Jane Zalutsky - Leadership

Jane: 0:00

Hi, this is Jane Zalutsky and you're listening to One Hour to Doors.

Jon: 0:14

This is One Hour to Doors, a podcast about the business and soul of the festivals and events industry. I am your host, Jon Stone. Every episode of One Hour to Doors explores the people, issues, insights and trends impacting the enterprise of bringing people and communities together in common cause. We are recording today at the brand new Totem Star Studios at historic King Street Station in Seattle. Our guest today is Jane Zalutsky.

Jon: 0:43

Jane is a renowned executive strategist and community leader spanning both the private and public sectors. She was ultimately responsible for a staggering array of the most important arts and cultural events in the Pacific Northwest and San Francisco Bay Area throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Later, her groundbreaking community development work in the banking industry redefined how many of us feel and interact with financial institutions in ways that are still reverberating to this day. In 2008, Jane founded JZ Works, a boutique marketing, sponsorship and business development firm serving clients nationwide. I know Jane through our shared time at Seattle Arts and Culture nonprofit, One Reel, beginning when I was a newly minted junior production coordinator, arriving at my first office job while Jane was the CEO of the entire organization. Welcome to the show, Jane.

Jane: 1:40

Delighted to be here, Jon. Thank you.

Jon: 1:42

It's been too long, I think it's been. We bump into each other at a function once every five or six years, but it's really been I dare say 20 years since we've really spent time together.

Jane: 1:54

Yeah, since we worked together. But we do see each other in the city somewhere at different events. So it's nice to see you, nice to be here.

Jon: 2:01

You know, last fall I was recording a podcast episode with Beth Knox and we went off on this tangent about what a profound experience it was for both of us to have had the privilege of working at One Reel, particularly in the 1990s, and throughout our tangent we kept coming back to you, your leadership and your positive impact you had on us. That's why I gave you a call.

Jane: 2:24

I'm honored to hear that,J on. It was a grand time for sure. We did some great stuff together.

Jon: 2:31

I confess I don't know that much about your background prior to our meeting in 94 or 95, whenever that was. How long had you been at One Reel at that point?

Jane: 2:40

Well, I came to Seattle in the early 80s. I had been living in New York and dancing with a couple different small modern dance companies and I did a few turns helping produce events, most notably probably at a place called Dance Theater Workshop DTW. And when I got to Seattle, the most similar organization at the time was On the Boards. Right Seattle, the most similar organization at the time was On the Boards, and On the Boards didn't have a job for me. So I thought, hmm, okay, what else am I going to do? And I did some volunteer work for the Mondale campaign out of an office on Second Avenue and it was right next door to One Reel's storefront there. Do you remember that little sort of group of stores, storefronts there?

Jon: 3:27

I do, I went there once.

Jane: 3:30

So I responded they were looking for a promotion assistant and so this would have been right after the election in 84. And so I went in and just sort of sat down and started talking to Norm Langill and before you know it they hired me as a promotion coordinator in November of 1984. And shortly thereafter the city council awarded Bumbershoot to a company other than One Reel and that created the Bumber Wars.

Jon: 4:06

Right. So this is connecting a lot of dots right out of the gate.

Jane: 4:09

Yeah, so we're talking. Yeah, we're talking almost 40 years ago now. And so I just kind of jumped right in. I didn't really know Seattle, I didn't know the politics, I didn't even really know the festival, and just kind of got into the one real thing and I was there until 2003. And at that point I left as the co-president. So I kind of worked my way up through various jobs and you know, the organization changed a lot from when I started to when I left.

Jon: 4:38

I'm trying to get time clear in my head, something which is getting harder and harder.

Jane: 4:43

As we get older.

Jon: 4:44

So I went to the Second Avenue. I went to those old spaces. Is that the same space that after One Reel TPN moved in there, or am I thinking of something?

Jane: 4:53

else. I think you're thinking of something else. There was a weird electronic store next to it, and then there was the One Reel office, and then there was this empty space, and that's why the campaign was in there. They had rented that space.

