstairs so we can share the expenses. It will be even better." And we put five ads on Craigslist. We launched Greenes. It was 92% full within a week. started cash flowing positive which was a new thing for me because this was my fourth business never had cash flow positive cash flowing positive within a month and became very successful very fast after about six maybe 12 months we started thinking bigger Miguel and I said we'll take this national we went to our landlord said I'm not interested we asked for $20 million we said we'll split the business 50/50 he wasn't interested so we started and and very soon after he said I'll buy it from you and we started planning this and you drew this on a whiteboard. Miguel drew this on the wall, not even a whiteboard. The walls were made of glass. This was drawn on the glass. So all of our walls in green desk were also whiteboards and cuz everybody was about creating and inventing. And what you see here is that social life, commercial, friends is here. This proves the fact Ben Horwitz in the interview that you saw he did with me in the podcast, he says to me, Adam, you've always had one idea. And then at the end, at the end, he apologized said, Adam, I didn't mean to say you only have one idea. Of course, you have all these ideas. I said, Ben, you're right. This is not that different from what flow is. This is all about the friends and all about the living and all about the working life essentials. Wow, I haven't seen this for a long time. Fintech, travel, everything in between. So, for anyone that's watching uh listening and can't see, it's a circle that has lots of circles in it. Um, and it says all the little circles are like travel, health, social life, friends, um, co-work co-workers, supporters, uh, life essentials, work rituals, work rituals. Again, you can read it better than me, but that makes sense.

And this was the idea for we work.

This is the idea for we work. So sometimes people said, "Oh, you grew out of desk and chairs. You shouldn't have gone to all these categories." The idea started, this was before there was one desk. What is the essence of this?

We wanted to make a world, at least in our opinion, that really needed community. This was to deliver on a mission of of create a world where people make a life and not just a living. This was a full life style, life circle, and it was very aspirational. And it's how, by the way, for anyone of our listeners or your listeners that uh that is starting a business, start with a vision. Dream as high as you can. Go all the way to the stars. Cuz if you don't shoot for the stars, you're never going to get to the moon. Go far. Then take a deep breath and go back to basics. What do I need to do first? What I need to do second? What I need to do third? The secret of life and entrepreneurship is to be able to be in both places at the same time. On the one hand, I'm going to go so far. On the other hand, I'm just starting, so I better roll up my sleeves and get the broom and start brooming. It's both of them. I need to go knock on doors. I need to go meet people. I need to do whatever work needs to be done at the beginning to get the business started.

Let's talk about both then. So the you got the trenches and then you've got let's say the clouds or the moon as you refer to it. Why is it important to dream big? Why is the scale and the size of the dream important?

So I believe it's the secret of manifestation. So when people ask me Adam what is the secret manifestation? How do you make something out of nothing? I think the order is first you have to believe. If you and I have a big idea, first we have to believe it. Then that takes time to believe. True belief, by the way. Do you know when belief is measured?

No. When it's really tough. Belief is not measured on everything. So I remember this. This is 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. When right after the whole explosion of we work occurred and it was like 5 days in and the whole thing was crashing on us and there's a million articles and the whole thing is happening my spiritual teacher who I haven't spoken at this point almost for 2 years after I studied with him for 8 years calls me said Adam how are you doing I said I'm not doing so well right now it's crazy he said oh great that's why I called you I said why did you call me his name is Eton I said why didn't you call me said I called you to make sure that you remembered the two things we learned for 8 years. Said, "Atan, we didn't learn two things for 8 years. We study twice a week. We learned endless things." Goes, "No, you missed it. We learned two things." I said, "Please remind me." Goes, "One was love thy neighbor as yourself, and the rest is commentary."

It took a second, Fred. I said, "Let's talk about this for a second. What does love thy neighbor as yourself mean to you?"

Such a famous saying. We've heard it so many times. 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. like I understand um all the that I'm a complex person and that I'm multifaceted and imperfect and that I have strengths and weaknesses and I kind of I'm okay with all of it and in others we're less okay with all of it. Beautiful. Let's say it a little bit different words but that was right on. Love that ins means that you first have to love yourself. 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. And the only way you can love yourself after all of those is if you're able to forgive yourself. 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. Back to the sword analogy that you're a sword and you're getting forged and every single time you get hit, you just get stronger. Once you feel that and you're able to love yourself, then you're able to love everybody else. That was the first thing he told me we learned. 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 a second before dawn. Belief is not measured when 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. Belief is measured when it's all crashing. when even your friends are questioning you, when the phone is not ringing 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 stored for you. What did you believe in in your hardest moment? 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. And I remember that morning, this phone call was late at night, the next morning at 6:00 a.m. I walked down to to my three I went from 13,000 employees to three employees in one week. I walked down to the three employees who were my partners in the family office, not even employees, partners. I walk down to them and I'm smiling and they're stressed out. We would meet every day at 6:00 a.m. that we're done. We're bankrupt. It's finished. They only joined me 3 months before they came to manage what they thought was a 5 to 10 billion family office and they're dealing with negative 400 million compounding interest full bankruptcy situation. and start 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 when I really needed that one small moment a lot of them weren't there and these three almost strangers who I didn't really know were standing right there by my side and they see me smiling Adam why are you smiling you they're like they thought I really lost my mind it was done and I said I'm smiling because I remember that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn and I remember that belief is actually measured when things are difficult, not when everything is working. 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. 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. And about 10 days later, we started coming out of it in a very positive way. I want to go to the top of the story and I really because I really want to walk through some of the key moments, but um I noticed your energy shift a little bit when you started describing those three people.

Here's another thing that I've learned. If you know haven't you're facing this as we speak right now. I bet you have lots of friends.

I bet you have

how you define friends.

I think a couple of years after you founded the company, I became a customer of it. Um both in New York, but also in London. What didn't I see? What was what was it? So we work started in February of 2010 and it's for anybody listening I think this is the way that that it should and could work. I think from the first day we were so clear as you pointed out with the circle on on the fact that this mission is bigger than us. 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. 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. And we just started with our first and part of my energy is I bring people together. I really like creating community, but I also I love to move fast when we're clear on the direction that we're moving and I don't believe anything is impossible. 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. I think that's one too.

I want an example of that.

How to do it?

Speaker A: cost?

No one could answer.

Speaker A: Very quickly, the cost went down to that first floor instead of 30 to 45,000 was 12,000. The guy tells me, "Adam, no one's ever worked with me that way." before you know it, they joined us and we had our own internal construction company and we realized that only by controlling it could we get the right price and move fast enough. So it's not taking no for an answer but also using logic to really look into it. Now it could be that if I looked into it I wouldn't have been able to get a better price but what I'm describing is a challenge in construction in general and globally and it's part of the things that flow is solving today.

Speaker B: Elon would call that like reasoning from first principles. I had a similar story.

Speaker A: It's going to go back this discussion can keep going back to the same basics. A person who's comfortable asking himself why is he doing something 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. And whenever you ask someone why and they don't want to answer you, what are you hiding? This is a discussion. I usually when I go into topics like this start by telling the vendor wherever it is, I want you to make money. No, no one's trying to make you lose money. But we're on a mission 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 Floor is not going to take part in.

Speaker B: This really does uh make a lot of sense to me. We have this um Slack channel in our company called Paper Walls. And the whole idea is that we're trying to encourage our team to push on paper walls. A paper wall is something that looks solid but reveals itself to be completely made of paper. The minute you try it, you ask why. You push on it. And there's a a story of a a kid that worked for me in one of my companies for 4 years. And um he animates video. I said to him, "How long is it going to take you to animate a video for us that's 30 minutes?" He said, "It takes 9 days, right?" He worked for me for 4 years. It took him 9 days to animate the video. We decide we want to launch a weekly channel. I need him to do it in 3 or 4 days max so that the rest of the team can do it. I say to him, "How long is it going to take you?" He says, "9 days." And then because we had established this culture in our company of pushing on paper walls, I said to him, "Why?" And do you know what he said to me? I think I said something like, "What would it take to do it in two?" And he went, "Stephen, you just need to buy me a new laptop. I have an old laptop." I thought, "Fucking hell. I've been paying him for 4 years 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. But also to your point, he never mentioned it. He never knew he was in a paper wall himself. First year of we work, we opened one building. Hm. Year nine of we work, we open two buildings a day in 130 cities, 50 countries, 70 languages, 100,000 square foot per building. So that's 200,000 square foot a day, 20,000 square meter for your European listeners a day. A lot of the same people who were only capable doing the one and two particip were leaders by that time of of being able to do one of the fastest physical global growth the world's ever seen. Same people as you learn to in your words go through paper walls as you learn that anything is possible suddenly this is the secret of high growth and momentum whatever you can do today if your company starts growing fast you'll be shocked what you'll be able to do in 3 months 9 months and in two years you're going to look back and not believe that that was your capacity and I keep telling people and they tell me oh I can't do this and this takes 3 months I say guys I've seen this done before I know we can do it it's easier now I've already been there now you just need to believe and goes back to the belief then we're going to need to put the systems and the processes and today with technology and this is where I think AI is very exciting you could shortcut a lot of these things and and do a much better work but back to what you said about your company I bet when's the last time you sat with them in a circle how many employees?

