YouSaid · the spoken record

Brian Chesky

lines on the record: 111
first: 2023-10-09
most recent: 2023-10-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I've gotten the benefit of people telling me that And I've been able to tell them that. I had a cold, and sometimes I have these temporary feelings of, oh, I'm a little bit like. Like a little tired here and there, but those feelings come and go, and the feelings that stick with you are like really basic feelings, and I think the most important feeling that I have is love. And I make my best decisions when I'm feeling that love is like the light. It's like a true North Star. And that's how I'm feeling right now. And also, the more I think about it, the more I let it in. The better it feels and the more it's true”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say we The feeling that I have right now is one of feeling loved. Because the last, you know, this journey I've been on has been so intense And by the way, this isn't the first podcast I talked about this stuff. I was on a couple others. And after I started talking about this, I had a lot of people in my life who I loved who reached out to me and it's been a basis for some connections. And what I've realized as I was never as lone as I thought I was, and I had so many more people in my life than I realized, and they loved me more than I ever knew. It's kind of funny. We often wait till after people die to tell them how much we love them at these like services, hoping maybe they're watching. And sometimes there's a reminder that we should tell them how we feel about them while they're still alive.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were born creative, curious, open minded, loving for the most part. I think that we have the ability for goodness in the outside of us. And the other thing is I think you said this in the beginning of our discussion. People are basically 99.9% the same. In fact, genetically speaking, that we know that's true. And the thing I'm surprised by is not how different we are as I travel the world is how similar I am. We are. And that 0.1% that makes us all difference, we might call that diversity and culture and heritage. And we use all these different words to describe that 0.1%. But as you spend time with those people, you're going to realize the shared humanity we have. If we believe the 99.9% of the people were the same, then it would be really hard to hate someone else because how could you hate someone that's 0.1% different than you? That would seem kind of pointless. And that suddenly you would find this common bond. So that's kind of at a conceptual level where I'd like us to go.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have a minister of loneliness. The fact that the United Kingdom needs to have a minister of loneliness in probably many countries do tells us that it's not just older people that are lonely. In fact, some of the loneliest people in the world are teenagers. This is crazy. And why is this? It's because the mall is now Amazon, the theater is now Netflix, the office is now Zoom, and it's not the fault of any of these things. I think these are all great inventions. I had this vision once, like, what is my purpose at a professional level, at the most fundamental level, is to help bring people together. That's kind of what we do at Airbnb. The most funny level. Maybe we bring you together with your friends to travel. Maybe you bring you people together, people from other cultures you've never met before. If we can bring people together, I think we can reinforce these two core ideas that we've had since the day we started. The first is we believe people are basically fundamentally good. Like children, most children are good.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you can start to connect people to places, homes, experiences, service, all different types of things, and that we can use great design in the latest technology to really be able to match and connect people all over the world. And if we're successful, then, you know, I think we can push against this dark cloud of, you know, loneliness that has been, you know, cast anything shadows over society all over the world. I mean, literally right before this, I was at, the reason I'm in a dress shirt. I took my jacket off. I was at 10 Downing Street, but I wasn't mean the Prime Minister. I was meeting some of his members of his staff, including the Minister of Loneliness.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With this rich identity system. So we know who everyone is and everyone knows who everyone else is, which I think is the foundation of trust. The profiles are really rich with public information and personal information, like preferences. And you come to Airbnb not just to find a space, but because Airbnb, the app, the brand, the company, you feel like it really knows you and understands who you are and really what you want. And maybe initially for travel, but eventually you could go beyond travel. And then our job as the app, the brand, the company, is to be like the ultimate host. And what a host does, like what does a host at dinner party do? They don't just offer you food. Hey, like meat, John, meet Sally, like meet each other. And so.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think when people see Airbnb on the surface, they see Holmes. Most of those homes are empty, and the reason you book them is because you can save money. Maybe you can live like a local. You can have these really cool, memorable vacations. But it's a space And I think that the center of gravity of Airbnb over time I like to shift from the space. I think at the end of the day, we're not just a service, we're not just a product. I think what I'd like everybody to become is more of a community, more of like a global travel community. And I think in that community, I imagine that everyone will have this really robust profile.