Chip Conley | There will always be those who doubt you and your vision. Here's how to tune them out.

Recently, I invited an experienced luxury hotelier to visit the new campus we were building near Santa Fe for Modern Elder Academy, the midlife wisdom school I co-founded in 2018.

Looking out at the 2,566-acre site, he remarked, "You're quite a risktaker." He's not wrong, but his tone was more cautionary than it was cheerleading. My entrepreneurial balloon of confidence popped.

I went for a long walk after that meeting. "Could he be right?" I worried. "Am I a lunatic?" I had so much invested in growing the business, which to me is a calling. This new campus was supposed to show a U.S. proof of concept after the success of our Baja campus. Was it too much, too soon?

Throughout my career, people have called me a risk-taker. They were shocked when, at 26, I bought a bankrupt motel in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood and turned it into the beginnings of my boutique hotel company, Joie de Vivre. They said I was nuts to join the Airbnb founders as their in-house mentor back before home sharing was popular. And with Modern Elder Academy, they told me there was no precedent for a luxury retreat center dedicated to reframing our relationship with aging.