Speaker A: about 200 in total

Speaker B: about 200 in total so 200 is a big number but if you took 30 of them sat in a room and actually asked them what are you working on personally what is your internal paper wall what is your internal challenge what's stopping you? And they got comfortable talking about it. And then as a group, first of all, all their peers would hear and before you know it, their peers would help them. Hey, I remember that you said that this is a child for you're insecure. You don't talk in public. You're a little judgmental. You're too hard on yourself. Every person has another story. Before you know it, the moment you get them used to grow internally, it will affect your business to grow externally. In we work, the business grew faster than I could grow. That's where everything went wrong. I actually think whenever a company grows faster than its founder, one of two things would occur. 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. And if they're not fulfilled and happy, why do it? How important for the founders listening and for the people that want to build or become is hard work? Because there's a real debate around hard work. You know, some people say, you know, work life balance is the ultimate. Some people say, if you're a founder, you got to give 100 hour weeks. Ah, by the way, new answer to that question. It is the most important thing. But we have to define hard work. Hard work as a founder is not just limited to how many hours you put in the office. Hard work as a founder is how much time do you put on the business? How much time are you putting on yourself? As you grow, you will be a better leader. You will be a better money raiser. You will be a better express. You'll express your business better. So hard work is the only way to do it. And you can't be 50%.

Speaker A: What is hard work? Some of it is on the business, some of it is on you. If you're married, it's also on your relationship. If you have kids, it's also with your kids. 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. They know.

Speaker A: There you alluding [clears throat] to this like sort of magical thing that happens when one focuses on something. You were saying if you're like 90% in, it like doesn't work, but if you're 100% in, it works. What is the the magic that isn't obvious with that?

Speaker B: When you're 100% in, there's no time for doubt. There's no time for questions. There's no time for fear cuz you're so in it. When you're, oh, I can find this work life balance while doing it, you're not going to do something great. And if you are, if you were to achieve something, it's not close to your potential. But again, I'm redefining what 100% in meant. We talked about Warren Buffett. Was he not 100%? And of course he is. Does he have a full schedule? No way. He keeps it open so he can have the important meetings, so he can read, so he can connect.

Speaker B: There are different ways to be 100% in. But you must in life, in my opinion, be 100% in. It's why I love surfing. 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.

Speaker C: What about founders that are doing two different businesses, pursuing two different missions?

Speaker B: Remember what I told you? We say in flow, you're not Elen. I would tell them you're not Elen. Elen can do two different very few people. I know I he's one of the only examples I have. Jack Dorsey. Some of the best on the planet can do. But uh it's very hard to do two businesses at the same time. It's hard enough to do one. And I guess even in those cases, they built up tremendous resources by doing one really, really well. Again, my question about I don't know which founder you're thinking, but you've met people like that. Really, where I when I've met people doing two that are somewhat succeeding, they're spending no time on their own personal growth. 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. If you're already doing one and it's meaningful and it's fulfilling, why do you need another? What are you hiding from? What is it that you're not actually doing would be my question. Now, if they maybe there's a maybe they're a miracle. Hello. I wasn't able to make that finance meeting. Can you tell me what I missed?

Speaker D: What I have in front of me is Whisper Flow's new notetaker. And for me, it's been an absolute game changer. I spend most of my life sat in very, very long meetings with lots of different teams and lots of different departments. 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. What whisper flows notetaker does for me is it captures the entire context of everything that's happened throughout my entire week. It labels who the people are that said what 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. It's building this sort of broader context of everything that's happening in my life. And it's an incredible incredible superpower. I love the fact that so many of you come up to me in the street because you know I'm an investor in Whisper Flow and tell me how much it's changed your life. It is the worstkept secret in productivity. If you want to give it a go, head to whisperflow.ai/stephven to download it right now and give it a try. And once you try it, I think you'll realize why we let them sponsor this podcast. It's amazing. I am have a stat here that genuinely shocked me. It says that sales teams spend about 50% of their time on admin and manual CRM updates rather than selling. That is deadly for their bottom line. And that is part of the reason why a decade ago at my previous company I switched to using Piperive who are our sponsor. If you've never used Pipe Drive, it is an intelligent AI powered sales CRM. And they just launched new meeting intelligence features like an AI noteaker built right into the CRM. Pipe Drive now automates more of the admin that stops you from doing the work that you love to do best. Before your meeting, it pulls deal history, email records, and previous conversations into a single brief so you're prepared. And it joins your meetings with you. It's in there to take notes so you don't need to. and it turns those notes that it takes into accurate autodraft CRM updates. 100,000 companies are already running their sales on it. You can sign up at piperive.com/ceo where you'll get an exclusive 30-day free trial instead of the usual 14 days. Absolutely no credit card needed. Just head to piperive.com/ceo to get started if you're in sales and you run a sales team. I don't think you'll regret it.

Speaker B: We often say, you know, in one end you're saying go fast. And I hear that from great founders like yourself and Elon and those guys. They say go fast, push on paper walls, go as fast as you can, but then also there's other areas where you go, you have to go slow to go fast, but also know your weaknesses. I obviously did not succeed in building great technology in Weiwork. That is a known fact. So if I'm going to partner again and I'm going to build a business larger than we work, put the right partners.

Speaker C: Know what you don't know.

Speaker B: Know what you don't know. When we hired our CTO, we had four different CTOs. I'll let Ben do the final interview.

Speaker B: 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. Let's say it's finance and then they do an interview with someone and the person says, "I'm the best at finance." They have no idea if they're the best at finance because they don't know finance, the founder. So, what did you do to mitigate the trap of accidentally hiring someone that you weren't able to assess their competence?

Speaker B: I chose partners that say the truth. when Mark and Ben and I do a board meeting and Mark is our board member and Ben joins us.

Speaker B: 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 flow. Um yeah, just

Speaker B: Mark and Ben have invested $470 million into FL at the series A and series B. And I, Adam, and my family personally invested $350 million because part of when we created the the business together, we wanted to be aligned. We buy together, we sell together, we do everything together.

Speaker B: We have our board meetings. They usually start at 8:00 a.m. They end at 5:00. Very long board meeting. We talk about everything. We love it as a team. We really respect them. We truly prepare for these meetings. We don't spend too much time cuz again, when you're really busy, you don't have time. So, it's not like we spend a month, we go a week before, look, take stock of everything we did that quarter. It's always shocking to see how much you did. Cuz when you're not really measuring, you're just doing. When you stop for a second and look what you did, like, wow, we did quite a lot in 3 months. So, very useful. We put together our board decks. We send them to them a few days before they actually read them. And then they come for the meeting. So it's like 8:30 to 5. And then when it's done, I go to dinner with the two of them. And the dinner starts by me saying, "We sit down usually wherever it is. Please tell me what I can do better." And the first time I asked them, they were a little bit uncomfortable. The second time I literally remember Mark going like this. Mark Andrew like this, like he was ready. Ben taking out his notes. That's a true partnership and we do it every single time. And when you have the previously you said some of the biggest investors in my opinion A6Z number one investor in the planet and if you're an entrepreneur today and and you can

Speaker A: that's who you want your money from. If you're an entrepreneur today and you take it from Benchmark the company that took me out that took Travis Superstar out. Jack Dorisy out >> Travis from Uber Jack >> Travis from Uber. Jack Dorsey from Square, Twitter, Block and and many more. So when you choose your investors, look at their history. Are they the kind that support entrepreneurs like you? Are they going to take you to the next level or do they have a history that actually clashes with the entrepreneur? If they have a history that clashes with the entrepreneur, park them.

Speaker A: So there was two two key things I pulled out from there. The first was around this idea of like knowing when to go fast and slow and you use technology as an example. The second thing which was opened up the story about um A16Z is the right people and partners.

Speaker B: >> So important more if I had to choose one. Right investors, right employees, right partners. Most important thing.

Speaker B: >> What did you learn about employees? Like what is a great team member?

Speaker A: >> If I have a problem with an employee, there's only one person to blame and that's me.

Speaker A: >> And what are the mistakes that you made in choosing employees? I think it's how I was leading that I've been learning more about. Where I used to lead from top to bottom, I now I'm learning how to lead bottom to up. What's the difference?

Speaker B: >> Top to bottom means you think because someone reports into you, they have to do what you say. But it's not true. This is not a dictatorship. They have free will. They can go work. If they're talent, if you hired someone, they're really talented, they'll go elsewhere. Especially great leader. The more talented they are, the more the top to bottom does not work. They they won't be willing to do it. They shouldn't. Great talent is not willing to be managed like this. Gray talent wants to be inspired, wants me to see the full version of themselves even more than they see it. And they want the room to make mistakes, but also to grow. But they also need feedback. If you have someone amazing and they're [__]. Sorry. They're miss

Speaker B: >> You can swear.

Speaker A: By the way, where was the business at? Was it It was um 2017. I want to tell you about the day I met Mustang. I'm going to connect it to I think the biggest mistake I ever made in Weiwork. I'll bring it together. Masa is one of the best investors in the world. He's also one of the biggest investors in the world. In my story, Masa is the hero even though a lot of people who didn't know the story correctly might have misunderstood. So in my story, Masa took a bet on me and and he did amazing and he deserved to have become very successful from it. And he leads SoftBank.

