May 1, 2025 • 49 mins
Today's guest, our 200th guest on the Hoffman Podcast, is Brad Keywell. As you'll soon hear, Brad is expansively curious and always moving toward more aliveness. An entrepreneur, investor, professor, author, artist, philanthropist, and Hoffman graduate, he shares his personal experience of the Process with us. In addition, Brad reflects upon the Hoffman Process through his lens of entrepreneurship and his essentially curious nature.
Brad sees life as two forks in the road: one of curiosity (fully alive) and the other of stagnation (not yet dead). While he says these are extremes, Brad suggests it is important to know which fork we find ourselves on and then consciously consider if we're happy where we are.
For Brad, this choice is to live the path of being fully alive. He suggests that the Process is a tool to help us grow in greater aliveness, curiosity, and vulnerability. We can consciously choose to continue to move forward into a life of greater aliveness and expansive curiosity.
Join us in celebrating Brad and his journey to and through the Hoffman Process. We are grateful for this conversation with Brad and Drew. We hope you enjoy exploring the nature of change, curiosity, and a life of more aliveness.
More about Brad Keywell:
Brad is an American entrepreneur, investor, professor, author, artist, and philanthropist. He has founded or co-founded nine technology companies (three of which have gone public on NASDAQ), an early-stage VC firm, a global ideas platform, an immersive museum, and several nonprofit organizations. Brad was named the overall 2019 EY World Entrepreneur of the Year. This is the highest global honor (selected from 44 country winners in the global EY Entrepreneur of the Year program). He was also awarded the 2018 overall EY Entrepreneur of the Year in the United States.
He is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Uptake Technologies. Uptake is an Industrial AI software company that delivers insights that increase productivity and reliability for industrial operators in twenty-one countries. In addition, Uptake, a Technology Pioneer of the World Economic Forum, was Forbes Startup of the Year in 2015. In addition, Uptake is a three-time CNBC Disruptor, a three-time Forbes Cloud 100 member, and was ranked third on the Forbes AI 50 list.
Brad signed The Giving Pledge in 2015. By doing so, he committed to giving the majority of his wealth to charitable causes. He is the chairman of Future Founders, a nonprofit that provides entrepreneurship education to students in underserved communities throughout Chicagoland.
Follow Brad on LinkedIn and X(Twitter).
As mentioned in this episode:
Bob Hoffman:
Bob Hoffman, founder of the Hoffman Process, had an innate and highly gifted ability to listen to deeper truths and wisdom. Read more...
University of Michigan Ross Commencement 2022 Speaker: Brad Keywell
• Bo Schembechler, Football Coach, University of Michigan
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
God. It feels exhilarating when there's a spark
of aliveness
like that connection. That's a deep feeling of
exhilaration. Those are the moments we remember. And
if life was a series of moments, I'm
privileged that some of my book of moments
come
from Petaluma, California
at Hoffman.
(00:21):
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute,
and it's stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process and how it
lives in the world
radiating love.
(00:52):
My guest today is Brad Keywell. He's a
lifelong entrepreneur,
a founder of nine significant technology companies, including
Groupon.
Three of those companies he's founded
have had IPOs and went public, and seven
of the companies he's founded are unicorns,
which means over $1,000,000,000
(01:12):
valuation.
For this lifetime of entrepreneurship and more, he
received the ultimate honor. In 02/2019, he was
named the World Entrepreneur of the Year. Beyond
this, Brad has created a nationally recognized
ideas platform
called Chicago Ideas Week. He also created a
museum called WNDR
Museum that's now in three cities. He's created
(01:34):
an inner city entrepreneurship
education program called Future Founders,
and he's a signer of the Giving Pledge,
which means he's pledged to give the majority
of his wealth to philanthropic
causes.
And as a preview of something I mentioned
in the interview, if you wanna see a
beautiful commencement speech, watch Brad's speech to the
graduates of the University of Michigan Business School.
(01:55):
In it, he talks about a magical story
in which, as a seven year old, he
wrote a letter to the coach of the
Michigan football team, Bo Schembechler.
And then fourteen years later, something very special
happened with that letter. You have to watch
the speech. I don't wanna ruin the surprise.
And now without further ado, please enjoy my
conversation with the entrepreneur,
(02:16):
professor, artist, philanthropist,
seeker of knowledge and wisdom,
and proud Hoffman graduate,
Brad Keywell.
Brad, tell me why
there's
synchronicity
in the air. We're recording
on a special day for you. Why is
that? One of my two daughters
finished
(02:37):
her Hoffman process week
today.
I got a call from her one hour
ago. Wow.
How was she? What was that like?
She was tearfully joyful.
She was
soulful
at a level that
I don't think I've experienced before
with her.
(02:58):
She seemed bright at her core.
To experience her right
after the Hoffman experience,
part of me just said, god,
the joy that I know you're experiencing right
now,
I know that feeling. And it's thrilling to
say the least.
That's a good word, thrilling.
So she said one thing that was interesting.
(03:19):
She said,
I know that
so many relationships in my life
would have gone in a certain direction,
meaning would have been
something in the zone, let's say, of okay.
And now because of what I just experienced,
I know how much deeper, richer, more meaningful
(03:40):
they'll all be. It was
as a
father, it was
a moment in my life. Certainly at Hoffman,
it is
fundamental.
Our tagline is when you're serious about change.
A poster
lives in the classroom
staring at students, students staring at it all
week long, and it says my goal is
(04:00):
to change.
Change
is fundamental
to the Hoffman process.
I've come to look at life as
two sided.
There's forks in the road of life, I
would say.
One points towards curiosity,
and the other points towards
what I call a trance, but we'll call
(04:22):
it stagnation.
And curiosity to me is
another way of saying fully alive.
And stagnation or a trance is another way
of saying not yet dead.
Hoffman
is a tool
that can be used
to further the experience of being curious,
being fully alive to what's actually happening in
(04:43):
your life.
When I have found myself in the last
year since I went
recommending to others
judiciously
who I believe could benefit,
what I find myself saying is if you're
interested in a completely unique tool
that
is so useful in this game called being
(05:04):
fully alive,
trust me.
Don't research it or you know, at some
point in the old days, there was these
little communities. Right? And you talk to your
neighbors or your friends, and they say, based
upon the trust you've built, they suggest you
do things. Well, now with social media and
nonstop information,
we've forgotten how valuable it is to trust
(05:26):
a friend, a deep friend. In this case,
what I find myself doing is saying, I'd
like you to trust me as a friend.
That what I'm recommending
is invaluable. It's extraordinary.
Just like I did this based upon a
handful of people saying, just
trust
me. It's a magnificent experience. Here I am
(05:47):
coming out the other side saying to others,
just
trust me.
I'm grateful that she trusted me, and I've
expressed my gratitude to those
who I gave trust to,
who had the courage to recommend to me
the value of Hoffman.
When I went, it wasn't that there was,
as many people who've gone,
(06:07):
there wasn't, like, an acute problem. It was
there was a language that I'd heard others
describe
that they learned at this place called Hoffman
Process.
I was, of course, curious about that language.
And ultimately, what those people ended up saying
to me is just trust me.
Number one, taking a digital Sabbath for a
(06:29):
week
might sound intimidating, but it's magnificent.
Number two is
what I virtually promise you is that you
will have a one week experience that will
change
the texture of your life.
And sure enough, that's true. That was my
experience.
In this word called
(06:51):
trust,
did you experience
a development of that for yourself
during your Hoffman week that there was a
deep trust in your own voice, your own
intuition, your own cellular
experience,
trusting that as the week wore on?
Yes.
And
(07:11):
the experience of trusting myself,
my instincts,
came through in a interesting way. At a
macro level, I would posit the question, when's
the last time you or anyone
has surprised themselves?
When's the last time you surprised yourself?
If that's a framework question
(07:33):
around, well, how do you build trust unless
you're
taking some risk
or trying something yourself,
by yourself, for yourself?
That's
the activity
of trust building for yourself. It's hard to
build trust when you're sitting watching TV. What
are you trusting? But when you're putting yourself
out in the world and experiencing something
(07:54):
that is provocative,
that requires you to be
introspective
and and and curious about yourself,
that is a surprise
to ourselves.
That activity of surprising yourself and challenging yourself
simply to be curious
is a inherently trust building exercise around who
(08:16):
we are. I'd also describe it as a
definitional
creation
exercise.
How do you decide who you are? Well,
you could think about it and just sit
there and think about it. It's not so
easy. But putting yourself out there in the
world through experience lets you figure out who
am I. And I think that's what we
(08:36):
all are here to do, and the
journey we all share is this journey towards
what do things mean? And then ultimately, what
do I mean in this world?
You know, man's search for meaning, Viktor Frankl,
I've come to believe that when he said
meaning,
that meaning is really
the meaning of things
and ultimately the meaning of my life versus
(09:00):
who am I? It's really, what do I
mean?
And to determine meaning,
to me, is better done experientially
than in a solitary way. And clearly, I
think it's better done experientially than on a
couch with a therapist.
So that search for meaning that I believe
is so important for us,
here's one great way to search for meaning.
(09:20):
Go to Hoffman.
