Miguel McKelvey Is Reimagining The Workplace — How Design Fuels Human Connection

The tectonic plates of the workplace landscape are rapidly shifting. Gone are the days of multi-decade corporate allegiance, replaced with project-based careers. The rapid rise of the freelance economy. And a labor core increasingly distributed across the globe. What are the economic and social implications of this trend? How can the traditional office be re-imagined to fit this escalating movement? And what role can architecture and design play to deepen community and foster personal happiness? There is no better steward to explore these important questions than this week's guest, Miguel McKelvey. A talented, multi-disciplinary designer and entrepreneur, Miguel is the Co-Founder of WeWork — the ubiquitous, communal co-working space company — where he currently serves as the Chief Culture Officer, directing construction, architecture and web design for the business. Raised on a commune in Oregon, Miguel earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Oregon, where he played on the Oregon Ducks basketball team for two years. Prior to WeWork, Miguel created the design framework and led the national retail roll-out for 170 American Apparel stores. Subsequently, he was involved in the early-stage development of several companies, including Green Desk, Barre3, Versation, and English, Baby! Because Miguel shares responsibility for creating and leading one of the world's most successful companies, one might predictably suspect this is a conversation about business. It is not. To be sure, we track his entrepreneurial journey. But this man's success has less to do with commerce and more to do with purpose. A deep commitment to community. And an intentional life devoted to fostering meaningful human connection. Over the course of two and a half hours, we explore how Miguel's unusual upbringing in a five-mother commune and his experience playing NCAA Division I basketball created the ‘Communitarian' philosophy that would later inform the cultural foundation for WeWork. We discuss Miguel's love of architecture and the important role design plays in modeling our professional and personal lives. How growing up in the town that produced Nike inspired an entrepreneurial drive to create an aspirational brand. And what his career at American Apparel taught him about engaging consumer culture at scale. But more than anything, this is a conversation with a remarkably humble man driven by gratitude and purpose to create new and original habitats that fuel a more connected world — and ultimately more fulfilling lives. The visually inclined can watch our entire conversation on YouTube here: bit.ly/miguelmckelvey452 (please subscribe!) Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:04Speaker 01

  If you find the thing you would do without being paid, and then you apply that to a business problem, which is that workspace sucks, people are disconnected, you know, everyone's lonely, that was a perfect connection point for me. So that's what I would encourage people to do, is look for, really to understand, like, where does their core, the depth of their being, what do they love to do? What would they do if they're not getting paid? And then how does that apply to an actual business problem, a social problem, something that they feel really passionate about being a part of changing? I think once you find that, then it's like, it doesn't really matter the scale of the business, or the level of success, or, you know, like, you become a millionaire, or all that other shit, doesn't really matter anymore.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  So what's interesting when it comes to the scale is that you can look at the business overall, and there's something interesting and impressive, and you value it on a large scale. It's like, wow, that's achieving something. But to me, in the day-to-day, what I really care about is connecting with people.

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  That's Miguel McKelvey, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:24Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey people, how you guys doing? What's happening? What's shaking? My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. Before we get into anything, I have a super exciting announcement I've been dying to make for a while. One of my big goals for 2019 was to create a live event experience, a show that I could ultimately eventually take on the road and execute it on the highest level. And for months, we've been working behind the scenes to make this dream a reality. And I'm just thrilled to finally let you know

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  that it's now happening. Our first live event will be Friday, September 27th at the Wilshire E-Bell Theater in Los Angeles. It's an absolutely gorgeous venue. It seats 1,100 people. It's insane. And the show will entail a live podcast, of course, with a special guest or two to be announced at a later date. We're working on it. But in addition to that, also so much more. The idea here is that I want to craft an immersive, entertaining experience that extends beyond just a podcast and is specifically tailored to a live audience.

• 3:49Rich Roll?

  We are using this initial show, again, September 27th, as kind of a proof of concept. In other words, in order to satisfy venue booking agents across the United States and internationally with respect to this tour idea that we have, we need to fill the house. I'm confident we will indeed do that. And towards that end, tickets just went on sale. So here's the deal. For the initial 48 hours between now, when you're listening to this, and July 9 at midnight Pacific Standard Time, we are giving first dibs on premium tickets, on all tickets, to all of my Patreon supporters.

• 4:32Rich Roll?

  So if you're part of that community, you will receive a message with a special code that will allow you to purchase the best seats during this two-day window. It's the least that I could do for all the support that all of you Patreon people out there have shown to us. But if you're not a Patreon supporter, but you want the opportunity to purchase early premium tickets, you can still join now and we will get you that access. In any event, after the 48-hour window, we will then open up tickets to the general public, to everybody. To get tickets, visit my website, richroll.com, click on the Appearances menu tab, and there you will find the link. Again, I'm super excited about this.

• 5:16Rich Roll?

  It's going to be next level, so check it out and I will see you there. My guest today is Miguel McKelvey. Miguel is the co-founder of WeWork, the ubiquitous communal coworking space company, where he currently serves as the Chief Creative Officer, directing construction, architecture, and web design for the business. Miguel is an architect by trade, and prior to WeWork, he created the design framework and led the national retail rollout for 170 American apparel stores, and was involved in the early-stage development of several companies, including Green Desk, Bar Three,

• 6:00Rich Roll?

  Versation, and English Baby. Miguel is an amazing person. This one is chock-a-block with insights on everything from entrepreneurship to community building, to the importance of design, to living a purpose-driven life, and basically reimagining how we live. But first...

• 6:30Rich Roll?

  Okay. Miguel McKelvey. Because Miguel is behind one of the most successful companies in the world, this guy is literally a billionaire, at least on paper, you might suppose, you might think, that this conversation centers around business.

• 6:50Rich Roll?

  It does not. Sure, we talk about his entrepreneurial journey, what he has learned along his path, but in my opinion, Miguel's crazy success has much less to do with commerce than it does with connection and being very intentional about making his life an expression of his personal purpose. We talk about his unusual upbringing in a five mother commune in Oregon, how that may have influenced him as a communitarian, this sort of community-oriented path and philosophy that he's all about. We talk about his love for architecture and how that informs his sensibility, how he thinks about modeling our work and personal

• 7:34Rich Roll?

  lives, how Nike's business model and culture influenced him, his career at American Apparel, and the professional and personal habits that he envisions to fuel a more connected world and ultimately more fulfilling lives. Miguel is a great guy. He is remarkably grounded and just super cool to hang out with. So, let's do it. This is me and Miguel McKelvey. All right, we ready to go?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I'm ready.

• 8:06Rich Roll?

  Miguel.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  I have curiosity here with all these.

• 8:09Rich Roll?

  Well, let's get into it. What do you want to know?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Well, I want to know if there's meaning behind them where they're just like, you know?

• 8:16Rich Roll?

  It's all relatively intentional. I mean, a lot of the, one of the things when you run a podcast, you get all the books in the mail ahead of time, and I interview a lot of authors, so I get a lot of cool books. So, a lot of these are from guests or they're just things that I'm interested in.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Scott, you know Scott, right? You do stuff at Charity Water. I have not had David Lynch on, but I would like to. And have you read Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday?

• 8:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:43Rich Roll?

  I was wondering whether you might have met him along the way because Ryan was the head of marketing for American Apparel.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 8:52Rich Roll?

  Back in the day. And I actually, he texted me this morning about something else, and I said, "Hey, Miguel's coming over to do the podcast. You guys must have met at some point." He was very young at the time, and he said, "I've been racking my brain trying to remember whether we met. We must have at some point," but he just didn't remember.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I would say the same way.

• 9:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  May have, but you know, it was wild times.

• 9:14Rich Roll?

  Well, let's get into the wild times, man. It's been quite a journey. I think when I think about WeWork and everything that you've accomplished and, you know, your mission, it seems like every once in a while, maybe just a couple of times in a generation, there's a really great idea that happens to coincide with a shift in culture and then like some fairy dusting of timing and a lot of hard work and persistence, of course, that kind of creates the foundation for something so, you know, seismically impacting as what you have created with WeWork. You know what I mean?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:56Rich Roll?

  Because I think about like the way people work today is not the way people work in general like when I was a kid. Right? And so this idea that you had, it wasn't, you weren't the first person to come up with the idea of coworking. That existed, but you did it at scale and in a way that really leveraged this change in our relationship to the workplace and work in general with the kind of emergence of this freelance culture and how the internet has allowed people to, you know, do what they do remotely even when they work for large companies.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's the reason why I responded to that, I guess, feeling a little bit overwhelmed is that it still feels like we're so in it, like we're in that moment where the change is still happening and evolving and it feels, I guess to me, still rough in that way. I don't know how to describe that, but it feels still like we're in the journey so much that when it, when you think of it as like that, as a shift, that almost seems like a conclusion or a change that's perceptible. I think we're still right in the heart of that change, like we're still so close to what's going on that,

• 11:13Speaker 01

  that to hear it described that way, I mean, obviously it feels great and I appreciate it, but I also feel like we have so much more to do.

• 11:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but just for perspective, I mean, this thing only started in 2008, which might seem like a lifetime ago to you, but really just wasn't that long ago.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think whereas in the early days it was like, cool idea.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Now it's like, wow, you know, you walk into, you go, arriving in Jakarta, seeing the WeWork sign on a big tower, you know, walking in and feeling this incredible warmth and like vibe of people feeling happy and connected to each other. That's when it's like surreal clicks into like real very quickly and it feels really good.

• 12:07Rich Roll?

  What I hear in that is, is the idea of community, which seems to be kind of the lifeblood for you. I mean, that, that theme permeates throughout your life. And really, uh, you know, in my imagination at least, is the life force that kind of ignites, you know, all of this for you. Yes, you're scaling, you're in all these cities, you know, this is a huge organization that you're now, you know, at the top of, um, but at its core, this is about trying to connect people.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  For sure. And I, it's interesting because that is still my deepest interest. So what's interesting when it comes to the scale is that you can look at the business overall and there's something interesting and impressive and you value it on a large scale. It's like, wow, that's achieving something. But to me in the day to day, what I really care about is connecting with people. And so, for example, I mean, we came to LA this week and what I did this morning was what we call leader circle, which was, I think about 15 of us sitting in a circle for two hours telling stories about our lives, about where we come from, about how we connect our past to who we are now.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  And that's the stuff that I love. I mean, there was tears, there were, you know, laughs, there were, you know, there was inspiration. And that's the stuff that like, I'm like, this is why I do it, you know? It's, those are the things that I feel really fulfilled by and like, um,

• 13:41Speaker 01

  And it's and then that I don't think I hope that never goes away. I mean, that's like, but that's the part that just feels so good. And so that's the part that I hunger to actually do that really well. And we talk about it all the time, like, how do we not waste our time? When we bring people together, because if you have an opportunity to connect, don't waste it.

• 14:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  You know?

• 14:04Rich Roll?

  How can you be intentional and structure these interactions in a way that will, you know, allow people to, you know, deepen their their relationship to each other?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and in that way, one thing that's really interesting, one of the struggles that we have, and we've designed WeWork for that connection. When we're outside of the WeWork setting and we like, for example, you know, the team like booked a restaurant for a dinner tomorrow night. And now we know that most restaurants suck for connecting, for really connecting. I mean, maybe if you're two people and you can really sit face to face. But if you're six and you're on the end of the table, or, you know, you're eight, you're definitely not connected as a group.

• 14:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  It's just not possible.

• 14:46Rich Roll?

  And if you're an introvert and you're at the end of the table, you sit there, you know, twiddling your thumbs.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:51Rich Roll?

  And full of anxiety.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And it could be three hours of that, right? And that's like torture, I think, if you're that person.

• 14:56Rich Roll?

  So what is the We Eat plan for addressing that?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Well, I think the first thing is for us to actually be, like you said, purposeful about those decisions. So we're actually looking for a new reservation, because of course, when I come to town, people are like, oh, let's take Miguel to the cool restaurant. I don't care about the cool restaurant at all. I want to go to the place that actually is quiet, that's conducive to conversation, where we can actually feel like we're sharing our time together in a way that's valuable. And so that's that's the design process that we're working on. So we're actually in the process today of looking for a different place to to hold that so that we, because we know we failed a lot. Like, we've gone and I've actually left those, some of the dinners being like, Angry that we wasted those three hours because I didn't feel connected. And so I aspire every time to make that time valuable.

• 15:42Rich Roll?

  I was at a friend's birthday party a couple of weeks ago. It was a small dinner party, twenty people, all at one long table. And in an effort to address that very issue, that problem, the host, the guy whose birthday it was, said, here's what we're gonna do. Everyone's gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna nominate one person to be kind of the moderator. And we're all gonna go around, we're gonna introduce ourselves. And we're gonna talk about like, what's top of mind right now for each of us? Or what we're working on, or like something that, you know, we feel strongly about. And then we'll kind of collate all of these ideas and figure out what's most interesting to talk about as a group. And that way it integrated everybody into the conversation.

• 16:26Rich Roll?

  So there was no marginalized person at the end of the table. And then it just went on its own way, but it was actually kind of amazing. And I did leave that experience feeling like I had had a meaningful exchange with every single person at that dinner. So it is like that, how can you bring an intentionality to this? Rather than just sit down like, hey, how was your day? What are you doing?

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Right. And how often do you have that experience where, you know, you happen to speak to the person who was sitting next to you, but then no one else, you know, or maybe one or two other people?

• 16:56Rich Roll?

  Or you're like, you're feeling bad because you're ignoring that person because you're talking to them.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. Yeah. And I, I think that there's, that intentionality is important on multiple levels. But I do think that it can be awkward. And so I think for me, that's been a, a something that, you know, I try not to take for granted that I'm in a position where I can say things and do things because of my whatever position or success, or whatever it might be, where people won't just blow me off. Yeah, like to some extent, like, like I can actually be a convener because of that. And I don't think, and, and so I don't take that for granted. Like I, I, I believe that, like, we've tried stuff where like, send an email in advance, giving people some instructions about how they should show up to something.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  I think some people would be like, fuck you. Like, what are you telling me how I'm supposed to act at a party or whatever? It's weird, but I think people have.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  At least in my evolving network, people are buying into that. And I think that's what, like, we want to prove that through some of that design, we can make those experiences valuable and then people will hunger for them and will continue to be able to evolve that. And I don't want to, I mean, I'm not taking credit, I should, you know, Priya Parker's book, The Art of Gathering, was one of the things that really switched that on for me because I had it in mind, but I hadn't like really got into like tactics of that stuff yet. And then in reading her book, I was like, so many points where I was like, you know, took notes and I'm like, I'm doing that tomorrow, you know, I'm executing on that stuff. And so, um, so I think that ladders up to something much bigger, hopefully eventually.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  But right now, I think that's, like, we do have the macro of like, we're creating these spaces where we believe they are conducive to connection and openness and we promote that idea in a big way. And now I think we're really getting into, not just me, but other members of our team getting into that, like, what are the practices that are truly connective?

• 18:55Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  And how can we then start to, you know, systematize those things, make them scalable, allow other people to be able to facilitate once we learn the tools?

• 19:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And so, but then that's really exciting to me because when you think about our scale, it's like one thing to be like, wow, it's cool, we have so many locations. Then if you really believe that those locations are amazing at connecting people, they're the best places in the world for that to happen, then it goes to a whole nother place.

• 19:24Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, let's go back to the beginning because the seeds of this communitarian sensibility go back to day one for you, right?

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Communitarian.

• 19:34Rich Roll?

  Very, uh, is that a word?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I don't know, I like it though. You just made it up. It's a good one. Communitarian.

• 19:40Rich Roll?

  Communitarian, community oriented.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:43Rich Roll?

