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Spencer Levy
It's not every day on this show that I get to introduce a guest who's braved something called the desert of death; survived temperatures of 40 degrees below zero or avoided being eaten by a bear. But on this episode, we welcome a man who's done all that and more. A road warrior whose challenging expeditions offer inspiring lessons filled with grit, courage and determination.
Rob Lilwall
One of the great things about an expedition which just simplifies life so much is, you have one very, very clear goal.
Spencer Levy
That's Rob Lilwall, author, motivational speaker, and above all, adventure traveler. His exploits include a 50,000 kilometer intercontinental bike ride, a six month hike across a sweltering desert and other daunting itineraries. Rob's chronicled his journeys on TV and in books such as Cycling Home from Siberia, Walking Home from Mongolia and Walking the Taklamakan, a punishing expanse in western China, known as, you guessed it, the Desert of Death. Coming up, Rob shares the wisdom of an ordinary guy who learned to thrive under extraordinary conditions. I'm Spencer Levy, and that's right now on The Weekly Take.
Spencer Levy
Welcome to The Weekly Take. And this week, we have an extraordinary adventurer joining us. Rob Lilwall, author of multiple books. Rob, welcome to the show.
Rob Lilwall
Hi, Great to be here. Thanks, Spencer.
Spencer Levy
Great to have you, and Rob, I think I've already described in the titles of your book a little bit about what you do, but describe a little bit more fully who you are and what you do.
Rob Lilwall
Okay. So I'm a Brit, originally from England, and right now I live in Singapore. I've lived in Asia for a little while now, but I've been on a number of pretty long expeditions. But the first one was a very long bicycle ride called Cycling Home from Siberia, which started right on the eastern edge of Siberia, Northeast Edge. And I cycled back to England, which took me three years via places like China, Australia, Afghanistan. So pretty wild, life changing trip. And I did that when I was in my twenties, it was my first big trip. And before that I was not in the military or in the Olympics or anything tough. I was just a high school teacher, so I really went on that trip. It was really a rite of passage. It wasn't intended to be a kind of career move. It was a “let's go and try and grow into a more capable person" sort of trip; out of my comfort zone. And that trip, to my surprise, I finished it and it sort of then led on to me doing this more for my work, and I ended up with a TV show and my first book, and then I did a second trip, which was Walking Home from Mongolia, which I think is the one you read, which was from Mongolia down to Hong Kong, because by then I had moved to Hong Kong, which was my new home. My wife is from Hong Kong, and so that was a six month walk, three and a half thousand miles, mostly through the middle of China. And then the third really hard expedition I did was through a desert called the Taklamakan desert in China. And that was just an intense 70 days of sand dunes and not a lot of people. So that was a very relatively solitary expedition. And then I've done a few other things in between, so…
Spencer Levy
The first thing I thought of when I was reading your terrific book, Walking Home from Mongolia, was the George Mallory quote about why he attempted to scale Mount Everest. And he said, Because it was there. Why did you attempt to actually succeed at bicycling from Siberia? Walking from Mongolia to China and your most latest adventure? What was the motivating idea?
Rob Lilwall
I found as I’ve got older and I've looked back, you know, I think as we get older, we sometimes understand our motives gradually in a deeper way. And I think when I set off on my first big bicycle trip, the Siberia one, I just thought I was going on a big adventure and I wanted to learn about the world. And that was sort of what I thought was driving me. So the young man's quest for an adventure. But I think as I went along on that journey, and certainly when I look back on it in hindsight, I think a deeper motivation was all about, I wanted to grow personally. I wanted to grow up. I wanted to grow into a more capable person when I went on that trip, I had just been a high school teacher. I wasn't, to be honest, I wasn't an amazing high school teacher in England. The kids, maybe in North America as well, the kids run circles around young teachers and I was really struggling as a teacher, really kind of wondering what am I doing with myself? And I was slightly taking the easy path in life. And suddenly a few things came together, which gave me the idea to do this big bicycle trip. And I think deep down I just desperately wanted to take on something really big and tough and grow through it. I think that was what drove me. I think later on, as I look at some of my more recent trips, like the desert I walked across, most recently I started to realize there was probably things like imposter syndrome coming into it, though. Sort of funny, driving forces as we got a bit older where we're trying to prove ourselves, and I sort of prove myself as an adventure and all sorts of interesting motivations starting to crop up and evolving as I went along.
