Middle Age Has Bad Branding

Chip Conley, the Bestselling Author of Wisdom at Work and the Founder of the Modern Elder Academy. He said middle age has bad branding. It’s not just a crisis. We talked about the difference between retirement and regeneration. When you are as curious as you are wise, you are a modern elder. Enjoy the episode. On this episode’s guest is Chip Conley who is a Rebel Hospitality Entrepreneur and New York Times Bestselling Author. He disrupted his favorite industry twice. At 26 years old, he founded Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which transformed an inner-city motel into the second largest boutique hotel brand in America. He sold that after running it as CEO for 24 years.

The young founders of Airbnb asked him to help transform their promising startup into the world’s leading hospitality brand. He served as Airbnb’s head of global hospitality and strategy for four years and now acts as the company’s strategic advisor for hospitality and leadership. His five books have made him a leading authority at the intersection of psychology and business. He was awarded the Most Innovative CEO by the San Francisco Business Times and is the recipient of the hospitalities highest honor, the Pioneer Award. He holds an MBA from Stanford and is also, where we are going to get into, the Founder of something that I’m extremely impressed with called MEA, the Modern Elder Academy.

You have so many words of wisdom. My favorite book of yours, Wisdom at Work is just something I have read multiple times. I usually don’t have the time to read a book more than once but it’s become a resource for me. Before we get into how you’ve got to be so dang smart and wise, let’s go back to your own story of origin. Tell us, childhood or your days at Stanford, wherever you want to start.

I grew up in Southern California in Long Beach. I wanted to be a writer and an entrepreneur and my dad said, “Entrepreneur, yes. Writer, no. Writers are poor and psychotic.” Ultimately, I became an entrepreneur and a writer. I was a rebel, of course, but I went to the College of Stanford. I went to business school at Stanford. I’ve got an MBA. About 2.5 years, out of Stanford Business School at age 26. I decided to call my new boutique hotel company Joie de Vivre. It is not easy to say, spell or even know what it means in America. French for Joie de Vivre. That was our mission. Our mission was to create joy. I figured, “Why not have the name of the company and the mission of the company being the same.”

I started with a broken-down motel in the Tenderloin in San Francisco and grew that into 52 boutique hotels around the State of California over the next 24 years as the Founder and CEO. It became the second-largest boutique hotel here in the US. I loved it until I hated it. There was nothing in between for 22 years. What happened was, I was starting to love the writing more. The third book I wrote was called PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. It became a bestseller. I started giving speeches on it, and then the Great Recession came along in 2008. I didn’t want to do this anymore. I didn’t want to be founder and CEO anymore but I didn’t set up the company to have a succession plan.

The Great Recession started to wipe us out and I had a bunch of other stuff going on. I had a difficult couple of years around 47, 48, 49 years old. Finally, I’ve got to the places that I’ve got to sell this company. I did it during the recession. What’s fascinating is it allowed me to say, “I now am without a resume, without a job and identity.” It was weird. I felt naked. That’s the time that the three founders of Airbnb came along. A couple of years ago, I joined them and it was a small tech company. Nobody in the company had a hospitality or travel background.

That was a fascinating journey, helping them guide the rocket ship in a 70-hour week. I only did it for four years. While I was there that I came to realize, they were calling me the modern elder behind my back. I wasn’t sure if I liked that. It sounds like modern elder lee. I was mentoring Brian, the CEO and Joe is the co-founder. He said, “Modern elder’s as curious as they are wise.” That’s what led me to where I am now. When I left my full-time role and became a strategic advisor of the company, it gave me the space to write Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder. While I was writing that down here in Baja, where I had a home on the beach, I had a Baja a-ha and epiphany. That’s when I decided, “We’ve got to create MEA.” That’s a quick summation.

There are a couple of things that stood out for me. “I loved it until I hated it.” Twenty-two years, it was joyful. I can’t help but think about personal relationships, marriages, partnerships, or any relationship with something. Not everything has to last forever for it to be a success. We could be in those relationships with ourselves and go, “It’s time for something new.” It doesn’t mean that it wasn’t great or that I’m a failure at this just because I don’t want to do it anymore.

We all evolved and there are things in life that we think will be permanent but nothing is permanent, including ourselves. We die at some point. Your reputation could live on. There’s a famous Developmental Psychologist named Erikson. He says, “I am what survives me.” I like that. It speaks to legacy. Your legacy and your reputation can live on. There are things in life that have to have an end. I didn’t think I would have an end with the company I started but I had a flatline experience. I died multiple times after having an allergic reaction to an antibiotic that I was on. I died on stage, even worse, it was right after giving a speech in St Louis. It was that moment at age 47, almost 48, where I just said, “Something is not working here.” There were a lot of things that are not working. It allowed me to step back and say, “This is the wake-up call for this hotelier.”

I have a phrase that I would love your opinion on, which is, “If not now, when?”

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