"Let's paint a picture of just what it was like to join Airbnb in your 50s. I was mentoring Brian, but he was also my boss. I was 52. The average age was 26. I had to be both wise and curious and often..."

"conversation, we explore how to be successful in tech as you age. What he's learned working with and for Brian Chesy, including a lot of real talk, how to build a great culture at your company, his ne..."

"Chip, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Oh my god, Lenny. I I sort of feel like I'm your father who's so proud of his son has done. My son has done so well and I I like to t..."

"This was uh 13 years ago. This was I think it was the end of 2012 and then Brian called me and said, "Listen, we really want you to come in." And so I came in and gave a talk about innovation and hosp..."

"mo many parts of the business definitely not the technical parts but I think the hardest thing for me is was just that initially when people were talking about product and Joe said you know I'm the ch..."

"non-mobile and then went mobile. And then I was like, "Oh, wouldn't it be interesting if everything was mobile?" And at some point, I just said, "Listen, let's get some older people who are hosts in h..."

"founder mode. It's not not as great to be working for someone in founder mode. Often a very challenging place to be. Yes. You reported to Brian. Uh also you were just your own boss basically your enti..."

"about Brian is he's been very honest in the last couple years on podcasts about his workcoholism and about the fact that the way he lives his life is not like other people. But back when I joined, you..."

"demotivate people. And in Brian's case, I didn't have to deal with that too much because he didn't understand when I was starting. It was really I was in charge of the hosts around the world. And so q..."

"is necessary because if you don't do that there's an almost an underlying message that people won't kick ass on their own. So there was a sense that Brian had that he had to maybe create ridiculous go..."

"Having said that, I had to hold my tongue in meetings sometimes uh when I saw how he was operating because I wouldn't have done it that way. And I think over time, I hope I had a little bit of influen..."

"would do because that's something you can come back to over and over again during the rest of the meeting. When Brian or the founder, whomever it is, is beating you up on something, saying like, "Well..."

"so this whole story of you joining Airbnb in your 50s is a really good example of of uh c intergenerational collaboration, something that you're big on just the value of having folks that are older wo..."

"you know when you have older brains connecting the dots thinking broadly peripherally younger team members being really fast and focused and being able to think linearly how to get things done. That c..."

"as uh noticeable quite frankly in some other diversities. Uh so I found that over and over was really helpful. Part of my job sometimes was to find the blind spot. You know, again, if you are very foc..."

"been toxic in New York the whole for the last dozen years um ever since I was there. And there's a few other markets in the in the world where it was like that. So, I would just say, you know, um the ..."

"and five other teams reporting to me. And I did my best to just be the kind of person who wasn't solving all the problems, but I was trying to elevate. There was a woman named Lisa Deost who is at at ..."

"to success. So you're sharing a lot of really good examples of the value of older folks being within tech companies. So let me just ask you this. How how real is agism in tech? And I ask because a lot..."

"these senior we had these senior nomads come in and be like the voice of the customer for 10 weeks at Airbnb. And it was the wisdom at Airbnb older employee group that really actually pushed for this ..."

"jury still out. There's a New York Times article that just came out about the question of is AI going to wipe out older people's jobs or younger people's jobs? And I think the answer is both. But the ..."

"that. That's a really interesting point that if you're older and you're maybe less connected to the most cutting edge ways of building and and coding, AI makes that a lot easier in many ways where you..."

"well is I was very approachable. And over the course of time, the number of mentees I had, the number of people who just wanted to have coffee with me or tea, the number of people who just said, "Than..."

"to get started for free and get six months of the team plan. kod.io/lenny. Interestingly, curiosity comes up a lot when I ask AI forward people what are they focusing on helping their kids learn most...."

"important part of how effective companies think broadly. So I think that's a key one. I think also this idea of how do you create intergenerational collaboration in the form of mutual mentorships. Um,..."

"curiosity. If I was just the older elder dispensing wisdom, people would have gotten bored very quickly. And I think the fact Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was on the board of Burning Man. Oh, that's cool. An..."

