Chip Conley joined the tiny tech start-up Airbnb nearly a decade ago after a successful career as a boutique hotel company founder and CEO. He was twice the age of the average Airbnb employee which earned him the title "Airbnb's Modern Elder" who was as curious as he was wise. As the internal mentor to the young Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Chip got to see the value of intergenerational collaboration in a company that has now grown to be the most valuable hospitality company in the world. His bestselling book "Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder" is a testament to rethinking the value of having 5 generations in the workplace and why more companies are doing their best to encourage their older workers to stay in the workplace longer. Chip's Modern Elder Academy has more than 2,000 alums who've come to the Mexican beachfront campus and MEA will be opening two campuses in Santa Fe, New Mexico soon.

Where to find Chip Conley

Website: www.modernelderacademy.com

• Facebook: Chip Conley
• LinkedIn: Chip Conley

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with Chip, transformational experience at MEA, et cetera.

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After the sale of his boutique hotel Branch, Joie de Vivre, chip

Conley joined Airbnb as their internal mentor and was called their

modern elder due to his curiosity.

In addition to his wisdom Chip's, Modern Elder Academy in Baja, also

known as MEA, has more than 2000 alums who've come to the breathtaking

Mexican beachfront campus.

MEA will be opening two campuses in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2020.

We talk about what he thought he would do while in business school,

what he learned from mentoring others at Airbnb, and what's ahead for MEA.

Now, let's get right into it.

So as an undergrad at Stanford, after my freshman year, I

worked in Washington DC and I think my greatest dream early in college was to

potentially run for office someday, maybe be the mayor of San Francisco, who knows?

And I then worked in Washington for the summer, like I didn't like that a lot.

I saw how politics works and how dirty it is.

You get down the mud with the pigs and you end up dirty and then second

half of my undergrad, I really focused on business and I wanted to be an

entrepreneur, and I went into business school straight out of undergrad.

I worked during my undergrad as well during business school.

I knew that I wanted to go into the commercial real estate business.

I sort of, I wanted to be like commercial real estate meets Walt Disney.

I was born five miles from Disneyland in Orange County, California.

And so there was a part of me that always was intrigued by Walt Disney's Vision.

So I wanted to do,

It's making sense about what I know about you.

That's wonderful.

Yeah.

Finish your thought.

So, creative commercial development was

what I wanted to do, and yeah.

I, that's what I have done.

Yeah.

So when you were building Joie de Vivre.

How did you discover.

And develop the ideas that made you stand out to people like me, but your

customers and differentiate yourselves such as what you shared with us at

MEA, the customer and employee Journeys built the top Maslow's hierarchy.

Yeah.

How did you come to that?

Even though I only took one psychology class in college, psychology

one, what I really appreciated about psychology was it's valuable your whole

life unless you're just surrounded by robots because you're understanding how

humans minds work, including your own.

And what I was so surprised by in business schools, how little psychology we learned.

And then what I was surprised by as when I started a company at

age 26, was how few people really.

Knew much about humans.

In the leadership world.

So I was from an early age as a CEO at age 26, I was really fascinated by the, the

intersection of psychology and business.

So as I grew my company, I was fascinated by Abraham Maslow's

hierarchy of needs and how you might.

Take that iconic psychology theory and apply it to, in our case, the three most

important stakeholders, our employees, our customers, and our investors.

And so I created a pyramid for each of those three stakeholders based upon that.

And, and I guess more than anything, what I came to realize is that companies

that actually operate from the peak of the pyramid as opposed to the

base of the pyramid, are better able to differentiate themselves and not

become a commodity and create loyalty.

Whether it's loyalty to turn your employees, your

customers, or your investors.

It sounds to me like you were a very mature 26, 27,

28 year old, would you say that?

I would say I was very mature in terms of my ambition.

I was not very mature on the dance floor or in my dating habits or

in a variety of other things.

Interesting.

That's interesting.

So you really formulated this idea.

You didn't have coaches, teachers, mentors, kind of hammering.

Yeah.

Into wonderful.

You're a pioneer.

So, well, but I did, what I will say is that when I was in my early

to mid thirties, I reached out to Herb Kelleher at Southwests to be my mentor.