Spencer Levy
Let's go back to the first one. When you bicycled from Siberia back to the UK. How did you do it? How did you pay for it? Were you sponsored? Tell us about the nitty gritty of how you actually pulled it off.
Rob Lilwall
The money question is always a good one to start with. There are certain types of expedition which are very expensive. Like if you want to go to the South Pole, if you want to climb Everest, you're looking at hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. You're going to need sponsors. When you go on a bicycle trip, even when it's going through quite extreme places like jungles and Siberia in the winter, you don't actually need a lot of money. So that whole trip for three years, I had about $15,000, which was my life savings at the time. I did earn a little bit as I went along, but basically I lived cheap. When I started that trip, I was with a friend, and we cycled through Siberia. We bought a bunch of clothes on eBay, probably not the best quality clothes, but it kept us alive. We got to Japan and so we cycled there, we got a ferry across to Japan and we were a bit worried about Japan because here in central Japan it's quite an expensive country and we were a bit worried about that. And then my friend said, oh no, no, Japan's not a very expensive country as long as you never buy anything. So basically we just bought instant noodles. You know, instant noodles are like a dollar each. In Japan, you get free hot water in the gas stations and so it's literally five or ten bucks a day. You live in a tent hiding behind a tree beside the road, and you can live. When you're a young person, you can live so cheap on those trips. So that was how I afforded it. Obviously, bicycle very cheap to run. I'd have to do a bit of maintenance on the bike, but that was pretty cheap and really I didn't plan the whole thing out ahead of time. Like three years is too long. It was really, I kind of plan the first bit to get from Siberia to Japan, and when I got to Japan, I was thinking, okay, Japan to Korea. And so planning it a few months ahead all the time and being quite flexible about how I adapted as I went through each place that came up next.
Spencer Levy
Coming back from Siberia, you go back to the UK and then you say, okay, I'm a high school teacher and now I'm an adventurer. What do I do? What was your next step? You say, I'm going to do this; become a professional adventurer.
Rob Lilwall
It was a gradual transition because it was such a surprise. It was a difficult time when I got back from that trip because I think one of the great things about an expedition, which just simplifies life so much, is you have one very, very clear goal. Like on that trip I was trying to cycle home and it's such a wonderful thing to have such a clear and tangible goal. And I find by now I'm a bit older, I'm running a business, got a family and everything. There's so many different things I'm trying to achieve. Life is a very much more overwhelming thing. But on that trip, very simple goal. Get back to England. And I got back to England. When I got back, I was a little bit lost because I had this very clear goal, but I hadn't really thought about what was next. I thought I'd probably go back to teaching, but then I had a lucky break, where as I went along, I sometimes gave speeches in schools as I went, and it sort earned me $100 to pay for the ramen noodles. And I got to give a talk in Italy and an international school, and I've been self filming the trip. I just bought a camcorder. This was like 2007, so it's a little while ago. I just had a camcorder, filmed the trip for fun. Showed a few clips from my video in these school talks. End of one of these talks in an international school in Europe, a kid put up a hand and said, What are you going to do with your video? And I said, nothing. You know, I'm just sort of filming it. I had no conception about aspiring to TV or anything. This child went home, told her dad he was the CEO of National Geographic TV Network at the time, sent me this email and suddenly, like all these doors opened and they made the show. It wasn't like a super high budget show, but it got me sort of into that new world. I got a book deal and then I married a girl who I'd actually met on the trip. So that was another sort of, I've got that girl in Hong Kong, I get married, we move to Hong Kong, and suddenly in Hong Kong I started getting invited to corporate events. It was sort evolved. I was the shy kid at school who never put his hand up in lessons when I was a kid. So the last thing I ever thought of doing was motivational speaking. And then just these various doors opened up in it and it ended up suddenly going from a part time job then, now it's basically my full time work is speaking and writing and from time to time, doing a wild adventure.
