The goal here is get into a day in the life of some folks' roles and get to know what their work is and how they do, how they do what they do and .

And for us today that's talking about critical thinking. .  When I asked Evo if he had somebody he would recommend you came up is, top of mind for him 

 I'm incredibly flattered. I think Evo and I I think, not to speak for him, but I've always lived by the principle that certainty is the point you get to when you're tired of thinking. And I think in my experience in hospitality and almost two and a half decades now that's served me well and.

It's allowed me to be consistent in terms of my approach and methodology when it comes to thinking through complex problems. I suspect that might be where it

 You said certainty is what we come to when we get tired of thinking. So meaning it's an illusion,  it's a point we finally get to when we quit or when we are ready to make a decision. 

 I'm a lifelong learner and I think that the more you can be. Open-minded to new ideas. Who doesn't want to learn? And I think Ray Daly have said it if you don't look back at who you were a year ago and say, gosh, I, things I thought a year ago were pretty stupid compared to that they are today, then I didn't really learn much.

It's not to imply that you can't be decisive and that you don't have knowledge in a certain discipline or what have you. But I think, none of us has all the answers to complex questions. And I think the more you can open your mind it's almost, your mind almost works like a parachute.

It works when it's open and the more you can open your mind to new thoughts,  to things that might challenge your own conventional wisdom, the more I think the better decisions you'll ultimately get to, not on your own but with other people. And I think, there's certainly, things that become habit over time, decision making and whatnot.

But I just think  continuous improvement requires just that level of being open-minded and, almost like looking around the corner for what have I not thought of yet? Yeah.

Okay. So could you tell me is there a complicated problem you've been thinking through recently and , how do you break that down? Give me a view behind what goes on, internally for you.

 I think over the last year and a half I've tried to overhaul our tech stack in many ways on the sales and rev revenue management side, really, and I shouldn't say revenue management side. The totality of our business intelligence, the analytics, analytical tools that we've used, and,

What's worked and what hasn't.

And, I think a roundabout way of answering that is sometimes the challenge in hospitality is in, from my opinion, is you have to honor institutional knowledge and what was there, but find ways to move things forward. And I think strong leaders bring people along with them in that type of journey.

And, so when I think of like the business intelligence tools, the tech stack overall that we've been pulling together, it would be easy for me to say here's what I know from the last 23 years. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna ram through what has worked for me in the past. But I think that misses opportunity, like the opportunity to bring in as many.

Inputs or data sources as you possibly can from others and understand that yeah, experience is life's greatest teacher and none of us have experienced everything. So like the ha being able to, with humility comes to the table and say, Hey this might be a blind spot for me. Where can I bring in either internal or external resources or thoughts or what have you to help me build out the best possible outcome in a way that still has urgency, that still has speak to market in many ways.

I think that is, that's something that I've developed over time, I think, earlier in my career. Certainly I think sometimes hubris can have you in its grasp and you don't recognize that, and I, I think, so that's an example of one that I'm wor I've been working through now.

Okay, so let's  break it down. So when you got into this role,  what, when you talk about maybe what your tech stack looked like what were the pain points? What did you notice that you were like, okay, we do need to do something about

yeah. I think what I would say it for the role I'm in now is we are a rapidly growing company and that requires putting in scalable tools, resources, solutions that perhaps look much different than some of the solutions that teams have used in the past. Because, I think that I think one of the, one of the biggest things with scale is that and this goes back to where we started the conversation, you have to repeatedly question.

In my mind,  your habits and when it comes to solutions, you need to ask yourself when it comes to scale is a solution I'm gonna put in place a point solve to solve today's problem? Or is it a solve that's gonna work at scale? And if that answer is a point solve, you don't do it. You do something else.

And you keep searching for that scalable type of solution. And I think yeah, so I think that's one thing that like,

Is a challenge because, this company my company's had a ton of success through the years, and and that's awesome. And we have, there's no doubt that there's areas we're scaling quick with hotels opening.

