Defining Hospitality

Dan Ryan: Today's guest is a New York Times bestselling author of the book, emotional Equations.
He took an inner city motel and turned it into the second largest boutique hotel brand in America, Juhu Aviv Hotels. He is the recipient of Hospitality's Highest Honor the Pioneer Award. He's the creator of the Wisdom Well Newsletter, a daily microdose of wisdom. Both for inspiration and insight. He's disrupted the ho hospitality industry twice as Airbnb's Global Head of Hospitality, and the founder of the Modern Elder Academy, [00:01:00] the world's first midlife wisdom school.
And he's also a hospitality leader to me, and whether he knows it or not, a mentor in many ways. Ladies and gentlemen, chip Connolly, welcome Chip.
Chip Conley: Thank you, Dan. You, you actually pronounced Jujuan, Viv correctly. You did. You, you had no flaws in that bio, so thank you for, uh, you know, serving me up in, in that
Dan Ryan: way.
Well, it's all a testament of your hard work, dedication, and passion over your journey. Um, and, and a little as well. ,
Chip Conley: you, you do know you're French , very
Dan Ryan: poorly. Uh, I can order a baguette if I need to. . Um, well just to kind of circle everyone around in here, um, My first memory of you or one of your creations Might have been in 1998, I was living in San Francisco.
It was a Sunday or Saturday. It was a beautiful afternoon and [00:02:00] I think, I don't know if we were out or we were having brunch or something, and then we went to this hotel called The Hotel Phoenix. Yeah. And it was one of the biggest parties I've ever seen in my entire life. , there was a DJ up on the balcony, and for everyone who can't visualize it, it's, it's pretty much an old motel, like right in the middle of the city that kind of opened with two levels.
There was a DJ up there spinning, there was a pool, and it was just fact, like shoulder to shoulder, a seething, sweaty mass of people just having the best time ever. And that was I. But that was your first hotel,
Chip Conley: correct? Correct. Yeah. I, I, so if this was 1998, that would've been about 11 years after I started the hotel.
Um, it was a broken down. Pay by the motel. A a No. Motel. Motel. It was very popular at lunchtime. Um, and, uh, I bought it, it was in bankruptcy and I was 26 years old. And, uh, I wanted to create a rock and roll hotel, renamed it the Phoenix, uh, the, for the [00:03:00] mythological bird that rises from its ashes, which in fact is, uh, the San Francisco City Bird because of the 1906 earthquake and fire.
And, um, yeah, I still own the Phoenix 35 year, 36 years later. Oh, I didn't, I didn't realize you still own that. That's amazing. Yeah, I still own a lot of the hotel real estate I just sold in 2010, the brand, uh, and management company that is Wan ViiV.
Dan Ryan: Wow, okay. So, but that was like for me, like a real welcome to Wow, I'm, this is a different place and I'm so happy to be here starting my career at whatever, 24 25 in San Francisco.
Um, so that was a seminal moment. Another time was I had moved to Vietnam with my family one summer, I think it was 2018. and I was on, I couldn't sleep one night. I was on LinkedIn and you wrote this really incredible article that broke Life into quarters, right? Mm-hmm. . So it's, you know, you're based on living a hundred years.
So I, and there was, [00:04:00] there was a story where you were asking yourself as a younger person, um, like if you could give advice to yourself as a younger person, and I think I might have turned the question down around on you, and then you're like, wow, that's really interesting. And you gave like, the most thoughtful, incredible response and referenced some other, uh, books and readings that you've done.
And it kind of set me off on a path. So I just wanna say thank you and we'll dig into those in a little while too. Sure. But thank you, thank you, thank you. So I'm just very excited to have you on board here. Thank you, Dan. Um, so as you think about your creation at 26 of Viv and then, um, exiting that, Starting up, uh, starting to work with Airbnb as their strategic director of, or strategic advisor on hospitality, and then now onto the Modern Elder Academy.
In all those different facets, hospitality is his primary role in all of that. Um, if you think about what hospitality means to you, how do you define that? [00:05:00] And then we can use that as the, the launchpad for our
Chip Conley: conversation. You know, I, I, I am, I will quote my friend Danny Meyer, who, um, has been by my side for 15 or 20 years, is just, you know, we, uh, we have a lot of respect for each other.
And he says that hospitality is when someone does something for you, not to you. And, um, He and I have conversed about the fact that service is a, is a, is really a, science, but hospitality is an art. And so I think, um, the idea of having someone do something for you, uh, can be beautifully pervasive in any kind of industry.
And I think that's why at one point, um, Danny created hospitality Quotient hq, a company that was really dedicated to taking some of the principles and practices of hospitality and incorporating them into companies from all kinds of industries. [00:06:00] So at the end of the day, um, hospitality is when something feels like it's been delivered not, uh, to you, but for you.
And it's, it's really something that feels customized. Um, and it's a combination of both the science of service and the art of
Dan Ryan: hospitality. I love it. And I agree with him and I would love to have him on here at some point because. Um, just from his restaurants and his books, like, he's been a real, um, guidepost for me on my journey as well.
Um, but thank you for sharing that. When you talk about Des, like you used, just used the word design and then, you know, balancing that art and science of hospitality. I know at Javi you guys had a really cool way of concepting hotels. Yeah. You would take a magazine, right? Mm-hmm. . And then I think you would correct me if I'm wrong, but ba basically break it up into three words, five and then or five words, and then develop a whole concept off that.
I'm really curious if you could [00:07:00] correct me first on Yeah. How I got that wrong, but secondly, how did you come up with that? Idea to create
Chip Conley: a narrative? Yeah. Let me, let me give you the origin story of that and then how it got played out, because I gotta say that, you know, it, it, it turned out to be really helpful for us.
Um, so the origin story was, I'm 26 years old. I buy a boat, broken down, paid by the R Motel. I have a little, you know, management team, and we're trying to figure out what this hotel will be when it's no longer a pay by the air motel. And, um, I think everybody was on the same page that a rock and roll hotel could make sense.
But there was such divergent opinions about the name and the, you know, design and a variety of things that it really felt like it was, we were just a mess as a group. And so I ca I said for the next meeting, and again, remember I'm 26 years old, , I say at the next meeting, bring a magazine that you think defines the hotel.
Because in some ways in my head I [00:08:00] was like, this is 1987. And boutique hotels were just getting off the ground, uh, in the us I, I just thought, you know, magazines and boutique hotels have something in common. They're very niche oriented, so they're not for everybody. And they represent a lifestyle and generally speaking, magazines, yeah, that's what they are.
