[INTRODUCTION]
Vanessa Liu (00:00:00) - Chip Conley, who is the founder of Modern Elder Academy, talks often about his time as a “mentern,” it’s what he calls it when he was at… a “mentern” at Airbnb. So he was like, oh, he had sold his business, his hospitality business, when he was approached by the founders of Airbnb to join them to be their head of hospitality. And he was like, well, I'm in my 50s. You're all in your 20s and early 30s. So what, what can I tell you about technology? They're like, no, no, no, like, this is about you teaching us about hospitality. You have so much wisdom.
[INTERVIEW]
Dave Tabor (00:00:33) - Welcome to the Stubbornly Young podcast for people in their 50s, 60s and beyond, to remain engaged in the world and relevant to the younger people in their lives. I'm Dave Tabor. In this episode I'll be joined by Vanessa Liu. I first learned of Vanessa when she was quoted in a February Wall Street Journal article by Lisa Bannon talking about her startup called Silver Life, a venture studio with a mission to disrupt aging.
They're partnering with exceptional founders to launch companies that are shaking up what it means to grow older. Of course, this is so interesting to me. So I reached out to Vanessa and I'm so happy. Glad you could be here on the Stubbornly Young podcast.
Vanessa Liu (00:01:10) - Thank you so much for having me, Dave.
Dave Tabor (00:01:12) - Well, I'm glad you are because Vanessa is an entrepreneur, you're past president of the Harvard Alumni Association, you’re mentor in Techstars. So, I mean, you've got firsthand experience with multi generational talent. So let's start with the notion with your observations about high level, what's going on with today's aging population from your perspective.
Vanessa Liu (00:01:31) - So the aging population as we know is incredibly large, incredibly diverse. And for so much of the last several decades, this is a population, if you just think about people who are 50 plus who have really been put to the side of society, what we're going to see, especially in the next decade with the second wave of baby boomers getting into retirement age, is that people are not going to just take it and be put to the side, like, these are people who are incredibly dynamic, so wise, they have so much to give. I'm really excited for the types of services that they're going to be coming up with, and also how we're going to be working with them in an intergenerational society in a way that we haven't seen.
Dave Tabor (00:02:14) - Well, you know, in a way we haven't seen. What do you think, at a high level, what's different about, say, the next 30, 50 years with those of us who are 50s, 60s and beyond versus 50 years ago?
Vanessa Liu (00:02:26) - So I think if you think about 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, and the type of people who were coming into the foray and thinking about the demographic bubble, the demographic bubble was really, if you look at it, was really about the baby boomers. Right? And so there was an emphasis on the young, emphasis on this incredibly large population. You just need to look at the 60s as a decade in terms of the emphasis on youth. And that is something that stayed, that really just stayed within society.
Vanessa Liu (00:02:57) - Like, oh, there is a celebration of youth, a celebration of people who are expressing themselves and over time, thinking about work, thinking about these new generations that were coming. I, from my perspective, a continual obsession with youth. And I think that what's different now is that those same people who were the youngins in the 60s
Dave Tabor (00:03:20) - The ones who are obsessed with their own youth.
Vanessa Liu (00:03:21) - Yes, they were obsessed with their own youth. They're like, hey, you know what? We're obsessed with the fact that we're now like, we're doing so much in our supposedly golden years. I just need to look at my parents. They are now in their late 70s, early 80s. They're still working. They're entrepreneurs. They still have their businesses. They go out all the time. They travel all the time. And it's, for them they are young at heart, like so to the name of your podcast, they are stubbornly young and they don't want to be viewed as a demographic that is old and needs help.
Vanessa Liu (00:03:56) - It's the complete opposite. They're like, no, no, no, what can we do for you? Like we set the pace on so many areas and we're going to continue doing so. And that is a framework that we're going to see that's going to shift with the help of the same people who (inaudible)
Dave Tabor (00:04:13) - Yeah. It sounds like you think the mindset of let's call it the baby boomers, the mindset was we're young, we're the upstarts. We've got this whole new thing. But that never went away as they got older.