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be open minded knowing that you might not predict. What you want, and that you might not have a tight because to have a type is to be so prescriptive that you think you know exactly what you want. Well, if you knew exactly what you want, you'd probably already have it.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's always this happenstance that occurs. So, you know, I kind of said like my job isn't to try to find somebody. My job is to, it's kind of like, I think I wonder finding a partner is similar to finding what you want to do with your life. Some people say follow your passion. And I always say, what if you know what your passion is? Think the better thing is to follow your curiosity. But your curiosity is something you must actively participate in. You must actively put yourself out there in situations to discover what you love, what you love and who you love.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the part that's kind of interesting is like Yes and no. I think you have a lot of, like, you encounter a lot of people and you have a lot of access, but at the same time, like, you know, there's a pretty big infrastructure around me and my life is like pretty structured and organized. And there's not maybe as much spontaneity. Like I'm not just going to like bump into somebody at the grocery store as frequently as I used to. Like not to say that's where you meet somebody, but you know what I'm saying? Like there's a little less spontaneity. It's definitely not the easiest. It's not the easiest thing, but I'm not sure it ever is easy”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was in two relationships over the course of nine years. They were very long relationships. So I spent most of my 30s in two very long relationships. I'm single now, and I've dated some, but that's probably something I need to make more time for. And it's definitely more complicated for me today than it was when I was. In my early thirties, like, you know.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so then I literally went down the list of like dozens and dozens of friends. And now I'm discipline about staying connected to people.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can't say I don't struggle. I'm doing much better. I've made so much progress. I feel pretty healthy. Like I exercise pretty regularly. So I'm like pretty healthy. I don't really drink alcohol very often ever. So I'm pretty healthy. On the friend side, it's a funny story. When I was turning 40, I was going to throw a big birthday party. And then because of COVID, I think it was the Delta strain or I ended up not throwing a giant party having a small party. But for the first time in my life, I had to write who all my friends are because I had to send an invite list. And I never, it's kind of like if you're like going to get married, people have to create an invite, a wedding list. Maybe in your life you've never written who all your friends are. Why would you? And the crazy thing is as I wrote a list of my friends, I started realizing how many I hadn't kept up with.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's when I realized that I don't want to say overly, and I don't want to say I design my personal life, but what I could do is design how I spend my time. I can be intentional. And I can be intentional about spending time with people that I love and people I care about. And that's when I started reaching back out to people. And that became the beginning of everything that changed how I felt personally.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“twenty twenty till like May, june, July, August or some general period of twenty twenty one, and I was working basically sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. I knew it was a singular period in my life. I don't regret a minute having done it. I'm thankful I did not have a personal responsibilities like a family at that point and I could dedicate. I don't want to do that again if I don't have to, but I wouldn't do anything different about that period of my life. But the moment that period ended, this deep sadness came in because now Mike, well, I can't just keep filling it with work.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's when I don't have the rush, the same level rush. I don't have the adrenaline. I'm at the top of a mountain. And now I say, what do I do now? And who do I do it with? And that was that moment of isolation that I had been working for a year and a half from probably March of December.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would get condolences. I'm so sorry. I feel for you. And people felt bad for me. But I wasn't unhappy at that point. I was on adrenaline. I was working twenty four seven, and I wasn't at least professionally lonely because 24-7 I was in constant contact. I'm on the phone with my board members, my executive team, my employees. I'm on this rush. I have a purpose. Maybe I'm totally isolated. Maybe I'm totally disconnected from friends, but I'm like, I'm in the field of battle. So I'm not thinking about that. And it's okay, then I'll have time for that because we're sheltering in place and everyone's working. And I don't feel like there's not something I'm not getting. Like, of course. And then we become a $100 billion company. We go public. We're no longer in crisis. Suddenly, I have weekends free. I have evenings free. I can choose to fill with work, but I know I don't have to. In that moment,”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This leads into it after the IPO. Because twenty twenty was twenty four seven. And it was the weirdest thing. In 2020, people, I would get a lot of condolence messages before the IPO, like when we were down and out.