  Um, this runs in your blood. I mean, you had a very unorthodox, uh, childhood, growing up on this commune run by strong women. So tell me about this.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird because commune is like the most simple word to describe the idea of communal living, but I think there's also, some people associate commune with like cult and other stuff, ideological stuff that perhaps gets weird. Um, it was very purposeful, meaning the women in my family made the choice to live collectively, um, share responsibility for different parts of their lives that, you know, were both like. Uh, replacing some of the things that normally happen in biological family, but then also going to another level in terms of like, how do they get by? You know, so when they wanted to like, live off the land at the time,

• 20:37Speaker 01

  or be more disconnected from society, it's like, well, some people had to have jobs, you know, to like, sometimes you need money for stuff. But it was very purposeful and they had ideals about how we as kids would be raised. They were very comfortable, all of them with having kids without the fathers being in the picture. And um, so there were five women who, and there were others peripheral, but there were five core women.

• 21:02Rich Roll?

  These are like friends of your mom? Like, how does this even come together?

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Well, it's weird. I've actually, over the years, I keep asking that, you know, just recently I've been like, recording my mom telling the stories. So I, I hope I'm telling them, right? Um, and I don't want to steal their stories because I think they, they should be the ones to tell them. But um, my mom and like, literally her like freshman roommate, you know, at Boulder, um, became friends and then they, you know, in the New Mexico, Colorado scene, connected with other women and I became this crew, um, who were living together and in a very, again, like an idealistic notion, like they were actually, I mean, and the way they describe it, they were like, the hippies were fighting back. They were like, we're done, we're out, you know?

• 21:49Speaker 01

  They were like that, you know, they were like extreme, um, in the sense that they were like, we've lost connection to what's going on in the world right now. We have to find something different. And so they really were trying to live completely outside of reliance on, on, you know, and a lot of the words that we have now, like free gins and communitarians, you know? They were, they were, um, they were that and they, you know? So there's amazing stories of like, Them literally getting their food from the dumpster in the back of a grocery store.

• 22:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  In an idealistic way, not because they were, I mean, they were poor, but they weren't poor, meaning like they like, like they were doing it for.

• 22:30Rich Roll?

  Just trying to completely opt out of anything commerce oriented.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then, so, and there's a bunch of influencing factors that affected their migration. But when they got to, from New Mexico to Eugene, where I grew up, they did have to re-enter society more formally because of us kids who are all in close in age. So, you know, similar band of ages, but we all, they wanted us to go to school. And so, you know, we went to public school and they had jobs for a period of time, you know, my mom was like a latchkey teacher.

• 23:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  After school. I don't know what she got paid, you know, we had food stamps, you know.

• 23:10Rich Roll?

  Was it stigmatizing for you, like to go to public school and have everybody else doing the traditional thing?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I did grow up in Eugene, I would say was a, was a, there was a hippie vibe there that was accepted. You know, like there were kids at school who had weird names. I mean, Miguel is not a weird name if you're Hispanic, but Miguel is a weird name for like a white kid. And there were other kids named, you know, Wind and.

• 23:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  You know, Morning Star and Evening Star and that summer, those kind of vibes. So it wasn't so weird. But, um, but definitely there were times, like, I didn't grow up with my father and, you know, there were times where I aspired to be normal. So I would say, someone would say, oh, what does your mom do? And I'd be like, I don't know for sure exactly like how you would define that. She's like, I mean, now I'd say, oh, she's a community activist. She's on, you know, public access TV, you know, she's doing all kinds of stuff that's cool. Now, when I look back at it, but as a kid trying to define their parents' job, it was very weird. And then my father was in the picture. So I would say, oh, you know, my father is police officer on, he's undercover, you know, you know.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  I made up stories to try to put him in a context that made me feel more, um, normal. But at the same time, I will say, there was weirdness.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  But we were also, you know, really like connected, you know, like we're a part of something like every weekend. I was on a couch at someone's house who I didn't know. Potluck, music, dancing, you know, people hanging out. Felt creative, felt just good. And, and I knew, so I knew I was a part of something bigger, whether I understood it or not, you know? And I was totally safe. Like I would like, you know, just fall asleep on the couch at probably age five or six at someone's house.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  I don't even know where I am, but I just felt totally comfortable there because I just knew I was a, we were, we were a community. We were like a connected group of people.

• 25:20Rich Roll?

  Well, the word commune is such a loaded term that, you know, has a lot of baggage associated with it. But essentially what was happening, as far as I can tell, is really the way that humans evolved to live in tight knit groups of people, not in, you know, insulated family units, but as, you know, not, and not as large as villages, but in, you know, groups, probably the size of what you were raised in. And in many respects, that feels right. And I, and I know as a parent of four kids and we live way out in the country, like not having, you know, there is a sense of, of, of not feeling as connected as I have been, you know, to, to people in the past.

• 26:04Rich Roll?

  And there's a yearning for that, like, wouldn't it be great? Like, that's why we, I was telling you before the podcast, like we've gone through phases where there's like been like nine or 10 people living here. Like we've kind of run our own little, you know, loose knit version of that. And it's nice and

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, when you come here, it's like, you can imagine if you had like five more of these little

• 26:22Rich Roll?

  Little containers. Yeah, that's the idea eventually. You know what I mean? And, and there's a comfort to that, that feels very human and, and the way that it should be, you know? And I feel like on, in, you know, our culture is just not rigged to promote that. But would we not be better off if there was more of that going on? And, and, and so really, you know, my question is like, how do you think about, I mean, you've kind of already answered it a little bit, but. Like that experience of growing up in a communitarian, you know, environment, like, how does that inform how you think about the communities that you're trying to create and cultivate and foster and grow in these spaces that, you know, you now create? I mean, there's, to me, it's like,

• 27:09Rich Roll?

  you know, you can always see things 2020 in retrospect, but it's almost like it was perfectly designed to put you in this position to be able to recreate the best parts of what that childhood experience taught you in the workplace and now in the living space.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, like you said, reflection makes things make sense, you know? And I think that at the time when I was a kid, I definitely had some rebellion to the communal hippie vibe, you know, like I wanted to eat McDonald's and not,

• 27:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  you know, co-op tempeh, you know? And so I had this, like, I did in some way rebel in the sense of business. And I also grew up in Eugene where Nike started. And I think that's a really important part of my history in terms of understanding. Like, yeah, I was in this communal environment, but I also saw this energy that came from something very commercial and sport and design focused. And so later on, that all adds up to,

• 28:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  you know, a business that is based in community, but also is about brand. It's about, you know, some level of coolness and understanding how you need that ability to message something and brand something correctly in order to like, get people to,

• 28:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  to be a part of it.

• 28:36Rich Roll?

  And it has, and the aspirational ethos of it.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a really important part to say, like,

• 28:45Speaker 01

  There are things that are truly good in the world that are community focused. Part of the reason that we've been able to scale and bring it to like a mass of people has been because we've also been really good at the business side. And that's what I think you don't think of as like, oh, the hippie dippy people who are like all about, you know, saunas and like, you know, yoga.

• 29:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Then it's like they don't make it, you know, and there are other brands that obviously have similar influences, but it's like, that's kind of the thing is like, how do you get that to be more of a mainstream thing? And I think that is where you said it was also good timing because a lot of that stuff has emerged more, you know? And it's not just us. I think there are a lot of other more mainstream places where this kind of stuff is part of the culture. I mean, your existence and podcasts, obviously as an example, it's like, you know, people are more interested in trying to get in touch with this stuff.

• 29:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you, those sensibilities are important, but if you're allergic to spreadsheets, it's not going to work, right? Like, so how do you meld and merge the best of those worlds to like alchemize all of that?

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's part of, I mean, for me personally, like, that was the part that I felt, um, the community I took in a way for granted. Like, I knew I didn't like the office environment. Like, I was sure that was wrong, you know? Like, I knew that that wasn't a good place for human beings on a day to day basis. That wasn't even a question, but the response wasn't that like, I wasn't, you know, I was actually against some of using the word community in the early days because I didn't want to claim something that we didn't actually have. And to me, a community is a really complex thing, you know, of a lot of different factors. Where does it, you know, how does it really feel like a community? It's not like you just say, you, you, you, community.

• 30:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you can't, it's not something that you can control and manipulate. You can create, you can create an environment that's conducive to it, but then there's a letting go, right?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  For sure. And that was, so that was part of the thing, and Adam and I, um, You know, had some like early day arguments about that because he would be like, why, you know, why can't we call it a community or why can't we use some of the imagery related to community in like the early marketing materials and stuff. And I was like, you know, we really have to do it before we talk about it, you know, and we have to prove that it's possible before we start, you know, because people would see that as fake, I think, if you, if you try to, um, so we didn't talk a lot in the beginning. I mean, we talked to like the landlords and the people we needed from a business perspective, but we didn't like, we weren't that, we weren't telling that story that much in the early days.

• 31:30Rich Roll?

  All right. So you're in this interesting living environment. You're six foot eight, right?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:37Rich Roll?

  Were you like, how tall were you when you were like 14 and 15?

• 31:40Speaker 01

  I was always bigger. I'm like scaled, always been bigger, you know, like, so, you know, in all the school photos, like my head was above everyone else.

• 31:48Rich Roll?

  Nike's down the road. You're interested in sports. Uh, so what? You start playing basketball at, at school? Like, how does, you know, how do you start becoming an athlete in that environment?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  My son, who now is nine and is a great basketball player, it's really interesting to compare because his skill level, you know, I just played for fun when I was a kid and I played every sport, baseball, football, basketball. Um, not every sport, that's a narrow range of sports, but they're the like, you know, seasonal, natural things that you can be a part of as a kid. Um, and basketball, I didn't really become serious about until the summer before eighth grade. And to be honest, like I was a really overweight kid. I ate a lot of McDonald's, literally, like I would say the joke, but McDonald's and Taco Bell were my main sources of.

• 32:33Rich Roll?

  Your mom's like working hard to ban glyphosate. You're sneaking off to, to Golden Arches.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's, you know, that was a great thing about my mom is that as much as she was like so on top of all the right stuff to do, she also wasn't forcing it on me. She like made it an option, but she wasn't going to be like, you have to eat this disgusting stuff, um, which to me at the time was gross. Like I was really like tofu is the worst, you know?

• 33:02Speaker 01

  But she let me do it, you know, she took me through the drive through because that's what what I wanted. And, you know, who who knows that all philosophical stuff we could debate a lot. And now that I'm a parent, like, what should I do? I'm not sure. I do. Obviously, organic is best, but you know that for sure. But anyway, um. Sports definitely became like a part of my identity when I was in like, high school and that, you know, being a basketball player like meant something. And and I do think that the learnings of like, you know, team and and

• 33:40Speaker 01

  really being willing to like, both stand up and stand out, you know, and be like, recognized, but then also be like, totally part of a part of a you like, I think I learned those lessons in a way that that I think sports are one of the few places where you can.

• 33:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  But I wasn't like a superstar player or anything. I was just like a good player.

• 34:03Rich Roll?

  But you ended up playing at University of Oregon, right?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I did. Which I mean, now, looking back on it, like, again, that's like, an accomplishment, which sounds cool. And I'm really proud of my time there. And, you know, I really enjoyed it. But I also was a super good student in architecture school. And I love that, you know, just as much. So it was very balanced.

• 34:24Rich Roll?

  But didn't you go? Did you go to Colorado College first?

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I went to Colorado College for two years. And there's a great moment that I had, which I always got to shout out this guy Carl Reed, who was a sculpture professor at Colorado College. And, you know, I took his class, Colorado College, I don't know if you know the format there, but I want to promote it. It's like one class at a time for a block for a month. And so, you know, whatever you're taking, like, total focus, like zeroed in on one subject matter. So one of my favorite classes, there was African American folklore, where you literally read like, a book a day for a month. Um, which was intense, but amazing. But anyway, so I go into sculpture class and I'm making like, whatever came to me. And this professor said, and I, and I don't know what I'm doing at all. Like, I'm like, I like art.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  It's way better than economics or math or any other stuff. And it's also an escape, like art class for a month. You know, pretty awesome. Um, no, you know.

• 35:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  So, um.

• 35:23Rich Roll?

  That's all you have to do.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it. It's like, go to studio and that's it. Make stuff, you know, all the time. And it was, it was great. And he says to me, he goes, you know, hey, your sculpture is really architectural. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, yeah, well, you know, if you look at it, it looks like you're sort of solving spatial problems and, you know, structural problems. And, um, I was like, wow, that's cool. He goes, you should think about that for graduate school. And by chance, and he didn't know where I was from at the time, he said, I, you know, University of Oregon is a great program. You should think about it. So that planted a seed where I was like, oh, whoa, like, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't have like a major. I don't know what my future holds. I was really actually unhappy at Colorado College, not for reasons that apply to the school, but more with the basketball team and stuff. And so that just clicked. I was like,

• 36:08Speaker 01

  oh, wow. And then I immediately from that moment forward, I like went to the library and like got an architecture book, you know? Um, I got a Corbusier book. Um, I got Frank Gehry book.

• 36:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  And Corbusier and Gehry are like so different in terms of their approach to architecture.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  But amazing in the impact that they had on the profession and on, and so by luck, I mean, literally I got those books by luck. And so I just completely was all in on that. And, um, I, I spent the whole summer, that following summer, just literally like, check out book, study it, memorize everything in the book and then return, get another one.

• 36:48Rich Roll?

  On your own.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  On my own, completely on my own.

• 36:51Rich Roll?

  And then you just, and then you transfer.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so then I transferred and I, but I had to apply still to the architecture school. So I had actually like a year out of, not out of school, but mostly out of school. Um, and that, that was like tough thing for like, for a high achieving person and you know, someone who had, um, Not that I was like in love with school, but I definitely was like good grades and all that. So to have like a year out where I was kind of idle was tough. But I think that I got really to know myself a lot better during that time. Because um, because I had to be, I wasn't in the format anymore. You know, like when you're in school, it's like you just show up in the format and it's like, yeah, papers do or the projects do. If you show up in that construct and you, you know, you're successful, it's easy. But then once you're freed of that, it's like, whoa.

• 37:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Like you have to make your own decisions about what time.

• 37:39Rich Roll?

  So you kind of created your own curriculum to fill that time in the in between.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I was working at a restaurant, you know, busboy.

• 37:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Um, and just like, you know, trying to fill myself up to prepare because I wanted to be the best. Like, to be honest, like, I was like, I want to be the best. Like, I want to be the best architecture student in.

• 38:00Rich Roll?

  Who were, who were your guys? I mean, you started with Corbusier and Giry.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it's interesting because Giry has always remained an inspiration to me primarily because of his early days explorations where he was really going against, you know, a lot of things in terms of the diagram. And he would say that he still like uses the diagram and stuff, but a lot of stuff is just wild, you know? And, and, and a lot of the professors that were at University of Oregon at the time didn't appreciate him, like didn't like him. They thought he was just arbitrary, making all these weird shapes for no reason. And so I liked being kind of counterculture in that way. So for that reason, I appreciate him and I still do. The other is that when he did Bilbao, the Guggenheim Museum there,

• 38:47Speaker 01

  I think he took architecture to a whole new place where the reason for that and the reason why Bilbao invested in that project was because they wanted to define themselves as a culture. They were like this industrial place, you know, they weren't known as like having a good, you know, like. Whatever, they weren't a culture center, you know? And so they said with architecture, we can reform, you know, and create this almost like culture heritage, I think, and define themselves as a region, you know, in that whole region, which has obviously great food. But, but, and that, and that to me was like, whoa, this actually became a branding exercise. And this again, sounds weird when you transfer it in the commercial, but it really is. It's like that building in Bilbao was a commercial draw.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  It was a tourist attraction. It was a redefinition of a place. It was a like, we completely

• 39:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you can't think about Bilbao, you can't think about Bilbao without thinking about that building. They're inextricably linked. And that, that structure really defines, you know, how we, you know, think about urban landscapes and experiences them. I mean, that is, it is, that is the brand of that city.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So to me, I was like, whoa, that's a whole different thing than I had ever experienced before. And I have appreciation for other, you know, I mean, there's cool things about Frank Lloyd Wright. There's cool things about Louis Kahn. There's really cool things about modern, you know, some of the contemporary architects, Herzog and De Meuron. You know, there's people doing amazing stuff. But I think a lot of, a lot of the stuff in our world now stems from Bilbao. Like the whole star architect notion, the whole like meaning of buildings, I think, changed from that. And, and so for me, the connection to that was I want to do something that goes beyond just the influence, just the goodness of good design,

• 40:40Speaker 01

  but actually something that moves culture forward in some bigger way.