They're niche oriented, lifestyle oriented. And so, uh, when we came to the next meeting, five of the seven people showed up with Rolling Stone Magazine. And so from there we said, okay, what if Rolling Stone is our, you know, the, the touchstone for the personality and soul of this hotel? What are five adjectives that define rolling?
So we looked through the magazines and it's like, okay. And we ended up coming up with five funky, irreverent, adventurous, cool, and young at heart. And so from that point forward, every single one of the, the elements of the hotel, whether it was the interior design, the kind of restaurant we opened, [00:09:00] the kind of staff we hired, and the uniforms they were, didn't were.
Um, the bottom line is it came back to these five adjectives. Um, and it was a, it was really helpful. And so 52 boutique hotels later, uh, you know, after I ran the company for 24 years as the c e o, um, every single one of our hotels had a different magazine, or often a hybrid of two magazines. So the Hotel Vital in San Francisco, very successful, you know, upscale hotel across the street from the ferry building.
And the, and the Bay was based upon, um, dwell Magazine meets real simple. And that was modern, urbane, fresh, natural, and nurturing. So that's what that hotel was all about. So every single hotel had its own five adjectives. And we like to say, you, you aren't, it's not, you are where you, what you eat, it's, you are where you sleep.
And I think the real differentiator for Viv, relative to Shrager and Kimpton, who [00:10:00] were the two fathers of the American boutique hotel industry, and I was, I'm their younger brother, uh, so to speak, um, because I started about three years after they did. Um, I think the real beauty of a, what we did was the cle, the diversity and eclectic nature of our hotels.
We had. You know, two and a half star hotel motels, and we had four and a half star, you know, you know, luxury resorts and upscale hotels, but every single one of them had its own personality. Whereas over time, Schrager got very, you know, enamored with obviously sort of the, the cool nightlife kind of environment of a boutique hotel.
Um, and then he started going, you know, multiple delano's. Multiple Mondrians. Same thing with, with, uh, Kimpton, you know, multiple Monacos, multiple polymers. Our perspective was like every single hotel needs to be its own original, and it needs to be, we need to have hotels across the full spectrum of [00:11:00] prices.
Um, now there was a n there was a downside of that, which we can get to, but the upside was every single time we created a hotel, it was like creating a new brand, creating a new pr, completely new product, and like painting a piece of art. I love
Dan Ryan: it. Thank you for sharing that because I totally agree. And what's resonating the most with me is I hear you say that, um, and actually it ties into my perception of you over the, you know, past two decades that I've known of you and, you know, met you a couple times.
Those five adjectives are really the values for each hotel, right? It's, and it's, each hotel then becomes value driven. Those five adjectives are defined, not just what the hotel looks like, but who the guests are that it attracts, and then who the, the team you build around it. And every decision that's made within the hotel, you probably have to go through that, some kind of a filter.
Is that correct? That's
Chip Conley: correct. I mean, you know, if you are where you. [00:12:00] What we are in the business of doing. We're not a boutique or teller. We're in the business of identity refreshment. Um, so I, one of the exercises, let me tell you an exercise that I think every, every leader should do with themselves and their senior team.
Um, Peter Drucker, the famous management theorist, said that the most important question that a leader can ask is what business are we in? And so we did an exercise at Shawa Vive, and then I did this exercise at Airbnb when I joined the company more than 10 years ago. Um, and the question was, I would sit next in front of somebody, one of the senior leaders in the company, and I would ask them, uh, Joe, what business are we in?
And Joe would say, well, we're in the boutique hotel business. And it was, and I would say, okay, thank you Joe. What business are we in? And we do that repeating question five times and Joe could not answer the same way twice. So, you know, we took our top 10 or 12 people in the company, we set them up into, you know, [00:13:00] dyads or you know, duos, and they went out.
We went off and did our this exercise and came back and said, okay, here's the raw material that we've just come up with. And, and for that led us to realizing we were in the business of refreshing the id aspirational identities of our, of our guests. And so we were an identity refresher. That was really what we did.
I took that same idea. To, um, Airbnb when I joined Airbnb and we'll, we'll, I'm sure we'll come to that, the Airbnb story soon. But lemme just say this briefly and that is that at Airbnb within the month after I joined, I took the senior leadership team and the founders off offsite. So I was in charge of all of our offsites because I was in, start in charge of all of our hosts globally, but also all of our strategy and a bunch of other things.
And I said, you know what? We're in the home sharing business, but there's something deeper. There's something that we're offering the world that is deeper than just Homesharing. Let's do this exercise. And so Brian Chesky, you know, the, you know, one of the [00:14:00] founders and c e o who is my mentee, who I also reported to, which is interesting, uh, that we could talk about that too.
Um, I, so Brian and I did this as an exercise in front of everybody else, and then we, and then we had everybody do it, and we came to the conclusion that Airbnb was in the Belong Anywhere business. And Hilton was not in the belonging anywhere business nor was Expedia. So ideally when you come up with this essence of what your business is, the differentiator, it's something that you can own that most other people or most of your competitors could never say the same thing.
And so once we understood an Airbnb that we were in the Belong Anywhere business, we helped, it basically meant we had to, to really rethink how do we operate, how do we market ourselves? How do we make sure that our hosts globally understand what Belong anywhere means, and how do we measure whether they're actually getting that right, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So I would just say that this [00:15:00] exercise, what business are we in, is a really great way for you to understand what is your differentiator, and then how do you operate your business in a way that elevates that differentiation.
Dan Ryan: I couldn't agree more and. I want, like, I wanna talk about feelings about that too, because just from my experience, I've been providing custom furniture to hotels for 20 something years.
But I realized it, it wasn't the real, the hotel, it, it wasn't the furniture that was driving me. It was, and I went through a whole experience and, um, exercise with our whole team about like, what, what makes us different? And it wasn't about the furniture, it was about making sure that our clients had the best possible journey towards opening their hotel.
And what lights me up more than anything is when I can shorten other people's journeys. And when we looked at everything through that filter, it changed everything. Like the next day at work, everything was different. So my question for you is, when you, when you got, when you came up with the idea of identity [00:16:00] refreshment or belonging anywhere, How did you and your executive team or leadership team around you, how did you guys feel differently before you came up to that?
It's a lot of work to come up to that. Mm-hmm. , but before to after like what shifted Tectonically?
Chip Conley: Well, I think what shifted is, I mean, you, you can do, you know, I'm, I went to Stanford Business School, so I've got an mba. So I, you know, two by two grids of like, how do we, how do we look on a competitive landscape is very easy for me to do.
And of course in starting jujuan with Kimpton and, and Schrager Art Round and, and a couple other fledgling boutique hotel companies coming up, I was able to look at how do we compare? But you know, when you actually spend your time trying to see how you compare yourself with your competitors, what you are missing is that Blue Ocean strategy.