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These things have merit, they're great to accumulate, but they're not going to fill you the way you think they will. The thing that's going to fill you is not what you achieve. It's going to be what you do every single day. If you do things you love and you sound so people you love, you're probably going to be happy as long as you don't take those things for granted. And if you isolate yourself doing things that are painful or you don't love or you do, but along the way, you don't make time for people that you love, then you might not be happy. Why is this so simple? I don't know, but that seems to be the case.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My life day to day was exactly like it was before the IPO. It was as if nothing had happened. The IPO and us being a public company mostly existed in my head as a consciousness. Yes, we were now public and yes we now had a quarterly earnings report, but like I'd wake up on Monday and nothing was really different. And the point of the story is that if your goal was to be public so you could say you're a public company, CEO, you made people all this money. You became a public. It's kind of like saying I became a doctor. I won this gold star. I did this thing.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had a lot of feelings, mostly great feelings and some sadness. Little bit. I'd say it was 70%. Pride and exaltation and sense of accomplishment. And I think why is, I think obvious. I think the more insightful thing is that it wasn't, I wasn't sad in the IPO or post. I was mostly happy. But I had 20, 30% sadness in a part of me. And it emerged after the high of the IPO started going down. And then I went about my daily life because the IPO is December 10th and December 17th and December 20th and January 1st and January 10th. And you know what happened? The thing that shocked me was”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A huge amount of the text messages emails I got weren't just current employees, were former employees, some of the ones that were laid off, or people I had been along the journey with. It was the most unbelievable seven or eight months of my life, and by the end of it, I remember saying, I think I was thirty nine at that point. I said I'm thirty nine going on fifty nine. Because I've lived like twenty years this year. And I think that's the moment I really grew up.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They came to work even harder, and something happened after that. Those that remained, forty nine hundred of us Against all odds, on Zoom, in the middle of a pandemic, we rebuild the company for the ground up. We reorganize every part of the company, we rebuild all the products, we redo how we do marketing. Then something miraculous happens. Our business starts recovering because people start getting in cars and staying in Airbnbs like a tank of gas away. And then our bankers who put our IP on hold say. You should dust off the S one. And then we decide to go public. When we go public A valuation that probably valued $48, $50 billion. And by the time within an hour of opening, we're a hundred billion dollars.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unexpected one of the most unexpected things in my life. And I think what they were thanking me for wasn't just the benefits we gave. I did say something. I said, we have great people and other companies be lucky to have them. In other words, people had, even when they got laid off, had to have dignity. And dignity required me to elevate them and remind people that these people were really good. And if I said people were really good, other people might want to hire them. And the last thing is that I think many people just thanked me because they felt like we had created a very special place, that a special place in their heart. And many of them said, we still want Airbnb to exist because there's no company quite like it. It doesn't mean we're better than everyone else, but it means like every person, we're a little bit different. There's something different about us. And those that left that remained to Airbnb, I think after that letter.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As possible so you understand the consequent decisions and now try to make a decision, but seeing the entire picture, the emotions, the financials, the strategy, you're a whole person. Bring all of it into the place. That letter was one of the most defining moments of my life, in my career? and something remarkable happened right after that letter. I got hundreds of thank you letters from people who were laid off. It was the most”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, no, now I get a little emotional reading Because the thing I said I had a deep feeling of love for all of them, even the ones I hadn't met, like I knew them through the work, and I knew how much sacrifice they made. You know, the burden you have in your leader and you say, we should do this thing. And it turns out somebody actually does that thing. And that person who does that thing, they might sacrifice personally so that you can do that thing. And maybe you know them and you develop a deep bond. But if you don't know them, they know you. And they deal with a deep bond for you. And then in a darkest of hours, in your dark hours, their dark hour, and you tell them that we can't be together anymore. And that's difficult. Now imagine breaking up with two thousand five hundred people. It's very difficult. And sometimes some people think don't get emotionally involved. It clouds your decision making. I would say the opposite. I say get as emotionally involved.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To those of you staying, one of the most important ways we can honor those who are leaving is for them to know that their contributions mattered. that they will always be a part of Airbnb's history. I am confident their work will live on, just like this mission will live on. To those leaving, I am truly sorry. Please know this is not your fault. The world will never stop seeking the qualities and talents that you brought to Airbnb that helped make Airbnb. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing them with us Brian”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you've been through a whirlwind, some things are more clear to me than ever before. First, I'm thankful for everyone here at Airbnb. Throughout this harrowing experience, I've been inspired by all of you. Even the worst of circumstances, I've seen the very best in you. The world needs human connection now more than ever, and I know that Airbnb will rise to the occasion, because and I believe this because I believe in you. Second I have a deep feeling of love for all of you. Our mission is not merely about travel. When we started Airbnb, our original tagline was travel like a human. The human part was always more important than travel part. What we're about is belonging and of the center belonging is love.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the lesson isn't that finance isn't good or data isn't good. It's that making all the Just solely on a financial basis. Jews are not good. Finances and input. I appreciate my CFO and the finance team. I'd be more than I ever have before the pandemic. Before the pandemic, I did not have nearly as healthy a relation with my CFO. I saw them as somebody trying to control me and say no to me. And once the pandemic heard, I said, thank God they're constraints. But you should never only make a decision based on purely financial reasons. So I end the letter and here's what I said As I've learned these past eight weeks, a crisis brings you clarity about what is truly important.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We created an alumni directory Where if you were laid off, you could opt into a public directory, we'd publish your information, and we'd point recruiters to your information, and we ended up getting like hundreds of thousands of recruiters and people ended up visiting those profiles, and a lot of those people got rehired. I was even calling CEOs. And I remember this is how long it's been remembered. I only remember that when I'm imperiled, we're in our darkest hour. I'm not just worrying about how we will survive. I'm trying to call CEOs of other companies to see if they can hire our people. But I want to read you what.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I wrote this long letter when I never thought I would, and I just want to read the ending of it because I'm going to read just the close, the last three paragraphs. So I write this letter informing the company of a layoff. This is obviously very difficult and actually in a pandemic, it's pretty traumatizing because it's uncertain, you're isolated, you're by yourself maybe, and you don't know if you're laid off in a pandemic who's hiring because economy is slowed down and we were in a recession. So I go through this EMI, I write out all the benefits. I'm not going to read the whole thing.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“is what everyone looks to because in a crisis the hardest thing to you know what the hardest thing to manage in a crisis is this is what i learned It's your own psychology. It's not the employees, it's not the financials, it's your own psychology. Because if you think you're screwed, people see in your eyes and they say, well, you have the most information, so you must be screwed. But if you're optimistic and that optimism is rooted in reality, some basic facts, that people still want us to exist. And here's why. Then that optimism is going to be the conditions for creativity. And you damn only creativity in a crisis because in a crisis, you often have like two bad options. And you sometimes want that third path. And that's what creativity is. Oftentimes in life, creativity is that third path. That doesn't exist that you pave with all the components that weren't ahead of you. So that's what we did. We rallied the company together. We got in a foxhole, basically, and we rebuilt the company from the ground up. We had to make some incredibly difficult decisions.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because the data has changed and they don't know what to do and they are uncomfortable making intuitive decisions. You better do that in a crisis. The second, as I said, act with all stakeholders in mind. A lot of people suddenly, they don't think about everyone, and they get really cold and heartless. I mean, that's a temptation. And you should not do that in a crisis. Always imagine how to be remembered in history. Maybe history won't remember you. Maybe we're not important enough to be remembered. But pretend like we are. If we had to be remembered, how do we want to be remembered? Act decisive with all stakeholders of mind, preserve cash, win for the next travel season. People said travel may never come back and may not come back forever. I said it will come back and we're going to win. And I think the final thing is to remember that a crisis is a terrible opportunity to waste. If you tell yourself this is my defining moment, then that creates an optimistic mindset.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I learned a lesson in a crisis You make principal decisions, not business decisions. A business decision is you make a decision predicting the best possible outcome. A principal decision is irrespective of the outcome. Maybe you have no idea how the outcome is going to play out. How do you want to be remembered? What's important to you? I wrote a bunch of principles. Some were pretty simple like act decisive and fast.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“defined by a crisis I told her board that we're going to be that third category. See, everyone was like, oh my God, why us? And I was like, no, no, watch us. And I told myself at that moment this is our defining moment. I know evidence that this was a defining moment, but I said this is our defining moment, and I said, what's about to ensue over the next six months will be the best six months in the company's history. We are going to redefine every part of our company.