Jon: 5:06

I might be thinking of a different space, but wow, what a time. Yeah, and you just kind of walked right into it. Belltown wasn't Belltown yet.

Jane: 5:14

You know, I mean it was an interesting time and I really didn't know that much about producing festivals. Really, I'd been producing, I'd helped to produce some arts and dance things, but I didn't really know that much about producing festivals. So it was a big learning experience for me.

Jon: 5:30

And what a time of growth too. I mean, that's just before what I consider to be kind of the golden era of One Reel in terms of growth and just audacity.

Jane: 5:40

Absolutely. I think when I got there One Reel was doing Bumbershoot and maybe the last year of their summer theater tour with the old vaudeville truck. So as we went through the mid 80s into the late 80s, early 90s, that's where all those other events got added. You know, we started working on the Goodwill Arts Festival in 1987, the WOMAD Festival. We did the first Summer Nights at the Pier in 1991.

Jon: 6:12

So you know, that was a golden era and I was there. I wasn't working for One Reel yet, but I was working for an event decorator that serviced most of One Reel's events.

Jane: 6:23

Were you working for Steve.

Jon: 6:25

No, Mike Prebezac oh.

Jane: 6:26

Mike, okay, right.

Jon: 6:26

MVP Enterprises at the time. Sure, I mean, he's still out there doing it too. Bless his heart. Amazing.

Jane: 6:32

Yeah.

Jon: 6:33

But that was my first exposure to One Reel and I was just a kid. But I remember that One Reel events stood out from everything else we were doing. It was so busy. I mean, we'd service 300, 400 events a year cultural festivals, fairs, commercial expositions, that kind of stuff. But the One Reel events always struck me for two reasons. Well, three reasons. One, they were just cool. It's like One Reel was doing stuff that nobody else was doing at the time. Two, they were always very well organized. From our perspective, from the vendor's perspective, there wasn't a lot of the usual, you know figuring it out on the fly.

Jon: 7:13

It's like there was always a plan. The plan wasn't always 100% right all the time, but at least there was a plan.

Jane: 7:21

And that was a tribute to our production team. I mean, that's John Vadino, that was David Doxtater, absolutely yeah.

Jon: 7:27

There was always a plan. But the number one thing was everybody on the One Reel team always appeared to be having fun and it was just infectious, you know, and I'm just like someday, someday, I want to be on that team.

Jane: 7:40

Yeah.

Jon: 7:41

And it took me a few years, but I finally got there.

Jane: 7:43

I think that's right. We all, you know, we really loved what we were doing and I would say, you know, as we start talking about the leadership part of it, everyone trusted each other. We trusted that what needed to be done would be done, and that's how those events came off as fun and seemingly seamless. They weren't always, but that was a huge part of that.

Jon: 8:09

They were never seamless, but the team had an extraordinary ability to figure it out, yeah, and just fix it in the mix, so to speak. So that trust I know exactly what you're talking about. But how did that happen, that extreme level of trust in all of your colleagues, across all the departments? And this was a big enterprise. By that time I mean, when I came on board there had to have been at least 30 FTEs or something like that.

Jane: 8:32

Yeah, at least yeah.

Jon: 8:33

That was always kind of a mystery to me. It's like, how did all that trust form? I can't believe that it just spontaneously appeared one morning.

Jane: 8:41

That's a great question, I think one. Everybody had a confidence about what they were doing individually and we had collective vision. So there was a commitment to doing what we said we were going to do. And so everyone who worked in different areas in putting this you know giant crazy production together, starting with Norm who had most of the crazy ideas right, like all right, how are we going to make this happen?

Jane: 9:08

And we would go through in the planning process. We would go through those times when nope, can't be done. You know production dudes would say nope, can't be done, we can't do that. And then we, norm, we would push and figure out okay, well, if we want to hang people off the space needle by ropes, what do we need to do from a rigging perspective? How are they going to? You know, push back. What's it going to be underneath? What's the fire department going to say? I mean, it just got to the point where, even though there was some skepticism sometime in the planning process, by the time we got to execution, everybody really fully believed we're just going to make this happen.

