Modern WisdomThe Downfall Of CrossFit & The Future Of Fitness - Will Ahmed
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,159 words- 0:00 – 4:34
The Downfall of CrossFit
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, how high and how hard did CrossFit drop the ball over the last few years?
- WAWill Ahmed
Wow, CrossFit... Well, CrossFit is, first of all, a great grassroots st- st- um, it's a great grassroots movement in the sense that, like, it literally began as an email list. And it's amazing to think how far they were able to go with that. And then you've got the Greg Glassman racism stuff and, like, the craziness during Black Lives Matter, and then you've got this whole new leadership team that comes in. By the way, around that time, we became partners with CrossFit and, I mean, I've now been building Whoop for, uh, 13 years. Without question, the most dysfunctional partner we've ever worked with.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- WAWill Ahmed
Um, like... And we've worked with a lot of partners-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- WAWill Ahmed
... like, that, like, literally are-
- CWChris Williamson
And a lot of dysfunction, I imagine, as well.
- WAWill Ahmed
A lot of different partners. And, uh, and then the tragedy at this recent event. I, I don't know, the whole thing is so poorly run, it's hard to even talk about it 'cause it's such a missed opportunity.
- CWChris Williamson
I've never seen anybody fumble the bag so hard in f- like, in fitness. If you'd said 10 years ago, 2015, uh... Actually, probably t- when was peak? 2017, probably? 2018, something like that? Like, absolute peak CrossFit?
- WAWill Ahmed
I think so, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Uh, if you'd said then what the next seven, eight years had in store, no one would have believed you. It's- it's- it's outrageous and I think it... A lot of people when they look at businesses from the outside, they see sophistication, they see popularity, they see, uh, a rate of adoption. The thing that nobody sees is what the internal operations of that company is like, and sometimes it can be all shiny-shiny and perfect out front and inside is just a total, like, mess. It's just a- a- a dumpster fire. And, uh, it feels like that might be the case.
- WAWill Ahmed
And they also had, like, a great community and a great brand, which are two things that are- that are pretty resilient, like, when things go wrong and there's, like, elements of dysfunction. And even with that, I mean, it's unbelievable how... Yeah, how sorry of a place it is now.
- CWChris Williamson
Turning people that, whatever, consume your product or are a- a user into an evangelist for it. I mean, it- everybody's new fitness pursuit is their most exciting thing. You know, every vegan wants to tell you about veganism, and every CrossFitter wanted to tell you about CrossFit, and every HieR- Hyrox athlete wanted to tell you about Hyrox, and then now every run club person is trying to get you to go to their run club on a Saturday morning and do a 5K. Uh, but yeah. The level of adoption that CrossFit had and the pace of change, uh... And I think, uh, I get the sense that the only reason we're seeing Hyrox and sort of hybrid training come through is because of the hole that has been left by sort of the exiting of- of CrossFit. There's some new things. It's a bit... It's lower impact. Maybe it's a little bit more accessible to go and do a Hyrox event than it would have been to have tried to go to sectionals or do a local CrossFit comp. Like, I'd rather do burpee broad jumps than try and do a snatch or a handstand walk. But, uh, yeah, I don't think... I think Hyrox's ascendancy can be laid at the feet of what CrossFit dropped.
- WAWill Ahmed
I think there's an opportunity for a lot of these different, like, fitness communities. I mean, you have F42, you've got Barry's, you've got Orangetheory, you've got, uh, these different types of Pilates studios. And, like, it- it sort of seems like people are looking almost for the new thing, and that in turn allows for these different, you know, micro-communities to pop up around a particular activity.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
And at the end of the day, I think, you know, weightlifting for a lot of people is intimidating, exercise is lonely and hard. Like, you know, it makes sense that there are these, uh, boutique communities, so to speak. And so, I wouldn't actually attribute the success of these other communities solely to CrossFit's downfall. I think CrossFit in itself, it probably appeals to you and me, but, you know, it had a high injury rate before they even had dysfunction as a- as a company.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
Uh, it is, like, a pretty intimidating workout out of the gate. It's like there's a lot of people that it- it's not-
- CWChris Williamson
You don't just go in and have a gentle CrossFit session.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah, it's- there's a lot of people it's gonna turn off, like, right out of the gate, so...
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you can go and plod along in a 5K but you can't do that in a CrossFit class.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- 4:34 – 13:11
Recent Global Trends in the Fitness Industry
- WAWill Ahmed
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. What are you seeing from a fitness industry perspective at the moment? What are sort of the broad trends that you've been able to track over however long you've been watching everything?
- WAWill Ahmed
So, last year the biggest uptick was Pickleball.
- CWChris Williamson
Let's go.
- WAWill Ahmed
And then in the last... So the- so, I mean, 2020, um, 3 actually, and then 2024, uh, the biggest we saw was Padel. So two racket sports, interestingly.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh.
- WAWill Ahmed
Pickleball grew a lot in the United States. Padel, um, which people in the States call Pa-del, but Padel, um, which is what it's called internationally, uh, has just taken off. And so that's a pretty fascinating game too. I grew up playing squash and tennis, so for me Padel's like maybe the most fun game I've ever played 'cause it's a- a sort of perfect hybrid of the two.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
Are you familiar with what it looks like?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah. So it's, you know, the whole glass courts all the way around and it- you're sort of- you're sort of in a tennis court in, um, like, you know, a- a glass cage, and you can essentially play the ball off of anything, and it's, uh, it's pretty dynamic and fun.
- CWChris Williamson
And is this based on the number of activities tracked
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah, in terms of, like, the percent- the percentage increase of activities we've seen on Whoop.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- WAWill Ahmed
Uh, that was- that was the biggest one last-
- CWChris Williamson
So you guys are kind of like a fitness trend aggregator now?