Speaker B: >> Masa is the leader of SoftBank. So if you want a little history of Masa, Masa is the leader of SoftBank. He becomes very well known to the world where he buys a tech conference actually in Vegas and he buys this tech conference for I think about 880 million and at the same time he has his own tech businesses and he owns a phone company and he starts growing and growing. He's famous to have gone to Steve Jobs and said I'm going to take the iPhone. 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. He invents the leasing model for it and gives an iPhone. Then everybody signs to his service cuz everybody wanted the iPhone. So a lot of things and then he gives Jackma $20 million that over time I think becomes 200

Speaker B: >> for Alibaba which at its peak is worth about 80 billion.

Speaker A: >> So at the time when I meet Masa, this is 2016. Let's start with the night before. The night before I met Masa in New York City, I have a board meeting the day before. This is the old board and we're all sitting together. I just raised at 16 I raised maybe six months before at 16 billion valuation.

Speaker B: >> How big we work?

Speaker A: >> It's about to do that year about 950 million in revenue. And the reason I know is cuz we were doubled in revenue every single year. So we work the business model was working very well and the four walls were working very well.

Speaker B: >> What's the distinction sorry between the four walls and everything else. When you have a retail business, you could have your stores could be doing really well. Your state not making money

Speaker A: >> and what's the >> state the so let's say you're in New York City. So let's talk high growth for a second. When you're growing as fast as we're growing, you're always putting new buildings on the map.

Speaker B: >> A new building has a ramp up. Usually ramp up of a retail store or a food or a restaurant could take two years, three years. And we like to talk about ROI, return on investment and how long does it take. A great time to return your investment would be 24 month, 36 month and then it can grow. We work at its peak was returning its money somewhere between 6 month to 9 month and then afterwards it was going up to 12 month and 18 month. So if you're going to grow, we we grew in New York City to 130 buildings. So you can have 30 buildings. If the following year you're adding 30 more buildings, those new 30 have to per definition lose money for at least the first 6 month if not 9 months. So you could be very profitable in these buildings but not profitable in these because they need time. Which means this New York City the city doesn't look as a city profitable or the country if you're looking at your P&L doesn't look as a country profitable. Which is why in a high growth business you got to get very specific and in the details and you got to really understand what's working, what's not. Even in a building you can have one floor that's profitable cuz you opened it first and the new floor that you opened after not profitable yet.

Speaker A: Weiwork's technology was never able to count this way. Flow's technology, if I threw it on Weiwork today, I can tell you which square foot is, I forget which building is profitable, which floor is profitable. I can tell you which corner is. It knows everything cuz it's a connected system. It's not disconnected.

Speaker A: Back to what we're saying. I'm sitting with the board and we decide that we want to turn the business, we're going to go out and raise money, turn the business profitable, and take it public. How are you going to turn it profitable? All you have to do in a high growth business that's working to turn it profitable is stop growing. You just stop adding new buildings and you give time to all the buildings to catch up. Remember I explained that in we work your problem was not demand, it was supply. So the moment you don't add more supply, the demand is greater than the supply, everything fills up. The moment everything fills up and you didn't add anything new, you go cash flow positive. As simple as that. So, we sit in that

Speaker A: and we decide that I'm going to go and raise and the number was 3 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. And and then take it public. This is 2016.

Speaker A: That was the day before. The same time at some point Masa's right-hand guy, his name is Ron Fischer, sends an email, a text to one of our guys and says, "Hey, Masa wants to come see Adam." This is at the same time that Masa is raising the vision fund. For those who don't know, the vision fund was his hundred billion dollar venture fund, largest venture fund ever raised. Masa wants to see Adam.

Speaker A: Say, "Great." And we schedule 90 minutes in the morning, the next morning. And we do we do the we get ready in the morning. Masa is coming. Everyone's excited. They're like, "This is amazing. Maybe that investment we just talked about yesterday will come today." His team says, "Just to let you know, there will be no discussions of investing." So, okay, no problem. As it gets closer to the morning, we keep getting text messages. He's not going to have 90 minutes. He's going to have 75 minutes. He's going to have 60 minutes. He's going to have half an hour.

Speaker A: I'm like, "Okay, whatever it is, sounds great." The same time, President Trump wins for the first time. This is the end of December. And Masa had a meeting with them. They wanted to talk about the future of America. Said, "I'm so sorry. I have a meeting with Trump, President Trump, and I only have 12 minutes." 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. I'm going to do all these things and suddenly it all changes." I take a deep breath.

Speaker A: Let's make it the best 12 minutes we can, but I can't help myself. I go, "Tell me something, Masa. If you're meeting President, future President Trump, do you have Jared Kushner introducing you to him first?" He goes, "Adam, it's so funny you're saying that. Everybody told me that it's better if Jared introduces me. I don't know him. We've been trying to get in touch." No. I said, "Give me a second." I'm very lucky to to count Jared as as one of my close friends. Jared's married to Ivanka Trump.

Speaker B: Jar's married Jared married to Ivanka Trump and he's the adviser, I think, to the president. But right now he's helping to peace both in the Middle East and in Europe. So I text Jared and I was like, "Masa is here. Ta ta da. We spend 5 minutes on that." Jared says, "No problem. Send him. I will introduce him to the future president." Now we have 7 minutes left. I say, "Masa, we only have 7 minutes. We're only going to stay downstairs, but this is we work." And he looks at me. He goes like this. Smells there. He goes, "You know what this smells like?" And I'm like, "Oh no, what is he going to say? They were serving waffles. Is that is he going to say it smells like waffles? Like what is he going to say?" He goes smells like dreams. This is a factory rework is not an office space. It's a factory of dreams.

Speaker A: I'm like he's speaking your language. Oh no. Not my language. One step above my language. He took he took the dreamer and went one step above the dreamer. He out did the he he Adam. He killed it. And I'm like, "Oh yeah, I love the smell of dreams. This no one's ever defined the business better than that." He goes, "Look, Adam, we don't have time. I'm driving up there to 50th Street, whatever, wherever it was. Do you want to come with me to the car? We'll talk in the car."

Speaker B: Did he not go around the building? And

Speaker B: couldn't have time 7 minutes. We were only downstairs in the lobby, the entrance. But but if you had the opportunity in 2017, 2016 to walk into our HQ, the energy was electric. You could not walk in there and not feel I I never felt a factory of dreams, but I felt community and people coming together. It felt like people are doing their life's work. It didn't feel like a work environment. It felt like people are really connected. And when you make a connected environment, then it really takes things to the next level and everybody wants to be there. So that's what it was. It's not what it is today, but that's what it was. So he says, "Come with me to the car." I said, "No problem." I get into the car and I remember the back of my hand, they said, "No investing." thing. His team said, "Don't talk about raising money." He goes, "So I start talking build where we work." He's like, "Adam, what's the number?" Said, "What do you mean?" Goes, "What's your valuation and how much money are you raising?" Goes, "I'm I'm here to do business." Said, "Your team said like, ah, I am I am the boss. I've done this many times myself. I'm the boss. Let's talk about it." [sighs and gasps]"

Speaker A: I said, "Well, listen. We have our last valuation was 16 billion. We have a we have we just launched China. That's a $2 billion company. We have Latin America and we're in Europe. We have a global company and then we have a China entity. Goes great. How much are you raising?" I said 3 to 400 million. 3 to 400 million. That's that's that's not going to work. Don't you want to build a global business? I was like of course I would love to build a global business. Goes don't you have a business in China? I said of course. Said what about Japan? Said I don't have a business in Japan yet. He said I think it's going to work very well in Japan. I said, "I'm sure it's going to work well in Japan. It's working everywhere, but I don't have the team." Goes, "What about Southeast Asia?" He said, "Sounds amazing, but I've never been there." He goes, "Well, I think it's going to work there." I said, "Again, I'm sure it's going to work there, but and before you know it," he says, "I think we should do about 3 billion." And that was a big number. Remember three, we were we were I was the night before with the board 300 to 400 million. Let's take less than number one. And again, I don't blame myself for any of this. Every decision I made was my decision. He's an investor. He saw a great business and he wanted to go big. I respect that. I've done it myself. Not at those numbers, but I've done it myself. [gasps]"

Speaker A: 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 and what is my intention? What is that going to do to the business? and am I ready to take that much? And so it says 3 billion. We then keep talking about all the different needs and the different stuff. It ends up after this is now we met for 12 minutes and the ride is um 16 minutes. So uh if yeah total 28 to 36 minutes the whole thing and we agree on the he says 4 billion 4.2 to be exact.

Speaker B: 4.2 billion what >> dollars >> that he wants to invest in. We work topco, we work China, we work Japan, and we work Southeast Asia. Remember, we were a cash machine. You put cash into us and we that just to I'll go back to a second, but we were doing 980 million that year. We hit our numbers. We forecasted we're going to do 1.8 billion next year. We did our 1.8 billion. The it was working so well. The model, all you needed was cash to build it. 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.

Speaker B: Did you tell him that? Did you tell him that it was a cash machine?

Speaker A: No, you didn't need to. M understands business better than most people in the world. But again, it was obvious cuz if you looked at the history of Weiwork, every single time you put money into it, it grew. The mistake was we were signing leases. We were taking long-term commitments against short-term commitments. 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. But the this question was there's people because a lot of people didn't understand the money raised. The money raised

was to build tremendous businesses all over the planet. And those businesses the moment you stopped growing them turned profitable. Today we works profitable. Those businesses all you had to do was stop growing. We were at a high growth stage. That's what high growth entrepreneurs do. That's what the market wanted at the time and that's what everybody knew we were doing. It was not a secret what we were doing. And it was growing exponentially. So, we ended up agreeing on 4.2 billion.

He takes an iPad, he writes it all down. This is all in that same car, right? He writes it all down. He signs his name and he hands me the pen to sign mine. I look at it. I sign. He walks out of the car, says, "Thank you very much." And goes to his meeting. This is now about 40 54th Street. Our HQ is on 18th Street. I'm just standing there. I can't believe what just happened. It was not what I planned. And I start walking. I was like, I'm going to walk downtown. I'm going to take a second. I'm going to walk. And every step I take, cuz until this point, this is 2016, we were 5 years of missiondriven mission. You ask me about the fundamentals, we had all the right fundamentals and we work because we had the right culture. And when you have the right culture, you can deal with any challenge. We were missiondriven. We could break through any wall. We were teamwork. We worked late at night. We were together. We were friends. We were one team. And I'm starting to walk down from 54th Street to 18th Street. And every step I take, suddenly the ego starts coming up. Oh, 20 billion valuation. Billion valuation in Japan on top of that. billion and a half valuation in in Southeast Asia on top of that five billion dollar valuation in China on top of that. So a billion of that 4.2 was going to everybody including to myself and I owned about proportionately about 25% of the company at the time. So big numbers numbers I've never seen numbers Miguel was getting a lot all our employees the investors many times more than they ever invested from that billion and every step that I'm taking the ego comes up. Oh, I feel so strong. I feel so big. You start doing your own math. 20 billion, 25%. What's but that's that's that's 5 billion. Then there's all the other ones. What's my net worth? And before you know it, the guy that sat in the car was a missiondriven entrepreneur who really believed in creating a world where people make a life and not just a living. Every step that I take, it goes higher and higher. And by the time I walk into HQ 18th Street, I forgot what we were all about. Here is why ego is on the one hand very good and on the other hand very dangerous. Ego and desire are the same word. Big ego just means big desire. Having huge desire is important to build huge things. But you have to manage it and control it. When I walked in, I got confused. It suddenly became about the money. all the stuff that Rebecca told me, all the stuff when we met, all the years of spiritual practice, everything to the garbage. And what happens when the ego gets the best of you? You become blinded. What does that mean? You make mistakes and bad decisions. And in a high growth business, you need to make a 100 decisions a day. And as we said before, at least 98 of them need to be correct. Suddenly you're blinded and suddenly only 95 of them are correct or 90 those mistakes ex because you're growing so fast the mistakes grow very fast also the other thing we were a company led from the top all great companies are led from the top the moment I lost it everybody lost it [sighs and gasps] and it just spread and the moment that's that's the beginning of the end and look it took 3 years after that for everything to unfold but it was that moment That was the moment that went.

Is there anything that could have been said or done to have made you when Massa offered you that $4 billion in that cab? Are you ready for this?

Sure. I I used to be closer. We don't speak as much [clears throat] anymore today. I used to be much closer to Mark Ben off the founder of Salesforce. 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, but I want you to fly to Japan and say no to Masa. I want you to take your company public."

What was your last valuation? I said 16.

He goes, "Great. I want you to take your company public for 5 billion. I want you to sell 20% of the billion. And I want you to learn how to be public CEO. I promise you two things. one cuz your last valuation was 16. At five, everybody's going to think this is a great deal. People are going to rush to invest including myself. Everyone's going to rush to invest. You'll learn because it's very different to be a public CEO and a private co. You're going to learn about profitable. You're going to learn all these things cuz I think you're very fast student and I guarantee you before you know it, your valuation will be much larger."

And he said, "But I know you're not going to listen to me."

And I didn't. Was there a world that I could have said no?

not the kind of person that I was then and not with the tools I have.

Why why didn't you listen to him?

We didn't know each other for long enough. I think it takes a lot of trust to listen to when someone gives you a counter advice and every by the way there was another person also said no.

But but we'll put that aside for a second. But here's what I think is more important about it. Let's say I said no. And let's say we work could still be around. We were could be a hundred billion dollar company today. Corona would have happened. we would have renegotiated all of our leases instead of leases would become management deals and we would have led the return to office. We would have led that concept because obviously people work I know we spoke about it much better face to face than remote work and we would have we would have been the leaders of the movement of return to office and we work was a great company and even it would have launched launched we live our version of FL but I Adam wouldn't have learned all those lessons I wouldn't be I am so much happier today even as we're speaking I'm noticing like everything you're talking to about makes me feel full even the wor even the challenging parts I I'm so happy that they happened because they made me exactly who I'm meant to be.

Falling is not bad. That's the thing that you and I are actually talking about. Falling is probably the most important part of life. And most of us learn a lot more from falling than we do from succeeding. The thing that's bad is not when you fall, it's how you get up. If you just fell and you're, "Oh no, everybody saw me fall. I'm not going to hide under the covers for four years until everybody forgets whatever it is that happened." That's what's horrible. That leads to the tragedy. That leads to the trauma. If you fail, you look around, you're like, "Wow, everybody saw." You clean up, you get up, and you say, "Let's do it again." If you have that in you, nothing will stop you. And it might take 10 times and 20 times and 50 times, but if you fall enough times, then you might avoid falling.

There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you're already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. I'm thinking also about a founder that's 21 years old. They've got a startup or an idea that they want to start. You like like when I was 21 years old, my mom tells me 18, if you do this, I won't speak to you again. It's, you know, she was warning me against business because she had struggled in business herself. So, that's a proxy of love, I guess. And then you've got other people here telling you that it's going to be amazing and you're going to make millions. When you're in that situation, you've got noise. How do you find the signal? Two ways. One,

they have to go back to the mission. So, if one had a mission and then someone off 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. But I think the other one, which is something that I have more today than I used to back then, one needs a practice. Part of the way to try on the noise is with a practice. I've been enjoying meditating lately in the past year and I've been getting better and better at it. And meditating is something that takes time. Meditating helps drown the noise. And then the thoughts that I do get while I meditate tend to be very healthy thoughts that are headed in a good direction. I there's many I do the hyperaric chamber.

Steve Jobs talked about meditation and his sort of spiritual practices and it's something that I I actually in the last year I started really looking into. Um, when I say looking into, I mean I started looking into what he did and why he did it because he's someone that I look at and go, it was like he was able to see around the corner and 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? 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. I.e. he stood away from the picture enough so he could see the full picture. And that's something that I thought, oh gosh, that's it 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. 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. We've seen that happen before.

So hard work is also personal growth is very hard work. And most people don't have the courage to even look in honestly, let alone change.

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, you're going to have to start by redefin business, I'm going to have to push back on it. We are not going to measure your success just in business. We're going to measure your success in life, in relationship, in friendships, in effect on the world and in business.

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, you're going to have to start by redefin business, I'm going to have to push back on it. We are not going to measure your success just in business. We're going to measure your success in life, in relationship, in friendships, in effect on the world and in business.

Do you know why I'm asking this question? 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." and for whatever reason, because of their trauma, because of how they were raised, the lens that they will receive that message through or the thing that will be the carrot will be a promise that it will make them better at the thing they currently care about. 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. But just for those people that have that lens, no, I'm going to we're going to help. We're going to say something and I hope people have said it here before, but I'm not sure they did. But tell me if people said it. 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. If these founders can all redefine success, think about if in school instead of learning about all the successes spoke about Steve Jobs and he's a real hero of mine, but would I have wanted his life? How old was he when he passed away? How was the relationship with everybody around? How did he affect people? Now, I don't know. Oh, I wasn't a friend. I don't know him. And I am not judging or measuring. I'm just telling you we cannot measure a person just through their business achievements. We must look at people holistically. So I'm telling all these young founders, forget take time to meditate. You asked how I do it and I how we quiet the noise and I answered meditation. But that is not my first advice to them. My first advice to all of us, by the way, you talk a lot about one year one year olds with AI coming and everybody's about to be a founder. Everybody can start a business. It's true for everyone. It's true for 12 year olds and it's true for 60 year olds. This is for everyone. Have the courage to actually look inside and say, "Where can I become a better version of myself? Don't work on three things. Work on one thing and choose that thing and work on it." And by the way, if you do, when you fix it, how you going to know that it's better? Cuz you're going to see the next thing you need to work on. It is like an onion. And every time you peel it, you will see another layer. and another layer and another layer. That is the advice I'm actually giving them. And I'm promising them that if they look deep enough, what they're going to find is their calling. 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. As we are able as human beings to do that, find our true journey, find our flow, the world is open for us.

So, let's zoom back into the story. You're walking down towards 18th Street. Um, you've just raised all this money. You feel like a king. That's the way you just on paper, right? It just, we're just saying. It didn't actually happen yet.

You're walking down towards 18th Street. Um, you've just raised all this money. You feel like a king. That's the way you just on paper, right? It just, we're just saying. It didn't actually happen yet. What was um, you said over the next year, you said that was the start of the end. Over the next three years, decisions changed specifically in terms of business. It became about money. It became about money. It became about valuation. I forgot the mission. That was a slippery slope. It's not my truth. And that means that you you grew even faster. You opened up even more leases. We blew up. We grew. We went even faster. We were going We went really fast.

One of the things that I 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 fake news. This was before we were ever started. I had all these ideas. Anybody who tells the story that we had a lot of ideas in 2016 cuz we raised money doesn't know that this was done before we work ever started in a green desk office and all the ideas we had were right here. This doesn't look like focus to me. I feel like if I showed my investors this now they would shout at me. Could be. Today I would choose what is the real focus of all these things. The person and if we can actually and I would do today I would do it one foot ahead of the other. It's a little bit more like we're doing flow. But when you build a business, it's art, not science. If you're going to have some investor tells you, oh, you put this first and this second and this third, they're limiting you. You do need to have a very a very strong foundation. And that's, as you said before, both as a human being and as a business person. So, for anyone that can't see, you just circled the the sort of stick person in the middle of all of these ideas, and you said really, I would have focused on this person. I would really have focused on the person and only added things that made so the mission create a world where people make a life and not just a living.

we should have just only added things that are in support of that mission.

It reminds me of Amazon and Jeff Bezos their famous saying of working backwards from the customer and what's the customer's pain points. I've just we just hired um a wonderful person our CTIO um from Amazon she's called ADA and she says to me that at Amazon there's always a you know often an empty seat to the meetings and that is the customer. So they leave an empty seat so that they can make the decisions through the lens of this person. So they're always in every meeting so you don't get distracted of who you're doing it

Speaker A: for. And that's kind of what you describe. It's actually become you know since she's joined our business it's always front of mind for all of us which is like work backwards from the customer cuz sometimes you might work forward from your own ego like I like that but remember I'm going to give you my best advice. I've met I've had the pleasure to meet Mr. Bizos and he's phenomenal and he's one of the best operators on the planet by far. Some would say the best. My best advice for you, build a culture that is authentic and true to you. So, I love that you're focused on the customer, but I can tell as we're speaking, you're very honed in on your user. Multiple times you've told me how your listener is going to interpret what we're saying. You are aligned with your listener. I have no doubt about it.

Speaker B: Isn't that a form of working backwards from the customer? Cuz I'm sat here about thinking 21-year-old Dave Jenny. I'm thinking about and every time you answer questions

Speaker A: again I'm sorry I don't I don't want to being very No, we're being very I'm I'm repeating myself and I don't mean to be boring and if this was if we did this podcast 3 years ago maybe I would go all over the place.

Speaker B: If you actually today went to the depth of your truth what is your correction? What do you need to work on? Where are you going? And then 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. So, are you saying I don't need to work backwards from the customer? What are you saying?

Speaker A: I'm saying your truth has to be yours first. I'm not pushing against this theory. Of course, we need to work again. My truth. I know a lot of times people keep telling me what the customer wants. I, Rebecca, and I build what we think is correct.

Speaker B: You don't listen to no focus groups. No way. There's a famous saying, I think it's Henry Ford, if I asked the customer, they would have asked for faster horses. Never invented the car.

Speaker A: No, you know what you want. I think it's about finding our own truth. I think when a person finds his own truth, they can express it. Of course, I'm not going to tell you we shouldn't listen to the customer. And flow, we have a lot of I could tell you 10 things that the customer has pointed out to us that of course are right and we do. But again, we have an opinion. If we listen to our customer at FL, we'll have prettier buildings so more influencers can take more pictures.

Speaker B: So, you're saying hear your customers but don't always listen to them. Is that a distinction?

Speaker A: I am saying do you know yourself? 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. [snorts] And instead of living life to the potential, life is so beautiful and amazing and full that if you're going to now be busy listening to your customer cuz you want to build a business cuz you want to make money. Not only do I think it's not going to work for you, where's the fun in that? I think I'm asking this in part uh selfishly for myself which is

Speaker B: for you. I'm ready.

Speaker A: So at a stage of my business, you know, where we're being offered lots of money from lots of people. Um our last valuation was about 450 uh 450 million or something like that. And so I reflect on your story a lot because I although the numbers were wildly different um you were at a moment where you know you could raise whatever you money you wanted and with that comes opportunity and distraction dressed in the same dress potentially. And in this particular season of your story I go oh Adam like bought this like apparently you bought like a a surfing thing and a thing over here.

Speaker B: Let's let's say something just cuz you said it cuz I I love it. The surfing thing we bought for $7 million was 48% of a company called Wave Garden. Mhm.

Speaker A: We bought it because we thought you could build amazing communities around Surf. Wave Garden today does north of, as far as I know, north of 500 million in sales for 2027. I think this year maybe around 250. They're extremely successful.

Speaker B: Mhm. The founders are so happy. I saw them not too long ago because when when I stepped down, we work famously sold it back to them for 5 million even though it was worth so much more. They own 100% of their business. Their business is thriving and I stand behind and I'll tell you again today the best amenity for if we wanted to build a big global community real estate best amenity number one school cuz if you have a great school everybody wants to live around

Speaker A: let me double click there then even though wave garden was a great great idea like great spotted a great business that went on to be very very successful in our situation there's lots of those and I would end up giving a different business.

Speaker B: Yeah. Like in in my world, there's lots of these like we could do that and that and that and that. And you know what? Objectively, maybe they're all good ideas, but when we talked about this point of focus, I would then be splitting myself 10%.

Speaker A: I have a great answer for you. Best recommendation to you would be the same one I gave you when we spoke about your fiance. I think you need a little bit time for yourself for a second. I think you need to soul search and see exactly where you want to go. Ask yourself what I just said. Assume that in 6 years you're huge. what for and why. 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? That's the only way to make that 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. First understand who you are. Then decide where you want to go because of it. then go back to all of the investors and see who is the right investor. And again, I want to say it again because I think it's worth it. I think you should choose, all of us 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. If I 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 to grow.

Speaker B: To grow. Yeah. And that could be for anyone listening that's at the start of their journey. It's going well. They're being pulled by opportunity, not by mission. What What are 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? So, I think the rule of thumb that we gave is well, you've said a few things. 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. So, first step, you needed to have had a real mission. 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. 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, handling there's a lot of handling we can translate it in many ways. Then in definition something is going to crack. There will be a short circuit. 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.

Speaker A: What is the um the most effective practice you've ever deployed to know yourself better? For me, Adam, it's just my truth. 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 and I just spend my time with my family, my friends, and taking part of something greater than myself. That disconnection actually makes a lot more connection than anybody understands. So, the best practice I can suggest is technology Shabbat. Forget religion. This is nothing to do with religion. If you take 24 hours off of your phone, completely off. Put it aside.

Speaker A: Here's what I forecast. When's the last time you were off your phone for 24 hours, by the way?

Speaker B: Oh, god.

Speaker A: So, here's what I suggest to the founders, to everyone. Choose a day. Make it Saturday, make it Sunday, make it middle of the week, it's easier on the weekend. Make it the day that's true for you. and take their phone away for 24 hours and put it in a place that you genuinely are not going to touch it. Give it to a friend if you can't trust yourself. [sighs and gasps] The first two hours, the amount of times your hands going to go to your pocket thinking your phone is there will show you how addicted you are cuz it's an actual addiction. But then what you'll notice, especially if you scheduled it in advance, you plan the dinner with your friends, some activities that include going out to nature, little things. From my experience, when those 24 hours are over and you take back that phone, two things will happen. One, you're going to feel amazing at hour 22, 23, and 24. Amazing. And you're going to take out that phone and it's going to take you exactly 10 minutes to drop back down to the wrong frequency. That's one. Two, some of the best ideas you've had in some time are going to come to you, including who you should be surrounded with, what business you should focus on, what is your next move. For me, the best practice is that 24 hours once a week. Now again, I got to remember I have six kids. I'm married. I have that 24 hours where it's where it's us together has been phenomenal. And I think in front of everyone, if you committed to 24 hours one time and then report back to all of us how hard it was, which will be a definition for the addiction, but was it positive? Cuz you talk a lot about giving your listeners tools. Well, I think we should test the tools on ourselves first and only if they work, we should really recommend them for everybody. But I have a feeling it would be amazing for you and even better for your fiance.

Speaker B: I have a feeling you

Speaker A: I bet she wants it, by the way. I bet she's even asked for asked me a million times.

Speaker B: Well, why haven't you said yes if she asked you a million times?

Speaker A: Oh gosh. Um, why haven't I said yes? What's the answer?

Speaker B: Whenever someone

Speaker A: Because I don't see the upside.