Brad, you talk about
curiosity
and change and a commitment to growth and
change. You talk
about meaning
and trust.
You're thinking at 30,000
foot views here.
Have you always been that way with a
a deep commitment to big ideas,
(09:42):
to big
thoughts and
frameworks?
I've come to believe that, yes, I've been
that way forever.
I've come to believe that
through the COVID era exercise
of looking at all the things I've saved
throughout my life and finding one
particular
(10:02):
note that was on my wall that I
wrote in a index card when I was,
I think, eight or nine or 10 years
old, and that was a Thoreau quote, the
mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
I believe
starting at that young age, I was committed
to not live a life of quiet desperation.
(10:22):
And something about that idea
has driven me. I'm just committed to be
thoughtful
as I do whatever I do and what
I've chosen to do for my life despite
being educated. I went to business school and
law school in Michigan, trained as a lawyer,
but never practiced for a day. My life
has been about testing my limits and creating
(10:43):
businesses and, as you know, a museum and
and ideas conferences and and other things. But
all through that creative process, to me, the
macro, the the broader
purpose or motivation is to live a life
of expansive curiosity,
the opposite of quiet desperation.
Is that what led you
(11:03):
to write coach Beau Schembechler
at the University of Michigan?
That story is one of those things that
I think yeah. I look back. I'm like,
I can't believe I did that. How old
were you then, eight? Seven or eight when
I wrote that letter. I suppose
the absence of the idea that I shouldn't
do something.
I'm in love with the idea of risk
(11:24):
because I wanna calibrate what the risk is.
I reject the idea that risk is bad.
So after I have an idea, I don't
go straight to the risk of the idea.
I go straight to the possibility
that might come from the action
that's driven me. Somebody who's an entrepreneur, like
an artist is an artist. An artist creates
art because they must.
(11:45):
An entrepreneur creates businesses because they must. And
I believe that describes me.
Because that's who I am, my orientation to
ideas and therefore to risk is around possibility
first, then,
let's say, risk in its absolute
sense second.
And then calibrating the reward
(12:06):
against the risk ultimately is my job.
That's a decent frame that explains
my first fifty five years. It sounds like
you've applied that to your personal life as
well. Yeah. I've come to realize that this
is only one life. It might be a
cliche, but this is not a dress rehearsal.
And
we all have this one life, and our
(12:27):
lives
are very much rooted in our relationships.
And our primary intimate relationship is not just
vital, it's somewhat definitional.
That's part of why it's so tricky, and
I believe everyone. I have friends with people
in the whole spectrum of success, let's say,
or celebrity or fame. And
(12:47):
the commonality with everyone I know, at any
level of success, is what they really want,
beyond the fame or recognition or money or
whatever, is to be loved and to be
seen by their intimate partner. And what they
really want
is to love and see
that intimate partner, and that's not easy.
(13:07):
And that is worth it. I mean, we're
here talking about Hoffman. Hoffman is an act
of love to yourself, and it's an act
of paying forward your capacity
to be in a truly intimate relationship.
Earlier, you talked about the power of experiences,
experiential
learning, so to speak. And so I guess
(13:28):
I'm curious. Take us with you into your
week.
Let us feel it from the inside.
What's some moments in time
as you were navigating this
intense immersive experience?
I'll pick out a handful of moments
acknowledging that part of the joy
(13:48):
of the week
is the unknown of the week. What I
poetically
will forever miss
is
that feeling of not knowing what's about to
happen.
There's poetry in that feeling in a way
that all you can do is say to
someone you don't really wanna know.
And while you might ask, what's this all
(14:09):
about?
Generally speaking, it's about knowing yourself better
and being more awake and alive
to the patterns
that you may or may not choose
to run your life.
And without being awake and aware of those
patterns, you're not even exercising the choice of
(14:29):
whether they run your life. They are running
your life. And if you'd like to be
more aware of them and then decide whether
you wanna use them or not, this is
an incredible modality. Okay? So that's a that's
one way I would describe it. But that
poetic
exhilaration,
slash fear of
what's this about,
(14:50):
I'll miss that forever. K? So that's one
part of my week was the walking in.
Again, the unique experience. How many other times
are you the beneficiary
of this type of genius?
Some genius man named Bob Hoffman,
how many years ago, fifty years ago,
had an idea. I mean, this is the
(15:11):
ultimate entrepreneur.
He had an idea, like an an entrepreneur
at definition.
If you look at the definition of entrepreneurship
in the dictionary, it's about someone who allocates
resources to a maximum extent,
generally limited resources. So an entrepreneur
almost makes magic out of something that others
would look at as simply a resource.
(15:32):
This person makes more than you might think
is possible with that same resource.
And a man named Bob Hoffman somehow had
an idea
to do something not
cultied,
not marketing y. He defied all the easy
routes of making a commercial or making it
culty or multilevel marketing. He resists all of
(15:53):
those things. He created something pure. And the
purity is this, it exists
so that those who experience it
walk out of it more alive, more aware,
more vital in their own
selves than before they came in. That's like
a miracle. The idea that a 50,000
people have chosen to experience this,
(16:16):
and it keeps growing by virtue of conversations
like we're having right now, Drew,
is extraordinary
that it even exists. And the idea that
somebody who's going to go to Hoffman process
takes that same
first step that we all did of unknown,
I miss that.
I want more of that. I want more
experiences that are this good that I don't
(16:38):
really know about yet. So I'll put that
as one thing that really
is quite substantial for me in terms of,
wow, I miss that feeling of walking in
to something this magnificent.
And then the predictability
of life
and the lack of predictability
in the process. You don't know what's happening
moment to moment. You just have to trust
it. Yeah. Like I said earlier, how often
(17:00):
do you really get surprised?
How often in life do you actually surprise
yourself
about yourself?
And the answer is probably not often, and
this is almost a guaranteed experience in a
very
safe,
structured,
compassionate
container
to actually surprise yourself about yourself.
(17:22):
So that's number one.
Number two is
my experience of meditating.
I've been meditating for many, many, many years.
Meditating
within the framework of Hoffman's
meditation
activities
was a new type of meditation,
if you will. A new experience to me
of meditating,
(17:42):
and I found it beautiful.
Beautiful.
Heartwarming.
Compassionate.
Meditation is, to me, grounding,
and it is pure.
Meditation Hoffman style felt
heartwarming,
tender hearted, compassionate.
Another moment that I'd share that really mattered
(18:04):
to me was
experiential education.
I reflected earlier,
getting to know yourself better and being a
curious and expansive,
expanding
human
is not something that involves therapy,
in my opinion. It involves experience.
The challenge is how do you get to
know yourself better? Our society said, well, here's
(18:25):
the way to do it. Go to sit
in the couch. We'll call it therapy.
And it's okay.
I don't,
diminish it or dismiss it. In fact, I
go on and I go to therapy, and
and I believe that sitting on a couch
has its place. But there are other ways
to learn about yourself and to expand as
a human being. I would describe those as
experiential.
Hoffman is experiential
(18:47):
learning, and the activity of being taught different
ideas
and then practicing them in real time
is something that Hoffman does uniquely well
without getting in the way of the surprise
and the joy of those who are going
to experience it.
The things that I learned
while at Hoffman
stayed in my mind, and part of the
reason is I learned them,
(19:09):
I got to practice them
with myself and with others, and they found
a root. They found a home in my
own self, my mind, and my body because
I connected those things I learned with my
life.
If all education was done that way, we'd
all be,
wiser, smarter, more dynamic humans.
Sadly, it's not. But Hoffman,
(19:30):
the fact that it exists,
the fact that somebody created Hoffman and it
persists the way it does and it's expanded
and blossomed the way it does as a
practice, as an experience to me, in and
of itself is worthy of celebration.
In this busy world, things like Hoffman, I
think, are eroded naturally by technology,
yet Hoffman is growing.
(19:52):
It's a quite a statement for the value
of this
thing called Hoffman process.
And maybe it's growing in part because of
what's happening in the dominant culture around media
and
information overload
and screen use?
I think there's a lot of truth in
that. It's an antidote to
(20:13):
information overload and clutter.
I think it's also
in the emerging zone of emotional education.
And clearly, friends are in no position to
teach us emotionally how to be. So where
(20:34):
do we go to learn
how
our emotional lives work and how to be
emotionally? Where do we go to refine our
emotional
acumen?
I don't know. You and I both found
one place, and that's called Hoffman. There's a
lot of space to be filled through,
we'll call them, experiential entrepreneurs
to create ways to receive emotional
(20:57):
education at any age. And given that I
now have come to understand that the age
range of Hoffman attendees,
youngest is, like, 21,
oldest is 91.
That's
remarkable.
That 70 years of age range have all
gone to this one week experience to
expand their emotional repertoire, their emotional acumen, their
(21:18):
emotional capacity
to love themselves and love others. It's quite
an endorsement.
Is there an anecdote that might
be worthy of reflecting?
Here's one story from my week at Hoffman
that when I really pull apart that week,
it was one of those moments like,
And the story is that
(21:40):
I looked around
my group of fellow Hoffman experiencers for that
week, and they break this larger group down
to smaller groups. And in my smaller group,
there was zero commonality amongst the eight of
us. I mean, nothing,
not one thing would lead you to say
that we all go together.
(22:00):
One person
was in,
an existential
search
for his meaning and finding his manhood
to a young woman who was struggling with
whether she likes herself
and is she liked by others,
to a man who was recovering and committed
(22:20):
to a certain vocation
that his parents and friends didn't really approve
of. All so interesting and all so different.
And I remember we broke,
and we did a writing exercise, and then
we
were all given some space to take a
walk on these magnificently
beautiful grounds. I had this moment, this epiphany,
because I finished writing, and I went to
(22:43):
the edge of this Hill. I'm looking out
at Petaluma, California. Right? I'm looking out at
these mountains, which I hadn't spent a lot
of time in that part of the country.
It's beautiful.
And I looked around at others who I
found also sitting alone,
thinking. And I thought to myself,
not one of these people are like me
the way I would define me. But we're
(23:04):
all like each other.
And we're all somehow here right now.
And the people that I've gotten to know
well, and this was midweek,
god, they make sense to me.
And I make sense to myself more because
I understand how we all relate.
I remember that feeling of it felt like
a full body, head to toe energetic alignment.
(23:28):
I felt stable on the ground.
I connected with the ground almost
where I was sitting on like a tree
stump, and I connected
deeply. And I remember that feeling, like, we're
all connected.
And, yeah, you might say, oh, that's, you
know, Kumbaya.
Yeah. Partly it is. And partly,
it's just the playful nature of being alive,
(23:48):
which is realizing we're just here having,
hopefully,
the joyful experience of aliveness.
God, it feels exhilarating when there's a spark
of aliveness
like that connection. That's a deep feeling of
exhilaration. Those are the moments we remember.
And if life was a series of moments,
I'm privileged that some of my book of
(24:10):
moments
come from
Petaluma, California
at Hoffman.
I had one thought about
when I was young, I played tennis, and
there are tennis coaches. And then professionally
or more at my essence, I've am and
have been an entrepreneur. I built many companies,
and I've sought out coaches in the form
(24:30):
of mentors.
I've had a series of extraordinary mentors over
a thirty year career thus far who really
have shaped
my
sense of opportunity,
my way of doing business, and my sense
of responsibility
to my own integrity and the integrity of
things that I create. Right? So coaches and
mentors are important to me. I had this
(24:51):
idea, what do you do if you wanna
be in better relational shape or better emotional
shape?
Who do you go to for that? Who's
a coach? And I don't mean like an
executive coach. Where would you go? Like, what
school or what
activity could you choose to do that would
help you refine your relational skills?
When I think about
(25:12):
or reflect on my experience at Hoffman, it's
a place to go
if you're interested in a more refined relationship
with
life, with your own life, the patterns underneath
your life,
relationships that make up your life, all of
those benefit from this
week of
examining
the patterns of your life.
(25:34):
It's like a relational not a boot camp,
but it's emotional and relational education
at the highest order. And it's so precise
the way it plays out. That's part of
the magnificence of Hoffman
is the unfolding of the week,
the unfolding
of how you're taught
and experience
what's being given this gift that's being given
(25:55):
to you, it unfolds in a beautiful way.
My experience with the group of people that
I went to Hoffman with and now with
others who I who I know who've went,
The most pervasive comment is,
I wish I went earlier.
You know, I've never heard anybody say, well,
that this is the exact perfect time. Mostly,
(26:16):
when they start to get it and start
to transform,
there's always a little bit of a regret
that they didn't do it sooner.
Yeah. It's as an entrepreneur, my job is
to understand.
And the way you understand is you get
curious.
And then you try to learn so that
the next time you do something,
you're better prepared to understand
(26:37):
when you come across a situation. Right? An
early entrepreneur is purely reactive.
You're reacting to what happens.
A wise seasoned entrepreneur
is not just proactive.
That person has a framework.
There's a way that they operate, that they
are. Great entrepreneurs have a a system, if
(26:58):
you will, for what greatness looks like.
I think Hoffman is part of this idea
of a life
in balance,
a mental, emotional,
relational,
wellness,
balanced life.
If you're tired of reactive living and you're
interested in not just proactive,
but balanced
(27:19):
living
with a grounded
framework of living mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally,
I can't think of anything more
valuable
and immediately rewarding than Hoffman. And I've
experienced a lot when it comes to self
development,
both psychologically and entrepreneurially.
(27:39):
And I've been with some other greats,
and I would put Hoffman up there with
anything
that
could help one
establish
a life in balance.
It really has impact there.
Brad, I know you and I talk about
understanding
through curiosity,
accepting,
healing, changing.
(28:01):
What do you mean when those words come
around, especially around acceptance?
Acceptance
before Hoffman to me
was probably a confusing idea. Because it's like,
what are you accepting? You're unclear when it
comes to emotional or psychological.
But now I look at acceptance as the
opposite.
I think acceptance is an inward facing activity.
(28:23):
Acceptance is accepting your
unique greatness,
your unique
flaws,
your unique okayness.
It's a fundamental
part of that balanced life.
The opposite of acceptance is
external validation, looking for you to be validated
by something or someone else.
(28:44):
Acceptance
is internal
looking, and the opposite
is ping pong. It's a reactive life.
I mentioned to you this idea of Hoffman
as a window and a door into relational
greatness or relational, let's say, okayness, which to
me, okayness is even better than greatness. Okayness
is is a state of peace. It's a
(29:05):
beautiful
idea to me. And what I stand for
is relationships
with people on that same journey.
You know, relationships with people who are interested
in intimacy
while acknowledging
their own greatness, their own flaws,
their own okayness.
I think that one who goes to Hoffman
and develops the skills to be okay with
(29:27):
who they are, to accept themselves,
naturally invites
some of that same
activity in others that they interact with. So
part of the possibility or opportunity, let's say,
entrepreneurially,
not business wise, but just make the world
better wise of Hoffman is that by going
and learning skills of accepting yourself,
(29:48):
you will sort of fertilize others
who might not understand Hoffman,
but might get a flavor
that there's something special happening within you. You
might help others
realize their own okayness by virtue of yours.
That takes acceptance to a
a whole new level.
That to me is the journey. Right? This
(30:09):
journey of
of life.
My journey through business led me to the
idea that it's about more than business. My
journey parallel to business became a journey of
creating
things that are more
intellectual recreationally
oriented. You know, not just business wise, profit
motivated, but intellectual recreation
(30:29):
as a goal.
As a worthy goal. That's why I created
Chicago Ideas Week. It's why I created Wonder
Museum.
That experience of intellectually challenging yourself is a
worthy goal.
And all of these things are about being
fully alive.
Ultimately,
where you land when you're fully alive
is you realize that you're okay.
(30:51):
Everything's okay. Maybe it's not great. Maybe it's
not horrible. Maybe it is great. Maybe it
is horrible. But, ultimately, you got this one
life, and how do you squeeze the juice
out of it?
My formula would be you investigate it. You
get curious about it. You don't avoid the
hard problems. Instead, you
find places and
(31:12):
people and
the experience that help you dig into the
hard, interesting problems, and that's probably one of
the biggest reasons I'm so enthusiastic
about Hoffman.
It helps you dig into
some of the really interesting
parts of life, and it does it in
this remarkably safe and
(31:33):
and beautifully structured container.
No avoidance
there at Hoffman. We go right to the
heart of the matter
over and over and over again.
Yeah. If your game in this life is
to avoid knowing yourself, don't go to Hoffman.
If your game in this life is to
get curious and you wanna learn and grow
by understanding yourself and and what it is
(31:56):
to be alive better, I would argue you
have to go to Hoffman. Because by virtue
of even listening to this conversation, you now
know about it.
And if you know about it somehow, someway,
well, that's a gift.
And the gift of knowing about it means
somebody somewhere told you something that led you
to get curious about it. And the beginning
of my journey was exactly this, hearing a
(32:18):
conversation
between you and someone else who I knew
of or heard of, and I listened to
the two of you talk about Hoffman.
And I said,
These conversations that you have created, the podcast
format lets us all listen in on conversations
like this. And what I'm proposing is that
whoever's listening to this, if they know either
(32:40):
of us, if they're touched at all by
these words,
it's really
a semi cloaked invitation that it's time to
get serious about checking out Hoffman for yourself.
You know, there are people who would say,
well, Brad can be that way in part
because
he's got so much money. He's got so
much time. But part of what you're saying
(33:00):
is that
you were this way
from a young age.
Although it's refined over time,
this kind of engaging
all in,
lean in
has been part of
who you are from a young age.
This is who I am. I've not sort
of tripped upon
(33:20):
big thoughts or existential
angst, existential
investigation.
Think about what
different options
were even talked about twenty, thirty years ago.
I mean, nobody talked about therapy. You'd, like,
lower your voice.
How amazing that now the word therapy is
embraced and talked about without any social stigma.
(33:42):
That's progress.
Beyond
that, quote, unquote therapy then he refers to
couch therapy,
sitting on a couch talking to someone, which
has its value, deep value.
And there's so much more.
That search for experience
to understand myself has absolutely been who I
am.
(34:02):
I grew up in Suburban Detroit. What got
me out of Suburban Detroit was being incredibly
curious about meeting those who I respected,
which led me to meet a guy named
Sam Zell, who led me to realize that
I can go to Chicago and I could
make my life there, but then I wanted
to do more. I I don't wanna work
for Sam Zell. I wanted to be like
him. And so while he gave me a
(34:24):
bunch of internship opportunities while I was in
law school and business school, I didn't work
for him. I didn't work in a law
firm for one day. I've always been creating
my own life. So that is who I
am.
The existence
of things like Hoffman
is relatively even though it's been around fifty
years, I only heard about it recently. So
(34:44):
that it exists. And I know there's a
handful of things that are now easy to
find out there,
but, wow, that's different than it was twenty,
thirty years ago. This is an option for
people ages 21 to 91.
Remarkable. And the fact that it's got that
it's rooted in such
durability
(35:05):
of experience and refinement,
something that's been refined for fifty years
and is growing without marketing, without promotion, without
TikTok.
It just does it because it works.
There are not many things we could point
to that started fifty years ago that are
not oriented in, like, hooking you in or
(35:25):
getting you to try and then buy or
just has none of that. It's simply about
being more alive.
And, by the way, after you go to
this one week Hoffman process experience,
that could be all you do. There's no
subscription here.
It's so pure.
As an entrepreneur, I look at it. I'm
like, holy cow. This is in its own
(35:46):
space,
in the space of, we'll call it, emotional
experiential
education
and relational
awareness enhancement
and a better understanding of this game called
being fully alive and curious
that Hoffman exists is like a giant wow.
You made a donation
(36:06):
to my dad's
college after he passed
Mount Saint Mary's
in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and I came upon that
letter they sent me
acknowledging your donation. And I wasn't aware of
the mount, but
it just meant so much to me that
you had the wherewithal to see that, and
(36:26):
I was just so touched. I'm so grateful.
Wow. Thanks for sharing that.
One of the thoughts and feelings I had
in doing it with Lauren was
my own appreciation
for my father. My father passed away seven
years ago, and I really felt
I gave it my all when my dad
was alive. And therefore, when he died, I
(36:47):
was able to experience his death as,
of course,
so sad that he died in his too
young age in his early eighties.
And
grateful
that he was my father, that I was
his son, and that I did the best
I could,
which is interesting
in how it relates to my perspective on
(37:09):
Hoffman.
Doing the best you can. I would say
it's a good question to ask. Why would
somebody go to Hoffman? Why would you actually
take a week out of your life
to do something that you don't really know
everything that's gonna happen, and I don't have
any problems. I don't need any help. Everything's
fine. Well, then why go?
Well,
because we're here to
(37:29):
be fully alive
and doing the best you can to understand
yourself, to me, is amongst the most worthy
things you can do. Understanding yourself
for yourself
lets you understand others better.
In entrepreneur land, you look at behavioral and
decision biases as something that are it's worthy
of understanding
(37:50):
the things that get in the way of
clean assessments of risk and reward and clean
decision making.
Similarly,
in Hoffman land and in the land of
understanding yourself better, there's value in understanding
what might be happening that you're not aware
of.
That unconscious
pattern that drives you to do the same
thing over and over again. If you find
(38:11):
yourself in bad relationships that have predictable ending
or
you start to get tired of saying the
same thing over and over again in situations.
If you start to get sick of things
that are not working well for you, whoever
you are,
well, there's value
in being alive.
And the value of being alive is exploring
(38:32):
those patterns
to understand what are they all about.
I wish Hoffman was one of 20 options.
It's just not.
Hoffman is one of one
that lets you experientially
really
understand the patterns that unconsciously
run your life
and get some frameworks that you can stand
(38:54):
on or rely on to choose. Do I
want this pattern to continue to run this
part of my life?
Can I
expose this thing that's been hidden but lurking
and operative?
Can I make that operative thing more
easier to see? And then can I have
the courage and the clarity to choose
(39:15):
if I want that pattern to operate right
now in this situation or not? That is
a huge
step towards full aliveness.
It all exists right there in that fulcrum
of a moment
between
aliveness
and
on your way. How did you phrase it?
On your way to death. Either either fully
(39:36):
alive to what's actually happening right now, or
you're not yet dead and in a trance
until you get there. And I believe if
you wanna be extreme, like I like to
be sometimes,
we can divide a lot of people in
one of those two categories.
And why do you like being extreme?
Because I like being provocative.
(39:56):
I find that when you say why is
it that way, the real answer you're gonna
get, it's just how it is. It's always
been that way. I hate
silence as an answer, and I don't like
the idea that things are exactly the way
they are because they're supposed to be. I
believe that it's worth understanding why things are
the way they are, and at least for
ourselves,
(40:16):
choosing, do we want to continue
to let them or have them be the
way they are? And one easy way for
me to provoke that question
is to be
categorically
extreme.
Is every person in your life pick one.
Are they fully alive to what's actually happening
and curious about what to do next?
Or
(40:37):
are they not yet dead and in a
trance like strategy to really just live out
their days? If you go that extreme, it
helps you understand,
Am I surrounding myself with people who I
want to be surrounded by?
I tend to surround myself with people who
are
actively
stretching themselves
creatively. They're curious
(40:59):
about themselves, about me, and they are both
interesting
and interested.
Use that as a reference point, and then
filter out people in your life and say,
how many are really both interesting and interested?
That's a good one too. Brad, I can
feel your energy
in this conversation,
and I'm grateful for it.
(41:21):
In this journey of aliveness,
what's got your attention lately? What are you
alive to
in your life?
That's a good question. It's ever
evolving.
I think right now,
I've spent so long
creating things from zero to one.
Literally, having an idea and making it something.
(41:43):
And I continue to do that.
And at the same time,
I'm looking at some bigger
opportunities
that involve
deployment of substantial
capital
plus,
entrepreneurial
acumen
to create something
even more
globally impactful.
(42:03):
The idea of disease
detection and prevention is very interesting to me
as is what's happening in the evolving world
of energy as a macro topic. And stepping
back where I am right now in this
project of life is,
you know, I get a lot of joy
from creating
art and creating things that impact others through
(42:23):
art, number one. Number two is I have
as much joy as ever around
creating and building and growing businesses,
and I'm finding myself raising my own bar
around
what can I do that will be the
next step of growth and evolution for me?
I've taken a number of companies from idea
to taking them public. I'm really looking at
(42:44):
and assessing
some even larger opportunities.
And then from a personal standpoint, as you
and I connect on, Drew, is
I wanna get deeper. I wanna have an
even more exquisite and extraordinary
primary intimate relationship,
and I want to engage even more deeply
with people who give me energy and who
(43:05):
appreciate my energy, you know, in their lives.
And so I'm becoming more and more intentional,
I find, in my mid fifties
around finding people that
I love spending time with. It's a lightweight,
joyful
exchange of silliness and playfulness and creativity and
music and fun. I'm really appreciating how much
(43:25):
fun it is to have fun.
Are there plans to be with your daughter,
the new grad of the Hoffman process, anytime
soon?
She called me. She picked up her phone
after a week offline, and she called me
first. And what I said to her is,
first of all, thank you for the honor
of, you know, allowing me to be that
primary witness of her coming right out of
(43:46):
it. And then I invited her, let's say,
or suggested that she just
come out slow from the intoxicating
afterglow
of that week. And so the plan is
just to ease into a debrief at some
point. And what I said to her is
how fun it's gonna be to be able
to share that common language. The language of
(44:07):
Hoffman, that language of helping us be more
aware of what's actually happening in our lives
and be more intentional about the choices we
want to make to build a good life
for ourself,
that's
thrilling
when you can use that shared
framework with others. And, you know, I talk
about deeper intimate relationships,
(44:28):
deeper
friend and
colleague relationships.
That's what I stand for at depth.
And it just feels good to know that
my daughter's gonna have that new dictionary to
play with.
Brad, what's it been like to reflect on
your time at Hoffman, reflect on what Hoffman
means to you, on the experience,
(44:48):
on the deeper understanding
of
the kind of thing Hoffman does in the
world, and to spend the last hour talking
about it. What do you notice?
I notice a peace, a calmness in myself.
There's something about
talking publicly
about things that are
introspective
that the category broadly speaking of therapeutic
(45:11):
that maybe for a moment felt vulnerable,
I want that vulnerability every day of my
life.
So to step into that vulnerability of sharing
my own personal experience and perhaps offering as
a pay it forward to other
entrepreneurs,
other people that might identify with my own
journey and maybe see in themselves
(45:31):
something that they might trust me and my
words,
that feels good.
And I think it's important in life when
you come across something that really matters
to pay it forward to others. As you
know, I've done helped others, encourage others to
go, and then pay it forward by having
this conversation with hopes that even one person
hears this and chooses to go by virtue
(45:53):
of hearing my enthusiasm,
that would feel pretty amazing.
If the result of this conversation, Drew, was
that one person who I don't know heard
it and said, you know what? I'll trust
him.
He'll put me over the over the edge.
I'm gonna give it a shot. That would
feel great. Yeah. Beautiful.
And lastly, I wanna salute you. I know
(46:13):
that
several several several handfuls of people who have
chosen to give parts of their lives to
Hoffman
in service of others
as teachers, as facilitators,
and in your case, as a messenger to
the world about what has been created that's
called the Hoffman Process that exists without marketing.
