Are You Growing Faster Than You Can Handle? The Billion-Dollar Lesson From Adam Neumann's WeWork Crash

Steven Bartlett opens by describing Adam Neumann as unusually philosophical and asks whether that difference comes from an unusual childhood. Neumann says his first identities are husband, father, and friend, before entrepreneur. He says every person has a “phenomenal soul” and that life is the attempt to close the gap between one’s perceived self and one’s potential. Neumann’s parents were doctors, and he felt their patients often came before him and his sister. After his parents divorced when he was in second grade, he moved to the United States with his mother and sister. His mother, who was bipolar, could be loving and playful but could also return from work at 8 p.m. and erupt. Neumann recalls being forced to wash dishes; when they refused, she would throw the dishes on the floor and cry while cleaning them. At 12, during another crisis, she threatened suicide and held a large knife. Neumann and his sister cried as he tried to take it from her. He also discloses that, between second and fourth grade, he was sexually abused by someone at least six or seven years older, without understanding at the time that it was wrong. He says these experiences once made him angry, but Rebecca, his future wife, introduced him to Kabbalah and a spiritual distinction between what is “meant to be” and free choice. A catastrophe becomes “meant to be” when a person takes responsibility, learns from it, and becomes stronger.

Neumann says he used to believe money would repair the emotional damage of his childhood. At 16 he wanted to become a millionaire; at 21 he wanted to become a billionaire. He had already started and failed at three businesses when Rebecca challenged him: chasing money would neither make him happy nor necessarily bring him money. She told him to identify his “superpower,” connect it to something meaningful for the world, and focus on that combination. Employees would want to join it, investors would want to fund it, and customers would want to buy from it. His definition of success is now radically different. He asks listeners to imagine their final minute of life, surrounded by children, grandchildren, friends, and the love they cultivated. Success, he says, is whether a person feels full and loved rather than regretful. He argues that material achievement cannot fill the internal hole people imagine it will fill. The host gives his own definition as making forward progress toward challenging goals while surrounded by the right people. Neumann replies that this is closer to his new view than a financial definition. He says that when he and Miguel McKelvey drew the original WeWork concept in 2010, the word that would have represented his goal was not “love” but “we.” The idea was to create a world where people made a life, not merely a living.

Neumann explains that Green Desk began in May 2008 during the financial downturn. He had a baby-clothing company and shared a building with architect Miguel McKelvey. Their landlord, Mr. Gottman, repeatedly told Neumann that the clothing business was bad because his wife—who had eight children—had never bought from it. Neumann replied that the landlord’s real estate was bad because it was empty. Gottman eventually showed him an empty floor. It generated no income, but the landlord said it could have rented for $5,000 per month. Neumann proposed dividing it into 15 small offices, charging $1,000 each, hiring a $2,500 receptionist, and splitting the resulting income. Gottman instead offered the whole five-floor building. They placed five Craigslist advertisements, and Green Desk became 92% full within a week and cash-flow positive within a month—Neumann’s first business to achieve that. When Neumann and McKelvey considered taking Green Desk national, the landlord declined to invest $20 million, then offered to buy the business. Their proceeds were $1.5 million total, but the landlord paid only $300,000 immediately and the remainder over four years. Neumann told McKelvey to hold the money because he would waste it. That exact $300,000 later became the check required to secure WeWork’s first building. Neumann says the original glass-wall drawing was never primarily about desks and chairs. It included work, housing, social life, health, travel, and other parts of a full life. He advises founders to dream at the scale of the stars while simultaneously returning to basic tasks such as knocking on doors and doing the work themselves.

Neumann says manifestation begins with belief, but genuine belief is tested only when circumstances become difficult. After WeWork’s collapse began, his former spiritual teacher, Eitan, called and reminded him of two lessons: “Love thy neighbor as yourself,” which Neumann interprets as forgiving oneself for weaknesses and mistakes before extending compassion to others; and “the darkest moment of the night is the second before dawn.” At the lowest point, Neumann had gone from 13,000 employees to three partners in one week. The company faced roughly negative $400 million and bankruptcy. The three people with him were almost strangers, yet they stayed. He arrived smiling and told them that belief is measured during a crisis, not when investors and friends are praising you. About ten days later, he says, the situation began improving. He describes WeWork’s growth as the product of a mission larger than its founders, speed, refusal to accept an unexplored “no,” and a team that believed the mission was part of its identity. In the second building, the company had only $90,000 for a floor whose wooden flooring quotes were $30,000–$45,000. Neumann asked suppliers to disclose their actual costs and offered them a 15% margin; the price fell to $12,000. The suppliers eventually joined WeWork’s internal construction operation. By year nine, WeWork was opening two buildings a day in 130 cities, 50 countries, and 70 languages, adding about 200,000 square feet daily. Neumann says people who once could manage one or two locations became leaders of extraordinary expansion after learning to challenge “paper walls.”