Speaker B: It's cuz you're religious, not spiritual. M [clears throat]

Speaker A: whenever someone can change something, I think they're religious. I keep saying to people, I'm 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?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Does your brain get very clear? Fasted from water and food or just water?

Speaker B: Just food?

Speaker A: Both. Yeah. Have you ever done a whole day no water? No food?

Speaker B: Yes. No food.

Speaker A: I've done ketosis as well. So ketosis also is a little different. Have you noticed when fasting after 12 hours, 18 hours, 24 depending how clear your head becomes. Your body doesn't want it. Your body doesn't see an upside in it. But you've tested it and you know that you get clarity from it. You know that there's a benefit to it. Same thing here. 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 the drug trying it and after doing it two three times being like that didn't work for me I respect that but you by the way I think you know that it would work.

Speaker B: Yeah this is what I was going to say is like conceptually of course I know it's going to work. I've like sat here with the neuroscientists that have done the studies. Um I I think there was probably a more honest answer that I've just sort of uncovered which is it would be very uncomfortable and even the thought of it is like really uncomfortable. But now you and I are going somewhere. How do we know what to do in life? Whenever we feel that we're in a crossroad, a decision, one is comfortable, one is not. Keep going after the uncomfortable one. Path of most resistance, path of least resistance. Always go after the path of most resistance. Long journey, short journey, go after the long. But you know what happens? It takes less time. It ends up being easier and has a lot more value. There are rules to the game of life. No one taught us.

Speaker B: So I we go back to

Speaker A: So I we go back to Wait, are we getting a commitment? I need a commitment. If France is listening, can we do one? She's listening. Can we do one time?

Speaker B: We can do one time.

Speaker A: Okay, perfect. We can do one time. Can we make sure to do it this month in September?

Speaker B: Oh, that's a great question. Um, yes.

Speaker A: It's uncomfortable. Yes. Yes, we can. Just before I shake, cuz I want my Cuz we're going to We both keep our words. Can I can I define

Speaker B: Let's define define it.

Speaker A: Well, 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.

Speaker B: It's not going on my phone or my computer or any electronic device for 25 hours.

Speaker A: You can drive. You can turn on the lights. Do everything else.

Speaker B: I can talk about everything. No, no. We're not asking you to pen and paper.

Speaker A: I can

Speaker B: I'm not asking you to keep Shabbat. I said technology Shabbat. [laughter] We're just We're just going off.

Speaker A: I can brainstorm on a whiteboard.

Speaker B: Encouraged. Okay, encouraged to bring a server. Now again, next level will be we'll take business out of it so you can really connect. But let's do the first.

Speaker A: Okay. So, right, let's define it. No screens, which includes your computer, your iPad, your watch, whatever. Yeah, watch. Good. I like it. Does your car have like a big screen? Cuz some of the cars are like big iPads.

Speaker B: I won't be in my car cuz I'll be in Europe in September. So, we're done.

Speaker A: Okay, great. Deal. Deal. I'll let you know how it goes.

Speaker B: Let all of us know how it goes.

Speaker A: I will. Now, we can go back. So, let's go back to this this cuz I really wanted to nail this point of focus.

Speaker B: Please do.

Speaker A: I'm obsessed. I'm pretty obsessed with this point of focus in part. I remember this Johnny Ives video I watched where Johnny I've sent it around for the last couple years to all of my team. Johnny says Steve had this remarkable ability to focus. And he said focus isn't saying no to things you don't want to remotely don't want to do anyway. 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. 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. They've all got a million initiatives they're working on. And famously, he goes up to a whiteboard and draws four things. Like I think it was a four quadrant thing. And he says, "This is what we're going to do. Everything else is canceled."

Speaker B: Cancelled it.

Speaker A: Cancelled it. One of the things that I concluded from the the period after you raised all this money was that there was a lack of focus cuz you ended up doing lots of things at the same time. And that's something that I find myself almost at like the foothills of being tempted to do. So that's why I wanted to ask you the question like let's let's answer it. So first of all, we talked about superpowers and super weaknesses. I cannot tell you that my superpower is focus. Okay, it's it's not not not my superpower. I actually have the opposite of it. My challenge is and Ben Horitz and Mark and Dre helped me understand this. I'm very good at zero to one. So the problem with many many entrepreneurs have a lot of ideas. Problem with me having a lot of ideas, they actually become a reality. So one entrepreneur has Ben was telling this to me said another entrepreneur is going to come with nine new ideas and the next board meeting maybe he did one

Speaker A: of them. You have nine ideas. We didn't say anything the board meeting. We come next board meeting. There's nine new businesses. So focus is something that I need to work on. So now let's go a little deeper. And this is how I do my own personal growth. I'm a creator. I'm not a protector. I'm really good at creating. I'm not that great at protecting. Rebecca's grandfather famously said, "It takes one lion to make a fortune and 10 lions to watch it." His name was Andre Herz. One lion to make a fortune, 10 lions to watch it. Very smart saying. 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 and maybe we should do it in 3 months or in 6 months or in 9 months, but right now really need to focus not on one thing. I'm not a one thing kind of guy, but let's say on three things where other people can only do one at a time. I'm probably very good at 3 to 5. But once you go above that number 10 to 15, which I could fall into that trap, not going to succeed. So for me, with my personality, I would have to surround myself with people I trust to say no. Did you have that at Weiwork? A little, but not really. Because again, remember back to that horrible moment where I walk back into the office and the ego got the best of me. What happens next when you lose yourself? you start attracting the wrong people. So the people that were hired after that were just there for the money. The energy that was being projected was let's go public, let's do this, let's do that. The energy that's projected was was wrong. You filed for an IPO and uh I think softback soft bank invested a further 2 billion into we work.

Speaker B: So you really are trying to get to the story. The challenge with what you're trying to do is there's so much context to the story missing. I'll give you the little piece.

Speaker A: No, I'm I'm all good with I'll I'll I'll give it to you if this and this is your podcast.

Speaker B: I'll tell you what [clears throat] I want to get. I just want to end this.

Speaker A: Then we'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.

Speaker B: I want to close this now.

Speaker A: Yeah. I'll close this for you. I'll close this for you.

Speaker B: So we Masa gives the money.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: We lose our mission a little bit. But he's very clear what he wants. He wants the fastest. He wants the largest company on the planet.

Speaker A: A trillion dollar company.

Speaker B: A trillion dollar company. I can deliver big company. I can by then back then by the way no one said numbers like that today we've seen companies 5 years old that are getting to those numbers see look how the world's moving what was impossible and then no one could talk about and made fun of 10 years ago suddenly is everyday reality not a big word anymore but it's a huge number obviously and very few companies are going to be there and stay there but more as time moves forward more and more must invest in the money ends up coming in only in 2017 takes quite a long time between when the investment is offered and 2016 that piece of paper to the money coming in in 2017. But we we we deliver on our 960 million in sales. And the following year, we deliver on our 1.8 billion or 1.92, whatever the exact number we said we we hit our number. And Masa comes and says, "Wow, you really delivered on your number." Said, "Of course, Masa son, we always deliver on our number." And and he said, "Well, Adam, I've invested with vision fund a lot of companies. Everybody promised me to double the revenue. You're one of the only ones who did it." said, 'Well, that's what we did. I said, 'Well, so our expenses grew. Said I have no problem with the expenses. When the time is right, we'll stop the growth and profitability will catch up. As we explained, that happens in businesses that are actually successful. And he comes and basically comes up with this idea. He says, "How about we buy your investors are going to want an IPO and they're going to want an exit. They're going to want focus. I have no problem with how wide we're going. How about we buy the company for 20 billion?" And this is the story that a lot of people don't understand. How about I buy the company? I'll give it a $20 billion valuation, which is very similar to the valuation it came in before. But I said, 20 billion, isn't it a little low? He said, "No, no, 20 billion of actual cash. We'll give $10 billion to the to the investors and we will put $10 billion on the balance sheet."

