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. 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. 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 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 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.
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, 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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, 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
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 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. 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, 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 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
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 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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
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 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 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.
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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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, 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 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 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 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.
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. 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. 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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. 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. 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.
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
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 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 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 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
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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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
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. 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. To find out more, please go to hoffmaninstitute.org.