Spencer Levy
Well, I read your second book, the Walking Home from Mongolia. You had some health issues on that trip. Your feet. You may have had a broken foot, you didn't even know it, and you had to work your way through that. Tell us about the highs and lows of that trip. Give me your biggest high, your biggest moment of doubt.
Rob Lilwall
Well, starting with the lows on that trip. One of them was, I got a pretty bad foot injury about six weeks into the trip. And in a way that did come out of complacency. I often say the biggest danger on an expedition, maybe in life, is when we start getting complacent. When I set off on that trip, I did a lot of stretching because walking is pretty brutal on your body, carrying a 20 or 30, 70 pound pack, pretty, pretty bruising on your body. And I stretched every morning, every evening, just like my physiotherapist had told me for about the first five weeks. And then I started getting a bit complacent thinking I'd toughened up. I don’t, I don’t have time to stretch. We are on such a heavy schedule. I stopped stretching as much as I said, and suddenly I've got this quite serious foot injury which left me limping for about six weeks. And that's a massive lesson about self-care. It's always tempting to skimp on self-care when we're under a lot of pressure, but it's massively counterproductive because suddenly you're going to metaphorically or literally get an injury. We also had an issue with the cameras at one point. Again, that was probably, we were so busy with trying to do too much, a bit of complacency, a bit of trying to have too many goals on an expedition that caused problems. The highs on that one, I mean, China is a spectacular country. And when you get away from the cities, there's almost no tourists. It was like in six months, I think I saw one or two tourists apart from in a couple of tourist areas I went through. On ground level, walked through China, staying in villages, climbing through mountains, walking across deserts, swimming in the rivers. And it was just a very, very beautiful country to walk through.
Spencer Levy
Let's talk about the lessons that you might suggest to the real estate community, to the business community. I know you're a big motivational speaker. Tell us how you tie all of these adventures into lessons that the business community can use.
Rob Lilwall
The two broad things which I really had to grow in, in my journey is to use corporate words. The first was bouncing back when I had a setback, so I got kind of knocked over when I had an injury or when the weather went bad or when I met a bad person. I had to bounce back up. We could call that resilience. The ability to bounce back, get knocked over. You bounce back, get not only bounce back. The other thing I needed was the ability to bounce forward, which is a bit more forward looking, adapting to new environments, sometimes pivoting my course as new opportunities opened up and I'd call that agility. So the bounce back was resilience. The bounce forward was agility, and to develop those things on the journey just to kind of corporate, psychological term on it, was the growth mindset. It was a massive first lesson, it was on the first journey when I went into Siberia in the start of winter in September of that year, I went into Siberia. I was with a friend and the Russians we met and started to warn us that we were heading into a very dangerous environment, which we sort of knew. But they were very, very worried about us. And they said, ig you keep cycling down this road to Siberia, the winter is coming. It’s September, you're going to freeze to death. And then other Russians said, no, no, you're going to be eaten by a bear. Another Russian said, no, no, you're going to be killed by the people in the wilderness. Very dangerous. I was very worried. We kept going into this winter. The temperature got colder and colder, went all the way down to -40 degrees. And if you had said to me a year before I did this journey that I would be living at -40 Fahrenheit, -40 Centigrade is where the two scales meet. If you'd said to me a year before I would be living at -40, I would have said, no way. There's no way that I could survive at -40. But then we were able to survive at -40, by getting advice from people about how to survive before we set off, by preparing a bit and then by practicing when the temperature was minus ten, -20, -30. We kept on practicing and we did learn how to survive at -40. And that was a massive lesson for me about our ability to learn. I was able to learn to do something which I never thought I would be able to do. And that really changed the course of my life. And just like in my own work example at the moment, this is a business example. A little while ago I realized in my business I do a lot of speaking with the speaking business. You get inquiries and you have to sort of pitch to your potential clients about whether you are good speaker of their events. And I was realizing I was losing a lot of my pitches because I just felt, I'm not very good at pitching. That's my weak point. I had a sort of fixed mindset. I'm not very good at pitching my speeches. And so I started to think, I've got to have a growth mindset about this. And so I thought, I need to find a coach, so I found a sales coach. I started doing weekly role plays where they help me practice how to do my pitches. And my close rate, before that, my close rate was about 60% when I had an inquiry. Since then, my close rate has been 100% because I just switched from like, I'm not very good at the sales part of this job into, I can learn how to do this. That sort of lesson really changed my life.