Speaker B: In the bank account, basically. in the bank account, you Adam won't sell. Your employees can sell some so they make money. All the investors are out. You and your management team will go down to 30%. me and the new me soft bankank vision fund whoever is going to do it will own 70%. 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 and I understand that we're growing too fast and I understand that we'll have too much expenses but I'm putting my money where my mouth is and I don't care because I think this is going to be one of the biggest companies in the world. This happens is a very important part of the story. This happens in March of 2018. This is before the IPO. You can't you can't bring this story back if you don't understand this part. March of 2018, he only invested the money really came in in the middle of 2017 or like you two. This is only a year after he's with us. He's on the board. He has two boards. They know everything that's happening in the company. No secrets. I take the offer to our board say look at this amazing thing 20. Remember they invested pre-money valuation of 84 million. This is 20 billion. They invested at 84 million. By this point, they've already pulled out because of all the secondaries. They've already pulled out nor somewhere between 3 to 500 million. I'll check the exact number so you have it. Maybe even more, maybe even 700 million by this. They've pulled out a lot. Whatever the number was at least 350 million on an investment of 21 million. I take it to them. The offers it must sounds like a great offer, but I Adam going to stay in the company mean the management team. So, we can't make a deal like this. So in boards when someone has a deal that they're staying behind you need to create a special committee and a special committee is created the board member from benchmark and another board member that we had in the not that we had which out of respect to him I'm not saying his name and they create a special committee and they decide to negotiate a 20 billion allcash deal that would have made money for everyone remember Masa came in at 20 he's the only one who's not making money from this deal and he's staying Everybody else came in at 50 million, 100 million, 400 million, a billion. Everyone's making money. And they're, and this word is a dangerous one, but it's greed because the company at that point is losing about $2 billion a year, forecasted to lose over $3 billion the next year. He knows the forecast. 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. He'll be the majority shareholder. they say no and negotiate a $20 billion deal from March till October for a company losing two billion. Now I don't know how you value companies. We could talk about how we should value companies because there are very valuable companies who are losing money of course at high growth but still they have a company losing $2 billion. Masaasan is offering them 20 in return for that pleasure and they negotiate these two special committee special uh board members. Now I'm not part of it cuz I'm staying in the deal so I have zero part of it. In a normal world, if I were to sit on your board [snorts] and and I'm sitting on your board and and someone comes and gives this crazy offer to buy me and all the other friends out and I invested in you now in this 400 million and you gave me a deal at 20 billion and I'm making 23 billion on my 50 million. First, I come to you and I say, "Stephen, thank you.

Speaker A: or we do this, this, and this, some threat that makes him step down. I have a different version of it, but they're pushing me very, very hard to step down. And at the beginning, I don't like I'm not stepping down. And then I have a meeting with one of the heads of the two biggest banks in the world. And he sits with me and he says to me, "Adam, if you step down, then we will fund $2 billion into Weiwork, which will give it time to move profit profitable."

Speaker A: I'm lucky that I chose well or she chose me or the universe chose us. She looks at me and she goes, "Hm, okay, this is a surprise. My mom owns a house in upstate New York. She bought it 30 years ago. She has no mortgage. Let's go live with my mom.

few months.

Think about it.

If you want to go back into business, I know you'll be successful. And if you don't, we'll move to Costa Rica. I will homeschool and we will surf every morning and serve every night. And we'll have a great life. Both cases. Don't worry about it. And at that moment, this is when I think I grow up for the first time. And you asked about this. So now as we're talking, you're helping me understand something. [sighs] You talked about that child and the pain. As a child, when we're facing these very difficult things, we have no one to count on, only our parents. For a moment, I think I was that child again crying. But I wasn't a child anymore because I had an amazing wife and kids that I could lean back on. They 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. And the moment I realized that, I felt a little stronger. I felt better. I stopped crying. I was like, I [snorts] start crying. I was like, "Okay." But Rebecca says that I'm still not smiling. She goes, "By the way, when I met you, you were broke. I think you're much more sexy when you're broke." Then I smiled. Now I was happy. Then I walked downstairs and now you're completing the story from before that morning. After when I go to my three employees, two things happened before that morning. One was the story with the spiritual teacher who taught me that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn. And that belief is measured when we're down, not when we're up. 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. So to when those when my three employees say, "Why are you smiling?" They didn't add everything. I told them the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn and I believe. But I also told them, "And my wife thinks I'm sexy." For a kid that didn't have much stability, that was a moment where you realized your foundation was probably rock solid. I think >> I go back to where you started. Biggest decision any of us can make in our life is who is our partner. And how do we know who they are? We now said two things. One, do they make us the best version of ourselves? 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. He talked before about the dark side and the light side. How are they going to treat us if for a moment it's just the dark side? If the light is not turned off but diminished. I can see all the emotion in your face when you recount that moment and how much that that means to you. Um, probably more so than anything else you've said. There's sometimes Rebecca is quick to anger with me and I can be upset for a second, 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. Cuz our relationship has been testing fire. There's another remarkable story I remember you saying about um her giving you some advice to stand your ground in the post sort of we work era where you know there was negotiation still going on about I think your your compensation that you were going to get and she gave you some really really good advice about standing your ground. >> She did. >> What was that for those that haven't heard that story? It [snorts] inspired me cuz you know I do tend to think my fiance is always right. So when I heard that I thought huh. So, first of all, it's very hard to stand our ground when we think we have a lot to lose. It's back to that fear. Rebecca has many superpowers. One of them, she has no fear, to a fault. She's all truth. She sees people for who they are. And therefore, she's honest and she's not afraid of her truth. If someone's not going to be our friend, if someone's not gonna talk to us because of it, she doesn't care. She calls it as it is. And at the end of this whole negotiation, when it came time to finish everything, my litigator at the time, today is my partner, his name is Eric Syler, called me and we talked and we said and said, "I think we can get to a deal." And we talked about the deal. And we got to the deal >> with who? Between >> between so fast to finish for the story for everyone. I step down the world. I get the letter from the bank. We have nothing. Masan comes in, saves the day, funds the company, funds us, funds, pays our debt, but we don't get get money, but we don't get the big number, 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%. So, a billion dollars for us. Corona happens really in March and on the last day of March 2020 we get a letter from SoftBank saying that this is force majour for those of you who don't know what force majour means is when an event happens that's greater than life that's out of control like a flood or something force majour force of nature something unexpected and they don't have to pay the money and they don't send the three billion I remember by this point I've taken so many hits ah one at this point I'm already practiced I look up to the heavens and I say, "Thank you, God. What do we need to learn from this one? This one I'm already ready to learn." And the lesson there was apparently litigation. Here's what we need to learn from this one. And we go into a very complicated litigation. When the litigation ends with a settlement of a billion and a half, so instead of the 3 billion, it ends up being half. So, everybody gets half, but it's done. We negotiate a certain negotiation and was going to take a certain time for the money to come in. And Rebecca was just about to give birth. This was 4 days before she was giving birth. And I walk in with my best friend Andrew Finkelstein who was there with me for this whole experience. And we walk in to tell cuz this is Corona. So everything's on Zoom. So Eric Syler, the litigator, is in his house in New York. We're in the Hamptons. They're in Japan. Everybody's all over the place. And we walk in to tell Rebecca the settlement that we agreed and we settle but the money will come in two months and this will happen and that will happen [sighs and gasps] and she says no. and we're if we don't close the deal Monday we're going to court and court was not a not going to be great for anyone and b it wasn't great for weiwork because if if if we weren't going to go to court another investor was going to come they're going to take the weiwork at least to stood the chance and she goes no we've already had they were supposed to pay April 1st for 2020 they didn't pay the 3 billion the three billion why are you now settling the 3 billion with another agreement ment to delay payment again. What if they don't pay and now you missed your court date? Either they pay and then it's settled. We'll all say thank you and everybody will walk away. And it's not just paying to us. That bill and a half is to all the employees and all the investors. It's half a billion to us and a billion to everyone else. Either and and and I know for all of us listening that these are outrageously large numbers. I completely acknowledge and understand either they pay or they don't. And I say to her, "What do you want to do?" we agreed on it. And she goes, "Tell them you agreed on it, but your wife didn't." And she goes, "You didn't do the money aside that we talked. You signed the personal guarantee. It's not just your money. This is our money. And I don't accept the settlement. Go back and tell them that either they pay it tomorrow." This was like th this was Wednesday before we had a scheduled C-section. So, Friday 8:00 a.m. Either they pay it before Friday 8:00 a.m. or we'll see everybody in court on Monday. And she said also tell them that any horrible thing that's ever been said about you has been on the press and public. It's all out there. So Eric Syler calls me

few months.

Think about it.

