Chip Conley’s Joie de Vivre to the Modern Elder Academy Ep. 115

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.

Welcome to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS. How do people end up becoming an entrepreneur? How do they scale and grow their businesses? How do they plan for profit? Are they in it for life or are they building to exit? These, and a myriad of other topics will be discussed to pull back the veil on the wizardry of successful and FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS. My book, RELENTLESS is now available everywhere books can be bought online, including and BarnesAndNoble.com, try your local indie bookstore too. And if they don't have it, they can order it. Just ask them. The reviews are streaming in and I'm so thankful for the positive feedback as well as hearing from people that my memoir has impacted them positively. It is not enough to be resilient. You have to be relentless. You can go to TheRelentlessBook.com for more information. Thank you so much. 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. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you loved the show. If you did, please subscribe. Also, if you haven't done so yet, please leave a review where you're listening to this podcast now. I'm Natasha Miller. And you've been listening to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS.