Chip Conley

Aretha Franklin’s 1985 hit song, Who’s Zoomin’ Who, defines our new normal. In an era when worldwide stock markets are in freefall, the price of Zoom Video Communications has nearly doubled in the past five months. Worth just $1 billion as a private company three years ago, it’s now worth $30 billion.

Nowadays, you hear stories of Italians singing from their apartments to deserted streets, or kids writing lists about how their parents can be kinder to each other. This makes me hopeful, and wonder if it’s possible that this global timeout could create an opportunity for a global reset?

Could our mundane lives be compared to the heroic caterpillar-to-butterfly-journey? What if, after childhood, we imagined—as many sociologists now do—the stage of life from age 15-25 as an “Emerging Adult”?

On occasion, I have a politically incorrect sense of humor. And, I guess I have a fascination with illegitimate love children. When we were concepting the identity for one of our San Francisco boutique hotels, I suggested the personality of the hotel should be Harrison Ford and Gwyneth Paltrow’s love child. It was my shorthand way of juxtaposing two things that were opposites.

When the leading candidate for the U.S. Democratic Presidential nomination creates a “No-Malarkey” tour through Iowa, you know that’s a bus of the “old school” variety. “Look, folks, here’s the deal…” maybe we’ve entered an era when retro wisdom might be our friend? World War III seems to be a virus.

The genesis of the Modern Elder Academy comes from my close friends Ben and Vanessa, who spent the holidays with us in my new Baja home three years ago. They stayed longer than the rest of us and then wrote to see if they could stay an extra week.

I was recently introduced to the word “Smeeze,” as in Subject Matter Experts (SME’s). I was talking to a doctor friend of mine in Seattle, who now works for Amazon (she said with a chuckle, “Someday, we’ll all work for Amazon”).

Not too long ago, I sat in the hot seat with famed podcaster and social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk, a guy who doesn’t hold back his F-bombs. I was a little nervous going into this interview but immediately realized that Gary looooves the concept of the “Modern Elder” and MEA.

“The virus needs people to spread.” This sentence came from San Francisco’s Director of Health, as he recommended “social distancing,” especially for those over the age of 60. The irony is that two years ago, the U.K. government created a Minister of Loneliness to address the growing sense of social isolation often felt by those who are older.

I’m a bit contrarian when it comes to naming a business. When I started my boutique hotel company at age 26, I gave it the name Joie de Vivre, which is basically unpronounceable, unspellable, and unknown in the U.S.