Chip Conley

“Very early in the new year, I will turn sixty, an age I never imagined I would see. My older friends told me what a big deal forty would be, and then fifty, but neither of them felt like a big deal to me. Forty felt like permission; fifty felt like letting go of whatever filters remained. Forty and fifty were signposts, or maybe toll booths, on the road to becoming increasingly okay with who I am.

Living part-time in the American Southwest liberates me. The roads are wide open, the “legal” speed limit touches 75, and, let’s face it, I like to drive fast.

I remember when I first read this article in "The Atlantic" seven years ago. I was shocked by it as both of my parents were older than 75, and I didn’t want them leaving their bodily form anytime soon.

Rene Descartes once opined, "I think, therefore I am." Four hundred years later, we’re awash in thinking and knowledge, but often missing some other foundational human qualities. While there are all kinds of other words Descartes could have used beyond "think" (breathe, feel, make love), "think" is still the king of the hill.

Your soulmate might not be your best friend or your spouse. For that matter, you may have multiple soulmates. You ought to feel blessed, not disloyal, for that gift.

The word “consumerism” is 67 years old and helped Americans see that a certain prevalent society message unconsciously influenced our behaviors around “keeping up with the Jones.” While the word continues to serve us well, I think it’s time we welcomed a new word (and concept) into the American lexicon: “successism.”

At Airbnb, I was a Socrates-wannabe. I liked asking questions. Most of the time, this worked. It helped us to see our blind spots, both personally and organizationally. But occasionally, I would get a response like this one from a mid-level manager: "Okay, Mr. Modern Elder, enough with the curiosity! Let's get shit done!"

I love working with aspiring entrepreneurs. It’s part of the reason I’ve written five books and been a mentor to younger CEO’s from organizations as diverse as Airbnb to Burning Man.

Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates may be phenomenal businessmen, but who's to know whether they're great husbands? They've both gotten divorced in the past couple of years, giving further evidence to the fact that more money (one-third of a trillion dollars in net worth between the two of them) doesn't mean a merry marriage.

I’ve got Godin goosebumps. That’s also how I felt in 1982 when I met Seth for the first time as the two youngest members of our Stanford Business School class. We were the brash upstarts of our class who got restless in lectures, especially from professors who’d never run a business and our older classmates who thought we never should have been admitted at age 21.