What kind of hotels are we talking about and what does the scale look like?

Yeah so our Aspen hospitality portfolio, we have the Little Nell brand and the Limelight Hotels brand, and our Limelight Hotels. When I joined the company we had the Nell, which is world renowned Aspen, which is incredible property, obviously. Aspen's only five star, five diamond property.

And we've had Limelight, Aspen Limelight, catch Limelight, Snowmass. And since I started right when I started we brought on Limelight Denver. We're opening Limelight Boulder, which is our first conference center. We're opening that in August. We're opening Limelight Mammoth 149 hotel rooms, 15 residences in December.

And then we're also working on a second development with the Nell brand and in New York City. And, that's the what we hope to be, just the start. And I guess my point in saying that is like we were very Aspen centric, like the properties in that market. And there's things that work well there that perhaps don't work in other markets, that you've gotta figure out how to scale, in that

So imagine that I, I'm in the hotel industry, but I'm not in revenue management, let's say. When you're talking about business intelligence and tech stack,  you're talking about. I would assume a reservation system a revenue management system, a property management system, some sort of sales type system to manage contracts and leads and all of this.

And then I would guess like you need also to be pulling all of this data together to get insight. And like when you're looking at that, it's about, okay, how, what are competitive shops and competitive data and forecasting, right? You've got all of these layers that you're trying to make sense of for a, from what sounds like a home, a homegrown brand of that obviously was working well for.

The properties that you already had. But now you've got to figure out how do we take what's there and also help it make sense with this bigger thing that is growing so that we can, like you said, continue to honor the thing that exists and help it get better.  I'm trying to dig in a little bit more of  your thought process and  how you handle such a thing. 'cause that does sound like a significant lift, right?

Y yeah.

come into this role and think about, okay, I've gotta revamp the, overall performance tracking and everything for the company.

Yeah, it's, I think about I think a couple things, right? What I think from a critical thinking standpoint with it.

Yeah.

need to evaluate. I think what I've worked hard on is evaluate the capabilities that need to be built

Ways. And while at the same time,  without it goes without saying continually continuing to perform at an exceptional level from an operational standpoint, from a property standpoint.

So it's doing two very difficult things at the same time.

How do you do that in a way, like where I would ask myself questions, it's okay, how do we do this in a way that that doesn't slow down the momentum, that helps continue to build a momentum in a positive way

For the properties that are operating well.

At the same time ensuring that when these new properties open and come online, we're ready, like out of the gate to, to have incredible success. And it's a it's a difficult thing to, to, I think, navigate sometimes, but I think one of my strengths is in vision casting. And I think it's super important as a leader to, to articulate a vision in a way that your whole team can understand and then rally your team to get behind that in a way to accomplish things that perhaps people didn't think they can accomplish on their own.

To me, there's nothing better than team success in that way where, a group of people accomplish incredible things because they're all pulling, not only pulling in that same proverbial direction, but they understand that at their core, like one plus one can equal three when you have people working together.

So how does that relate back to this tech stack? It's recognizing that. Different people are at different places in their journey and their willingness to accept new ideas and

To embrace new concepts. Some, everyone's different, right? Some people will be at the, for forefront of that.

Other people will not be. And I think  ensuring that you have everyone going with the same velocity as much as possible requires, like developing those deep connections with your team members to again, instill that trust to where you, they, people can buy in.

So the vision of where you're going that takes time. It doesn't just happen overnight. And I think when you're looking at whether it's a tech stack or rebuilding a team or what have you there's, like I said earlier, I think it's easy. The easy button is to take knee jerk reaction or to take knee jerk approaches rather of this is what worked for me in the past, so I'm going

Forward with that

Mentality.

And I

Yeah.

where I've found the most success is not taking that approach is understanding, hey, what does this particular situation require? And that's gonna look different, but than any previous situation. And then how do we, what steps do we need to get to encourage the adoption of new tools or encourage a different direction, a different strategy, whatever the case may be.