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah. We've got a lot of data, that's for sure. Uh, the- the thing that people still struggle with the most is sleep. It's amazing how-Um, you know, like 20 ... I think it's 22% of people on Whoop, um, get over seven hours of sleep. So, if you just think about that, that like, you know, roughly 80% of people are getting less than seven hours of sleep. Uh, and I think sleep, sometime in the last, like, five years, became the new steps, where all of a sudden people just realized that was an important thing to care about-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
... and steps maybe in turn was less important thing to care about in the grand scheme of things. And, uh, yeah, we've, we've certainly benefited from people's enthusiasm towards sleep.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- WAWill Ahmed
But it's, yeah, it's super important.
- CWChris Williamson
It's hard to try. I, I've said this for a long time that as soon as you begin using any fitness tracker, the first thing that you learn is you're not sleeping anywhere near as much as you thought you were.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a very painful and like, "No, I got eight hours." It's like, "No, dude, you were in bed for seven and a half-
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah. Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... and you were asleep at 6:45."
- WAWill Ahmed
There, there, yeah. That, that's the trap is people ... Previously, if you ask them how much sleep did they get last night, they're like, "Well, I went to bed at 11:00, I woke up at 6:00, I got seven hours of sleep," and then they realize after you do all the factoring of time awake-
- CWChris Williamson
Five and a half.
- WAWill Ahmed
... and this, yeah, it's five and a half hours of sleep.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- 13:11 – 17:31
How Being an Only Child Influences You
- CWChris Williamson
something during my research, I found out that you're an only child too, and this is gonna be kind of like a immovable object and an unstoppable fucking force, is two only children meet, um, have you ever reflected or do you reflect much on how that's influenced you, sort of how it shaped your personality, the things that you expect, the way that you were socialized, how you showed up as a young man and now an older man?
- WAWill Ahmed
It's a great question. I mean, I think, uh, the first obvious thing is that I do think only children are more self-centered. Like, I think that there's an element of, uh, if there's things that you want in life, there's sort of an element that you believe you can go get them, uh, and I think that that's probably something that, that only children, uh, have a stronger gravitation to, or comes more naturally. There's also another element which is that you, at, at least for me, I found I spent a lot of time with adults when I was a kid, and I would travel with my parents to different countries, and, um, and so I also got comfortable around being people, like sitting at a dining room table with, like, seven other adults and me, and... strangely, the two things that I just described actually boded well for being a young entrepreneur because I think so much of building anything, it's probably even so much of, like, what do you wanna do in life, is knowing what you want and figuring out how to get what you want, and I think that knowing what you want is, like, a deeply, um... it, it requires a, a deep sort of inwards reflection. I think the mistake that a lot of people make, particularly when they're young, like I started Whoop when I was 22 years old, the mistake that a lot of people make when they're that age is they ask everyone else what they should do, and they don't ask themselves. And so I think the, the, the best path of trying to figure out what you want, like knowing what you want, is to look inwards, and as an only child, you also spend a lot of time alone, and so looking inwards is sort of a natural thing.
- CWChris Williamson
It's second nature.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah, uh, and then there's, of course, like, practices that you can develop to look inwards, like I got into meditating, and we could talk about that, but, um, so looking inwards was something I became comfort- uh, you know, comfortable with, and, um, and then the process of getting what you want I think is actually, it's really important to get outwards, like to go be around a lot of people and, you know, essentially try to ask for what you want in the world-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
... and get rejected a lot and sort of deal with that, and again, the mistake that a lot of people make when they're trying to get what they want is they actually become isolationist. And so, uh, it, there's an interesting, you know, um, irony to this whole concept of get what you want and, or, you know, discover what you want and get what you want.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
Um, but then I think there's also an element with being an only child where, uh, you, you can build up, you, you potentially can build up more self-esteem 'cause your parents have more time to sort of-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
... you know, pay attention to you, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
And I, you know, I have great parents and they, they love me considerably, and I, I think that helped with self-esteem, you know, probably throughout my childhood and, and growing up, which probably in turn when I was starting a company made me more resilient in the face of rejection.
- CWChris Williamson
You believe that you can do things that other people might have had second thoughts about?
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah. Yeah. Now, I also had a lot of conviction in what I was building, more conviction in the thing than I had in myself, which is an interesting concept in itself, but, like, I believed that what I was building should exist in the world and would exist in the world, and what I struggled with for years in building it was, "Can I do this? Am I capable of this? Oh gosh, I feel like I'm under a lot of stress," or, "I feel like I'm under a lot of pressure," or-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
... "Um, I don't know the answers to these things," or, "How do I hire someone?" Or, "How do I fire someone?" Or, "How do I raise money?" Like, for me, it was, it was dealing with that sort of trauma of building the company.
- 17:31 – 25:01
Overcoming Self-Doubt
- CWChris Williamson
How did you learn to get past your self-doubt? Have you got past your self-doubt? How much does it still creep in?
- WAWill Ahmed
I don't have a lot of self-doubt now. I think that, uh, I think that I'm, I'm, I've gotten good at, um, questioning why I have conviction in things and then, you know, sort of examining that through other people's perspectives or through my own, uh, y- y- you know, sort of deeper examination, if you will. I don't think that, um, you ever stop entirely having self-doubt, and then you probably shouldn't-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
... you know, 'cause then I think you get a little unhinged, so to speak.... but I do think that, uh, confidence and self-belief i- is sort of a prerequisite for doing anything really hard.
