Strategic Advisor for Hospitality and Leadership for Airbnb
and Customer Service & Corporate Culture Expert
Hospitality entrepreneur and best-selling author, Chip Conley is a leader at the forefront of the sharing economy. At age 26, Chip founded Joie de Vivre Hospitality, and took an inner city motel and turned it into the second largest boutique hotel brand in America.
Airbnb
After being CEO of his innovative company for 24 years, Chip accepted an invitation from the founders of Airbnb to help transform their promising home sharing start-up into the world’s largest hospitality brand. In his four years as Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy at Airbnb, Chip taught his award-winning methods to hundreds of thousands of Airbnb hosts and created Airbnb Open, the company’s world-renowned hospitality conference. He currently holds the position of Strategic Adviser for Hospitality and Leadership.
Books
Chip is also a celebrated author whose books share his theories on transformation and meaning in business and life. His previous book, Emotional Equations: Simple Steps for Creating Happiness + Success in Business + Life, was a New York Times best-seller and his book PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow (10th anniversary Revised and Updated October 2017) features new content including Eight “PEAK” Leadership Practices. Chip’s new book, WISDOM@WORK: The Making of a Modern Elder, shares experiences from his tenure at Airbnb.
Awards and Philanthropy
Conley remains very involved in his Northern California community and is the founder of Fest300 (part of Everfest), San Francisco’s annual “Celebrity Pool Toss” that has raised millions for children and families, as well as the Hotel Hero Awards that shine a light on outstanding hospitality employees. He is the recipient of hospitality’s highest honor, the Pioneer Award, joining industry icons Marriott, Kimpton and Wynn, as well as the GLIDE Cecil Williams Legacy Award. He was also named Bay Area’s Most Innovative CEO and Northern California Real Estate Entrepreneur of the Year.
Education and Affiliations
Chip holds a BA and MBA from Stanford University, and an honorary doctorate in psychology from Saybrook University. He serves on the boards of the Burning Man Project and the Esalen Institute.
PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow
Part memoir, part theory, and part application, Chip shares Joie de Vivre's remarkable transformation while providing real world examples from other companies and showing how attendees can bring about similar changes in their work and personal lives. He explains how to understand the motivations of employees, customers, bosses, and investors, and use that understanding to foster better relationships and build an enduring and profitable corporate culture.
Toward a Psychology of Business: Simple Truths for Creating a Culture of Happiness and Success
Chip believes the most neglected fact in business is that we're all human and that business schools don't do enough to help us understand that creating peak experiences for stakeholders can create peak performance for a company. The PEAK model can be used to understand how a company can relate to relationships beyond those with employees and customers: investors, vendors, the community, and, even with yourself. As a practitioner who has used his own company (with over 3,000 employees) as a laboratory for understanding the human condition, Chip's philosophical but prescriptive approach to leadership will be very illuminating.
DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION: Learning How to See and Surf a Disruption
Chip Conley has disrupted the hospitality industry twice, once as the founder and long-time CEO of Joie de Vivre Hotels (America's second largest boutique hotel company) and more recently in 2013 when he joined the three founders of Airbnb to help grow and lead the company to become the most valuable hospitality company in the world. Chip has identified his three rules of disruptive innovation in any industry and how start-ups as well as established companies can see the foreshadowing of a new wave on the horizon and surf that wave to competitive advantage.
The Modern Elder: A New Framework for Sharing and Receiving Wisdom
For the first time ever, we have five generations in the workplace at the same time. What would happen if we got more intentional about how we all work together? Age diversity makes companies stronger as wisdom can flow in both directions from old to young and vice versa based upon new practices that encourage mutual mentorship.
All Chip Conley Books
Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder
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Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness + Success
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Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow
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Marketing That Matters: 10 Practices to Profit Your Business and Change the World
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The Rebel Rules: Daring to be Yourself in Business
Purchase Book"Chip wildly exceeded all of our expectations and we can honestly say that our company is stronger because of his presentation. Many of his quotes and comments have become part of our everyday vernacular. It’s clear that his impact will continue to be far-reaching and lasting."
- | The Container Store
"He was fantastic. I thought he was going to be great and he exceeded my expectations."
- | Boston Financial Data Services
"I love the Joie de Vivre heart icon that Chip uses to illustrate how a passionate corporate culture breeds happy employees, which leads to satisfied customers, which results in a profitable and sustainable business."
- | Sir Richard Branson
"Chip is that rare breed of CEO who possesses both a brilliant business mind and a very big heart. He's a true role model for anyone who wants to lead."
- | Gavin Newsom