• 40:52Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm a huge fan and somebody who appreciates great architecture and somebody who's experienced the impact of great architecture up close and personal. Like, we live in an architectural home. Very blessed to, you know, be in this space. We were talking about it a little bit before the podcast. And I can't imagine what my life would have been like living somewhere else because this structure has been like this crucible for everything creative that my wife and I have been able to accomplish. And it's the environment in which we raised our kids. And

• 41:34Rich Roll?

  The memories and just the daily experience of being in a structure that's oriented around like how we come together as a family unit and how we experience nature and how we engage with our creative selves, like it's a very underestimated thing in our culture. We just think, oh, you build a building or you build a house. But when there's mindfulness and intention that goes into how a structure is created in the sense that it's oriented around promoting those, you know, a certain set of values, it shapes how you live, every aspect of how you live.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I get, I mean, I'm just so excited to hear you say that because what I get extremely frustrated by seeing things that are done for reasons other than that, you know, and there are buildings built for houses.

• 42:29Rich Roll?

  Showing off or for ego or yeah.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  And I mean, there's so many, there's just any number of stupid expressions of other things other than having like good motivations for design. And there's, you know, and there's dumb stuff that's just like, oh, there's a house with a great view of nature and they didn't even put a window in the right place, you know, so there's some of that stuff that's just like, how? Like you have this amazing vista of like the ocean and, you know, or, you know, there's people who keep their curtains closed all the time to that view. And I'm like, how? But, but then there's like the next level. Then there's like actually designing for intent, actually designing with purpose and trying to understand, you know, the flow of life. And there's this building that actually

• 43:14Speaker 01

  I've always loved, which you have something similar here. I was curious how it affects you, but there's a Tadao Ando building, a very small house in Tokyo, where he designed the living spaces in the front and the bedrooms in the back. And there's a, there's a courtyard and a bridge between the two. And his idea was, you know, Waking up or going to bed, experience nature in between. And whether it's cold, whether it's rainy, whether it's hot, you're just gonna know because every day you have to, you know, make that transition. And it's a very simple idea, but one that seems so beautiful and elegant to be like, you can't avoid it, like you've gotta, you know, connect to it. And, and, and I think that's, that intention, I think, is something that's missing in,

• 43:59Speaker 01

  who knows what, 90% of stuff that's built.

• 44:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, for our, to go to our master bedroom, you have to go outside.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Oh, you do? I wonder.

• 44:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, back inside and outside.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  And how does that, is it like?

• 44:11Rich Roll?

  Well, people are like, why would you design a house that, like, that must be a mistake? I'm like, no, that was very intentional, you know, and I love it. I think it's fantastic. And look, we don't live in Minnesota, so it's no big deal.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Right, right. Is there ever a time where you're like, ah, it's pouring rain or something and you're annoyed? Or is it like, not that that would be bad.

• 44:30Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, this is, you know, this house is at its best in the summer, for sure. You know, when it's raining a lot, it's, it can be a little bit of an annoyance, but it's not that big of a deal, you know? And yeah, we purposely set off the containers like out of distance from the house to, you know, make you engage with the outside a little bit and create a little separation. And we have the communal, you know, the communal aspect of the house is separated from the private quarters and you have to go outside again to go in between both of those. And the whole idea is to bring nature into the experience. And it's a modern house, but it's not austere in the, in the, the sense of what people think of modernism in a traditional sense, because it has the rustic elements of the nature

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  and those doors slide open and it brings that natural experience into the, into, you know, your experience of life.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've only obviously been here for a short time, but when you first drive up, you have the immediate response of, ooh, that's a modern house. And you can imagine that there's some crispness to it. But then when you come right in, it's like the materiality and there's a real warmth on the inside, which feels really nice. Like, it feels immediately comfortable, which is, there are some houses designed like this that don't feel that way, where you're like, ooh, wait, am I allowed to touch anything?

• 45:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Your house feels very much like, and the dogs help.

• 45:49Rich Roll?

  The dogs help. Well, I have this, uh, this, this theory, I don't know if I've ever said this out loud, but, you know, it's really cool to have. Interesting people that inspire me like yourself come here to do the podcast. Like, we've had so many cool people come here over the years. And even before I started the podcast, we would always have interesting people here. And I feel like every person that comes, um, leaves like an energetic residue here that like enhances like the, like the spiritual vortex quality of like our living space.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 46:24Rich Roll?

  I feel it.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  That's a good aspiration.

• 46:25Rich Roll?

  I definitely feel that.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  That's, that's a new, like, that's a new way of thinking about it, which I think is a, um, that's cool. I mean, it helps that like, you also have like the objects for some of the people, like there's history.

• 46:37Rich Roll?

  If people get antsy, they want to play with something.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:41Rich Roll?

  So cool. So, all right, you're, you're at Oregon, you're studying architecture, you're playing hoops. Were you guys good?

• 46:48Speaker 01

  You know, we were okay. We never made the NC, I was just there for two years. We didn't make the NC tournament. We made the NIT and lost in the first round, but we got to go to Hawaii, you know, for the first round. So that was fun. Yeah, but we weren't awesome. I mean, Oregon since then, what the other part that's funny about it is-

• 47:01Rich Roll?

  They've had years where they were like crushing it.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Football and basketball. Well, this year, we're in the Sweet 16 in basketball.

• 47:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Amazing accomplishment. Um, we've had 20 wins in a row in basketball for years since Coach Altman is there. He's awesome. But football has also had an incredible run, um, that's been, I think, changed like, changed the game, actually. They sped up, um, Chip Kelly, who came to Oregon. I don't know if you pay attention to college football, this dude came into Oregon and completely changed the game because of the speed at which they played. And a lot of it actually had to do with fitness and, you know, more attention to, to wellness and overall, um, presence and, um, and, and so I, I think he was great. Unfortunately, he left and then went to the NFL and has done other stuff. And, but regardless, I think that that,

• 47:49Speaker 01

  that and the relationship with Nike where they made all these super cool uniforms and equipment, that also changed, um, sport. Um, what's funny-

• 47:57Rich Roll?

  Another branding exercise.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  I, I, my first year at Oregon, we had champion uniforms. So it was pre Nike contract.

• 48:05Rich Roll?

  That's crazy.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Which is so weird because it's like, you know, Nike has been tied, but it just, you see, it's like business. Can either work or not, you know, there wasn't a relationship at that time. And then my second year was the first year of like the Nike all sports contract concept. And so we got like some pretty basic Nike stuff. And then following years are just like, like all the coolest Nike year was all Oregon, you know, super cool, you know, colors and you could get any shoes you want and all that. So I missed on that, but I'm planning to get back in on that somehow. Maybe this podcast will help.

• 48:41Rich Roll?

  Do you stay, do you stay connected to the basketball team?

• 48:43Speaker 01

  A little bit, I mean, not, not, not, not specifically I watch, but I have, you know, it's tough time. I would love to go to more games, but if they make it to the final four this year, then I want to go.

• 48:55Rich Roll?

  Well, now that your son's a player.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, that's a big part of it. He really starts to appreciate college basketball just now. He's a big NBA fan, but he's just starting to get into it.

• 49:03Rich Roll?

  You go to the Knicks? That's an exercise in self abuse.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  The Knicks are tough. He's become a 50 50 Nets Knicks fan, so the Nets are great this year. Not great, but they're good. They're a great team to watch and they're, and they're fun and they're in a good direction. So we'll see about the Knicks.

• 49:18Rich Roll?

  All right. So you then go to Japan.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:22Rich Roll?

  So what was that about?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting because I intended to move to New York City. Like that was my dream, you know? I wanted to move to New York. I'm not sure why for exactly, but I just knew that was the stage that I wanted to be on.

• 49:38Rich Roll?

  That's where you birth a big life.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was something like that was a place to get to and had the plan, saved up some money. But my friend is living in Tokyo, my, one of my best childhood friends is living there. And I think, well, I graduated from school, I should at least go visit him in Tokyo and, and, and that would be a waste to not go there while he's there. So I, I go to visit him and I buy like a two week train ticket to go travel around Japan and stuff. And I had studied Japanese architecture, so I had like, I wanted to see the sights and all that. I get there and literally within the first couple of days, we hatched the idea to start this website to like connect people to, connect people learning English as a second language

• 50:23Speaker 01

  to Americans who could help them understand American culture.

• 50:27Rich Roll?

  Because no one knew what scrubs meant.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Right, that's the famous thing. It's so funny like to launch a business based on like a term like scrubs. But it was like No Scrubs was the TLC song that was super popular and people would ask that like, what's a scrub? And it's like, that takes a lot of nuance to be able to explain what that is, but we thought there was business in there. It turned out to be effectively, you know, looking back on it, like a social network for people who are learning English as a second language. They didn't have that term back then, you know, community websites existed. But anyway, so we started that and it was very small, but it actually got some traction enough to give us the idea of like, wow, we can start a real company with this. And so we went on that journey of like, starting a company and raising some funding and being a startup,

• 51:11Speaker 01

  tech startup and in Portland, we moved back from Japan to Portland and it became a great little business. It didn't like explode, you know, it didn't have the like huge growth that, but it became like a profitable business. And you know, one that actually my friend continued to operate for 14, 15 years before it sold.

• 51:31Rich Roll?

  But you just had this pull to go to New York in the back of your mind?

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Every year.

• 51:34Rich Roll?

  Like ripcord it out of there?

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, every year I was like, is this my last year? And I think I was there for four years before I left. And, and I, and I was almost, you know, five years actually, and then I was almost 30 and I was like, I got a, you know, 30 was like the deadline.

• 51:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you haven't, you haven't even started an architecture career yet.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I also felt like I was, to be honest, like I always said, I'm never going to be that. First of all, I said, I never be the guy, never be the guy who goes to University of Oregon because that's my hometown and that's lame. And I do that. And I'd be like, I'm never going to be one of those people who just like moves to Portland after school because that's lame too. And I was like that guy a hundred percent. And but so I told myself I'm going to be out before I'm 30. And so I made it to New York the month before my 30th birthday.

• 52:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it's kind of a cool story too, because you were trying to get a job at these architecture firms while you were still in Portland.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's funny now to look back on it because now I feel like, oh, I'm accomplished in the world and stuff. But back then, I'm like, I was literally nobody, like, to the extent of, in the architecture world, like, I was a really good student. But then I'm out five years, and I'm literally nothing. Like, my resume doesn't have anything applicable. So I'm like, I'm not even, you know, I'm not, so, applying for a job, it's like, I'm, I'm like, you know, I'm, I'm like, a business leader, sort of, in Portland. Like, people know me a little bit. I've been in the newspaper. You know, now, like, trying to get a job at an architecture firm, and it's like, the lowest of the low I can't even get, you know? So finally, luckily, this little firm, you know, Jordan Parnas, who hired me, like, hired me $10 an hour, and like, I'll take a chance on you, I think, because he just needed someone who would...

• 53:14Rich Roll?

  Be like a drafts person.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think part of that also, you know, to be honest, there's, in the architecture profession, especially at the time, there are a lot of amazingly talented designers who go to school in the US, and they come out, and the English skills are not good. But they want to work at firms, and they're incredibly talented, way more talented than I've ever been. But they're missing, they, they're not great communicators yet. And so for me, coming in and being able to do the role at a very low level, but actually being able to, like, communicate really effectively, as a, like, as I was as a business leader, gave me a different kind of position. And so, when it came to the American Apparel Projects, which we were focused on, I had a different presence there than people who were just great designers. I just showed up differently.

• 54:00Rich Roll?

  Right, because you were able to communicate with these guys at a higher level than just some young kid right out of school.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also someone who, like, had the appreciation for design, but also knew business, you know? And knew, so, American Apparel, when I got there, was in the earliest stages of their retail development. So, and you know, there was some cool... Whatever you call it, culture behind them.

• 54:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, people forget, like, at that moment, it was a big deal. Like, they were, those billboards were, you know, insanely provocative. There was just tons of, you know, news about it. You know, Ryan talks about it all the time. And then you have Dove, who's just like this insane character that you probably had to deal with from time to time.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but even more than that, they also were trying to do, they were bringing manufacturing back to the United States. They were trying to pay people a good wage. They were like giving English classes and massages on the job. You know, they were trying to compensate people fairly. So there was a good, like, foundation to that from a sort of ethical perspective. It's, you know, it's weird that Dove had those two sides of being like really caring, but then also being so outlandish in a way.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  But yeah, it felt good. Like, it felt like a good thing to be a part of at the time.

• 55:09Rich Roll?

  So you're at this tiny two or three architect firm. And then this contract just lands in the lap of you guys to build the first American apparel store. And that blossoms into essentially building like a lot of them, right? All of them, like?

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Not all, so it was a little bit split because they had the West Coast team. And we did a lot of the East plus international. So we were a part of a growth path that went from early handful of stores to, at some points, you know, maybe forty to fifty concurrent projects happening around.

• 55:45Rich Roll?

  I mean, that escalation was really fast.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, one of the fastest retail rollouts.

• 55:50Rich Roll?

  I had to be a pressure cooker.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  It, you know, it's interesting, like Dove is such a cool character because of the things that he cared about. You know, he really cared about lighting, for example, like he really cared about, about lights and the color of lights and stuff. So it was just like, you know, some, some things he cared about with schedule and time and stuff. But there are some moments I had with him where he's like. What the fuck are these lights? Get these all out of here. And literally, it's like everyone, all hands on deck. You have to like go unscrew every light bulb and change it to a different bulb like on demand. Just because there were things, you know, that he really, like he was in the details, you know, of some things like that. And, um, and I like appreciated that. Like there were times when I really thought he was an asshole, to be honest. Um, but I also really thought he was doing something good. And I think that was okay to me.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Like, I felt like it was like, okay, trade off. At least in my experience, the other people I can't speak for and who experienced probably other things. But for me, being yelled at, screamed at, get this done, you know, move faster, do it cheaper. Like, I took that as like, I'm gonna learn from this every moment, rather than be like, oh, this guy's an asshole, it sucks. I'm gonna be like, this is a great opportunity to learn from this, to be under this pressure.

• 57:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and if you can get through that, then you're weatherproofed for basically anything.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  I would say two experiences in my life. One, working with Dove. The other, I worked in Alaska in a fish processing plant for 16 hours a day. I was like, those two experiences, that doesn't really get, like, you've kind of had it all. Like, the monotony of endless salmon coming off the conveyor belt and the like, super intensity of someone screaming at you to like, do something that's totally unreasonable, outlandish. I kind of like, have always drawn on those things as like, I can handle anything.

• 57:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I would have to think that being around Dove, like, there's a, he's a complicated figure, but there's an audacity to his vision. Like, he, he was shooting for the stars, right? Like, the, the scope of what he was trying to do was gigantic. And in certain respects, he was successful in accomplishing that, at least in the short term. So, did that end up informing like, the big vision that you held for, for WeWork?

