Toni: 0:00

This is Tony Aspen, 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, John Stone. I would like to introduce to you today to a very special person in my world. She is my mentor, my sounding board, hands down the most talented listener I've ever known, and my dear friend, Tony Aspen. Tony has held a dizzying array of leadership roles in both the profit and nonprofit sectors. She was the executive director at Centrum in Port Townsend. She was the managing director at the Richard Hugo House Literary Arts Center. She was the CFO at the Seattle Symphony. She was the founding director for not one but two commercial banks in Washington State. And our paths crossed in 2010 when Tony was brought in as the CEO of One Real in Seattle. All of that isn't enough. Tony recently earned a PhD in transformative studies. She has a CPA. She's earned an MBA from the University of Washington. And Tony graduated with honors from the Pacific Coast Banking School. Presently, she teaches at the University of Washington, Tacoma, and has her own consulting practice providing guidance to enterprise leaders with an emphasis on startup planning, strategic growth advancement, organizational capacity building, governance council, and executive coaching. That is a lot, and at the risk of stating the obvious, we always have a lot to talk about, so let's process the resume part later and get on with the conversation. Welcome to the show, Tony.

Toni: 1:50

Thank you, John. I feel like I should run for office.

Jon: 1:54

Yeah. It's not too late. You maybe turn this town in a new direction. So I just rattled off this long resume of yours. It's an unusual career path. Like, what what the heck? Is this all part of a master plan that you've had all along, or have you just kind of gone with the flow all the years?

Toni: 2:20

Oh, sure. You know me. I always have a master plan. No, I move in directions that uh that uh make me inspired. And so I think this journey started when I dropped out of high school. So um at that time I felt like there was a lot more to learn out in the world than there was sitting in a classroom. And so just before the summer before my senior year of high school started, I thought I got more interesting things to do, and specifically Woodstock. Oh wow. Yeah. So um, so it turned out that that there was a lot more out there. I was not uh in a place that sitting in a classroom and reading was useful to me in any way. I needed life experience, is what I felt like at the ripe old age of 16. So um that was um quite a learning experience for me, being a high school dropout and seeing the country, because I hitchhiked around the country. And it was a quite a while before I realized that uh learning was valuable, and it's just that the learning that I was getting in my uh current state was not the learning I wanted. So that was probably without understanding it. It was my first sort of glimpse at the idea of transformative learning, learning that is uh that that is uh of your own selection and you understanding how you can apply it and make a difference in the world. So I um that I think that's what started me there. And from then on I just followed whatever it was that was moving me. Now, in those early uh days after and years after dropping out of high school, uh I realized that um wow, it really helps if you're going to be raising two young sons, it really helps to get a job that earns a little bit more than uh working in Marie Callendar's pie shop, which is what I did. And so that led me on the trajectory to uh what drew me every time. And of course, when we have those kind of pressures, what was on my mind was what's a job I can get that is gonna actually pay the bills. And uh that's my undergraduate is in accounting. I don't know anyone who has thought, oh goody, I get to become an accountant, and neither did I. But it paid the bills. So um getting an undergraduate in accounting in business with uh emphasis in accounting allowed me to get a good job right away. And I went to work for KPMG, um, an international accounting firm that allowed me to be able to uh work really hard, bank hours, and be off in the summer with my boys. So it feels a little bit like Maslow's hierarchy. You know, I sort of managed that and then realized once I was paying the bills and raising my sons, wow, this is not the least bit satisfying. And so there I began on my search for, you know, what was next. And that's how my career tri trajectory has gone. It's been what's next? Opening the heart and soul and spirit to what can come. And I don't mean for that to sound corny, like inviting the universe to bring you things, but that in fact happens when you just do it with an open heart and open mind. And so what happened next was I uh was introduced to the nonprofit sector here after working for several years in the in public accounting. And my emphasis uh you in those days, I don't know if that's how it works now, but in those days one had to identify an emphasis that they wanted to audit so you could become a true expert in these various areas. And somehow I fell into financial institutions and excelled, ended up running the three largest financial institution audits in Southern California. Wow. And thought, gosh, this is dry and horrible. And I got to pull the curtain back a little bit and see how you negotiated things with clients, even though they may not quite have the best loan loss reserve that they could, but maybe they were gonna bring you some more business. It was it was all the things that we know about, but it was shocking to me, you know, as a young person. So with that in mind, I began to look for what would be satisfying because I didn't know enough that I even knew how to define what satisfying would be. Um so I picked up and moved myself, my family to uh the Pacific Northwest, thinking that I had to get out of the LA fray of things and that I would find something else there and stumbled into the American Civil Liberties Union in a very unusual way. I wasn't looking at all, but should I tell this story about how I stumbled into the American Civil Liberties Union? Yeah. Okay. So I got a house right on Green Lake, and every morning I walked around Green Lake. This is in the eight late 80s, and in those days, latte carts were just coming on the scene in Seattle, believe it or not. I remember those days. And there was a latte cart on on Green Lake, and I'd walk by and get a latte every day from this lovely young woman. And she confided in me one day that the city was now making her write a business plan for the latte business that she was doing. And she said, I have no idea what to do. And I said, I was new to Seattle and I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do. And I said, Well, I can help you with that. So I worked with her on getting a business plan. Turns out that she was the next door neighbor of the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. And she's chatting with her neighbor and said, Wow, I met this woman, and she like makes financial stuff seem simple, which was like a huge compliment to me. Yeah. And so Kathleen Taylor called me up on the phone and said, Tony, you don't know me. I'm Kathleen Taylor, and essentially invited me to come and work for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. They had some things coming up, like they needed to move from their space, so they needed someone to help them negotiate a new lease. Um, they had an investment portfolio and didn't know what to how to manage that. So that's what I did. And I remember the moment, John, when I was sitting in my little office space in the Smith Tower, up on the, I'm gonna say the 26th floor, and I heard this rumbling going on outside, a bunch of voices, and I went out and it was a press conference happening about busing in Washington State. And I saw our director out there and a bunch of press asking questions, and I was like, wow, I can actually do something with the knowledge and expertise that I have for good. And it was the first moment I understood this is what I can do in the nonprofit sector. I can help sort things out financially and business-wise, and I don't have to get a degree in social work. I can bring what I have to the table. And so that was my foray into the nonprofit sector.