(46:34):
I just wanna salute you and all the
teachers that stand shoulder to shoulder with you
how vital and vibrant and valuable
your role is in this whole ecosystem of
Hoffman. So thank you.
Thank you, Brad. I appreciate
that
seeing us
as a part of that journey. And one
of the things that makes it so worthwhile
(46:56):
is everything you said about the process,
The integrity, the aliveness, the
ceremony,
the container
that the process is.
I feel honored
to have the Hoffman process as my wingman
in this
journey of transformation.
I can imagine that that when you go
(47:17):
there for a week as a teacher, that
it brings you more fully alive.
You missing others like me
doing that little microcosm
of my own life,
and you'll be able to reflect for yourself
on your life must be a reminder of
these frameworks. And, you know, it's just so
(47:37):
good. The whole thing is so pure and
good
for our soul, for our intellect, for our
essence, our light that we all have inside
of us that I believe is
our essence.
On so many levels, it's magnificent,
majestic, and meaningful.
I'm exuberantly
enthusiastic
about its existence in the world.
(48:07):
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and
president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Razi Ingrassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves, in each other and in the world.
(48:28):
To find out more, please go to hoffmaninstitute.org.
God. It feels exhilarating when there's a spark
of aliveness
like that connection. That's a deep feeling of
exhilaration. Those are the moments we remember. And
if life was a series of moments, I'm
privileged that some of my book of moments
come
from Petaluma, California
at Hoffman.
(00:21):
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute,
and it's stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process and how it
lives in the world
radiating love.
(00:52):
My guest today is Brad Keywell. He's a
lifelong entrepreneur,
a founder of nine significant technology companies, including
Groupon.
Three of those companies he's founded
have had IPOs and went public, and seven
of the companies he's founded are unicorns,
which means over $1,000,000,000
(01:12):
valuation.
For this lifetime of entrepreneurship and more, he
received the ultimate honor. In 02/2019, he was
named the World Entrepreneur of the Year. Beyond
this, Brad has created a nationally recognized
ideas platform
called Chicago Ideas Week. He also created a
museum called WNDR
Museum that's now in three cities. He's created
(01:34):
an inner city entrepreneurship
education program called Future Founders,
and he's a signer of the Giving Pledge,
which means he's pledged to give the majority
of his wealth to philanthropic
causes.
And as a preview of something I mentioned
in the interview, if you wanna see a
beautiful commencement speech, watch Brad's speech to the
graduates of the University of Michigan Business School.
(01:55):
In it, he talks about a magical story
in which, as a seven year old, he
wrote a letter to the coach of the
Michigan football team, Bo Schembechler.
And then fourteen years later, something very special
happened with that letter. You have to watch
the speech. I don't wanna ruin the surprise.
And now without further ado, please enjoy my
conversation with the entrepreneur,
(02:16):
professor, artist, philanthropist,
seeker of knowledge and wisdom,
and proud Hoffman graduate,
Brad Keywell.
Brad, tell me why
there's
synchronicity
in the air. We're recording
on a special day for you. Why is
that? One of my two daughters
finished
(02:37):
her Hoffman process week
today.
I got a call from her one hour
ago. Wow.
How was she? What was that like?
She was tearfully joyful.
She was
soulful
at a level that
I don't think I've experienced before
with her.
(02:58):
She seemed bright at her core.
To experience her right
after the Hoffman experience,
part of me just said, god,
the joy that I know you're experiencing right
now,
I know that feeling. And it's thrilling to
say the least.
That's a good word, thrilling.
So she said one thing that was interesting.
(03:19):
She said,
I know that
so many relationships in my life
would have gone in a certain direction,
meaning would have been
something in the zone, let's say, of okay.
And now because of what I just experienced,
I know how much deeper, richer, more meaningful
(03:40):
they'll all be. It was
as a
father, it was
a moment in my life. Certainly at Hoffman,
it is
fundamental.
Our tagline is when you're serious about change.
A poster
lives in the classroom
staring at students, students staring at it all
week long, and it says my goal is
(04:00):
to change.
Change
is fundamental
to the Hoffman process.
I've come to look at life as
two sided.
There's forks in the road of life, I
would say.
One points towards curiosity,
and the other points towards
what I call a trance, but we'll call
(04:22):
it stagnation.
And curiosity to me is
another way of saying fully alive.
And stagnation or a trance is another way
of saying not yet dead.
Hoffman
is a tool
that can be used
to further the experience of being curious,
being fully alive to what's actually happening in
(04:43):
your life.
When I have found myself in the last
year since I went
recommending to others
judiciously
who I believe could benefit,
what I find myself saying is if you're
interested in a completely unique tool
that
is so useful in this game called being
(05:04):
fully alive,
trust me.
Don't research it or you know, at some
point in the old days, there was these
little communities. Right? And you talk to your
neighbors or your friends, and they say, based
upon the trust you've built, they suggest you
do things. Well, now with social media and
nonstop information,
we've forgotten how valuable it is to trust
(05:26):
a friend, a deep friend. In this case,
what I find myself doing is saying, I'd
like you to trust me as a friend.
That what I'm recommending
is invaluable. It's extraordinary.
Just like I did this based upon a
handful of people saying, just
trust
me. It's a magnificent experience. Here I am
(05:47):
coming out the other side saying to others,
just
trust me.
I'm grateful that she trusted me, and I've
expressed my gratitude to those
who I gave trust to,
who had the courage to recommend to me
the value of Hoffman.
When I went, it wasn't that there was,
as many people who've gone,
(06:07):
there wasn't, like, an acute problem. It was
there was a language that I'd heard others
describe
that they learned at this place called Hoffman
Process.
I was, of course, curious about that language.
And ultimately, what those people ended up saying
to me is just trust me.
Number one, taking a digital Sabbath for a
(06:29):
week
might sound intimidating, but it's magnificent.
Number two is
what I virtually promise you is that you
will have a one week experience that will
change
the texture of your life.
And sure enough, that's true. That was my
experience.
In this word called
(06:51):
trust,
did you experience
a development of that for yourself
during your Hoffman week that there was a
deep trust in your own voice, your own
intuition, your own cellular
experience,
trusting that as the week wore on?
Yes.
And
(07:11):
the experience of trusting myself,
my instincts,
came through in a interesting way. At a
macro level, I would posit the question, when's
the last time you or anyone
has surprised themselves?
When's the last time you surprised yourself?
If that's a framework question
(07:33):
around, well, how do you build trust unless
you're
taking some risk
or trying something yourself,
by yourself, for yourself?
That's
the activity
of trust building for yourself. It's hard to
build trust when you're sitting watching TV. What
are you trusting? But when you're putting yourself
out in the world and experiencing something
(07:54):
that is provocative,
that requires you to be
introspective
and and and curious about yourself,
that is a surprise
to ourselves.
That activity of surprising yourself and challenging yourself
simply to be curious
is a inherently trust building exercise around who
(08:16):
we are. I'd also describe it as a
definitional
creation
exercise.
How do you decide who you are? Well,
you could think about it and just sit
there and think about it. It's not so
easy. But putting yourself out there in the
world through experience lets you figure out who
am I. And I think that's what we
(08:36):
all are here to do, and the
journey we all share is this journey towards
what do things mean? And then ultimately, what
do I mean in this world?
You know, man's search for meaning, Viktor Frankl,
I've come to believe that when he said
meaning,
that meaning is really
the meaning of things
and ultimately the meaning of my life versus
(09:00):
who am I? It's really, what do I
mean?
And to determine meaning,
to me, is better done experientially
than in a solitary way. And clearly, I
think it's better done experientially than on a
couch with a therapist.
So that search for meaning that I believe
is so important for us,
here's one great way to search for meaning.
(09:20):
Go to Hoffman.
Brad, you talk about
curiosity
and change and a commitment to growth and
change. You talk
about meaning
and trust.
You're thinking at 30,000
foot views here.
Have you always been that way with a
a deep commitment to big ideas,
(09:42):
to big
thoughts and
frameworks?
I've come to believe that, yes, I've been
that way forever.
I've come to believe that
through the COVID era exercise
of looking at all the things I've saved
throughout my life and finding one
particular
(10:02):
note that was on my wall that I
wrote in a index card when I was,
I think, eight or nine or 10 years
old, and that was a Thoreau quote, the
mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
I believe
starting at that young age, I was committed
to not live a life of quiet desperation.
(10:22):
And something about that idea
has driven me. I'm just committed to be
thoughtful
as I do whatever I do and what
I've chosen to do for my life despite
being educated. I went to business school and
law school in Michigan, trained as a lawyer,
but never practiced for a day. My life
has been about testing my limits and creating
(10:43):
businesses and, as you know, a museum and
and ideas conferences and and other things. But
all through that creative process, to me, the
macro, the the broader
purpose or motivation is to live a life
of expansive curiosity,
the opposite of quiet desperation.
Is that what led you
(11:03):
to write coach Beau Schembechler
at the University of Michigan?
That story is one of those things that
I think yeah. I look back. I'm like,
I can't believe I did that. How old
were you then, eight? Seven or eight when
I wrote that letter. I suppose
the absence of the idea that I shouldn't
do something.