- CWChris Williamson
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- WAWill Ahmed
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, or you set big goals, or you have a dream, or you have whatever, whatever it is that you wanna do. Uh, and then also, sort of programmed into just the typical cadence of how this stuff works, is you have something you're chasing toward and you're uncertain about whether or not you're going to get there, right up until basically the moment you get there. And then the second you get there, you move the goalpost again.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So there's no point at which you feel like you've arrived, so you very rarely actually sit in accomplishment and gratitude. So if you're permanently doing this iterative sort of, I get close and I move away, and I get close and I move away, and I get close and I move away, if you're permanently doing that, w- at what point are you not going to feel like you're lacking? You're permanently in lack because you continue to push it further away, continue to push it. I think all of this sort of combined together creates this, uh, a soup that's probably pretty fertile to grow self-doubt out of. But at least for me, I realized this last year, I did this live show in London, it was kind of a formative, little bit of a formative moment. It was three and a half thousand people at this big theater and I was like, "Holy fuck. Like, I'm on stage in front of three and a half thousand people. This is insane." And, uh, someone asked me, we do these, uh, people can come and watch the sound check that are in the first few rows, and, uh, someone asked me a question. They said sort of, "W- did you think, is this part of the plan, did you think you were gonna get here?" 'Cause I am the poster child for imposter syndrome in a lot of ways, uh, l- chronic self-doubt, a lot of uncertainty. But I think kind of in the same way that you said, which is if you believe that this thing is supposed to exist in the world, and if you really like the thing, and you kind of, you almost outsource your own self-doubt to, "Well, this has got rocket fuel behind it, and I'm just gonna keep seeing if that thing can come. And I can't tell anybody else to bring it into existence, so I might as well have a crack at it myself." So I might as well have a crack at it myself. And if you're sufficiently stubborn, kind of before you know it, you, you don't fake it until you make it. You sort of make it until you believe it. And then you go, "Oh, I got, I, this is a thing. This is a company. Like, there's a tracker and it actually tells people that
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh my God, I'm on stage in front of all of these people." Or, y- you know, this is, "I've managed to get the degree," or, "I managed to move out of the, the town that I hated," or, "I managed to find a partner. I managed to build a fam-" Whatever it is that you thought, "Ugh, like, this thing is supposed to exist. I don't know if I'm a person that can do it, but I'm just gonna keep sort of grinding away until it happens." And then when you actually turn around and look, you go, "Oh, fi- I guess this is what arriving is."
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah, that's really well-said. I mean, m- for me in building Whoop, I, I, it was helpful to sort of disassociate building the company and building myself as a CEO or an entrepreneur. And I think in the, for years, like, I had kind of wrapped those two things up as one. And so if, you know, if Whoop had a good day, I had a good day. If Whoop had a bad day, I had a bad day. If Whoop was failing, I was failing.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
And, uh, and it's not a particularly productive sort of framing, if you will, for actually growing either yourself or the business. And the reality is that, you know, the business could be doing great and you could be spiraling out of control, or vice versa, you know? How many businesses suffered during COVID to no fault of their management team, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
And so there's, i- i- it just, it's, it's quite important to separate those two things, I think literally. And then I realized also that if I didn't start growing better, I was gonna be the detriment to Whoop growing.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- WAWill Ahmed
Because as the CEO...
- CWChris Williamson
A lame duck in your own company.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah. Because as the CEO, if you're, you know, projecting all sorts of stresses and, and, uh, you're not managing the company properly and you're kind of spinning out of control yourself, uh, well, the business isn't going to be successful.
- CWChris Williamson
It's very difficult to have an orderly company and a chaotic founder, yeah.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um-
- WAWill Ahmed
And, and so I felt, yeah, I felt especially early on I was very much that chaotic founder. Now, it's hard to, it's hard to go back and say, "Well, I wish I could change the way I behaved for the first few years of the company's history," because there is an element of, a- and I, I think I believe this, there's an element of you change one thing and, you know, everything else changes going forwards.
- CWChris Williamson
Big butterfly effect going on.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah. And of course, I'm, I'm super grateful with where I sit today and, and, you know, w- what we've been able to build. But, um...Yeah, I, I, I put up real walls in those, so that the period of, like, 22 probably to 24, 25-
- CWChris Williamson
Hm.
- WAWill Ahmed
... of just, like, real walls to anyone's feedback, and I was so certain about things and I was so stubborn. And I think it's, in, in a way it's a good, it's a, it's a helpful mechanism to get something off the ground-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
... 'cause there's no ambiguity, but you're very hard to work with.
- 25:01 – 34:44
Balancing Ambition & Gratitude
- CWChris Williamson
I really resonate with, and this is something, you know, no matter what your pursuit is, if you're scrabbling a little bit for meaning, uh, in life, which almost everybody who's a bit sensitive and introspective is when they're young because, "Who the fuck are you?" Like how many people arrive at 20 or 23, and they're like, "Yeah, I know who I am. I've got a good strong sense of self. You know, things don't sway me." Like shut up, dude.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Of course stuff does. You get, you get, the weather's bad and you feel bad about yourself because you just haven't had enough time to get those sort of stabilizers down. And, uh, I ran nightclubs for, for all this time, and, and exactly the same. The weird thing about running events, it's, uh, kind of like being a, a baseball player. It's iterative, right? You have, as, for, especially for us we had this big Saturday, and that was our, uh, our big event from the age of 22 until 28. It was the Saturday that was our big money-making-
- WAWill Ahmed
It's the big game, so to speak.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That was the big one. And if the event had been successful, I was worthy, I was, I was, uh, good, um, I was validated. And if it was bad, then that was a reflection on me. But then I managed to get it to this much more pernicious place which was I dissociated working hard and pain and difficulty with good outcomes, because typically when you worked a little bit harder there was some pain that came along with it, but when you worked harder the outcomes were better. But my brain, you're already grinning, my brain had short-cutted the link and it ended up being if we had an event that went well but I hadn't suffered, that I didn't feel good. And I started to make a direct link between "Chris suffered, Chris is good and worthy." So the event had to go well first, but I also had to have suffered. So if it went well and I hadn't suffered, I, that wasn't good. If it went badly, whether I'd suffered or not, that didn't matter. So the only key that unlocked my self-worth for, like, a good bit of time was success objectively and pain subjectively.
