At ‘89’ This Guy Took a 19 Day 11-Flight Trip Alone Then Gave a Workshop on The Blue Zones

Talk About Risk It! Or Regret It!...

After reading one of my email newsletters (they’re free btw at DebbieNigro.com) where my headline was my question “What are you going to do with TODAY?” 

James (Jim) Flaherty a subscriber replied to my email:

“About to leave (Mon Morning) for a 19 day 11-flight trip, visiting Flagstaff, AZ; Las Cruces, NM; and Houston and San Antonio before landing in the Baja of Mexico to teach a Modern Elder Workshop on THE BLUE ZONES, where there are more centenarians than anywhere else in the world. Trust you are well.  Good column today.  xo Jim 

Jim Flaherty is a former ad agency guy, entrepreneur and writer. I made friends with Jim after randomly featuring his book on my show, which I randomly found on an old table, in a random old general store, in an old section of an old town in upstate NY. The only thing I won’t call old is Jim - even though he’s 89. This guy’s ageless!

And talk about Risk it or Regret It!  I was exhausted just reading about the trip he had planned. I asked Jim to call into my show from the airport while waiting for his first flight. I wanted to know how the hell an 89-year-old was gonna do all that airport walking? I couldn’t! LOL

Jim said: “The only part of me that really doesn't function as well as I expect it to, because I always expect everything to work perfectly, are my legs. I can walk around the house, I can walk around an office, I can walk onto a stage and give a speech but I've had three surgeries starting with one bad surgery in Mexico years ago on my right le,g and now my left leg is just being 89 years old and tired. So I find when I get to an airport, and it's a mile or a half a mile between one thing to another, I have to have a wheelchair. And of course, it really, basically, it pisses me off because I never did.”

 

 I was wondering how this 89-year-old was going to handle all those flights?

“I don't mind the fact that I'm going to have 11, I'm going to have 11 flights in the next 19 days. That doesn't bother me. I'm fine on a plane.”

 

Was this 89-year young guy going to rent a car and drive himself around the country in between flights?

“Yeah, I drive fine. I'm a good driver. I'm okay behind the wheel.”

 

 I wanted to know more about that ‘Modern Elder Academy’ I’d read about, and Jim’s workshop he was giving on the Blue Zones.

 

Jim said:

 

“The founder, Chip Conley, is a wonderful, wonderful human being. Chip, who was going through his own kind of midlife crisis in his 50s and saw so many of his friends just at the end of their rope, decided, God, there's nothing for people going through what he called the messy middle. And they put a long age range on it, ranging from 35 to 75. People are going through the messy middle with one transition or another at all of those ages. So he put together this academy.

 

“And the reason it ended up with the name Modern Elder Academy is that the Airbnb boys who were all, you know, well, they weren't 12 years old, but they might have been, they were 20, 22, 23 years old, you know, when they started Airbnb, they didn't know their ass from their elbow, but they had a wonderful idea. And they, they asked Chip to come aboard, to tell them about hospitality, because he had owned a chain of hotels out in San Francisco. And, yeah, and one of them one day said, gosh, Chip, you're our modern elder. Because he was at that point like 52. And he thought, That's an interesting point of view of modern elders.”

Jim wants everybody in the world to look up modernelderacademy.com and put their name on the free mailing list. He said you get a free daily blog that is worth its weight in gold. And he said they have free monthly webinars that are just terrific. The workshops are too, adding that the workshops aren't for free, but he said he read the blog for two years before he signed up for one.

 

Jim said:

 "Fell madly head over heels in love with the whole concept, went back eight months later for my second workshop and now they've invited me to help facilitate workshops.”

 

From what I’ve learned now about those Modern Elder Workshops … they seem to get people unstuck and give them clarity for their what’s next. Might interest some of you or someone you know.

 

Meanwhile goodness knows what’s next for 89-year dynamo Jim Flaherty. Senior Ninja Warrior Games? LOL Not sure but Jim wrote me a follow up note, “I’m wild (again) trying to triple my output so I can keep up with myself”!

 

 Enjoy listening to this podcast of our live conversation on The Debbie Nigro Show.