And of course he said no, but he said through his assistant,

said, if you write me a, a letter once a year, I'll answer it.

And assuming that they're, you know, reasonable questions.

And so from afar, my mentor was Herb Kellerher, the founder

of, founding CEO of Southwest.

And would he have agreed with you about psychology not being

studied, people not being studied, and did he share that passion with you?

He did, and he also shared a passion around culture.

He said the most important differentiator for any company is their culture.

And he spoke about Peter Drucker's famous quote, which is, culture

eats strategy for breakfast.

And so part of the reason I actually did reach out to Herb Kellerher

originally is because the airline industry had notoriously bad cultures.

But Southwest Airlines evidently based upon what we saw from the flight

attendants and just from the spirit of of the, the company had a great culture.

So that's part of the reason I reached out to him as a.

Okay.

So moving down the line, in your career, you mentored the founder of a Airbnb

and many of the employees for eight years after the sale of your hotels.

I wanna know what you learned from your time there.

Yeah, yeah.

It was actually all three founders, but especially Brian, the CEO, and co-founder.

I'm a big believer in mutual mentorship, so mutual mentorship.

I also call it being a mentor.

A mentor, and an intern at the same time.

What this really speaks to is the idea that we're constantly able to learn

from others and they can learn from us.

There's a reciprocity to this.

So what I learned from Brian and the over a hundred mentees I had at Airbnb,

Seven and a half to eight years was, I think more than anything, I learned

a lot about the technology world, not just my iPhone and all the uses of

my iPhone that I didn't know existed.

All the, the apps, et cetera.

But more just how do you develop a website that's sticky and friendly,

and how do you build a digital company Because I was a bricks and mortar boutique

hotelier who created 52 boutique hotels around California, but didn't have

any background in the tech industry.

I think I also learned a lot about millennial lifestyle habits and

travel habits, which I actually think are so relevant to boomers like me.

They don't believe that millennials don't really believe in the three stage

life of you earn till you're 20 or 25.

You learn till you're, I'm sorry, you learn till you're 20, 25.

You earn until your 60 or 65 and you retire till you

die, or adjourn till you die.

They're like, you know what?

Everything's episodic.

It's not linear.

So you might actually go get a master's in your mid thirties or take a year long

gap year or write a book or who knows.

And also the fact that at Airbnb I learned so much about how millennials

really wanted to live like a local, and I learned a lot about remote work or

you know, what we used to call digital nomads, which you don't hear that

term nearly as much as pre pandemic.

You heard digital nomads.

Now we just say remote work as a broader category, but the idea that people

could actually live and work on the road, which was some of Airbnb's core

business users made a lot of sense.

So, I learned a ton, and I think that is why they called me the

modern elder at Airbnb as someone who is as curious as he was wise.

Yes, and I think based on my experience with the

Modern Elder Academy website, I see.

And I'm surprised and delighted at your digital functionality and your speaking.

You know, I'm not a millennial.

I have one, and that is, you're right, they're all over the place.

They just get, do whatever it is that they wanna do, whenever they wanna do it.

Which I admire.

But yeah, the site and the way that you incorporate that with your brick and

mortar and in-person experience is really dialed in beautifully in my opinion.

No, and we have a long way to go.

We're gonna be doing that this summer, a complete revamp of it.

But yeah, it serves us pretty well and we're growing into Santa Fe,

New Mexico next year with a 2,600 acre regenerative horse ranch.

And we gotta like up our game on our website and, and our

customer journey to adapt.

So we're gonna move on to the segue of Modern Elder Academy.

You have a beautiful resort like retreat center.

That's how I describe it.

Called Modern Elder Academy in Baja.

Did it ever occur to you when you started it that it might not work?

And what were your fears when you started putting your plan into motion?

One of the challenges.

In my life is when I get something in my head and I deeply believe that's true.

I will jump over tall buildings in a single bound to make it happen.

And yet, An entrepreneur often doesn't know their limits

until they've surpassed them.

And my limits sometimes are cash flow.

My limits sometimes are physical health, and my limits are sometimes

one dimensionality and workaholism.

And so I think, you know, I've had to come face-to-face with all of that.

