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Which billionaire was homeless?

The son of the late Heinz Berggruen, one of postwar Europe's most celebrated art dealers and collectors, the 60-year-old Berggruen grew up in France and made his fortune in America. For a time, he was known as the “homeless billionaire” because he didn't have a fixed address and lived out of luxury hotels.

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“Just close your eyes. We’re almost there. Well, not quite. But soon.”

Nicolas Berggruen was trying to be helpful. We were in the Santa Monica Mountains, climbing the aptly named Serpentine Road in a Mercedes S.U.V. being driven by Berggruen’s personal assistant, a cheerful Frenchman named Cyril. I was riding shotgun and furiously scrolling on my iPhone, trying to ignore the fact that we were on a heavily rutted road with few guardrails, hundreds of feet above the 405 freeway. Berggruen, a German American investor and philanthropist, was in the back seat with the acclaimed landscape architect Mia Lehrer, whom he had enlisted to help with the project that had brought us here. The day before, I had confessed my dislike of heights while visiting Berggruen at his condominium, which is on one of the top floors of Sierra Towers, a luxury West Hollywood address. (He owns several units in the building.) Now, as Cyril navigated a switchback, Berggruen, sensing that I was dying up in the front seat, suggested in his softly accented voice that I not look. His concern seemed genuine, and I felt a little guilty that I found myself thinking sourly about rich people and their apparent need to always claim the highest ground. I also couldn’t help wondering why, with his vast fortune — said to be in the low billions — Berggruen didn’t just use a helicopter to get up the mountain. A few moments later, after another sharp turn, we reached our destination, a plateau not far from the Getty Center. Here Berggruen plans to construct what he half-jokingly describes as a “secular monastery,” a campus where scholars affiliated with the think tank that he founded, the Berggruen Institute, will live, work, cogitate. The 450-acre property, known informally to Berggruen and his staff as Monteverdi (they haven’t decided on an official name), will be centered around a building designed by a group that includes the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, famed for the Bird’s Nest Olympic venue in Beijing. According to Berggruen, he purchased the land in 2014 for $15 million. But he has yet to break ground on the project, which has drawn resistance from nearby residents. If completed, this spot overlooking Los Angeles will become the de facto seat of what might be called an empire of the mind. The son of the late Heinz Berggruen, one of postwar Europe’s most celebrated art dealers and collectors, the 60-year-old Berggruen grew up in France and made his fortune in America. For a time, he was known as the “homeless billionaire” because he didn’t have a fixed address and lived out of luxury hotels. In the late 2000s, dissatisfied with his career in finance, Berggruen began privately studying philosophy and political theory with a couple of U.C.L.A. professors. Soon after that, he established the Berggruen Institute. A prolific networker, Berggruen has recruited so many prominent names to the institute’s roster of supporters and advisers — Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman, Arianna Huffington and Fareed Zakaria are among those listed on the organization’s website — that it has been described as his own personal Davos.

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Is there more to life than work?

But it is important to remember that we don't live to work, we work so that we can live. Even though work is a big part of our time, there is more to life than work. We work so that we can live happier, fulfilled, more engaged lives.

It is so easy to get caught up in the day to day of work. Most of us work at least 5 days a week and 8-10 hours a day, some of us work even more than that. It’s not hard to see why we can sometimes feel like work is the only thing we are doing in life. But it is important to remember that we don’t live to work, we work so that we can live. Even though work is a big part of our time, there is more to life than work. We work so that we can live happier, fulfilled, more engaged lives. Outside of work is love, passions, hobbies, family, pets, travel, etc… Whether you love your job or hate your job, at the end of the day it is not the only thing happening in your life. Remember what you are working for. Get my free training series to create powerful Employee Experiences in your organization.

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