WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn 🦄

Thoughts on a Hulu exclusive documentary about a coworking office space company called, WeWork.

Transcription

Business movie, WeWork: Or the making and breaking of a $47 billion unicorn.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Got to talk a little bit about this movie that can only be found currently on Hulu. Hopefully, they’ll open it up a little bit after that, so that other people can see it. But if you have Hulu, you have the chance to be able to watch it at least for now.

Good documentary, interesting documentary, there’s pieces of it I like, pieces of it I don’t, I’m not going to completely ruin the idea for you wework is still functional company.

It is a company that is built off of coworking and what coworking is if you’re not familiar with it, is you can purchase in some way the ability to be able to use a certain space for an office space.

So you can use the Wi Fi that’s available the internet, you can use everything else that the office has contained in it. And in some cases, on at least at the very lower ends, you can share a room with multiple other people, like you’re at a coffee shop or something and be able to sit there and do whatever you need to do and but also, the thing about wework is they encourage you to be able to talk with the other people around you.

And they made everything very fancy. And they made everything very modern and comfortable. Trying to shirk away the whole idea of a corporate office space and making it more social, making it more about the relationship, which I’m always been interested in, I’ve actually always been interested in the coworking concept.

Because unlike a lot of entrepreneurs, there’s a lot within like the direct marketing space, that really poopoo any type of working out of a cafe, I like working out of a cafe.

I’m a social creature, I like being around people.

I don’t love people, but I like being around it. I like the energy that happens in a in an active cafe and being able to sit there if I don’t have stuff that I have to do recording of or I don’t have to do any type of meetings, then I would love to be able to do a lot of my work out of a cafe or out of a social arena.

So the concept of we work has always interested me, although I’ve never taken the dive with any of these companies that offer coworking spaces I’ve attempted to a few times but never fully gone with it. I love the idea of being able to rent low term office space so that you don’t have to have it that whole time being able to split the amount that you can.

You need to spend it’s a great idea and it goes along with the third pillar at BrianJPombo.com, which is being relationship reliant, relationship reliant.

All of business is relationship reliant, because all a business has to do with people, and has to do with knowing the right people and having the right people know you. So that’s where that all comes in.

So I love the concept that the business was built off of now it’s built off of a very charismatic character, and that’s what this movie is about.

It really the movie does its best, I’m not going to ruin it too much for you. But it does its best right off the bat to attempt to paint this person as a villain. And while there were definitely miss major missteps made with this business, which is a great.

The thing I love about this movie, or this the at least the story behind the movie is that it’s one of those that you want to sit with other business people or people that are business minded, and be able to watch it because there’s so many good things that could be taken out of it.

Because what he did was he took this company from nothing, and helped bring it to a $47 billion evaluation.

And that is in such a short period of time, it’s new, it’s unheard of, especially when they did not really have any major visible assets that would be able to back it up.

That shows you that there was a whole lot of salesmanship, there was a whole lot of community that was built up through wework.

This movie just gives you a taste of all of that. I’d love to hear some more of the other side of it. I’d love to hear the people that were not interviewed, including the gentleman that started the company. I’d love to hear more about the whole thing.

Not just the bad side of it, but also the good side. You got to see some of it. You got to see a lot of the people that got burned In the process, because what ended up happening is the evaluation was over inflated.

As soon as it was realized everything came crashing down, and a lot of the growth stopped and everything else and the CEO was removed from his position. So that’s none of that is new, and it doesn’t ruin the movie, go and watch the movie. And look at what occurred and try and point out, well, that’s good, but I’m not I’m not sure about that.

And where did they go wrong?

And how would you change it if you had to do it all over again, it’s a very interesting exercise in that.

It’s a very interesting exercise in the thin line between a cult and a very successful community oriented business. It’s thin, it’s really thin. But you will see that it you know, whether you’re talking Apple computers, whether you’re talking all these, what Guy Kawasaki would call evangelical companies, that they all have the same elements in them.

And it’s really interesting to see on display.

So go watch the movie, if you have a chance, find someone who’s got a Hulu account or go get one yourself, and go check out the wework movie. worth watching. Like I said, it’s very one sided.

But if you could remove yourself from what they’re trying the picture they’re trying to paint and consider that it may there may be some other side that isn’t being said, then I think you’ll come away with a very similar view of the whole thing that I did. And I’d love to hear what you think.

So leave a comment down below whether you’ve seen it or if you’re going to see it, come on back and leave a comment because I’d love to hear what you think about it. That’s all I got for today. It’s all about relationship reliance.

And we’re gonna go into that on a regular basis along with the other three, the other two pillars of BrianJPombo.com which we’ve talked about, it’s about being relationship Reliant. It’s about being system base.

It’s about being reality grounded. And so stay tuned, we’ll be talking about that more. Also, you can find a whole lot of good stuff in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business and you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. We’ll be back here tomorrow night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.