The ability to say, I'm gonna stake my claim not on, how do I compare with my competitors? I'm gonna stake my claim on this thing [00:17:00] that no one else is doing. And, um, so I, I, yes, that can be hard. It's certainly not easy to come up with a two word mantra that defines the, the essence of the business. But say for Hanavi, once we came up with that, what we realized is that, okay, each hotel has five adjectives, and everything we do for that hotel is gonna come back to those five adjectives.
How we. The kind of questions we might even ask in a hiring interview. So, a hiring interview at one hotel might be slightly different than in a different hotel. Um, what kind of philanthropy that hotel does might be different. Um, how we market the hotel. So once we actually knew these five adjectives, you know, it really helped in our marketing copy to make sure are those five adjectives showing up in the marketing copy.
And here was the, the big one, Dan. I loved this when the.com bust happened, man, you know, uh, all of our hotels at that time were in the San Francisco Bay area. We had, I think, 22 hotels at that point. Ultimately, we had [00:18:00] 52 around California, but we had 22 hotels in the Bay Area. And the Bay Area just hit, got, got hit really hard during the.com bust in nine 11.
And so, We created this character named Yvette because of course Sheard Yu sounds like a French company. Yvette, the Hotel Matchmaker, she was a cartoon character. She showed up on the Vuu website. And so when you went to the website, Yvette would pop up and say, do you want to, do, you want to be matched with your perfect hotel and the perfect things to do?
Uh, and so what we did is in essence, we gave people a a a two minute personality quiz that helped us to understand the five adjectives out of 35 that best described them. And once we understood that personality of the perspective guest, we could match them with, number one, the hotels that fit their personality of the best.
Number two is two locals. So we had about 60 locals, uh, local people in the Bay Area on the [00:19:00] website, and we had their perfect day in San Jose or San Francisco or Napa Valley, depending upon where they're located and. And then we also would say of 400 things to do in the area, here are the five that are best suited to you based upon your, your five adjectives.
So what we did is we created a customized tool to match, make our prospective guests with the hotel and the things to do, and even locals to meet. Um, and that was like, so way ahead. Uh, totally, this is 2000, 2003. This is 20 years that we were do doing this two 20 years ago. We were doing this and, you know, artificial intelligence could do this a lot better now, but 20 years ago it was, you know, it was, it was our own little technology that was, that was providing us this.
And Wow. What we found is that the people who actually would take the quiz and then actually select a hotel based upon it, not only did they, were they more likely to select a hotel if they took the quiz? And that could be because, you know, if they take the quiz, [00:20:00] maybe they're more serious anyway. So, you know, there's no, you can't, you can't, you know, Say that that's what happened.
But what we know for sure is that the people who actually took the quiz had 10 points higher, um, customer satisfaction scores after their stay or based upon their stay than those who didn't take the test be
Dan Ryan: because there's a bit of a buy-in and then they become these like raving fans for you because they're, yeah, it's a perfect matchmaking.
Um, I, yeah, you're speaking my language. So as, okay, Sowa, you built this company from your 26 then, you know, you've talked about Airbnb and I want to go into that before and after, from a home sharing to belonging Anywhere and get like, cuz that was a bigger company when you joined, right? And
Chip Conley: I mean it, yeah, I mean it was ob obviously I wasn't a founder, but it was a, it was a small-ish company.
It was a small tech startup with about hundred, it was about 125 employees. So, but so it was not, it was not tiny. It was okay. [00:21:00] It was. Relative to what it became. It was tiny, but it, it, it had some venture capital money already for sure,
Dan Ryan: but Okay. But either way to get 125 people to kind of believe in and drink this Kool-Aid of shifting mm-hmm.
a filter from okay, it's home sharing to, it's really that anyone can belong anywhere. And for me, my personal experience, like working in the hotel business, I've, I've watched Airbnb with both like, incredible fear, but incredible admiration. Um, but what I've realized since it's been around, it just, it's like another arrow in the quiver for travelers, right?
Mm-hmm. as a business traveler, I might not wanna stay there, right? But as a family, I totally would want to, cuz like we can hang out together, we have more room and space. Um, so it's been a really incredible, um, competitor to the standard hotel model that I think has only made the ho standard hotel model better because I think competition does that.[00:22:00]
But when you talk about that, that shift of the, of the why or like what type of what, what your business is, what was the before and after like for the team, but also for you as far as showing up for work every day?
Chip Conley: Well, when I joined, so I joined in very early 2013, so a long time ago. And, um, the comp, I quite frankly, I didn't know much about Airbnb.
I didn't necessarily think they had a very good business model. Um, my friends in the hotel industry, who knew I was af two years after I had sold Javi, I was gonna go do this, thought I was crazy. Um, most of them had never heard of Airbnb. Um, and. So what I encountered upon joining the company was it was a tech company like the Lang.
It was all the language was tech, it was a millennial company. I was a boomer from bricks and mortar. So I was sort of out of my habitat. But what I, what I got really quickly was their a real [00:23:00] thirstiness on their part to understand hospitality. They, but, but I also got, what I got was, everybody was talking about the sharing economy back then.
So no one talks about the sharing economy. That language doesn't really exist much anymore. But back then it was the sharing economy and it was Uber and Airbnb and Uber and Airbnb were always in the same sentence. And that's because they were sharing economy darlings. They were based in San Francisco, they had young founders, et cetera, et cetera.
One of the first things I said upon joining the company and Brian agreed with me, We need to disconnect from Uber. We need to make sure that the PR about our company is not the, in the same stories about the PR about Uber. Because Was that before they had all
Dan Ryan: their issues also? Oh,
Chip Conley: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay. This, I mean, the Uber was the, I mean, Uber was worth a lot more than Airbnb at that point. Um, mm-hmm. now, you know, Airbnb then soon surpassed, you know, not soon, but a while later it surpassed Uber's valuation. But at that time, Airbnb was a spec. It was a small, it was probably worth one 10th of what Uber was, [00:24:00] but I could see the culture of Uber and the culture of Uber was so, so not hospitality.
Yeah. Um, that I, I, that I really said to Brian, we gotta do everything we can. We can't do any strategic partnerships with Uber because we, when I joined, I became head of strategic partnerships for the company too. No, we're not gonna do a partnership with Uber. I mean, if we do a partnership with Uber, we're gonna do a one with Lyft at the same time, even though Lyft's a lot smaller.
Because we don't wanna get too aligned there because I, I guess that what is at the heart of this, Dan, is I just felt like if we are go, we are a disruptor and we're in hospitality. A disruptor in hospitality is almost like an oxymoron. hospitality is about people pleasing. It's about making people feel good.