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is eight weeks after we were preparing for one of the Haidas IPOs ever. How could we go from this noun verb used all over the world to suddenly people were worrying will we even survive? And I knew there were probably some questions. Not only could we survive, but could I, could I, Brian, lead us through this? I think no one doubted I knew how to build this. I did. I mean, that happened. But was I enough of an adult and a grown up in a leader to be able to manage through a crisis? And that crisis occurred on march fifteenth, that's when the world shut down the Idesa March, and I remember holding emergency board meetings. But I remember there was a quote by Andy Grove. He is one of the founders of Intel, I believe, and he said. Bad companies are destroyed by a crisis. Good companies survive a crisis. Grey companies”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A hundred percent. It was so dark, at least professionally. I mean, my darkest personnel hour, I'll talk about in a second, but my darkest professional moment. There were news articles. Is this the end of Airbnb? Will Airbnb exist?”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“eighty percent of our business and we had a business larger we were handled our gross sales were probably higher than starbucks i think at that time was 35 billion dollars i think starbucks is like 25 30 billion this is gross sales through the platform gross revenue gross gross booking value When a company that big loses 80% of its business in eight weeks, it's like an 18 wheeler going eighty miles an hour and slamming on the brakes. Nothing really good comes out of that situation, at least not initially.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Disaster stress. And then, you know what? When disaster strikes, whatever you do and your darkest hour, That becomes your culture because your culture people think is the perks, the yoga, the free food. No, culture is like when everyone said, you know, you were going to fail in your darkest hour, when you didn't know how to get out of this situation, when you were in this incredibly difficult position, maybe you're in a difficult negotiation. Maybe you're about to run out of money. Maybe you're in this horrible situation with a competitor. Whatever you do or the pin or in our case, the pandemic And you're about to go public. And you're working on one of the biggest IPOs ever at that point. And then suddenly you lose eighty percent of your business in eight weeks.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As you do about every one of those things. They may never be a carbon copy. Individuality is good. But the further away from you, usually it's like carbon copy of a carbon copy of a carbon copy. And so I think your job as a leader is to flatten the organization, to make people feel as close as possible to you. By feeling close to you, they're going to be close to the values because you as a leader, you are the values.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Constantly trying new things, and that has to be rigorously detailed and documented. And I think you want to show by example, and I tend to skip level, work with a team and watch them and keep meeting them. I meet every team in the company that works on projects that I see. I meet them either every week, every two weeks, or every four weeks. And I have them show work. So it's like watching a golf swing. I'm the chief editor or the orchestra conductor. I don't push decision making down. I pull it in. By push and making decision down, I'm pushing the company to be fragmented. By pulling decision making in, it's like a solar system. The planets are coming closer to sun. And at some point we're all one collective consciousness. We're totally integrated. We can row in the same direction. And we all have the same values. Every single thing you care about in your head as a leader, your culture is as strong as everyone else caring as much.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said no that matters. That's our culture. And somebody once said, but we can't measure the impact. I said, that's exactly why it's our values. Because our culture and our values are we do something when nobody notices and we can't even measure it. And we don't even notify if it works. But the reason we do it is because that's what we believe. It's like, you know, like this table and we want it to be a certain sheen, but I can't prove to you that more people want to sit in this room, but I want it that way. It matters to me. I always joke to people the most important customer is yourself. You have to love it because real artists want to sign their name to work and you have to be willing to sign your name in the bottom right corner of that thing to make it perfect. So this is just a metaphor. So it starts at you, your values, and then the last thing is your behaviors. Those behaviors aren't just how you act and behave. It's your capabilities. It's how you make something. And maybe like your values are.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said, there's no more divisions. We're going to be run like a startup. We have a design department, a marketing department, an engineering department, a sales. And this is how every little company is run. And almost no large companies in the entire world are run this way. People see you can't run a giant company like a startup. But I wanted to do that. And I know Steve Jobs had done it that way. And it's like, I'm going to try to do that same thing. The next thing is people tend to do measurement when you get really big. And you do small tactical micro-optimizations. But then you tend to bias towards performance marketing, towards AdWords, towards small optimizations, and you don't take big creative leaps because big creative leaps require the entire company to organize work together. You don't obsess over things you can't measure. And it's hard to measure quality if this pixels off, if that doesn't feel quite right, if this thing's complicated, it may be hard to measure. So maybe that doesn't matter.