I grew up on the East Coast. Went to college on the East Coast in New England. I moved with some friends to Hawaii because we didn't really have anything better to do when I graduated from college. Lived in Hawaii for a year. Somehow stumbled my way into a job in Japan teaching English while I was teaching English, one of my private students his college friend owned a Japanese ryokan. Ryokan is a Japanese inn and he got me a formal apprenticeship at this inn. Which was sort of the good news and bad news type of thing because, you know, it's what I really what I thought I really wanted and formal apprenticeship in Japan is closer to slavery than it is to a actual job, if I'm being honest. Probably the hardest work you'll ever do for very very or almost no pay. So I did that for about three years. I lived in Japan for about four and a half years total and then I moved back to the States and decided I wanted a career in hotels. Ended up moving to San Francisco, worked for three different hotel chains, and then I moved on and worked at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Took some quick classes while I was local in San Fran, applied to business schools, got in, went to B school with a focus on finance and real estate and tried to make a career change into the real estate sector, commercial real estate sector. I tried to not focus on hotels and what my experience had been even though everybody I met and interviewed with was like, why aren't you doing hotels? And I kept saying, that's not my thing anymore. I'm a real estate guy. And so I went into that. I became a mortgage banker and eventually an investor and developer. So here I am today in front of you today.
Doug Logan (02:13)
Hmm. That's awesome. I, gosh, so I've been to Japan. I did not take a internship there. But I was there for about a week or two and, ⁓ yeah, the culture is very, very different. I've also taken some karate and taekwondo, which I just recently found out you have a black belt in, is it in karate or what's your martial art form that you're in?
Andrew Benioff (02:36)
So I practiced what I term as a Korean karate, which is sort of the predecessor to what is modern Taekwondo. I did that for about 15 years. I have a second degree in that. But I've been practicing for, I don't know, about 35 years or so. Aikido, which is a modern Japanese martial arts, it's been around for a little less than 100 years, I think something like that. And I have a fourth degree. I'm an instructor in that. And I have my own little school here in Haverford, Pennsylvania.
Doug Logan (03:08)
Is that, how does that compare? Cause like Taekwondo was a lot of kicking. The karate that I took was a mix of kicking, takedowns and I mean, self-defense, I guess. How does what you're teaching now, how does that change?
Andrew Benioff (03:24)
So Aikido is ⁓ different than karate and Taekwondo. There are some striking elements, but really not... that's not the focus. The focus is joint locking, pinning, and throwing. In Aikido, all of our practice is always with a partner. So one person is attacking, the other person is doing a technique, and then you switch. And we do a lot of rolling and falling. There's no competition, there are no trophies or colored belts or anything like that.
Doug Logan (03:55)
How does that help you in your daily life? Because I think when I was practicing. There, it was a balance between forms, but also like meditation and getting your head in a good place. There was a lot of, a lot of respect in everything that you do in it. And I really, really enjoyed it much more so than just like going to the gym. But yeah. How has it helped you, I guess? You've been doing it for 30 plus years?
Andrew Benioff (04:21)
45. I started in 1982, so whatever that The way I practice is directly from my experience of when I lived in Japan full-time. We have family over there. So we go every year. Not that I consider myself even a little bit or have an allusion to me being Japanese. I am not. Like I said before, we don't have any competition. There aren't any trophies. There are no colored belts that you get. The way I teach and the way I practice, we don't do any of that. So, in Western society in general, we're always going towards a goal. What's our goal? And what prize do we get at the end of that if we get the goal? If I build a company and I make a bunch of money, that'll be my prize. And then I can go live a certain lifestyle that I want to live or you get satisfaction doing that. We don't have a goal in practicing Aikido. The goal is just literally practice every is not very satisfactory for a lot of people because they're like, wait, there's... I don't get anything for... Nope, you don't get anything. And so, really, it's the the
doin Aikido and also in Karate-do they say usually, Karate-do, is Michi. In Japanese it's pronounced Michi, which means road or path. So you're just on a path, you're on a trip. If I'm saying that there's actually a goal in Aikido practice, I guess I would say that it's enlightenment. I will tell you that I've been practicing now for whatever it is, what we just talked about, 44 years. I don't think I'm… any closer to enlightenment than the first day that I started. I'm not sure I'll ever get there. The goalpost continued to move, I think. We do practice a lot of... It's a lot of quiet sitting. What I tell my students all the time is learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Our practice is definitely uncomfortable, especially in the beginning, but it continues to be uncomfortable. There is a lot of pain in the practice. It's not pain for pain's sake, but it is a painful practice. And just discomfort and learning to accept that and to be comfortable with it is something that's very hard for us in Western society. It's also hard for a lot of Japanese people, but it's much harder for us. I explain this to people all the time that we're used to instant gratification. Not only do we have every restaurant under the sun to go to, close by generally, now we don't even want to go to the restaurant. We want somebody to bring us the food. So, all of that sort of instant gratification, there is none of that in Aikido. And just because you're athletic doesn't mean you learn it fast. I have a lot of people who are totally unathletic, who are much better students than the athletic For every, five students who start my class, maybe one or two continue. They leave very quickly And it's not, not doing anything that's crazy, to be honest. But even just sitting like we do in class is painful. We sit with our feet under our butts. We call that seiza. You probably have sat like that in karate or Taekwondo. And even though we're sitting on mats, which are soft, people find it very uncomfortable. And just that they don't want to do.