• 58:04Speaker 01

  I don't think consciously, but I think it definitely was inside of me in terms of the way that I internalized like, business and vision and like, you know, and really what was possible through force of will. Cause I'm not that kind of person. Like, I'm not a person who would like scream or yell or like, you know. Fight for something like it's just not in me. I'm a much more reserved person. And so I think it informed my relationship with Adam in an important way. Because I learned things about myself, like I was able to exist with Dove. Not that I had that much interaction with him, but I could like pick up the phone and hear him yell at me. And be okay.

• 58:48Rich Roll?

  Not personalized.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Right. Just I was resilient in that like, okay, fine. I got yelled at. I'm not going to go into a hole or into a shell. I'm going to just keep on moving forward, you know?

• 58:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  No matter what. And I think that that's like an important thing to realize what my capabilities were in that contract. But I also knew I wasn't him. I wasn't like the person who could drive people like that. I couldn't be, I was really laid back, you know, like I'm like a Oregon dude.

• 59:14Rich Roll?

  Right. Like you're a chill dude with the design chops and the attention to detail. But then Adam has like this charisma and this like relentless persistence, right? That makes for a great combination.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And a kind of drive that was way different than mine in terms of like just nonstop energy, you know, that like willing to just like every day be at like max, you know? And that's something that I give him so much credit for because he's still that way. Like he's still, you know, literally can just, he, you know, he's nonstop. Like in some cases, it's like you need him at a seven rather than a 10 because he can relate better to like normal people at a seven, you know? And he knows that he's developed his own self-awareness.

• 1:00:02Rich Roll?

  Modulate it now.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. In the early days, it might be like all 10 all the time.

• 1:00:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Some people are like, whoa, like.

• 1:00:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but that's how you ended up with those early leases, right?

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, and that's what, I mean, again, going back to like, how do you? How are we successful early on? Amazing formula of Adam being able to push and convince and.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Really through force of personality, get people to do stuff that they didn't want to do. And then me to be able to back that up like immediately, like really to be able to turn that around and like make something credible really fast. So that it seems like we're nobody to someone and then literally we're someone, you know, the next day.

• 1:00:43Rich Roll?

  He can spin the yarn and then you have to fulfill on the promise.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And that's, and that's another thing that which I had no, I've never told him to like, slow down. I've never told him not to make a promise or anything like I've never said, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? I might've been thinking in my head like, dude, why are you saying that?

• 1:01:00Rich Roll?

  Way ahead of yourself here.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Why are you promising that we'll do that? But I didn't, but I don't say that because I knew, at least especially in those early days. And now it's obviously a way larger team, but in the early days it was my job to back that up.

• 1:01:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  You know, and obviously he's a part of that as well, but I'm just saying the, the formula is like, he's going to push us. And I'm going to figure out how to fulfill, you know, that, that space that he would create. And, um, and it was, I think it's a, it was a really powerful, um, formula, like it really was, however it happened, it was, um, special.

• 1:01:35Rich Roll?

  Well, I want to get to how it happened. So you're, you're building all these stores, these retail outlets for American apparel. Like, why not just ride that out and stay there and be this successful architect?

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, there's something there in terms of like, you know, how many times can you do the same thing? And certainly with American Apparel, we did a lot of the same thing. And for me, I mean, I really look for the challenge, the opportunity to, to grow. And again, I probably wouldn't have used those words then, but it's the choices I made reflect the fact that I'm like, always looking for the next way to.

• 1:02:08Rich Roll?

  When the growth curve starts to plateau.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Rich Roll?

  You start looking around.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  And I get bored super fast. Like I get some of the, as soon as I figure something, I love teaching myself stuff, but once I learned it, I'm like, okay. Like that, that was cool, but now I need something else. And, um, so I think with American Apparel, I just hit the end. I was like, I can't do another one, you know, and it wasn't changing really like it was just the same. The, the foreseeable future looked the same. And so I did a few kind of projects that were outside of American Apparel. And, um, and at that point I just needed a, a different scene. And so, um, But but at the time, where we were was a cool community. That firm was in a building in Brooklyn in Dumbo that was like made up of like cool, small companies and like, you know, it, the vibe was great, like in terms of like.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  That neighborhood is amazing. There's so much cool stuff happening there. And it's really gotten like even better. You know, I mean, you can complain about whatever real estate prices. That's always the, you know, places like cool when it's rough and then it gets better and then it gets expensive and all that. But um, but it's a cool energy there. And um, so I convinced Adam to move into that same building. How did you meet Adam? So Gil was my friend at work who's an Israeli guy and all very similar to me, like very chill dude, you know? And um, so we became friends and we're sitting next to each other at the office and you know, I don't have, I don't know that many people. I'm still relatively new to New York and he says, hey, what are you doing this weekend? I'm like, I don't know, they come over to our apartment. We're like hanging out.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  And so I like walk into this building, you know, it's on Broadway and like worst street in Manhattan. And I mean, remember it clearly because like we came on and like, I forget what floor, maybe we're on the elevator, go up a floor or two and doors open and Adam comes on and Adam is like, you know, I'm a tall dude. I'm six foot eight. He's six foot four or whatever, six, five, something. And he's no shirt on, shorts, no shoes and like just beaming energy, just like, you know, like he's like a buzz. And then he's like actually literally buzzing and just talking nonstop. And I don't even know, I can't remember a word he's saying, but I just know he's talking to everyone on the elevator and I, you know, a New York elevator is usually not filled with conversation, you know, especially amongst people who don't know each other.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  And this is his apartment building, so he knows people who live there and he's, he and his sister, I think have like tried to build community, like they've actually been living in the building for a while. So they tried to like get people to know each other and they talked to everyone and everything, but I don't know this, you know, I don't know the history of their existence. So to me, I'm like, what the fuck is going on? This is so weird. And so um, the, the key moment of like my like. Whoa, was that we're all on the elevator now, and there's four or five of us. And he's talking to someone and that person walks off the elevator and he holds the door and just continues the conversation as they're like walking down the hall. And I remember just standing there going like.

• 1:05:08Rich Roll?

  Where there's other people in the elevator? Yes, like the, like the self-confidence and the poise that that requires.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, like just not like I've never like, it seems so small, but yet it's so big from a human perspective to be like, like that is an audacious thing to do because it's just not done. You know, it's like the kind of thing. It's like you're breaking all social norms in that situation. You know what I mean? And that I certainly don't do that kind of stuff. I'm like way more like, oh, I'm quiet. I care about everyone. I'm like, you know, like the Japanese like ideals of keeping everything calm and, you know. So I remember that clearly because that whole day turned into an experience of like us hanging out and, you know, feeling a lot of trepidation and discomfort, but then knowing that I needed that or that I was interested in it. And that was really the thing. I mean,

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  I think if you go to like, what was I searching for in New York? I wanted things that were foreign to me, things that made me feel uncomfortable, things that were hard. I wasn't looking for an easy life. I was looking for the things that would like be, you know, not Portland, not Eugene. And so.

• 1:06:14Rich Roll?

  Where does that, where does, not to interrupt you, but like, where do you, where does that, what's the genesis of that? Like, where does that come from? That like drive that energy?

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  You know, it's a good question. I, I've always had a feeling that, um, that I could be a part of something different. And I know that just sounds weird, but it's like, I've always foreseen myself doing things in a way that everyone else around me wasn't doing them. So like, if you look at going back to like architecture school, for example.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  It doesn't sound crazy now to say that I love Frank Gehry. But in my entire class, as well as almost the whole school at the time, there was like one other kid who even like really knew who he was, you know? And that was like my like all in, you know, love of the of architecture was based on that. So, you know, when I did my first projects, my first design looked nothing like all the other kids. And I was willing to stand in front of that and present it comfortably for some reason, like that was just, I knew that was me. Like, I knew I just wouldn't be the same as everyone else. And I don't know, what's weird about that is it goes counter to my actual physical presence,

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  which has always been, again, being bigger than normal. And especially as a kid when I was fat, I was always trying to receive. I was always trying to be like in the background. Like, I always wanted no one to notice me. And I spent a lot of time at other people's houses because, you know, I didn't have boys as friends. And so I was at my friends' houses a lot, my male friends. And, um, you know, I would get criticized for like eating too much. And I'm like a big fat kid, of course, you know, why are you having three slices of pizza? You know, like that kind of stuff happened to me. So I think that I often tried to like disappear in those scenarios.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  And yet, for some reason, when I got to this other place, I just developed this comfort with always being the like outlier, like always just trying to do something different. And I'm not sure, I don't know why exactly. I just, it just switched at some time. And I think that, um, it came, I don't know. And it came from just an unwillingness to like, you know, as soon as people got jobs. And bought houses and cars and TVs. And I was just like, that whoa, like, I'll never be that, that guy. Like, I'll never, I mean, I obviously now have some of those things, but like, you know, I just, I don't know.

• 1:09:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  Just didn't do it the same way. I couldn't follow the same path. It just, I just couldn't.

• 1:09:12Rich Roll?

  Right. And then you collide with this shirtless dynamo and you're like, this guy's my, my ticket to, you know, continue my path to being this iconoclast.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Again, I don't know if it was like, I think, I don't know when, you know, that realization happened. Obviously, like, that day, I was just like, phew.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  Something's going on there that's different. And over time, I think the, the bond that we built was,

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  when he moved into the building and then we were both there and we're both very hard workers in the sense that we're like putting in the extra hours and stuff is that we spent a lot of time just like walking around the neighborhood, you know, and just talking about stuff and

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  trying to like feel each other out, I think, you know, and and realizing that we had like real differences, but somehow we both developed an appreciation for each other and that, you know, it's hard to say why, like, I don't know why there was in some way, like some kind of attraction or, you know, magnetism that happened there, but.

• 1:10:15Rich Roll?

  What do you think that he saw in you?

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  You know, I don't know for sure, but what I would think is that he hasn't, he didn't have up to that point, a lot of stability in his life. He had a lot of people in his life that were very, you know, like family and other conditions that, you know, weren't consistent, that weren't calm, you know, if he was on this.

• 1:10:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Cycle of.

• 1:10:48Rich Roll?

  You could ground him.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I probably had some kind of consistent energy, you know, and I think when he would search me out sometimes, you know, maybe that's why. I mean, maybe it's like he wanted to connect to some of that, some of that more.

• 1:11:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Consistency. And I hope that.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  You know, I hope that that was like, I mean, again, we don't, we haven't talked about it that much, but I do hope that that was like, was what I felt it was, you know?

• 1:11:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I would imagine you're, you're, you're, you're seeing in each other things that you don't have or that you aspire to have or that you need in your life, right? So this is like perfectly complementary yin and yang thing.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it didn't really have purpose at all. That's the other thing too, is it wasn't like it started out with like, hey, we're gonna do business together. It wasn't like that. It was just something else. It was like, you know, whether it was friendship or whether it was just we're both sharing an energy with each other that we needed. Not clear, you know, it wasn't like there was a specific reason for us being together and spending that time together, but it, but it was something that we both just, we had, we needed.

• 1:12:06Rich Roll?

  So he, he moves into your office building and he's doing his entrepreneurial thing with like baby clothes or something like that, right?

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Rich Roll?

  So when is the idea like, hey, let's do something together kind of enter the picture?

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Well, so we started talking about some different projects that were like, you know, at the time of the like residential explosion around the world, but also in Manhattan, there was a ton of people. It's kind of like the dot com era where it's like, well, everybody's developing real estate, you know? And so we looked at some like residential projects and we had that in mind, like, hey, we could do something, this spot, that spot.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  But it wasn't, again, it wasn't formal. It wasn't like we had really had a partnership or anything. It was just like, these different projects seemed interesting. And, and what really, I mean, he had done in his, in school, when he was in school, he did a project that was related to like community housing and like this idea that you could create something more connective. And he had been exposed to this co-working model that someone else was doing in New York. I hadn't really ever seen co-working before. Like I saw the environments in Brooklyn where there was a lot of these small companies working together, but I didn't know formally what this was. And so he said to me one day like, hey,

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  We could do a coworking space, like he looked at the economics of this building and they were charging a very low rent and basically no services, you know, just like.

• 1:13:31Rich Roll?

  In Dumbo.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, in Dumbo. Here's the landlord of the building we're in. It's like, hey, here's this space. You can have it, take it or leave it, you know? Not very good marketing or sales, um, not good customer service. So, um, he had the idea of like, hey, we can make this kind of like this serviced office model that he had seen before. And, um, so I went and, and he was trying to convince the landlord that we could do this, but the landlord is like, you have a baby clothing company. I don't even know who this other guy is. Um, so, but they just didn't care. They're like doing fine. They have like a good business. They're renting out space. So it's like, it's not, they were, their space was in demand, even though they're charging a low price for it. They didn't need us for anything. So Adam really did a good job

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  of like continually going back. And at the same time, I was hatching some ideas of, of what could it be if we actually did this? Like if we did a like shared office? And so I went and saw, um, a couple of the things that were called that at the time, and they were horrible in my, uh, my design view. I'm like, these places suck.

• 1:14:36Rich Roll?

  At the time where they just opened floor plans with long tables?

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  No, actually the opposite. The places that, the big mistake, and I, and I forget the name, I'm, it's escaping me now. There, there was a, a company that was emerging in New York who was doing something, um, that was like coworking and shared office. And to me, they made a really fatal mistake, which is that they put a lot of their money into their newest, coolest location. And it was a long skinny building with windows only on the ends. And then they built these custom partitions, which were kind of like modern cubicle, and they were all black. And they were solid. And so you come into this place, it's all dark. They actually had like club, they were in the club scene. So they had like club music playing, it was super dark and they have black partitions that absorb all the light and the windows are only, you know, far.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  And I went into that place and I was like, I wouldn't spend five minutes in here.

• 1:15:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Let alone what I was looking for, which was like, this is, should be amazing. Like you should feel so good when you walk into this place. Like that was the whole point. So when I saw that, I was like, okay, we can do something way, way, way better than this. And, um, And so that started to come into my head of like, what are we, what would we do if we got the chance? And by, you know, coincidence, Adam finally, you know, gets the landlord to like, say, okay, here's a building. What would you do with it? And that was like the hinge point because I think when we finally got the opportunity, we, and we hadn't really formalized anything, but we got the chance to turn that into, you know, a really quick business model, brand, which was not WeWork. That was Green Desk before.

• 1:16:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  But Green Desk was oriented towards environmental responsibility and, and turning that around really quickly, I think, gave us that initial credibility. Like, okay, you were nobody yesterday and now you're somebody.

• 1:16:26Rich Roll?

  Right. So Adam, you know, just pesters this guy enough until he finally relents. And then you guys are suddenly in the position of like, all right, I guess we're going to do this, right? And like bootstrapping this thing literally overnight.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:39Rich Roll?

  Try to make it happen. I mean, how did you even have, was it a whole building?

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Well, it started as just one floor. So the beautiful little building in Dumbo that

• 1:16:48Rich Roll?

  I mean, how did you even finance that?

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Well, so luckily, and this is part of the, you know, again, the, the being in the right place at the right time was that these owners of the property, they had this building, it was super cool, beautiful windows, you know, timber, brick and timber, you know, kind of the ideal, like, it was old, like coffee warehouse.

• 1:17:10Rich Roll?

  Brooklyn loft.

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And they say, you know, what would you do with it? Well, we come back with like the design ideas, looks really cool. Who's going to pay for it? And we made, you know, we made a partnership with them and they paid for it and we designed it, built it, run it. They paid for the build out. So it became 50 50 from that.

• 1:17:31Rich Roll?