In my whole history and including at MEA, although from the cashflow

perspective, I've done really well in my life financially, especially with the

Airbnb time and therefore the ability to, to help fund this business in the

early days as it grows into something big has been not as traumatizing as it was

when I was 26, piecing together a dollar here, a dollar there to start a company.

But I will say that I sometimes need to have people by my side

who can be the judicious ones.

I don't need doubters, doubters, like they don't do me any good.

But I do need people who are thoughtful, constructive jousters.

I, I actually do like to sort of intellectually joust about an idea,

you know, a business idea, but you may have a great business idea, but then

you have to execute on it as well.

And then there's all of the headwinds of what the economy is like at the time.

And the pandemic was not good for MEA.

Because our singular location at that time was in Baja, who's

traveling internationally, dedicated and oriented toward people who

are on average 54 years old.

It's like not exactly the people who are gonna travel.

And then thirdly, it's a physically and emotionally intimate experience.

And during Covid, that was not something people could do,

so we made it through that.

I'm proud of it.

You know, we're the world's first midlife wisdom school dedicated to helping people

cultivate and harvest their wisdom so they can reimagine it and repurpose themselves

mostly in their work life, but also in their personal life, and MEA their, maybe

their spiritual life, certainly their, you know, relational life and home life.

So there was never a doubt in your mind when you started

it that it was going to be what it is today and what it'll become?

I think that, you know, the doubt, I don't think there was

a doubt that the concept made sense.

I think there was a doubt about how do we execute on it and make it work.

Will people come to Baja?

And will people come to Baja Because, you know, Mexico's

scary for some people and you know, we're in a very, very safe place.

Yes, you are.

We're also in Mexico, and Mexico has some brand issues

around the cartels and things like that, which are not in our area.

But long story short is, I think where I have some doubt sometimes

is the, to expand as much as we're going to, I don't question the

demand and there's demand out there.

And the quality experience that we deliver, as you

know, is just off the charts.

It's a, to create transformational experiences every single week.

That's wild.

Have you ever thought that you should write a book, that you should

write the story of your life to help other people learn from your experience?

Please go to memoirsherpa.com and learn how I can help you write, figure out your

publishing path and market your story, your memoir, to a best seller status.

What is the most satisfying aspect or element for you with Modern Elder Academy.

For me, MEA, there's two sides to it, and

they're sort of opposites.

I think the most satisfying is just the personal

transformational stories I've seen.

I know when I die someday, I will have a lot of people, a lot of people at my

funeral and a lot of people who wanna give eulogy and it's partly because I'm living

a life based upon the Eric Developmental psychologist, Eric Erickson's point of

view, which is I am what survives me.

And so I believe deeply in helping people make a difference out there and then feel

like, wow, that was a transformational relationship with Chip, transformational

experience at MEA, et cetera.

I Mean, that's sort of the.

The thing that's most meaningful to me, but the other side is the opposite.

The opposite is not the opposite, but something at the other end of the

spectrum, which is beyond the individual transformational journeys, I deeply want

to create a new category, a combination of a category of education called

midlife wisdom schools, and a category of residential experience communities, which

we're building also these regenerative residential communities that is Meant

to disrupt retirement communities.

So in some ways, I have this very personal sense of like why I'm doing

this, and then I have this really.

Pioneering legacy, big picture perspective of Chip was the one who

helped put new categories on the map.

Midlife was in schools and regenerative residential communities,

so I'm excited about both.

And sometimes I need to focus a little bit more on one versus the

other because I can get a little too focused on one or the other.

And they're nice.

They're like barbells.

They're nicely balance.

And you have a team with you.

Oh, for sure.

That is probably balanced as well in their concentration

and excitement for either or endeavor.

Yeah.

So yeah, I think that some people are more drawn to the intimacy of those

relationships of transformation.

Some are more drawn to the big vision.

So, and I think what we have to do is be focused on both.

The truth is, if we do the first thing, The second thing is more likely to happen.

Yeah.

So that's why in some ways it's the more important thing.

Yeah.

Because it's the fuel that allows the second thing to happen.

Yeah.

But if you only did the first thing, and you know,

there's times when I said like, all right, we should just stay in Baja.

