Chip Conley - Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder

To understand Chip Conley and his role as a Modern Elder at Airbnb, I need to first share with you the story of our companys humble beginnings.

In October 2007, Joe Gebbia and I were roommates at our Rausch Street apartment in San Francisco. Our rent had gone up, and we were on the brink of losing our place. It was around that time that there was a design conference in San Francisco, and we noticed that all the hotels were sold out. So we thought, why not create a bed-and-breakfast for the conference out of the empty space in our apartment?

With three spare air-mattresses from our closet, we decided to offer conference attendees a place to stay, plus breakfast. Along with Nathan Blecharczyk, our third cofounder, we created a website, Airbedandbreakfast.comand what the world now knows as Airbnb. We certainly never imagined what that idea would become.

By the time of this books publication, Airbnb will have had more than 250 million guest arrivals, across more than 191 countries. Our community now offers over four million homesthats more space than the top five global hotel chains combined. And in every single one of them, travelers from every corner of the planet can feel like they can belong anywhere.

Belong anywhere is a powerfully designed paradoxand its the mission that drives us at Airbnb. To belong is a universal need, and the simplest way to understand belonging is to think of feeling accepted. Anywhere actually means two things. The obvious meaning is that belonging can be offered anywhereas in the more than 65,000 cities, villages, and tribes around the world where you can find an Airbnb host. But anywhere also has a deeper meaning. The best way to think of anywhere is where you are out of your elementits a place youve never been before. And our belief is that when you belong outside of your element, you become your best self.

Thats the transformative power of travel, and its why Airbnb exists.

But back in 2013, when I first met Chip, Airbnb was still just getting started. Though we had nearly four million guests staying in homes around the world, most people saw us as strictly a technology company. But Joe, Nate, and I knew we had more to offer. We knew that we werent just in the business of home sharing. We envisioned a community that helped people with not only where you stay, but what you doand whom you do it withwhile youre there. In other words, a complete end-to-end trip. What we were actually selling was hospitality. The only problem was we didnt yet fully understand how hospitality worked.

So I did what I always do when I want to learn. I try to find the top expert in the field, and ask if they would be willing to give me advice.

When we first started to build out Airbnbs international presence, I turned to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for wisdom. For product design, Apple SVP Jony Ive provided invaluable insights. When I wanted to think through corporate culture, CIA director George Tenet took my call and offered his counsel.

And when it came to the global authority on hospitality and service with a heart, I kept hearing over and over again that the person to call was Chip Conley.

Id heard that Chip was a boutique hotel disruptor who oversaw the creation and management of more than fifty boutique hotels during his twenty-four years as CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, a company he started when he was about the same age as we were when we founded Airbnb. Chip and I first met when he came to a fireside chat with our employees at our headquarters in early 2013. And from how hes translated Maslows hierarchy of needs into a hierarchy of hospitality, to his deep understanding of Joseph Campbells revolutionary approach to storytelling, I knew his knowledge would be invaluable.

So after a dinner at his home, I successfully persuaded Chip to become a part-time adviser to Airbnb. And before long, I offered him the role of Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy. I knew that he could help us transform our company into the international hospitality brand I had envisioned. But even more than this, we shared the belief that we could harness the power of millions of micro-entrepreneurs to learn how to be hosts and establish new standards for hospitality.

Truth be told, early on, we actually considered hospitality a dirty word at Airbnb. Hospitality was what the hotel industry did, where guests are called sir and maam, and everything is a transaction, not an interaction.

Chip helped us understand that Airbnb could do hospitality differently. Our hosts call guests by their names. The houses and empty spaces guests stay in dont create belonging, people do. By inviting guests into their homes, Airbnb hosts personify true hospitality by getting to know their guests, learning their stories, and maybe even becoming their lifelong friends.

Chip also introduced Joe, Nate, and me to the power of what Dr. Carol Dweck from Stanford calls a growth mindset. Its a way of seeing the world through a lens of curiositywhere risk and imagination combine to open up new possibilities. Its no coincidence that one of Airbnbs core values is embrace the adventure. In contrast, too many of us are often hobbled by a fixed mindset, which limits our ability to change and our understanding of how to solve problems. But Chip invited us to see that experiencing a sense of wonder and surprise will always be a fundamental part of what travelers seekand taught us how to approach hospitality with expansive and timeless curiosity.