Jon: 9:46

And I would go so far as to say that everybody understood what needed to be done as well as could possibly be understood. I mean, there was no mysteries left. That was one of the defining one real attribute. Yeah, because we just planned the crap out of everything we thought through different, sometimes to a fault.

Jane: 10:05

Yeah, I mean, you could say, we were control freaks to a degree but in the end, when you're doing events that involve and at that time we really did have hundreds of thousands of people over four days at Bumbershoot, I mean those you know there were close to 250 people 250,000 people who came over four days Nowhere near those numbers come to the festival anymore. So when you have that many people coming you've got to be pretty dialed in by the time you get there.

Jon: 10:33

And you know you make me think of an important point that I never lose sight of when I'm remembering the old days, the same period when One Reel was pushing every envelope possible in terms of what you can do for an event. At that same time there was not a lot of rules and regulations, policies, procedures or experience, for that matter, with regulating city agencies and whatnot. So not only were we pushing the boundaries of what's even ever been attempted before, but there was not a lot of safety check or just like common sense check surrounding us, either at the venues or, like I say, the city, the fire marshal's office or whatever taken. But I've always felt like One Reel understood that and kind of made it their own job to be that double, triple, quadruple dummy check. Yeah, in a lot of ways kind of writing the standards for how things are done today.

Jane: 11:35

Well, and things have changed. I mean, we never did an active shooter drill. You know that was not something that was in our vocabulary, so it was a different time for sure. I mean, you know, I remember some of the calls on the radio and one of the big deals was oh my God, the snake guy is back. You know the guy who came with the cobra wrapped around his neck and that was freaking people out. So you know the level of security and issues. But we did. We had really strong relationships and this is mostly thanks to our production team worked with the fire department, worked with SPD, worked with ESU, I mean, worked with all the folks who make sure that level of big production was taken care of so that the artists could do what they needed to do and deliver the kind of experience that Bumbershoot became known for.

Jon: 12:24

Yeah, absolutely. You described your background prior to One Reel, but that still doesn't answer my overarching question how did you develop your leadership skills?

Jane: 12:35

Well, you know, I was thinking about that because of having this conversation with you and remembering back in fourth grade, going back in history, I ran to be president of the student body at my public school, elementary, and I remember making the posters that got posted up and, you know, because of this conversation, it's like why the hell did I think of doing that?

Jane: 12:58

Then, you know, and I guess my parents a little cliche, you know go back and thank your parents, but my parents were very encouraging about being who I was, okay, instilling confidence, and so I think I felt I had a level of confidence about who I was.

Jane: 13:27

I wanted to step up and help people in the case of Bumbershoot, you know, going from a promotion director to running the company. Essentially, for me it was a journey about, a figuring out who I was and, b figuring out how the group of people who were there wanted to move around in the world and what we could do collectively, because we just kept adding things to our plate and things that people I think would have said you know, from the outside, looking in, you guys are crazy. I mean, I remember you know Norm coming back and describing the Spiegel tent, you know to us and probably a fact almost no one knows is the first idea for that was we went to Microsoft and talked to them about doing an internet cafe, which was really a cafe in the Spiegel tent. This was before there were internet cafes.

Jon: 14:10

So for the listeners, you're talking about the genesis of Teatro Zinzanni, exactly, yeah.

Jane: 14:14

I'm talking about the venue that Teatro Zinzanni is in and they didn't want to buy that. It's like all right. Well then, what else are we going to do? Oh well, we're going to do this show. That is the combination of running a restaurant, putting on a show, with circus performers for a small number of people, serving meals, and making this crazy activity happen. And if anybody said you're going to run a restaurant and do a theater with less than 300 seats and it's going to serve meals and you know, put this on, you would go, no, you are crazy. And we just said, all right, we've got to come up with a name, we've got to come up with the show, we've got to figure this out. And we put a stake in the sand and said go do it.

Jane: 14:54

And the rest is history, and the rest is history, and it's still going.

Jon: 14:57

Still going strong. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head when you say that, and we head when you say that. And we kept adding more stuff to the plates. That was another defining attribute of what it meant to work at One Reel. If you're in, you're all in.

