Attaining, Atoning and Attuning with Chip Conley | Big Leap EP#65

When I've been in the attainment mode, often afterwards, I have to atone. So attain leads to atone, and attune leads to that one. And maybe it's partly because I'm a Scorpio with my sun sign that I like the idea of regeneration and being able to rise above. Midway between 18 and 90 is 54. So at age 52, I was like, jesus, I'm not even halfway through my adult life.

In the Hindu system of developmental psychology, they break it into four phases. Child, student, householder, and forest dweller.

I met my forest dweller era. Yep.

Hello, and welcome to the Big Leap podcast, everybody. I'm very excited about this episode today because Mike and I are interviewing someone who's one of my heroes and one of Mike's heroes and someone whose wisdom I respect enormously, Chip Conley. And so I've been looking forward to this for ages because for a long time now, people are always asking, hey.

Do you know Chip Connolly?

Now I can say I do. So I'm looking forward to this episode a lot.

Yes. And one of the big takeaways that you can experience is where you will find the greatest level of purpose in your life. And one of the things that Chip talks about that I found very interesting is attaining versus attuning and atoning. And he'll go into what that means in this episode. How about you, Chip? What's the biggest takeaway that you have in this one?

I think the biggest takeaway is you probably have more life ahead of you than you think. So if you're 54, which is the average age of our people who come to the Modern Elder Academy, and you're gonna live till 90, you are exactly halfway through your adult life if you start counting at age 18. So when you know you have that much life ahead of you, it's time to start planning about doing the things you've always wanted to do and make the big leap.

There it is, everybody.

Very nice.

Chip encapsulated the whole thing there in that lovely sentence he was saying. So look forward to more in this episode.

All right, well, whether you're listening, whether you're watching, make sure that you, like, comment, and we'll see you inside.

Hey, this is Mike Koenigs. I am here live in Baja, Mexico. Actually, very, very close to Chip Conley's Modern Elder Academy with the one and the only Chip Conley gay. And I have been really looking forward to spending some time with you, Chip. So where are you right now? What's going on, and what are you Most excited about.

Well, I'm in. Well, first of all, it's an honor to be hanging out with both of you on the show. I'm in San Francisco where we just finished an annual MEA Modern Elder Academy alumni reunion with people coming in from many, many countries around the world. Half the states in the United states, we had 400 people at a, at a three day event. So it was, it was spectacular. So I'm, I'm, I'm feeling sort of the love bubble after effects a little bit of a hangover emotionally. Not, not so much, you know, drinking wise, but emotionally given you just. We're not used to being with that many people all together in such an emotionally intimate way. So it was, it was beautiful.

I wanted to also talk to you, Chip, about a personal experience I had. Was started about 15 years ago, I think about the time when I was going out and doing a lot of talks to business leaders and people like that when my book the Big Leap came out. And on a number of occasions somebody would come up to me after my talk and said, you ought to meet Chip Conley. A lot of the things you're talking about are the same kind of things that he's talking about. So after that happened a few dozen times, fortunately just this past, in the past year or so, we connected and got to meet each other virtually. Haven't had the opportunity to meet each other in person. But here's a good question for you, knowing a little bit about me and you. What do you think they were referring to, Chips?

Well, I think Gay, you and your work has always been a North Star for me. And so I think the idea, and especially with the Big Leap, that particular book and your intellectual property around that it really speaks to the idea of courage and resiliency. And I'm a big believer in, in the fact that I think as we become adults, we need to get a master's in TQ Transitional intelligence. And the idea of transitional intelligence is really deeply woven into your book the Big Leap. And I'm also a big believer, as I think you are, in the fact that resilience alone will just wear out your knuckles. You'll go white knuckle it. Resilience buys you time, but adaptability buys you a future. And so for me.