- WAWill Ahmed
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
And if I'd done that, then hooray, maybe that's okay. So it's just, it's a really interesting twist, I guess, on the Puritan work ethic. It's like a, a capitalist Puritan work ethic where you know that you should be grinding and you are just in so driven by dopamine and chaos and, and, and caffeine, uh, and, in the nightlife industry, other substances too, that you end up in a place where you signal off of how hard this thing was. And then you get into your 30s and you go, "Hey, I wanna have a family," or, "I wanna chill out. I wanna be able to go to bed on a nighttime and my thoughts be of good quality." And you go, oh, you need to let go of the entire dr- pathway catalyst fuel that you were using previously. Good luck trying to unwind that. And that's been a task of basically best part of a decade now for me to try and unwind that, that little linkage.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah, the unlock for me in that category has been to be driven and grateful, and I feel like it's easy to get stuck on just the drive train and the dopamine system of, you know, when the company's worth $100 million or $1 billion or $10 billion, you sort of keep telling yourself, "When I get to X, I'm gonna be happy." And what's good about that from a drive standpoint is it, it drives you there, but of course when you get there there's some sort of enormous letdown.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
And it's also, uh, you have to, you have to balance it with being grateful for the moment that you're in. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs worry that, or sort of misinterpret gratitude as complacency, but I think they're, they are fundamentally different things. And, you know, and they work different, uh, you know, aspects of your brain. Like, the, the drive system is dopamine and the gratitude system is serotonin, and both of those have a, you know, a way of making you happier.
- CWChris Williamson
How have you learned to navigate those two things, given that there's still things you want to achieve and you still do want to be driven?
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But you don't want to look back on a series of miserable successes as a career?
- WAWill Ahmed
No, I mean... So I, I would say my, my sort of, um, sort of broad operating principle is that I wanna be of service, and that's a helpful framing because just outta the gates it, it makes it less about what you accumulate and more about what you do for your company or society or your customers or fill in the blank. And beyond that, I also, um, eh, get to work in, uh, you know, unlocking human performance and health span and the sort of, like, uh, what I would call noble mission, uh, which is around making people perform better and, you know, live longer. And so by, by not having, uh, my sole mission be around, uh, you know, revenue numbers or, um, company valuation or those sorts of things, like I think that alone helps you get a little bit outside of, um, the miserable successes, so to speak.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
And so, like, it's very easy to-... um, just gloss over numbers that get bigger, and not really associate any meaning with them. But when you go from getting, um, you know, one testimonial every six months to getting hundreds a week from people that are like, "Your product changed my life," and you get to stand in front of your company and read that to 500 people who are, you know, blood, sweat and tears trying to make this product great, y- you feel something. I mean, that, that there's a lot of gratitude for me that comes from that experience. And, uh, and so, I can still want to push for the company to be bigger and more successful and be affecting more people, but I can also at the same time I think appreciate the impact that it's having. And, and that's, I would say, will the entrepreneur or CEO, right, we all have these different identities. And, uh, you know, I- I've, I've sort of looked at hard things that happen in your life as a path to growth. Like, we talked about early on when I was 22, like not really knowing what I was doing running a company and just having to go through that sort of painful period of, of becoming a better CEO or becoming a better human. I think that, in general, um, you know, pain in some form leads to growth. And, uh, so if you, if you kind of adopt a growth mindset, it makes you much more comfortable with being in that painful state. Now, you don't wanna be, you don't want it to be in sort of a masochistic way where you're tr- yeah, wh- like what you just described where you're like, you wanna force yourself to be in pain, but more just in the sense that like, "Wow, a bunch of things just went wrong in a row for me, and this is very painful." Um, like my best friend committed suicide a little over a year ago, and that, like in my personal life, that was the most pain that I'd ever felt in my life. I'd never lost anyone, um, let alone someone who I had seen a, you know, a week earlier. And I think when you're first going through the, um, the trauma of an experience like that, it's hard to find perspective in it. But, you know, if my emotional range at that point in my life was like from a six to a ten where like, you know, zero's a bad, zero's like the worst thing in your life and, and ten is like, you know, you feel great euphoria. Like, i- in hindsight, my emotional range was actually kind of narrow, right? And so being able to go down to a, to a one or a two for some period of time actually opened me up in a, in a really healthy way in the months later, and in a way that I never would have anticipated from having this terrible thing happen in my life. And, uh, and so, you know, some of it's a little bit of just how you reframe everything, but I have found that in whatever category of your life that you're feeling some kind of enormous pain, there is like, there is something on the other side of it that you'll benefit from.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 34:44 – 39:18
Running a Company While Experiencing Grief
- CWChris Williamson
How do you keep operating a fast-growing business when personally you've gone through something like that? I think a lot of people have to show up to whatever their job is, whether they're the founder of a big company or they've just got a normal position or they've gotta be there for the kids or they've gotta be there for their partner or whatever it is, uh, when they're kind of going through it.
- WAWill Ahmed
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
Ho- how did you come to... I'm sure that you've reflected on this. How did you come to split brain yourself into actually being a functional human?