And I think that to me is  the hardest part, but the most exciting part of leadership is just that at the end of the day, it's getting, it's that vision casting that, that ability to, I. Get everyone not just on the same proverbial page. I think that's cliche, when you do have a full team that buys in it's incredible what team's can accomplish in that way.

 What what have you seen happen there with your team?

, I think everyone's a little bit different in terms of where they want to go and, or I shouldn't say where they want to go in terms of how quickly folks can embrace it or not, or, and I'm not just talking about tech, but that's anytime there's change, right?

There's change to a system. And I don't mean a literal tech system, but change to a process or change to a team or what have you. It requires hard decisions. It requires again, honoring where people are at, encouraging them to get to where you are looking for them to go, where you're looking to go, giving appropriate feedback and And then going and doing that with velocity.

I, I don't know if that's, that took a far left from your question of the critical thinking component 

I, yeah.

work through.

. No, I think that all of that is it's part of the process of, critical thinking for sure. And you quoted Ray Dalio earlier, and I think that he, that's a great example of. Okay. Someone who thinks in what he would say,  principles and tries to communicate in the form of principles as well to  his team when he was, running that running, is it Bridgewater

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. And so do you think about things that way,  in terms of principles or  how do you come up with a vision that  you're getting folks behind? 

Yeah. I, it's, I do think that way in terms of principles, and I think I, to me, anytime I've come into a new role or onboard with a team I try to make very clear what the non-negotiables are for me, or

Look for when it comes to how a team is gonna operate. How a group of people are gonna operate with one another to get the best outcomes.

And, I believe in relentlessly seeking solutions. I believe in questioning, as I mentioned, questioning or repeated behaviors. I am a firm believer that \ , there's no such thing as failure. You learn from your failures and your mistakes and you apply that wisdom forward. If you do that, there's no failure, otherwise, what are you doing?

It's failures just failure, right? So there are fundamentals like that, that I think are that I firmly believe in and then that I share with new team members to, so people know what, they're not just getting with me, but like how to operate with one another. And I think there's a radical, I know radical candor has been overused, but I think to some degree, it's important. And that's not just being like, oh, just be direct and straight to the point. No, it's let's make sure that  when we need to give one another feedback, we can do that in a way because we've got a deep level of trust with one another that, it's a, it's that feedback is a gift mentality of the radical candors required because hey this team member really needs to know this to get to the next place.

And I think, Josh, I think to me all of that is super important in order to create the conditions for a team to all move in the same direction.

Yeah. Yeah. 

And I think one of the challenges in the pace of business period is that those things take a little bit of time. They take a lot of intentionality, they take time, but.

In many respects in business, like you don't have a lot of time. You've gotta, you've gotta do both things at the same time. Yeah, as to me, as long as you've got a team that is all in, on the best business outcomes and basically making the best, one of my biggest principles is just if you do the best every day, you make the best decision you can in that moment, every day, the end is gonna take care of itself. And that takes discipline

Yeah.

discipline and hard work. And a bit of , everything we talked about, pressure, testing assumptions and making sure that yeah, people are doing just that. I'm gonna say this phrase, and I may regret it, but not intellectually lazy.

Yeah.

of just taking the quick way out, but really, not

Yeah.

to do the hard things.

Yeah. I remember  sitting on the beach reading this book, and I remember the, eyeopening moment of I think he was talking about what he would  consider I, I'm probably getting this wrong, but I think it was like secondary effect.

Like basically a lot of times we may go at something directly and not actually get the result that we want, right? And so how important it is that we're actually understanding the lower levels of that, right? I probably, a good example of this is  we all go after  health in terms of weight loss and we  very much focus on, okay, I'm gonna lose X number of pounds.

But it's not part of this  longer term, lifestyle or vision. And then we gain it back plus some. But  a secondary,  understanding, , I really just want to build the habit of walking 10,000 steps a day, or I'm going to start evolving , how I eat in this way because I care about health.

Now. The secondary effect is that I'm going to lose weight  and it's going to actually  last, we go after I think revenue management or sales or some of these things as , how do I drive this metric? And, but it, but if we go straight at the metric,  we don't get the intended result and

yeah you just hit the nail on the head, and it's not to be redundant with what I said a moment ago, but it aligns with, the thought of do the best you can every day, make the best business decision that you can every

That, and the end will take care of itself. And I, coming up through the sales discipline, I would always tell sales team members during the annual goal setting process, right?

I would say, if you look at that number, let's say it's a $4 million target

And all you're focused on is that number, you're probably not gonna hit it. Or even if you do hit it, you may hit it by not taking the best piece of business possible, but it's because you're concerned about your 4 million number.

Whereas if you think about it through a team construct and not just like an individual contractor, the team goal is 12 million. And that requires all of those sales managers working together in harmony with revenue management to ensure that every decision they're making, every booking they're taking is truly the best piece of business possible. That every day gets you to that 4 million. I'm



Focusing on that 4 million in that 4 million alone does not then lead to the best business outcomes for the team, for the hotel, for the team, for the cluster whatever it may be. It's exactly what you just talked about there.

I, i love that. And it's how I try to wire myself professionally

Control what you can control today, and that is in every situation, make the best business decision you can in that moment.

. The example that comes to mind is  there was a book that came out last year called Anxious Generation by the guy, Jonathan, he is his name. He is he's a professor by trade.

And just was looking at okay,  I see concerning trends with just, okay, this new generation now level of depression and suicide, all these things. And so he's looking at the data to understand  what the implications are. One of the things he talks about is how kids have been underprotected in the digital world and overprotected in the physical world and the physical world piece.

He says part of the big thing is  as humans,  our brain's not fully developed until we're in our twenties and we, and  other animals start walking as soon as they come out. But we've got this need to grow slowly. As part of a community and that we are in a environment that is safe and that is where you're getting unstructured play and that you realize the consequences of falling.

It's not that bad, right? Like even if you get hurt, it's not going to kill you. Most of these things that we're afraid of, we don't need to be afraid of. And when I think about that with what you're saying is you are pushing your team and you're creating pressure. You're giving them opportunities to fail and make mistakes.

You're asking them to. Push and try and question. And the, because the stakes, he, like the author says, you need a low stakes environment, right?  You're saying the stakes aren't that high here, right? If I push the stakes if I make the pressure too high, it's it discourages the, the willingness to try.

But if I'm in the daily habit, like you're saying of asking people to do their best,  that gives people this opportunity to realize okay, I can have, these small learnings and losses and that's encouraged and rewarded, and , that's part of this bigger picture of we actually end up with better long-term results because of the short term learnings

It's very much taking the long view with that. And I think that, I think with what you just said, a couple things came to mind. One, the underlying point there is I think when you create the conditions for psychological safety within your team, then it's incredible the results you can get. It really is because the inverse of that is that people are not willing to take risks.

And if you do what you've always done, you're gonna get what you've always got. So I think like you, you need to create the conditions to allow people to take risks, to innovate, to try to not be afraid of failing. Now that doesn't mean there's not pressure, that doesn't mean there's not pressure to reform, it doesn't mean there's not accountability.

It doesn't mean that's all part of what, what goes with the job. Like we've gotta financially perform in hospitality. We've got to. Ensure that we've we're I will never forget when I first started in this business up in, in Vail proper, back in 2001. I'll never forget my GM saying in sales your job for off season business may, October, is to ensure that we're giving people hours.

Ensure that those housekeepers or there's those bellman or those banquet captains like, look, we're not gonna make our fortune in May and October in a ski resort community, but we need to give people jobs because that's how we're gonna retain our staff year round. That always stuck with me in a way that

Yeah, there is pressure to financially perform and there's everything that goes along with it and ensuring that you're taking care of your staff.

I say all that because really hit the nail on the head in terms of it's creating the conditions of psychological safety for your team and creating conditions to where you can save. Yeah, two things. One, this is really hard and this is really fun when you can do both things. They don't have, they're not, those two things don't need to be in conflict with one another.

And, I think over time when you have those systems in place and those principles in place   you learn which team members are capable is too strong of a word, but which team members are on board and the ones that are going to help get you to the next place.

And which ones maybe are your dissenters or who are not gonna get there,

Who probably should explore another opportunity. And I think that's where, I'd say the pressure is there. The pressure is there to perform, but I'm just a believer that. Those results will take care of themselves and tenfold when you create the right conditions for your team to, to innovate, explore, learn, not be afraid of failure.

Now you can't repeat the same fails failures, right? Like you've, the whole point is you learn from those failures and then apply those learnings to where it doesn't happen again, or you make a better decision next time. And that's an important point, right? It's not just saying, ah, mistakes will happen, carry on.

It's like having your processes around, let's talk about this, walk me through the steps as to why you made that decision. I might disagree with it. Here's how I would've done that differently. Here's what I think you should have considered or what have you, and let's talk through it. And that's where coaching and leadership really comes in.

Yeah. That was so good. You've gotta hold those things in tension, right? The psychological state safety and the pushing to perform. It's both exist, both have to exist. And creating that tension between the two is, I think where a lot of people miss. They think that the safety thing means oh, an easy, comfortable life and job.

And it's no, we've got, we are gonna push together and see what we're made of. There's and we're going to take care of each other, but we are going to push to, to be at our best.

Yeah. And in many ways saying I have very high expectations and high expectations of your level to perform, and I believe in your ability to perform. No one's gonna say I didn't enjoy that job 'cause they believed in me too much.

They're, the inverse is true though.

I think some of the, I think one of the most powerful statements you can say in business is I believe in you. No, it's gotta be. Earnest and sincere. But when that's the case I think that helps develop that healthy tension to where, you, you hit it spot on, Josh. People hear the word safety and they think oh, thank goodness, like I'm not gonna get in trouble.

It's no. Psychological safety just says like you're expected to push yourself past your comfort zone.

That's how we're gonna get the best outcomes. And that's not, look, that's not for everybody. It really isn't. And that's okay. There's no problem with that, 

Yeah. It's also when we feel most alive too, right? It's if we're. If it's if we are just trying to, not be stressed or that's I guess that's for me personally,  I realize  I when I'm pushing myself is when I'm also feel  field most alive and at my best, 

it goes back to what I said a moment ago, right?  Those two different statements of one, this is really hard, and two, this is fun.

Yeah.

Oftentimes those two things can be in conflict

'cause people think something's really hard. I'm not really having fun now. That's, I think I'm right with you.

That's when you feel the most alive of pushing yourself past your comfort zone. And look I think I've done that over the last couple years with revenue management. Like really tried to push myself in an area that that I had experience with, that I led in the past but did not, I'm not a 25 year revenue management expert, right?

And I think leaning in there has allowed me to, I look back at like my two years here so far, and. My gosh, the learnings have just been exponential and they should be. Like, I, if I was sitting here today and saying, eh, I haven't learned anything in the last two years, then I've failed in that regard.

But I feel like my, I'm so much better from my team today than I was two years ago because of where I've pushed myself past comfort levels and,

Yeah.

leaned in and learned areas that like yeah, are, were really hard and really fun.

Yeah, I love that. Are there any frameworks that come to mind for you,, in critical thinking that you encourage people to use or as 

I think there's a great book called Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath, I'm not sure if you've read that one,  I've really taken that one to heart. 'cause they talk about creating a framework to be decisive

many people think obviously decisive just means make a decision like that.

It's You're gonna make the wrong decision. A lot of times if you're just doing it based on instinct. It's about creating the framework and, , one of those frameworks is to widen your options. Right? Oftentimes we think in business as a question having a binary if

Yeah.

and how often can we say, and

This or that and this.

And I think that's one , I really try to challenge myself on cognitive biases. I think confirmation bias is something that we all fall victim to a lot, and I think especially in this age with. And especially in data science to some degree, I shouldn't say data science, but yeah, I guess data science, revenue management.

Use it as an example. Oftentimes, like you, you've got all this data and you've gotta interpret the true signal within the noise. And oftentimes, confirmation bias tells us we seek out those signals that align with our preexisting belief or that support what it is we're trying to say.

And I think from a critical thinking standpoint, you have to, sometimes that can be unconscious and you have to really pressure test that goes back to that pressure, testing your assumptions, making sure that you're not yeah, cooking the books because you're trying to find data to back up your preconceived beliefs and, cooking the books in your mind, I should say.

But yeah, I think that's part of it. I think I really love I. The idea of doing a, a pre-mortem on big projects, like once you're right, almost at the end, right? Have everyone take a step back and say, okay, let's take a breath and let's fast forward a year and say we're writing a, we're writing a memo on how this spectacularly failed. Why would it fail in a year? And I think that allows you to see some of your blind spots. There, there's frameworks that I try to apply in terms of critical thinking in that way, that, again, don't have to slow down the process. I think that they, if anything, just allow, allows you to make the best decision you possibly can.

And more often than not, you have 80% of the information you need to make a decision, but you're never gonna get that last 20%. And I think leadership is about being decisive and making those decisions, but. You can only do that, you can't do it recklessly. You've gotta, you've gotta have that type of framework or that, that pressure testing that allows you to make the best decision you can.

And then go,

Yeah, I love that you had a lot of great points in there on the confirmation bias. I think,  , I think that's asking the question of, what if the opposite were true? And I think that's similar to what you're saying about you're trying to also come at the confirmation bias with a pre-mortem of what if this thing completely falls apart?

And so that way you're imagining it falling apart and you think about what led up to the fact that it fell apart instead of confirming in your mind like, oh, this is gonna be a smashing success, and assuming that everything will be fine. Yeah. That's a great, that's a great point.

I think it was, I can't remember the CEO, but there was a CEO, I wanna say it with gm, but I might have that wrong, who anytime before they made a big decision, like a big time move, when if everyone was in alignment, in agreement, they would say, okay, we're gonna take a step away. We're gonna come back in a week or however long it takes to ensure someone comes back with why we shouldn't do this.

And then, what that does is just allow you, again, to make sure that you are not, whether it's confirmation bias . You want to think your decision's, the right decision. But again I think having said all this the, one of the challenges, one of the tension points is you have to be able to do that while still doing it with velocity.

yeah.

not becoming indecisive or not having, paralysis analysis because you're overthinking something. And I think that's something that, you've always gotta be mindful of too. It's okay there's 37 ways we can slice this. Have we sliced it enough? But I think, again, the framework is what's most important.

And if you adhere to that framework, then you're gonna, you're gonna produce ultimately over time the best business outcomes versus, and by the way, I think that's true in life too, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

the whole idea of like house hunting, right? There's that, that cliche that you should fall in love twice.

Don't buy and make an offer on that first house. You fall in love with, fall in love with two, and then make a decision and take a step back and see which one's the right one to go

So many things I could go into with you on all of this. As a leader how do I help build critical thinking in others or build an environment where critical thinking is happening?

And part of that, I think for you, what I hear is vision is important, right?  You are saying one,  we've got to,  think critically, we've gotta challenge our assumptions, we've gotta make sure we're not doing what we've always done.

But you could just say all of that stuff and without vision, people don't know what to do with it. 

Yeah. Why can't we do what we've always done?

And part of what I think about with vision is okay, we've got  17 people looking in 17 directions. How do I get them all pointed?  Where they've all narrowed their focus to the same place, right?

