How to Navigate Mid-life Transitions as a Modern Elder – Chip Conley, MBA : 1045

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Formerly Bulletproof Radio, A state of high performance. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. I've got a well known guy here in the studio in Austin with me. His name is Chip Conley. Chip runs something called Modern Elder Academy, and he's helping people cultivate wisdom and he's working on understanding different generations, especially in the workplace. Now, if you're young, this episode is for you. You're in your early 20s, maybe you're 30. And you're saying, I'm not that young. Well, you're kind of in the middle there, but you're certainly not 90. Right. And Chip's working on how do we get three generations together to share knowledge? And it's really impactful and profound when you do that. I even put my Burning man camps together that way. I want a couple elders. I want a couple of young people to pick up heavy things and run around and get us all excited. And then a mix of people in the middle, because that's actually how societies work. Chip learned all this stuff because he started working at this tiny, tiny tech startup you might have heard of called Airbnb as head of global hospitality and strategy years ago. And he was twice the age of the average employee of the company when he came in. And he got the title Airbnb's Modern Elder, which led to where he is today. Chip, welcome.

Well, I'm glad you. Thank you, Dave. And as a founding board member of Burning Man, I appreciate the call out because Burning man is the kind of place that is incredibly intergenerational. For those who've never been there, they're surprised by that. Burning man is the kind of place that is incredibly intergenerational. For those who've never been there, they're surprised by that. There's, you know, frankly, the founders of Burning man were, you know, they're boomers. So it's a really great mix of people, and I would love to see that utopian world mirrored throughout the world.

And you're also a New York Times bestselling author. These are mostly business things. I'm talking about business and marketing and some emotional equations around happiness. And you kind of shifted from one to the other. I'm just looking at questions I could ask you that maybe no one's asked you before. So when did you first become aware of your elders having something of value to you? How old were you?

I was, you know, I was probably a kid. I was a kid. And it was my grandmother Nani, my dad's mom. The other three grandparents I had, I can't say that I learned a lot from them. They were fine people, but they were drinking by 4 in the afternoon. Long story short is my grandmother Nani, she just had a sparkle in her eyes. She had a, she had a joie de vivre. I started a boutique hotel company in my early 20s, or my mid-20s called Joie de Vivre, partly because of my grandma Nani. Because I used to say to her, you've got a joie de vivre, you've got a joy of life about you. So I learned a lot about happiness from her, about it's not something you pursue and instead of pursuing happiness, you should practice joy. That's something I learned from her. And yeah, so she was special. She was the one who lasted the longest. She was the last of the four grandparents to pass away.

What do 20 year olds not know about, say 60 year olds that they should know?

Well, here's the number one thing. I would just say about 20 year olds because I started doing this when I was 28. You can become wise at any age. Yes. So Modern Elder Academy MEA is the world's first midlife wisdom school. But I've met lots of people who are wise at 25 and not wise at 75. So my definition of wisdom is metabolized experience that leads to distilled compassion. And the reason, the second part of that is because wisdom is a social good. If you're savvy or shrewd, you might metabolize your wisdom for your own sake. But if you're actually doing it for the benefit of somebody beyond yourself, then there's a distilled compassion piece. But the key thing to know in your 20s is the thing. What I learned at 28 was I was an idiot. CEO of a boutique hotel company. I had one hotel. Did you ever go to the Phoenix Hotel in the Tenderloin, sort of a rock and roll hotel? No, no, it's just like this funky rock and roll hotel in the Tenderloin. I bought it when I was 26, didn't have a lot of family money.

How did you buy a hotel when you were 26?

I bought it for $800,000. Can you imagine buying a 44 room hotel in San Francisco?

That's a good deal.

Well, we didn't own the land. 40 year land lease.

Okay.

But yeah, I bought it and then I spent $200,000 renovating. I mean like, so I had a million one that I had to raise to do it. And so, yeah, a million one won't go very far in San Francisco today. You might get a studio condo.

Yeah, and a bag of needles.

Yeah, that too. So I still own that place 35, 36 years later. But long story short is when I was 28, two years into owning that hotel, we had the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Oh, yeah, I remember that.

And I was up shit creek. I mean, I just didn't know what to do. We lost all of our business. I had no cash. And so one weekend I went home and a friend of mine said, you need to start writing in a diary. I think he was just tired of hearing from me kvetching. And so I pulled a diary off the wall and I wrote on the front of it my wisdom book. And from that point forward, I, every weekend would sit down. And now, 34 years later, I still do this. And I sit down and I write four to six or eight bullet points of what I'd learned that week. And by doing that, I was actually metabolizing my experience. I was taking my life lessons and making them tangible. So you could do that at any age. And I think that the thing I'd say to someone in their 20s is learning lessons is part of what life's all about. But then actually using those lessons for your good and for the value of others is the opportunity of wisdom.

There's a little piece of advice in there that maybe listeners didn't get, is that you wrote it down. Because every day you have wisdom points that come up. But we are programmed in our meat operating system to forget. To forget the good stuff, to forget the wisdom, and to just stay worried about, you know, not running out of food and being safe and all of that. And if I look at any of the work I've done around integration, whether it's psychedelic or from the neurofeedback school that I run, if you write it down, it takes it out of the mucky ego, subconscious, unconscious thing and it crystallizes it, even if you never read it again. And if you read it again, you get your wisdom. So you've been doing that for 34 years.

I've been doing that for 34 years. And let me take it even one step further, Dave. You can do this with a team. What you can do is to say once a quarter as a team, you come together and you say, the 10 of you, the 12 of you, what was your biggest lesson of the last quarter? And each person talks about it. And then as a group, you Say, what was our biggest team lesson? And that's a great way to not just sort of get clear on what it was, but to actually socialize it. Because actually, that's the next step is if you actually talk about your lessons, not only are you recognizing them yourself, but you're actually acknowledging them to other people. And you learn it faster that way. And as a team, you share the wisdom. And so at mea, we talk about wisdom is not taught, it's shared. So how do you create the crucible for wisdom to be shared in a way that is serving everybody?

That is a really cool idea. I'm going to start doing that with my group of companies.

Yeah, it's easy.

Yeah, it is easy. And then you have the organizational learning. The more I've run multiple companies, the more I see each company almost as a person. It's an information field, and individuals come in and they leave over time. And at what point, if everyone in the company's been replaced three times, is it the same company? Well, it is. And all the cells in your body get replaced about every seven years or something, but you're the same person. So it turns out both companies and humans are ephemeral. We actually don't exist except as fields of information. And what that means is that if you can take the lessons learned and you can write them down, that they strengthen the information field that holds things together.