  So, you know, in partnership with the owners of the building.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  And so then from there, we were very successful. I mean, literally like we put Tape down on the floor, showing these are the spaces. And we had renderings of what it's gonna look like. And we started selling it and people loved it right off the bat. And so we knew we were on to something from the first floor. Built it out, filled up, another floor, another floor, another floor. And I mean, we're doing much better. I mean, so even their return on, you know, their 50% was way more than they're getting on their normal rent. So they could see, this is something cool. They like it, they'll continue to build it out as we went. So we did that whole building and then we started doing floors in that other original building that we had been in. And so it was clear that it was something. But the real hinge point in terms of Adam and I was that we, one, I forget if the building was full.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  Maybe we had mostly filled it up. We were like, we're gonna have like a party for the first time. And we bring everyone together and like, I literally think like, we looked on the internet for like networking techniques or whatever. And there was this like speed networking thing where it's like, you know, you make two lines and then you each, you talk to each person for like 30 seconds and then you shift. And it sounds like so cheesy and we didn't know what we were doing, but like that spawned a lot of people then more organically and casually interacting that evening. And then the next day, literally just that elevator ride felt different.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  And then the, the whole workspace felt different because before everyone was kind of in their own office, even though it was glass, they had familiarity, but they weren't really connecting on, on the level that we noticed they were after that night.

• 1:19:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  And that really like shifted something where we, we, we, we then felt like, whoa, this is what it's all about. Like seeing the people who need each other so much in this context, like small business people, entrepreneurs, you know, freelancers, people who are trying to start something new. What they really need is that like connection. They need the opportunity to like have someone else who's in the same boat. Cause your family doesn't, you know, you've experienced it. Like when you're working hard, sometimes you gotta get away from your family. You know, you gotta get out. And so you leave your apartment, you're on your own. You're working really hard, no one gets it. Why are you doing this? Why did you quit your job? And all these other stories that come with that adventure. And what you really need is a community of people that are supportive in that construct.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  And so that was, from that moment, we're like, okay, Green Dust was wrong. It's something new. We gotta sort of start over.

• 1:20:07Rich Roll?

  Right, so well, a couple of things in that. I mean, first, just the idea that you had to, okay, we're gonna have a party and we're gonna try to get these people together speaks to, you know, that, you know, core value of community that that existed at the inception. So I presume Adam shared that, you know, that vision and that value. I mean, did he? He grew up in a commune, but he's Israeli, right? Like, did he live in a kibbutz?

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:34Rich Roll?

  Have like a similar kind of experience that gave him that same?

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I mean, he had experience in a kibbutz, but I also think he had the like, being a part of a community in New York as well, you know, of just like, you gotta depend on people, you know? You get somewhere new.

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  You're out in a new city. Who are you gonna rely on? Finding people that like you can actually count on and building a group of people that, you know, you can spend time with. And he's a great, he loves like hospitality. He loves bringing people together. He loves being a host. I mean, it's something that he takes great pride in. And he actually, you know, when he does it privately, he works super hard at like bringing people together and making it a great experience. And so he has that motivation of really like, he wants those experiences to be deeper. You know, he doesn't want you to just like, you don't show up at the party because it's just the cool place to be. You show up because you're actually getting something from it. And he cares about that.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  And he did from the start. And so it was like that combination of like, I wanted to make the space where this is like persistent. Like, we're gonna make, design these spaces where that connection is possible any moment. And he was much more of like the peak moments. Like, that's what he, he would be like, when we do a party, it's gonna be the best party. You know, or we bring people together, it's gonna be like the best thing they've ever been to. And he, you know, so when we've, as we've evolved, then we've gotten into like our summer camp events and, you know, our summit events and stuff like that. Like, a lot of that motivation is for him of really wanting to bring people together and then to make it awesome, you know, make it amazing.

• 1:22:14Rich Roll?

  So you have this inflection point because this real estate partner that you have, they have, your, your, your interests begin to diverge because they basically just want you to focus on their buildings, right? And you could have said, okay, filled their buildings and had like a really nice business.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:34Rich Roll?

  Just said, you know, and maybe kind of inch your way out of that to other buildings once you had filled those to capacity. But instead, you take, you, you, you know, you do this risky move where you, you break up with this partner. And that all goes back to this like bigger vision that you held.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a couple of moments in there where I remember when we finished the first building and like, if we would have just stopped there.

• 1:23:00Rich Roll?

  It would have been good.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  We would have been like the most money I would have ever had in my life.

• 1:23:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  You know, like just in the monthly income, like I would be like, we, we were all like, wow, this is actually pretty good. And then when we sold, we also had a moment like that where we were like, you know, we had a chunk of money that we could have been like, wow, you put that in the bank. And our, and our third partner, I shouldn't.

• 1:23:21Rich Roll?

  Your third partner who did that, right?

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  Gil, who did that, who, you know, went back to Israel and, you know, said this was an achievement. And, and, but Adam and I just immediately, Adam even said to me, he was like, don't put that money in my bank account. Just keep it, you know, or put it somewhere else because I know, you know, I'll spend it if I have access to it. But he, he was like, we're letting it ride for sure.

• 1:23:44Rich Roll?

  So it was never even a question?

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, not a question that it was, we're just, you know, at the beginning of this and we. We put all that money that we got into the start of the next thing. And I think from the very beginning, that was because we knew it was big. Like, it wasn't like, oh, we're gonna do another version of Green Desk where we could like, be comfortable and like, or we make money. That that never came into it. It wasn't like, oh, we hit on a good business model. Like, let's make, you know what I mean? Like, we knew at that moment that this is like, okay.

• 1:24:20Rich Roll?

  This can go all the way.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  Something way bigger. It's not gonna be about like, our individual financial success. This is a part of a way, way, way, way bigger thing.

• 1:24:28Rich Roll?

  Right, but then you have the practicality of like, trying to get the, you know, what's gonna be the first new building and what has now been rebranded as WeWork, right? Like, you're still two young guys, you got a little bit of money, but

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  These are, I mean, this is, you know, this is capital intensive.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  And it's also the New York real estate world.

• 1:24:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's insane, right?

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  Where no one, you know, like, family and credit and all these things matter.

• 1:24:56Rich Roll?

  Mean a lot, right?

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  Relationships, which we knew nobody.

• 1:24:59Rich Roll?

  But you did have one thing that happened, which is in 2008, like, the market turned, right? So suddenly, there's, there's vacancy where there didn't used to be, and there's not as much demand.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so two things, I mean, there's that part, which is there's vacancy, there's less demand, there's less like, new tenants coming around the corner. So a landlord who wants to wait that out doesn't have a clear path, for one. But then, two, there was some difference, at least in the argument of what like, a credit tenant is, right? Because you, you were thinking that like, Lehman Brothers is like, a credit tenant at the time, you know, right? Like, you think that's not a company that's going down. That's a rock solid, you know? And then, a lot of the companies like that, maybe not at Lehman Brothers level, but at lower levels, were affected. They defaulted on leases. So, we could at least say, hey, that was the old way, like, we're the new way. And I don't think anyone believed it, but at least it was like gave them a little bit of comfort,

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  you know, and like in our story. And we, we, we had a lot of buildings that we put a lot of time into that then didn't work out. Because when the boss heard about it, it was like, no way. Like the whoever the real estate management team was like, yeah, these guys are cool. They're doing something interesting. And then the boss heard about it and he was like, no, that's a stupid idea. You know, we never rent to those kind of people.

• 1:26:18Rich Roll?

  Was there ever a moment where you thought, maybe this isn't going to work? Or was Adam just so persistent?

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I don't, my, I mean, my brain doesn't really work that way. I don't usually have.

• 1:26:31Rich Roll?

  How's it work?

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's more like always moving forward with some level of, I don't know, like confidence that if we're doing something that's good, it's going to work out, you know? And so I don't remember ever having any question about that. But I also don't think we had much downtime to worry about. It was like, even though the deals weren't coming through, that Adam was like creating the deal flow, where it was always the next one and the next one and the next one. It was like, we're producing for each one of those. We're negotiating the lease. We're producing some, you know, sketch version of what the building's going to look out, look like, how much our income could be. So we're kind of test fitting all those projects before we, um, so it wasn't like we're just sitting around going like,

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  what's going to happen? We're pretty much in it, waiting for like the domino to fall, you know?

• 1:27:24Rich Roll?

  And then what was the break that led to the first building?

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Well,

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  that's a, it's weird because you know, this is business, but there was a lot of emotion that went into it. Back then, and the first building was a building owner who.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  I have love and something opposite for because he did take a chance on us. But he also, I would say tortured us to some extent by just fighting every single term of the lease.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  You know, who just being so intense as a negotiator and a arguer and a person who like felt like every term was life and death for him. And this is the way some of the people, I mean, this is a man who, you know, his family escaped Syria, went through like serious stuff, like he thinks of that building as part of his life and his family's future. So I don't begrudge him that, but at the same time, like the fight for every millimeter of that deal was in hours and hours and hours of arguing. And, and for me, that's not, I don't enjoy that.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Like maybe some people love that negotiation.

• 1:28:56Rich Roll?

  But now, looking back, thinking like that was one of the more difficult leases that you ever had to negotiate. Does it feel all the sweeter?

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  No, no, it doesn't because it was, it was really hard for me. Like it was hard emotionally. And then, you know, and there were other layers of difficulty. Once we started building out that building, because if you look at like just the lease, then imagine now we're trying to build and it's like there's issue after issue in the building. And now you have to argue about who pays for this unexpected cost. I mean, there was so much time and energy arguing and fighting that it took a lot out of me, which I wish I could look back on it fondly, but to be honest, like I, I.

• 1:29:40Rich Roll?

  But you wanted that learning curve.

• 1:29:44Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:29:45Rich Roll?

  Did it make you bulletproof for the next go around?

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, you know, it did, but in some ways, but it also, there is that building when I walk by it. And I love that it's the foundation of the company, but I honestly like I, it, I feel something that feels painful.

• 1:30:05Rich Roll?

  Is the one, is it in Soho?

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's Lafayette and Grand, and I love it. It's like where we started, it's an amazing building. It's great for the members there, but to be honest, it's hard for me to like walk through it. But I should add also, and this is an important part of the equation is that my son, who is the exact same age of WeWork, was also, was born at the same time that this was happening. So I was in the most intense phase of both of those things. And so that was, you know, I didn't sleep for a long time and I was, you know, so it, um, I think it was a lot of things that added up. And again, I'm not, I mean, we made it through it. It's great, but it was hard. It was super, super, super hard from an emotional perspective. And I mean, add to that, it's a startup where we didn't have, we spent the money to build the building.

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  Every month we were on the hook for the rent, you know? And I believe that if we defaulted, that was someone who would like take the building back. It wasn't someone who's like, oh, no problem. Pay me next month, you know? So I watched the bank account every day and like was always making sure like I got it when we get to that month, make sure that we've done all the stuff right with the money. So we have, you know, that we pay on time, right amount.

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  Was it a similar experience with, that you had with, with Green Desk though? Where you, you know, were able to fill subscriptions like right away? And you just knew, you knew like this is, this concept works.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  And that was the balance. Like we were, it was so great in the building from the beginning. And we had this, we had an amazing community team from the start. Lisa and Nathan, who were the first community management team and they were. Incredible at bringing people together and also the members that we had from the early days were awesome. So you it was both sides. That's what was so interesting about it was that there was so much fulfillment in this like what you got from the energy of being in the building. And then this other side of like, wow, it's hard to make this work every day. And but I mean, it was all worth it for sure.

• 1:32:03Rich Roll?

  Right. As a as a designer, as an architect, when you're faced with the proposition of a build out, you're looking at a floor plan, and it's up to you to figure out, how do I create a roadmap, a design, a structure, a flow that is conducive to promoting these values that I care about? Like, how do you think about that and then break that down and kind of implement that into a physical space?

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, it's definitely been an evolution, a long evolution that we're still, you know, learning from and trying to figure out. But there were a couple of things that I actually they seem so basic, but like, the first thing I felt like was that you want people who feel happy, because if we run into each other at the coffee machine or whatever, if we're happy, we're gonna have a good interaction. If one of us is like, feeling like shit that day, either we're not gonna speak, or I'm gonna like, drag you down or vice versa, right? So so there was this fundamental thing of how do you get a feeling of like, wow, this space feels good. And for me, in architecture school,

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  it was like, daylight was always a big part of that. So first thing we had was every building will be on a corner. So there's two sides of light, minimum, you know, obviously a freestanding building is even better. But it was like, we're never gonna take a building that doesn't have great light and that it's democratized where it's like, everyone gets some of that. It's not like, the people next to the window get it and then everyone else is in the dark. So that plus making everything glass, which was kind of like a to make a dumb idea in in at the time, in the sense that it was so basic. But when I was in like psych 101 at Colorado College, we learned just about familiarity. And they said that like, people who are familiar with each other are more likely to be friendly with each

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  other. People actually like, Like find people more attractive who they're familiar with. You know, there's all these benefits of familiarity. So I thought if everything's glass and everyone can see each other, that will over time build up the chances. Like if we've seen each other's face eight times, but we've never spoken. Well, now we happen to see each other on the elevator, out in the wild, you know, at a restaurant. You're gonna be, oh, I know you. Like, you're the guy from down the hall, right? So that familiarity would, over time, would build up this potential for a connection. And then, you know, from there, we learned to try to create spaces that were actually designed. We call it center of gravity, but spaces where sort of all paths lead to the same place.

• 1:34:44Speaker 01

  Because at the time, there was a lot of residential was getting to be competitive. And there was a lot of these cool buildings where they made awesome amenities, right? Like you put on the roof or second floor, the awesome gym and like the big TV and the pool table. And you go into these places, there's literally no one there ever, right? So it's like they're doing something wrong there. They're spending all this money to make the amenity, which checks some box, like when you whatever rent or buy. But then it has no value beyond that. So what we wanted to figure out is like, there's obviously a good intent, but it's something's missing. So how can we create a way that you just naturally flow? And that to me became something I'm still really curious about,

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  which is just thresholds and how we make decisions about things. Because obviously, we don't always make decisions that are good for us, right? Even though we might think like, oh yeah, it would be great to go hang out in the common area. If you have to like get on an elevator and go up six floors, yeah, probably not gonna do it, you know? Like you're just lazy for the most part mentally even. Like regardless of like the energy to walk there, it's oftentimes you're just mentally lazy to make the decision. So the idea was to remove threshold conditions where you don't ever have a decision. You just flow. Like you just happen to. It's on your way to wherever. It's on your way to wherever you're going, by the way. And then that just happens in that you have a lot of different places to go.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  So let's try to make those, let's try to make those spaces multifunctional. And then let's try to present a lot of options in those spaces. Because, you know, all, there are great speakers who speak at WeWork all the time. If I get the email saying. Cool speaker, four o'clock. Am I gonna go like, put that on my calendar? I'm gonna go to the speaker. Maybe once in a while, but a lot of time I'm gonna be like, even though I signed up, I'm too busy to go. But if I just happen to be walking by and I'm like, oh, wait, who's that? Oh, that's cool. Pause, listen for a few minutes. Whoa, this is actually really interesting. You know, this is cool. Maybe I'll hang out and linger longer. Then I can like accidentally be connected to something that could actually have a really interesting effect on me.

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  And so that's been a really like, there are a lot of those things where it's like, it's actually annoying in both cases for the people to have to have the speaker in the space because there's all these people wandering around. And then, you know, versus an auditorium where it's like everyone's closed up. And then on the same, on the other side, it's like, if you're in your office and there's a speaker, it could be annoying because like, but those are some of the risks we are willing to take of like,

• 1:37:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Let's, you know, have the speaker. Let's play the World Cup game in the common area, even though there's gonna be some people. And we still get the emails like, so stupid. Why is there a soccer game on in the common area? I'm trying to work, you know?

