Andy Wirth
Appearances
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Yeah, they're not plausible. They're not possible. They're lunacy and more.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
I just love getting into the backcountry. And I did that many times alone, just solo hiking back there.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
I got in so much trouble with Nodby, which I didn't care at all about him and getting in trouble with him. It was something I found great pleasure in, actually, by the time I left.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
These areas, Ryan, are beautiful. They are absolutely gorgeous and beautiful. And, you know, if you go to parts of Arizona and you see high mountain desert and you see the mountainous areas, whether they be Red Rock or other, they're still starkly beautiful. This area is beautiful.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
If you and I had gone to Moab, Utah in the 30s before mountain-cut bikes were even conceived of, this is what that was like. It was warm because it was June, July, August. I didn't mind that. But it was intriguing. I thought it was beautiful. And to go in there and to destroy it made no sense. And frankly, I quickly became quite angered about the whole deal.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Not only was it creative stupid, it was creative destructively stupid. What was the thing that would have destroyed it the most? Of the top 10, vault number one, the lake number two, number three, some of the other smaller, if you will, developments, the hospitality properties. It's so much in the way of high explosives and destruction of a landscape that it's hard to even conceive of.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
I found out from some of the folks close to the royal family that the crown prince had spent many of his formative years around this area. And so I started developing an appeal to him directly, to MBS, to shut down some of these things that were just lunatic and appeal to his direct sensibilities on this and maybe a place that had fond childhood memories.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
So I started crafting a message to go directly to him, to Mohammed bin Salman,
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Word got out, and he absolutely, bleeding from his eyeballs, screaming.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Oh, yeah. To your face. Yeah, which happened all the time with me, and it didn't matter to me. I made the mistake of laughing at him a couple times because he was actually funny to watch doing this kind of in his mode. But yeah, it drove him batshit crazy when I advanced that thought.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Because there was just no way I could get this two-page document rationalizing a different approach to the mountain region. I could not get that to the Crown Prince without going through Nodmy's desk.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Being CEO of this region, yeah, I saw myself as with science, math, modeling, good sense, and more. Some of my experiences injected into this effort to be able to change a little bit of direction. If not a little bit, change the directions of some of them, some of the elements within Neon Mountain.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Not at all. In fact, it was the exact opposite. Shut up, execute. Rationalize, execute.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
They'd say, Andy, haven't you heard? You carry two buckets over here. One's filled with gold and one's filled with horse s***. It's only when the horse s*** outweighs the gold that you reconsider working here. And I was indifferent about the money, the gold. I was indifferent. But the horse s*** piled up pretty quickly in my bucket.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
It was in the neighborhood of maybe a month and a half, two months.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Oh yeah. And that's, I'm actually probably being generous.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
There was, gosh, a couple months into it, we had these, I think, there's something like a town hall meeting.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
It was, if each of the sector heads don't spend the money that was allocated in this quote-unquote fiscal year, it'll be brought for the founding board to explain why. And for this fiscal year, calendar year, I think I was supposed to have spent $600 or $700 million. $600 or $700 million.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
And I can feasibly conceive of a way to expend that sum of money between July and the end of that year.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Oh, you know, even in our country, you have the government approach to if you don't, you know, spend it or lose it. But it was, I think it was honestly an embarrassment to nod me. It was an expression of progress to have expended these funds. And therefore, if they weren't expended, that would be a very direct indication of a lack of progress.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Consultants and master planners and subcontractors to feed the master planning process.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
It was full-on The Shining, Jack Nicholson-type stuff.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
I never even conceived that of somebody in a leadership role having this disposition. I didn't think it would actually ever exist. I never thought I'd actually see it.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
The impact it had on everybody in the organization was one of constant fear. Constantly, anywhere near his presence, walking on eggshells and or ice. You just didn't know if it was going to break through and he was going to lose his shit.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
They were intriguing. They were extremely creative. Extremely out there. And I'm an open-minded fella. Some of them seemed outlandish. Some of them seemed very creative.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
My first thought was, huh, who's going to come here for this? Why would you actually go to Saudi Arabia from anywhere to go to this? It just didn't make any sense. Did you think it looked cool? No. I thought it looked ludicrous. It looks inane. It was actually, let me go straight to it, it looked idiotic.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Talk about the palaces. So you ask about the palaces, but you have to bundle them together with the mansions. I found out that we were to build, I think it was a neighborhood of 40 mansions and 15 palaces in the mountain environment.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Because there was no demand model. There's no sensibility to it. So honestly, it was an extremely perfect, more of the same stupidity way of thinking that seemed to permeate the project.