- WAWill Ahmed
Well, your first reaction is, uh, to try to go numb, because that is a coping mechanism. If you don't feel the pain, you can kind of still get through the day. And you have to process the emotion. You have to feel it. And so, I think in the first ten days of it, I was sort of white-knuckling through it, and especially kind of day-to-day in running the company. Now, fortunately the company's also at a stage where I've got, you know, an executive team that's, that's pretty functional and, um, and they knew what I was going through. It wasn't like, uh, it was a secret. Uh, and then at least in this specific case for me, I, I delivered the, uh, the eulogy, um, and it was... He, I mean, he was a very popular young man and it was in front of 800 or 1,000 people in this massive church. And, uh, and so that... And that was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, was having to talk about his life, um, and, you know, someone I loved and cared about. And, uh-... and just a whole wave of emotions went through me doing that. And so that... One, I felt e- enormous relief from doing it and, uh, and then, you know, two, in the aftermath of it, I was, I was proud of being able to celebrate his life. And so, there were, there was sort of a weight that was taken off from that experience. And then, of course, you deal with th- these other stages of grief, which is around, like, you know, I would play squash with him every week and so now every time I go to the squash courts, like, I think about him, or I go to the steam room and I would sit with him. And so, you have these different, um, you have these different stages of grief, but, but I think in the, sort of, in those first 30 days, the, the best thing that I could have done was to go through that huge, like, wave of, of, um, painful release of emotion.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. It's, uh... (clears throat) The classic male denial of any emotional issue.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"I'm just gonna lean into knowing myself to where I can keep moving. This is what they would have wanted, in any case-"
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
"... from me."
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You know, logically, emotionally, psychologically, however you wanna try and rationalize-
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the fact... "I just... This kinda sucks and I don't wanna feel it."
- WAWill Ahmed
I, I think, that, that's sort of a natural, uh, that's a sort of a natural thing that any- anyone can do, because it's, it's scary how your body feels. Like, it's a physical, overwhelming, um, uh, state. And, uh, and it, it's distracting. Like, you, you, you're... You think you're in the middle of a conversation and next thing you're, you're crying. So, I understand that. But I... If anyone's listening to this who's going through grief, I would encourage them to, um, take whatever time or whatever process they need to release what they're feeling in that period.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, interesting that doing a eulogy is, in itself, a form of, sort of, therapeutic release in, in some ways for you.
- WAWill Ahmed
Oh, it was huge. And, and, and I think it was exag- it was an exaggerated experience because I had, I had to write down everything I felt about him. I had to, you know, deliver that in front of, actually, a large number of people that happened to also be all of my closest friends and all the p-
- CWChris Williamson
The most hardcore type of public journal entry that you're ever gonna do.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah. And it, and it wa- and it was a, you know, large public speaking event too, which is, you know, it's, it's its own form of whatever. And, uh, and I had never, you know, experienced death like that. And I wanted to celebrate someone who was a really important person in a lot of people's lives. So, yeah, I think that, that it was a very exaggerated experience and, um, I'm s- I'm, I'm grateful that I got to do that, that aspect of it.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- 39:18 – 43:18
Finding Out What You Truly Want
- CWChris Williamson
I think, uh, just going back to the two points that you raised earlier on, sort of, working out what you want and then working out how to get it, um, I would hazard a guess that most people get stuck. Think they get stuck in problem two but are actually stuck in problem one.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah. That's a great way to describe it. They're, they're kind of out and about trying to chase a bunch of things and they're upset they're not getting what they want, but they've never actually declared what they want.
- CWChris Williamson
How did you investigate what it was that you wanted? What's some advice that you have for how people can better define that?
- WAWill Ahmed
Well, I think the, the first thing to know is that it's an inwards examination. You have to ask yourself what you want. You can't go asking everyone in your life what you want. You'll never figure out what you want. And, and so that's, that's a very internal and introspective pursuit. And I do think that it's hard when you're young because you, you haven't quite figured out how to talk to yourself yet, at least I hadn't when I was 18 or 19 years old. Uh, but you can be, sort of, self-aware of things that you're drawn to. So, let's start with things that you're not drawn to. Well, you know, I did a bunch of internships, so to speak, when I was, like, 18, 19 and 20 or whatever, and I worked in finance which sort of seemed like what I should do because other people I knew were gonna go into finance and, um, and I just didn't enjoy it. And, by the way, in my free time, I was, you know, doing research on the fitness industry or the wearables industry or those sorts of things. And, uh, and then, you know, when I would go, uh, play squash practice at Harvard or whatever, uh, like, I would love working out and love, like, pushing myself, and, and through that I also was someone who used to overtrain so I got interested in how you can figure, you know, how can you understand overtraining? And through that I found myself doing physiology research on things that, in the past, I wouldn't have been interested in or not drawn to. And I think the things that you think about in a shower or in the back of a cab, like, when your mind is quiet, so to speak, I think those things really matter. Like, what are you actually drawn to? Like, pay attention to that. Probably the biggest curse of cell phones and smartphones is that people aren't bored anymore and so they actually lose some of that inner dialogue.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah. I did, uh, a lot of therapy last year and one of the best things that my therapist reminded me to do was pay attention to fleeting thoughts.
- WAWill Ahmed
Hmm. Yeah, that's well said.
- CWChris Williamson
And, specifically, it was when I was on the cushion, but also throughout the rest of life and fleeting thoughts are quiet. You know, they sort of appear and they come and go and you can quite easily ignore them. And, um, if you have some distraction in your pocket, if... I- i- the volume that you need the rest of the world at to be able to hear fleeting thoughts is so low-
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and the volume that, kind of, comes out of your phone, uh, proportionally or mentally, whatever, cognitively, is so high, it's so loud that it just... You're right, it doesn't have any room, doesn't have any space to appear. And, yeah, that... (clears throat) The ability to pay attention to fleeting thoughts and to think, "Ah!"... but then you need to be careful, right, because the mind's slippery and sometimes it'll say stuff to you, you go, "Yeah, that's bullshit. That's bullshit."