So now they're all looking in the same direction. And that way, right? If you've painted that picture that now folks are thinking, okay, here's how I think critically, how I can be decisive, how I can make progress to, toward what we've all said is  most important. Yeah I don't know.

I'm curious what you think about that.

Yeah, I think one of the challenges there is, I think with any vision,  especially when you have a bigger team,  you have to be able to articulate it. You truly in a way that everyone can understand. So if you come at it just to use as an example, you come out with a circumstance of Hey, we need to grow by percent, let's call it 20% in three years.

And. you don't explain the why or what you just come at it with here's a bunch of data points that is, we gotta do X percent by year one x percent by year two x percent by year three. Go. You're not really painting a vision, you're just telling people , here's a data point you gotta go hit.

And I think what it misses is I think, and this is where I think relationships are so important on teams too, like it misses the understanding of where everyone's at in their understanding of where they need to go. I'm trying to think of the best way to say this, but I think what I'm trying to get at is sometimes, like we just we like to throw data around all over the place.

Data's critical obviously, but like data doesn't speak for itself. We need to put words to it. And, if you just throw data points at out, it. Where we need to get grow by 20%. It's like throwing a fire extinguisher to someone who's drowning, like the solution's not matching the problem. So you've got to, you've gotta be able to, whether it's by way of metaphor or whether it's by way of, I, I don't know.

I'm being long-winded on this one, Josh, but I think to me that part of it and ensuring and then pressure testing on everyone that they understand the where and the why is the only way you're gonna get a team to go and or a team to accomplish it, I should say. I think a lot about it in terms of when I have tripped up in the past. I questioned myself first. I'm like, how could I have articulated something differently? How could I have,  painted a different picture 

I think sometimes I can have a vision in my head. It's just  hard to get out,

Everybody bought into. One of the things I have realized,  that's helpful is if, as I'm trying to communicate it, that I'm helping that everyone see that I understand their pain points, right?

And  we've got an inventory of here's all the points of friction, right? And it's here's the, here are the tensions or the friction in what we're doing right now that. It is hard for all of us. And trying to come up with some common language around that stuff of the pain where we are right now and like the the joy of what's in front of us and like the possibility of what's there, like in front of us.

Yeah. No doubt. And everyone is going to receive the information a little differently too,

Yeah. 

Part of the problem. It really comes down to, in many ways, storytelling

Yeah. 

A story

Crafting it in a way again, that that is inspiring. That is, , I don't wanna say the word simple, but is, yeah.

That can be absorbed. Relatively easily. And  that storytelling, I think is a critical part of it.

I think we're always a work in progress. All of us. And for me,  mindfulness is. A very powerful thing that you never by any means perfect over time, but I think allows you to be grounded and help to make those best decisions in the moment.

And I think even with, we're talking about vision casting and how

We talked earlier even about people, honoring the past, but looking forward to the future. And, I think mindfulness and being present teaches you  it's good to check in with yourself from time to time.

If your mind is in the future, if you're anxious about something in the future okay, you note it I'm anxious about this in the future, or I'm ruminating about something that was in the past.

Yeah.

it's like time traveling. You can't be in two places at the same time. You gotta be, if you're in the past or the future, you're not present.

And I think the more you can especially in today's environment, right? 

Yeah,

to say there's economic uncertainty right now is a bit of an

sure. Yeah.

And I think it's easy for anyone in this business to be very nervous about what is coming or excited or whatever you name it. There's just a lot of emotions attached to it.

And I think for me, what I've continued to try to work on is it's not to just like strip all the emotions away, but recognize when, like, when you're not being present and either angst or something else has you, when it's grasping, is leading you to make decisions that perhaps error on the side of the emotional reaction that you're having versus the true objective type of decision making that you should have.