Doug Logan (07:03)
Yep. Yeah. That's crazy. It's been years since I've been in in practice, but just in listening to you explain this my mind just goes to so many different ways that this is so helpful as a business owner and you're a business owner, right? I mean, we haven't even talked about business yet, but I will get there. But thinking about that, even just thinking about seeking discomfort... I find that the journey, which is what you were talking about too, is oftentimes a lot more rewarding than the destination in life. But there is a lot of enjoyment in in the process and going through that journey. I've, I've definitely experienced that. You say pain, but if you think about it in life and in business, we learn more from failures than we do successes. Cause if a success comes too easy, then you just feel like it's just going to happen again. But we learn a lot more from not missing this sort of failure itself, but getting back up from that failure. Like when that project fails, that deal didn't come through that you thought was going to happen or whatever that might be. We learn a lot from that. That builds that resilience. It's like sitting on your, on your feet.
Andrew Benioff (08:20)
Think that's the case. One of my partners used to say a lot is not his quote, but he said that
experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.And so that goes to the point of failure. You get a lot of experience from things not going the way that you expected. I certainly have. Everybody has those failures, but the successful people are ones that recognize and remember when that happened and then are able to bring that memory back up so that it either doesn't happen again or they can take a different path to change the outcome on the next time around. The unsuccessful people are the ones who just continue to do the same thing over and over again and they continue to have that. One of the things that we practice in the martial ways is something called MUSHIN. MUSHIN means no mind. It's written by... MUT means void, and SHIN means spirit or mind. So it's the lack of mind. And what that translates to in Japanese is a mind that is not hampered by certain thoughts. It doesn't mean you stop your thoughts or you stop emotion. Well we all have emotions and the practice of the martial ways is not to get rid of emotions at all. It's to be able to at least put some little bit of control on emotions so they are not overwhelmed by them all the time. Fear, anxiety, greed, any of those things. Those are emotions that can overwhelm us. If you can put them to the side for a moment and let things play out and then respond appropriately, that's more effective for you. So what we try to do is when we're sitting and if we're doing MESAL, which is meditation in practice. We're sitting and we have lots of thoughts in our mind like, gosh I have this long list of stuff to do. I wonder if I'm gonna be able to finish it today. ⁓ I forgot I have to call my my partner and ask about what are we gonna do for dinner tonight. Should I go shopping before I go home or should I call and ask her what she wants? We talked about going away on spring break. Should I look up those airline tickets now? These are all thoughts that are going through your head as you're meditating. Constantly. Your brain or your mind is like a squirrel. It's running from the next thing, one thing to the next, and it can't stop. And so we can't control those thoughts coming into our The goal is not to stop the thoughts at all, but it is to not have your mind linger on them. The idea is to have the thought, but just let it go out and not focus on it. So we try to do that. And if you can do that, you have less anxiety and you have less stress about certain things.
Doug Logan (10:54)
Thinking about how and when we process things has been really helpful. I find that putting a date to something. Like if I can't do something about a particular, problem. I can't solve it right now, or maybe I can, but it's not necessary that I fix it or think about it right now. Putting a date to it and giving myself a deadline. Like I need to reach a decision on this by Friday and putting it in your calendar and being like, this is what I'm going to sit with that and I'm going to process it and decide what that might be. You know, maybe I've got to have a conversation with somebody or I need to correct someone or I need to terminate someone. Like whatever that might be, giving myself a time and a place to kind of sit and just focus on that and come to that decision. Because indecision has always been the wrong decision. Just ignoring that there's an issue or ignoring that there's a problem and just letting it go has always been the wrong decision. The other thing that has helped me is that in that time when I sit with an issue is I separate. I separate the emotional from the logistical side of it. So I think about like, all right, in this situation, emotionally, how do I feel it? And I give it time to think about the impact that this decision is going to have on me and other people emotionally. And then I say, now what's the you know, if it's business oriented. Well, what are the business? You know ramifications of this decision, right? If if I fire this person as an example, is this it's gonna be bad for them Right, they'll survive. They'll move on find something better. But also what does it mean from the business? Usually it means something better. They're not right in that position somebody else something else needs to happen there. So I try to separate both of those, but we're human, so we have to obviously wrestle with that. We have to respond to that. I can't just come in and like, Andrew, I'm sorry, you're fired. I still have to think and treat you like a human being in that situation as well. That timeline and being able to process those things, both from an emotional and a logistical standpoint has been really helpful for me.
Andrew Benioff (12:37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I think that's great. In our modern world, in our Western way of doing things, once again, we sort of, what's the easiest thing to do? And so we have apps that you can meditate to and talk about wellness and mindfulness and so forth. I I guess they may work. I've never used one, so I don't know. But I think it's important. And maybe my brain is old school and too much a part of my Japanese experience, I guess. But I feel like the pain, the discomfort that we practice in our martial way, is one of the greatest tools in helping you make progress. in this. I personally don't believe you can make progress without that discomfort. I think when it's too easy, when you're sitting at home using your app in your living room on a cushion, you sit on your sofa and you're like, okay, I'm going to meditate now. I'm not sure you ever get anything out of that. the, the, know, and once again, I may be too old school in the way I think about it, but I feel like the process of going to practice, being at practice, being experiencing at least some level of discomfort during the practice. Being there and trying to really push aside. That's one of the reasons we wear what we call in Aikido a keikogi. The reason we wear a keikogi in Aikido, it's all white, no patches, no writing on it, no other colors. So everybody's in white. for the entire practice. Nobody's wearing a t-shirt, we're not wearing other colors, no other symbols, no patches, no advertisements, no nothing. And that signifies that when you come into practice, you're putting aside the outside world and putting on your keikogi that is plain and white, just like everybody else. So you're trying to put aside your outside life, put aside your outside thoughts, and practice to the best of your ability, and be here, be present in this discomfort. And that's how you can make progress.