Jane: 15:10

Yeah, because we had sort of underlying annual events and then we added new things. You know, we've had the tour that went to Japan. We just kept adding things to our plate, the WOMAD Festival for a few years, figuring out how that was going to work with Peter Gabriel and that whole group. I mean, I think at one point we just about killed ourselves, but we yeah, but we had fun doing it. Yeah, and we kind of righted the ship after it was like, oh my God, that's so much. But it was all good.

Jon: 15:37

Well, what all that work did? I spoke one time with Norm about this and from his perspective, one time with Norm about this and from his perspective. All that just piling on to work. It allowed the company to retain this critical mass of highly specialized people across all disciplines year round. Less work for the company would have meant more seasonal work and more attrition, and it wouldn't have been the same.

Jane: 16:03

The balance between you know there were a lot of balances and I guess part of what I look for is balance in anything but Bumbershoot, highly volatile, you know it could have a year where it made money, it could have a year where it lost money because all your chips are in on one weekend, the pier spread out, summer nights at the pier spread out over the summer, but generally could generate positive cashflow. And then you had Teatro Zinzanni and its main season was fall into holiday, into spring and until it really became a year round thing. So it became that baseline. So we had all these things that kind of balanced each other out in a nice way that made it a going concern and did exactly what you said, which was keep really good people who were very specialized, employed and working together.

Jon: 16:52

TZ really changed the dynamic in the office, slowly at first, in that it was truly. It became a year-round like every day, 365-day-a-year operation.

Jane: 17:04

Well, especially when we added San Francisco into the mix.

Jon: 17:06

Yeah, versus everything else that we did. Each event had its season of planning around it, and so there was this rhythm, this annual cycle, this pulse, where you'd engage your brain and your body on this project for you know, two months or six months, whatever the cycle was, and then you can kind of let that rest and recoup and shift your focus to something else, to the next event. But TZ that pretty rapidly within the first few years. Well, ultimately it led to the split of the company into two different companies, because TZ got so successful and so large it started to create tension.

Jane: 17:43

Yeah, its rhythm was constant and the changes were when the show changed, and so it had a different impact in terms of that balance, for sure.

Jon: 17:53

Yeah, I'm just going to be direct because I have to ask this question. Did you ever, or do you ever, suffer imposter syndrome?

Jane: 18:00

No, Um, sometimes you know a little bit not too much the thing for me that I like the most about leadership and the can't really be that person, because I couldn't necessarily see that person. You know Insecurities for sure at different times, but I would say not that classic imposter syndrome.

Jon: 18:39

That's interesting. I have to ask, just because your persona has always been so fearless, if I had to put a word on it. That's the impression. You give people, the impression that you are truly fearless, and I often have wondered is that really true, or are you putting on a face?

Jane: 18:56

No, mostly I would say that's pretty true. Wow, for me, the leadership thing, if I can visualize it, and that's both, you know, like literally visualize it, but also see the path to get there, I feel like I know I will figure out how to get there. And that takes fearlessness sometimes and I look back. You know people have said to me at times I can't believe you did X. Or when you did that, did you realize? And a lot of times I just did it intuitively. I mean, when I said Teatro Zinzanni is going to open on August 28th of you know 1998 or whatever that date was, how did we really know that? You know, I just believed that our team was going to figure out how to get there and we put a date on it and we started selling tickets. So we didn't have a choice.

Jon: 19:49

I can understand your confidence in that area, because that team absolutely could do anything Could deliver, yes.

Jon: 19:55

And that's also a way that I've long explained the difference between the special events world, the festivals world, versus most other industries. If you're building a new building, you're building a new restaurant or something like that, and you've got your grand opening date set for July 1st, but here it is April and things have fallen behind, or whatever, what do you do? No problem, you push the grand opening back two weeks or a month or whatever, but when you're in the business of selling tickets to a one-off event, you can't do that.

Jane: 20:27

Nope, you gotta go.

Jon: 20:28

You have to, otherwise you fail, you fall hard.

Jane: 20:31

Yeah.

Jon: 20:32

And that's one of the things that's attracted and kept me in the industry. I like that kind of pressure.