And that would've been great and that would've satisfied the first thing.

It might not have as satisfied.

The second thing, because.

97% of our people who come to MEA are not from Mexico.

And so to be able to,

not to uproot and spend the rest of their lives in Mexico.

So so to be able to go and to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is our next

place where we have two huge campuses and then a huge residential community there.

Now we start to do something that has even more poof of concept in our biggest

market, which is the American market.

We ha we have over 3000 alumni from 42 countries and we have 26

regional chapters around the world.

So it's, it's a movement.

By the time, I was with the Inc Magazine Master's Group

at Modern Elder Academy this year.

You had led many groups through this really brilliant curriculum,

in my opinion, which I'm still studying, and Mike Walters and I

are writing a little story about it.

Oh, great.

How many iterations of that curriculum has it gone through

to what it is today and how do you think that core curriculum may change?

Be different in the future.

Yeah.

Let's talk about the curriculum for a second.

So the curriculum is dedicated to the idea people helping people to reframe

their relationship with aging and live a regenerative lifestyle based

upon the idea of helping them move from a fixed to a growth mindset.

Learn how to navigate transitions and cultivate their wisdom in ways

that actually are not just good for themselves, but as a leader or as a team.

Companies today are very focused on knowledge management, but I think

it's time for us to start asking ourselves about wisdom management.

How do you cultivate wisdom within an organization?

So that's the curriculum.

It's taken, you know, we've been doing this for over five years.

I would say there's been four major iterations along the way and

we are probably gonna move into a fifth major iteration in the next

year with opening in Santa Fe.

So it's gotten better and better, that's for sure.

We have people who've come eight times, like they've come in, done workshops

and they, so those are obviously our robust evangelists, but we also hear

from them how it's improved with time.

So that's, you know, an important metric for us is what do our cheerleading

customers believe, do they feel like we're getting better with time?

Generally, most of us as customers feel the opposite because disappointment

equals expectations minus reality.

So you build an expectation if you're an evangelist for a business, like

I just love it, and then that's a high bar to actually adhere

to, and yet we continue to meet.

We're not perfect, but I would say our net promoter scores are the highest that

anybody's ever seen in the education or the hospitality business, so that's good.

What would you say you think MEA's success is attributed

to, I have my own as somebody that has attended, but you as the founder,

CEO, what would you attribute if you were telling Katie Corick?

What is one thing I'll let her know?

We talked,

I'm gonna say there's two, and these are things that I haven't

talked about yet on this podcast.

Number one is how do you.

Create the conditions for a community of like-minded people to come

together in the course of five to seven days in a way that is profound.

And full of life-changing conversations.

So the social community and the connection is paramount.

But along with that is the subtle and behind the scenes ways that we help

people to learn how to be vulnerable and to become a beginner again.

No one came down here saying, I'm going to MEA cause I wanna

learn to be a beginner again.

But at the end of the week, I think two of the things are most profound are, "Wow,

do I feel connected to these people?"

And number two is, I feel like I have more options in my life because

if I'm open to being a beginner, again, I am open to new options and

new ways of being and doing things.

So that's what we do.

And it, there's a, both an art and a science to it.

Yes, I was watching that.

I really didn't know what to expect.

I went for reasons that were other than what MEA is for.

And I just wanted to say that-

because, because you went for INC, INC Masters, you, you were,

I went for INC Masters.

Yeah.

Access to those kind of people and-

Yeah,

-the magazine, but also to be around you who, for me.

You know, you've been an inspiration and a, you don't know this, but

some sort of a mentor to me.

And what I came out of there was watching how quickly you

got a group to bond so deeply.

That was within the first 24 hours.

Yeah.

And then the transformations that happened with people that

weren't there for transformation, didn't believe in transformations.

Thought they'd already transformed to never transform again.

You know, our group is a little bit different of a makeup than your typical

MEA group because we're all entrepreneurs.

We all put our hands up for being on the Inc 5,000.

We all made that list.

Then we all opted into the master's program.

Then we said, As a small little group to coming to MEA.

And what you had in your hands was this ripe version of very

scaling and growth mindset.

People that have had.