Vanessa Liu (00:04:23) - No, it has not gone away. And I think that that is something that is so important for society to see. And we know the stats, we know that in a few years time, basically like 1 in 5, 1 in 6 people are going to be 50 plus. It's going to be a very different perspective of what is around us. If you just look at Asia, for instance, you look at what's been going on in Japan, they've had an aging society for a couple of decades ahead of us. It's much more integrated into how you think. It's not about ghettoizing people who are older. No, it's about embracing people and thinking about these intergenerational communities that we are living in and really making that thrive.
Dave Tabor (00:05:02) - Well, that sets the stage nicely for some of the constructive ideas that you've shared, both in that Wall Street Journal article I referenced also in a South by Southwest presentation that you gave, you talk a lot about the need to transfer institutional wisdom. And this is within organizations. So talk about that and we're going to dive into that.
Vanessa Liu (00:05:20) - Absolutely. So actually the first company that we are working on is a company called Sugar Work. And it is doing exactly this. It's helping companies transfer institutional knowledge from person to person. And so this happens when people are walking out the door of a company because they're either retiring because of natural attrition, because of corporate reorganizations, because of layoffs. If you think about institutional knowledge, that is something that makes a company competitive. If you look at a company like, let's take a company like Disney or a company like Coca-Cola, these are companies that have been around for decades.
Vanessa Liu (00:05:57) - And if you think about what is their special sauce, it's been gleaned over a time, like Disney's franchise model has been gleaned over time. Yes, you can have operating procedures around it, but really the special sauce is what's in people's heads and how you work together and how you work with one another. If I think about now what's happening in many traditional companies, there are now large retirement clips happening. So we're going to see a lot of handover that needs to be happening from people who are experts, who've been doing their fields for a long time and passing on to successors.
Dave Tabor (00:06:32) - Yeah. So are you seeing you know, I think the mindset was maybe it still is for a lot of companies that as people hit whatever retirement age they choose and they decide to walk away, that we just sort of allow them to go. Are you seeing any desire by company leaders to say, let's, not so fast?
Vanessa Liu (00:06:50) - Yes, there is a very big desire. I was very recently at a knowledge management conference where NASA, basically representatives from NASA, were talking about how the silver tsunami for them is a very, very big trend that they're looking to mitigate with successful knowledge transfer.
Vanessa Liu (00:07:08) - They even have a website dedicated to this about saying we need to transfer knowledge because we have a large part of our team, our colleagues who've been around for decades who are leaving, and we need to make sure we capture their wisdom. This notion of being able to plan for retirement successfully is something that's baked into those types of organizations that really value this type of wisdom.
Dave Tabor (00:07:31) - You know, and what I'm hearing, too, and I wasn't aware that NASA had a website specifically promoting this transfer of knowledge. You've talked and make sense to think about that. Perhaps maybe the people who are getting ready to retire from NASA, maybe aren't developing the latest technology. They're not using AI to code, but they have different kinds of skills. So as you think about this notion of transitioning and transferring institutional wisdom, it's with a flavor twist, isn't it?
Vanessa Liu (00:07:57) - It is. It's a flavor twist. But it's also I always feel like the best AI models out there right now they're being built, they're being built on wisdom and experience that's been gleaned over decades. If we talk about a company having their own AI model was being based off of, it's being based off of the knowledge that's already there. So this is really about getting out that type of knowledge around best practices. How do you navigate an organization around what does good look like? If you think about what NASA does, let's take that as an example. And I must say, when I was younger I wanted to become an astronaut. So this is why it's something near and dear to my heart. But if you think about, well, we need to build the best rocket booster to do X, Y, and Z. How do you do that? What do you know? What are the trade offs that you need to think about? That's something. Yes, AI could help you design something, but do they really know the trade offs you need to make? Do they know what is in place and what people do you need to bring in to solve for that type of problem?
Dave Tabor (00:08:55) - And I guess what I'm thinking about, those are somewhere between the latest tech skills and soft skills. There's something, there's a savviness that and there's a how do you navigate kind of a transfer that's different from tech.
Vanessa Liu (00:09:08) - Yeah it is. It's different from tech. It's about the soft skills around how do you get colleagues who could be gatekeepers to give you the green light on something. So it doesn't take four months to get a green light, but it takes two days. Like what are the things that you need to know?