It's the information field and it's the cultural field, too.

Oh, smart. What's the difference?

Information field would be data and knowledge and how we do things. And the culture field would be, how do we behave? You know, what are the behavioral norms that you know when you come into this company? Ah, you'll learn them quickly. In fact, they're never written on the wall. There's. Yes, there's the values on the wall. And they say, oh, here's our values. But very few companies say, here's the unwritten rules of how we do culture here. And I like to say that culture is what happens around here when the boss isn't around. That's my definition of culture. And I think so. I think culture is, yes, as you can churn through a bunch of people, but often it's the culture that's still there.

What do you do when you're running a company and say, someone's not a cultural fit? They might have skills, but they come in and they do not behave the way they need to behave to be successful in that environment?

Well, I think the first question is. So first of all, I don't know. I don't love cultural fit. I love cultural ad. And the reason I say that is because if it's a cultural fit, it means that somebody has to fit in. And a cultural ad is giving the indication that we're open to exploring having people who don't fit the dominant culture.

So culture evolves, for sure. I mean, I'm certainly not a normal person at any organization.

I think we could all agree with that.

I wouldn't have hired me. That's why I'm an entrepreneur. So I'm with you there. I want you to criticize my definition of culture, so I'm gonna share it, and then I want you to contrast it with yours.

Yes.

So I look at culture as like a school of fish, right? And they're all swimming in a direction, and if one of the fish just starts going sideways and it's the wrong direction, the other fish automatically kind of get it to go in the right way. So we're all moving in the same direction. And when a culture's not working, that means when a fish goes sideways, everyone follows one fish. Right. Instead of all of the fish moving in unison like a flock of birds.

Well, I think what you've just described is the US Military. But no, it's not.

They're marching one direction because it's a joint decision where they all go. Sure. It's not like there's one intelligence that tells a school of fish when to turn or a flock of birds when to go. They're all doing it together. But if one of them is completely going sideways, the whole flock doesn't lose its cohesion.

Correct. So I think we'd start by saying in terms of the definition of culture, there's no right or wrong culture. So there's.

Okay, a culture of narcissism, sociopathy, and slavery. That seems wrong.

That would be wrong. Totally agree. Totally agree. But in terms of a successful culture, let's say a success. And maybe there's a successful narcissistic culture, but I don't think it's sustainable. But there's successful cultures that are very different. Oracle is very different than Apple, which is very different than Facebook.

Very true.

And so I think the question of culture is. I would look at it this way. Culture is what serves the business interests and the people within the business and makes them the most effective as possible.

And maybe happy as well.

Yeah, for sure. Happiness is a big piece of it. So, you know, I'm. I. I've written books on culture, so, you know, my book peak. How Great companies get their mojo from Maslow is based upon applying Maslow's hierarchy needs to companies and to cultures. And so I do believe that you have to get conscious about what kind of culture you want. And this is where most companies get it wrong. They actually don't get clear on, like, what is the culture here? What kind of culture do we want? And. And they aren't. They're not. Nor they're not conscious about it, nor are they explicit about it. And so the hiring process, frankly, is when you determine this. And, you know, when we were at Airbnb or when I was at Airbnb, we had a process where anybody who's getting hired in the company had to go through a cultural values interview of two people in departments that had nothing to do with the group that you were going to be working with. So it could be an engineer who's coming along, and everybody on the engineering team wants to hire them. But if the values interview interviewers didn't like them, then a conversation needs to happen. So there was an element. And so that was weird. I mean, it was a little bit weird. It was unusual, for sure. But I think it had a profound impact on making sure that there weren't these little fiefdoms and these silos of like, oh, the engineering culture is that, and the marketing culture is this, and the policy and legal culture as that. So there was something that actually held it all together.

That's cool. Now's my chance. I got to ask Eric Schmidt a question that I want to ask you as well.

Yes, please. I'm honored.

And for listeners, guys, Eric Schmidt was the CEO and chairman of Google. So here's what I asked Eric. I said, okay, scaling the tech isn't that hard. It's an engineering problem, and we know how to solve this. But how in the heck did you scale the people organization that big without the narcissists destroying it?

Yeah.

So how did you do that at Airbnb?

Yeah, so Airbnb. So I had to do it at joie de vivre. But when I. When we grew to 3,500 employees. But when I went to Airbnb, it was a tech company, and tech companies grow a lot faster than, you know, bricks and mortar companies. So I want to give, you know, hats off to the three founders.

Sure.

They believe deeply in culture, and so I. They liked my book Peak. And so they were fascinated by the idea of the peak culture. But what they were really most interested in is creating a culture that actually was going to be around 100 years from now. And Brian, who I acted as the mentor to, but I learned as much from Brian as he learned from me. I called myself a mentor, a mentor and an intern at the same time. And so they've invested in culture. We did something called one Airbnb. This is a great story. So when we had only about 500 to 1,000 employees, we started it and we kept doing it until we had 3,000 employees. And then it became too expensive. But we had to look for other approaches. So we brought every single employee from 22 countries around the world to San Francisco for like a four day love fest. And it was a way for us to once a year and then ultimately every other year, bring everybody together, help people to be on the same page in terms of where we're going, mission wise, business strategy wise, but most importantly, help people to feel the culture. You know, because pre Covid, pre pandemic. Yeah, the idea of something palpable that you could touch was exceptionally important. You know, we're learning in this era that, you know, how do you do that in an era of zoom? But back then we made the investment to say, let's bring everybody together. And I think what it did was it meant that we had fewer of. I mean, we didn't have that many coaches in the company because we didn't need coaches so much because there was a sense that often the coaches were someone helping someone deal with a problem that on a team or in terms of their own purpose. But we had, you know, we had mentors. We had like a mentorship program that helped people to feel like, I don't need an outside coach coming in and telling me this. I need an internal culture minded mentor who could do that. And I had over 100 mentees over the course of my seven and a half years at Airbnb, which was a lot.

What a cultural difference. Do you want to know what Eric said?

What did he say?

He said, well, we identified that they had knaves and some other word whose name I'm forgetting right now. So basically, people were bad actors building empires. Those were the knaves. And then they had these other people who were basically weird. Maybe not a cultural fit, but high producers who HR didn't like, maybe, but who were not doing anything harmful. They were just odd. And I think it was like knights and knaves or something like that. He had a great thing for it. And he said the knaves were the problem. Those were the narcissists building their own little IP fiefdoms.

