Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin, the online real estate site. The corporate world “is pretty starved for personality,” he says. “So if you can really be your own self, even if it’s a little bit different, I think people are really drawn to that.”
To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times
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Bryant: What were some important early lessons for you?
Kelman: Two things influenced me the most. I’m an identical twin, and I felt that with my twin brother, we sort of formed this unassailable force and it gave me the confidence to be different. Even if I was a goofball, my twin brother was a goofball with me, so I didn’t have to worry about fitting in as much. I was able to march to my own drummer.
My parents were a big influence, too. My mother was a nurse, and my father was an engineer, but I just think they didn’t know how to fit in. Here’s just one example: We moved into this ritzy neighborhood in suburban Seattle for a little while. We were the only renters, and somebody came by to tell us that we had to mow the lawn, that there were these rules about how short the grass had to be. My dad decided that he wasn’t ever going to mow the lawn. I just felt like we really didn’t fit in in a lot of different ways, and I was constantly in embarrassing situations because of things they did. At one point, my dad used a machete to mow or really just hack back our lawn.
Eventually, I just decided that you couldn’t die of shame and that I could do whatever I wanted to. It made me less risk-averse, and gave me this confidence that I could be myself. I think the corporate world is pretty starved for personality. The reason you have comic strips like “Dilbert” and sitcoms like “The Office” is that people just can’t be genuine human beings in a corporate environment. So if you can really be your own self, even if it’s a little bit different, I think people are really drawn to that.
Bryant: Did you always want to go into business?
Kelman: I was sort of lost, because I wanted to study everything. At different points, I applied to graduate school. I got into medical school. I thought about being a writer. I thought about being an investment banker. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself. I think the thing that best suits me about being a C.E.O. is that you get to exercise many different talents and wear many different hats.
Bryant: So how did you get into the world of tech?
Kelman: When I was trying to write a novel, I ran out of money, and I was delivering packages on a bicycle. And I finally connected with these guys who started a software company, and almost serendipitously fell into that. I felt like they were goofy guys and that I was a goofy guy. It was just a really interesting, harrowing environment.
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