← The Ronan Levy Podcast
The Ronan Levy Podcast
Chip Conley: How to be Useful
00:51:15
After disrupting the hospitality industry twice, first as the founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the second-largest operator of boutique hotels in the U.S., and then as Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, leading a worldwide revolu...
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- [00:00]
A
I was the guy who said, every weekend we're doing mushrooms. Every weekend of my senior year, we did mushrooms. And oh my God, boy, did I love that. And the reality was that I was in college, starting to break free from the mask of masculinity.
- [00:21]
B
Hey, everyone, Ronan here. The conversation you're about to listen to today is between two bald dudes talking psychedelics, spirituality, life and death, and finding purpose. No, I haven't finally snapped and just embarked in a deeply insightful conversation with myself. Or have I? Just kidding, rather. Today's episode is with Chip Conley. Chip is a hospitality entrepreneur and bestselling author who is on a mission to reframe our relationship with aging as the founder of the Modern Elder Academy, the world's first midlife wisdom school. I first learned of Chip's work shortly after I left field trip and found it inspiring as I embarked on the process of picking up the pieces from that part of my life. Now, 18 or so months later, I feel like that aspect of my journey is coming to an end. So this seems like an elegantly timed closure to it. Shout out to Jason Gnard and Mastermind Talks for helping make this conversation happen. And if you enjoy it, please subscribe to the Rona Levy podcast wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review. It helps spread the word. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining me today, Chip. It's. It's really nice to see you after seeing you at the Mastermind Talks event, which was now a couple months ago, wasn't it? Time flies in the summer.
- [01:31]
A
Thank you. Yeah. And it's great to. Great to be with you, Ronan. And I'm coming to you from Santa Fe, our campus, Modern elder Academy campus. 2600 acre regenerative horse ranch.
- [01:42]
B
Oh, wonderful. I've spent a little bit of time in Santa Fe because one of the companies I worked with and invested, actually the biggest investment I ever made in my life is based in Los Alamos. So I know a little bit. But I do know how beautiful it is out there, so that's awesome. Okay, so my first question for you, and I want you to think about the answer for a moment before you share it, is, who are you? I'll cover all the technical details about your work and books and so forth, so you can go into that if you want, but I'm more interested in knowing how you might answer that question if you were answering it to yourself or your soul. It's an experiment we did when I was making a documentary about psychedelics, about watching how people answer that question. How it had. How it evolved over time, especially through psychedelic experiences. But having watched you a bit and knowing how thoughtful and soulful you are in a lot of the ways you communicate, I'm really interested in hearing how you answer that question.
- [02:43]
A
Who am I? I am someone who defies definition. No, I think I'm a bit of a rebel soul. Someone who doesn't like conforming but has a hospitality spirit. I'm a social alchemist, which means I'm a mixologist of people. I am someone who has constantly felt like he needed to prove himself and has learned over time that what I really need to focus on is just improving myself. And I'm someone who has a sense of urgency in life, and that can sometimes come across as impatience.
- [03:34]
B
Yeah. Do you think so much of that resonates with who I am? Every time I've listened to you speak and read your work, I'm like, there's an alignment between. Besides our hairstyles, there's an alignment between the way you appear in the world and the way I think I appear in the world. Do you think that tendency towards rebellion and the inclination towards hospitality are linked?
- [04:05]
A
I mean, I love the way I've linked them. Meaning? I don't know. I don't think that they're from the most people's perspective that they would be perceived as naturally linked. I would think someone who's rebellious might be perceived as angry, might be perceived as not gracious, not sort of in a service mode. For me, I think there is. I think the hospitality professions about one of the most noble professions you could go into, because it's about helping people just feel good about themselves and feel joy. I mean, that's why I called my first company Joie de Vivre, my boutique hotel company. I think that rebellious, where there's a rebelliousness to it in the world we live in today is that we don't have a hospitality spiritual. We have a little bit of a perspective of assume worst intentions of people that you don't know, as opposed to best intentions. And so to sort of put the welcome mat out in the world we live in, the divisive, polarized world we live in, with the intention of being hospitable. No matter who you are and what you believe, there's some rebelliousness in that, in the world we live in today.
- [05:30]
B
The reason I thought about that is because I just did a session with one of my teachers named Irwin, and we were talking about, you know, some. Some existential stuff. And one of the things that came up is That I have, obviously, a healthy fear of death, a good Jewish hypochondriac in some ways. But one of the things that came out was, you know, one of the underlying fears is a sense of being alone. And now we went into a very spiritual conversation up. But as you spoke, one of the things I think that's inherent about being a rebel is sometimes going it alone. And so, you know, that inclination towards hospitality so you're not alone, may actually be underlying a piece of that. But I can see how they can go hand in hand very closely. While I still respect that rebellion can often mean, you know, giving a middle finger to everybody. I think a lot of people just don't want to be alone.
- [06:26]
A
You know, it's interesting. I'm here at my home on the ranch at our MEA campus here in Santa Fe. And it's a big one. It's four square miles. And we had a. You know, we have a pool here. And so, you know, each day we have one of the workshops that's going on here. Private groups, they come up and hang out in the pool. And they were at my home here. And they're like, it's a bit. It's sort of a. It's a big, big old, you know, home built 30 years ago by some folks who wanted to get it into Architectural Digest, which. Which it is. So it's a really quite, you know, wildly magnificent home. And the woman, one of the women who came up and says, like, aren't you lonely here? And I have a partner and who's Israeli, who is in Israel right now. And so he's not with me. And I. Although he's with me much of the time, mostly in Baja, which is where our other campus is. And I said to her, no, I am so happy here. I grew up as a very, you know, I was very introverted. And then in my teen years, my adolescence, really made to feel by my parents that I should be an extrovert, or at least more, if not an extrovert, at least a little more socially adept with my friends. And so I've spent my life being a really competent extrovert. And I've become more of an ambivert now. You know, ambidextrous between extrovert and introvert. So I really appreciate my alone time and my solitude. I don't have fears. I mean, you and I may be very similar in many ways. I have zero fears about being alone at my death. That does not worry me. In fact, I really. I think with the way I'VE I'm curating my life right now. I have no doubt I will have. I'll be surrounded by people assuming we know and we can see when I'm going to die. I'll have a lot of people around me and a lot of people at my funeral and eulogy. I don't have any worries there and I don't have much worry about the afterlife in terms of what is ahead for me. I do feel very much like my soul came with me on this journey and will leave when my body no longer functions and my soul will continue. And to even call up my soul is inaccurate. The soul that I am gifted with will continue on. And so I've been dealing with death stuff lately. I found out two days ago, three days ago, I have stage three prostate cancer and my urological. What do you call someone who's a cancer doctor? Oncologist.
- [09:12]
B
Oncologist, yeah.
- [09:14]
A
He said, chip, the data says based upon the fact that we've done all these things for you to try to get rid of the cancer, it's not. Not gone, that you have about a 22% chance of living another 10 years. It's like, oh my God, I'm. Are you kidding me? I'm not even 64 yet. And it was really, it was hard. And then a day later he called and said, well, we have new studies that we just found that, you know, show that you're going to live. That's an 80% chance. You're another 10 years. Like, okay, which is it? So long story short is I've. I've been dealing with this topic this week. So the timing of this conversation is, you know, very relevant. My biggest fears around death really relate to how two things really. One is the sense of all the things I want to do and experience before I die. And secondly, the fact that my affairs are not in order, so to speak. And that is just that I've got quite a big broad platform of what I'm doing in my life and you know, especially the modern elder academy mea. And it's just we're not set up yet for me to leave and so it would be really complicated for the organization. So, you know, that's the kind of stuff. It's actually sort of more in the weeds kind of stuff than it is the bigger question of death. But yeah, I also had an ND at age 47 and died and went to the other side and got an experience to the other side. And you know what? I don't. I'm not scared of It.
- [10:53]
B
Can you. Can you share that? And I'd love to hear what you saw on the other side.
- [10:56]
A
Yeah. No. I was 47 years old, had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic because I had a broken ankle and a septic leg due to a. A bachelor party accident. And long story short is when I went to the other side, and it happened nine times over 90 minutes. I was in a, like, mountain chalet in Switzerland or somewhere like Switzerland. And I was on the second floor, big living room, big skylight, light coming in, kaleidoscope of colors on the wall. Everything was very sensual. Everything was slow motion. I was flying like a bird. I was naked, except for I was wearing slippers. One. One slipper that said slow, the other slipper that said down. There were birds chirping and singing to me, and I was talking to the birds. I. You know, I was. I was a human, so I was a human flapping my. My arms, and I. My arms could just extend, and when they extended down to the ground because there was this frangipani scented oil slowly moving along the beautiful wood floor and starting to go head down, head down the staircase or the stairs. So, you know what I took from this? There were no humans there. There was a lot of light. What I took from it was just beauty and awe and just the sense that I was one with everything else. And most importantly, that I was supposed to slow down. And that's a really important message for me. My whole life. It had an impact on me. I really, completely changed my life in my late 40s as a result of that. And, yes, this cancer stuff I'm dealing with now is also having an effect on me. So I have a daily blog, and my daily blog yesterday was called Overriding My Body's Messages. And it was the idea that often our body is telling us something, and it's so easy to distract ourselves and not listen to what your body's telling you. So, yeah.
- [13:06]
B
Wow. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. It sounds very psychedelic. Very psychedelic experience in many ways.
- [13:15]
A
No, it definitely was. Yes.
- [13:20]
B
And thank you for talking about the health issues that you're going through. And in fact, the first episode of the podcast after I rebooted, it was a woman with a woman named Florence Schaefer, who is amazing in so many respects. You know, she's my age, and our conversation focused on the fact that she just got diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. You know, and. And what was so remarkable about it is that I probably would have been a sniveling, like, just mess and she was just a light, you know? And she's like, this has been the best thing I think she ever said. This has been the best thing that ever happened to me. And I think you've described cancer as being a teacher. And can you explain that? And I'm curious to know, go deeper into like, what. What has it taught you?
- [14:08]
A
There's lots of ways to look at cancer. You know, everything from the bumper sticker, fuck cancer to the idea that it's a war, you're in a war against cancer. And those messages sort of make me freak out a little bit and stress me out. So instead I had a different perspective. And the perspective was, what if cancer is supposed to be a teacher? What if this actually is not being done to me, it's being done for me and I'm supposed to actually get something out of this in terms of wisdom. And that point of view is really. It definitely relieves some of the pressure to relieve some of the pressure that I have to be the gladiator. It's more like I moved from the gladiator to the student. And I'm in cancer school and I'm ready to graduate. Let's be clear about that. I don't want to be in cancer school the rest of my life, but it has helped me to sort of be a more a better observer. I'm a first class noticer of my life. So what are some of the lessons I've learned? Number one, that I don't have to be the hero. I don't have to do this alone. Number two, is that my family, my kids, I have sons who are 12 and 9 and biological sons who are 12 and 9. And I also have a foster son who's 48 years old who has. Has a son who's 26 and a son who's 5, who. So I've got. And they live here in New Mexico. So, like, okay, I've got that too. So I think I really felt this sense that I just need to spend more time with family. I got a sense that I need to really treat my body as a sacred vehicle in my life. I got a sense that I don't have to be the hero. Meaning, I think I said that, but more that I can really delegate more. And not everything has to revolve around me in the mea world. So those are some of the things I've learned. Yeah, I've also learned patience a little bit better than I used to have it. But I also think that's part of aging, you know, I think one of the beautiful things about getting older is realizing that the finish line is a long way ahead. And, you know, enjoy your water stops along the marathon.
- [16:43]
B
I love that. Thank you. On that note, actually, my next question was you also said that you felt like you had to be a hero all your life, and now you can be a conduit.
- [16:55]
A
Yeah.
- [16:56]
B
Do you have any sense of why you thought you needed to be a hero? I've been interested in this conversation because it really ties into a conversation, I think, in many ways about masculinity. Like chauvinism turns men into performance objects and women into sex objects, and so men have to be the hero. Yeah. So love to hear your thoughts on that. And if you have any sense of what healthy masculinity and healthy femininity look like, it's. It's a very germane topic.
- [17:24]
A
Okay, so let me just say that. I'll start with that and just say they're the same. And when I say healthy, I. I mean evolved healthy masculinity and femininity because it's. It is less about. And I'm not saying that we're genderless. Of course we have gender. But I do think that as we get older, a healthy male takes on more of what we consistently think of being female traits and vice versa. I think in terms of my story, I am a firstborn of two firstborns. Both of my parents were first born in their families. Both of them hyper responsible. Both went to Stanford, met there. My dad was a marine captain in the reserves. So he's a pretty hardcore dude. I'm Stephen Townsend Connolly Jr. Chip off the old block. So I was supposed to be like, and the only son. I have two younger sisters. So there's a lot of pressure on Chip to be the model chip off the old block. And in fact, as my father said, my father was here taking a workshop at MEA at 86, almost 87 years old, just two weeks ago, and he said, you know what? Every father. And this is just my dad's words, not, you know, so don't. Don't judge me for it. He says every father wants his son to be better than himself. And he could have said it a lot of different ways, but that's what he said two weeks ago. And he said, you've proven that you are. And I knew that. I knew he's felt that for a long time, but growing up, I didn't feel that. Growing up, I felt very much like my job was to just be on this very linear Narrow path to be better than my dad at what he did. And I just rejected it at times. And yet, at the same time, was also the star pitcher on the baseball team, and he was the coach, and I was in the Boy Scouts, and he was the leader of our troop, and he was an Eagle Scout. And guess what? I became an Eagle Scout. And in high school, I went to the same high school as my dad, played water polo and swam, just like my dad, was student body president, just like my dad, went to Stanford, just like my dad. Joined a different fraternity than my dad. Oh, wow, what a rebel. And. But then, you know, long story short, but was an economics major just like my dad, went to business school just like my dad, but at age 22, came out as a gay man, not like my dad. And that, you know, started my process of. I had already. I was already. I mean, listen, I was. My fraternity in college. I was the guy who said, every weekend, we're doing mushrooms. Every weekend of my senior year, we did mushrooms. And, oh, my God, boy, did I love that. And the reality was that I was in college, starting to break free from the mask of masculinity, the mask of what I had to do. Now. I played water polo at Stanford. I was in a fraternity. So I'm not the kind of guy that people would think, oh, Chip's coming out. And I didn't come out till I was 22. But again, this was a long time ago. This is 1983. And I came out during the time when AIDS was at the early hysteria of aids. The summer that I came out in New York was a summer that Newsweek had AIDS on the COVID for the first time.
- [20:53]
B
Oh, wow.
- [20:54]
A
And so it was a really scary time to come out. And so what I would just say is that my experience of a personal level is that I was doing everything I could to try to be the better version of my dad, when I knew that I was much more of a creative soul and I was the introvert. Part of me was there because I liked to write and I liked to just sort of do my own thing. And I was not someone who wanted to fit in. And then I became a master at fitting in. So I just think, you know, the beauty of getting older is learning how to chart your own path. And often that means you break out of the definitions of masculinity and femininity that have been imposed upon you. And, yeah. So, I mean, I think it's. It. To me, it's a relief to be in a world in which I Can be both masculine and feminine and not feel like I have to be embarrassed about it. I'll never forget I took one psychology class in college, and I've written a bunch of books. Like, written seven books. And many of them are at the intersection of psychology and business. So why I didn't become a psychology major, I don't know. But the one psychology class I took, I was sitting with my girlfriend in college next to me. And Dr. Zimbardo, the professor, famous professor, says, I want you all to look at your fingernails right now and just put it in front of your face and put your fingernails. And so I did this. I looked at my fingers, nails like that, as opposed to like that. And then he said, you know, almost all of you men are looking at your fingernails like that. And I'm like, oh, shit. My girlfriend is watching me right now or sitting next to me, and she, funny enough, she actually did this. So we both looked at each other like, okay, what's going on here? I mean, she's. She's got married and she's very heterosexual. She's still in love with me, you know, all these years later. It's so funny. I love her so much, too. But long story short is, yeah, the process of, like, wanting to portray myself as a masculine dude was really important to me because it was part of my survival mechanism. Because I don't know that I would have survived. Not that my parents would kill me or anything like that, but I don't. I could have been one of those teen suicide guys.
- [23:22]
B
Do you think? Did the rebel spirit in you exist at that younger age, or did that really start to shine afterwards? Because it sounded like you're quite the conformist up until it was there.
- [23:32]
A
The rebel was there, the rebel was there. And it sort of. It would actually. It sort of showed up as, like, a class clown occasionally and just sort of like the way that I could articulate being the jester or the clown allowed me to say things that were sort of inappropriate and rather, I don't know, subversive. But it was with a sort of archetype of the clown. And so it wasn't Chip saying it was just sort of like Chip's alter ego saying it. So, yeah. But, yeah, after I came out, I was like, okay, really? I really. I really fell into my rebel spirit. And fell is not the right word exactly, but actually I think I inhabited my rebel spirit, which was there. It just had been sort of like, not been used all that well.
- [24:33]
B
So much of this speaks so much to me. It's like I was the same way, like, obviously a slightly different path. But I remember in grade nine, I sat beside one of my best friends, Charles, and we would sit there in our math class and when the teacher wasn't looking, we'd try to crack each other on the knuckles with our, you know, six inch rulers kind of thing. And you had to hold in the pain and not yell because he didn't want to get kicked out of class. And inevitably, even when I hit Charles and was the guilty party, our teacher would get mad at him and kick him out. And I don't know, maybe I just had a cute face. Maybe my energy was just one of not being. Being subversive without being rebellious. And it happened so many times. I'm sure you don't remember this, but when I first heard of your work at the Modern Elder Academy, I tried to invite you to this podcast. It's probably about a year ago. And you never responded, Lee.
- [25:21]
A
I mean, if you sent me an email, I would respond. If I didn't, I'm sorry, but if you wrote me on LinkedIn, you probably wouldn't have gotten it, but I'm sorry.
- [25:30]
B
No, it's quite all right. I think I went through your website, but I don't remember exactly. All good. But since then, and following on your work as well as the conversation at mmt, I see so much similarity in our paths. Like I just said specifically about being a conduit versus a can do it. I've spent much of my yeah, yeah, yep. Adult life thinking of things that have never been. And instead of asking why not, I just kind of go out and do it. And now I'm trying to shift, I think, in many ways to being a conduit where I don't have to do everything or force it. How do you stay in that space? And how do you not fall into resentment anymore around that? Because I remember a couple years ago when we were going through some pretty challenging times at field trip, I came up with what I thought was a solution. And I thought I articulated it very clearly to my co founders. And they're like. And then two or three months later, one of them's like, I have a great idea. It's this. And it was the exact idea. And I'm like, that's literally exactly what I said two or three months ago. And then I kind of got to the place where it's like, okay, sometimes when you step into the future, you gotta be patient and wait for people to catch up because they're just not there yet. But it's hard. It's. It's a real challenge when you kind of sit in this space and I wonder how you have learned to manage it.
- [26:48]
A
A couple things you're talking about there. Patience is one of the things you're talking about that tell you three things that come up that come up when you say that. Patience, which sometimes you have to. And yeah, someone. Actually I was on a. I was on a online fireside chat yesterday and. Or no, it was just. It was a meeting with some. Another company and. And one of the people on my team was saying, you know, Chip sometimes comes up with all these ideas and none of us like, know what he's talking about. And then six months later we totally get it. And it's so. That says a lot about including maybe my lack of articulation. So that's so. So learning that sometimes you have to just put it out there and it. It will.
- [27:23]
B
It.
- [27:23]
A
You're planting seeds. So no one who's planting seeds expects the flower to come up two hours later. I think this idea of owning something, it's my idea, not your idea. The idea of what would the world be like if no one got credit for their ideas, but it was just collective credit. There's been quotes in the past very similar to that. I think Harry Truman had a famous one around that I like. I like my ideas. I like my fingerprints on my ideas. And what I've come to realize is that I don't have to be the only one with my fingerprints on ideas. It would piss me off if someone else said they stole my idea. What would not piss me off? And what I really am looking to do today is to have other people's fingerprints on ideas that I might have propelled into the world. If part of my calling is to be maybe six months ahead of other people in seeing something, and then sometimes I'll articulate it, but I'm planting seeds. Then for me to think that I'm the only one who's going to be tending this garden doesn't make sense. And then this idea of can do it. Hero versus conduit. This is two different archetypes. The canduate hero is the one who is always going out and solving, strapping on the cape and flying like Superman and leaping tall buildings in a single bound. And there's a lot of joy and ego attached to that and there's a ton of responsibility. And so to get to a place where I can sort of think of myself as more the conduit as opposed to the conduit hero. And the conduit means my job is to really create the conditions for epiphanies to happen. So I'm a midwife for midlife epiphanies with mea. And my job is really to help people to source something deeper in themselves, and I'm the midwife to help them with that. It's a very different metaphor, very different archetype than being the guy at the head of the parade, getting the glory for my idea, being a moonshot. And I think my time at Airbnb really helped, you know, you know, going from, for 24 years being CEO of my own boutique hotel company and then selling it after my nde, and then having a couple years of a midlife atrium, exploring all kinds of interesting things, being very curious, and then joining Airbnb as their modern elder, the person who's as curious as they are wise and being their conduit, being not the person with my name in the papers, but being the in house mentor to the three founders and helping them take their ideas and make them real. And that I think helped me to see, like, wow, I don't have to be the one who's getting the credit, nor does it have to have singularly my fingerprints on the idea. My job is to help steer this rocket show. And that was what I did.
- [30:33]
B
A lot of podcasts and a lot of books are written about how to be an effective leader. Not so many are about how to be a midlife midwife. I can't remember what the third word.
- [30:42]
A
You attached of epiphanies.
- [30:44]
B
Of epiphanies. How do you cultivate that skill?
- [30:48]
A
You have to listen. You know, Jimi Hendrix long ago said, knowledge speaks and wisdom listens. And to be a great listener means you're able to hear the things that are being said and more importantly, the things that are not being said. And then being exquisite, asking questions. Those are two qualities that I have built over time. I wasn't a good listener when I was CEO of my own company. Not a great asker of questions. And so to be able to get to that place and then to. Then to apply that to yourself, I mean, the first step to being a great listener is for many people, I mean, there's really three kinds of listening. There's listening inside yourself, there's listening to the other person, and then there's listening to the field. Like, you know, what's going on in the room or whatever the, whatever the field is. The field could be the planet.
- [31:43]
B
Yeah.
- [31:43]
A
And I think each of us have a doorway into which of those three paths we are maybe the best listener on. But for the average person, it's listening to another person, because that's sort of what you think of when you think of listening and listening to one other person. So that's, in many ways, the pathway I try to help people with. To start with, is like, okay, let's. Here's some. Here's appreciative inquiry, which is a form of asking questions. Here's a form of listening. Also, let's send the two of you out and learn how to listen and ask great questions based upon what we do in an MEA workshop, for example. And that's beautiful. But I will say that if you can start the process of listening really well to other people, you will get better at listening inside yourself as well, and you'll get better at listening to the field. So I think the qualities that make up a great listener, one on one, are some of the same qualities. Not exactly, but there's some of the same qualities that are helpful to listen inside yourself and then to the field overall. And, yeah, so to me, that is a. To be a midlife of midwife epiphanies is to be an archeologist and providing roto rooter to the soul, meaning opening up clogged pipes, the pipe between, you know, the mind, the heart and the soul. The soul or the gut, you know, I. We call it the solar plexus, but, you know, but the solar plexus in the gut, you know, that there's a. There's an element there of like, okay, how are we going to open up the conduit to that and see that there's a vast cavern down there? And that's really what we do. I mean, that's part of the reason why people say, like, oh, my God. In five days at an MEA workshop, I have rediscovered not just who I am, but who I'm meant to be and what is my essence of what I'm supposed to be here to do. But it is absolutely about getting to the third vault. The first vault is, in terms of how we communicate, is the stories of our life. The second vault is the. I'm sorry. The first fault is the facts of our life. The second vault is the stories of our life. And the third vault is the essence and soul of who we are. So that's really what we do, is we excavate. And if you excavate and create that archeological dig to open that up, all of a sudden the epiphanies start to Arise.
- [34:16]
B
So yesterday in a conversation, I was speaking with someone who spent time with the Shah of Iran, Persia's family, after they left Iran. And he was saying that, I guess it was part of the cultural training that they were so good at hospitality and making someone feel entirely welcome in their presence and 100% focus. And just as you were speaking, I got the idea that maybe as a CEO you weren't a great listener, but I feel like, to do hospitality really well, you are a great listener because part of it is making people feel safe so they can go to those next vaults.
- [35:00]
A
Yeah. I think one of the things that I was really good at in my early teen years when my parents said, if you don't get more socially active, we're going to send you to therapy, is I got really good at observing other my, you know, my peers and learning how to make friends and influence. Influence people. To use a Dale Carnegie line from a long time ago. And I just. I think. So I got much better at frankly understanding other people than myself because in some ways I was like, okay, it's now time for me to be the ventriloquist and Chip is the dummy. And like, you know, and it's like. And so I'm. So. When I had this revelation in my early 20s that I could come out and that I could start getting creative and ultimately create a boutique hotel company, and, you know, I really went on a way. A path that was not the conventional path there. And it was with the relief that I was finally listening to myself. But, yes, I've been a. I think hospitality is definitely an industry that is good for listeners because you better be listening to your customers and they want you to listen. I wrote a book called Peak about Maslow's hierarchy of needs applied to organizations. And I think the ultimate experience of what a customer is looking for is to have their unrecognized needs met. Not just their expectations or their desires, but their unrecognized needs. And quite frankly, that requires some serious mind reading and listening as a hospitality leader.
- [36:40]
B
Yeah. My friend Sam Jelen runs the maid hotel in New York City, and he loves his job because he's like, I just get to go and hang out with all of the people who stay at our hotel and make them feel welcome.
- [36:53]
A
Yeah.
- [36:53]
B
He's like, it makes for such an experience for them just to sit down with the owner, have a drink comped. It's, you know, it's honestly, in many ways not hard to do that for people in this day and age where everything is so transactional and robotic, it feels like, in many ways. On the conversation of wisdom, a wonderful friend of mine, Owen, we were in Santa Cruz a year or two ago, sitting on a beach, and he was commenting about how he wished he had known better as a man in his 20s and early 30s, that the things he was chasing, like money, sex, success, weren't the things that really mattered. And in that conversation, I stopped him and said, but maybe you needed to go through that phase, that chase, to come through to the other side. What are your thoughts on that? Can we shortcut to wisdom and this really goes into the modern elder academy, or should we try to avoid the phraseology that used from Brene Brown, the Great Unraveling, even if we could do it, or do we have to go through the steps? What are your thoughts on that?
- [37:51]
A
I mean, I think that there's a. The underlying premise with that question is that there are life stages and there are things you're supposed to learn in those life stages that actually propel you forward and give you more awareness as you move on. And wisdom is gathered along the way and you get clearer on what's meaningful in life. What I would say is that two things to that, number one is that are there people who can circumvent that and go to what really meaningful and matters to them in their life earlier? Of course.
- [38:34]
B
Should we be aspiring to that?
- [38:35]
A
No, I don't think any. It's not a should because it's not. If someone chooses it, you know, at 17 to become a monk and this is what they want to do for the rest of their life and they feel pretty clear on that, then that's, you know, that's fine. And then there's, you know, Dr. Phil Pizzo, who is. Was the head of the dean of the medical school at Stanford and a good Catholic Italian boy, and he decided to become a Jewish at 75 and go to rabbinical school at 77. So for him, that was his path. No, I really don't think there's a should here. I think what I think that I will say is the other piece of this question is about wisdom. So my belief is that our painful life lessons are the raw material for our future wisdom. And what I mean by that is that wisdom is really the metabolization of life experience and to make sense of it and create value in it and then share it with others. Because wisdom is a social good. Being smart or savvy is not a social good. Those are a personal good. But wisdom has for thousands of years been seen as a social good, therefore you're supposed to share it. So can you in your 20s, start to cultivate and harvest wisdom based upon making sense of your life experiences? The answer is a resounding yes. And I've been doing it since age 28. I have a wisdom journal. I started writing in it at age 28. Every weekend I would sit down and spend 20 to 30 minutes making sense of my lessons of the week. And based upon those lessons, and often they were painful and they were not all professional. They were personal, spiritual, physical, etc. Relational. And I would say, what was the lesson? Like a bullet point? And then what? How is it going to serve me in the future? So I've been doing that for 35 years.
- [40:34]
B
Wow.
- [40:35]
A
And I do it with leadership teams that I lead. Not I don't require them to do something weekly, but once a quarter, we sit down and we say, what was our biggest? What was each of us, you know, volunteers in a very candid and vulnerable way. What was our biggest lesson of the quarter and how's it going to serve us in the future? And by doing that, we actually all get wiser because I'm learning from your lesson, not just my own. And then we end the meeting with a question of what was the biggest team lesson? And that can be an arm wrestling match. And then we say, what did we learn from it? So, long story short is wisdom is available to us because lessons and experiences are part of how we live our lives. What I think is true is that the longer you've lived on the planet, the more raw material you have. But that doesn't necessarily mean a 70 year old is wiser than a 30 year old, because it's all a matter of what you do with the raw material.
- [41:35]
B
So beyond a wisdom journal, are there any other ways you might recommend that people be proactive in metabolizing those experiences?
- [41:45]
A
Yeah, we just told you sort of the most fundamental piece of it. So when someone comes to MEA and we have a series of workshops called Owning Wisdom, some of the kinds of exercises we might do are. Here's a simple exercise. Someone's 20 years younger than you, they come up to you and they say, I'd love to have coffee with you tomorrow. And I just want to tap into like, what are the three to five pieces of wisdom or advice that have your fingerprints all over them, that have a life lesson attached to them? I'd love to hear that at coffee tomorrow. What are your three to five greatest pieces of advice or wisdom to me, based upon Your life experience. And so we do that exercise. No one's going to have coffee the next day, but it's more like, okay, let's look at them and then let's share them with the group and let's talk about what was the core of where they came from. Generally speaking, when it's sort of like on a moment's notice like that in a workshop, it's like you come up with very cliche things. Be yourself, everyone else is taken. Well, Oscar Wilde said that 150 years ago. So come up with something better. Come up with something. Tell us what it is, and then tell us what's the. What's the origin of that story? What's the lesson behind it? And so that again, it goes back to lessons, but it's actually now a little more prescriptive, a little bit more practical because it's like, okay, these are the things we do an exercise which is a repeating question where, you know, Rowan and I would ask you the question, what, Matt, what mastery do you have to offer? Or what mastery can you offer? And I would ask that question you to answer it. And then I'd ask, I'd say, take a deep breath and let's do it again. And you can't answer the same way twice. And by the fifth question for fifth answer, you may get to something that's again, an archeological dig. That helps you to understand underneath being. For me, that's how I learned I was a social alchemist. I learned I was a social alchemist because I realized that in my life, that was what was when I felt like I was most living my calling. And so, yeah, I mean, we have all kinds. We have a bunch of. We have a huge toolbox. I'm not going to tell you everything here. You guys and your listeners have to come to mea and you are coming to me. You're coming to mea, is that right?
- [44:08]
B
I haven't signed up yet. I don't know if there's spots still available, but I'm going to look into it because I would love to.
- [44:13]
A
Available. Every single week we have a workshop.
- [44:16]
B
So that's true. I was thinking about the MMT one in particular, Tim.
- [44:20]
A
Right. Yes. Well, we are definitely. I think we still have a spot, so.
- [44:23]
B
Okay, I'll take a look at that. I want to thank you a. Because you basically articulated in such an eloquent way everything I'm trying to do with this podcast, which is trying to get at those points of wisdom that go beyond the surface level stuff that you kind of always hear. So I won't ask you for all three or five, but how about what's the. What's the one piece of wisdom that you. You would share after. If I had approached you for this piece of coff or this cup of.
- [44:49]
A
Coffee, it would be they change all the time. So that's why I'm hesitating a little bit. And it's nice that they change all the time because that just means you're living your life.
- [44:57]
B
Yep.
- [44:58]
A
I would say trust your instincts about people, but trust and verify. And, you know, you can get really heady whether it's dating someone or it's hiring somebody. You know, like, is this the right person? And our gut has such a huge value there. And I would go if I. Then I would tell you some stories around that. But the verify piece is important because the verify piece is what a lot of people don't do, which is to be careful about your unconscious bias about why you think this person's the right person. And that's. The verify piece is, look, make sure that you're not just hiring somebody who's just a repeat of you.
- [45:45]
B
Right.
- [45:46]
A
I mean, the worst thing in an entrepreneurial relationship, and I've said this for a long time, is that co found something with someone who has exactly the same skill set you have and point of view that is redundant. So, yeah, so that would be my piece of wisdom. The verify piece is the part that's, I think, a little different than what might be normal.
- [46:08]
B
Right. One of the things I found in my life is that as soon as you become known for a specific topic, you often get pigeonholed into talking about that specific topic. And for me, psychedelics. For you, it's probably about being wise and being an elder. So my question is, what are some of those things? Or what's the one thing that you wish people would ask you about that you would like to share but don't often get an opportunity to. To share because so much of your conversation turns on the things you're known for.
- [46:39]
A
I would say anytime someone can ask a question to someone who is a thought leader and in the public eye and is often perceived on a pedestal, I think the most important question anybody could ask me, and I'm a minor version of being on a pedestal, is, what are the mindsets that are no longer serving you? Chip? You know, Kamala, what are the mindsets that are no longer serving you? Donald, what are the mindsets that are no longer serving you? And, you know, the higher person is in their power and fame, the less likely they're going to answer that and maybe the less conscious they are. So if I were to ask myself that question, or if you were to ask me that question, I've sort of covered a little bit of that today because of the talking about, like stepping away from being the hero.
- [47:27]
B
Yeah.
- [47:28]
A
Let's look at something beyond that. I'd say a mindset that is no longer serving me is the sense that. And this is an interesting one to talk about is that starting MEA and growing it and having it be successful is my legacy, is my. And I think that mindset has put me in a position where I'm a bit at times one dimensional in my thinking. And. And when I have health issues, as I've had, it puts me, it puts stress on me. It's like, how is this thing going to go getting to a place where I could say, you know what, I've been doing it now for almost seven years. Maybe at nine years or at 10 years we just said, hey, this was an amazing thing. We're shutting it down. And that's a possibility. And I'm not saying that we're going to do that because I actually think we've got so much momentum and we're just featured in Time magazine as one of the hundreds greatest places to visit in 2024. And, and we have two amazing campuses. And yet to know that that's a possibility is a shift in mindset and makes me feel like, oh, wow, okay, I could do that. Yeah. So, yeah, but I think that's the question I would ask because I think that's. Our lives are defined and ruled by our mindsets.
- [48:52]
B
I think that's super powerful because as much as your fingerprints are all over mea, its success is conditional on a whole bunch of factors that are outside of your control. And if you're mentally, emotionally attaching your legacy to factors outside of your control, that is a recipe for stress. Right. So it's. I think it's a.
- [49:18]
A
And my legacy, my legacy. I love It's a Wonderful Life because, you know, there's a scene in the movie where Jimmy Stewart or George Bailey is up on the bridge and he's going to jump off and Clarence the angel comes down and says, this is what Bedford Falls would look like if you didn't exist. And we all need that in our lives. And what I can look at from a legacy perspective, it's not the capital L legacy of a claim associated with something. It's the small L legacy of the individuals that in this journey for however long, this journey of mea existing and me existing that I have impacted, that no one can take away from me. That has very little to do with external issues. Like it's like in the moment. I have had that impact and that makes me feel good. And not because ego, but more just because of feeling like I'm being useful. I think as we get older, it's not about being youthful, it's about being useful. And to feel useful is the kind of thing that a person wants to feel the rest of their life.
- [50:20]
B
That's beautiful. You know, I'm just going to stop there. Actually. I had other questions, but like that's just a wonderful place to stop.
- [50:27]
A
I've got. I got something at the top of the hour, so that's helpful.
- [50:34]
B
Thanks again for listening to to this episode of the Ronan Levy Podcast. For more information about Chip's work, visit chipconley.com or m e a wisdom.com for his work with the Modern Elder Academy. For more episodes of this podcast, visit Ronanlevy.com or subscribe to the Ronald Podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on social My handle is Ronin D. Levy. That's Ronan D as in David Levy. Thanks for listening.