Disruption can feel not so good. Yeah. So we better have humility built into us. We better have, um, a collaborative spirit built into how we're gonna go out and grow this company. And, um, so, [00:25:00] so Brian used to call me, you know, Airbnb Secretary of State. Yes. He called me our, the modern Elder . And he said a modern elders as someone who's as curious as they are wise.
But he also called me the Secretary of State because part of my job was really to go into enemy territory, whether that was landlords or hotel conferences, or destination marketing organizations, or, you know, Convention meeting planners and say, Airbnb's not going away. How can we collaborate and work together in, in new ways?
So there had to be a, there had to be a, a good hospitality spirit built into our business model. And I do think that belong anywhere helped us to move from home sharing, which is very functional, but somewhat transactional to something that actually spoke to the higher needs of all of us. Um, and the fact that, you know, Airbnb is everywhere because homes are everywhere.
Hi, Hilton can't be everywhere. Marriott can't be everywhere because you know, you have to [00:26:00] be, you have to have a certain econom economy of scale to have a Hilton or a Marriott. And so, yeah, so Airbnb, but that was also the complicated part is we were everywhere. And all of the laws around home sharing were local laws
Yeah. So, oh my god, you know what a business model, it's a puzzle we have to go around the world in, in lo in locations all over the world and change local laws to make, you know, to make ourselves valid.
Dan Ryan: Which is crazy cuz changing laws is the hardest thing to do anywhere. So it's almost like a game of 70 chess or something.
It's like, it's uh, it's, it's the most complicated thing. . Um, so let in all of your writings and, and speaking, there's just, there's, and you've said it in the intro of like with Danny Meyer in that whole idea of hq, but there's been all this, um, it's, it's so rooted in empathy and emotional intelligence and some of your, and, and going back to that article where I asked you where I made a comment and asked you like, what, what [00:27:00] advice would you give yourself?
Um, I somehow that led me on this path to read Victor. Frankel's, uh, manned search for meeting, which was like, it's was one of those books that I, I feel like I was a different person before I read it and after. Yeah. That's why I'm going into this feeling of before and after I, because I think this transformation, it, it can happen suddenly.
But for me, I think before I read that book, I would fe, I would think, you know, what do I want to get out of life? Right? What do I want to get outta life? And then after I read that book, and it was so earth shattering for me, it was what does life want out of me? Right. That's right. It totally changed my whole perspective and just seeing beauty in so many different places that I might not have thought was there and learning in so many different places.
Um, at what point did you encounter that book and how did that change how you felt before to.
Chip Conley: So I think I read the book in [00:28:00] college. Um, I took a few philosophy classes in college and I, I, I remember Frankl from college, um, but not, you know, didn't think, it, didn't like register too deeply in my twenties and my thirties.
I had a copy of his book and I would occasionally pull it out. Let, let's be clear about what the book is. So he was a psychoanalyst, um, in Vienna, who's, who is Jewish. Um, he, he had a, a belief system around therapy and psychology, which is logo therapy. His belief system was that meaning is the fuel of life.
So if you can actually find meaning in something, it gives you. And then as if God has a, you know, weird sense of humor, he ended up in a concentration camp. Um, and he got to see whether his theory worked because he saw who, who passed away, who didn't, and he saw meaning and hope as the often the fuel of what kept people alive.
The book man searched for meaning is really two parts. One [00:29:00] is his experience in a concentration camp, and it's really, it's pretty dire. I mean, it's, if you're having a bad week or month or year, read that damn book because you'll realize you should stop whimpering. Um, and then the second half of the book is his theory around, you know, um, meaning and, um, So when it was most profoundly helpful to me, it was in my mid to late forties, which is a period of time that social science has shown pretty conclusively.
That is often the lowest time of life satisfaction for adults. And I was going through a really hard time. Um, this was during the great recession, um, and just about everything that was could go wrong in my life was going wrong. And I ended up having a flat line experience. I had a, i, I had an allergic reaction to antibiotics.
Um, and I was, I was after giving a speech in St. Louis and. Uh, I just, you know, ironically, I had man [00:30:00] search for meaning in my backpack. So I, I, I flatlined nine times in 90 minutes. I ended up in the hospital for two or three days. Um, and I was just reading Frankl while I was in the PO hospital, um, as a way of just trying to say like, what the hell's going on here?
It, because they, at first they had no idea what was going on. They still really don't, but they ultimately, they said it was probably an allergic reaction. But I, that book really helped me. It helped me to, uh, create a, an equation despair equals suffering, minus meaning, which ultimately led to my, uh, New York swimmer's bestselling book, emotional Equations, which I wrote after I sold Shiv.
And Desher Suffering men, meaning basically means, um, if suffering is often sort of a constant in life, it doesn't mean that everything's bad, but there's always gonna be some suffering. Um, there's sort of a str, you know, the first noble truth of Buddhism. Then if, if, if that's the constant, then despair and meaning are sort of inversely proportional.
The more meaning you have, the less despair you have. [00:31:00] So what I did during the Great Recession is I trained all of our leaders in, in, um, UA Viv during the worst of times during the, the Great Recession. I trained everybody to understand how are we gonna find meaning individually and as a team when we're going through hard times.
Um, and it is that, I think it's that psychology that really helped me get to the other side of, um, the great recession such that, you know, my company survived. I was able to sell it. And, um, so Frank Franklin's pretty important. Um, yeah. Uh, and I'm, I've always been interested in psychology, so, you know, I wrote a book called Peak How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow.
That's all about Abraham Maslow. Um, my book, wisdom at Work, you know, the, the making of a modern elder speaks around Carl Young and Eric Ericsson, both psychologists. So I, I think psychology and business, um, is a very strange intersection. My job is to be the crossing guard at [00:32:00] Intersection, um, to help people to understand the psychology in business and how psychology can actually be one of your greatest strengths in being a great
Dan Ryan: leader.
Yeah, and I think also, you know, that cross training between Maslow Young and uh, uh, Malow Young and who was the other one you mentioned? Um, Frankel and Frank Ericsson. No, Ericsson. Ericsson Malow, young Frankl and Ericsson. Um, I think what's amazing about them, especially using this idea of Young's, um, Archetypes, right?
Mm-hmm. , I think as a leader, if you understand all of the archetypes of personality and that we all have all of them, some are just more heavily weighted to the other, it creates an awareness for all the people that you're around. So you can open your heart and really feel or get a sense of where they're coming from, so that you can all kind of divert and start rowing in the same direction,
Chip Conley: if you will.