Spencer Levy
Let's pull the lens out and let’s have a little fun and talk about two of the other books you mention, or two pop culture references, which was, you compared Orlando Bloom and Jason Statham in your book. Tell us a little bit about that.
Rob Lilwall
Okay. This was a little while ago. So, yeah, basically, I did that second walk I did with a friend. A young, Irish cameraman who was filming the trip. We were filming that trip for Nat Geo as well, but it was just us. There wasn't like the whole big production crew and helicopters. It was just me and Leon, just basically six months on our own, trying to figure out how to make a TV show and sending back these hard drives and Leon's way of directing because we both like these movies, it's sort of, choose a character who I had to look like at a certain moment. So of course, Orlando Bloom has got a wonderful, what we would call a middle distance stare when he was an elf. It's sort of always be looking into the distance with his elf eyes. So sometimes when Leon wanted me to look particularly epic, looking across the Great Wall or whatever, he’d say, Get right, give me an Orlando. So I have to have this sort of Orlando-like face. You know, without the good looks, I would try and do, looking at the Great Wall. And then when he wanted me to look sort of, I think we got it confused but ready for action, that was Jason Statham. And so when there's like something exciting look confused but ready for action, it's like Jason Statham and so that would be that. So you know it was I mean, humor is so important, isn't it? You know, I was in the sort of furnace of a hard expedition. I know you guys in your corporate world, corporate real estate, there's all sorts of big challenges at the moment, a big uncertainty, and it's a bit of a furnace. And we need to have that humor and to find funny jokes. And they might be silly in-jokes like that, which to actually make a difference to a team, to ourselves when it feels so absurd and so difficult. We have to laugh at ourselves and laugh at life, really.
Spencer Levy
Well, one of the big challenges we're facing today, just to name one that you're keenly aware of, is coming out of the pandemic, the real estate world hasn't, certainly the office world, hasn't recovered. Certainly not as much as we would have liked, certainly not as quickly as we would like. And a lot of our clients have to pivot as a result, whether they have turned them into apartment buildings, whether they put more capital in, whether they give them back to the banks. What do you say to our clients right now who are dealing with some of the biggest challenges of their careers coming out of COVID and lessons learned from your journeys?
Rob Lilwall
There are various practices that I find very, very helpful when I'm going through a really tough situation. And some of them are more like kind of mindsets where you have to say something to yourself, like, I can learn how to do this, we can learn how to get through this. Sometimes I say to myself, although I'm on my own, on my expeditions, very often, I can't make it on my own. And that's been one of my huge lessons, has been learning to reach out to people when things feel like they're getting really tough, try to talk to all the right people and on an expedition that might be the research side of it, of like, how am I going to get through this jungle? How am I going to survive this particular country? It might be managing the risks? Like before I went to Afghanistan, I had to talk to people who live there to find out, you know, which parts of it were safer. And it might be getting connected to the right person so that we can actually get what we need to done. So like when I was looking for a boat, I would meet one person that introduced me to the next, the next. That was when I was hitchhiking on boats to get down to Australia. And I think just remembering that we don't have to make it on our own. Remembering that we need the help of others to make it. And that's I know what CBRE is partly all about. It’s really, really key in these tough times, is don't try and make it on your own. Don't think you're on your own. You're not on your own. Reach out to people, to your peers, to your mentor figures may maybe experts, to people who can connect you to other people who can help you, and to really figure out a way forward through talking a lot with other people, I think is very key on expedition, and I think in a lot of industries these days.