Jon: 10:46

That's wonderful that you can remember well and clearly that moment. I want to jump back to your description of the early years and trying to find your way and your place and figuring out early on that it's gonna pay to have a I'm using air quotes now, a straight job to pay the bills while you figure out what your actual passion pursuit will be at some point in your life. And it reminds me of my early, early, early years, even before I really was serious about being in the event and festival business, and I was a working musician, but of course, there's sporadic income associated with that. And I had figured out pretty early on that for me it was carpentry. Seattle was booming at the time. I figured out early on that if I had tools and a belt, I could show up for things on time, that there's always work for me.

Toni: 11:36

Well, I think it also just takes those experiences to help us understand, get clearer, because we're what we're trying to do is know ourselves. And when we're 18, 23, it's difficult. You don't have enough experience to know yourself. And so we do these things, and it helps us if we use it well, it helps us sort through what it is so that we can understand this moves me and this does not.

Jon: 12:06

You say 18 or 23 in terms of knowing ourselves. I've I've struggled with that my entire life. The most recent uh issue for me was just the the pandemic. And having my entire industry, I was about to say identity, and for me, my job, what I do is very much part of my identity. And to have that just all cease to exist globally for a couple of years really did a number on me. Yeah, in terms of reckoning with who am I, who am I now? Because for a while there, the answer was nobody really.

Toni: 12:46

Or you don't know.

Jon: 12:47

Or yeah, I don't know. Yeah, what am I gonna be coming out of this? Of course, so much has changed, and uh it's still something that I figured out. I've I've discovered that I like podcasting, though.

Toni: 12:58

Good thing it's something that you do well.

Jon: 13:00

Well, it's just well, it it's it strikes me as my new highest and best use of all the knowledge and relationships that I've acquired over the years.

Toni: 13:11

Yeah. Well, you're drawing on what you feel that you do well and what you enjoy, that combination. So you love to learn about people. This is what I know about you. You love to learn about people, you love technology, and uh you love trying new things because I've seen you go through a bunch of new chapters in your life, and you're invigorated by that, even though at first it's confusing. So I just mentioned this, John, because I feel like it's really important for us to pay attention to ourselves. And I like to say that most of my career has been serendipity, but it's not really, because what we do, we put that out, it lives out in the universe and then comes back around. One of my favorite scholars is Mary Catherine Bateson, and she talks about this triple helix of learning, and that we see something the first time, we engage in it, and then it drops off and comes around again, and we recognize it and see what's happening, and then it leaves us and it comes around again. And sometimes it takes three or four times in this spiral mode for it to really sink in that this is something that is part of us, who we are.

Jon: 14:40

I like that idea. You mentioned in your ACLU story that moment where the young woman you're helping said, Oh my goodness, here's somebody that makes numbers feel easy. And that's exactly my recollection of when I first really connected with you. Working in the context of a very large organization which had had a decades-long storied story and very complicated financials. I had been in that company, brought up in that company for a long, long, long time, and had just kind of gotten used to the fact that all these numbers are always complicated, and you just needed to work harder and harder and harder and get your head inside. We always took the numbers very seriously. We took pride in our in our mastery and control of those numbers, but it was kind of an all-consuming thing. And then Tony Aspen rolls into town, and it was probably just only my second or third real meeting with you, and I remember it well. There was a whiteboard in the room, and you had in one hand a a dry erase marker, and in the other hand you had like the current financial statements, uh, multiple pages, six-point type, you know, and you talked for two or three minutes and started writing on the on the whiteboard, and you essentially took all of those pages of complexity and mystery in a way, and you condensed it all down to what I still refer to as A plus B equals C. And there were there were a it wasn't just me in that room, there were other leadership in the room, senior leadership. And I also remember in that conversation when you said A plus B equals C, and for me that was a light bulb moment. It's like I got what you were saying, others did not. And I can remember even some pushback. I remember people, I'm paraphrasing here, but there was the notion, the suggestion that perhaps you were oversimplifying things. And I remember you like considering that, like, no, you said no, no, it's pretty much A plus B equals C. And with the benefit of hindsight, I realized now so yeah, you were exactly right. It really could be that that simple. You just had to go to that headspace. You had to let it be that simple.

Toni: 17:05

Well, I loved that office. Remember that office where where we were?

Jon: 17:10

First and King Street.

Toni: 17:12

Yeah, and we were down below, so that um I could see people's feet walking by. I had a window in my office, and dogs would piss on the window. I was like, yeah, that's my office. I'm so anyway, I'm just visualizing us sitting in there. We had a lot of meetings and a lot of discussions that were very challenging and very complex. And so I understand the notion that A plus B equals C uh may be oversimplifying. I understand that notion. But you know, we get blinded by all the complexity of the numbers and we forget to look at what the story is. We don't see the story because we're get distracted with all of this. I don't understand, and what's this, and trying to tie it all out. And we can't get there that way when we're in, especially in executive leadership, we have to be able to make decisions that are relevant. And being in the weeds and looking at it through the weed perspective is not a way to get above it and look and see what is the impact that's happening, what is the story I'm hearing by this. I like to simplify the complex financial statements because it reveals what the actual story is. When we look at uh revenue and expenses and uh cash flow, we can look at what the primary issues are there. We don't have to look and make sure that the cash flow as it's described is exactly what it is. I mean, what we're trying to get at is what do we need to get out of this in order to make our organization flourish? That's the that's the stuff. And what happens is that there's, you know, there's another kind of person, personality in this world. There's one that I like to think that I'm part of, which is taking very complex things, recognizing their complexity, and then trying to put them in terms that helps us use that information in some way. And then there's other people that love to wallow in the complexity.

Jon: 19:32

Yeah.

Toni: 19:33

Because it covers stuff up, right? It doesn't get at the point, it doesn't get at what we're after. So we could argue all day long about whether we should be spending this much money on paperclips. We could spend uh days on that, or we could say, What are we after here? What are we trying to learn? And so once you get the essence that I believe comes through sympathy. Simplicity, now we can nuance it. Now we can add more complexity to it and look at it from the context of what things matter. What matters the most and what what what do we need to know in order to make this decision?

Jon: 20:19

Absolutely. And you make it sound so simple. I've come to believe that the human brain is hardwired in a way that resists letting things be as simple as they can be. In my consulting practice, which I focus a lot on helping people think about strategy, long-term strategy. And I use the concept of three levels of altitude at which we can exist. There's the ground level, the weeds, as I call it. I think that most of us spend 98% of our days, 98% of our lives on the ground level. It's where our day today plays out, uh, our home life, our work life. It's just we do, we it's the tactical part. It's the things that we need to do to get through the day and to move forward in the calendar, move forward in our career, move forward in life. But when you're at the ground level, you don't have a heck of a lot of perspective other than the own bubble that you you live in or you work in. The next level up is the mountaintop. And from the mountaintop, you know, you can still see some of the detail down below, but now you're getting a broader perspective. I also correlate the mountaintop perspective with like an industry view, right? So if the ground level is your organization, then the mountaintop level, you would you'd be outside of your organization if you're looking at your whole industry. Uh, and then the highest elevation I associate with an airplane at a cruising altitude 30,000 feet from that altitude, there's you can't make out any kind of detail on the ground. You can only make out, you can make out there, you know, there's mountains over here, and there's a big lake or the ocean over there, but none of that ground level stuff matters. It's not even perceptible up there. And the 30,000 foot altitude is also that's the macro environment, right? So the correlation to our daily lives is that's where all the scary stuff tends to live, the uncomfortable stuff, the stuff we can't control. The weather lives at that altitude. Um global pandemic lives at in the macro environment. It's scary stuff, it's uncomfortable stuff. Certainly, trends, technology. Uh, and so there's a lot of folks that just, you know, it's not intuitive or uh an attractive idea to go looking around and exploring at those altitudes.

Toni: 22:53

True. That that highest altitude is also where the web that connects everything, all of us and everything is there too. When we are there, we don't have control, as you said. And so people are very reticent to venture outside of their area of control. But the reality of it is, is whether you go up there and look around or not, doesn't mean it's not happening.

Jon: 23:19

Right.

Toni: 23:21

So we can we can get to feel what that feels like. And if you don't have control over every little thing, which you don't, then what can you do? You know, what can you do? And it's about it's that area up there, that third level that you describe, it's about awareness. It's about building your own awareness. So you may not dabble in that every day, but you need to know it's there. You need to make friends with it.

Jon: 23:53

To go tangential for a moment on this 30,000-foot altitude, in my observation, and I may be off base here, I feel like the for-profit sector does a much better job of acknowledging and addressing that 30,000-foot altitude than the nonprofit sector does. In my experience, the nonprofit sectors tend to try to avoid even going up there. They just, it's not a natural thing. I kind of have to force the issue when I'm working with clients.