And.

And he just Said public and traumatic firings. He said, we only needed a few of those. And then the rest of them left the company. And I was like, wow. Like, talk about a difference of culture, right? Like, we will hunt you down, we will find you. You will exit the company. You know, the walk of shame with the box kind of thing. And that way everyone else who's playing tricks knows. And here you are with, like, mentors and mentees. But you had to make a bad hire. What happened to hire?

Oh, we made lots of bad hires. And there were people who, I mean, the hiring process is essential, but someone will make it through and then, like, show up with their true self and, like, how do you deal with that? But someone will make it through and then, like, show up with their true self and, like, how do you deal with that? So one of my favorite tricks with someone who's not showing up the way that we want them to is to ask them, what are the five adjectives you want people to use to describe you? And so I get the five adjectives, and then I say, I'm going to go out to the dozen people who you work with the most, and I'm going to ask them a few questions, like A360, all anonymous. And one of the questions I'm going to ask them is, what are the five adjectives that best describe you? And then we're going to see. And so get those five adjectives from the people who work with them, look at them and compare them with that person's five adjectives. And you do the comparison and say, okay, none of your five adjectives are showing up here. So let's go back to your five adjectives and let's say, what are the habits or the behaviors or the hacks that we can actually put in place? If you want to feel like you're an empowering leader, what do we have to do to help you to be empowering to the people you work with? And that worked. That worked. And sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it didn't work at all. And when it didn't, that's when it was clearly time to say, no more. This isn't working. And then you move on. Yeah. And quite frankly, when someone's habitual in some of their personality flaws, my favorite question to ask in an interview is, what's the number one way you're misperceived in the workplace? I love this question, because what it forces someone to do is to go off script. Because a normal job interview can be just so rote and it forces them to go off script and say, wow, okay, am I self aware enough to know how I am misperceived? And if I say that, how's it gonna come across? And so people sometimes get really flustered with that question. But that question was the number one question that worked for me because it allowed me to go down the rabbit hole with them based upon their answer. And so they say people think I'm an asshole, but really I'm a nice guy. It's like, okay, let's talk about that. How are you? Why is there that misperception? And so it ends up almost being like a therapy session.

Sounds like it.

But quite frankly, that's what you gotta do. And so that kind of question helps to weed out the bad apples.

One of the things that you're working on with the modern elder academy is this kind of midlife. Midlife coaching. I don't know, midlife, what do you call it?

Wisdom school.

Wisdom school. I like that. I'm thinking back to a time where I was having a really serious problem when I was running Bulletproof with an employee and it just didn't make sense. And I was dealing with a narcissist. And narcissists will make you think you're crazy. That's their operating system. I've studied it. I'm probably gonna write a book about it because not about that one experience, but just about the pattern recognition to be able to find them. It's a society wide problem that's getting worse right now. But I sat down with my friend Ken. I'm not going to say his last name, I don't know if he wants that kind of publicity, but he runs a $500 million real estate company. And I mentioned the problem and he looked at me and he picked up his phone, he said, oh, you need to fire her. Are we going to use my phone or yours? Now this is a guy who's probably 10, 15 years older than me and had seen the same pattern. And since then I've talked to so many entrepreneurs, people with 10 plus years as CEOs, and we all have had this experience, but no one really talks about it because it's actually kind of shameful, right? And I actually waited another six months, were incredibly traumatic and probably cost me $100 million to make the decision.

Oh, wow.

But hey, you live and you learn, right? And I asked him, how did you know this? How did you know to do that? And he said, oh. I said, mentors. Well, who mentored you? He said, jack Welch.

Ooh, I don't know if I want. Jack Welch is my mentor. Jack had some positives, and he also had some negatives.

He did, right? Yes. But a vaunted business leader. How do you do this? And he said, oh, I got to know him 20 years ago, and I just formed a relationship, and I could call him, and he would just give me advice. And that's where I want to ask you this question.

Yeah.

So wherever someone is in their career, if you want a senior executive in your back pocket who can mentor you, how do you ask for that? What does mentorship look like?

A couple thoughts on this. So let me. I'm going to tell you a quick story. Sure. So when I was in my early 30s and my company, Joie de Vivre, was growing quickly, we ultimately grew to 52 boutique hotels around California. I knew that culture was important, and I knew that I wanted to learn from the best. So I called up Dallas, Texas, and I said to the operator at Southwest Airlines headquarters, I want to talk to Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines. And she put me through. And I got Colleen Barrett, who was his assistant, his executive assistant, one of.

The most powerful people in the company.

She was very much then. And she ultimately become president of the company. How does that happen? And EA becomes a president. I love that. And I said to her, I said, my story is, I'm a young CEO, and I want to learn culture from the best, and I would love to learn from Herb. And she said, well, he's really busy, but if you write him a letter, he might respond. And so, basically, long story short is I wrote him a letter. Three weeks later, I got a letter back with answers to all three of my questions. He said, you asked me two of those three questions no one's ever asked me before. You're welcome to write me once a year. And so for the next 10 years, I wrote Herb Kelleher a letter.

Wow.

This is pre Internet. So these were all written letters, and he would answer them. And ultimately, I think Colleen was answering some of them in the later years. But long story short is your mentor doesn't necessarily have to be someone you've ever met. Now, you may have to have the chutzpah to say, I'm gonna reach out to whomever and see if they respond to me. And most of the time, they won't. But the wisdom is not wisdom. Doesn't have to be local, doesn't have to be the person who's, you know, down the hall from you. Doesn't have to be someone who lives in the same place as you, doesn't even have to be someone you know. But back to your question. How do you ask the question? Well, first of all, you don't pop the M word too quickly. Marriage is not popped on the first date. So go out and get to know the person. And the number one piece of advice I have is to say, ask the question of, like, I want to learn about how to run a great meeting from you. I want to tap into your wisdom. Say that at the end. I want to tap into your wisdom. Tap into your wisdom is something that's hard to turn down. And wisdom is something everybody appreciates when it's applied to them. And the more specific you are about what you're looking for, the easier it is for them to say yes. Where a potential mentor is worried is that you want a long term marriage relationship. And there are really two kinds of mentorship, and we teach this at MEA at the Modern Elder Academy. The first kind is the librarian. When you're the librarian as a mentor, your role is to share your know how and know who. And the mentee's role is to ask you great questions. And that's what I did with Herb Kelleher. Asked him the questions, he answered them. I learned something that's a finite role. And so if you want that kind of mentor, then you might be specific after the second or third conversation to say, I'd like to have you be my mentor. Just to ask you questions occasionally. Perfect. The other kind of mentor is a much more comprehensive relationship. It's what I call the confidant. And the confidant. I came up with that word. It's not a, you know, not a. An unknown word, but I came up with because there was a woman at Airbnb who was from France and I was, she was directly reporting to me. And two months into me working with her, she said, chip, you're my confidant. And I said, lisa, you haven't given me any juicy details yet. And she said, oh, no, in my part of France, a confidant is the one who gives you confidence.