Spencer Levy
One of the lessons I try to teach our rising professionals is, yes, the market is very difficult. Yes, this may be the first time you're experiencing something this challenging, but this is the time when you're going to A, learn the most and B, create the greatest value for your clients. What do you think?
Rob Lilwall
It's funny. When I look back on my expeditions, people say, what was your favorite country or whatever is a question I often get. And it's a really hard question because every one is nice and in a different way. But sometimes I think my favorite memories from my journeys are the really, really hard places. Like when I was in Siberia and it was -40, when I was lost in the jungle in Papua New Guinea, when I was in this desert surrounded by sand for hundreds of miles. Those are really tough times, when you look back on those situations, they always are great memories of learning and to have stepped up and to have been a courageous person in a very difficult situation is a very satisfying thing. So sometimes, like my latest expedition, which was in this big sandy desert, everything went wrong in that trip and it really went wrong. And I had to change my routes. And at one point I was very close to quitting, but somehow I kept going. And what I think happened in that moment of near failure is, I just thought, I'm going to stop worrying about the end result. Obviously the end result matters. I'm trying to get to my goal. I'm just going to worry about taking the next ten steps, taking the next ten steps, really doing the next right thing absolutely right. And every fear I face, every danger face, every challenge, I thought, I'm just going to worry about getting through this particular thing as best as I possibly can. And that was very liberating for me when it felt like everything had gone out of control. And that was really very, very helpful for me.
Spencer Levy
But what you said is something that we hear all the time and I agree with completely in business is, you can't focus solely on the outcome. You have to focus on the preparation, which is what you talked about, Rob, with respect to the time you stopped stretching your foot, but also the process that you follow. The process will lead to the outcome. But if you focus on the outcome, you might not get there. Is that a lesson you've learned from your trips?
Rob Lilwall
Yes. The only nuance I'd give to the preparation part, with this is really specifically for expeditions, but sometimes for business plans as well, is we meet so many people who say, oh yeah, when I was younger I was really hoping to do that and then I started preparing and I never did it. And there's a real danger we can spend so long preparing for an expedition that you never set off. And usually my expeditions, I spend 3 to 6 months getting ready, and usually that's sort of fairly part time. And then you just have to go for it, sort of Indiana Jones style, making it up as you go along and having that jersey. And it's a really hard balance to get. But if you over-prepare so, you know, life, especially if it's an expedition, you might end up getting married, having kids or whatever, and suddenly are never going to do it until you retire. And so, it's an interesting balance, yeah.
Spencer Levy
And I think you said a lot of interesting things there. One of them I would put in the words that you hear a lot in business, which is that perfect is the enemy of the good. You're never going to have a perfect plan. Sometimes you just got to go. And it also brings up another terrific book, which I'm going to send you after we're done here. It's a terrific book. It was about Teddy Roosevelt and it was called The River of Doubt. Have you read that book, Rob?
Rob Lilwall
No, I like Roosevelt, though, so…
Spencer Levy
Well it was after he was president. After he was president, he was invited to chart an uncharted river in South America. It almost killed him on the trip. He had to have surgery on the side of the road. You know, it was like a madcap type of adventure, if madcap is the right word for almost dying on the side of the road. But he just went for it. And this is after he was president.
Rob Lilwall
After he was president.
Spencer Levy
Quite a story of how sometimes doing is better than fearing doing. Is that a fair statement?
Rob Lilwall
Yeah, I think yeah, nearly always. But I guess always, there's this nuance of like, unless you actually die. Well.