- WAWill Ahmed
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, so that's a fleeting thought that's bullshit. Sometimes they are.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But sometimes it's a... I don't know what it is, I don't know where it comes from, I don't know.
- WAWill Ahmed
Well, I- I would say it's recurring fleeting thoughts because the things that matter to you keep coming back, I- at least I've found. And, uh, and then I think the other thing that everyone should learn in some form is- is the ability to close their eyes and breathe, and whether you call that meditation or mindfulness or fill in the blank, develop some process to sit with yourself.
- 43:18 – 56:27
The Journey of Pursuing What You Want
- CWChris Williamson
And what about getting what you want? Let's say that somebody's managed to set, they've developed the ability to pay attention to fleeting thoughts, they're actually working in that way. Where have you noticed with the people that are around you, your team, yourself, what are the pitfalls that people find when it comes to actually getting what they want, assuming that they've managed to define it?
- WAWill Ahmed
Well, o- one step is to state it. I mean, don't be coy about it. "I wanna build this company." "I wanna be a musician." "I..." you know, fill in the blank, like what do you want and state it to the world. And then y- you cannot underestimate hard work and consistency. If you are hard charging and consistently hard charging, that is such a differentiator on the, on sort of everyone else.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
And, uh, and that's in turn what creates luck. You know, like if you keep showing up and you keep getting rejected and da-da-da, all of a sudden you meet this person and they introduce you to that person, and next thing you know you're on a plane and you showed up to the city and it didn't quite make sense, and now you're meeting the person who all of a sudden has the answer to that thing you wanted-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
... to that break that you needed.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
And so, you know, I think getting what you want is some cr- combination of hard work, consistency, and luck, and you could probably bolt onto that, like, a comfort with rejection.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Mm.
- WAWill Ahmed
'Cause you're gonna get rejected enormously, and the more ambitious what you want is, the more you're gonna be rejected.
- CWChris Williamson
Most people aren't that bothered by rejection. I think most people are bothered by the fear of rejection. G- re- the idea of failure or rejection hurts so much more, I think, than actually being rejected.
- WAWill Ahmed
And that goes back to my point about people when they're trying to get what they want actually get insular rather than going out. Right? Like, you wanna be introspective about what you want and then you wanna be extroverted about getting what you want, and I think people get stuck sort of going out and about because they're afraid of what's someone gonna think if they know I want this thing or, you know, "What if they say no to me?"
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, so we outsource, we outsource to our family or our friends, "What is it that I should want?"
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And then when it comes to trying to go and get it, we don't go and ask for it because that insulates us from failure.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about framing it that way, but I think it's... I certainly think it's correct. I mean, uh, cynicism, I- I think a lot of the cynicism that we see in the modern world is people assuring failure privately so they don't need to face the risk of faili- failure publicly. Uh, if I don't... Basically, if I don't try, then I can't fail and-
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah, that's true.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, there's always sort of one foot, a lot of the time when people commit, not going 100% in to a relationship. It's like, you know, "If I don't give everything to this, if I don't fully open myself up, if I sort of, you know, keep my eye wandering a little bit more, if I convince myself that this person isn't quite my person or whatever-"
- WAWill Ahmed
That's a good point.
- CWChris Williamson
"... then if this doesn't go well, then, you know, like, d- it's not a comment on me because I wasn't in it, I wasn't fully in it." It's like most of me or a bit of me, but the bit of me that I care about gets saved over here.
- WAWill Ahmed
I think commitment is another criteria to get what you want, like being deeply committed to it and whether that's a relationship or, you know, a, uh, a pursuit that you're after in your career, like, staying committed to it is huge. A lot of, I meet a lot of young founders who are kind of, they're sort of in school, they sort of have a job, they're sort of starting something, right? And there's a safety in that.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
'Cause if any one of those things sort of blows up, they've still got the other two and-
- CWChris Williamson
They'll get a little bit of a piece of the pie.
- WAWill Ahmed
... you'll still sound good at a dinner table, you know? I will say, though, getting over fear of rejection is part one, but getting over rejection is part two.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- WAWill Ahmed
Like, I struggled with that. And-
- CWChris Williamson
How did you get rejected?
- WAWill Ahmed
Well, from the age of 21 to... I- I mean, look, I've- I've now dealt with rejection throughout every phase of building this company, but I would say it was most painful from the ages of, like, 21 to 24 because I hadn't experienced actually a lot of rejection in hindsight up to that point in my life. And everyone I was telling this idea to about like, "Hey, I wanna start this company. This is the thing I'm gonna do," a- a lot of people I respected, like, they were all kinda telling me like, "This is a bad idea, dude." Like, "You should not do this." And- and then of course you go try to raise capital, and investors tell you no, and you try to hire people and they tell you no, and- and, um... And I, you know, looking back on it, I think there was good reason for that. Like, I was a kid, I was starting something that, eh, eh, eh, is big in engineering and medicine and computer science and math, and, you know, I'm not an engineer or a computer scientist or a doctor or a mathematician, and, like... And- and so there's just a- and I was super young and naive, and so, like-... I understand why I faced all that rejection, but it still was very painful. And, um, a- and then that's where the conviction piece wavers, like your commitment and your conviction. Um, I was committed. I stayed very committed to the idea, again, because I believed it was gonna exist in the world and I had, like, deep conviction around that. But my self-belief, that's, that's what wavered.