Jane: 20:37

Well, I think you know the world divides up pretty neatly You're either an event head or you're not, and you can be on any side of what an event head is. But you either thrive in that situation where that pressure and that adrenaline to get there and make it happen and like, oh yeah, we are going to do this, we're really going to do this, or you're not. You can't do that, and that's people you know, I, people who don't even want to have dinner parties, right, it's too stressful. So you're, I think you're either on one side of the line or the other in terms of being into the event mode or not in the event mode.

Jon: 21:10

Yeah, that's fascinating. How do you describe your leadership style?

Jane: 21:14

You know, I like to think of myself as a team player and every once in a while, as a leader. I have to dash ahead and do something, put a stake in the ground or make a decision that may or may not be popular or may make people go. No, why did you do that? It's a little bit like that. I think it's the African proverb. You know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. I've never heard that. Oh yeah, I think it's an African proverb. But if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And for me that would describe my leadership style. Sometimes you just have to go out ahead and make things happen, and the rest of the time it's about working with the team and figuring out how you're going to get there together.

Jon: 22:06

In your opinion, can anyone become a great?

Jane: 22:07

leader, yes, but not everyone's going to enjoy doing it. I think if you want to be a leader, there's a way to figure out. You know to work on it to get there. I have confidence that people who want to be leaders can be leaders. But I will also say that some people will get there and go. You know, this isn't so much for me. I have confidence in people's innate ability to be leaders.

Jon: 22:34

So, that said, what kind of advice would you offer for younger folks, maybe just starting out in their career and they think that maybe leadership is something they'd like to explore, just develop in themselves over time?

Jane: 22:41

You know, depending on in what area right I mean. Some of it is about education. I mean, what can you get from a formal education? And then most of it is about doing, and then it's about people skills, being able to really listen and to have, I think, a high level of EIQ, and you know, know when people need to be helped, be propped up, or where they want to have freedom to make independent choices or just do their job. So it's a lot about understanding what people need to be successful, because good leaders let their team really shine and do their best work. That's what makes anything successful, whether it's an arts program, a big festival, a company. It's really making sure that the people who are doing the work on a daily basis know, a where you're going and, b want to keep doing it and give their best.

Jon: 23:34

Did you have the benefit of any great mentors or role models from a leadership perspective as you were coming up?

Jane: 23:42

There were lots of people who I admired, who were producers. David White at Dance Theater Workshop was one of those who I worked with. He was the executive director there. I had some visual art professors when I went to college who I thought were really good about sort of drawing out what I was working on that I didn't even know I was working on. You know what I was working on that I didn't even know I was working on, you know, in the work that I was doing. So I would say, not one person in particular, but multiple people who I respected and admired, tell me about JZ Works. So I left One Reel and went to Washington Mutual in 2003. And then Washington Mutual was the largest bank failure in the history of the United States. I recall I was part of that and that was in 2008. I started JZ Works in 2009. So we are talking 15 years ago. So I've been doing it for a while.

Jane: 24:40

You know it was interesting for me because that was during the Bush recession, you know, at that time, and there were not a lot of jobs, at least at what I was interested in or at the level I was looking, I thought, well, you know what can I offer? And I had done so many different kinds of things. You know marketing, sponsorship, public affairs, government relations, you know that whole side, everything but the creative side. I was, but the creative side I was not the creative side of Unreal for sure. And so like, hmm, what's JZ Works going to be?

Jane: 25:11

And I said three things. It's a three-legged stool. I want to work with good people, I want to work on good projects and I want to be able to clearly see how I can add value and if those three things are in place then it will be a good project, a good team for me to work with. I've done a lot of different kinds of consulting projects. I would say there was one project which I won't go into, but it was the one project where I thought I'm not sure all three of these are really here and in hindsight it was the one project where I was least engaged and probably shouldn't have had said yes to that.

Jon: 25:49

So what are the different areas of practice in your consultancy?

Jane: 25:53

It's mostly strategic planning. I will work with different teams on different things. In some cases it's been around sponsorship, in some cases it's been around board development, but generally business development and strategic planning.

