Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
It’s time to stop lionizing megalomaniac founders. Some of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs, from Thomas Edison to Henry Ford, were ruthless, single-minded in their pursuit of success, and by all accounts, exercised huge control over all aspects of their enterprises—traits we see today in Elon Musk, for example. In a trenchant reported essay for Inc. about the “cult of the entrepreneur,” editor-at-large Bill Saporito writes: “We find ourselves at the high-water mark of the cult of the entrepreneur, where excess supposedly leads to success. The message to would-be founders is that a good idea and solid execution aren’t enough to achieve greatness. You have to add the histrionics, the blog and social-media posts, and the worshipful fan base ready to do your bidding.”
It doesn’t have to be this way. Chip Conley, founder and CEO of Modern Elder Academy, has created Entrepreneurship at Any Age, a workshop in collaboration with Inc., to help entrepreneurs become better businesspeople and better humans. “Sometimes [founders] feel like, ‘If I’m successful, I’ll become a better human.’ What I have found is being a better human has made me successful in business,” Conley says. “You have to be smart. You have to negotiate well. But that doesn’t mean you have to be an asshole.”
Reimagining midlife
To be sure, Conley has always been a bit of an iconoclast. After earning his MBA from Stanford Business School in 1984, he eschewed corporate gigs in favor of a $24,000-a-year job working for a commercial real estate developer in San Francisco. He started the Joie de Vivre boutique hotel chain at age 26. “You’re making no money, you’re living in San Francisco, and you’re naming your company for the emotion of joy. You’ve become very New Age,” he recalls friends saying. “But I wanted to remind myself of the mission, and the name of the company was the mission statement.”
After selling Joie de Vivre to John Pritzker, whose family started Hyatt, Conley began doing some consulting work for Airbnb, which quickly led to a full-time role at a company where he was called a “modern elder” at age 52. In 2018 he launched Modern Elder Academy to reimagine “midlife”—which Conley defines as the years between 35 and 75—and give people tools to navigate that period of their lives.
While Modern Elder Academy offers retreats and courses for people from all walks of life, Conley understands firsthand the unique challenges entrepreneurs face. “Corporate executives often have road maps or a company strategy, and their job is to execute. Entrepreneurship is like surfing: There’s a wave and you have to figure out, ‘How am I going to surf this?’”
On being human
Entrepreneurship at Any Age features sessions and conversations on core business and leadership topics such as time management, growth tactics, and exit strategies. But Conley and his fellow instructors and coaches expect attendees—the workshop capacity is 20 to 24 people—to get personal in their quest to become better founders and better people.
“It’s about people getting to know each other as humans first. What, as a human, are you dealing with in your company? How do you create the crucible for life-changing conversations to happen? That’s really what we specialize in,” he says.
Do you agree with Conley’s assessment that being a better person makes you a better business leader? Or do you think every entrepreneur needs to be a little like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison to build and scale a business? Send your responses to me at [email protected]. The best responses might form the basis of a future newsletter. And there’s still time to enroll in Entrepreneurship at Any Age, which takes places at Modern Elder Academy, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, September 23 to 28.
Read more: defying the cult of the entrepreneur
Chip Conley on how Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher put employees first
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