I've been resilient at times and then worn myself out because I actually didn't make the leap. So I think it's that leap. It's not just the resilience, it's the courage to be adaptable, the creativity to be adaptable to the curiosity and it's absolutely the willingness to make mistakes along the way. So you have been. Not to say that you're just a mistake maker by nature, but you have been someone who has given lots of people, all your readers, the freedom to know that you can make mistakes. And the biggest mistake you could ever make is not even trying.

Speaking of trying, where did you, and in what project or what stage of your life did you go from trying to letting things happen in a more effortless way?

Yeah, so what I, what I like to call moving from attaining to attuning.

When I've been in the attainment mode, often afterwards I have to atone.

Because I, you know what I'm talking about. You're sort of like, you're so focused on your own selfish desires and needs that you're, you may have sharp elbows and when you're in the attunement Mode, you're at 1. So attain leads to a tone and a tune leads set one. I believe that in for 24 years, I was the founder and CEO of a boutique hotel company called Joie de vivre. We had 52 boutique hotels around California and became the second largest in the in the U.S. i think I was so in the attainment mode partly because my primary operating system was my ego.

And when your primary operating system is your ego, it's all about, you know, how do you prop that thing up, how do you make it feel good? And I think what's happened to me, and that was really up till about age 50, and both Carl Jung and Richard Rohr have both said, you know, that the primary operating system for the first half of your life is your ego and for the second half of your life it's your soul. But no one tells you around midlife that there's going to be an operating system change. And sometimes you just go through a lot of circumstances that are challenging. And it's when you get introduced to that dark night of the soul that you start to realize that there's a different way of operating. So, you know, in my 50s and now I'm, you know, I'll turn 62 later this year, I've really operated from a different place. And it doesn't mean I don't still have an ego or there's times when I'm just insufferable to be around. But it does mean that generally speaking, when you operate from your soul, you are such a, you're a first class noticer and you notice everything around you, the people around you, what's going on inside of you, the energy of the field and, and that's where I operate from today most of the time.

Going back to your early start in the hospitality industry.

What gave you the idea that you wanted to get into that particular niche of the world?

Well, you know, I, I went to Stanford undergrad, I went to Stanford Business School straight out of undergrad. So I graduated from, with an MBA, it's from Stanford at age 23, which is sort of unheard of. And I was, you know, precocious and attain, attain. And I worked, went to work for a real estate developer in San Francisco and I was bored. I mean, I enjoyed it a little bit, but I was, more than anything, it wasn't creative enough for me. So I was in the mid-1980s, curious about hospitality and boutique hotels were a part of the hospitality business that was just getting off the ground. And I said I wanted to buy a boutique hotel. And everybody in my family, everybody, my friends, people I went to business school with, they're like, are you kidding me? You're 25 years old. Like, what the hell are you doing? And so on my 26th birthday, I finished a business plan and I, you know, within two months I'd closed escrow and I didn't have a lot of money, let's be clear about that too. I'm from a very middle class family, not a lot of money. I had to go raise money. I bought a broken down motel in a bad neighborhood in San Francisco on a land lease that was, that was in bankruptcy and it's got a 40 year land lease and I bought that for $800,000 on an acre of land. Now can you imagine, like $800,000, you can't even buy a condo in San Francisco today. But I bought a 44 room motel on an acre of land with a relatively inexpensive land lease. And you know, almost 40 years later I, I still have that, that hotel. But I, but that's what led me and I had to learn the hard way. I had to learn about hotels and I was in a tough neighborhood. I'd learned about, you know, why we were not going to charge hourly rates anymore because the people who were running it before were charging hourly rates and I didn't quite get what that kind of business was. So.

Long story short is I called it the Phoenix, the mythological bird rising from its own ashes. And maybe it's partly because I'm a Scorpio with my sun sign that I like the idea of regeneration and being able to rise above and in Fact, the mythological bird, the Phoenix, is the city bird for the city of San Francisco because of the earthquake and fire in 1906.