If you want to go back into business, I know you'll be successful. And if you don't, we'll move to Costa Rica. I will homeschool and we will surf every morning and serve every night. And we'll have a great life. Both cases. Don't worry about it. And at that moment, this is when I think I grow up for the first time. And you asked about this. So now as we're talking, you're helping me understand something. [sighs] You talked about that child and the pain. As a child, when we're facing these very difficult things, we have no one to count on, only our parents. For a moment, I think I was that child again crying. But I wasn't a child anymore because I had an amazing wife and kids that I could lean back on. They 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. And the moment I realized that, I felt a little stronger. I felt better. I stopped crying. I was like, I [snorts] start crying. I was like, "Okay." But Rebecca says that I'm still not smiling. She goes, "By the way, when I met you, you were broke. I think you're much more sexy when you're broke." Then I smiled. Now I was happy. Then I walked downstairs and now you're completing the story from before that morning. After when I go to my three employees, two things happened before that morning. One was the story with the spiritual teacher who taught me that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn. And that belief is measured when we're down, not when we're up. 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. So to when those when my three employees say, "Why are you smiling?" They didn't add everything. I told them the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn and I believe. But I also told them, "And my wife thinks I'm sexy." For a kid that didn't have much stability, that was a moment where you realized your foundation was probably rock solid. I think >> I go back to where you started. Biggest decision any of us can make in our life is who is our partner. And how do we know who they are? We now said two things. One, do they make us the best version of ourselves? 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. He talked before about the dark side and the light side. How are they going to treat us if for a moment it's just the dark side? If the light is not turned off but diminished. I can see all the emotion in your face when you recount that moment and how much that that means to you. Um, probably more so than anything else you've said. There's sometimes Rebecca is quick to anger with me and I can be upset for a second, 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. Cuz our relationship has been testing fire. There's another remarkable story I remember you saying about um her giving you some advice to stand your ground in the post sort of we work era where you know there was negotiation still going on about I think your your compensation that you were going to get and she gave you some really really good advice about standing your ground. >> She did. >> What was that for those that haven't heard that story? It [snorts] inspired me cuz you know I do tend to think my fiance is always right. So when I heard that I thought huh. So, first of all, it's very hard to stand our ground when we think we have a lot to lose. It's back to that fear. Rebecca has many superpowers. One of them, she has no fear, to a fault. She's all truth. She sees people for who they are. And therefore, she's honest and she's not afraid of her truth. If someone's not going to be our friend, if someone's not gonna talk to us because of it, she doesn't care. She calls it as it is. And at the end of this whole negotiation, when it came time to finish everything, my litigator at the time, today is my partner, his name is Eric Syler, called me and we talked and we said and said, "I think we can get to a deal." And we talked about the deal. And we got to the deal >> with who? Between >> between so fast to finish for the story for everyone. I step down the world. I get the letter from the bank. We have nothing. Masan comes in, saves the day, funds the company, funds us, funds, pays our debt, but we don't get get money, but we don't get the big number, 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%. So, a billion dollars for us. Corona happens really in March and on the last day of March 2020 we get a letter from SoftBank saying that this is force majour for those of you who don't know what force majour means is when an event happens that's greater than life that's out of control like a flood or something force majour force of nature something unexpected and they don't have to pay the money and they don't send the three billion I remember by this point I've taken so many hits ah one at this point I'm already practiced I look up to the heavens and I say, "Thank you, God. What do we need to learn from this one? This one I'm already ready to learn." And the lesson there was apparently litigation. Here's what we need to learn from this one. And we go into a very complicated litigation. When the litigation ends with a settlement of a billion and a half, so instead of the 3 billion, it ends up being half. So, everybody gets half, but it's done. We negotiate a certain negotiation and was going to take a certain time for the money to come in. And Rebecca was just about to give birth. This was 4 days before she was giving birth. And I walk in with my best friend Andrew Finkelstein who was there with me for this whole experience. And we walk in to tell cuz this is Corona. So everything's on Zoom. So Eric Syler, the litigator, is in his house in New York. We're in the Hamptons. They're in Japan. Everybody's all over the place. And we walk in to tell Rebecca the settlement that we agreed and we settle but the money will come in two months and this will happen and that will happen [sighs and gasps] and she says no. and we're if we don't close the deal Monday we're going to court and court was not a not going to be great for anyone and b it wasn't great for weiwork because if if if we weren't going to go to court another investor was going to come they're going to take the weiwork at least to stood the chance and she goes no we've already had they were supposed to pay April 1st for 2020 they didn't pay the 3 billion the three billion why are you now settling the 3 billion with another agreement ment to delay payment again. What if they don't pay and now you missed your court date? Either they pay and then it's settled. We'll all say thank you and everybody will walk away. And it's not just paying to us. That bill and a half is to all the employees and all the investors. It's half a billion to us and a billion to everyone else. Either and and and I know for all of us listening that these are outrageously large numbers. I completely acknowledge and understand either they pay or they don't. And I say to her, "What do you want to do?" we agreed on it. And she goes, "Tell them you agreed on it, but your wife didn't." And she goes, "You didn't do the money aside that we talked. You signed the personal guarantee. It's not just your money. This is our money. And I don't accept the settlement. Go back and tell them that either they pay it tomorrow." This was like th this was Wednesday before we had a scheduled C-section. So, Friday 8:00 a.m. Either they pay it before Friday 8:00 a.m. or we'll see everybody in court on Monday. And she said also tell them that any horrible thing that's ever been said about you has been on the press and public. It's all out there. So Eric Syler calls me

Speaker A: and he says I I tell so actually Rebecca called him and he said, "Adam, I have a question for you. Who do I work for? You or Rebecca?"

Speaker B: Said, "Well, you work for me and I work for Rebecca. So, you work for Rebecca?"

Speaker A: Goes what I thought cuz she called me and told me I'm a lousy lawyer.

Speaker B: Said, "You're not a lousy lawyer. She just doesn't like our settlement."

Speaker A: But we did get to a resolution. I go, "What do you think we should"

Speaker B: He said, "You have no choice. You should tell them there's no deal."

Speaker A: I said, "What are they going to do?"

Speaker B: He said, "They're going to explode."

Speaker A: Said, "And then said, I don't know. Either they'll meet you in court and this was a horrible decision or they'll break and send the money."

Speaker B: Said, "What do you think's going to happen?"

Speaker A: Said, "I I've never been in this position."

Speaker B: Said, "I don't know."

Speaker A: Okay. Got on the phone. We told them what we told him. They hung they screamed, "Ba, we're going to sue you for this and sue you for that."

Speaker B: I called Eric, "What now?" He goes, "No, we wait."

Speaker A: Torres later, Marcelo calls and and Marcelo is not the person who made the original investment in me. Marcelo Clar is he was at the time he was very big personality in SoftBank. Today he has his own business. Every time that I've had an interaction with me, he's always kept his word and always did the right thing. Even when I didn't agree with him, he told it to me straight. So I respect him and a lot.

Speaker B: And Marcelo calls me. He's on the walker. He's like a tall guy like he's on this walker. He goes, "Call Rebecca." I was like, "Are you sure, Marcelo?" She's like on the couch. Call Rebecca. I was like, "Okay."

Speaker A: I called Rebecca. She's coming in again right before birth. And she's standing there next to Marcelo goes, "Rebecca, I wanted to tell you that you and Adam were ahead of your time."

Speaker B: He's so correct. He said, "The world is lonely. The world is disconnected. People need we. People need to bring people together. People need community. You're you're 10 years ahead of your time. I don't think we were 10 years. I think we were five years ahead of our time because the world's moving so fast. Cuz I just want to tell you the money will be in the bank before you give birth. I'm sorry we had to go through all of this. This is just business. Nothing here was personal. We'll take the keys. Hopefully, we do well by the company, but we're good."

Speaker A: Gets off the zone. I looked at her. I said, "Now what?" She goes, "Fine. Sign the documents." I said, "But you said we can't do it if the money is not in." What?" She goes, "No, no, we're all good now. We signed At 4:30 a.m. the money hits the account. We all get on a Zoom. At 8:00 a.m. I'm in Mount Si Hospital. Great hospital. Rebecca is giving birth to Moses. Everybody took a deep breath and we're here today. Adam, I have um I'm going to wrap up, but I I have these five pieces of empty card and I wanted to give you the opportunity to write on. Are you okay with the writing or shall I write it for You'll write for me for my dyslexia."

Speaker B: Okay. Um just the the five most important lessons that you have learned over since the beginning of we work.

Speaker A: Well, I guess from the beginning of your

Speaker B: How about we just do the five lessons I feel we learned today by talking.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Lesson one, choose your life partner, friends, and business partners for the worst day in your life, not for the best. Okay.

Speaker A: Great advice. [snorts]

Speaker B: Lesson two, life is not about when we fall down. It's about how we get up.

Speaker A: Okay. Number two,

Speaker B: Number two, choose the life partner that will make you the best version of yourself. The one that you need, not the one that you think you want.

Speaker A: Okay. [snorts]

Speaker B: Control doesn't come from power. It comes from influence. And influence needs to be earned every single day from the beginning. And last but not least, we all have a destiny and a journey. Get to know yourself so you can start living yours. That one's for you.

Speaker A: Yeah, I thought [laughter] so.

Speaker B: Adam, thank you so much. I am I couldn't be more excited by all the wonderful things you're doing at Flow at the moment. Um, got some wonderful photos here of like the team and I've looked into the business. I also had your partner um your partner one of the greatest investors of all time Ben Horowitz write me this beautiful letter where he talks about the amazing journey he's had with you um 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 he tells us all Ben Horowitz We should never judge a founder by his worst moment. But with Adam, that was easy because his light shined and shines so brightly. You have overd delivered in every sense of the word, including on your promises.

Speaker A: Thank you, Adam. Beautiful. I want Steven to thank you. I know we had a real discussion because I learned a few things for the first time and you made me talk out loud about a few things that I've almost never had. I appreciate it and I'm going to think about it and I'm going to learn from it. What's your last word? Is there anything at all that you wanted to leave the audience with?

Speaker B: We all came to this planet with a purpose and a destiny. We started this life as this perfect light. Noise came, challenges came, people came, ego came, everything came. It is up to all of us to have the courage to look inside. See whatever the things that are stopping us from really becoming the best version of myself, of ourselves, surround ourselves with the right people, with the right family, both real family, spiritual family, whatever you consider your best and closest and go and chase your dream, your journey, your truth. 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. 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. 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. and that you're going to live this world and this planet much better than it was before you came. I wish you and all of us good luck at this journey of life.

Speaker A: Amen.

Speaker B: Amen.

Speaker A: Thank you. We're done. Thank you.

Speaker B: YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out and I bet you you might love it.