Scaling Airbnb, Founder Mode, and What’s Next for Travel — with Brian Chesky

23:14And I think we all thought all of our businesses were going to change in three or four years. And honestly, if I just like, I don't know, here's a good test. I open my phone. I look at the apps on my home screen. I ask, how many of these apps have fundamentally changed because of generative AI? And I really can't say very many have. Maybe the algorithms are marginally different. There's some interesting kind of on the margins filters that are possible because of AI. but their experience is not that different than a pre-AI startup. So I would say if you think about the stack, you've got the model.

23:45So you've got the chips. There's a lot of development there, mostly just NVIDIA. Now there's a huge amount of development at the model level. Obviously, OpenAI was the frontier model, but there's so many others. But there's been very little innovation on the app front. And I think all of us are trying to basically figure out, what is the application interface paradigm in an AI world? One of the comments that Johnny Ive made, he's a designer that I work very closely with, he designed almost all the products between iMac and iPad and beyond, was he noticed that there was a user interface paradigm of the graphical user interface formed in the 1970s, popularized in the 1980s, basically a mouse and a point and click.

24:29And then you had multi-touch introduced in 2007 with the iPhone. So a lot of startups are starting to work on these new layers. But, you know, mostly what these startups are doing is scraping data, the kind of same data that OpenAI would scrape or the data that Google would scrape. And they're just trying to do marginally different interfaces by doing these kind of pseudo, you know, assistants. But assistants are very chatbot. And I think a chatbot is just, you know, you know why I don't think a chatbot is the right interface? for the same reason that like I have a messaging app, but I don't want to use that to do a computation.

25:03I want to open a calculator and I have a different interface for the calculator. So in other words, I think every job wants a different interface. And I don't think we can revert to that, like the universal chatbot interface to be able to handle all these different tasks. It actually is very inefficient for things like travel. I don't think a chatbot is the way to book travel. So that's like my general commentary. Now let's take Airbnb. I think the thing that will first get revolutionized through AI by Airbnb is customer service. Just to give you a sense, we have a very difficult customer service challenge.

25:34We get more than 10 million calls and chats a year. They come from people in every country in the world. And a lot of the calls are urgent, like I'm locked out, there's a problem. And we often have to adjudicate disputes between a guest and a host that don't even speak the same language. And because we're travel, we have a lot of seasonal workers, right? And so the seasonal workers, there's a lot of turnover. And so you often call a customer service agent that is seasonal, and a lot of them are new. And they're trying to handle adjudication between guests and hosts. And there's like 100 different policies.

26:10And the policies can be like 100 pages of documentation. And so AI can be the front line. It can basically speak every language. It can be 24-7. It can be the corpus of all your policies. It can also look at the last million times something happened and say, based on that, this is the best predicted resolution. And of course, it can be a tool for customer service agents to provide better service. So I think customer service is the first thing that's going to be reinvented, at least in the e-commerce space, because of AI. And then I think the question is, can you bring that customer service paradigm to search?

26:44In other words, can search be not a chatbot, but a slightly more conversational experience where it's not like the Amazon paradigm where it's a search box and filters, but it's a little bit more this app that's getting to know you, understanding you. It's more personalized. And that would probably be phase two. I've sort of, and I might have this wrong, but I was really just fascinated by the meta earnings call. I think it was turning calls ago where he said, and I've never seen this before, we've increased our revenues 23 % year on year while decreasing our headcount 20%. And what I've generally found, the analogy I would use is that AI is a little bit like corporate Olympic, and that is it turns off the signal we have as managers, CEOs, and directors that just because we're growing doesn't need, we need to eat more, or in this case, we don't need to hire more.

27:34Have you thought, and I realize this is a difficult conversation for CEOs to have, but has AI given you the sense to maybe rethink if you need more employees and to see how technology can make you more efficient? And what's happened to your employee headcount over the last 12 months? I went through one of the first big layoffs in Silicon Valley since the pandemic. We were like a well-known layoff. We had to cut 25 % of employees. But actually, we lost almost half the employees because we also had to cut 10 % of contingent workers. And then when you're a travel company, a pandemic, people tend to leave you for other hotter fields or other hotter industries.