By contrast, if I took a quiz about the 500 industries that I'd want to be in, I think hospitality would be way down at the bottom, about 498, just because of my. And same thing with restaurant energy. I have a friend who owns a restaurant, and actually they own 10 of them. And the labor things that go on in that would just drive me mad. I think I've structured my life so I have one super high paid assistant and about half a dozen people that she runs, you know, so that's about as much close to administration as I want to get.

But what's beautiful about that Gay is it's given you the time and space in your life to think big thoughts and to not get mired down into operations. And so I respect that. For me, I, you know, I think the most neglected fact in business is that we're all human. And I love the fact that creating a company that had 3,500 employees meant I needed to learn how to understand humans. And it's very frustrating at times, but it's also incredibly rewarding. And I think my biggest.

Disappointment from moving from the traditional hospitality industry into some other things was that I missed all the people.

But I actually went from that to actually becoming the mentor for the three founders of Airbnb when they had this little tech startup that, you know, nobody had ever heard of. And that was a very different form of hospitality, Airbnb. But it's now the most, you know, by far the most valuable hospitality company in the world. So it was a fascinating 10 years of helping them.

You know, that was another interesting phase of your life, too, that when you were running. I don't know if folks know this, but Chip used to run Airbnb, and you were in a situation where you were maybe twice as old as some of the people that you were working with. And that's a common problem people are talking to me about these days is how to interface with millennials and gazennials and all the other different terms that people are in. And how did you find yourself dealing with all that?

You know, it's interesting. Within the first. Yeah, I was 52 when I joined. Average age in the company was 26. The three founders were, you know, like, like my son's ages. And what I, what about a month into it, what they said to me is, chip, we hired you for your knowledge to basically help run this company. You know, and I was running it with other people too. But I mean, I was the mentor of the founders and I was full time and I was the person on the road more than anybody else in the company, traveling the world, growing the company. But what I, what they said is we hired you for your knowledge, but what you really brought was your wisdom. And gate, to be honest with you, I had never really thought about the difference between knowledge and wisdom. And, and sometimes the thing that is wise to a 26 year old is just obvious to me because I've been surrounded by that kind of thinking and I have familiarity toward it. And that's when they said, chip, you're our modern elder. And I was like, I don't want to be your modern elder. That sounds really like I'm like 100 years old. And they said, no, a modern elder is as curious as they are wise. So what I would say to you in response to what you've asked is.

I was part time mentor, part time intern. I would joined a tech company at age 52 and I never worked in a tech company and I'm not particularly proficient with my iPhone, you know, right here. So like, to join a tech company and then to be in charge of strategy, in charge of, you know, running the business in many ways. So it was, it was, it required me to be curious, it required me to be humble, it required me to have a beginner's mind. It also required me to just right, size my ego. You know, when you've been the founder and CEO of a company that had 3,500 employees for 24 years, and then you're brought in to sort of be the, the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage. You better actually know that your role is to make those three young men who are the founders of this company successful and to have a sense of legacy around how they build and create a company and how they build their own leadership skills.

So it was no longer about chips, it was about the three of them. And what a beautiful opportunity in my life to feel that. It's sort of what you feel towards your kids or maybe your grandkids for sure. But to do it in a workplace is so unusual because the way we've historically had, traditionally had hierarchy in workplaces is the old lead the young. The wisdom goes from old to young. And what I started to realize is like, wow, I am a mentor and an intern. I'm a mentor at the same time. And the wisdom is going both from old to young, but also from young to Old. And so I taught them a lot of EQ emotional intelligence and they taught me a lot of DQ digital intelligence.

Yeah, I think the emotional intelligence part is really something because I've had the opportunity to do something similar where I was mentor to young founders of several different startups. And some of the most basic things that you learn, like in your 30s and 40s, if you haven't learned them yet and you're 25 years old and you suddenly find yourself worth $100 million, that can really put a crimp in somebody's life. And so, yeah, you have to really grow that emotional intelligence at the same time. And a lot of people that are really good at digital kinds of things aren't particular particularly good at anything below the neck.

Yeah, it's, it's. I used to say it's time to microwave our emotional intelligence, guys. Like let's, like, how do we accelerate this? Because the big difference compared to say 25 or even 50 years ago is that these are companies that are becoming billion dollar companies overnight. I mean, Airbnb is worth 110, $120 billion now. So.

The, the stakes are higher. I mean, this is why some of these, you know, there's a lot of films are coming out right now, like about Uber and, and We Work and Theranos telling the basically the story of these young founders who could have used a little bit more emotional intelligence. They could have used a modern elder by their side. I'm very proud of the fact that there's no, there's been no hit piece on Airbnb and in terms of a docu series like that.

But I think, you know, the key though is for them to be as curious about what I can teach them as I am curious about what they can teach me. And that is really the future of intergenerational collaboration in the workplace, because we have five generations in the workplace for the very first time in history.

I not thought about that.

Mike, how are things down in Mexico? Chime in here.

Yeah, well, I've got a couple things, so I'm going to create a little context here. So at this moment I'm in Todo Santos, just a couple minutes away from mea Modern elder Academy, which I'm going to frame in an interesting way. The first time we met Chip was through Yannick Silver. It's got to be probably 15 years ago or so. And I was very struck by your wisdom then and also just who you were. And then if you fast forward a little bit, I've seen you around I followed you. And then some time ago, our mutual connection, Arielle Ford, that's who actually introduced me to gay years ago, told my wife Vivian, when Vivian had been running a Non profit for 17 years doing work in Uganda, and she wanted to start working on her third book and was looking for some kind of a break. And Ariel said, you've got to go to mea. And Vivian was like, what's mea? And she told her about Chip's new place, which is interesting. So fast forward a little bit. Vivian's down here, she's done for a day, and she calls me up and says, I want to move here. And I'm like. And my answer to Vivian is always, whatever you want, honey. The answer is always yes, because her instincts are fantastic. So if you fast forward, it's a little over a year now. We bought three and a half acres pretty much right next door to Mea. And this is such a profoundly beautiful, sacred place. But what I want to ask you is, you know, so you go from the hotel business to the high tech hotel business in a way, and then you move to MEA Modern Elder Academy, where the best way I can describe it is if and when you're at a place, place of transition, you really desire to reinvent and connect on a soul level and really rethink who you are, what you want to do, and what the next part of your life's all about. This is a perfect place to get that booster shot that you're looking for, meet and meet some amazing people, but also rethink where do I live and what do I want to do next. So that's my setup to just saying, what is mea? Why mea? What motivated you to come to Todos Santos of all places?

Yeah. Well, let's start with when I was in my midlife. When I was around 47, 48 years old, I went through a really dark two or three years. And I also lost five friends, all men in midlife, to suicide, unfortunately. So note to self, you know, midlife is a challenging period. I ended up having a flatline experience. I died nine times over 90 minutes because of a allergic reaction to an antibiotic I was on because of a broken ankle and a septic leg. So long story short is, you know, looking back at that period, I was like, okay, how am I going to, you know, what, what do I have available to me? And luckily, my best friend was a leadership coach and life coach, and she helped me for a couple of years and I ultimately sold my company and I did I just came out of that period and then went into the Airbnb period. And then I'm at Airbnb and I'm now feels like, like the old guy there for sure at age 52 and realize, okay, they're calling me the modern elder. And I did some math, you know, I said, listen, if I live till age 90, which I think is very likely, both my parents are literally on a six week trip around the world right now. They're 84 years old. So I'm probably gonna live till 90. And if I am 52 and I look at adulthood being the period from 18 till when I die, midway between 18 and 90, if I live to 90 is 54. So at age 52, I was like, Jesus. I mean, I'm not even halfway through my adult life at 52. When I joined Airbnb. And that's what really led me to when I took some time from working full time to just becoming a strategic advisor to the founders. That's when I started writing my fifth book, which is called Wisdom at Work, the Making of a Modern Elder. And in writing that book, I went on a run on the beach. And so, yes. Why Toda Santos? Why Pescadero? Why? So then Baja? Well, I had some friends who had lived down there. I loved visiting them. I just like the energy of the place. And I love the fact that, you know, how many places do you have farmland and you've bought some farmland. Farmland next to tropical, next to desert, next to ocean. And then you have about a 15 minute drive to the mountains, you know, 7,000 foot tall mountains. All of that's right there in a very rural place.

With the most spectacular food. I mean, just, it's a food culture. So I went for a run on the beach while I was writing my book at my home there. And I had a Baja aha. I had an epiphany one day and my Baha aha is why do we not have midlife wisdom schools? Why don't we have a place where people go to reimagine the second half of their adult life? So that's my answer to you, Mike.

That is, you found a sweet spot there.

It sounds like, yeah, sweet spot, physically. And I think also in terms of the idea of.

The fact that there's a need for this, you know, the fact that there are. This is not just a retreat center. I was on the board of the esalen Institute for 10 years and I've taught there for 15 years now. And I love Esalen and Esalen has Wonderful teachers there. Gay, you've probably taught there before. What a spectacular location. But Esalen doesn't have a curriculum. It actually brings in wonderful teachers, and then the teachers run their program. So we have a curriculum, and it's a curriculum that is based upon long life living. You know, I'm sorry, and long life living, but also long life learning such that how do you. How do you create a life that's as deep and meaningful as it is long? And so that's. So there's a real curriculum that it's, you know, that we've conspired with Harvard, Stanford, Yale and UC Berkeley professors to develop a program that helps people to reframe their relationship with aging and up their purpose and shift their mindset from a fixed or growth mindset and build that TQ that transitional intelligence, as well as their sense of regeneration.

It's one thing that I notice is a lot of the people who come to MEA want to become faculty on top of it. They're so inspired by the vision and the mission that you've declared that they sink into it quickly. Which leads me to question two, which is, think about pre lockdown, post lockdown. What did you find? The biggest challenges, the inspirations that people came to MEA with in their lives, and then what they walk away with versus post lockdown. What are you seeing people entering with in terms of what's on their mind and what they leave with right now? And I know it's kind of early in terms of post lockdown, but I'm curious what your response would be.

Yeah, well, there's a guy named Dr. Phil Pizzo. He's a. He ran Stanford Medical center for many years. He created the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute as well. And he's. In his research, he's shown that the three things that are most important to people foundationally after age 50 are purpose, wellness, and community. I would say that what people were looking for before they joined me, a. I'm sorry, before they. Before the. When they came to me, a was often a combination of purpose and wellness. So it was like they wanted to be flourishing and so flourishing in their career, flourishing in their health, flourishing in their relationship with aging. And what I think has been most evident to me is post.

Or coming out of the People are exceptionally focused on community.

Yes. Wellness and community. So it's like social wellness. Yes. Community and purpose. So it's like generativity, like how to. But. But community is sort of at the core. And I think that's partly because that the two years of Being separate from each other has created, you know, a deep desire for the IRL experience, the in real life experience. We have been on URL, on zoom and other forms of seeing each other, but we haven't had enough time to have that, you know, that intimacy experience in person. Now we do have, you know, we have a purpose course in MEA Online. ME Online. It's an eight week purpose course dedicated to digital intimacy and it's extremely popular. But I would say that what people are most thirsty for is to, to be, you know, sharing the same air. Which is not something I would have said the last two years, but I think it is true that that's what people are looking for and the, the social wellness that comes from being with people and.

Charting their path for the future with 18 or 20 other people in a workshop for a week.

I wanted to ask you one more kind of big question before we close up shop here. And drawing on your wisdom now, from all the different experiences you had, could you crystallize one or two or three things that people should keep focused on no matter what their generational experience is, to make their workplace a conscious one?

Well, first of all, aligning purpose, the purpose of an organization and the people within the organization, and giving the people in the organization the ability to feel like their fingerprints are all over the culture as well as the philanthropy. I mean, I think that's a critical one. I think, yes. You know, one of the things that's really interesting, one of the issues of the great Resignation is that people have not felt like they're engaged or cared about by the people who they work with, especially the leaders in the organization.

So I think aligning purpose is key. But I also have another perspective on that when it comes to purpose is, I think in Western culture, especially in the United States, we tend to get very possessive of our purpose. We almost think of our purpose as like a possession. It's like, oh my God, all my friends have purpose, but I don't have a purpose. The number one thing to do when it comes to purpose is, you know, you can't have the noun purpose if you don't do the verb be purposeful. So start with what in your life.

Whether it's in the organization you work for or whether it's in the rest of your life. What would give you a sense of purpose? At what could you be purposeful? Because being purposeful, the verb is the breadcrumbs that take you to the noun. The noun being the possession of purpose. And so I think, you know, companies need to get smarter at this. But we as individuals need to get less worked up about, you know, do I have a purpose or not? The bet it's more important to say I am a verb. To quote Buckminster Filler, I am a verb. And I think to be purposeful is the key. And I think when you ask people at what can you be purposeful? It's an easier question to answer than what is your purpose? Which is a question that freaks people out sometimes. Yeah.

Hey, Mike.

Okay, here's my last big question. That was awesome, by the way. That was very, very powerful. So I'm curious right now. You've hit your 60s. I'm curious who or what do you look for for. For your inspiration, your direction, your insights, and your wisdom?

So I look for my insights and my wisdom in nature from my dog. We go for a three hour walk three times a week called Spying on the Divine. That's what I call it. So, yes, I. I get it from Richard Rohr. I get it from Lynn Twist. I get it from Michael Franti. These are my friends. These are people who are guest faculty at mea. But I would say my most important teacher is nature. And what's beautiful about being down in Baja and also in Santa Fe, because we're opening two campuses in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is. There's a lot of nature there. And nature will teach you interdependency and resilience. Nature will teach you so much if you are open to learning. So I think my greatest teachers, you know, in the era that we live in, especially when nature and the earth is, you know, in some level of peril, is I look to nature and wildlife as my ultimate teachers.

In the Hindu system of developmental psychology, they break it into four phases. Child, student, householder, and forest dweller. Yes, you're a perfect example of a forest dweller.

I met my forest dweller era.

Yep, yep, me too. It's a good era. I come out of the forest and deliver little bits of things and then go back into the forest again.

Well, you live in a beautiful place as well, Gay. So it's, you know, it's. Let's just hope for not a big fire season this year. That's the key.

All right. Great being with you. Many blessings to you. Mike, you want to kind of wrap things up for us?

I sure will. Well, first of all, Chip, this has been awesome. And what I'm going to just tell everyone, first of all, I will say if you want to learn more about what Chip's up to, go to chipconley.com there you can learn more about his books, his bio, etc. Etc. And check out modernelderacademy.com also. That's a great place to learn about what he's doing right now. You'll see the curriculum and maybe we'll see each other down here because we're just a couple blocks away, less than a five minute walk away where we bought a giant strawberry field that we're developing and turning into our home. So anything else that you want to add, Chip, in terms of your ask or where people should go to learn more about you and to follow you?

Yeah, I think the only other thing I would say is I have a daily blog and it's called Wisdom well and Gay. I would welcome you to write a guest post if you ever want to write a guest post. It's a daily blog called Wisdom well. It's on the Modern Elder Academy website. But you could also just google Wisdom well Chip Conley and subscribe. It's for free. And it and it and you get a, you get a little micro dose of wisdom every morning from, from me or one of our guest guest bloggers.

I just had a wild idea. I think I may go into competition with you and create a conscious Conjure Academy.

Conscious Conjure Academy. I love it. Well, there you go.

That's how I described myself a while back, as a conscious kaju.

I don't know where else to go with that. Well, thank you.

Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for joining us today.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Chip. All right. And for everyone, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you post comment and you can always reach out to Gay and me@bigleetpodcast.com so thanks again for listening or watching.

Bye Bye.