This is the Gary V. Audio Experience.

Hey everybody, it's Gary Vaynerchuk and I have a really special guest here, an

entrepreneur that I've known for a very long time and I got an email.

I got a lot of emails. I got an email either from him or his crew and they're like,

chips got some stuff to talk about. I'm like, yes. So here we are.

Thank you. On MLK Day, we're filming and recording this.

Chip Conley's in the building. Chip, why don't you tell everybody who's listening

a little bit about yourself and then very frankly, some of the things that you want to

talk about and then we'll riff. Yeah, so great to be here.

Congratulations on the digs here. Thanks. Pretty nice.

Thank you. Staying at the Equinox Hotel right nearby, which is very, very nice, getting

a massage tonight. So yeah, I started the second largest boutique hotel company in the

US when I was 26. I called you a lot of you based in San Francisco. All 52 of the hotels

were all in California. Sold it. And then seven years.

How did the first one start? Because I know this audience when they hear that hyperbole,

everyone's like, how? Yeah, so the first one started. I was two years out of Stanford

Business School. In fact, I was hanging out with my friend Seth Godin yesterday here in

New York and who I went to business school with. So I started the first one by buying

a pay by the hour motel. Not because I was frequenting it.

Which would have been fun because it was cheap. And how do you have any capital?

I raised about 1.1 million dollars. So I was 26. I had gone to Stanford Business School,

gone to Stanford undergrad, had a lot of friends who had money. I was not from a money

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