Yeah, no doubt about it. I mean, you know, the [00:33:00] most neglected fact in businesses that we're all human doesn't show up on a balance sheet that often doesn't show up in a strategic plan. But, but, um, you know, as, as Peter Drucker famously said, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Um, and I think there's truth to that because culture is about humans and, and so, you know, emotional intelligence and understanding both yourself and others is one of the most important investments you can make in your life.
Dan Ryan: Completely. And. Okay, so I want to go back to Frankl again. So then that idea of logo therapy or logo psychology that he had logo therapy that mm-hmm. logo therapy. That was his meaning this whole theory he kept in his head that got him through the concentration camp. Yeah. So he was holding onto that. And it, and the people who lost meaning, I was just so, you know, they, they would basically fade away and die.
Yeah.
And
Chip Conley: even though they might physically have been in better shape. Yes. So what, I mean, what was really interesting was there were people who were just looking emaciated, and they were just phys and, and they're older and they're more [00:34:00] infirmed, but they lived. Um, and partly because of that, you know, the hope and meaning was, was their lifeblood.
Uh, totally
Dan Ryan: agree. And I'm so grateful for you for kind of pointing me down that road to stumble across this book also, um, with, and you don't even realize it, I'm sure. But, um, it opened my mind, it helped me figure out my why, which I, which I shared later or earlier, and. . And then in 2019 I had a business failure, which it was so dark and, but because I had read those books and I had my purpose, it really helped me get through it.
And then that, then ultimately what I saw is that failure was just unfinished learning. And I actually read that on someone's t-shirt. I was on a bus going up to the Catskills to go stay with some friends, and I read that, and then it all kind of came together. Mm-hmm. And I had this, uh, it was like a really incredible moment.
And then I was all better on a new path. So I thank you for that. Yes. [00:35:00] And so, okay, so then you go from vie 26 year old, um, fresh out of Stanford business school.com. Boom. Rookie full of rookie smarts creating draw Viv right. Then you exit. You're the, you said you're this boomer with experience who, I didn't realize that Brian, I think actually I read that, but uh, Brian said that, you know, you're really a modern elder who's both curious and wise or more curious than Wise,
Chip Conley: more curious than all.
No, well, I think I'm more curious than wise, but I think he, no, he said you're the perfect alchemy of curiosity and wisdom.
Dan Ryan: Curiosity and wisdom. Which then, so if you think about the arc of your journey, that you're still in the middle of you, you create this incredible idea, or you've had this idea and create this physical place of the modern elder Academy, which before you get into that, I really think about, if you look at [00:36:00] just population everywhere, and I, I did not coin this, but, um, talent is uniformly distributed, but opportunity is not.
Mm-hmm. . So you look at, in some countries where women can't work or other minorities can't work, you're the, those, those countries or societies are really. Limiting and, and throttling back some of what could be their best minds and best, um, contributors to their societies. I also get the feeling that, you know, you, this whole boomer thing and you know, with all the younger kids are not, I don't know, there's like this oil and water thing between boomers and the young, but I really think that the boomers, not, not even the boomers, but as we age, we, we bring so much more to the table we can, um, and instead of getting, you know, doing, working at checkout and Walmart or whatever, it's like, how can you bring and tap into this collective shared experience?
And what resonates with me the most about this is I grew up in a house with, it was me, my mom, my dad, my sister, my grandmother, [00:37:00] my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather. And I was very lucky to like, when, especially when I got into the 20th century, if I had to write a paper on something, I would, instead of read, I would just go up and talk to them.
And it just brought all of these stories and histories and experiences to life. And I just feel I was really lucky for that. So share with us how you came to arrive at the Modern Elder Academy and what the vision is and how you hope to impact the world.
Well,
Chip Conley: so, you know, when someone calls you a modern elder, my first reaction was like, you know, I don't wanna be a modern elder.
You just, you're, you're ma you're making fun of, of my age. I thought he met modern elderly, which is different than an elder and elderly are very different things. Um, but when I finally realized it was like this perfect alchemy of curiosity and wisdom, I was like, wow, I like that. And so I owned it and for seven and a half years, I, I spent time at Airbnb, four years, full-time, three and a half years as a very active, part-time strategic advisor.
As I was [00:38:00] finishing my part-time, uh, time there, I was curious about writing a book, wisdom at Work, the making of a Modern. And I was, I had a home down here in Baja, about an hour north of Cobbles San Lucas, um, on the Pacific Coast, right on the beach. And I was writing the book there and I was going for runs on the beach each morning.
And one day I had a Baja Aha. I had an epiphany. And the epiphany is, why do we not have. A school or tool or roadmap for people in midlife to reimagine and repurpose themselves. Um, and so decided to create the world's first midlife wisdom school. Um, you know, my back, obviously my hospitality background was helpful here, but I was for 10 years on the board of, uh, directors, board of trustees for the Eslan Institute, uh, in Big Sur, California.
Oh. The most famous personal growth retreat center. In, in, in, in I Want Us. Us. Yeah. And it's amazing. It's quite, and I, I've taught there for a dozen years, so I understood the retreat center world. I [00:39:00] understood hospitality. And then I had a curriculum, um, that based upon my experience, uh, at, at Airbnb that led to my book Wisdom at Work.
Um, and I said, well, let's, let's, why don't I buy some of the land and the homes around my home and create a, a little center? And I did and just sort of tested it out in 2018, been very popular. And so we opened and. Now, what, five years later, having gone through Covid, which was obviously not easy for the whole hospitality industry, but especially a retreat center in a, you know, foreign location.
Um, but we, you know, had over 3000 alumni from 42 countries, and we have 26 regional chapters around the world. And, and we're growing like a, you know, like a weed because we have three locations in Santa Fe, New Mexico that will be opening a 2,600 acre regenerative horse ranch. Um, uh, that'll have two workshop centers and residential.
Um, and then, uh, also, uh, a location that [00:40:00] historic property in, right in the town of Santa Fe, uh, next to St. John's College. Um, that was a former Catholic retreat center in seminary. And then a third property, uh, which is a regenerative residential community that we're building. Um, and we also have a regenerative residential community here in Baja.
So, long story short is, um, yeah. . Yes. Chip is back on the treadmill again. Uh, disrupting, in this case, less disrupting hospitality, more disrupting higher education, uh, and senior living retirement communities because our regenerative communities are really all about helping people feel regenerated as opposed to retired.
I love it.
Dan Ryan: Um, and then I, we had a guest on here, Andrew Alfred, a few episodes ago. Yes. Who went down there and he, the metaphor he came up with for his before and after of experiencing the modern elder Academy was, it was like, he was at, he was like an Italian suit before Taylor, before it was tailored [00:41:00] there.