Jon: 26:06

And after some 15 years, are you still having fun with that? I am, but it's a smaller team. When I think of you historically, I think of you as driving large teams.

Jane: 26:18

Yeah, I guess I thought of it as I've got all these different teams with the clients. I've got all these different teams with the clients and so I felt every time I did a consulting project that that was my new team, right, that working with them. So a little different in terms of we're not delivering a product in the same way. That's the big buildup to making an event happen. And then you're done and then you start over, especially the annual event cycle that we're all very familiar with. But in the consulting world it's like OK, this is my University of Washington team, this is my Seattle Center team, this is my Washington State auto dealers team, you know. So it was just a different way of creating teams.

Jon: 26:57

When you reflect on, say, the past 30 years, how do you measure the impact of the work that you've done?

Jane: 27:09

I measure it when people tell me about their personal experience of attending one of the events or the consulting work that I've done and somebody says you know, unlike a lot of plans that get done and sit on a shelf that's sitting on my desk and I refer to it all the time. So I'm looking for that personal commentary on how meaningful it was and I, you know, I guess I could go back and say all right, you know, I did 20 Bumbershoot festivals and we had 250,000 people and you know how many people. But what I love is listening to people tell a story about their experience there, or the first time they went to Teatro Zinzanni, or the 20th time they went to Teatro Zinzanni. So for me it's measurement in terms of my own satisfaction and how people have responded to the work that I've done.

Jon: 28:02

I've never been very interested in headcount alone as a measure. In fact, that's one thing I think that I learned. I started to learn at One Reel the only real difference in events between the biggest international festival spectacular and the smallest rural community hometown event, the only difference is the number of zeros on the end of all the numbers on your budget or your balance sheet or whatever. And zeros don't matter. All the elements are the same and the potential for impact on a community or on the individual is exactly the same.

Jane: 28:44

Yeah, I, you know. So the main thing I'm doing right now is working as the executive director of the Seattle Center Foundation and in an interview, interviewing somebody for a position, and at the end the question I asked was you know, why would this position be meaningful to you? And the person who was being interviewed told this story about being a young person. Her parents were refugees and they would come. They had no money and they would come to Seattle Center to some of the different events, and it's where she got to see people who were different than she was, meet new people. It inspired her to travel, to travel around the world, and I mean it almost made me cry just listening to her describe her personal experience of coming to the center. That's why we do what we do right To change lives. That's, create community.

Jon: 29:39

I can totally understand that. About Seattle Center, all those different events, I can say the same thing. Funny enough about my initial work as an event decorator which is setting up tables and tents and chairs and whatever for festivals and events is that every single week, as I say, I was a very young person, I'd be traveling, mostly in the Puget Sound region, but sometimes a little further out, but it would be all these different cultural festivals and events, and everywhere I went I would encounter people who are very different than me and people who thought about things very different than what I was thinking of, and I liked that. I mean, that was absolutely fascinating to me as a kid that you know, grew up on the farm, literally.

Jane: 30:29

Yeah.

Jon: 30:30

I just I had no idea. It was almost like traveling the world, but just within the context of, you know, a hundred mile radius of my hometown, meeting people outside your normal sphere, and how that can get you engaged and thinking about different things, and inspire you, absolutely shaped who I have become. That's great.

Jane: 30:53

Yeah.

Jon: 30:54

I know that over time you have given generously of your time in supporting many other nonprofits through volunteer board work and commission work. What's your motivation there?

Jane: 31:07

Giving back. I think that came from my parents. My parents were involved in the community in Portland where I grew up. But it's also I get new experiences out of it too A little bit. To those who have advantages whether it's a warm house and a loving family or, you know, resources it's important to do things to help other people. But I've learned so much I've been I think I've been on boards since I was in my early 20s. I was on the New City Theater Board when I first came to Seattle. So we're going way back, John Kazanjan, and I always feel like I get more than I give when I'm in that situation. So I've done a lot of different boards and commissions, most recently my experience with Plymouth Housing, which was a really important thing to do. I learned as much way more than I ever gave, but yes, it's an important part of my experience in this region.