• 1:37:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  But those are the trade offs in like the overall net benefit, which we believe, yeah, you're annoyed and you're trying to make your phone call. And, and, you know, we understand. But overall, it goes back to the same thing. Everything's glass. What are the first people who come in do? First thing, can I cover the glass? Almost everybody, right? Can't cover the glass because if I let you cover it, then the next person come in, they wanna cover it too. And soon we've completely lost that benefit that was fundamental to the business.

• 1:38:01Rich Roll?

  But there's gotta be instances in which people do wanna have a private meeting, right?

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we wanna provide that. There's a bunch of functions we wanna provide for. So that's a, that's a big part of revolution is how do we actually make spaces that are supportive of lots of different work types? And that could be like the phone booth, which we added probably in building two or three because we knew people need a private conversation. Or it could be the nook, which is one of the most popular little spaces for two people to hang out. You know, or we've evolved conference rooms over time to have different sizes and shapes. And, you know, we added boardrooms if you didn't have in the beginning, we added classrooms and, you know, now we have in some buildings meditation rooms. So it's like, we're continuously evolving that collection of.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  Supportive functions and we're still working on it. We're still trying to figure it out.

• 1:38:48Rich Roll?

  Well, I think that at least in Los Angeles and perhaps in a location or two in New York, you should have a dedicated, soundproof studio space for people to do a podcast. I mean, everybody's a creator, right?

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:01Rich Roll?

  All these YouTube, everyone's creating their audio visual content in one form or another, particularly in this town and certain other towns. But you know, that is a trend, right?

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:11Rich Roll?

  And, and I've been, I've done podcasts in, in, in various WeWork conference rooms and I'm like, they should just have like one room that you can reserve that is quieter than the rest, right?

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:24Rich Roll?

  You guys gotta do that.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, let me explain that one a little bit.

• 1:39:30Rich Roll?

  I can't be the first person to.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  So first of all, building number two in New York, Empire State, opened with a screening room, literally the second building we had opened with a screening room and a recording studio to support these functions. And then first building in Hollywood had editing suites and screening room and stuff.

• 1:39:47Rich Roll?

  I did, uh huh.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  So, cool, but you people who record podcasts, you start to get a little specific about the things that you need. Not everyone wants the same thing, you know, like you have your lights and like your camera setup and then there's some technical need that you have that this doesn't fulfill. And now we need our own manager of that technology in those spaces. One, and we also need in some way a different sales function because we're used to selling workspace and you want a podcast room, right? So I don't, we don't have a dedicated person who knows how to connect to and sell to. So we make these spaces. They're fine, I think. They're not perfect. And then we don't have a person or a, we don't have a separate website

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  for the person who needs a podcast recording studio, right? Like, so sounds really simple. We're still working on it.

• 1:40:39Rich Roll?

  How do you think about the nature of work itself? I mean, I would imagine you've put a lot of thought into this because this is the business that you're in. And we're in a situation in which the tectonic plates of, of, you know, what the workplace is, what it looks like, what it means to quote unquote, like go to work are really in flux. So how does, you know, what is the philosophy that you hold around that? Like, where do you see it going? And, and, you know, what is the future of work?

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  Work is the harder part.

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  What we need as humans, as people, as social beings, I think, is the part that we

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  think we can play a really important part of. So regardless of whether there's displacement by AI or efficiency or other efficient systems or robots, who knows what it is? Or perhaps even just, you know, the ways that people are effective and efficient in their own, you know, way that they work. Like if their, if their knowledge or brain power is the most important thing and they don't need that for as many hours of a day as we currently think of it. Who knows what that, how that will change. But what we feel really confident is that we need this. Like we need the human connection of being face to face and spending time with other people.

• 1:42:04Speaker 01

  So I think that we're gonna keep building that social, emotional, communal, communitarian infrastructure to be supportive of whatever those work models evolve to be, right? Because they'll continue to change over time. But we know that like what happens next to that will continue to be really important. So when you look at something like Flatiron School, like Flatiron School, really awesome school. They're amazing at teaching students in real life. And we're able to add community to that and it's great. But it's not, and it's like, we can do a lot of locations, but it still won't be scalable to the masses, right?

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  But Flatiron as an online learning program can actually be effective because we can take the people who are learning online and create that community and support that community of those learners in a whole bunch of different places where we don't have an actual physical, physical location of a school, right? So I think that's where education may be changing, work might be changing.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  You know, the way we eat is changing. Lots of things are evolving.

• 1:43:18Rich Roll?

  But irrespective, we still, we still need to be able to connect with each other in real life.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  And we need to get way, way, way better at that. Like, we're still doing it at a, at a, at a minimal rate. Right? We're still, there are still so few of us who have one hour of a day where we feel like that fulfillment of connection. Now, huge emerging part of our business is working with large companies to do, to create a similar environment of openness, of connection, of creativity, of innovation. Because that's what all the companies are aware that, maybe not all, a lot of them.

• 1:43:52Rich Roll?

  Like, like a large company would contact you and say, help us figure out how to reconfigure our workspace?

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so they have to change. They have to change their workplace. They have to change their culture. They have to change the way it feels to work at that company. And so we're really excited to be a part of something like that. Because if they don't, they just continue to do this the same way they've always done it, right? And we know that's not the right path for the, for all of our future.

• 1:44:18Rich Roll?

  Become antiquated.

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  And they'll just, they'll fight, they'll fight really hard to keep doing it the way that it's been done. Right? And they, you know, they'll do that because their shareholders will require it of them up until a certain point, right? But at the same time, they need to be a part of the solution.

• 1:44:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  And we believe we can help. We believe we can be a part of that kind of transformation.

• 1:44:41Rich Roll?

  So you guys have recently embarked on this We Live initiative where now you're creating living spaces. What do you have them in, like, New York and DC?

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, New York and DC, they've been around for a couple of years. We're gonna, we have one in Seattle that will open soon.

• 1:44:56Rich Roll?

  And they're like studios or all the way up to like literally almost like communal living spaces with multiple bedrooms around a shared living space? Or how does it work?

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we're still, in the ones that we have, there are, you know, I believe up to four bedroom units or four bed units. And we're, you know, we're really experimenting with that on multiple levels because that in different regions, there are different ways, you know, that code allows you to do different things. So in New York, there are more restrictions, although there, the government's actually working on evolving that. But, um, you know, we're trying to apply some of those same principles. Like, again, there's something about residential where it's like, you know, you, if you live in an apartment. You enter the building, go up in the elevator. The hall is empty. Bunch of closed doors, you go in your apartment and that's it. You don't have any connective tissue. There's nothing that draws you in.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  So ideally, we would create some of those same environments that are threshold free or with reduced threshold. So you just flow into other potential connections.

• 1:46:02Rich Roll?

  And are they all in the, in buildings where you have WeWork office space as well?

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So it's all integrated. So it's almost like in the way that Apple created this ecosystem. I mean, closed off is the wrong connotation, but like kind of this world in which you can inhabit. This is, this feels like a similar thing. Like you can enter the We, the We, uh, what's the new name that you guys have?

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  The We Company.

• 1:46:29Rich Roll?

  The We Company Experience to live, to work, to eat, to work out, or whatever it is. Which is like, that's like, that's like, I mean, talk about like big vision. That's like a huge vision.

• 1:46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  We just had an initiative that was made public, which was We Cities Initiative.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  And it's.

• 1:46:55Rich Roll?

  An entire city that you would design an entire city?

• 1:46:58Speaker 01

  I don't know what it means exactly, but I think if you, again, there is something about it, which can be like, well, those people are crazy. They want to like take over everything. And then, and I keep getting back to why? And this was part of the start of our conversation is like, what do we need to be really good at? We need to help people in real life, face to face, make connections to fight disconnection, loneliness, depression, plagues of our time. Right? So you could look at it from the like Frank Lloyd Wright perspective, which was design everything and like control the user and even determine what clothes they're wearing inside of the home that you develop. Right?

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  That's not what we're trying to, to promote.

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  But at the same time, we would love to have influence on people for a really fundamentally important reason, you know, which is to increase that that possibility.

• 1:47:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's it's audacious and is bold, but it's also beautiful because the truth is, we are starved for that connection. We're in an epidemic of depression and, you know, drug addiction and anxiety and stress. And we really are dying to be more connected. And a big kind of contributor to this affliction is the way that society has kind of, you know, created these environments in which we live and work, right? So the idea that, hey, let's, if you were going to design a brand new city and it's all about, it's all going to facilitate connectivity, connection and community, like, what would that look like? Like, there's,

• 1:48:41Rich Roll?

  there's, yes, there's an idealism built into that, but there's also something that's pretty cool. Like, what would that city look like? And I can tell you, some of my happiest moments were when I was a college student. I was on an athletic team where I was super close to these people that I spent a tremendous amount of time with. And then I would go back to my dorm or these suites where I lived or a house that I shared with other people. And we did spend a tremendous amount of time in these common areas and the doors were always open. And that sense of feeling connected to other human beings in an environment that was conducive to like, learning and growing is a really amazing thing. And I, I would like more of

• 1:49:25Rich Roll?

  that in my life now. So when I hear about, you know, we live and you could like move to New York and like, immediately tap into like this situation that's community oriented and then work, I feel like I was born out of time. Like, I wish I was, you know, 23 right now and I could go experience that. Because I feel as an adult, you know, now, I don't have as much of that in my life as I would like, and I know that I would be a happier, more fulfilled person if I did have more of that, and I know most people would as well. Everybody would, right?

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's weird because when we first started, we lived there were some almost derogatory evaluations saying like, it's dorms for adults.

• 1:50:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but I kind of like, I'd be like stoked to move back into a dorm.

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  I mean, in a way, it's like, wow, there's some really good like.

• 1:50:11Rich Roll?

  Right, I liked living in a dorm.

• 1:50:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think, I mean, I'm sure there are some people who don't, and there are downsides, which again, with design, perhaps we can figure out how to reconcile, but yeah, it's like the good parts of that are amazing, like so good, and also the, you know, the free flowingness of like, not having to like text and plan and like, okay, I'll meet you over there, you know, and everything is, you know, kid playdates and every, you know, everything's just so structured. It's like when you're in the dorm, it's like you're just rolling through life, you know, and like bumping into people and who knows what's going to happen, you know, next. And I think that's something that like, people look at that like that's somehow an immature way of living or something, and that's weird.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  Like, it's really weird that like, we somehow created this construct where we're like,

• 1:51:02Rich Roll?

  Grow up.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Growing up means go live in a.

• 1:51:05Rich Roll?

  Wall yourself off.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, why? It's so weird. And I mean, I'm sure I, there's plenty of reasons why it happened, but I think now that the problem is, is that it is very hard to change because it's actually, like you said, very expensive infrastructure that supports this way of living that we have now.

• 1:51:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  Right? So, and residential is harder than, than, than work. And that's one of the reasons why we've been able to scale WeWork very quickly because, you know, on any WeWork floor, there's one set of bathrooms, right? And, you know, one kitchen.

• 1:51:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  And then a whole bunch of highly efficient space.

• 1:51:45Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  You know, apartments get more complicated to build and, you know, there's way more plumbing stacks and HVAC issues and all these kinds of things. So from an execution perspective, they're very different, but the, but again, the foundational why behind them is, can be so similar.

• 1:52:02Rich Roll?

  So if you were to design a We City, let's say you could start from scratch, like what is it, you know, what does that look like?

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  You know, it's a great question, because I, I mean, I've, we were talking about that, this today, because I drove to work for the first time in my life today. We were in LA and, you know, everyone drives, so we were like, we rented a Tesla, which I hadn't driven a Tesla before. I've been in one, but I hadn't driven them, like, I mean, the gas pedal, like, it's like a roller coaster a little bit, which is cool.

• 1:52:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  But, but I drove to work. I like, went into the parking garage and I suck at all of that. Like, I didn't know, I just, I didn't remember where I parked, like, I didn't pay attention. Anyway, I'm just bad at like, all stuff related to cars. I'm really terrible. But, but, point is, is that I've always been, you know, walking, biking, subwaying now. And I really love that. And so I think that there's like, the first thing, I think transit and transportation is just a huge part of any city. And when that, you know, so the first time I heard about autonomous cars and even Uber as a, as a, as a idea that no one would ever park. And then someone said, think of a city where no one ever parks.

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  That was one of the coolest things I heard about the future of cities. Because, obviously, it's cool to think of other ways of transit, but even just the fact that our streets could be liberated from all these cars and what could you use the space for? And I mean, LA, you just imagine like, if you made, I mean, just the scooter lane.

• 1:53:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  Could be amazing here and take half the people out of their cars and put them on those cool scooters. I mean, and make it safe for them. So anyway, that's not as visionary as we would need to get to. And, and I haven't, I haven't indulged in it enough, but I do think that, what, what I think would, would, one of the things that would be fundamentally different is that we would just be much less.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  Governed by the typical systems of time in the way that we usually work now, which is like you wake up in the morning, do your routine,

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  get to work, spend whatever number of hours that is, you know, eight or 10 hours a day. You go to home, you have dinner, you work out, you go to bed, right? Like, I think that there's, for me at least, being much more free flowing about that, you know, we're really untethered. We can be really untethered. Ideas can come and efficient working could come in all kinds of different times, places and spaces. So if you can imagine just a network of, like you, you said, you know, when you're working at home, I'm sure you have the times where it's like one space really works for you, but, and it's great and you're engaged and it's, there's other people around and there's a buzz. And then other times you gotta get completely out. You gotta be in your own private box, you know?

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  And so if you can imagine a city working that way where it's much, it's less more about binary.

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  You know, I'm in or I'm out, but much more about a spectrum. And you're always existing in some kind of different spectrum of entertainment, work, health, life, you know, we talk about walking meetings.

• 1:55:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  Trying to promote that. So it's like just this much more spectrum oriented, threshold free environment that just feels like I'm alive all the time. I'm doing good stuff all the time. I'm in a good mental mindset all the time, not like

• 1:55:40Speaker 01

  switch into this, switch into that, switch, you know what I mean?

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  Cause I think that's, I don't know, I think that we show up, I mean, my feeling is that we, we, we would, we could show up differently if we were like that. Like if we were just much more free rather than compartmentalized.

• 1:55:57Rich Roll?

  Well, there's no question about that. I mean, you know, our cities, our urban landscapes were designed in a different time with different priorities and a lot of them without much mindfulness whatsoever. I mean, Los Angeles is a perfect example of that. Like, it just went up and now it's here and we're dealing with, you know, so many problems that could have been resolved at the inception had it been, you know, had it been well thought out and planned from the outset.

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:25Rich Roll?

  And, and, you know, with what we know now, if like you could just wipe it out and start over, you know, imagine how much better it could be.

• 1:56:32Speaker 01

  What's weird about LA coming from New York is that like the assets of LA are like so amazing, you know, like it's like in New York is not like you're gonna go find this incredible canyon or like a beautiful orange tree that, you know, or like a garden or, you know what I mean? It's like it's you're finding urban everywhere.

• 1:56:55Rich Roll?

  But it takes you two hours to go 15 miles.

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. So you may or never, you not even get to those things. Like you may close your mind to the idea that you're even gonna experience that diversity. But if you can imagine like incredible high-speed, you know, transit here and super convenient public transportation and it would be like, oh yeah, I'm gonna be on the mountain or at the beach or, you know, wherever that might be and like, and it doesn't, and it feels frictionless, then this would be like the wonderland, you know?

• 1:57:25Rich Roll?

  We'll get on that.

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  Small problems to solve.

• 1:57:28Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, Green Desk was conceived with this environmental sensibility. And now you're kind of starting to explore that with WeWork. You announced this meatless initiative that made a lot of news all around the world, which I thought was amazing. I would imagine that was a risky maneuver for you guys. It's a bold statement and it's super cool. So can you kind of talk about what went into making that decision?