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then another team's experimenting on the wheels, but it turns out those two things don't fit together. And they fit together, they invent this new wheel. Now it's got to fit on a bigger car body. So now they got to go to the car body team and change the shape of the car. But that makes the car, I don't know, maybe heavier and they need a different battery. So now they go to the battery team. The battery team says, we need to manufacture a new battery.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This, I just want to give one very concrete example of where I left this out. I'm a perfectionist. If people who work for me will watch, they'll actually laugh because that's kind of like a classic understanding. I want every part of the product to be perfect. I want her product to be perfectly designed. I want it to look like one person designed it, completely cohesive. I obsess over simplicity. I want to make sure that it's about reducing something to its essence. I want there to be the sense of heart and imagination. And the problem was the way we were running the company, I was running it the way I thought everyone else wanted to work. And they wanted to work in autonomous separate groups and divisions. They wanted to do lots of experimentation. And for me, I like to be creative and experimental, but I not want to do micro-experimental optimizations for software. Because what that meant, let me use an analogy. Let's say we're making a car. One team is experimenting me on the tires.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The How You Do Something creates the what. In other words, you can't break the core values and succeed at making something, but like trample on people along the way. Your values, your culture is how you do something. So for example, let me take our example. One of our, we don't even really have codified core values. We have old codified core values, but like our culture is at its strongest when it's just like one shared consciousness. So the best cultures is one shared consciousness where everything in your head, everything you care about is permeated throughout the people and they can finish your sentences and people would do in a room with that what they would do if you were there. And that's when you create this collective consciousness. So my thing is the culture starts with the intersection of what your vision is and what your personal values are and how you want to lead to you.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's essentially correct. And I think the one thing I would add is when we say behaviors, because I agree with the word behaviors, but I want to like round out behaviors because for just a second. I used to think behaviors as the things in addition. We used to say the what in the how. This is something I always got wrong. There's what you did and how you did it. And people tend to think of the what as competency, how well you did your job and culture is how you went about doing it. And like, so were you a jerk? Were you nice? Did you make people around you better? And I don't think that's accurate. That's what I used to think. There was the what and the how. It turns out”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the same action happens as if I was in the room. That's the moment it goes from management to culture. So it's like a golf swing. To teach the golf swing, you've got to like probably, I don't play golf be it, the instructor has to watch the person. And at some point, the person learns how to swing a golf swing without the instructor there. That's the difference between management and culture. And culture is something that people learn. They develop these shared instincts. And it's so important because it's your ultimate intellectual property, not your technology, not your recipes, not your exclusive contract vendor relationships. The way you know how to do something. That is the most important thing a company has because all a company is is a bunch of people, a bunch of money, and a direction that those people are using those resources to go towards people, resources, strategy.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you don't just allow the culture to happen. You design the culture. You have an idea of what you want to do. And you're just constantly getting this group together. You know, you might have a culture of excellence and a culture of excellence means I review all the work and I say not good enough, not good enough, not good enough. And eventually I could not join the meeting, but people know what I'd say. They'd say it's not good enough. This is our standard. And the moment I cannot be in the room.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is the shared way you do things and often they're based on lessons you've learned. And the lessons you tend to remember the most are the ones that are seared in you. They come from trials and tribulations, from your most difficult times. It's the way you rise the occasion in the face of adversity. Your culture is the behaviors of the leaders that get mimicked all the way down every single person. Your culture is every time you choose to hire someone. Every time you choose to fire someone, every time you choose to promote somebody, it's the way everyone does everything. And the way a leader designs the culture is not by writing out a list of values. It's by basically leading by example every single day and taking a survey of every single thing happening and constantly shaping it, pruning it like a garden.”
2023-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Airbnb CEO: “IT WAS SO DARK WE NEARLY DIED!”. I Was Lonely, Deeply Sad & Wanted To Be Loved! [INSPIRING!] Brian Chesky · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT