What Comes After You've Achieved Everything? | Bill George

**Bill George** (0:00)
And I looked myself in the mirror driving home that day, and what I saw was a miserable person, me. Meanwhile, if you ask me how I'm doing, I said, Chip, I'm doing great. We have all these business challenges I'm traveling. Traveling 80% of my time, we're gonna get them fixed. And every time I got, I was Mr. Fixed. Every time I got one fix, they gave me another one to fix. And there was no joy in that. And I realized there was no purpose.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:22)
Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.

**Chip Conley** (0:38)
Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis. This is Chip Conley. And you know, there's people out there in the world who you admire, and then you feel lucky when you get to know them. And Bill George is one of those people. Bill was a quite heralded CEO of a medical electronics company called Medtronic.
And it was one of the fastest growing stock market valuations in the 1990s and 2000s. And Bill was very successful there. And for 10 years as CEO from age 48 to 58
And then at 58, he could have just retired and said, well, you know what, I've made a lot of money here, and I've done my good leadership time, and I'm just going to go and hang out on a golf course in Florida. Well, that was not going to be the case. But Bill is now 25 years later at 83
He teaches at Harvard Business School. He gives speeches. He's written a couple books. He's very well known as someone in the mode of authentic leadership, because that's the name of one of his books, and true North leadership, the idea of understanding your purpose. Lots of us in midlife can feel boxed in by our work, and we feel like we have to fake it till we make it. Bill will tell you, fake it till you make it is a big mistake.
Do not do that. Instead, find your strengths. Find within you what you have to offer and then amplify that. Bill and I are going to be teaching together in November at our Santa Fe campus. So for those of you who are both interested in leadership, interested in your career path, interested in understanding how do you know who you are and what your strengths are as a leader. It's a great workshop and I hope it will see you. But first, let's listen to this episode and at the end, I'll tell you my three key lessons. Bill George, you are a role model for so many of us. Thank you for joining us on The Midlife Chrysalis.

**Bill George** (2:35)
Hey, Chip, I'm thrilled to be back with you for all the amazing work you've done in creating the Modern Elder Academy. It's just incredible. There are so many people that have been there and it's transformed their lives.

**Chip Conley** (2:46)
Thank you. Well, let's start with your life because I wrote about you in my book, Peak, about your remarkable tenure at Medtronic in terms of how effective you were as the CEO and leader there, and Medtronic had remarkable stock market gains. But you had a long-term philosophy on strategy and business and leadership, as opposed to short-term.
In fact, I think one of the things I always appreciated is you said, CEOs get the investors they deserve or something like that. And because you had a long-term perspective as a public company, in terms of what you're looking for. So I'd love to have you explore the topic of leadership, your personal experience with it, and maybe tell us a little bit of your life story that led you up to becoming CEO of a big-time public company.

**Bill George** (3:36)
Well, it doesn't sound egotistical. Let me start there because I think it's fundamental to everything I do and everything I believe. I'm an only child of older parents and grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan in a middle-class family. My father was, I thought, a good consultant and my mother had taught school for 12 years, and then she just decided to raise me and being an only child. My father traveled all the time. I didn't see much of him, but when I was about nine or 10, he pulled me aside and said, son, I feel like I failed to become the leader I should have become. Now, I don't think he would have become a leader, but I thought he was a good consultant. He said, I would like you to make up for all the things I haven't done.