I'm in love with the idea of risk
(11:24):
because I wanna calibrate what the risk is.
I reject the idea that risk is bad.
So after I have an idea, I don't
go straight to the risk of the idea.
I go straight to the possibility
that might come from the action
that's driven me. Somebody who's an entrepreneur, like
an artist is an artist. An artist creates
art because they must.
(11:45):
An entrepreneur creates businesses because they must. And
I believe that describes me.
Because that's who I am, my orientation to
ideas and therefore to risk is around possibility
first, then,
let's say, risk in its absolute
sense second.
And then calibrating the reward
(12:06):
against the risk ultimately is my job.
That's a decent frame that explains
my first fifty five years. It sounds like
you've applied that to your personal life as
well. Yeah. I've come to realize that this
is only one life. It might be a
cliche, but this is not a dress rehearsal.
And
we all have this one life, and our
(12:27):
lives
are very much rooted in our relationships.
And our primary intimate relationship is not just
vital, it's somewhat definitional.
That's part of why it's so tricky, and
I believe everyone. I have friends with people
in the whole spectrum of success, let's say,
or celebrity or fame. And
(12:47):
the commonality with everyone I know, at any
level of success, is what they really want,
beyond the fame or recognition or money or
whatever, is to be loved and to be
seen by their intimate partner. And what they
really want
is to love and see
that intimate partner, and that's not easy.
(13:07):
And that is worth it. I mean, we're
here talking about Hoffman. Hoffman is an act
of love to yourself, and it's an act
of paying forward your capacity
to be in a truly intimate relationship.
Earlier, you talked about the power of experiences,
experiential
learning, so to speak. And so I guess
(13:28):
I'm curious. Take us with you into your
week.
Let us feel it from the inside.
What's some moments in time
as you were navigating this
intense immersive experience?
I'll pick out a handful of moments
acknowledging that part of the joy
(13:48):
of the week
is the unknown of the week. What I
poetically
will forever miss
is
that feeling of not knowing what's about to
happen.
There's poetry in that feeling in a way
that all you can do is say to
someone you don't really wanna know.
And while you might ask, what's this all
(14:09):
about?
Generally speaking, it's about knowing yourself better
and being more awake and alive
to the patterns
that you may or may not choose
to run your life.
And without being awake and aware of those
patterns, you're not even exercising the choice of
(14:29):
whether they run your life. They are running
your life. And if you'd like to be
more aware of them and then decide whether
you wanna use them or not, this is
an incredible modality. Okay? So that's a that's
one way I would describe it. But that
poetic
exhilaration,
slash fear of
what's this about,
(14:50):
I'll miss that forever. K? So that's one
part of my week was the walking in.
Again, the unique experience. How many other times
are you the beneficiary
of this type of genius?
Some genius man named Bob Hoffman,
how many years ago, fifty years ago,
had an idea. I mean, this is the
(15:11):
ultimate entrepreneur.
He had an idea, like an an entrepreneur
at definition.
If you look at the definition of entrepreneurship
in the dictionary, it's about someone who allocates
resources to a maximum extent,
generally limited resources. So an entrepreneur
almost makes magic out of something that others
would look at as simply a resource.
(15:32):
This person makes more than you might think
is possible with that same resource.
And a man named Bob Hoffman somehow had
an idea
to do something not
cultied,
not marketing y. He defied all the easy
routes of making a commercial or making it
culty or multilevel marketing. He resists all of
(15:53):
those things. He created something pure. And the
purity is this, it exists
so that those who experience it
walk out of it more alive, more aware,
more vital in their own
selves than before they came in. That's like
a miracle. The idea that a 50,000
people have chosen to experience this,
(16:16):
and it keeps growing by virtue of conversations
like we're having right now, Drew,
is extraordinary
that it even exists. And the idea that
somebody who's going to go to Hoffman process
takes that same
first step that we all did of unknown,
I miss that.
I want more of that. I want more
experiences that are this good that I don't
(16:38):
really know about yet. So I'll put that
as one thing that really
is quite substantial for me in terms of,
wow, I miss that feeling of walking in
to something this magnificent.
And then the predictability
of life
and the lack of predictability
in the process. You don't know what's happening
moment to moment. You just have to trust
it. Yeah. Like I said earlier, how often
(17:00):
do you really get surprised?
How often in life do you actually surprise
yourself
about yourself?
And the answer is probably not often, and
this is almost a guaranteed experience in a
very
safe,
structured,
compassionate
container
to actually surprise yourself about yourself.
(17:22):
So that's number one.
Number two is
my experience of meditating.
I've been meditating for many, many, many years.
Meditating
within the framework of Hoffman's
meditation
activities
was a new type of meditation,
if you will. A new experience to me
of meditating,
(17:42):
and I found it beautiful.
Beautiful.
Heartwarming.
Compassionate.
Meditation is, to me, grounding,
and it is pure.
Meditation Hoffman style felt
heartwarming,
tender hearted, compassionate.
Another moment that I'd share that really mattered
(18:04):
to me was
experiential education.
I reflected earlier,
getting to know yourself better and being a
curious and expansive,
expanding
human
is not something that involves therapy,
in my opinion. It involves experience.
The challenge is how do you get to
know yourself better? Our society said, well, here's
(18:25):
the way to do it. Go to sit
in the couch. We'll call it therapy.
And it's okay.
I don't,
diminish it or dismiss it. In fact, I
go on and I go to therapy, and
and I believe that sitting on a couch
has its place. But there are other ways
to learn about yourself and to expand as
a human being. I would describe those as
experiential.
Hoffman is experiential
(18:47):
learning, and the activity of being taught different
ideas
and then practicing them in real time
is something that Hoffman does uniquely well
without getting in the way of the surprise
and the joy of those who are going
to experience it.
The things that I learned
while at Hoffman
stayed in my mind, and part of the
reason is I learned them,
(19:09):
I got to practice them
with myself and with others, and they found
a root. They found a home in my
own self, my mind, and my body because
I connected those things I learned with my
life.
If all education was done that way, we'd
all be,
wiser, smarter, more dynamic humans.
Sadly, it's not. But Hoffman,
(19:30):
the fact that it exists,
the fact that somebody created Hoffman and it
persists the way it does and it's expanded
and blossomed the way it does as a
practice, as an experience to me, in and
of itself is worthy of celebration.
In this busy world, things like Hoffman, I
think, are eroded naturally by technology,
yet Hoffman is growing.
(19:52):
It's a quite a statement for the value
of this
thing called Hoffman process.
And maybe it's growing in part because of
what's happening in the dominant culture around media
and
information overload
and screen use?
I think there's a lot of truth in
that. It's an antidote to
(20:13):
information overload and clutter.
I think it's also
in the emerging zone of emotional education.
And clearly, friends are in no position to
teach us emotionally how to be. So where
(20:34):
do we go to learn
how
our emotional lives work and how to be
emotionally? Where do we go to refine our
emotional
acumen?
I don't know. You and I both found
one place, and that's called Hoffman. There's a
lot of space to be filled through,
we'll call them, experiential entrepreneurs
to create ways to receive emotional
(20:57):
education at any age. And given that I
now have come to understand that the age
range of Hoffman attendees,
youngest is, like, 21,
oldest is 91.
That's
remarkable.
That 70 years of age range have all
gone to this one week experience to
expand their emotional repertoire, their emotional acumen, their
(21:18):
emotional capacity
to love themselves and love others. It's quite
an endorsement.
Is there an anecdote that might
be worthy of reflecting?
Here's one story from my week at Hoffman
that when I really pull apart that week,
it was one of those moments like,
And the story is that
(21:40):
I looked around
my group of fellow Hoffman experiencers for that
week, and they break this larger group down
to smaller groups. And in my smaller group,
there was zero commonality amongst the eight of
us. I mean, nothing,
not one thing would lead you to say
that we all go together.
(22:00):
One person
was in,
an existential
search
for his meaning and finding his manhood
to a young woman who was struggling with
whether she likes herself
and is she liked by others,
to a man who was recovering and committed
(22:20):
to a certain vocation
that his parents and friends didn't really approve
of. All so interesting and all so different.
And I remember we broke,
and we did a writing exercise, and then
we
were all given some space to take a
walk on these magnificently
beautiful grounds. I had this moment, this epiphany,
because I finished writing, and I went to
(22:43):
the edge of this Hill. I'm looking out
at Petaluma, California. Right? I'm looking out at
these mountains, which I hadn't spent a lot
of time in that part of the country.
It's beautiful.
And I looked around at others who I
found also sitting alone,
thinking. And I thought to myself,
not one of these people are like me
the way I would define me. But we're
(23:04):
all like each other.
And we're all somehow here right now.
And the people that I've gotten to know
well, and this was midweek,
god, they make sense to me.
And I make sense to myself more because
I understand how we all relate.
I remember that feeling of it felt like
a full body, head to toe energetic alignment.
(23:28):
I felt stable on the ground.
I connected with the ground almost
where I was sitting on like a tree
stump, and I connected
deeply. And I remember that feeling, like, we're
all connected.