Oh, that's a different definition.

Exactly. And she said, you're my permissionary. You're the one who gives me permission, but you're also the one who helps me understand how to be successful. So that's a different kind of relationship. In that kind of relationship, I was the one asking the questions. She wasn't asking the questions. I was asking the questions. And the questions really were almost like being A coach, almost like being Bill Campbell, being the person who just said, hey, here's a few questions, like, you know, what did you learn in the last week? Or how'd that meeting go? What do you think you could have done better or more? I use appreciative inquiry a lot, which is a form of asking questions that helps show possibilities and opportunities. And like, what do you want your role to look like a year from now? And what are the key things, skills you want to have learned by then? And so a confidant relationship is much more comprehensive. You can't have that many confidant relationships. You can have a lot of librarian relationships. So distinguishing between the two is helpful for you to determine whether you can say yes or not.

As a mentor, it feels like a lot of people in their early to mid career need confidence and permission as you described. And maybe as you become more of an elder, you don't need confidence and you don't need permission because you're just going to do it and you're either going to fail or not. And once you realize that, you don't really even need confidence because you're not.

Afraid of failing, you have some pattern recognition. Let's start by saying if you have metabolized your experience, you've created some wisdom. Women actually, in particular, as they get older in the workplace, get more confident. Men's confidence actually starts to plateau a little bit in their 50s, whereas women's continues to escalate. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But long story short is, yeah, I think as we get older, but you can have a mentor at any age. And let me also, let me talk about my mentor relationship with Brian Chesky. He asked me to come in and help democratize hospitality. That's what he said. That was his opening line. Chip, I want you to be my in house mentor to help democratize hospitality globally because we want to be a big player someday. And this was when nobody had ever heard of Airbnb. And so I said, okay, let's talk. And what I learned over time was that he was my mentor as well. So we mentored each other. I mentored him around emotional intelligence and leadership and strategy and frankly, the hospitality and travel business, the business, the industry he was disrupting. He taught me so much about venture capitals capital. I never had a venture capital in my own company investing in me. And so I learned about that. I learned about basically product, I learned about technology, I learned about cultural changes that are happening due to millennials. And so the best kind of Relationship, in my opinion, is a mutual mentorship because it means that you're gonna learn from each other. It's full of reciprocity.

I really like that perspective on it.

And wait, let's. One other thought on that. We live in an era. By the year 2025, two years from now, the majority of Americans are gonna have a younger boss. We've never seen this before.

Interesting.

As of last year, 44% of Americans had a younger boss. By the year 2025, the majority of Americans will have a younger boss. So we are living in an era. I mean, this is. We haven't had this before.

No.

So we're living in an era where we better get really wise around the idea of the physics of wisdom. It moves in both directions. It doesn't just go from old to young, it can actually go from young to old as well.

Early in my tech career, when I was a co founder of a part of the company that held Google's first.

Servers, it was the first big data.

Center company, Exodus Communications. I came in and I realized people weren't taking me seriously because I'm, whatever, 25. And so I had this idea, I'm going to dye my temples gray and I'm automatically going to get a raise and a promotion because literally people have this pattern recognition. Oh, he must have. So I actually went to a hairdresser and at the time there was no way to dye your hair gray because no one would want to do that. Like, duh, foiled. So I never did that. But it literally was one of those things where, like, I have something to do here. And the business that I helped to start, like as an intrapreneur, we did 100 million a quarter in revenue. It was a big deal, right? But to be able to walk into the CEO's office and be taken seriously, I was like, I need something else. And eventually I did get that. I had an office, outsider office, and I got to attend board meetings as long as I didn't speak. Right. But that was maybe through force of intellect and study and all of that, and maybe not through dyeing my hair, but.

Well, the founding fathers wore wigs. I mean, they wore gray wigs. So like, there wasn't. There's a history of this. Although actually, in the era we live in today, elders are not necessarily appreciated in the workplace and in general. And there's lots of reasons for that. But what I would just say to you is, like, what do you, if you look at your pattern recognition, what are two or three things that you're wiser about today than you were 20 years ago.

Being more selective in my hiring process and just in. In the people around me. One of the things that. That you don't learn unless you have good mentors is that if you accumulate either power or money or fame, the percentage of people who approach you who are narcissists or sociopaths goes up dramatically.

That's true.

You're like a light bulb with moths.

Right.

And this is why you see so many celebrities who are just weird, because they've just been traumatized by people trying to use them. Right. And this is why. I mean, you have filters in your organization, right? Not anyone can just reach out to you, because there's people who are just bad actors. Right. And half of them don't even know they're bad actors. They think they're good actors, but they're bad actors. And, like, it's so confusing. I didn't understand.

Well, they also think that, yeah, there's a. There's a mirror phenomena where they want to be you when they grow up. And that's. I'm empathetic to that. And then I'm also protective because we do get a lot of people who come to the modern Elder Academy who say, oh, I've always wanted to do a retreat center. I mean, my.

Oh, my God, the knockoff artists.

Yeah. My history of, like, all the time. A boutique hotel. You know, people want to be a boutique hotel restaurateur and spa owner. People wanted to do that. And now, like, retreat centers are the big thing. And so, like, oh, Chip, I want to come and be a retreat center owner, and I'm fine with actually helping to educate them. Not so fine if they want too much, you know? And I also don't mind people stealing. I mean, when we. You and I write books, if we write books, we have. We're in the business of sharing our wisdom. And so I don't mind sharing the wisdom where I. If someone's gonna rip me off, though, and start to say things that isn't giving credit and, you know, then that. Then that crosses a line.

Right. So how would someone who is in a position to be a mentor filter out people who are feeling envy?

Well, I would say the number one thing I would ask a mentee, a prospective mentee, is, what is it that you most want to get out of this? And if I'm not satisfied with the answer, both tonally as well as content wise of that answer, then I'll be cautious. If someone says to me, I just Want to learn what it's like to be Chip? It's like, well, that's not a mentorship that I do.

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If someone says to me, I just want to learn what it's like to be Chip, it's like, well, that's not, that's not a mentorship that I do. I mean, if you're actually working in the company, sure, then you'll learn how it is. But I'm not, I'm, I don't need a stalker and I don't need somebody who is going to try to replicate who I am by being. I love Oscar Wilde's quote, be yourself, everyone else is taken.

Amen.

But long story short is I would just say if it feels like the person is there in a non reciprocal kind of way, I won't go there.

I like that answer a lot. I get approached all the time, people saying, I want to be a mentor. Like you said, a little too soon there, let's not get married. But I do provide a lot of answers to people just because, like I said, it's easy to do that and.

You have formats, whether it's your conference and other formats for people to sort of hang out in the orbit and yeah, Modern Elder Academy, we do workshops year round and we're in Baja now and we're moving into Santa Fe, which we should talk about New Mexico, since that's your upbringing. So Santa Fe will have multiple campuses there. And so we create the crucible for people to spend time with me and my co founders, Jeff and Christine, and all of our facilitators and all of our faculty. So have people have the opportunity in a five or seven night program to actually get up close and personal? What we have to be careful of in those is to make sure that someone's coming there and that they know that there have to be boundaries as well. So just because you're in a workshop with 24 people doesn't mean that Chip can have a meal with you with every meal. But I really. When someone makes a commitment and says, I'm coming to spend five or seven nights and I'm going to spend the money to come down, whether it's to Baja or to Santa Fe, it's a bit of a pilgrimage. And I really appreciate when people come because I'm going to show up and assume best intentions until I'm proven wrong.

Game theory.

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay. And for listeners, if you haven't gotten into game theory, always assume best intentions and put yours forward. And that creates mathematically the best scenario until one person shows not good intentions, at which point you stop doing that. That's exactly right. But if you lead with mistrust it always, immediately, if people are doing the best fit solution, then it's going to go sideways.

And a similar thought on that is when you are working with someone, give them a reputation to live up to. So I was doing an email with someone this morning who's struggling in something, and I had to give her some confidence. I said, I know because of the following three things of what you've done historically. You have the capability to do this, and people know you're going to succeed at this. And so in essence, I'm giving her a reputation of up to him. Now, if I go too far, I can freak her out and create performance anxiety. But this is part of the role of being the permissionary to show some of the history. Because often we're so lacking in objectivity about our talents that someone else sometimes has to point them out.

I love that. So it's just the right sprinkling of that. All right, let's talk some more about what happens when people hit midlife.

Yes.

Your story about why you started Modern Elder Academy, it's a little dark, but tell me what's going on.

So I Had a midlife crisis that I now call a midlife chrysalis. I'll come back to that. Between 45 and 49. It sounds very self indulgent, you know, a midlife crisis. But I was going through a lot. Going through psychological stuff that gave me probably. I was probably in a depression. I had a long term relationship ending. I had a foster son who's African American who was an adult going to prison wrongfully. I was running out of cash for my company. Joie de vivre. 3,500 employees during the Great Recession. You know, didn't have the deep pockets to be able to keep it going. And I didn't want to do that anymore. I frankly, after 22, at that point, 22 years of running that company, I just didn't want to do it. And then I started losing some friends to suicide. One of my closest friends has the same first name I have. His name was Chip Hankins. He was my insurance broker. He also was the person I would turn to for spiritual advice occasionally. And he took his own life. And so to go to someone's memorial service and have everybody tell their Chip stories at a time when you're feeling dark yourself. Wow, that was like. I don't know if you ever saw the Gilligan's island episode where he falls from the coconut tree at his own funeral. That's what it felt like for me.

What a reference. I'm pretty sure millennials didn't get that one.

Yeah, I definitely did not. So I had a flatline experience. I broke my ankle playing baseball at Gavin Newsom's bachelor party set for his second wedding, and got a bacterial infection in my leg, was on an antibiotic, had a septic leg, was on a strong antibiotic that turns out I was allergic to.

Oh, that'll mess you up.

And so I was giving a speech on stage in St. Louis, and at the end of the speech, I was sitting, thankfully, signing books, and I went unconscious. And the paramedics showed up quickly. And that's when I started having my flatline experiences, because they had the heart monitors on, and so they had to get the paddles out and bring me back to Life at age 47. Which is interesting because 47 is the low point in the U curve of happiness. So the social science research has shown that really the low point of adult satisfaction, life satisfaction, is between 45 and 50. Your mileage may vary, but the bottom line is that's the low point. So I didn't know any of this when I was having my flatline experience and my dark night of the soul. At 47, I now think of this era and I think of midlife as sort of the caterpillar to butterfly journey. It's the chrysalis that's in between, and that's where, yeah, it's dark and solitary and gooey, but it's actually where the magic happens, the transformation happens. And I think midlife is an era of life where we're going through a lot of transitions. You know, menopause and empty nest and career changing and divorces and. And something stirring inside of you because something like internal is changing. Maybe you're moving your operating system from your ego to your soul. Who knows? And we don't have anything in society to help support people through an era that is full of crazy transitions. There's a word called middle essence that social science talks about now, but pop culture doesn't talk about it. Just like 1903, no one had ever heard of adolescence. Adolescence as a word is only 120 years old. So we now know what adolescence is. And we have adolescents in the room here. Hey, so adolescence has a respect, and it has been given a huge amount of investment by society. Child labor laws, college counseling, and junior high schools and high schools. What has middle essence been given? It's a time where people are going through hormonal, emotional, physical and identity transitions. But we have no schools or tools or rites of passage or rituals for people for this era of life that often is sometime between 45 and 65. And so that's why we created the Modern Elder Academy, because we felt like there was a need for a place for people to go and reimagine and repurpose themselves. And in what Mary Catherine Bateson, the famous academic whose mother was Margaret Mead, father was Gregory Bateson, said was the midlife atrium a place where you go and reflect and reimagine your life. Because, yes, we have a lot more longevity globally than we did a hundred years ago. But a lot of people think of it as a metaphor of like, oh, you have two additional bedrooms in the backyard. Aging is about just having more time being old. And Mary Kathryn Bateson famously said it's not about having extra bedrooms in the backyard. It's about rearchitecting the home so that your midlife is like an atrium, so you have light and air and space for reflection. And so that's why I created the modern Elder Academy. The average age of the person who comes to MEA is 54. The average age they think they're going to live till is 90. So that's it. I know, I know, I know, I know. They're not hackers. They're not. They. They. But. So. But if. Think about that for a minute. If they. If you're 54 and you're gonna live till 90, you have 36 years of adulthood ahead of you, and you have 36 years of adulthood behind you, because 54 minus 18. So at 54, you're halfway through your adult life. So that doesn't, you know, the crowd of people who are listening to us right now, you may say, oh, no, you're like, not a. You're like a third of the way through adult life or a quarter of your way. I get it, I get it. But I'm just saying, this is the fair point. 3000 alums from 42 countries have come to MEA and Baja. Long story short is when people actually wake up to the fact that they actually have as much life ahead of them, adult life, as they have behind them at 54, it is the opportunity for someone to ask the question, what am I going to regret if I don't learn it or do it now? It sort of allows a person to say, I can become a beginner again. It allows them to become liminal. It allows them to say, so, yes, first off, we need to help people in midlife to say that. Secondly, there's a growing number of people who feel like they're age fluid. And it's not, you know, in the era of gender fluidity, why not have age fluidity? Age fluidity is the idea. We're not talking about someone who's ageless or talking about somebody. Because when someone says you're ageless, they're sort of saying, you look young or you are young. Age fluid is like, I am all of the ages I could ever be. And don't, you know, pigeonhole me with a particular age. Just like gender fluidity. Twenty years ago, people are like, what are you talking about? Or 40 years ago. I think age fluidity is gonna be a thing.

Yep. And it might be hard to tell for the people who maybe have done biohacking since the early days.

Well, and there may be. And as an employer, there may get to a place where you actually get to understand the biometrics of an employee you're going to hire. I mean, who knows? I mean, it could get scary on some level, but on the other level, wouldn't it be interesting before you marry someone, if you understood their metrics a little bit and understood how long they might Be living, et cetera. So I think there's a lot of privacy concerns here that we have to be careful of. And at the same time, I think it's nuts that we think of two 55 year olds as exactly the same when they have very different lifestyles and very different gene pools.

Yeah, it's going to get really interesting real fast here too, that's for sure. With all the AI stuff coming down the line too.

For sure.

If you were starting your role at Airbnb today, would you have used ChatGPT to help you figure out what's going on with culture?

Wow, great question. For sure we would have used it and we will use it. And Airbnb, I'm sure is, is. If not there, you, if, if it's not chatgpt, something else.

Machine learning.

There's a lot of machine learning. I mean, when I, when I joined Airbnb over 10 years ago, I mean, machine learning was. I'd never heard of it before. I thought machine learning is what, like you did in the gym or something like that. You worked out on a machine and you learn your muscles. But like. So machine learning is part of the tech world. So the answer is yes, chatgpt. And now number four.

That's looking interesting.

I'm excited about it. Personally, I think it's just like anything that's new, we get scared, especially in terms of what becomes redundant as a result of it. I think that the part that is most interesting is that sort of classic, sort of Space Odyssey 2001 and the element of the sentient beings. And how do we know when it crosses over? And that's the part that I deeply want our ethics and philosophy and bioethics people to be spending a lot of time and money on.

I don't worry about it very much because the odds are almost certain that at least one of them has crossed over. At which point we won't be able to know that it crossed over. And let's see, throughout all of history, has it been military industrial complex? Who does that first?

Well, yes, it has.

So I'm sure that there's a sentient AI at some national lab already that's already pulling all of our strings, including the other AIs, because how would they know either? So this was a race to see who got there first. And it was probably one of the five national labs or possibly a big investment bank. In fact, I think I could tell you which one.

Really tell us.

I don't know that I really want to be. And this isn't all conspiracy stuff. This is game theory, actually. And it's like once one of them is able to do this, the exponential advantage you get is so much higher. And I did study AI as a concentration in my undergrad, so we weren't allowed to call it AI at the time because that was a fantasy. So we called it Decision Support Systems, which was. So anyhow, it's one of the things I've thought a lot about. But you can only worry about things so much before you have to get on with life. And so, yes, companies will use AI against you, we'll use AI against big companies, governments will use it against us, we'll use it against them. Just like we always have with every other tool, like shovels and guns and butter and all the stuff that people do.

It is the new tool.

Yeah. So I don't know. I just don't stay up late at night thinking about it. Are you hopeful right now for the future?

Yes, I am. I'm particularly hopeful about the statistics around how do we help people shift their relationship with aging because we're gonna live longer.

Exactly. Get used to it.

Although actually in the US The US is not about longevity. It's about shortevity or shortivity. Because, like, our longevity in the United States today is the same as it was in 1996. Our longevity in the US is behind Cuba, China, Chile, Croatia, Thailand, Uruguay.

At least our medical spend is really high with Big Pharma. That makes me feel good.

I know the whole thing doesn't make any sense. And yet we gotta get smarter and wiser about how do we help people to reframe their relationship with aging. Becca Levy from Yale has shown that when you shift your mindset on aging from a negative to a positive, you gain seven and a half years of additional life.

There you go.

Which is phenomenal because it's actually more life than if you actually stopped smoking at 50 or started exercising at 50. But where are the PSAs? Where are the public service announcements? So I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that we are going to get smarter as a society.

What I believe is that people want to retire in a circle around a regenerative farm that feeds them, that doesn't allow glyphosate so that you actually can live a long time.

That is what we're doing in Baja.

I know.

And that's what we're going to be doing in Santa.

I love this man. This has been a vision I've had for, like 10 plus years. I just didn't have the capital to do it. So it makes me really. And plus, you have the experience of hospitality. What do I know about hospitality?

Thank God for Airbnb. It's given me the capital to be able to do all of this. And my partners, Jeff and Christine, who keep me competent on this topic because they are far ahead of me when it comes to regenerative agriculture and principles. So, yeah, so it's beautiful. In some ways, what MEA is doing is we're disrupting retirement communities and we're disrupting higher education, which also deserves to be disrupted because, you know, to have an industry that thinks that all of their customers are going to be 18 to 25, and in a world where there's a fewer as a percentage of the population, fewer and fewer of those customers doesn't make any sense. We need long life learning, not lifelong learning. We need that, too. But long life learning is how do you help people to learn how to live a life that's as deep and meaningful as it is long? So it's both the quality and the quantity.

Okay, now I get to ask you an amazing question. On the drive here, my son Alan said, dad, do you think it's going to be worth going to college for me? Alan, I'm asking on your behalf. Chip Conley's going to answer.

Well, you know, I would want to ask, being a good coach, I would want to ask Alan two or three questions first, but I. Which I won't do because he doesn't have a microphone in front of him, but he says he can go there.

You want to come up to the.

Oh, my gosh, I love this.

Here you go, Alan.

Spontaneous.

So just like, stand about there.

Here, sit on your lap.

Yeah, sit on my lap. Pretend.

It's so cute. I wish you could all see this. It's beautiful.

If they can. There we go.

There we go.

So are the questions.

Alan, first of all, how old are you?

I'm 13 right now.

Okay. So welcome to your teens and your adolescence. So what totally turns you on in terms of the kinds of things that you're interested in today that might have the potential to be a career for you in the future, whether it's subjects or even sort of cool role models and professions that look interesting to you?

In terms of subjects? Right now I'm pretty interested in math. I know that's kind of stereotypical. Ew, math classes.

No, that's okay.

I find it's pretty fun because it's always so, like, logical. Two plus two is always going to be four, right?

Yep, yep. So, okay. Math and, like. And from a career perspective. Any thoughts on that?

I'm not too sure. Like, when I'm thinking, like, where will I be when I'm 20? Or where will I be when I'm 30? And that might only be a quarter of how long I'm gonna live.

Yeah.

But, like, just compared to where I was when I was 8, like, it's very hard to say, but I'm thinking maybe some job in engineering that requires math stuff seems cool. I like how things work.

So here's what I would say. And do you ever. Are you a rebel by nature? Are you somebody who likes to do things differently?

Yes, sometimes.

Okay.

Got that, Gene. Sorry, Alan.

Yeah, I think you got that from your dad. But long story short is I would say not knowing anything else and not asking more questions, which I would love to do at some point, I'd say you should go to college, but I'd say I have an asterisk here. The reason I'd say you should go is because it gives you a lot of options. The value of college is it allows you to explore more deeply than if you were actually to do it on your own. If you were a complete rebel and the people you most admired were entrepreneurs who are going to go do their own thing, then maybe you go out and just spend. Instead of spending four years in college, you spend four years mentoring, being a mentee to someone who you really admire. Maybe you start a business. I mean, the best learning I ever had was starting a business. I went to business school. Your dad went to business school. You don't learn much in business school because you got to go out and learn it in person in a practical sense. But there is something to be said about learning math from math geniuses, as in professors and advisors and things like that. So I don't know. That's Chip's advice for the moment, is I think you should consider going, but also see what happens in the next couple years. Also see what kinds of alternative programs. I mean, there's University Austin of Austin here that's going to be doing a program, and there's going to be all kinds of alternatives, alternative forms of learning that we don't even know yet.

Thanks. Really take that into consideration. I really like the opinion on yes, but also no, depending on how it works.

Thank you.

Covering my bases there.

Thanks, Alan.

Thanks, Alan.

And thanks, Chip. Yeah, I didn't plan that, but that was just a cool opportunity. All right. You talked earlier about Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Needs.

Did you hear about the Final step that he never published before he died.

What's self transcendence?

Transcendence, yeah.

I've got Maslow here in Austin. In my home here in Austin, I have a copy of a two volume set of Maslow's diaries. There's only 100 of them globally. And I've got. His family gave them to me because of writing a book about him or using his theory. Yes, of course. Self transcendence and beauty. He also had beauty up there. So he had five levels and then he got a sixth, seventh and eighth. I can't remember what one of those is, but beauty and aesthetics is one. And then self transcendence at the top.

Scott. Barry Kaufman came on.

I love him. I love him.

He's great. And he talked about that as well. And I feel like that's probably behind some of the reason that you're so active with Burning man as well.

Oh, yeah. No, I mean, Burning man is, well, actually so funny. I had my 50th birthday party at Burning Man a few years ago.

Amazing.

And it was. And our camp was called Maslowtopia. Isn't that wacky?

Can't even make this stuff up.

You're pretty intuitive, dude.

That's so cool. Yeah, it's funny. I try to explain to people why I go to Burning Man. It gives me energy for the rest of the year. And I think it's because of that transcendent time and a bunch of other stuff. Why do you go?

Brian Chesky from Airbnb, when he first went, I was there with him. When he first. His first time in 2013, he said, Chip, this is what the world would be like if artists ruled the world. And I love that. I go because it is utopian in so many ways. I love art, have always loved art. So just the sheer ability to see that much art in one place is phenomenal. The fact that it's a culture of giving, it's a culture of just. No one's buying anything other than ice and coffee. That's the only thing you buy while you're at Burning Man. Everything else is given away and you get to roam.

I've given away 5,000 cups of coffee with butter in them every year that I've gone.

Beautiful, beautiful. No, that's. I mean, I love the giving economy. I love the. I think serendipity and epiphanies happen there. I think it's why a lot of people in tech go there. Yes. They may be going there and taking psychedelics or plant medicine while they're there, but you can go there and have a contact high as well. You can go sober. I have been sober there, and I can tell you that you can get a contact tither. And it is a place. It's like a midwife for epiphanies. And I feel like that is what Burning Man's opportunity in the world is for people, is to go there and have an epiphany.

All right, I want to talk some more about what you're doing, specifically when people go to Modern Elder. And by the way, guys, I. Chip, when we sat down before we started recording, he said, hey, Dave, is it okay if I give a discount to listeners? I don't normally do that.

Yeah, we don't.

So, I mean, I.

It's Dave 20. And so if you go to the Modern Elder Academy website and you look at workshops or what we have sabbatical sessions, which are like wellness vacations with education or our online programs. If you put Dave20 in the coupon code, you get 20% off.

Thank you for that gift, guys. There's no business arrangement here. It's just. It's just a gift. Yeah. Think of it like the gifting economy from Bernie Mae. Now, who's the target? Just because we're going to go into what you're doing here. Is this the people in their. In their 40s, 40s to 50s, 40s to 60s?