"Yes. Um, speaking of throwing problems and also uh why Brian decided to reach out to you, I want to go back to the beginning of your career. Yes. So, you're good at this, by the way. You're good at th..."

"and I loved it till I hated it in my late 40s. I hated it. Didn't want to do it anymore. I was, you know, the Great Recession came along and it was just kicking my ass. And I really went through a bit..."

"there what happened there. Yeah, I was uh so I write books. have written seven or eight books and I had written a book called Peak uh how great companies get their mojo from Maslo and it was a book th..."

"What? I did. You want to hear this? Yeah. No, I saw this beautiful stuff. the the best I think there's a hotel in San Francisco called the Vitali that I built um across the street from the ferry build..."

"So with building Juvary something you've written about a number of times is just the way you built it as a really unique approach to building a business. Specifically there's a huge focus on culture w..."

"the remote work world we live in, the more culture is important and more difficult because the when you're remote, you know, there's these few cues you have about how we do things around here and they..."

"language about culture fit. I like to say culture ad because culture fit to me means can actually be quite negative toward somebody who is the aberration. Um you have to fit in and especially if this ..."

"certainly has an enormous oppressive uh influence, but uh you know you can you can you can be in a culture uh a really great culture of a team or a department in an overall company culture that's not ..."

"simple. It's money or compensation at the base um recognition in the middle and meaning at the top. Now there are some industries and some kinds of jobs in which money is 90% of the pyramid. So just b..."

"becomes an organizing principle for how do you teach your hosts to create a sense of belonging? um how do our how does our marketing and advertising play up the belonging piece especially and the ever..."

"Okay. So, you've had two major shifts in your career. You started the hotel chain, you went to then you went to Airbnb. Most recently, the Airbnb experience, I imagine, led you to starting something i..."

"now call it MEA because elder is a fraught word on some level. It makes you sound elderly. But um what I really wanted to create was a place where people could come and do a workshop. you you know the..."

"biohack that's being done right now. So that's what we do. and we have 7,000 grads from 60 countries and 56 regional chapters around the world. So, it's a bit of a movement. And um I teach I I teach s..."

"Uh to your point I forget who said I think you said Jonathan has said this was the natural next step for you. I completely agree. It's like looking back this is the obvious thing you should be doing r..."

"of view. Because when you actually have a pro-agging point of view, and you see the upside of aging, you take better care of yourself, both your mind and your body, you actually are willing to learn a..."

"happiness and it's been around for 20 years and it shows the following. It has changed in the last couple years because young adults are h unhappy like never before. So a 20 or a 22 year old really un..."

"you what a beautiful body looks like and you get some you're liberated into freedom in your 50s and beyond. And uh I can say that yeah, I'm happier today at 64 than I was at 47 when I was going throug..."

"sort of going through that not necessarily in this intense way yet but that might be You said there's a bunch of upsides to being getting older. It might be helpful just to share a couple of those thi..."

"There's a quote I found from you along these lines. The societal narrative on aging is just don't do it. Yeah. there. I mean, we sort of say like we want we don't want to age, but we do want to live. ..."

"Those three. Yeah, that's the tagline. That's your tagline right there. Esselin meets Blue Zones meets what was the first one? The Four Seasons. The Four Seasons. Yeah. Nailed it. Okay, I'm going to z..."

"weird idea and of course my not all my blog posts are so new age and and uh like that I I I write a lot on leadership but that was one that you know within you know 30 seconds I had a 250word you blog..."

"to So there's a couple that are really interesting to me. This is you wrote about these in a book. You have a bunch of these equations about living a happier life. So the one you shared is despair equ..."

"And when you take free floating anxiety and put it into uh a an equation, it actually makes it more tangible and you often are less anxious as a result. Boom. Okay. So, if you're feeling anxious right..."

"often come back to and find really useful in work or in life? I imagine you have many, but is there one that comes to mind? I mean, my favorite one right now is your painful life lessons are the raw m..."

"It didn't. Yes. Chip, two final questions. Where can folks find you online and how can listeners be useful to you? So online, meowisdom.com is the website for MEA. My website's chipconley.com, co- ny...."