And, yeah, you might say, oh, that's, you
know, Kumbaya.
Yeah. Partly it is. And partly,
it's just the playful nature of being alive,
(23:48):
which is realizing we're just here having,
hopefully,
the joyful experience of aliveness.
God, it feels exhilarating when there's a spark
of aliveness
like that connection. That's a deep feeling of
exhilaration. Those are the moments we remember.
And if life was a series of moments,
I'm privileged that some of my book of
(24:10):
moments
come from
Petaluma, California
at Hoffman.
I had one thought about
when I was young, I played tennis, and
there are tennis coaches. And then professionally
or more at my essence, I've am and
have been an entrepreneur. I built many companies,
and I've sought out coaches in the form
(24:30):
of mentors.
I've had a series of extraordinary mentors over
a thirty year career thus far who really
have shaped
my
sense of opportunity,
my way of doing business, and my sense
of responsibility
to my own integrity and the integrity of
things that I create. Right? So coaches and
mentors are important to me. I had this
(24:51):
idea, what do you do if you wanna
be in better relational shape or better emotional
shape?
Who do you go to for that? Who's
a coach? And I don't mean like an
executive coach. Where would you go? Like, what
school or what
activity could you choose to do that would
help you refine your relational skills?
When I think about
(25:12):
or reflect on my experience at Hoffman, it's
a place to go
if you're interested in a more refined relationship
with
life, with your own life, the patterns underneath
your life,
relationships that make up your life, all of
those benefit from this
week of
examining
the patterns of your life.
(25:34):
It's like a relational not a boot camp,
but it's emotional and relational education
at the highest order. And it's so precise
the way it plays out. That's part of
the magnificence of Hoffman
is the unfolding of the week,
the unfolding
of how you're taught
and experience
what's being given this gift that's being given
(25:55):
to you, it unfolds in a beautiful way.
My experience with the group of people that
I went to Hoffman with and now with
others who I who I know who've went,
The most pervasive comment is,
I wish I went earlier.
You know, I've never heard anybody say, well,
that this is the exact perfect time. Mostly,
(26:16):
when they start to get it and start
to transform,
there's always a little bit of a regret
that they didn't do it sooner.
Yeah. It's as an entrepreneur, my job is
to understand.
And the way you understand is you get
curious.
And then you try to learn so that
the next time you do something,
you're better prepared to understand
(26:37):
when you come across a situation. Right? An
early entrepreneur is purely reactive.
You're reacting to what happens.
A wise seasoned entrepreneur
is not just proactive.
That person has a framework.
There's a way that they operate, that they
are. Great entrepreneurs have a a system, if
(26:58):
you will, for what greatness looks like.
I think Hoffman is part of this idea
of a life
in balance,
a mental, emotional,
relational,
wellness,
balanced life.
If you're tired of reactive living and you're
interested in not just proactive,
but balanced
(27:19):
living
with a grounded
framework of living mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally,
I can't think of anything more
valuable
and immediately rewarding than Hoffman. And I've
experienced a lot when it comes to self
development,
both psychologically and entrepreneurially.
(27:39):
And I've been with some other greats,
and I would put Hoffman up there with
anything
that
could help one
establish
a life in balance.
It really has impact there.
Brad, I know you and I talk about
understanding
through curiosity,
accepting,
healing, changing.
(28:01):
What do you mean when those words come
around, especially around acceptance?
Acceptance
before Hoffman to me
was probably a confusing idea. Because it's like,
what are you accepting? You're unclear when it
comes to emotional or psychological.
But now I look at acceptance as the
opposite.
I think acceptance is an inward facing activity.
(28:23):
Acceptance is accepting your
unique greatness,
your unique
flaws,
your unique okayness.
It's a fundamental
part of that balanced life.
The opposite of acceptance is
external validation, looking for you to be validated
by something or someone else.
(28:44):
Acceptance
is internal
looking, and the opposite
is ping pong. It's a reactive life.
I mentioned to you this idea of Hoffman
as a window and a door into relational
greatness or relational, let's say, okayness, which to
me, okayness is even better than greatness. Okayness
is is a state of peace. It's a
(29:05):
beautiful
idea to me. And what I stand for
is relationships
with people on that same journey.
You know, relationships with people who are interested
in intimacy
while acknowledging
their own greatness, their own flaws,
their own okayness.
I think that one who goes to Hoffman
and develops the skills to be okay with
(29:27):
who they are, to accept themselves,
naturally invites
some of that same
activity in others that they interact with. So
part of the possibility or opportunity, let's say,
entrepreneurially,
not business wise, but just make the world
better wise of Hoffman is that by going
and learning skills of accepting yourself,
(29:48):
you will sort of fertilize others
who might not understand Hoffman,
but might get a flavor
that there's something special happening within you. You
might help others
realize their own okayness by virtue of yours.
That takes acceptance to a
a whole new level.
That to me is the journey. Right? This
(30:09):
journey of
of life.
My journey through business led me to the
idea that it's about more than business. My
journey parallel to business became a journey of
creating
things that are more
intellectual recreationally
oriented. You know, not just business wise, profit
motivated, but intellectual recreation
(30:29):
as a goal.
As a worthy goal. That's why I created
Chicago Ideas Week. It's why I created Wonder
Museum.
That experience of intellectually challenging yourself is a
worthy goal.
And all of these things are about being
fully alive.
Ultimately,
where you land when you're fully alive
is you realize that you're okay.
(30:51):
Everything's okay. Maybe it's not great. Maybe it's
not horrible. Maybe it is great. Maybe it
is horrible. But, ultimately, you got this one
life, and how do you squeeze the juice
out of it?
My formula would be you investigate it. You
get curious about it. You don't avoid the
hard problems. Instead, you
find places and
(31:12):
people and
the experience that help you dig into the
hard, interesting problems, and that's probably one of
the biggest reasons I'm so enthusiastic
about Hoffman.
It helps you dig into
some of the really interesting
parts of life, and it does it in
this remarkably safe and
(31:33):
and beautifully structured container.
No avoidance
there at Hoffman. We go right to the
heart of the matter
over and over and over again.
Yeah. If your game in this life is
to avoid knowing yourself, don't go to Hoffman.
If your game in this life is to
get curious and you wanna learn and grow
by understanding yourself and and what it is
(31:56):
to be alive better, I would argue you
have to go to Hoffman. Because by virtue
of even listening to this conversation, you now
know about it.
And if you know about it somehow, someway,
well, that's a gift.
And the gift of knowing about it means
somebody somewhere told you something that led you
to get curious about it. And the beginning
of my journey was exactly this, hearing a
(32:18):
conversation
between you and someone else who I knew
of or heard of, and I listened to
the two of you talk about Hoffman.
And I said,
These conversations that you have created, the podcast
format lets us all listen in on conversations
like this. And what I'm proposing is that
whoever's listening to this, if they know either
(32:40):
of us, if they're touched at all by
these words,
it's really
a semi cloaked invitation that it's time to
get serious about checking out Hoffman for yourself.
You know, there are people who would say,
well, Brad can be that way in part
because
he's got so much money. He's got so
much time. But part of what you're saying
(33:00):
is that
you were this way
from a young age.
Although it's refined over time,
this kind of engaging
all in,
lean in
has been part of
who you are from a young age.
This is who I am. I've not sort
of tripped upon
(33:20):
big thoughts or existential
angst, existential
investigation.
Think about what
different options
were even talked about twenty, thirty years ago.
I mean, nobody talked about therapy. You'd, like,
lower your voice.
How amazing that now the word therapy is
embraced and talked about without any social stigma.
(33:42):
That's progress.
Beyond
that, quote, unquote therapy then he refers to
couch therapy,
sitting on a couch talking to someone, which
has its value, deep value.
And there's so much more.
That search for experience
to understand myself has absolutely been who I
am.
(34:02):
I grew up in Suburban Detroit. What got
me out of Suburban Detroit was being incredibly
curious about meeting those who I respected,
which led me to meet a guy named
Sam Zell, who led me to realize that
I can go to Chicago and I could
make my life there, but then I wanted
to do more. I I don't wanna work
for Sam Zell. I wanted to be like
him. And so while he gave me a
(34:24):
bunch of internship opportunities while I was in
law school and business school, I didn't work
for him. I didn't work in a law
firm for one day. I've always been creating
my own life. So that is who I
am.
The existence
of things like Hoffman
is relatively even though it's been around fifty
years, I only heard about it recently. So
(34:44):
that it exists. And I know there's a
handful of things that are now easy to
find out there,
but, wow, that's different than it was twenty,
thirty years ago. This is an option for
people ages 21 to 91.
Remarkable. And the fact that it's got that
it's rooted in such
durability
(35:05):
of experience and refinement,
something that's been refined for fifty years
and is growing without marketing, without promotion, without
TikTok.
It just does it because it works.
There are not many things we could point
to that started fifty years ago that are
not oriented in, like, hooking you in or
(35:25):
getting you to try and then buy or
just has none of that. It's simply about
being more alive.
And, by the way, after you go to
this one week Hoffman process experience,
that could be all you do. There's no
subscription here.
It's so pure.
As an entrepreneur, I look at it. I'm
like, holy cow. This is in its own
(35:46):
space,
in the space of, we'll call it, emotional
experiential
education
and relational
awareness enhancement
and a better understanding of this game called
being fully alive and curious
that Hoffman exists is like a giant wow.
You made a donation
(36:06):
to my dad's
college after he passed
Mount Saint Mary's
in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and I came upon that
letter they sent me
acknowledging your donation. And I wasn't aware of
the mount, but
it just meant so much to me that
you had the wherewithal to see that, and
(36:26):
I was just so touched. I'm so grateful.
Wow. Thanks for sharing that.
One of the thoughts and feelings I had
in doing it with Lauren was
my own appreciation
for my father. My father passed away seven
years ago, and I really felt
I gave it my all when my dad
was alive. And therefore, when he died, I
(36:47):
was able to experience his death as,
of course,
so sad that he died in his too
young age in his early eighties.
And
grateful
that he was my father, that I was
his son, and that I did the best
I could,
which is interesting
in how it relates to my perspective on
(37:09):
Hoffman.
Doing the best you can. I would say
it's a good question to ask. Why would
somebody go to Hoffman? Why would you actually
take a week out of your life
to do something that you don't really know
everything that's gonna happen, and I don't have
any problems. I don't need any help. Everything's
fine. Well, then why go?
Well,
because we're here to
(37:29):
be fully alive
and doing the best you can to understand
yourself, to me, is amongst the most worthy
things you can do. Understanding yourself
for yourself
lets you understand others better.
In entrepreneur land, you look at behavioral and
decision biases as something that are it's worthy
of understanding
(37:50):
the things that get in the way of
clean assessments of risk and reward and clean
decision making.
Similarly,
in Hoffman land and in the land of
understanding yourself better, there's value in understanding
what might be happening that you're not aware
of.
That unconscious
pattern that drives you to do the same
thing over and over again. If you find
(38:11):
yourself in bad relationships that have predictable ending
or
you start to get tired of saying the
same thing over and over again in situations.
If you start to get sick of things
that are not working well for you, whoever
you are,
well, there's value
in being alive.
And the value of being alive is exploring
(38:32):
those patterns
to understand what are they all about.
I wish Hoffman was one of 20 options.
It's just not.
Hoffman is one of one
that lets you experientially
really
understand the patterns that unconsciously
run your life
and get some frameworks that you can stand
(38:54):
on or rely on to choose. Do I
want this pattern to continue to run this
part of my life?
Can I
expose this thing that's been hidden but lurking
and operative?
Can I make that operative thing more
easier to see? And then can I have
the courage and the clarity to choose
(39:15):
if I want that pattern to operate right
now in this situation or not? That is
a huge
step towards full aliveness.
It all exists right there in that fulcrum
of a moment
between
aliveness
and
on your way. How did you phrase it?
On your way to death. Either either fully
(39:36):
alive to what's actually happening right now, or
you're not yet dead and in a trance
until you get there. And I believe if
you wanna be extreme, like I like to
be sometimes,
we can divide a lot of people in
one of those two categories.
And why do you like being extreme?
Because I like being provocative.
(39:56):
I find that when you say why is
it that way, the real answer you're gonna
get, it's just how it is. It's always
been that way. I hate
silence as an answer, and I don't like
the idea that things are exactly the way
they are because they're supposed to be. I
believe that it's worth understanding why things are
the way they are, and at least for
ourselves,
(40:16):
choosing, do we want to continue
to let them or have them be the
way they are? And one easy way for
me to provoke that question
is to be
categorically
extreme.
Is every person in your life pick one.
Are they fully alive to what's actually happening
and curious about what to do next?
Or
(40:37):
are they not yet dead and in a
trance like strategy to really just live out
their days? If you go that extreme, it
helps you understand,
Am I surrounding myself with people who I
want to be surrounded by?
I tend to surround myself with people who
are
actively
stretching themselves
creatively. They're curious
(40:59):
about themselves, about me, and they are both
interesting
and interested.
Use that as a reference point, and then
filter out people in your life and say,
how many are really both interesting and interested?
That's a good one too. Brad, I can
feel your energy
in this conversation,
and I'm grateful for it.
(41:21):
In this journey of aliveness,
what's got your attention lately? What are you
alive to
in your life?
That's a good question. It's ever
evolving.
I think right now,
I've spent so long
creating things from zero to one.
Literally, having an idea and making it something.
(41:43):
And I continue to do that.
And at the same time,
I'm looking at some bigger
opportunities
that involve
deployment of substantial
capital
plus,
entrepreneurial
acumen
to create something
even more
globally impactful.
(42:03):
The idea of disease
detection and prevention is very interesting to me
as is what's happening in the evolving world
of energy as a macro topic. And stepping
back where I am right now in this
project of life is,
you know, I get a lot of joy
from creating
art and creating things that impact others through
(42:23):
art, number one. Number two is I have
as much joy as ever around
creating and building and growing businesses,
and I'm finding myself raising my own bar
around
what can I do that will be the
next step of growth and evolution for me?
I've taken a number of companies from idea
to taking them public. I'm really looking at
(42:44):
and assessing
some even larger opportunities.
And then from a personal standpoint, as you
and I connect on, Drew, is
I wanna get deeper. I wanna have an
even more exquisite and extraordinary
primary intimate relationship,
and I want to engage even more deeply
with people who give me energy and who
(43:05):
appreciate my energy, you know, in their lives.
And so I'm becoming more and more intentional,
I find, in my mid fifties
around finding people that
I love spending time with. It's a lightweight,
joyful
exchange of silliness and playfulness and creativity and
music and fun. I'm really appreciating how much
(43:25):
fun it is to have fun.
Are there plans to be with your daughter,
the new grad of the Hoffman process, anytime
soon?
She called me. She picked up her phone
after a week offline, and she called me
first. And what I said to her is,
first of all, thank you for the honor
of, you know, allowing me to be that
primary witness of her coming right out of
(43:46):
it. And then I invited her, let's say,
or suggested that she just
come out slow from the intoxicating
afterglow
of that week. And so the plan is
just to ease into a debrief at some
point. And what I said to her is
how fun it's gonna be to be able
to share that common language. The language of
(44:07):
Hoffman, that language of helping us be more
aware of what's actually happening in our lives
and be more intentional about the choices we
want to make to build a good life
for ourself,
that's
thrilling
when you can use that shared
framework with others. And, you know, I talk
about deeper intimate relationships,
(44:28):
deeper
friend and
colleague relationships.
That's what I stand for at depth.
And it just feels good to know that
my daughter's gonna have that new dictionary to
play with.
Brad, what's it been like to reflect on
your time at Hoffman, reflect on what Hoffman
means to you, on the experience,
(44:48):
on the deeper understanding
of
the kind of thing Hoffman does in the
world, and to spend the last hour talking
about it. What do you notice?
I notice a peace, a calmness in myself.
There's something about
talking publicly
about things that are
introspective
that the category broadly speaking of therapeutic
(45:11):
that maybe for a moment felt vulnerable,
I want that vulnerability every day of my
life.
So to step into that vulnerability of sharing
my own personal experience and perhaps offering as
a pay it forward to other
entrepreneurs,
other people that might identify with my own
journey and maybe see in themselves
(45:31):
something that they might trust me and my
words,
that feels good.
And I think it's important in life when
you come across something that really matters
to pay it forward to others. As you
know, I've done helped others, encourage others to
go, and then pay it forward by having
this conversation with hopes that even one person
hears this and chooses to go by virtue
(45:53):
of hearing my enthusiasm,
that would feel pretty amazing.
If the result of this conversation, Drew, was
that one person who I don't know heard
it and said, you know what? I'll trust
him.
He'll put me over the over the edge.
I'm gonna give it a shot. That would
feel great. Yeah. Beautiful.
And lastly, I wanna salute you. I know
(46:13):
that
several several several handfuls of people who have
chosen to give parts of their lives to
Hoffman
in service of others
as teachers, as facilitators,
and in your case, as a messenger to
the world about what has been created that's
called the Hoffman Process that exists without marketing.
(46:34):
I just wanna salute you and all the
teachers that stand shoulder to shoulder with you
how vital and vibrant and valuable
your role is in this whole ecosystem of
Hoffman. So thank you.
Thank you, Brad. I appreciate
that
seeing us
as a part of that journey. And one
of the things that makes it so worthwhile
(46:56):
is everything you said about the process,
The integrity, the aliveness, the
ceremony,
the container
that the process is.
I feel honored
to have the Hoffman process as my wingman
in this
journey of transformation.
I can imagine that that when you go
(47:17):
there for a week as a teacher, that
it brings you more fully alive.
You missing others like me
doing that little microcosm
of my own life,
and you'll be able to reflect for yourself
on your life must be a reminder of
these frameworks. And, you know, it's just so
(47:37):
good. The whole thing is so pure and
good
for our soul, for our intellect, for our
essence, our light that we all have inside
of us that I believe is
our essence.
On so many levels, it's magnificent,
majestic, and meaningful.
I'm exuberantly
enthusiastic
about its existence in the world.
(48:07):
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and
president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Razi Ingrassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves, in each other and in the world.
(48:28):
To find out more, please go to hoffmaninstitute.org.
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