Yeah, 75% of the people are 45 to 65. But we've had people as young as 28 and as old as 88. Mostly it's people who are in the core of what we consider midlife. Why are they coming? They're coming often because they're going through some kind of transition. And we talked earlier about all the kinds of transitions that happen in midlife. And so sometimes people are going through something and they're looking for a clue. The program has really five pillars to it. One is how to cultivate and harvest wisdom. And we've talked a lot about wisdom on the show, so we do that. Secondly, how do you reframe our relationship with aging? What gets better with age? And a lot of things get better with age. I listened to your show recently with Steven Kotler and you talked about Dr. Gene Cohen, and Dr. Gene Cohen talked about four wheel drive of your brain. As you get older, your brain shrinks a little bit, but you actually get so much better at being able to do the left brain, right brain tango and be able to basically go from lyrical to logical all in the same sentence. Okay, so the five pillars of MEA curriculum, Wisdom reframing aging. Thirdly, moving from a fixed to a growth mindset. Carol Dweck's work from Stanford. Fourthly, navigating midlife transitions. And fifth, how do we create a regenerative lifestyle? That's cool. And the regenerative lifestyle is regenerate your purpose, regenerate your community. Erik Erickson, the famous developmental psychologist, said, the most important challenge in midlife is the challenge between generativity and stagnation. And generativity speaks to the idea of how are we constantly generating something new? And in his definition of generativity, doing it for people younger than you so that you're actually serving something beyond yourself. And he famously also said, I am what survives me. And he didn't mean that in a narcissistic way. He meant that in a way of how do you give back? So those are the five pillars. But the two things that I think that we've seen the most, and we have some data on this as well, is that when people come and experience the program, they're open to being liminal in midlife more, which means they're open to being curious and open to new experiences more. And those two variables are extremely important in terms of their correlation to living a long, happy life. Curiosity and openness to new experience. So open to being a beginner again is important. The other one is community. And you have community. You have too much community at times. There's times when you just want to huddle away at home.

And you must get that, too.

Yeah, I do. Totally. I'm an ambivert. I am both an extrovert and an introvert. And so there's an element of like, okay, yes, I'm a social alchemist. I am a mixologist of people. And then sometimes I want to just go ahead and mix them and have them all together. And then like, okay, now I'm going to leave the room, do the Irish goodbye and go to bed at 9pm because that's when I like to go to bed. So there's something called social wellness. And social wellness is, yes, we have physical wellness, and yet often the only kind of wellness we tend to talk about is our sleep, our nutrition, our exercise. And yet there's this social wellness, which is the idea of how do we do some of our normal personal wellness things with other people, but also how do we actually invest in relationships? And this is particularly true for men in terms of the need. And you and I are fine probably on this, but for a lot of men, they didn't learn in their teen years the social skills to make friendships as like women did or girls did. Then they got very busy in their life just like women did as well. But women still kept the friendships because they're social animals more than men. Men are the rugged individualists.

Yeah, there's times I've been lonely for sure.

And so what happens is that men hit their 50s. The five friends of mine who took their own lives during the Great recession were ages 42 to 52. Three of the five were entrepreneurs. And more than anything else, I think that they just didn't feel like they had people to talk to and they thought what they were going through was abnormal, when in fact what they're going through was normal, but they weren't talking about it.

So for the entrepreneurs listening, I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs, there's also a lot of anti aging doctors who by themselves, by the way, you are also an entrepreneur. Unless you're at a big university. You need to find time to hang out with other people, whether it's from your industry or another, but who are at your level of complexity, even so that you can talk about problems in hundreds of people units or with an unimaginable number of zeros because you're dealing with those. And the young entrepreneurs don't know that. In fact, I have several in my portfolio. I'm like, yes, you need to spend 25 grand to go to Genius Network or something like that.

And like, what do you know? What's money that is?

I said, yeah, I know because I was in the same situation. And my friend jj, JJ Virgin said, hey Dave, you need to do this. I'm like, that's like a meaningful percentage of a month's revenues here, but okay, I'm going to do it. And it worked. And then I'm there. And another guy's like, we spent 40 grand, 40 grand to spend a weekend with a group. And that was actually just in support of the X Prize. And I did it and I made a couple of friends I've known for many years. And it was actually one of the most important things I did in terms of motivating myself. Cause I finally got to talk to people who were not only not intimidated by what I did, but they're like, oh, that's a rounding error. Like, let me help. And it's that let me help vibe that's carried through and that's what you're doing.

Well, yeah. And entrepreneurs need to understand the difference between cost and value. And they need to be focused on Both. Cost is essential, but value at the end of the day is not just the value to the company, but the value to you as a leader.

Right.

Because the more you invest in your leadership skills, and the better the company will be. And that's what I just want to. Again, hats off to Brian Chesky. Brian Chesky at Airbnb. The reason he is still a CEO of a public company is because he's invested in his leadership skills. And I have been by his side for over 10 years.

Beautiful. I love how you've done that. And you have this track record of giving back. Anytime you're writing a book when you're already successful, it's giving back. Same thing here. I don't write books for money. Because you could pull shots of espresso for more money than writing a book, Right? Yeah, but you've written five books. And Modern Elder Academy is also just all about giving back. Have you always been a giving back guy? I mean, you are an original burner, so maybe that's just how you're wired.

I am sort of wired this way.

Okay.

Yeah. Which is why I sometimes have to have people around me who help to protect me.

Yeah. I'm the same way.

Yeah. Because I. An entrepreneur doesn't know their limits until they surpass them. And frankly, for me, that means occasionally I need people to say, hey, Chip, you need to take a break.

Like you're aiming at a wall and accelerating. Maybe you should put the brakes on.

Yeah, exactly.

That's always good to know. All right, Chip, we could talk for probably another hour or two and have a great time, but I know you've got a hard stop, and so do I, because it is south by Southwest this week.

It is.

So thank you so much, so much for taking time to come into the studio today, guys. Modernelderacademy.com and, Chip, thanks for the gift.

Check it out. 20. 20% discount. And also check out my. I have a daily blog called Wisdom well, it's on the Modern Elder Academy website. Or you can Google Chip Conley and Wisdom well. And it's basically my micro dose of wisdom every morning.

Well put. Thank you, Chip.

Thank you, Dave.

If you liked today's episode, you know what to do. Leave a review. Pick up a copy of Smarter, Not Harder. Or maybe mentor someone else. Or ask someone else if they could just help you. What did you say? Tap into wisdom. Tap into their wisdom. There you go. Have a great day.

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You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

A human upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a corner consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paper, paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.