And then after all of the, the workshops and seminars and eating and living and breathing and sleeping. Um, He became a fi, a more finely tailored suit that fit his body perfectly. And, uh, and it, I don't know, it, it really ha, I, I didn't do his metaphor justice there, but it really struck me as he shared that.
What are some other, um, kind of testimonials in that sense from that before and after transformation. Well,
Chip Conley: let me first say what the curriculum is and what people are coming for. So, um, and, and look, and, and if, for those of you who are watching the video, you can see the light is coming into my office, , um, early morning here in Baja.
Um, uh, so the, uh, the curriculum is based upon the idea of how do we cultivate and harvest harvester wisdom. Um, now that is an interesting idea. Wisdom and knowledge are two different things. Knowledge is something you accumulate. Wisdom is something you distill based upon life experience. So we start with wisdom.
Then we help people to reframe their relationship with aging. [00:42:00] Uh, because aging is a, you know, a big no-no, you don't, you're not supposed to age. It's a bad thing. And yet we all do it. Uh, and so how do you help people to understand and reframe their relationship with aging? How do we help people move from a fixed to a growth mindset?
How do we help people navigate midlife transitions? And then how do we help people feel a sense of regeneration in both their life and in how they can make a difference in the world? Um, so a lot of people come to m Mea. Where they, when they're in a transition of some kind in the broader span of midlife.
Now midlife is by sociologists now is defined as 35 to 75, so it's a very long period of time. The core of midlife is 45 to 65. So, um, You might be going through, uh, career change. Uh, you may be selling a business, you may be getting divorced, you may be coming an empty nester. You may, as a woman, you may be going through menopause.
Uh, you may be, um, uh, having your parents pass [00:43:00] away, uh, having health diagnosis. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff goes on in midlife, and yet we don't really have much in the way of schools tools or roadmaps for people to understand this era. So, um, the testimonials we hear and, and we use Net Promoter Score NPSs, which mo you know, if you don't know what that means, don't worry about it.
But it, it, you know, the scores are from negative a hundred to a hundred and we have a 92 N P s for our workshops, which is like 99th percentile. So what is it that people are getting? What they're getting is some tool to understand how to actually operate their life differently. Um, so there's really some practices and tools, um, that are quite practical.
But they're also getting a sense that, um, the , that what they're going through is not singularly because they're doing a bad job of operating their life. Some of these transitions that are happening in midlife are natural and normal, and a lot of people are going through them, but they're just not talking about them.[00:44:00]
Um, I think the other thing that people really get from this is a renewed sense of purpose and, and a real sense of why they're here on earth and what they're meant to do. I, there's a quote I love, which is, the meaning of life is to find your gift. The, the work of life is to develop it. And the purpose of life is to give it away.
So that is, you know, woven into our curriculum. And I think finally people come, and I, and I'm a, you know, I have a lot of friends. I have more friends than I need to be honest with you, so, The idea of loneliness has not been something that has been close to me because I've, I actually need more space for people as opposed to less.
And yet there's so many people who come here who are active in their lives. They have a good life, but they don't have the deep kind of life-changing conversations with their friends and family. Or in some cases, they just do feel a little bit of loneliness, [00:45:00] not because they're a loser, but often because they're a workaholic, because they are spending so much time on their work.
And I think the deepest thing that what we've seen is that the, the importance of social connection. And, um, Harvard has a study, uh, that was popularized in a recent book called The Good Life by, uh, Dr. Bob Waldinger. And, um, basically showed that the number one variable for living a good, healthy, longer life is the social relations you have at age 50.
Um, and so, You know, our average age of people who come to M MEA is about 50. Uh, we've had people as young as 28 and as old as 88, but 50 50, 50 to 50 fives are are sweet spot. So, you know, helping people to feel that deep sense of social relation and, uh, a connection to a group of people that you're going to stay together with the rest of your life pretty important.
I'm
Dan Ryan: always amazed, um, you know, having done that work to find my why and, and my purpose, um, [00:46:00] and the work that you've done and, you know, other, many other people have done that, but I'm always amazed and surprised and, you know, a little down that so many people haven't put the work in and haven't really figured out their purpose.
Um, would you say if, if for all the people that are entering M Mea, do many of them have a purpose or they have they lost it or like what percent have never really even put the thought into it and then come out and it must be like a. A rebirth, a phoenix?
Chip Conley: Well, I think for a lot of people, you know, for so many of us, the, the, the path of least resistance is to just go do the thing that people are telling you to do, or the thing that actually you are good at, but you may not enjoy or whatever it is.
And, um, we coined a term success. We know consumerism. Consumerism is like thinking that going out and buying things is gonna make you happy and then you wanna keep up with the Joneses [00:47:00] Success is based upon the idea of, uh, being too influenced by other people's definitions of success such that you're on a treadmill trying to keep up with, you know, and, and, and, and attain those, uh, those, um, external definitions of success.
So I think part of what we help people do is to, to chart their own definition of success. And, um, help them to understand that what we call same seed, different soil is very relevant. You have built some wisdom, you have built some skills and some talents. Um, just as I learned at Airbnb, many of the talents I learned I took for granted because I, you know, I'd been, I've been attached to them, I've learned them over time.
But a lot of my leadership skills, my strategic thinking, my emotional intelligence, these are things that were really valuable in a company full of people in their twenties, um, who [00:48:00] were, were growing a company, but they needed to have their, their emotional intelligence microwaved. Um, so my process of helping people at Airbnb was to realize I had a seed, but now I'm in different soil.
I'm in a tech company, not a bricks and mortar hotel company. Uh, I'm in, I mean, I'm sure, yeah. I, so I had to accept that, wow, some of the things that I think are just common knowledge are, are not, um, So purpose is important. I also think that one of the things that's most important around purpose, and we, and we have EMEA, has online programs and one of them is called Living and Working On On Purpose.
It's an eight week online course. That course is amazing in terms of helping people to see that becoming purposeful is the most important step to finding your purpose. So you gotta do the verb in order to find the noun. And um, most of us get really possessed by the idea of, what's my purpose? Everybody else has one and I don't have one.
And then [00:49:00] we get performance anxiety around purpose because we feel like somehow there's something deficient in us. Instead, what we help people to do is say, okay, what do you feel passionate about? What do you feel purposeful about? What are the things that just get your, get you riled up? And then let's look at how do you invest some time and energy into those things with the idea that those may be bread crumps that take you to your purpose.
Dan Ryan: It's interesting on that performance anxiety when I, when I was going through and journaling and journaling and journaling and trying to figure out my why, um, I couldn't see it. And I called an old coach of mine and I read him a lot of like the summary of everything, scores of pages. And, uh, he's like, you don't see it?
I was like, no. He goes, it's all about the journey with you. And, and I couldn't even see it. It was all there. He knew he saw it and he shined it back at me and I literally like was overcome with emotion. It was amazing.
Chip Conley: Well, that is exactly what M me A is. So [00:50:00] M me a is a magnifying mirror of other people who are your enlightened witnesses in this workshop who help you to see things that you might not see yourself and um, So, and those people will stay in your life afterwards that unlike a lot of retreat centers where you go have your experience and then everybody sort of scatters to the wind.
M mea, you know, we have a very active alumni program, regional chapters, and the cohorts, um, have Zoom calls, uh, you know, once every other week or once a month, and they stay in touch to help each other and support each
Dan Ryan: other. That's amazing. It's, it must provide tremendous lift and just to be able to touch and, you know, re-experience that emotion of th going through that learning and those epiphanies.
Yes. Um, so just before Christmas I went on this, uh, reading Spur. I read, read, uh, it's called Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman. It's like Physics 1 0 1. He would give to his like, incoming physics students at Berkeley or Caltech. And then I read, [00:51:00] uh, the Oppenheimer book about, uh, Richard Oppenheimer in the Manhattan Project.
And then I read Cormack McCarthy, who just published two of his final books in the fall about children of the people who were on the Manhattan Project. Mm-hmm. And, and it's like a, what's so amazing is as you go deeper and deeper and deeper into what could be between your ears or into the atom, there's a whole nother universe in there.
And they were un able to unlock it in the Manhattan Project releasing, you know, a terrible atomic bomb. But I was really struck when I heard that you were opening up in, in Santa Fe or outside Santa Fe, cuz it's so close to Los Los Alamos. Yes. So this is my long way around away of getting around to saying, if you could look at your m e A and look to the future of the Modern Elder Academy, and if it was a Manhattan Project for you, [00:52:00] what would the ultimate outcome of that be?
Chip Conley: No, hopefully not an atomic bomb. Um, the, I would say our bhag or big, hairy, audacious skull is to completely rebrand the idea of midlife so that it's not a crisis, but it's a chrysalis. If you think about the journey from caterpillar to butterfly, midlife for the butterfly is the chrysalis. It's a time that is perceived as being dark and solitary, gooey, but it's also where the transformation happens.
And, um, uh, you know, midlife can be the time when you actually move to the happiest time of your life. The new curve of happiness. Social science research shows that after age 50 people get happier with each passing decade. So our, our Manhattan Project is to make midlife, uh, to help rebrand midlife, to create, uh, an inspired and empowered [00:53:00] community of Midlifers globally.
Who are almost like a movement and, and, and whether they, whether they're actively involved in m mea or they're going out and making a change in the world, or they're choosing to buy homes in our regenerative communities, there's lots of ways for people to relate to us and, um, but to actually help people to see that midlife is not just the start of your long, slow decline to decrepitude and death is an important thing.
Becca Levy from Yale has shown that when people shift their mindset from a negative to a positive on the subject of aging, they gained seven and a half years of additional life, which is more life than if you actually stopped smoking at 50 or started exercising at 50. So we un intend to be the p s A, the public service announcement to say aging has its downside, but it also has its upside.
And midlife is when you start to learn about the upside. .
Dan Ryan: Yeah. And I know [00:54:00] like for the Los Alamos, the, the, the outcome was the bomb. But on the other side, maybe that's the, the old way of thinking about aging, but they're also, they figured out a way to harness the power of the sun, which I don't think we've really figured out how to deal with just yet.
But I think there could be a tremendous positive there. And if you think about that, despair equals suffering, minus meaning, you know, if you can fill up the balance sheet line item of meaning, it doesn't matter what the suffering is, it will it, it will overwhelm it. Right. And you're, and you're on this new path.
Yeah. Um, how, how did you pick Santa Fe in that area?
Chip Conley: So, so when the, when the, when the pandemic came along, we just knew, okay, we need a beachhead in the US because while we have people from all over the world come to our programs, the US is the, the largest, you know, market that we, we se serve. So the question amongst us for operating partners, with me being the founder and the funder, uh, and c e o was okay.
You know, to my three partners, we each get five [00:55:00] votes of places in the us. Um, let's come up with 20 different qualities we're looking for in those communities. And we came up with 20, and I can talk to about two or three of them in the moment. And then each of us had five votes. And the only place that actually was on all five of our lists was Santa Fe.
And the reason Santa Fe was on our, all of our list was because, uh, a few different reasons. Number one is nature is prevalent there and nature is incorporated into our experiential education. Number two is Santa Fe has a long history of personal growth. It's a place where people go to find themselves to go, you know, explore.
It's, it, it, it is a bit of a sort of rebel, rebellious place in terms of why people go there. And um, thirdly, there's a long history of indigenous elders. We can tap into, uh, fourthly, it is a, a retirement community. It's where a lot of people go to Santa Fe to, to live later in life, which, so our regenerative communities are well suited for that.
Um, number five, there's a lot [00:56:00] of, uh, faculty, guest faculty and facilitators who live in Santa Fe. Number six is, um, Santa Fe's, one of those places where people, when they hear it, they say, oh, I, I had a great trip there, I loved it. And they want to have a reason to go back again. So Santa Fe's not a place where you have big conventions like, oh, let's go to the convention in Santa Fe.
Uh, so you have to actually sort of make a conscious choice to say you're gonna go do a Santa Fe trip, and people look forward to that. And so the fact that we will be with, you know, two different campuses there, um, is, is a positive. I could keep going on the list, but, um, that's at least six of the 20. Hmm.
Dan Ryan: And. They have a, a fan fantastic opera there as well. So I think that kind of ties into the arts, right? The
Chip Conley: opera, there's, I mean, there's the, the, the food scene there is amazing. 10,000 waves, this amazing Japanese, you know, communal bath, you know, spa place is amazing. So the, [00:57:00] it, it's, um, one other thing, and this is a pretty important one, we don't wanna be a commuter campus.
So we could have gone to Ojai for LA or Sonoma for the Bay Area or the Hudson Valley for new. But we don't want people driving in. We want people to actually feel like they're making the pilgrimage. You're going to a remote location and Bajas remote. Uh, you know, we're we're, you know, you fly into Los Cabos, we're only an hour away, but it does feel a bit like it's a, you know, in a rural fishing, fishing and farming village, similarly, Santa Fe requires a little bit of a pilgrimage to get there.
Yeah. It's, um, so that was another thing we wanna, and, and Santa Fe's feels a little bit foreign, a little bit, not just remote, but a little bit like not normal. And that's good because if people are going to a place that feels familiar, it's hard to break outta your habits. Um, part of the, the beauty of the week is people break out of habits that are no longer serving them.