Jon: 32:08

I recall from my earliest days of sitting in meetings giant staff meetings at One Reel all of these incredible minds sitting around a table having hard discussions, hard conversations, and more often than not I can still visualize this. There's you sitting at the table, listening, but you're doodling. You're putting pen to paper and you're doodling like mad, Just like doodle, doodle, doodle, doodle, doodle. What were you doing?

Jane: 32:37

It's so funny that you noticed that, that you remember that, because it took me. You know, I'm like I did that. Oh, yeah, I do that. Yeah, I do do that. I doodle not probably as much as I did, but I think it was a way. I feel like my brain is going a lot fast and I'm listening. So it was maybe it's a little bit of a component of OCD or ADHD or something, because it gave me something to do while I was listening and I'm just kind of amazed that you remember that.

Jon: 33:10

So I'm the first person to call you out on your doodling. Totally Wow, I'm honored, I'm surprised though. Yeah, no, I, I'll be completely honest, I was always like looking, it's like, well, what is she doing? I don't even know what I was doing, but yes, I'll tell you right now about half the time it was abstract, and the other time it was usually a face, like from shoulders up, sometimes it was straight on, sometimes it'd be profile, okay, yeah.

Jane: 33:35

Yeah, no, I definitely was a doodler. I don't think I do it as much. I don't do doodling as much as I used to, maybe. But yeah, some weird way of listening intently, I guess. Maybe I was sending secret messages too, could be, could know, who knows.

Jon: 33:54

So, speaking of memory, elaine, I was thinking about some of my favorite Jane Z memories. I remember do you remember Wo Pop at the pier? So it was after or at the tail end of our working with the WOMAD festival proper and we had an evening at Summer Nights at the pier, that was. It was David Byrne was the headliner, and then we had all sorts of all sorts of folks. It was a true festival kind of format and we had installed this fancy artwork, these figures, these figures on poles that moved in the wind along the fence line at the venue and at one point during the day one of those pieces blew off and into the road and hit a car and there was some commotion and I can't remember if that was the cause or if there was something else that was happening at the same time.

Jon: 34:44

But all of a sudden, what I remember from my point of view, I was sitting in my production trailer, minding my own business, unaware of that, there was some commotion going on and I remember you coming into my office all casual, like, hey, john, how's it going? Pretty good. She's like hey, you don't happen to have any of your business cards down here, do you? I'm like, yeah, and I had them in a box and I just kind of pushed them across the desk and you're like thanks, and I remember you grabbed the giant stack of them and I thought I wonder what she's doing. But anyway, I was going back to what I was doing and what you did was you went out to this angry mob of people and you handed them all my business card.

Jane: 35:29

I really don't remember that, but I was really smart to give them yours, not mine. Oh, it was brilliant.

Jon: 35:36

It was brilliant. I'm just like wow, yeah, so I had to field all those calls over the next couple of days.

Jane: 35:42

How many calls did you actually get?

Jon: 35:43

I don't remember it seemed like thousands, but it might have been eight or nine or ten.

Jane: 35:48

Okay, oh, that's funny no. I don't remember that one.

Jon: 35:52

That was smooth.

Jane: 35:52

That's called passing the buck, yeah.

Jon: 35:54

No, I salute you on that one.

Jane: 35:56

Yeah, okay, that's funny.

Jon: 36:00

On a more serious note, you and I we didn't work together directly much, if at all, because there was always a layer or two of management between your role and my role. But on occasion somebody would send me to have a chat with you about something, and on those occasions I remember very well that it was a little intimidating to me because, again, I was just the new kid on the block.

Jane: 36:24

I try not to be intimidating, and here you were, you can be very intimidating, okay.

Jon: 36:29

In a pleasant way, pleasantly intimidating.

Jon: 36:33

You always have this aura of in charge about you, about you. But every single time that I would come to chat with you, you looked me in the eye and you would never break that connection and I always knew I could just feel it, that you were actually listening to every single word that I said and that I realize now, later on in life, I just realized how powerful an experience that was for me. That built enormous confidence in me. So I want to thank you for that and just acknowledge that's an extraordinary ability to be able to focus. You had a thousand and one things on your plate every minute of every day, but your ability to just tune all that out and be with someone is an extraordinary skill.