• 1:58:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting because the motivation on some level was not about...

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  Not necessarily about meat itself, but about accountability and about, you know, personal choices and the impact that we have. And, um, and these things have come up over time, not about meat, but about like paper, you know, or energy, like our lights, you know, being on and why don't, you know, and Adam, to his credit, is very aware all the time of like inefficiency. Like he sees things and he's like, I walked down the street and the lights are on at a WeWork building. Why are they on? You know, this has got to be a waste of energy. And, um, and he's paying attention to these things all the time. And then we're looking for like, okay, what switches in your mind where you start to care about these things rather than just like walking past them without thinking about it.

• 1:58:54Speaker 01

  And, um, so we had, I mean, Adam's, uh, uh, um, fearless leader doesn't have any like worry about saying or doing things that, um, you know, would be controversial. And so, um, we were discussing like, what are the things that we could do that would increase, you know, personal accountability? And that one came up and it wasn't actually, you know, a big, we didn't think of it as a huge decision. Um, I mean, I think he knew in saying it for the first time that it would actually, people would be like, whoa. Um, I actually didn't. I was just like, oh yeah, that's like, I was like, whoa, I can't believe that he actually said it because he said it when it was still, you know, TBD of to whether we would do it.

• 1:59:39Rich Roll?

  It wasn't like a fully baked idea.

• 1:59:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't like we prepared the whole comms team and like, you know, prepared a whole, um, thing. And that's the way we've done a lot of stuff over time is just instinct and intuition and just like right time, just do something, you know? Um, but it was part of an overall discussion in about that personal accountability. And so, um, I took that as like, this is amazing because it actually is a spike that pretty much nothing else would get, you know? Like you can ask people to like be more aware of their choices in a lot of other areas of life. And it's kind of eh, you know, like we've, we also have eliminated plastic from our operations, right? And like, you know, it's easy to forget and you still go out to the local deli or whatever and come back with a bag full of,

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  you know, plastic flatware or whatever. But meat has been, you don't forget that one, you know? It comes up in your brain. It's like if you're going out to dinner, you know, you're gonna remember that that was something. And then you have to ask yourself, what do you do with that information? And I think what we've seen, I'm sure some people could care less. They've gone and lived their life normally. But we've also seen a lot of people are like, this is the first time I've ever thought about that before. This is the first time I've ever understood the implications of my choices when it comes to food. And that's the stuff I get super excited about is that we've also heard people say, hey, I've talked to my family about it. It's influenced the way that we eat as a family. I have a really good friend who sends me pictures all the time of their family eating, you know, vegetarian.

• 2:01:11Speaker 01

  And, and, and it sounds like, kinda crazy, but like there are kids who are, you know, 19, 20, whatever, who are like really proud vegetarians and vegans because of our influence. They're not even WeWork members. They just happen to be friends, but they're just, they connect into it. So that's the stuff that I think actually will have a ripple effect. You know?

• 2:01:34Rich Roll?

  Have you seen that ripple effect in other corporate cultures?

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  Well,

• 2:01:40Rich Roll?

  Like you kind of broke the seal on that.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  It comes up. It's come up in different contexts. So one of the examples is that, you know,

• 2:01:48Speaker 01

  you know, in talking to leaders in both HR, other business fields, we're, we get, I get the feeling that we're creating space for other, for conversations, right? So if, if people look at us as like the crazy ones who are doing the wild stuff. And we're also thought of as like a cool company that people know about. And they can say, hey, look, we're in, we wanna hire the same talent that WeWork is gonna get. Look at what people who work there care about. Like they're mission driven, they're purpose driven. We need to find that too, right? What are the signals that we can find within ourselves that are gonna put us in a place where we can even be on the, close to the same page as them, right?

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  So I haven't seen anyone else go so far as, but you know, I've been in a lot of conversations where people have said, hey, we're thinking about something like that. We're thinking about doing something. And I'm very like, I mean, I, I, I've gotten, you know, a lot of knowledge in.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  Conversations with people to in understanding how like misaligned companies are in terms of the efforts that they make. So you know, you can have a company like a big bank who has said, we have a new $200 million fund to invest in, you know, green technology and we believe wholeheartedly that, you know, we have to support innovation in this area or else we're all screwed, right? So they can say that. And then I'll be like, so have you got, are you guys still eating meat in your cafeteria?

• 2:03:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:23Speaker 01

  And they're like, what do you, what, what, you know, what, what are you talking about?

• 2:03:26Rich Roll?

  They're not connecting the dots on it.

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  This all come, all ties together. And then also say, you know, what, what do you, what's, you know, what, what is your CSR program? Your impact program look like? And they're like, oh,

• 2:03:38Speaker 01

  oh, wait a minute. Like it, that doesn't all come together. And I think that's the kind of thing which we're excited about being in those conversations.

• 2:03:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, just be able to initiate that conversation and get people thinking about it a little bit differently and, and start being mindful of like working towards some,

• 2:03:58Rich Roll?

  you know, form of carbon neutrality or working towards, you know, reducing that carbon footprint.

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I would say one thing that I've, one of the effective techniques and I promote it for other people who are conveners or people who gather smart people. One of the things that I've been saying is that whenever you're bringing people together where food is not the point, meaning you're not going to a place to eat the best blank steak or whatever it is, or you know, or you're bringing together thought leaders who should be able to at least understand that there's something bigger going on here. Then make those events meat free. Make those the time when you don't serve meat because

• 2:04:43Speaker 01

  it's not like, you know, people are really protective of like grandma's meatballs or whatever, you know, they're like, we're not going to give that up like. Our family needs that, but like the like chicken breast and steak at like a crappy catered event.

• 2:04:56Rich Roll?

  That's not even really the meal.

• 2:04:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, like who cares? It's like, that's pointless. That's nothing to do with why you're there, right? So, most people have received that. I've gotten a few immediate reactions of like, fuck off, what are you talking about? And then.

• 2:05:11Rich Roll?

  You're trying to police my life.

• 2:05:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:05:14Rich Roll?

  But you're not, you're just saying, we're not gonna pay for it.

• 2:05:18Speaker 01

  Well, in our, in our case, yeah, we're not gonna pay for it. We, we're not gonna be a part of, you know, the consumption. But I think there's the other level of, you know, if you're appealing to people who are smart people who care, they might be ready to make that leap themselves, but I think that you can at least say, I mean, we know like reducitarian is a thing, right? Like it would make a huge difference if we just had less consumption. So, look for those opportunities to consume less.

• 2:05:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:44Speaker 01

  And then that will, collectively, if that spreads, we change the expectations of like, you know, what we need from those kind of events. And then those are all business leaders who care. Okay, now their mind is open. Why don't we have meat? Here's why. Oh, wow. Okay.

• 2:06:00Rich Roll?

  Have you, I mean, because you're doing this on such a huge scale, have you run the numbers on, this is the amount of water that we're gonna save? This is the carbon emissions that we're sparing?

• 2:06:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I should know that stuff.

• 2:06:12Rich Roll?

  Animals? I mean, there's gotta be stats on that.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  We've done some of that. I'm like so not the numbers person. Um, Adam has definitely commissioned those, um, reports and the numbers are big. Coffee is a huge one, which we're trying to figure out, because, you know, the implications of coffee are big and we serve a lot. Um, you know, we're doing a lot of study of our supply chain to try to understand where things come from. And our, you know, we have, um, a team that's a sustainability team that I, um, am already super impressed with, trying to create, uh, you know, not only understand where things come from, but where do they go after they come into our, uh, buildings? And we're looking at ways that we can always keep them inside. So, you know,

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  and this is a long-term thing, but saying, once something comes into a WeWork building, it never leaves, whatever that might be. Um, I don't, we don't know for sure what that means yet, but that's what we're looking at is that circular, you know, path. And then also. Really, really understanding. We have wood desks, we have wood flooring.

• 2:07:12Rich Roll?

  Building materials.

• 2:07:13Speaker 01

  Where does it come from? All the building materials. So, and the cool thing about our scale is that we can actually be, you know, market movers in that way, right? So it's like our buying decisions could have influence and that's something I'm trying to learn more about. I've heard some great stories from people who have been empowered by that, who have, they've known that they have, say, a huge power requirement for a factory or whatever. And they're able to influence, you know, government in a country to say, I'll build the wind farm, you update the grid to deliver me my renewable power, for example. And that's the kind of stuff I'm getting excited. It's very early stage for us, but that's the kind of stuff I get excited about. I was saying like, at scale, we could now influence, you know, a municipality.

• 2:07:54Rich Roll?

  We're gonna roll into this country or this city that we haven't been in before, but here's what's gonna have to happen.

• 2:08:00Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:08:00Rich Roll?

  That's like real power.

• 2:08:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And think of it, and I mean, there's so many downstream implications of that that can be so positive if, if you, you know, look at the ways that, you know, cities care about economic development. They are motivated by jobs. They're motivated by, you know, things that so. So if we say we're gonna build something locally, whether that's a sofa or a chair or a desk or light fixtures or whatever, you know, you're talking about pretty good, good amount of economic potential there, right? So that can actually move the needle.

• 2:08:32Rich Roll?

  You guys have announced that you're, you have this goal of being carbon neutral by like, I don't know, 2030 or something like that, right?

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. 2023.

• 2:08:40Rich Roll?

  2023.

• 2:08:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which is, actually, you know, it's not that hard in the places where renewable power is available.

• 2:08:50Speaker 01

  It's very difficult in the places where it, you know, where the grid is not, you know, if you don't have a grid that gets the power into the city and we're in the city, you know. We're going to be facing challenges there, but those are challenges where, again, we're just super excited about engaging it. I don't have all of those answers, but I think like a year from now, we're going to have a really awesome story to tell about that and how we're figuring it out. And then also add, we believe we can be a convener of other companies. So if we're talking about scale, it's like, you know, other companies who want to be purpose driven, mission driven, care about the future, believe in their role in helping with climate change.

• 2:09:33Speaker 01

  If we're the convener of those companies and now we say, hey, look, we've got, out of all the office buildings in downtown, we could get 20% of them. Now that's even, you know, more buying power that could move, you know, things to happen, right? So that's the stuff that we get excited about. And that could apply in, you know, different places, like we said, from transportation. We're looking at things in LA of like, what we could do point to point between buildings to reduce driving, things like that. So a lot of future there, which should be fun.

• 2:10:03Rich Roll?

  How important do you think it is in 2019 for, you know, young entrepreneurs, people that are starting businesses to think in terms of, you know, triple bottom line values?

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's weird because I exist in that world, so I thought everyone was that way already. But I had a conversation yesterday with the woman Julie Hannah, who I'm coming to know and really appreciating. She's an early technologist and entrepreneur in the Bay Area, who's an investor in a lot of different companies. And, you know, she was seeing it differently. She's like, you know, maybe for Lucky, it's 50/50 in terms of like mercenary versus missionary.

• 2:10:43Rich Roll?

  What's the advice that you give to young people looking to start businesses? Like, what have you, I mean, you blaze this extraordinary entrepreneurial path. You know, what have you learned from that?

• 2:10:56Speaker 01

  Well, I used to say this differently, but I was talking to, I had an event with Sean King a couple of weeks ago, and he had this cool framing where he said, you have to, I hope I'll say it the right way. He said, you need to find out, find what you love to do.

• 2:11:18Speaker 01

  And then you need to find what you really care about. And if those two things match up, meaning if you can use what you love to do to address what you really care about, then you will have found your thing. And I think that's for me, I hadn't heard it in that way exactly before. But if you look at it for me, it's like, I feel like I really cared about human centered design. I really cared about, I really love design. I love the process of like rigorous problem solving. Like that was my, I would do it without getting paid, right? Which is always like the thing, like what would you do? If you find the thing you would do without being paid, and then you apply that to a business problem, which is that workspace suck, people are disconnected, you know, everyone's lonely.

• 2:12:03Speaker 01

  That was a, you know, perfect connection point for, for me. So that's what I would encourage people to do is look for, really to understand, like where does their core, the depth of their being, where does, where do, what do they, what do they love to do? What would they do if they're not getting paid? And then how does that apply to an actual business problem, a social problem? Something that they feel really passionate about being a part of changing. And that, I think, once you find that, then it's like, it doesn't really matter the scale of the business or the level of success. Or, you know, like you become a millionaire or all that other shit doesn't really matter anymore. Because now you're just existing in this place where you're doing something that feels like a full expression of yourself.

• 2:12:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And if you can, if you can match that with a problem that really needs to get solved, right? Where, where there's a service component to it and a need.

• 2:12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's, that's why I would say like, don't start another photo sharing app. You know what I mean? Like, no one needs that.

• 2:13:04Rich Roll?

  What do we need?

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  You know, I mean.

• 2:13:08Rich Roll?

  You're gonna start over.

• 2:13:09Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, that, you know, that, there, there's, there's a lot of slices. And we, I think we're, again, like the world that I live in, I think that we see a lot of people finding that slice. And, um, and it comes in weird forms. I mean, our creator awards, which we give out to companies that are, and efforts. I mean, you know, nonprofit, for profit. We say creators because they're not necessarily entrepreneurs in a similar sense. It could be artists, whatever it could be. But in Creator Awards, the winner this last year was a company that does something that seems really kind of weird, but they're basically like a marketplace for used medical equipment. And that sounds not so awesome at its, you know, without understanding it too well.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  But the way I understand it is that, you know, they're through taking underutilized medical equipment from hospitals that have already like upgraded to their new MRI machine or whatever. Now they've got this old one just collecting dust in the corner. If you can actually make that one available to a hospital that can buy it at a discounted rate that doesn't have an MRI machine at all in some, you know, smaller town that, you know, used to be like you have to drive two hours, like you've actually done something to support a small community and their health, for example, right? And those are the kind of things where it's like, people, you know, that's a really narrow slice of the business world, but it's actually doing something impactful.

• 2:14:33Speaker 01

  And I think that's what we get excited about is that there's so many, if you're thinking about it in the right way and your motivation is really to do good, there's a lot of opportunity. You know, there's a lot of places to find something that's not what gets the like headline of like the hottest new startup, you know? You seem like a super grounded dude. How do you?

• 2:14:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's like looking around. Are you? Is he not? Like, you're pretty chill, dude, for like, you know, you could be, you know, rocking a different kind of lifestyle. You know what I mean? You don't seem like you're, you seem like you have a very healthy relationship with your ego. I can hear the humility in your voice and you truly, you know, come across as mission-driven and value-based in your approach to your life and your business. So, you know, how, to what do you attribute that? Or like, how do you like maintain that sense of self?

• 2:15:33Speaker 01

  That's something I've, I mean, I've been trying to figure out in different times because it's, it's hard to understand, but like, like I've had some of the weirdest questions in that way. Like there was this one guy who literally walked up to me one day and he was like, one of our employees and he goes, "Hey, man, I just really wanted to ask you this. Like, how are you you?" And I'm like, How are you supposed to answer that question? Like, um, and I'm like, what, can you expand on that? And he's like, he's just like, you know, it just doesn't make sense. Like you're like, you know, you're like so successful, you know, like it's just not what people expect, but I don't know exactly what, I

• 2:16:15Speaker 01

  don't have a counterpoint in my own brain of what I could be, right? Like I'm just myself. So it's hard to like, um, I don't, I can't perceive a different me, but other people do. And they, there are people can be like surprised or disarmed or like, whoa, this guy's different than I expected, but I don't have that. So all I can, you know, the thing that I get to is that what I feel really good about is that, and I, and I'm trying to, I am trying to understand why, but I just feel like really comfortable being myself all the time. And I feel like I'm my authentic self, no matter whether I'm talking to you and it's recorded and there's cameras, or whether I'm speaking in front

• 2:16:54Speaker 01

  of, you know, doing a commencement address in front of my, you know, at my university, or whether it's speaking to someone who literally just like grabbed me at the airport and was like, "Hey, are you Miguel?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I mean, I think, um, I wasn't expecting anyone to know who I was, but I am." And have a, having an authentic connection with that person, not just being like put off by that. And I think, I don't know why that is. I just feel really good about it. Like, I feel like really, and I believe that, once I felt it, I've indulged in it. Like, I've been like, you know what? I'm not gonna ever believe that I have to put on some other face.