Dave Tabor (00:09:23) - And those are measurable outcomes that a savvy, experienced person who's walking out the door right leaves with and the person who's 30 or 20 or whatever, they got to learn it the hard way over time.
Vanessa Liu (00:09:33) - That's right. And it's actually been very well researched. There's a former Harvard Business School professor, her name is Professor Dorothy Leonard. She's written a book around this, around critical knowledge transfer. And as part of her research, she surveyed, I think it was about 75 companies and asking them, what does it cost the company when somebody experienced walks out the door without transferring knowledge? And on average it was $350,000.
But where only a small portion of that was rehiring costs. A huge portion was lost productivity, lost innovation, lost relationships, lost reputation. And if you think about that, like if you have everybody who's been there with knowledge walking out the door, that's $350,000 a year, $350,000 a year. You look at it differently.
Dave Tabor (00:10:21) - That's, you would and not every company is going to look at it that way. But my listeners are. So those of us who are stubbornly young, people who are listeners are probably thinking about making a transition. Maybe if they're already if they're still working. But how do you, you've talked about a couple of things. You've talked about intensity levels changing and sort of adjusting one's life to intensity level. You wrote an article, you asked for folks to give you feedback about flexible work arrangements and got over a thousand replies. So talk about both of those concepts sort of in this bucket of transition.
Vanessa Liu (00:10:53) - I think the notion of work is different. We are now living in an age where children born nowadays can expect to live, on average, to a hundred. And if you think about that in terms of a life span and a health span perspective, it means that instead of having a 40-year career, you're probably going to be having a 60-year career. But there should be ebbs and flows in it. And that's also something that we've all experienced. Like, for instance, when you have to take time out for childcare and child rearing or you have to take time out to take care of aging loved ones who need just extra help. We've all been there. Where, yes, like there should be an ebb and flow of work. And having lived in Europe for over a decade, I've seen how society there is much more embracing of a more flexible relationship with work, which I feel like needs to come here also and in North America. And flexible arrangements is key. Like in the Netherlands, if you are a teacher, you're actually given a path at the moment that you want to retire. You could go from full time to 80% to 60%, 40%, 20% over a period of several years. And I think that's something that needs to happen here, that flexible arrangement.
Dave Tabor (00:12:04) - Yeah. Do you think people who are, say, 60 or 65 are they in a position because they may be the ones thinking about this, not their employers. Those of us who are stubbornly young in a position to advocate those, do you have a sense that employers are open to that kind of a proactive approach by those who are?
Vanessa Liu (00:12:23) - Yes, very much so.
Dave Tabor (00:12:25) - What makes you feel that way?
Vanessa Liu (00:12:26) - I've been talking to several companies about this, and actually part of our platform is exactly helping companies figure this out. Like how do you offer flexible arrangements because they see the brain drain that will happen if people walk out the door. And it's like a win-win on both sides to have that open dialogue, to be able to say, wait, you have so much knowledge on this. You know, if you walk out the door tomorrow, that means, like, I'm going to lose this. Like, is there a way to do like a soft ramp down and to figure out how to do that? Of course, companies, the reason why it's really difficult to implement is because the current work systems are not set up that way.
If you look at your typical HR systems, you can either have somebody be there as full time or part time, and when it's part time, it's like count it very differently. You have to think about the managerial span of control. It's not how we're set up nowadays.
Dave Tabor (00:13:17) - Yeah. I saw stat on your website, 74% of people plan to keep working post-retirement, which is kind of a weird way to say it, because if they're retired, then that means they're not working. But I think what you really mean is that they have to sort of switch off their old employment and switch on something different?
Vanessa Liu (00:13:34) - Right. Switch on something different. But interestingly, if you ask a lot of people like, do you want to switch to to do something else, like, no, I just want to be able to have more time if my current employer would allow me the ability to do what it is I'm doing, but to start ramping down, and I think that the currency that people who are now of retirement age, what they have is their wisdom, is their knowledge. And to be able to say, I'll trade you. So in return for me basically training my successor over time, and I'll do it very, very well, why don't you give me a way so that I can down-ramp. And there are companies that are doing this and they're doing this extremely well.
Dave Tabor (00:14:12) - Who's initiating most of those interactions, most of those arrangements?
Vanessa Liu (00:14:16) - So in one situation there is an incredible company called Atrium Medical. And they are located in Alabama, in Texas, in Florida. They, it's actually leadership. They're the ones who are initiating it because they recognize the value that their employees bring.
Dave Tabor (00:14:35) - Okay. So if I were going to go to my employer or one of the listeners is going to go to their employer, how would you suggest they initiate that conversation?
Vanessa Liu (00:14:43) - I think so much of this is about showing to your leadership how much you know and what you can do to help frame this in a way that also works for them. I think if you talk to employers, they get it inherently like, oh, so-and-so who's been with for so long they have so many relationships. This is incredibly valuable for us, but they don't know what a flexible arrangement could look like. So come up with a proposal like say, hey, I think this is my proposal. I think I want to come in, maybe is it three days a week? And this is what part of that is going to entail? Because I think if you take the thought, like a lot of the hard work out of employers, it's much easier for them to say yes to.
Dave Tabor (00:15:25) - And your experience suggests that many employers, anyway, would be open to that.
Vanessa Liu (00:15:30) - They would be. They would be open to it, I think, provided that they're able to support this at scale.
Dave Tabor (00:15:36) - Yeah. Now that would be a subsequent conversation. I guess that's contextualized based on the kind of company. If it's a Disney versus a small company, that's a different context, right? So that sort of transitions us, I guess is a good segue to a concept around mentorship, which you speak about a lot and, you know, you're real. You're very much an advocate of mentorship, but you also use a term called true mentor. And maybe this contextually fits in with the conversation we just had about approaching an employer.
Vanessa Liu (00:16:03) - Right. I think that the notion of mentoring, of course, is an incredibly valuable one in the workplace. But I always think that a mentor, it's a great relationship to have. But really, what could be very, very helpful for people who are just, you know, continuing on their career is to get paired with people who could make them that much better in their line of work. And that means learning from the best. That means like being brought along for the best. So if you can say to your employer, well, I'm the best at this, and I can devise a way to teach in a group of successors the best practices around X, Y, and Z. Like, I could think about people who have been incredible sales executives, for instance, and that is like that. It's an art form to do that well, or somebody who's an incredible engineer and is making heavy machinery and thinking about how do you piece that together? That's also an art form as well.
Vanessa Liu (00:16:55) - And so to be able to say, part of what I will do in return is to make sure that this knowledge is passed on. That's very, very powerful.
Dave Tabor (00:17:05) - You know, the idea of being a true mentor, meaning mentors can go down two paths. One can be technical mentors where you've got somebody who's just maybe a couple of years ahead of somebody else, showing them how to do stuff. That's almost like a more experienced. Then the kind of mentorship you're talking about is more about life, about savviness, about what you were talking about earlier, like, how do you speed the green light process from four months to two days? That kind of mentorship. Right?
Vanessa Liu (00:17:28) - Right. That kind of mentorship is priceless. That makes you a better professional, makes you just like that much better at what it is that you're doing.
Dave Tabor (00:17:36) - Yeah, I've heard of the notion of sort of the opposite. But for people that are more seasoned and more experienced, to be mentored by somebody way younger than they are, to keep them engaged with new technology and so forth. Have you seen that happening to?
Vanessa Liu (00:17:51) - Oh, I've seen that happening. And, Chip Conley, who is the founder of Modern Elder Academy, talks often about his time as a “mentern” It’s what he calls it when he was at… a “mentern” at Airbnb. So he was like, oh, he has sold his business, his hospitality business, when he was approached by the founders of Airbnb to join them to be their head of hospitality. And he was like, well, I'm in my 50s. You're all in your 20s and early 30s. So what, what can I tell you about technology? They're like, no, no, no, like, this is about you teaching us about hospitality. You have so much wisdom. So he was like, okay, I'll mentor you on that. But he was like, I'm also interning when it comes to building a high growth, like a very, very fast growing technology company. So this notion of a mentern is something I think is so valuable. I think there's also a Robert De Niro movie called The Intern.
Dave Tabor (00:18:41) - Yes, that was a great movie.
Vanessa Liu (00:18:43) - Yeah, it was just a great movie. And I think we're going to see a lot more of that. And there's a recent book written by Arthur Brooks, a professor at Harvard, From Strength to Strength.
Dave Tabor (00:18:53) - Yeah, yeah, I've read that. I listen to it. Yeah.
Vanessa Liu (00:18:54) - It's a fantastic book. Like talking about what are you really good at in terms of your intellectual capacity? So much of it is about teaching when you are in your later years, because you're able to connect the dots faster, you're able to just exceed the connections. And it's like that type of gleaned wisdom from experience that makes you better at that. And so to be able to apply that, it's interesting.
Dave Tabor (00:19:18) - Yeah. And I think his concept was interesting that no matter what, no matter what we think about ourselves, we all peak, you know, either in our 30s or our 40s. And as far as technical prowess and that kind of thing, no matter what we do.
Dave Tabor (00:19:29) - And so I think his premise is let's move. Let's transition to teaching and mentoring as we age, because we are past our peak in some of these other skill areas, no matter what we want to think.
Vanessa Liu (00:19:40) - Right. And I think there's a lot to that. And it's being able to say it's okay. Like, I'm not going to be that world class physicist anymore, or them or that world class mathematician. But what I'm going to be really good at, though, is thinking about how do you apply these concepts in other areas that people haven't thought about that orthogonal thinking.
Dave Tabor (00:19:59) - All right. The last thing I wanted to talk about before we wrap up is the whole idea that you're forming a company that's designed to find exceptional founders who want to launch companies that are shaking up what it means to grow older. So are you seeing some companies emerge to do this kind of stuff.
Vanessa Liu (00:20:18) - This whole entire sector, when it comes to longevity tech, and that's an aging…
Dave Tabor (00:20:23) - Longevity tech?
Vanessa Liu (00:20:24) - Yeah. Longevity tech, aging tech as it's been called, like the AARP has this amazing lab called the Age Tech Collaboration Lab, and they're finding startups to work with. And this sector is only going to get bigger. There are a lot of exciting companies that are starting. We're figuring out how to morph, like with this first company. It was an idea that I had, and I'm launching it with a co-founder. We think that other companies all will be launched. We have other ideas too, for companies to launch, but we'd love to be able to support like an operator, who knows how to drive this going forward. But Techstars, it's an accelerator, has been running for the last three years now, a longevity accelerator, and they have fantastic companies in there, doing everything from working for a new caregiving solution that's going to help people find a caregiver that's from their ethnicity that that they identify with to another company, that where you can point at a lamp and be able to turn that on or off, like this technology with a ring that you wear around your finger.
Vanessa Liu (00:21:26) - It's fascinating what is coming up into the foray. And I think that's very exciting. We're going to see a lot of innovations around this. I personally am very much into the innovations around the future of work, because I believe that it gives you purpose. If you find something that you really want to do, like, I again, like, you know, I look to my parents and the fact that they're still working and the notion of future of work, how do you disrupt that? I'd love to see more ideas there. And we also have a few additional ideas in this space, if anybody is interested.
Dave Tabor (00:21:57) - Well, I am, and we'll stay in touch. My future of work includes probably putting myself out on Rover and walking dogs and getting a few, getting a few dollars in a little exercise. But, that's down the road for now. I'm still doing things like this and it's super fun.
Vanessa Liu (00:22:12) - Which is great. And I think like this type of portfolio mentality that you have is I think the future.
Dave Tabor (00:22:17) - Well, thanks. I think that's a good note to wrap on. So let's do that. I'm your host, Dave Tabor, today on Stubbornly Young. You've been listening to my conversation with Vanessa Liu. That was fun. I'm glad you could join me, and I look forward to circling back one day.
Vanessa Liu (00:22:29) - Thank you so much. I look forward to it, too.
Dave Tabor (00:22:31) - Good listeners, this has been episode five of the Stubbornly Young Podcast for those in their 50s, 60s and beyond who want to remain engaged in the world and relevant to the younger people in their lives, please do me a favor. Help the podcast spread by submitting a review and by sharing. Hey, a quick note I want to thank my friends at VEA Technologies. They're managing all my technology for the website and so forth. So anyway, thanks to them. listeners, catch you next time on Stubbornly Young.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