Jane: 37:23

Thank you for that. I mean, to me it's just a basic respect, right? If you're having a conversation and it annoys the crap out of me when you know, especially now with cell phones, if you're really trying to have a serious conversation with somebody and they're doing, you know, texting and looking at their phone and looking back at you and then they're looking over your shoulder it's like, hey, I'm here with you, we have 10 minutes together. Let's respect each other's time. So that's nice that you acknowledge that, and I didn't want to be intimidating, but I'm glad that you recognized that I was listening, because I do listen.

Jon: 37:59

Yeah, thank you. Who do you think you are?

Jane: 38:19

Who do I think I am, you know, do that in pretty much everything I do, and that would be everything from what I do professionally to baking to sports. You know, I guess that's what makes me happy and I think that's how I like to relate to people. I guess that's what I would say. Who I am. What is your favorite sound? Hitting a really good golf ball I'm kind of into golf these days. Okay, that crack of the ball going, you know, down the fairway. I love that sound.

Jon: 39:01

I can imagine that right now, but it's not easy to get that perfect hit.

Jane: 39:13

No, no. That sound comes when you're in balance and when you're executing and following through. So to me, that's one of my favorite sounds right now.

Jon: 39:19

You walk into an ice cream shop with the intention of getting an ice cream cone with two scoops. What are the flavors?

Jane: 39:27

Oh, chocolate and coffee.

Jon: 39:29

That was fast.

Jane: 39:31

Yeah, because that's you know. It could be some variation on that, like it could be a coffee with chocolate fudge in it or something. That was my mom's favorite I grew up. I remember we used to go down to the Meijer and Frank in downtown Portland with chocolate fudge in it or something, or that was my mom's favorite. I grew up. I remember we used to go down to the Meijer and Frank in downtown Portland and go to the counter and she would get coffee, ice cream with hot fudge, and I think I adopted her love for the combination of chocolate and coffee. So you'll find that in. You know whether it's a mocha or you know pudding. I make a biscotti. That's a chocolate biscotti, but I put espresso powder in, so it's not just an ice cream.

Jon: 40:05

So chocolate and coffee, which flavor goes on top?

Jane: 40:09

Chocolate on top and coffee on the bottom. Coffee goes into the cone.

Jon: 40:13

Ah, I see where you're going with that.

Jane: 40:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get the chocolate hit. First you know kind of lingers a little bit, but then when you get down to it, that coffee is what's sinking into the point of the cone.

Jon: 40:24

I've long realized that it really does matter which flavor goes on top. Oh, absolutely, I asked this question of just about everybody, and the which one goes on top tends to throw people.

Jane: 40:35

They're like oh, no, no, no, no, I got that it matters yeah people. They're like oh no, no, no, no, I got that. It matters yeah.

Jon: 40:43

And what have you discovered in people's choices? The first thing that pops to mind is our friends from Canada have a thing for licorice ice cream. Ew Okay no not going there, it's not ew. It should be celebrated. We should celebrate Okay.

Jane: 40:58

But, I like licorice, I'm just not sure an ice cream.

Jon: 41:01

Yeah, I noticed that, and there's often now that I say this. It's kind of a statement of the obvious, but there's often a strong childhood. There's a nostalgic angle to their preferences.

Jane: 41:13

Yeah, I get that.

Jon: 41:14

Yeah, thank you for making the time today to have this conversation.

Jane: 41:19

I'm honored that you invited me. I'm honored how you reflect back on that time we spent together. There were a whole bunch of people who were part of that. It was a great, great time and I think you know, as I said, I love hearing people's memories of whether it was the you know, they were body surfing at one of the concerts and came over the barrier and got kicked out of a show to you know, their kid was smoking pot by the whales or you know, whatever, whatever those kinds of stories are, or they discovered a certain artist. So it was fun to reflect with you back on on that time because we did some really amazing things together. So thank you for this conversation and thank you for that time together. All call one hour to doors.