28:12So we ran the experiment of having significantly fewer employees against our will. We weren't looking to do this. And something remarkable happened. The remarkable thing happened is that we actually started getting more work done with fewer people. And it was partly because there was a massive communication tax and that like people are in meetings all day and they're in meetings all day because people create meetings and you can try to impose things. But it was just it turned out we had too many people probably. And we we never would have realized that until we kind of ran the experiment of having fewer people.

28:41And we actually started getting a lot more done. So then I mentioned this to Mark Zuckerberg and, you know, I'm close to him. And, you know, I think he kind of realized that, you know, there were a lot of efficiencies to be gained. And, you know, obviously, he made his decisions with this year of efficiency. I think he found that there was a huge communication tax and that they probably had way too many people. Now, it's hard for a CEO because you don't want to always be on the side against hiring people. I'll say this. I think that most startups raise too much money. They hire too many people.

29:16I don't think that has to be against workers. I think that they can just be redistributed to other companies, that we should fund more companies. There should be more startups built, but the startups should probably not hire so many people. I think that's a general view I have. AI, I think, is making people marginally more efficient, but I've not seen yet a massive displacement of workers because of AI. You know, whether it's customer service, we still have mostly agents doing it. And then software engineering, you know, it can make software developers a lot more efficient, but it is not reducing our workforce.

29:51And actually, the way this would probably work is we'd probably, if AI made everyone more efficient, instead of downscaling the employee base, we'd probably try to get more revenue per employee. So we wouldn't be doing, we wouldn't be eliminating jobs. We would hope that the revenue per employee would increase so they have more leverage. And we're starting to see this. We're starting to see that what we're seeing is our headcount is only growing in low single-digit percentages year over year. And our revenue is growing faster in our headcount. And I'd like that to continue. And so a metric of revenue per employee or free cash flow per employee hopefully will massively increase.

30:28We won't have fewer employees. We'll just do more revenue. So you had a bit of a viral moment. You probably weren't planning this. And I just want to say I thought your comments were sort of taken out of context around founder mode. Talk a little bit about what you meant. And it kind of went wild. My favorite meme was, I'm going to go founder mode on this breakfast burrito. Founder mode, question mark. Let me say this. I'm not sure anyone really knows what founder mode is because Paul Graham wrote an essay about it, but he never described exactly what it was. So let me just give a little bit of backstory.

31:03I was asked to go to see a Y Comediar alumni event. It was the first time they got basically 100 startups that are, you know, like around a billion dollar market cap or higher, later stage companies. They did a basically like the quote level conference. They had different speakers. I joined last minute. It was off the record. I remember they'd tell you, like, you're going to do this talk and no one's ever going to know you did this talk. It's off the record. There'll be no knowledge of it. So I do this talk off the record. And I basically described my experience from 2009 to 2019 going through hyper growth.

31:35But the problem was I was told a certain philosophy of leadership, which is you hire, you know, hire great people and entrust them and empower them to do their job. And that sounds great. But there was a big missing piece of the puzzle, which was being in the details and being close. And I had let go. And I noticed this paradox that the more I let go, the more dysfunctional company got, the more people thought it was leadership meddling. And so the further I got from the details of the company and I would hire these people and I thought they were doing a good job. And I would find out years later, they weren't doing the job I thought they were doing because I wasn't close enough to the job.

32:09So I think Paul Graham wrote this essay. It was a very compelling essay. I think the theory is a really great way he framed it, that there's this orientation that is germane to founders, which is being in the details, having real ownership of your company, which is different than a classic manager mode. But to be clear, I never said this was something exclusive to founders. Basically, the general principle is being in the details. and being very, very hands-on. And it's this basic idea that great leadership is not absence. Great leadership is presence. And then the counterpoint is, well, what about, like, isn't this sound like micromanagement?

32:46Isn't this micromanagement? And no one wants to work for a micromanager. And here are my two thoughts on micromanagement. Number one, I actually think, like, a lot of people are afraid to get into details because they'd be accused of being a micromanager. And I actually think a lot more leaders would benefit fit from being in the details and model more hands-on leadership. But the other thing is what Steve Jobs said, because what I took from founder mode, a lot of it was what I learned observing Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs said, he didn't believe he was a micromanager, because he said that what I do is I'm in the details, but I'm partnering with the people.

33:19And if you ask Johnny Ive, I don't think Johnny Ive thought Steve Jobs was a micromanager, but Steve Jobs visited designs to you every single day. They had lunch every single day together. They were talking. Steve was steeped in every detail of the design of the iPhone, but he wasn't telling Johnny what to do. They were having discussions. They were partnering. And I think that's the key. I remember one time I had an employee and they asked me, is this your decision or is this my decision? And I said, that's exactly the problem. Every decision should be our decision. This notion of this black and white decision-making authority between owner and worker, manager and employee is, I think, the problem, that you're kind of partnering with people in the details, working with them.

34:02And so that was probably the single most important philosophy, that as a founder or as a leader, you set the pace of the organization. You set the standards of equality. You set the standard of how much you care. You identify excellence, that you work with the leaders on the ground, and you don't defer to them, but you don't tell them what to do. You're constantly partnering with them. And the one reason you shouldn't defer to your leaders is because oftentimes you'll have different leaders come from different functions with different interests, and they'll conflict. And you're the only leader, or maybe if you're a general manager, you're one of the ones that can actually consolidate and have the most global view and make the most macro decision based on all the different inputs.

34:45So let's talk a little bit about the company and the stock. And you're a public company CEO, so you can plead the fifth on anything here and just say you can't comment. But your revenue is$2.75 billion most recent quarter. That's up double digits. That's up 11 % year on year. Net income over half a billion,$555 million, representing a net income margin of 20%, which is very healthy. Adjusted EBITDA of about$894 million, up 9 % year on year, and represented an adjusted EBITDA margin of 33%. These are solid numbers. Airbnb generated a billion of free cash flow in Q2 and$4.3 billion of free cash flow over the trailing 12 months, which is, I think, the most you've ever done.

35:28Now, the bad news. Since the company went public, its first trade to retail investors, I figured we went public four or five years ago, it's effectively flat. If you've purchased a stock, you're effectively flat. I mean, there's been some bumps and some ups and downs. But is this a case of where, quite frankly, you went public in a market that was very frothy and the company is growing into that valuation? You know, at some point, investors are going to get or shareholders are going to get restless and say, this is a great company that's growing. How come it's not reflected in the stock price?

36:01What is it as a CEO? Is it you're going to continue to block and tackle and just continue to stay the course? Do you think it might involve acquisitions moving forward? But what would you say to a shareholder who's been in the stock the last four years and quite frankly, it's underperformed the rest of the market? I think there's a couple of things going on. I think that beginning of 2020, we had a private market valuation of$30 billion. Then the pandemic hit, and we raised debt, and the warrants were priced at$18 billion. So that might be the best proxy for a valuation. In May of April 2020, we were$18 billion.

36:37Then our goal in the summer was to go public at$30 billion. We don't want the last round investors to be underwater, so we would like to clear$30 billion. And then by the time we priced the stock, we priced it at$50 billion. And then the first day of closing went to$100 billion. And that was crazy. And it was not what we expected. I did not think the stock would pop a double. If I did, I probably would have increased the issue price. And we probably at that point had a valuation that was a little ahead of our numbers. We were not generating a huge amount of free cash flow. We were not profitable on an EBITDA basis in 2020.

37:13The market was super frothy. So now, you know, there's this old saying, you know, you're never as good as they seem. You're never as bad as they seem. Were we as good as they seem in 2020? I don't know. Maybe we got a little frothy. But we're certainly not as bad as people say now. You know, those that are a little bit cynical of the company. I mean, you know, you mentioned we did like over$4 billion free cash flow. We have one of the highest free cash flow margins in all of Silicon Valley. You know, we put out a little bit softer guidance for a quarter and that like really made it had a huge impact on the stock price because investors, they'll like kind of forecast a subtle change in growth rate over the next five or 10 years and it massively changed your valuation.

37:53What I would just say is the following. I'm 43. I intend to continue to run this company for the coming decades. I want to build one of the great defining generational companies. And I'm spending a lot of energy taking Airbnb, which was basically a noun and a verb, that's one vertical, and trying to do what Amazon did in the late 90s, which was take a platform, an e-commerce platform that's designed for books and bring it to everything. And I think that there's going to be a massive amount of category expansion for Airbnb beyond short-term rentals. So you're going to start to see that next year.

38:28We have some really exciting ideas that we're working on. But beyond that, there's a huge amount of growth in our core business. And I would just point to a few things. Number one, quality control. We are now bumping up against the growth rate of what Airbnb can kind of grow its growth rate without better quality control. Because we are now an alternative to hotels. A lot of hotel travelers are comparing Airbnbs. And they want the similar level of consistency and quality. For every person who stays in Airbnb, nine people stay in a hotel. If we can get one of those people to stay in Airbnb, we double the size of our business.

39:00And then you've got international markets. You know, most of our business is in like six or seven countries. So we're in 220 countries, but most of our business is in US, Canada, Australia, UK, France. So there's so many opportunities in Asia. I mean, there's many countries in Europe, Latin America, where there's huge growth expansion. So that's the next frontier. Okay. So without revealing your corporate plans, I think of Airbnb loosely as you're great at monetizing fallow assets and creating community. And that might be the wrong description, but that's how I think of it. So what are the most monetizable assets?

39:37People's homes. You're kind of in that. Next would be commercial real estate. I could see, I don't like apparel. People have tried that. It isn't working. I could see private chats. I could see, you know, what am I missing? What are, in your view, without giving... Oh, you're missing the biggest one of all people's time. So like Skillshare? Tell us what you mean by that. Well, what do I say without saying it? There's a lot of services that are available that we could go into. So imagine Amazon, they had books, but they went initially into DVDs and CDs when those existed, and then all these different retail categories.

40:13So we're looking at, let me just break it down for you. So you have short-term rentals, which is the Corvins. You have long-term rentals. Long-term rentals can be defined as 30 days or longer. So that's the same asset, but for longer stays. And seasonal, that's huge. Then, yes, you do have like car rentals and boats and other large assets. They're not as big as your house, but those are your next biggest assets in your life. But again, the biggest asset are people's time. So services and experiences would be a big opportunity for us. But as far as going down the list of those categories, there are dozens and dozens of categories, but I'll kind of start to accidentally talk and reveal our new product if I do that.

40:53But just to double click on that, I'm outstanding at installing energy efficient HVAC and I'm in Delray Beach and I'm very good at installing solar panels or installing soapstone kitchen counters and homes that need this. My problem is new business. can I see an environment where I put my services and pictures and photos similar the way you would advertise an apartment on your platform and you bring them a bunch of business and assure a certain level of quality in exchange for that 15 % fee everybody wins is that is that a logical extension that's a logical extension it wouldn't be the first extension we would probably start with things a little more adjacent to travel and to hosting an Airbnb but down the road almost any type of service.

41:38I mean, I don't want to say almost any type of service, but many services, including building, maintenance, cleaning, interior design, uptape your property. We built the Coz platform. This Coz network we built, we took lessons from Amazon. And the lesson from Amazon is don't build a book marketplace based on ISBNs, build an abstracted marketplace where you can sell diapers and books and a number of things on the same platform. So that's what we've done. We basically re-architected an entire platform. And so there's many services that could use the Coase network. And then on the demand side, I'll probably stop there because there's, but you'll see, there'll be more things coming.