When Bartlett asks about imposter syndrome, Neumann says his certainty about WeWork was unusually strong because he believed the world needed the product. He distinguishes certainty about a mission from having done everything before. He also says WeWork was easier to commit to because he and Rebecca had no children and he could work 18–20 hours a day, seven days a week. With Flow, he had a family and greater responsibilities. Neumann defines hard work more broadly than hours in an office. It includes work on the business, personal growth, marriage, and children. A founder cannot be 80% or 90% committed, though being 100% committed does not require an entirely full calendar; Warren Buffett, he notes, preserves time to read and think. Founders pursuing two businesses should be cautious: only exceptional people such as Elon Musk or Jack Dorsey can sustain multiple major missions, and some people use a second business to avoid dealing with their own life. He says the right employees and partners matter more than almost anything else. His leadership has shifted from top-down control to influence: talented people do not want to be treated as subordinates in a dictatorship. They want inspiration, room to make mistakes, and honest feedback immediately when they are failing. Power comes from influence, not control, and influence must be earned daily. Neumann also admits that he is better at creating than protecting. He can generate three to five initiatives, but needs trusted people to tell him when to delay an idea. Rebecca’s grandfather’s warning—“one lion to make a fortune, 10 lions to watch it”—became a way for him to understand this weakness.

Neumann recounts meeting Masayoshi Son in late 2016. The night before, WeWork’s board had decided to raise only $300–$400 million, stop signing new leases, allow existing buildings to mature, become profitable, and then go public. The company was generating about $950 million in revenue, and its buildings were returning invested capital in roughly six to nine months, later stretching toward 12–18 months as it expanded. Son originally had only 12 minutes before meeting Donald Trump. Neumann texted Jared Kushner, who agreed to introduce Son to Trump, leaving seven minutes. Son looked around WeWork’s lobby and said it smelled like “dreams,” calling it a factory of dreams. In the car, he asked WeWork’s valuation and fundraising target. Neumann said the previous valuation was $16 billion and that he wanted $300–$400 million. Son instead proposed around $3 billion and ultimately wrote and signed an agreement to invest $4.2 billion across WeWork, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Neumann says every decision was his own, but the offer instantly activated his ego. Walking from 54th Street back to WeWork’s headquarters on 18th Street, he calculated valuations and personal wealth. By the time he arrived, he had forgotten the mission and become focused on money. He says the resulting loss of clarity spread through a company led from the top. Marc Benioff had advised him to reject Son’s offer, take WeWork public at $5 billion, sell 20%, and learn to operate as a public CEO. Neumann did not listen. He now says the company’s growth exceeded his ability to grow, and the business’s technology could not accurately distinguish profitable buildings and floors from newly opened, temporarily unprofitable ones.

WeWork continued expanding after Son’s investment, with nearly 500 locations, 400,000 members, and 12,000 employees by May 2019. It filed an S-1 at a stated valuation of about $47 billion, but the filing showed losses of $690 million in the first six months of 2019 and almost $3 billion over the prior three years. Neumann rejects several simplified accounts of what happened, including the claim that he was fired after the IPO failed and the claim that he trademarked and sold the word “we” to the company. He says the company became forced into an IPO because a proposed $20 billion all-cash transaction from SoftBank collapsed. In March 2018, Son had offered to buy out investors at a $20 billion valuation, put $10 billion on WeWork’s balance sheet, and give Neumann and management a path from 30% ownership to 51% if they hit agreed goals. A special committee negotiated for months, hoping to push the offer to $32 billion. By the time it was ready, SoftBank’s share price and market conditions had changed, and Son withdrew the deal. Neumann says the board members prioritized a larger dollar figure over closing a generous offer, even though the company was losing roughly $2 billion annually. WeWork then went public before its systems, technology, and founder were ready. Neumann says he stepped down voluntarily after a bank executive promised that resigning as CEO and becoming chairman would unlock $2 billion of funding and resolve his roughly $460 million personal debt. Nine minutes after he resigned, the bank issued a legal demand for repayment, citing a change-of-control breach. Neumann says Son eventually paid the debt and took control. At home, Neumann told Rebecca they had lost everything. She replied that they could live with her mother, homeschool their children, and surf in Costa Rica. Her response showed him that his real foundation was his family, not money.

Neumann says founders must know whether growth is faster than their ability to handle it—financially, emotionally, relationally, and organizationally. He recommends a weekly 24-hour “Technology Shabbat”: put away phones, computers, watches, and other screens. He predicts that the first hours reveal the user’s addiction, while the later hours bring clarity and better ideas. Bartlett initially resists because the practice sounds uncomfortable, but agrees to complete one 25-hour period in September. The conversation turns to focus. Bartlett cites Steve Jobs’s ability to cancel almost every initiative and concentrate on a few priorities. Neumann admits focus is not his natural strength: he is very good at turning zero into one, and his ideas often become real businesses. He says he would now limit himself to roughly three to five active priorities and surround himself with people who can tell him “not now.” Businesses should be anchored in a founder’s truth and mission, rather than being assembled only around customer requests or attractive opportunities. Neumann and Bartlett close by writing five lessons: choose life, friends, and business partners for how they will behave on the worst day, not the best; remember that life is about how you get up after falling; choose a partner who makes you the best version of yourself; understand that control comes from influence, which must be earned; and know yourself well enough to live your own destiny. Neumann’s final message is that people begin as “perfect light,” but noise, ego, and hardship obscure it. The work is to look inward, identify what is blocking personal growth, choose the right people, and pursue a meaningful journey rather than measuring life only through business success.