Spencer Levy
Well, I hate to go so big on that, but it's really important that people do these big things even at their own risk. And some people say, no, no, no, it's not worth it. Why would you do it? What do you say to those people, Rob?
Rob Lilwall
Whoa, I mean, I again, I face that question myself. I face that, you know, you do face the guilt. It's appropriate to feel a bit guilty when you're off on an expedition and your parents are worrying about you and so there is a selfish side to it, and I think it's good when adventurers are honest about that. Personally, I think, I mean, I think it's important, maybe especially for young people to go out, and adventuring can be a way to face your demons, to sort of grow up, to develop oneself. I think that can be very important. Personally, I've got two little kids now, who I had after my last expedition. Personally, I found that having kids is the scariest thing you're ever going to do by far. But it also, it really changed my risk profile. And personally, I wouldn't do the sort of expeditions I used to do. I have got new ideas for new expeditions, but they'll be in a slightly different category to my old, really kind of life and death ones, because that's just sort of how I see it. Sometimes you've got to say, actually, that's too risky, given my responsibilities. When you're younger, obviously you've still got a lot of people who love you, but I think there's a little bit more space to take those risks. But I made a conscious decision actually, when I was just getting into adventuring, not to get into mountains because there's so much out of your control on a mountain. One false grip and you're dead or one avalanche. It's just the stakes are so high and it's so addictive and you've got to be so good at turning back. And adventurers aren’t always good at turning back when you know you've got to turn back. Whereas I find the type of expeditions I do, there's a bit more control over them and the dangers are still high, but it's different sort of dangers. And I asked this question in my talk sometimes. I'm telling the stories of when I just caught malaria, I've been robbed, I've met snakes, I'd just encountered cyclones or extreme weather. And I say to my audience, okay, let's vote. What's the biggest danger I’ve faced on this three year bicycle ride? Is it disease, weather, people, animals or something else? And everybody votes. And occasionally somebody says something else. But often, even in really high powered audiences, people won't say what actually was the biggest danger by far, which was the traffic. And it's so easy to get caught up in certain types of fear, like, oh, I'm so afraid of these bears, or I'm so afraid of the dangerous people. When on a bicycle trip, statistically, by far, your biggest danger is probably a perfectly nice person looking at a mobile phone as they're driving down the road and hitting you. Fear is such an interesting thing because it’s a very helpful thing. It warns us about potential dangers which are coming up, and it's actually quite a good thing to be afraid of the cold weather because it motivates you to prepare. But it can be a very distorting thing and it can amplify certain things as being much more dangerous than they actually are and make you miss what the real dangers actually are. And I always say the way to overcome all fear is not to ignore it. You don't try and overcome it by willpower. You try to understand it. You ask yourself, how really dangerous is this? Who can I talk to about it? How can I reduce the danger and kind of getting vulnerable with our fears, I think, is very, very important.
Spencer Levy
In addition to your adventures, your books, you are one of the most prominent motivational speakers out there. I'm trying to ask every question that an audience member might ask. What are some of the questions I didn't ask that you frequently get from your audiences?
Rob Lilwall
You've asked a lot of good questions. I think there are some interesting questions about whether it's good to travel alone or with others. That's an interesting question. There's a good side to both. I think alone, in a way, there's more personal growth. You've got to really own your decisions, but with a friend, you're able to enjoy yourself more. Another question, I think is an interesting thing about people. Like often when we think about certain places in the world where we've never been, often some of the things we've heard about them might have been negative stories, and that makes them seem like quite a scary place. Like for example, I've never been to Brazil. When I think of going to Brazil immediately, even though I've done so much traveling, I get a bit worried, like oh, I've heard that there's lots of street crime in Brazil, that sounds a bit scary. And it's exactly the same almost everywhere you go, you will find people saying, oh, you, you know, and these days people say you can't cycle across America, because, you know, there’s all this gun crime in America, it’s too dangerous, and everywhere you want to go, you're going to hear a lot of horror stories. But what I actually find is nearly everywhere you go, nearly everyone you meet is pretty nice. I'm not saying everyone is, and I'd say especially in rural areas, tends to be cities generally are less friendly. Just everyone's busy, but almost everywhere you go, people tend to be very friendly in the rural areas, and generally, most people have been pretty nice. And that I think is a really interesting, helpful thing to remember. This is a sort of a broader lesson, again, relating to fear, that our perception of a place can be quite wrong until we actually go there.
Spencer Levy
What would you say is the glue that makes people similar? If you can put some of these common elements together from your journeys of people across different countries and cultures, what might they be?
Rob Lilwall
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of commonalities. You know, people react well when you smile at them and you’re sort of smiling and trying to be friendly, I think goes a long way anywhere. I think the fact that I was an outsider, probably, you know, it does make people more friendly in a lot of situations. But I think people like helping people who are on epic quests, you know. It’s that whole thing like, why do people love Lord of the Rings? You know, we love an epic quest. And when you see somebody who's on an epic quest, even if it's a bit, you know, eccentric or whatever, we kind of all want to help that sort of person. And especially in a village environment, people feel a bit less threatened than in a city where you get sort of real intensity of humanity gathered. It's amazing how even I can't, I don't have time to learn all the languages of all the countries I go through, but you could still communicate. You mime a bit, and you can sort of somehow make yourself understood that you need to fill up your water bottle or whatever. And it's like when somebody asks us directions in the street, we're going to want to help them unless we're in a real hurry. And that's, I think, a good part of humans that we do actually want to help each other.
Spencer Levy
We talked about going it alone versus collaborating with others. You have examples of both in your stories. What are the pros and cons of each and what do you prefer?
Rob Lilwall
If you want to talk just about expeditions, it's good to do your first few journeys with friends. It's kind of safer and a bit less scary. I think when you're with other people, you can enjoy things more. Climbing a mountain, it's kind of fun to celebrate with a friend or whatever. But being alone, I think it pushes you out of your comfort zone, I find, a lot more, when you're in an extreme environment, and you've really got to make the decisions by yourself. You've got to face your fears by yourself. You've got to keep forcing yourself to keep going by yourself. And that's a very profound and difficult thing. But I think it's really, really important. I think in a way, it's easier interacting with people across cultures if you're on your own, because when you're two of you, you look a bit like two people who are sort of on a trip together talking to each other. But when you're on your own, people are much more likely to come and talk to you, to invite you to stay because you seem like you need to talk to someone, you're a bit less intimidating on your own. So I think there's pros and cons of both.
Spencer Levy
Just relating that very quickly to the business context, I don't think there is anybody out there that would say you don't need a great team around you to build anything. But, if you take a look at some of the great entrepreneurs in current and world history, they started with a simple idea, many of them out of their parents' garage. And so, maybe there's a time and a place for both. Is that a fair way to put it?
Rob Lilwall
Absolutely. Yeah. I think. Yeah. I mean, I love people like Cal Newport and his book “Deep Work” of just making sure you have quality time on one's own. Really just using your brain on your personal challenge is really, really important for creativity.
Spencer Levy
So, Rob, on behalf of The Weekly Take, I want to thank you for joining our show. I loved your book, Walking Home from Mongolia. I'm going to now go buy your book Cycling Home from Siberia. Looking forward to reading your next one. Rob Lilwall, thank you for joining The Weekly Take.
Rob Lilwall
Thanks, Spencer. Great to be with you.
Spencer Levy
For more on Rob Lilwall and other related content, please visit our Website, CBRE.com/TheWeeklyTake. Use the Talk to Us button to let us know what you thought of this show, and I promise I'll never complain about a road trip ever again. And also, don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you listen. We'll be back with our own everyday adventures in commercial real estate, sitting down with a serial entrepreneur whose latest vision is to disrupt the restaurant business and more. For now, thanks for joining us. I'm Spencer Levy. Be smart. Be safe. Be well.
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