• 2:17:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:38Speaker 01

  I just won't do it.

• 2:17:39Rich Roll?

  Well, it's nice and it's refreshing, you know, in a, in a kind of period of time that we're in right now, where, you know, the Elizabeth Holmes story is, you know, top of mind with the documentary and all that. I just watched it. And I listened to the like, six-part podcast series too, which is like, amazing. It's fantastic. I'm like, obsessed. And the FIRE Festival documentaries and all this, where you see these, you know, these quote-unquote, you know, entrepreneurs that have, you know, their ego spiral out of control. And, and there is no connection with authenticity, and they're not grounded. And, you know, perhaps, you know, these are journeys that began with good intentions,

• 2:18:21Rich Roll?

  but, you know, trajectories that spiraled out of control.

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I have to attribute a big part of that to being partners with Adam and him giving me the freedom to be myself, because I didn't always have to show up in front of everyone, you know? So he was the face when we're talking to early investors, you know, he still has the high-level relationships with people where it really, you know, that funding and financing that you've referenced, which is to an extraordinary amount, you know, when you judge it from the outside, you know, he's the one who's had to show

• 2:19:08Speaker 01

  up in some of these very, from the very beginning, in high-intensity exchanges, situations, and I've been able to do my thing. You know, I was able to build up a credibility by, by, by being a part of that creative process of building the experience and the, and the business and the brand and stuff like that, in a way that just was very natural to me. I didn't, and then...

• 2:19:33Speaker 01

  Hatch something else from that, you know? And I, and I, and so, you know, again, that goes back to that partnership of like, what were we able to do and what was some of the magic of it? It, it allowed me to be me the whole, the whole way through. And I'm still, I still feel like I'm finding out who I am. I'm on the journey and I hope to continue to evolve. It's not like I'm like, I made it. So I still see it as like, okay, we're figuring it out. Like I have complex shit to deal with in my own head and I'm working on it.

• 2:20:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:06Speaker 01

  You know?

• 2:20:07Rich Roll?

  How do you instill these ideas in the, in the management team? Like, how does that, how does that go downstream to make sure that that integrity remains intact?

• 2:20:17Speaker 01

  Well, for me, I mean, that's a lot of just leadership by example. Meaning I just try to show up in every context that I can as my authentic self. And I promote that. Um, I will say it's not like a really proactive, like, like leader circle as an example, which I did this morning with the local leadership team here in LA. That's an exercise which we did just to find vulnerability and share stories and, um, be ourselves, hopefully our authentic selves for two hours out of our lives, our busy week, our day, whatever. But I think that that kind of, um, connection

• 2:21:00Speaker 01

  is one means something to yourself, then it means something to those around you. And then there's something that just going through that exercise of connecting to yourself will flow to the people who as leaders now to their teams, right? I don't know if they'll conduct the leadership circle. I hope they do, it'd be cool if they did. But just the fact that they got in touch with themselves, I think will help them show up differently. And so that's a lot of what I try to do is conduct those kinds of experiences where they, where you get into something that perhaps you weren't normally asked for in your regular business life and, um, And that's something which, again, I think it's like practicing what I preach to some extent of actually making time for those kind of experiences. And we do it, you know, if I go to Seoul,

• 2:21:44Speaker 01

  we do it with a group of leaders there. When we, you know, go to another city, it's like that's the exercise that we do as well as other things, but make time for that. And, you know, Adam is a, and I also, you know, at all company meetings, I will try to connect people to context and give us perspective about where we are and how we should, how we show up. But Adam also plays a role of being, you know, a visionary leader from a much more specific side, you know, meaning like, here are our business goals. Talk about our growth, you know, talking about how we as individuals have to perform

• 2:22:26Speaker 01

  in order to reach these big goals that we're setting for ourselves. And what does it take, you know, as a person to show up in this?

• 2:22:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:34Speaker 01

  Equation. So it's still a play, you know, it's still a play. And I don't, I don't have a lot of like specific accountability for that stuff. It's not like I'm running a leadership program. It's like, I'm just trying to embody it.

• 2:22:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:22:46Speaker 01

  And that's why it's so cool to be in both of those places at the same time. It's like, we do something really hard. We make spaces for people to exist in. People are a pain in the ass, right?

• 2:22:57Rich Roll?

  They don't, they don't do what you want them to do.

• 2:22:59Speaker 01

  Air conditioning, one person's hot, one person cold, sitting this close to each other, right? Maximize that to half a million people around the world.

• 2:23:08Rich Roll?

  You're the biggest human resources, you know, department in the world.

• 2:23:14Speaker 01

  Exactly. And they're not your employees, right? If all the people work for you, it's like, you just go, hey, just take it, you know, you're like, you're, you know, it's like, but these are people who are paying us their monthly membership fee. So they're like, if I'm paying the fee, I want it the temperature that makes me comfortable, which is totally fair assumption, right? It's hard sometimes to negotiate with a person like that who's like, yeah, but, but the person next to you. So anyway, so that's hard every day, delivering hot coffee, making the bathrooms work, you know, cleaning the bathroom, having a smile on your face every day as a community manager when the member walks in, you know, that these are things that are in a very difficult business to execute, again, at scale with great speed.

• 2:24:00Speaker 01

  But then, like, what are you a part of that makes all of that worthwhile? It has to be something way bigger. You gotta feel like if you're like on the front lines in like Jakarta and you are opening a building and all you've got is your local team. And you're like, we gotta open on the first of the month, no matter what, because members are moving in. I mean, that is a stressful situation for them and they're far away from, you know, they don't get to see what's going on at our HQ in New York and feel that energy. They're a small team that's so far, and yet they feel like they're doing something that matters.

• 2:24:45Speaker 01

  They feel like they're actually moving the world forward. When they open those doors and the members come in, they believe they're doing something good.

• 2:24:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:24:53Speaker 01

  And that's like, so that, that to me is a big part of my responsibility is to keep helping them connect to that energy, you know?

• 2:25:04Rich Roll?

  All right, well, we gotta wrap this up in a minute here, but I, I can't let you go without asking you how you maintain balance in your own life as somebody who's, whose job is to create workplaces and foster a healthier relationship with work. Like, does it feel weird when that gets out of whack in your own life? Like, how do you show up and be, you know, a loving and present partner and father while trying to like steward this like massive organization?

• 2:25:38Speaker 01

  Well, I will say that for a long time I didn't do that well. I think that I was unhealthy in the way I approached my life outside of work. I do think that for my son's life, I've really dedicated the right energy to him. But in other places, I think that I wasn't good at it. But I went through divorce and I was re-establishing myself and who I am and I met someone and fell in love with her and she is amazing. And

• 2:26:23Speaker 01

  She shifted my appreciation for a whole other part of life that I just, to be honest, had completely ignored. And that was the enjoyment of like dinner, or you know, actually enjoying it, not just eating it functionally, but like going out and enjoying it and like actually having some appreciation for like, and I still have to work on this, she knows that, of like, how was your day?

• 2:26:51Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 2:26:51Speaker 01

  You know?

• 2:26:52Rich Roll?

  Being present.

• 2:26:52Speaker 01

  Being present.

• 2:26:53Rich Roll?

  Gratitude.

• 2:26:54Speaker 01

  And, and, and care, but caring about that, like, I can, again, I can preach that at work, but then it's like at home, I can just be like, oh, you know, this is, I don't know, something else. I think I thought about it before as like, you know, recovery time almost as an athlete. It's like, this is the time to just like, you know, functionally repair, but not actually be present in a, that it has equal value in a way. And so that's been a huge shift for me. And I know even Jillian, my assistant who I work with, she knows, and she's very good at helping me be much more aware of like, making a schedule that, that helps me achieve more of this. I don't necessarily call it balance, but I would just

• 2:27:39Speaker 01

  say, because I do think it's like a spectrum. It doesn't mean I'm not thinking about work at the time when I'm doing other things, but it is like just a greater level of awareness. And, and then, so with Jesse and I, when we're together, I think that we try to be present with each other and that's a, and that's a commitment, which again, I feel I take seriously and I, and I love it. Like I get a lot of good.

• 2:28:08Rich Roll?

  Practice.

• 2:28:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is a practice. It is. And when there's a lot of other inputs that could easily take over that, whether they're in work, or they're just life, or they're like, I mean, to be honest, we discuss like, do we listen to too many podcasts sometime? Because you know, it's like you feel like you need to learn and you need to grow and you have to like, the, the latest amazing person is on Rich Roll, you gotta listen to it. But it's two hours, you know?

• 2:28:33Rich Roll?

  We've gone two and a half today.

• 2:28:36Speaker 01

  So, you know, you have to ask yourself, like, I encourage people to listen to it, but at the same time, it's like, okay, at what point do you stop that consumption and actually be, you know, present? And obviously there's commute and other times you can do that, but it's like,

• 2:28:49Speaker 01

  But yeah, I think that that's like you said, it's like it's a practice and something to be as purposeful in that in life as you are at work. And I think that will always, you know, that's always an opportunity to do better, try to find that, you know, purpose and and to and to be good at it, like to try to be really good at it.

• 2:29:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Good, man. It's good talking to you.

• 2:29:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really have enjoyed this. I always say like I learned from these experiences because I learned from speaking, which sounds really maybe self-absorbed, but I feel like I learned a lot today.

• 2:29:29Rich Roll?

  Well, the more that you, the more that you, that's hilarious. Yeah, the more that you share your own story, the more it tells you what it is and what's important, right? Or you try to figure out like, what is it about that experience that could be helpful or meaningful in my own and how I think about myself and how I communicate, right? I know that's been the experience in my case. Well, all I can tell you is, look, I know what it's like to suffer in an insufferable work environment and to be in an in an uninspiring, you know, architectural, professional habitat. And I appreciate what you're doing, man. And you really have impacted the world in a way

• 2:30:10Rich Roll?

  that few people on earth can say. And it's inspiring what you've built. And I can, you know, I can feel the intention behind it. And it's a beautiful thing, man. So wind in your sails, my friend.

• 2:30:22Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:30:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What's next?

• 2:30:27Speaker 01

  You know, we're actually trying to get into Kanye's Sunday sermon.

• 2:30:31Rich Roll?

  Oh, nice.

• 2:30:32Speaker 01

  So are we?

• 2:30:33Rich Roll?

  You're gonna be back out in Calabasas?

• 2:30:34Speaker 01

  Try to convince him that we're worthy of of attendance.

• 2:30:39Rich Roll?

  What's the angle?

• 2:30:42Rich Roll?

  Dude, if you can't get in, you know, come on, you should, you gotta, I'm sure you could find a way to finagle that somehow.

• 2:30:47Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, we're meeting with someone who works with Kanye, so we'll see if he likes us enough, maybe he'll give us the

• 2:30:53Rich Roll?

  Awesome, man.

• 2:30:56Speaker 01

  The thumbs up.

• 2:30:56Rich Roll?

  All right, cool.

• 2:31:00Rich Roll?

  Miguel, I appreciate you. Thanks, man. If people want to learn more about your world, just go to WeWork, right? Is that the best, any, any other place? You're on Twitter, your name.

• 2:31:12Speaker 01

  I don't use Twitter, but.

• 2:31:13Rich Roll?

  You don't really use it?

• 2:31:14Speaker 01

  Instagram a little, but I don't know. That's a really good question, and I should have a good answer to it, but I have no idea how you're supposed to learn more about me.

• 2:31:24Rich Roll?

  I would. Google, I guess if people could Google you, right?

• 2:31:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you should go on YouTube. I think my.

• 2:31:30Rich Roll?

  I like your, your speed, your, your.

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  My commencement address has way too few views, so I think that people should watch that. That's a good.

• 2:31:39Rich Roll?

  I agree. I watched it. It is very authentic. I appreciated like the honesty and just the kind of like unabashed, like unpretentious way in which you showed up for that. It's very cool.

• 2:31:50Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:31:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man. All right, dude. Come back, talk to me again sometime.

• 2:31:54Speaker 01

  I would love to.

• 2:31:54Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:31:57Rich Roll?

  Good stuff, you guys. I like that guy, right? What's not to like? How can you not like Miguel? He was really cool. Really enjoyed that. Hope you guys got a lot out of that. Please let Miguel know what you thought of today's conversation. You can hit him up on Twitter or on Instagram, at Miguel McKelvey. And please make a point of visiting the show notes on the episode page, at richroll.com. There you can go down a rabbit hole on all things WeWork and Miguel, and you won't regret it. We put a lot of time into those notes, so please peruse them, check them out. Again, I'm going to be doing my very first live event, Experience Podcast Extravaganza in Los Angeles, Friday, September 27th, at the 1100-seat Wilshire E-Bell Theater.

• 2:32:42Rich Roll?

  It's a beautiful venue. Tickets are available on my website under the Appearances tab. For Patreon supporters only through midnight, September 9th, and then after that, we're opening it up to the general public. It's going to be rocking. Let's sell this thing out, people. Again, September 27th, be there. If you're struggling with your diet, if you're trying to. Master your nutrition, but you feel lost and you don't feel like you have the skills or the time or the budget. Check out our Plant Power Meal Planner. We created this digital platform to solve one very simple problem. How to make nutritious eating convenient, delicious, and affordable. And I can tell you that we have succeeded.

• 2:33:26Rich Roll?

  When you sign up at meals.richroll.com, you get access to thousands of delicious and easy to prepare, plant-based recipes that are completely customized based on your personal preferences, all these things that you input when you sign up. We also have unlimited grocery lists and grocery delivery that integrates into the platform in most metropolitan areas. So, everything that you need to prepare these meals just magically shows up at your doorstep. And what I'm most proud of is our team of amazing nutrition coaches who are at the ready to answer all your questions seven days a week. You get all of this for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. It's an amazing deal, literally the price of a cup of coffee. So, to learn more and to sign up, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the

• 2:34:10Rich Roll?

  top menu on my website. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the podcast, tell your friends about your favorite episode or the show in general, subscribe them, grab their phone and just subscribe them to the podcast. Share the show on social media, take a screen grab of what you're listening to, share it, tag me, and sometimes I like to retweet or share that stuff out as well. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on YouTube, on Google Podcasts, wherever you listen to this. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, that's very helpful. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I am the one on the mic here, but I do not do this podcast alone. It is a team sport, so I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show.

• 2:34:51Rich Roll?

  Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, all kinds of behind the scenes stuff. Blake Curtis, who is now taking over some audio engineering work. He's giving me the thumbs up right now. We're in the pod at the moment. Blake and Margot also video the show and they edit it, so thank you to both of you. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Ally Rogers for portraits. DK David Kahn for advertiser relationships and theme music by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. I do not take your attention for granted. It means so much to me that you spend so much time with me, week after week. So, I will see you back here in a couple of days. With another amazing conversation, this time with food and drinks editor from Esquire

• 2:35:35Rich Roll?

  magazine, Jeff Gordonier. It's a great story, super fun conversation. There's all kinds of backstory to that as well that led to me going to Copenhagen, which you may know if you follow me on Instagram. More on that in a couple of days. Until then, work hard, be great, get connected with your friends, your family, your coworkers, stay humble. Peace. Lance, namaste.