Dan Ryan: Yeah. It's, uh, I'm going back to that idea of the genesis of the Phoenix name and mythology, and it's like the going to Santa Fe is like crossing [00:58:00] the rivers sticks, if you will. It's a, you know, you are on this journey and, uh, inward, the Manhattan Project of Aging. I love it. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. So. Okay, now I want to go all the way back to before you were 26 and started Draw Aviv.
When you were in college or high school or graduate school, when, at what point did you know you wanted to start a hotel company? .
Chip Conley: Um, so what I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I, I've al I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. So entrepreneur was, ship was built into me. Um, it was in my college years that I got interested in real estate.
My uncle was a commercial real estate developer and broker, uh, in Silicon Valley. So I started working with him as an intern and then I got my license. And at age 19, while I was at Stanford undergrad, I took a year off and worked for my uncle in Silicon Valley. And I was fascinated by real estate. So, uh, I went straight in from Stanford undergrad to [00:59:00] Stanford Business School, focused on real estate, worked for Morgan Stanley in New York in the real estate division.
Um, . So upon graduating from business school at age 23, which was really young, I was maybe the most focused person in my business school class because I knew I totally wanted to go into commercial real estate and be an entrepreneur someday. And, um, I went to work for a real estate developer and while I was working for that real estate developer in San Francisco, we were looking at doing a hotel.
And um, and it was while I was doing some of the, you know, the due diligence and the review of this, you know, the underwriting of this hotel that I just was fascinated by the hotel business. Um, and it's when I started learning about boutique hotels. So this is like 19 85, 19 85. So like boutique hotels are barely, you know, no, most people had never heard of them in the us And so that's when I got this idea in my mind like, My, my boss, the c e o and founder of this real estate [01:00:00] development company, should, we should create a division that I can run at age 25 or 26, which is the boutique division.
And he liked to be like, no fucking way , we're not gonna do that. Um, and that's why I decided I had to go, I had to leave and start my own company. So that's how it all happened. So hospitality got, I got interesting to me, I have been called a social alchemist, which means sort of a mixologist of people. So no wonder I would like be interested in hospitality if I'm a mixologist of people.
So restaurants, spas, hotels, all of it made sense.
Dan Ryan: Love it. Um, okay, so now I, I'll ask you a question that I are indeed, which I'll say rip off and duplicated from you. Um, it's, I, it's my time machine question. So I like ask, I like digging back to your 19 year old self. You're in college, you're taking that year off.
Um, If the, the modern elder that I'm speaking to right now magically appeared in front of your [01:01:00] 19 year old self, what advice do you have for yourself? Uh,
Chip Conley: stop caring so much what other people think about you. You know, don't take things so personally, um, and stop attaching your sense of self-worth to your successes.
So, you know, not to say those aren't important. These are, you know, it's not, it's more like everything I just said. It's not like, um, black and white. It's more like dilute how important those things are to you. They're, they're, they're too, you need to dilute how, how much they influence you. N so it's not like go, don't care what anybody says about you.
Yeah, I care. You should care. Your reputation's important, but don't care as much as you do. Um, don't care. Don't feel like your, your only way of [01:02:00] feeling self-worth is based upon the success, the most recent success you had. Yeah. That's like stupid. It doesn't make sense. And, um, so yeah, I mean, I I also, I also love this Oliver, uh, or no Oscar wild line.
Be yourself, everyone else is taken . I love such a, such a good line. Um,
Dan Ryan: I, you know what, I, I love that verb and thinking about it as a dilution, because if you go back to young in the, the 12, I think it's 12 archetypes, I forget 12. Mm-hmm. . Yep. Okay. The 12 archetypes. And we are all of those. So it's not like we can say, oh, I can't do that, or I can no longer be that.
It, the act of diluting really creates a spectrum so that we can all weave in and out, because we can't really change who we are. We have to find who we are. Mm-hmm. . And be an with who we, who we are. Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. Or find that frequency. It's really tuning to the frequency, right? It's a little, gets a little fuzzy on the edge.
Mm-hmm. , [01:03:00] you gotta dial it back. I mean, this has just been so wonderful, chip. I, I think as I've been talking to you and talking about purpose and Modern Elder Academy, I am going to commit to you that I will go to the Modern Elder Academy and I wanna do a before purpose and after purpose for myself that I could share with everyone and be vulnerable.
I think that would be really amazing. So thank you for,
Chip Conley: would love to have you down here that there's a Richard Lighter, quite famous, uh, author is teaching a Power of Purpose workshop in the fall, uh, at m mea in Baja. So, you know, there's, there's purpose workshops before then, but that's, that's just one to keep in mind.
Lighter.
Dan Ryan: Okay. I'll look, I'll follow up with you on that front. Um, okay. This has just been so fantastic and like I'm just energized for the rest of my day. Um, and. Forward. Um, yes. If people wanna learn more about you or Modern Elder Academy, where can they go?
Chip Conley: So, uh, the Modern Elder Academy [01:04:00] website is modern elder academy.com.
Um, we also have Instagram and, you know, there's a, lots of, lots of ways to find Modern Elder Academy, but a lot of the social media for MEA comes from me. So, my LinkedIn profile, I, my wisdom, well, my Daily Wisdom, well, uh, blog posts I actually put on my LinkedIn. So, um, if you go to the my, the Chip Conley LinkedIn page, you'll see a lot of content there.
Um, or you could go to, you know, wisdom, well Chip Conley, uh, Google Search, and you'll find it. And it's a, that's a free, uh, subscription, uh, email every morning from me, A little micro dal wisdom. Um, the chip conley.com website also is, uh, available for people, uh, uh,
Dan Ryan: to see as well. Wonderful, and we'll put links to all that and, uh, uh, a hyperlink to, to the signup.
But also, uh, I know you're very active on LinkedIn and I get a lot of inspiration, um, from you there. So, again, chip, I just wanna say from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for your time [01:05:00] and your experience. Share, it means the world to me and this whole idea of what hospitality is and defining it and the whole purpose behind doing this podcast, I'm hoping that, and I'm not just hoping, I know that this conversation will shorten other people's journeys towards finding their purpose if they haven't, or refining it or diluting.
Um, so thank you.
Chip Conley: Hmm. Thank you. Thank you
Dan Ryan: Dan. And I'd like to thank all the listeners again. We keep growing every week and it's so humbling and awe-inspiring. Um, I just wanna say thank you and it wouldn't happen without great guests like Chip. Um, so thank you, all of you. If this changed your idea or changed your thinking on hospitality, Please pass it along.
We're we grow by word of mouth, so thank you very much