- 56:27 – 1:10:41
The Romanticisation of Failure
- CWChris Williamson
- WAWill Ahmed
What's your take on, on, on failure? 'Cause I feel like failure's gotten very romanticized.
- CWChris Williamson
I fucking hate failing too.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I hate failing so much. And, uh, I don't have a particularly good relationship with the idea of it. Uh, I failed very few times across my entire professional career, which suggests that I'm moving too slowly, and I would tell somebody else if they were like-
- WAWill Ahmed
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
... "Hey man, I've basically never failed at anything I've tried professionally," I go, "That's just an indication that you're playing within the bounds. Your, uh, safety tolerance and comfort is too much."
- WAWill Ahmed
You need to push further, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, exactly, because you're waiting until you've got basically 100% confidence in whatever it is that you're gonna do. The confidence interval has collapsed so much that there's no chance it's not going to wo- essentially no chance it's not going to work, uh, which means that you could iterate more quickly, maybe break a few things, but move significantly faster. That's me. Um, it... I knew I wanted to move to America three or four years before I actually finally made it. Uh, I probably should have left the world of nightlife at least a couple of years before that. Now, I'm talking not huge amounts of time, but when you're 28, three years is, like, fucking 10% of your life, it's, you know, 30% of your adult life.
- WAWill Ahmed
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
So, it's... You, the failure porn thing, I get where it comes from, and it comes from a place of wanting to reassure people that if stuff doesn't go badly, if stuff doesn't go well, if it does go badly, you'll be okay. I understand, I think that's a noble place to put it in.
- WAWill Ahmed
And I, I, I'd go a step further. I think it's actually in part to get people over the fear of failure.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
Get, sort of get them out of the blocks-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- WAWill Ahmed
... right? Take the leap.
- CWChris Williamson
Stop being paralyzed.
- WAWill Ahmed
Don't be paralyzed. Yeah. I think that's where, to your point, the failure porn is coming from, is trying to convince people that it's okay to put-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- WAWill Ahmed
... put themselves out there.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a much more noble way to think about it if it's-
- WAWill Ahmed
Because... Yeah, my, my, my reflection is that I, I've learned more from successful endeavors than I have from ones that have failed, and I think failure is largely overrated.
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting. Why?
- WAWill Ahmed
So, so sometimes, I think this is particularly true of startups. I think that, um, uh, a lot of startups all kind of fail for the same reasons. You know, they didn't find product market fit or they burned cash too fast or, um, you know, ultimately the, the product or service was something that another competitor did faster than them or they got undercut on price. Like, there's, like, five things that most of the s- the, the, the co-founders got angry at each other. There's like five things that, like, all startups essentially fail from. But the companies that really make it, they all kind of have some kind of, like, secret in a way, like, they have some magic. And, uh, and I think that there's probably more that's unique about each of those than, um, than sort of the, it is the same and, and so, so for people who have been on that sort of one in 100 rocket ship, I, I think that you're, you're learning some special sauce.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- WAWill Ahmed
And i- in the future you're gonna look for, "Hey, what is the special sauce?" Like, we actually have to-
- CWChris Williamson
Ah, that's-
- WAWill Ahmed
We haves- we have to create something here. We have to, we have to spark something that otherwise we're not gonna have.
- CWChris Williamson
That's such a good point, that if, if people were to learn more from failures than they were from successes, they still don't know what they're looking for. You don't actually know what it is you're looking for, you just have a series of things you know you're not looking for.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- 1:10:41 – 1:19:31
Learning From the World’s Best Athletes
- CWChris Williamson
Who else... Rory is one of them, but who else are some of the athletes that you've got to spend time with and you just think, "Holy shit, this person's, uh, mindset, their approach to the game is a different level"?
- WAWill Ahmed
There's a lot of common themes amongst the world's best athletes. Uh, so, you know, Michael Phelps and Cristiano Ronaldo and Patrick Mahomes and Rory, and, like... Like, I've spent a lot of time around these guys and there's a certain intensity that burns inside them that is, uh, hard to fake. Like, you can kind of feel it even when you're chilling. Ronaldo is probably the most exaggerated example of that that I've ever felt.
- CWChris Williamson
How so?
- WAWill Ahmed
Just you can feel a drive, like, you can feel a certain energy. You know, peop- all- all... Everyone kind of gives off an energy and- and depending on how healthy you are in a given day or how good you're feeling, maybe your energy is stronger or less strong. But, like, um, his... The energy that he gives off is one of- of real drive and there's, like, an intensity burning there that you can't fake. Like, you can just feel it. And, uh... And I think for a lot of these guys, there's a cost that comes with that that we, the fans, don't see. Like, you don't see the- the cost of having to be the first person at the practice facility every single day and cold plunging for hours afterwards and- and the time away from the family and the sacrifices in all these other areas of life. I mean, it is very inspiring when you really get a close-up look at it and you realize just, like, what a grind it is. Like, it is such a grind. You see the goals and you see the- the Masters jacket, but you don't... you don't see the grind and the pain and the injuries and, like, the- the time that they're not on camera.... and there's something about it that's both inspiring and also you're like, "Yeah, maybe I wouldn't wanna do that."
- CWChris Williamson
Intimidating.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, this is... You've activated one of my trap cards and, um, the question of what is the price that people pay to be someone that you admire-
- WAWill Ahmed
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... has been-
- WAWill Ahmed
It's a good question.
- CWChris Williamson
... one of the most compelling e- f- a- ever since I started... since I grew out of being an adult infant, um-
- WAWill Ahmed
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... and started to be a little bit more of a grownup, I guess intellectually. Uh, it's one of the- the questions I've been fascinated with to look at what's it like to be that person? You wanna be that person, you wanna be Rory McIlroy, do you? Okay, let me explain all of the prices that he's had to pay to be Rory McIlroy. You like the look of Patrick Mahomes or Michael Jordan, perfect example. Look, fuck the, you know, uh, the last dance, um, still now at what is he, probably 50, something like that, I don't know how old he is, sorry, if he's on- in his 40s. But yeah, like, 50, 50s, doesn't look happy. A man who was tormented by drive and perfection and obsession, he was the greatest. Okay, but that's the- that's the price that you need to pay. Elon was asked on Lex's show three years ago, said, uh, he says something like, "How are you doing?" And he takes a little moment and he goes, "Most people think they would want to be me. They don't wanna be me. They don't know. They don't understand. My mind is a storm."
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
He's the richest guy on the planet, sending rockets to space, building world-changing cars, he's on- onstage in Japan doing robot dances and shit, fathering a million children.
- WAWill Ahmed
He's actually easier to compare to some professional athletes than any other business leader.
- CWChris Williamson
How so?
- WAWill Ahmed
I- in just that it- it's clear that he's- he's got a drive that he's tormented by and he's willing to sacrifice everything else for it. And you see that with the world's best athletes.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, the- (sighs) the thing with at least... (sighs) The problem with looking at anybody through the lens of a narrow pursuit, like the success in business or the success in a sport, is that you only see the one vector that they've channeled their outputs into and you don't see any of the other fissures that their costs leaked out of. Right? Well, what- what if this guy hasn't had sex with his wife in, like, two years?
- WAWill Ahmed
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
What if the- the- they're drugging themselves to go to sleep and stimulating themselves to wake up in the morning? What if their relationship with their father or their mother is just nonexistent? What if they hate themselves? What if they can't bear to look at their body in the mirror? You know, all of these things happen and you go, "Okay, well, they're the great- they're the greatest, they're the best."
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Would you want that? Is that what you want? Because you don't... As you said earlier on, it's kind of stupid to just look at one element, either of a business or of a person and say, "I want... I- I really want Rory McIlroy's master's thing. The not being able to sleep on a nighttime because he's obsessing about that shot he missed, I- I don't really like the idea of that so much. But the green jacket, that sounds great." It's like you don't get to piece this person together. Someone as a whole, right, that... his level of o- o- obsession, totally, like, just throwing shade at Rory's, like, mental state, but I imagine his level of obsession, inability to let go of things and- and, you know, is the reason that he's got to that. It's not some weird bug on a s- on the side of the code that makes him Rory McIlroy, it's a feature that is a part of his performance.
- WAWill Ahmed
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh, yeah, this- this question of what is the price people pay to be someone that you admire is fucking endlessly interesting to me.
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah, no, I think athletes have gotten more, um, introspective. Like I- I... Actually, Rory is extremely, uh, thoughtful and he's gone through phases of reading books on the stoics and meditating and all sorts of things. I think a lot of- a lot of athletes end up being more introspective 'cause they get into visualization, which becomes sort of the gateway to, uh, meditation, intuition, these sorts of different, um, levels of- of- of self-discovery. And then I think there's- there's plenty of really capable athletes who don't actually go that deep inwards and they don't really analyze the how it works as much as know that it works and they just go.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, I had... Who was I talking to this? I can't remember who it was. Uh, cultivated stupidity, we called it, uh, that... Matt Fraser good example of this, I think, actually, um... So Matt, in Ben Bergeron's book, Chasing Excellence, he tells this story about Matt was an engineering student, I think-
- WAWill Ahmed
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and he would make himself rote memorize entire textbooks word for word, and he would then sort of play them back in his head or maybe he was writing them out. If he missed one word, he would just make himself go back to the start. So this guy was very, very smart and very, very driven and very, very obsessed, but there is a kind of bone-headedness and almost simplicity that you need to turn up and do 90 minutes of zone two work because you think there's got to be a better way. Like, "I just need to sit on the rowing machine for 90 minutes?"
- WAWill Ahmed
Yeah.
- 1:19:31 – 1:32:14
Getting Trapped in Over-Optimisation
- WAWill Ahmed
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. D- one of the things that you were talking about earlier on, this sort of fear of failure, this, uh, you know, obsession with detail, but not beyond a point, I'm sure this is something that you consider the sort of health anxiety that's downstream, th- the perils of over-optimization. Being able to see why, you know, "Oh, my God, I didn't sleep very well last night," says my Whoop. "I feel kind of okay," but then I get in my head about that and, "God, I didn't hit my 10,000 steps today." There's a fucking step tracker on there now. Um, how do you come to think about, uh, using data to assist, to improve people, but not to be, uh, an object, uh, like a taskmaster or, or a, a prison that people can get trapped in?
- WAWill Ahmed
I, I think, uh, first and foremost, we view Whoop as a tool that anyone can use. You know, we don't view it as, uh, your master. We view it as a tool that, uh, can make you healthier or live longer or perform better. And the general sort of broad critique of, is more knowledge better, I've always rejected. I mean, you can go back to the printing press and people being like, "Oh, we c- we can't have the printing press. God forbid so many people have access to information." So, I, I think, eh, in almost every stage of human history, this rejection of people having more knowledge is, is, uh, is sort of a, a lazy analysis. Now, there's certain things from a technology design standpoint that we've done with that in mind. So, I've never believed that having a screen on the product actually, uh, made it a better tool. You know? And, and I've always thought that there's plenty of screens in the world, and do we really need one more screen that's giving you numbers that you're obsessing over and looking at and they're vibrating and alerting you? And so, in many ways, we designed the product to disappear into the background.
Episode duration: 1:54:26
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