42:18And when you're thinking is kind of 2025, the year where you start rolling out and testing it? Every year, I made a statement on the earnings call. I believe I can stick with it, which is every year from now on, we're going to launch two to three new businesses or verticals that we believe will one day generate an incremental billion dollars of revenue or more. So you're going to start to see those next year. And will you do this organically or will you make small token acquisitions to give you a head start in these categories? Primarily organically. And the reason why is because similar to Apple, when Steve ran it, we're a functional organization.

42:49And so it's kind of difficult organization to plug in like businesses because then they become divisions. But if If they're small acquisitions or if it's extremely compelling, we'll always take a look at it. And I mean, I will just say like a lot of entrepreneurs really want to work with Airbnb. They're very motivated. I think we have a very entrepreneurial culture, especially for an S &P 500 company. So it is a very appealing place for an acquisition candidate. Well, let me just ask you this. You've got a$85 billion market cap. I'm sorry,$84,$85 billion market cap. Lyft, the number two, has a$6 billion market cap.

43:26So you'd have to pay a premium,$8 billion for 10 % dilution. Why wouldn't you take a flyer and become the number two and then maybe the number one in terms of sharing or monetizing people's cars? I mean, these are like, I think there's a lot of opportunities. One of the frameworks that Jeff Bezos had, I think, is this idea of perishable, non-perishable opportunities. And I think doing an acquisition, most of these acquisitions are not perishable. I mean, maybe someone else could take them out. But we generally think that we want to get a little more momentum in the core business, get to a little bit larger scale before we try to absorb large companies and large acquisitions.

44:04So that's kind of why we've tried to build our muscle. Having done acquisitions in the past, they're very, very time consuming. I think acquisitions benefit larger corporations because they can absorb the acquisition, right? I think a smaller company struggles with just the administrative. You think of yourself as a small, you're$84 billion market cap. You're by far and away the largest hotel company in the world by number of rooms, growth. You have solid EBITDA. It's just funny that you think that way. I would think that - We're a baby compared to what we're going to become. And by the way, we only have 7 ,000 employees or so.

44:36I think Uber has like 30 ,000. So yeah, maybe today they're double the market cap, but they also have like four to five times the number of employees. So we're actually a smaller company from an employee base than people realize. We try to build like this, not a Navy, but like the Navy SEALs, this lean elite group. but I think this is just the very beginning. Like I got to tell you, Scott, I'm 43, but I have more energy, more motivation, and more passion than I was when I was 26 when I was running this company. And I just see endless opportunity for this company. I think we've done a lot of the hard work to rebuild our company from the ground up, to be prepared for this next phase where we can take Airbnb and bring it to more business models around the world.

45:13So I mean, yeah, it's just, maybe it's a mindset. You know, Jeff, like Steve Jobs said, Apple's the world's biggest startup. And I think you know what he means by that. Jeff Bezos had his version. He called it day one. It's all basically is the road in front of you longer than the road behind you. And for us, it is. So I pitched you on this idea privately 18 months ago, and the statute of limitations are over so I can pitch it to you publicly. But Airbnb Plus, or whatever we call it, and I pay 50 bucks a month, and it does a few things. One, when I'm in a city, I have access to cool gyms like an Equinox or whatever.

45:50I have access to concierge services. But more than anything, it's a thinly veiled aspirational community slash dating site. And that is, I travel so much. And when I'm in a town, I'm almost always alone. And I find myself at 5 or 6 or 7 p.m. thinking, I don't know what to do. And if there were other entrepreneurs, if there were other academics, if there were other people New York or just locals. What about some sort of Airbnb plus community offering? I think it's incredibly compelling. I think you've sold me. I'm in. Listen, 18 months ago, I was in when you told me. And the only reason we haven't done it is because we had really foundational things.

46:31People were complaining about Airbnbs aren't affordable. They were complaining about our customer service. They were complaining about like there were a lot of things. There were a lot of complaints. And so I felt like, well, we got we got to get our house in We still have to grow into this valuation. We have to generate a real consistent profit on a free cash flow basis. And we have to address a lot of these issues that customers are brought up. And over the last two years, we made 430 upgrades and improvements. So yes, we are now looking for this expansion. I've always believed that there was some type of Airbnb membership model, not necessarily a points program, but where you get access.

47:04And I guess my only question back to you is, are you available as an advisor? Oh, Jesus Christ, Brian. You're so full of shit. I'm always available. I love this company. We're going to talk privately after this. But I think it's a great idea. And I generally do see Airbnb as a community. I mean, like in Berlin tonight, there are tens of thousands of Airbnb people that are staying there. We can match them together. They can do a variety of things. Those local businesses would love to have specific travelers. And they could tell us which travelers they want. And we could target just those travelers.

47:38I think there's a social overlay here, and that is I think that there's a crisis or an epidemic in loneliness. 100%. And young people aren't connecting in a safe environment where they want to know each other and want to establish professional and personal relationships. There's a lack of third spaces. You know, people aren't going into work. They aren't going to church. They aren't participating in organized athletics as much. And I think that you guys are in a position to provide third spaces on a pretty big scale. So look, now I'm going to sound like your mother here. Last time you were on the show, you spoke about feeling like a 61-year-old and you were 41 there, so a 43-year-old's body, working 18 hours a day, essentially living like a monk during the pandemic to scale Airbnb from$18 to$85 billion.

48:25So over a year later, have you been able to make strides in reconnecting with the personal side of your life? Do you feel as if you found more balance or is this still kind of an ongoing journey? No, it's been a major change for me. Kind of three changes. The first change is I've gotten much healthier. I was always into exercise, but I've I think a lot of entrepreneurs, we glamorize sleep deprivation. And I think until recently, no one was talking about the benefits of sleep. But I think only like five last five or 10 years. But when I started, like it was a badge of honor to never sleep. And I do that for years.

49:00And, you know, we didn't really like we weren't that healthy. and I'm much more healthy now. I'm sleeping more, exercising. And I think that's a good trend in Silicon Valley that people seem to be much more mindful of health and fitness. That's the first thing. Second thing is I'm spending a lot more time with friends. And one of the things I do with friends is I travel. You and I talked about one of the great ways to have a shared experience is to travel with people. And that's a great form of memories. And I do that. And then I've started to, the third category is like, I'm single and I'm 43.

49:31and I waited longer than I ever thought I would to meet someone and have a family, but I do desire to have a family. And so I've been dating a little bit and hopefully I meet someone. And you also said on the professional front, you talked about your desire for Airbnb to have a next act, your Disneyland, your AWS, your iPhone moment. Give me a moonshot crazy idea that people wouldn't expect from Airbnb or Brian Chesky. There's so many, but I'll just pick one based on the conversation we've had. Loneliness. People are lonely. I think there's a massive way that we can facilitate people meeting one another.

50:05So I'll give you an example. If you travel by yourself, you ever go to a restaurant, you got to eat at the bar by yourself. And sometimes all the time. OK, it's literally one of my favorite things. And it's pathetic. Yeah, yeah. And I do it, too, actually. You know, I do go to the bar and sometimes by myself get food and I like it. But I have no alternative. Like if I'm traveling by myself, that's the only choice. So what if we could basically pair Airbnb travelers together at restaurants, pre-book reservations, and bring travelers together? Taylor Swift, number two, she obviously had this incredibly, unprecedentedly successful concert tour.

50:41And we noticed in Europe where her concert was, we saw this massive rise in Airbnb bookings. and what if you could pair, what if you could sell concert tickets on Airbnb, but not just sell concert tickets, but you could actually pair people together to go to the concerts. They can meet one another. We could go down the list of other types of things like pickup sports. So there are kind of things you might not think of as Airbnb, but if we're talking about difficulty meeting one another, there's a lot of ways we can pair people together. So I think the most non-obvious biggest idea would be Airbnb becoming like a social network in the physical world, Not an online social network, but essentially a physical social network where we're matching people together in real life around events and shared experiences.

51:25God, I just thought you should take on Live Nation. By the way, I love the idea of you sitting alone at a bar and everybody being like, isn't that Brian Chesky? By the way, you know what I call when I see I'm not young nor a billionaire and not as good looking as you. You know what I call eye contact at a bar when I'm meeting alone? What? A prostitute. Oh, anyways. There you go. All right, Brian. Brian's literally turning beet red. Yeah, what a great way to land this interview. This is great. He's literally turning beet red here. Brian Chesky is the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. Since launching in 2007, the firm has grown to a community of over 5 million hosts who have welcomed more than 2 billion guests in almost every country across the globe.

52:06He joins us from New York. Brian, you know I'm an enormous fan of you. I think you're not only a baller professionally in the world of tech, but I think you're just generally speaking, a good person and think about the commonwealth and what's good for society. And we don't always have that peanut butter and chocolate combination. So thanks for your time. Thank you so much, Scott. Thanks for having me.

52:37Algebra of happiness. My sister and I have put my father into hospice and hospice is a scary sounding word, Jimmy Carter's been in hospice for five years. It's basically saying we're not going to continue to shuttle him to the hospital. If something goes wrong, we're just going to try and make him as comfortable as possible. And my father's 94 and has declined pretty significantly in the last two and a half months. He had a series of very weird bladder infections and UTIs that just took it out of him. And the last time I went down there and I knew he was coming, he didn't recognize me. And I saw him about two months ago and we had a conversation.

53:10And then And two months later, he's like a baby and he doesn't recognize me, which is obviously very, I was prepared for it, but you can't really prepare for it. Just a couple of takeaways. Something I'm really happy about is I knew the end or that end where I would no longer have my father. He would have me in terms of consciousness was coming. And I said a lot of nice things to my father and I made sure that he felt loved. And I've also, about 25 years ago, one of the best decisions I've ever made is that I've always thought of relationships as transactions. and my father wasn't very involved in my life and I resented him for it.

53:42And then I decided across all my relationships that I was just going to decide, okay, don't keep score. What kind of partner, what kind of father, what kind of son do you want to be? And I decided I wanted to be a generous and loving son, distinct of what I thought his contribution was. And also I was a little bit hard on my father. I think when you're the child of divorce and you live with your mother, You have a tendency to sanctify or deify your mother because she's taking care of you and making you breakfast and demonize a little bit dad because, you know, it was his fault. And my dad, divorce really kind of was his fault.

54:23But look, the thing you got to think about your parents, what I come to realize, is that their number one job is to be a better dad to you than their dad was to them. And I found out at a much older age, my dad never said this to me, that my father was abused by his father, physically abused. His father was an alcoholic and used to come home and get this, wake him up, start yelling at him and beat him. And I just think about Jesus Christ, talk about trauma that might not make you a wonderful dad. And my dad did try. He wasn't always there, but he did try. And so I forgave my dad 25 years ago and said, I'm just going to be a generous, loving son.

55:00And I've been that. I'm really glad I was that. That gives me a great deal of comfort. The other takeaway is that it's so wonderful to have siblings in this situation. My sister handles all the logistics and makes the millions of decisions you need to make every day when your father's not doing well. And it's actually brought us closer. And I can't imagine how difficult it can be for siblings that don't get along or one contributes more than the other and the resentment and the martyrdom. And, you know, some people just don't show up. And I handle the money side of things because I'm blessed on that end, which is important.

55:37And it's a sad reality here. It is just so goddamn expensive. And so if you're in a position where you're making some money and you have aging parents, you may want to think about the costs that are going to be involved there. And if you can't, otherwise they're going to have to live with you. But let me just try and land this plane. I didn't know where this was going to go. I decided to put the scorecard away and be a generous, loving son. and that was the right call. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Caroline Shagrin, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

56:14We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prop G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.