And I think for me that's yeah, it's not a new thought by any stretch, but I think the more I've grown in my career. The more important that's become

You're responsible for people or more hotels or more top line revenue or whatever the case may be. And

Those types of it, it becomes more and more important to make sure that you are yeah, controlling your emotions as much as you can, controlling what you can control

Decision you can based on those circumstances and not get lost in, I think the either irrational exuberance or the inverse of that.

And ultimately I think that leads to the best decisions that you can make too.

I think like on, on the mindfulness thing I mean you, you said that so well, like you, you're saying, okay, we've talked about like how you think about the past and think about the future, but there's so much value in okay, how can we be right here in the present?

And , that presence is I think so important for us to be paying attention to. And then the part of just  non-judgment also, right? Being on,  I think that I've heard you talking about a lot of these concepts through the whole conversation, but not judging whether something's good or bad, but just understanding that it is and that it's here right now, right?

That, that's all of those things. I think as you lead a team or you're trying to think critically. It's so important.  You're creating this space between the the stimulus and the response. You're trying to push pause on automatic behaviors that are just happening unconsciously.

And this space that's then created is helping give depth to the decisions that need to be made

And then the ones that I'll, I'm just actually like being worried about stuff I can't control right now.

That is a whole nother podcast, and one

Yeah.

do with you, to be honest, because it's a passion of mine. It really

Yeah. Okay.

everything you just said there, just, it all ties together with what I was saying earlier, which

Yeah.

Just make the best decision you can in that moment every day, and the end takes care of itself.

And you can only do that by being present. You can only really make the best decision of

Yeah. I just heard something this morning that I thought was very powerful, and it was talking about when that stimulus happens, whatever it is, feel your chair.



That gives you, if creating that habit gives you that automatic space between the automatic response and a more rational, it's the elephant in the writer or the, there's all of that.

I'm a big believer

That line of thinking and, 

That's great.

loud zoo. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, 

yeah. I love that. . You asked me what I am, learning right now,

Yeah. What are you, yeah, I'm curious like what are you

Where are you developing? I think the question was like

Sure. Sure.

your development right now?

Yeah, I mean I just follow where my curiosity is at the moment and probably where my biggest pains are.  I've been reading more on  similar to how mindfulness helps, I've been digging into cognitive behavioral therapy

Yeah, definitely.

, I think there's a lot of power there.

And the, I, you were talking just there about analyzing emotions and for us to question the thoughts that we have and understand when we have, cognitive distortions. And how those distortions then lead to the emotions that we feel. And with all of that,  , what we can do about it and how we can act differently, and so I've been reading a book by I think David Burns. I'm trying to look over at my bookshelf over here. But yeah, reading on that and with a couple in a couple of other contexts. And then what else? I'm digging into yeah, I don't, the other one's kind of weird, but it's existentialism as a philosophy, but applied to business actually. And there's a. Philosophical consultant named Peter Co Steinbaum that I've been reading a few of his books and like digging into I just have, I've found. It's very interesting. Digging into that just the, he's very big on, what he would say about freedom and responsibility, right?

Like we all have freedom of choice in every moment and  how important it is that we're taking responsibility for that freedom. And so how does that work in an organizational context and how do we each. Take more responsibility for what's ours and blame other people less, because that's often right.

What we end up doing is deflecting responsibility and blaming other people or judging them. And that's what I've been  digging into a lot and kind of, making a lot of notes about most recently, those are the kind of the two topics that have been , peaking my interest.

love it. Yeah, cognitive behavioral therapy is incredibly powerful.

Incredibly powerful. And you I think it's what you just said too, it's like it's recognizing those automatic responses that you have 

yeah.

and how those automatic responses were created. 'cause oftentimes they're created based off of something that isn't true.

Or that you haven't, you yourself questioned internally. I.

. We gotta hang out sometime,

Yeah. I would love it, man.

I  📍 feel we've found a kindred spirit here.

I really appreciate you doing this Sunny, and making the time and I can see why Evo recommended that we talk I think that we , you and I are, we're on the same wavelength