Lots of success of various ages.

So I think 28 to 60 something early sixties.

And that just made the perfect storm of an incredible group that to

this day, if you saw our whatsapp.

Yeah.

You're so congested with participation.

Yeah.

And we're flying across the country to see each other on a regular basis.

I saw almost all of you at in Austin.

At Southwest.

Southwest.

I would never have planned to go this year for any reason.

The only reason I came was to be with that group of people.

And the cherry on the top was that you were going to make an appearance

and we were able to see you there too.

Yeah.

So thank you.

And of course I speak very highly about MEA to EO, the Genius Network.

Everyone I can talk to about it and you know, eventually that trickle through.

I think a lot of the people that have gone through MEA are just like me.

I'm not special.

Oh my God.

People are doing the same thing.

It's so beautiful.

I mean, we do so little marketing.

We do some sales.

We have, you've talked to Kiara, who's doing some direct sales for us now, but

I mean, I, our marketing team's tiny.

It's a couple people.

And so to have a business like ours, it's so much rest on creating

the transformative experiences so that our alumni tell the

world, and so we appreciate that.

The next question is, What is the one thing that you're

doubling down on for strategy, for growth?

And I don't mean necessarily opening the new Santa Fe area.

Which is definitely a strategy for growth, but what are you doing to

turn those wheels to expand people's knowledge of it, their discovery of it?

I would say that one of the things that we're curious about,

since we have very active regional chapters and very active alumni, I love,

you know, back in the day there were Tupperware parties, there is Amway, there

were all these things that people did.

You had a Tupperware party to learn about, like these old plastic things

or you know, like what a crazy idea.

But the idea of bringing people together in someone's home to have life-changing

conversations is sort of what we do.

And so I think the idea, I call this the plus one movement, and how do we get our

alumni to come together and have a meal?

Around some topics and questions and bring a plus one so that both the alumni

have a great dinner and conversation, but the plus ones really get that flavor.

And I think that's a huge, there's a huge opportunity in that because I go

back to the Tupperware party idea, is that there was a time when people, and

I think people are so thirsty for social connection these days, and we are now

in a place where it's more comfortable for us to have a meal together.

After the pandemic.

So that's a simple idea.

There's a bunch of other things too.

I have a book coming out next January called Learning to Love Midlife,

and the subtitle is 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age.

And we'll do a huge promotional thing on that.

And that book probably will hit the New York Times Best Seller List and there

will be a whole PR tour around that.

So, those are the kinds of things we'll be doing.

We'll have a great grand opening party in Santa Fe.

Michael Frante has already said he's gonna be our headliner

for music at there because he's actually an MEA faculty member.

So yeah, we lot planned.

So the last you be able to talk about is the opening of Santa Fe.

Give us an idea of when it'll open, what it'll be like.

So when we open in Santa Fe, we'll have two campuses.

The first one will be open in 2024, approximately start of

spring or maybe end of the year.

It's a 2,600 acre regenerative, a horse ranch.

It'll have two houses there, two, one with 21 bedrooms, the other with 22

bedrooms in this most beautiful part of the world, land of enchantment,

lots of hiking, lots of horseback riding, and you know, mountain

biking right there on the property.

That property is gonna be, it's perfect for people who want to be in nature.

The other property, which will open in 2025, is beautiful hiking near it, but

it's actually on Museum Hill in in town.

It's next door to St.

John's College in a very beautiful residential neighborhood, and it's a

former Catholic retreat center, and seminary, historic property that

is more like the urban experience.

Now, urban when it comes to Santa Fe is not that urban.

So if you're country mouse, so to speak, you'll like the ranch if you're a city.

You'll like the Sunmount campus, which is what it's called, and because

that's a historical name for it, and so Santa Fe is a beautiful place to go.

Sometimes people are saying, I like Santa Fe, but I need a reason to go there.

This gives you a reason to go, come and spend a week with us, and then go

spend two or three days in town eating at great restaurants and checking out

spectacular galleries and enjoying just the vibe of a place that actually feels

often, like it's not in the United States.

For more information, go to the show notes where you're listening to this podcast.

Wanna know more about me, go to my website OfficialNatashaMiller.com.

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