Toni: 24:29

Yeah, I tend to agree. My experience is that the nonprofit sector tends to um, they're worried about how to raise their next dollar, frankly. And so they're really stuck, really stuck in the tactical. What do I do? In the weeds, what do I do? And yeah, it's unfortunate. One of the things that because I think we'd have a far more robust nonprofit sector, and that's what I am hoping for. I want a more robust nonprofit sector because the complexities in our society are beyond the ability for any one sector to solve. It needs it needs partnership. Uh, if the nonprofit sector can't move forward with that, I think we're gonna miss a big opportunity. And it will um unfortunately may be a far less humane solution if it's left just to business and for-profit. But uh, what do I do about that then? So I uh love this scholar and consultant named Adam Cahane, and he uh does scenario planning and uh does it globally. And he he does scenario planning with like Colombia, you know, Venezuela, uh, big countries that are looking at their social issues. And so I teach a little bit of that in my nonprofit leadership courses is this idea of scenario planning and asking the questions, what if? And imagining different scenarios, and then thinking, what would how would our organization be working? What would we do under these scenarios? It has to be a little bit more structured than that. But the idea of what if is what I think we're getting at here in our conversation is that question, asking what if, and then letting it be big, letting that be big. Uh, if we can plan at that level, then we can we can get to what we need to get to. But it's difficult. It it takes a whole shift in the way we think, and that's not easily done. I think that's that also ties back to this idea of looking at financial statements and get getting buried in the detail instead of looking at what is this story telling me and how would I like to shift that story? And then beginning to plan your financial resources around how to shift it. And it's scary stuff, and it's also wildly fun.

Jon: 27:26

In pursuit of that shift, do you feel like you're all alone floating, you know, on a raft out in the empty ocean, or do you feel like there's any kind of momentum or trend towards moving in that direction?

Toni: 27:40

Hmm. Well, I tend to see it as a trend because I'm in the midst of it.

Jon: 27:46

Right.

Toni: 27:47

But I but then reality happens, and I have nonprofit clients uh whose boards are just grappling with how to have uh clear and effective communication. And then that bursts my balloon, and I realized like, oh, so much good work could be done if we stopped piddling around with should we get new, do we have a policy about this? And how do we get control over our expenses? Um yes, these are things that talented staff can do and board should be aware that it's happening, but it's not the work of the board. So while I think, oh, it's a trend, I see a few people going in this direction, and I can kind of generate some excitement about it when I'm able to talk with them, but then they go right back to the old version of not their best selves and grapple with some board member who's being rude in a board meeting and what to do. And it keeps us from doing the work that's important.

Jon: 28:52

Indeed. Sobering but true. Oftentimes I feel like it's the youngest, meaning having been in existence the least amount of time, it's the youngest organizations that I feel like I have been most successful with. Perhaps it's just because they haven't had years and years and years to get set in routines and mindsets.

Toni: 29:17

Yeah, yeah. I think you're right, because these set routines that are so embedded, very difficult to get past. And so you have young people who are just anxious to get work done. They just want to get it done. And I love that. And ultimately it has to be balanced with getting the work done now, like young people want to do. And what is that gonna look like if we build this trajectory out? What's that gonna look like? And that's the part where I've found young organizations stumbling. Uh, is okay, this is a good model for today. Is it a good model for next week or next year? It's a such a fine balance of some amount of structure and then some amount of going for it, doing it, you know? It is. We must be very careful about how we're measuring success. And especially in the nonprofit sector, when it's not a bottom line per se. We can measure success by being crystal clear about the impact of what we're doing and what we want that impact to be. So you put on a great festival, what was it that you were after precisely? And I'm not judging whatever that is, but I'm just saying be clear about what's how I want to define success. I take this advice to myself. What am I, how am I measuring success in my own personal life? But certainly in an organization, we have the obligation to define what success is. And so in financial institutions, easy. We can clearly define by a couple of sets of ratios, we can say what we're after. So much ROI, so much ROA, all that. Easier there. But then you can also add into that, yes, this is our uh measurements of financial success. What is our measurement for human success, human development, what we want our culture to be like? These are all measurable things, they take thought. I'm a huge proponent of identifying what the success measure is and then how to look at it, analyze it, and decide and change it if you've picked the wrong thing.

Jon: 31:50

If you cannot measure it, you are not likely to ever get to that place. That's that's another important lesson I've learned over the years. There are some uh music programming people loath to come up with metrics. They're happy to take the gross box office numbers as their metric, but of course, you know, you got to go deeper than that.

Toni: 32:16

Yeah, but be careful or be aware that there are also qualitative measures. So quantitative, the ones that you're talking about for box office, etc., quantitative measures are are one thing and should be taken. Any opportunity that can come once you've said this is what we want to measure, this is how we're gonna claim success. But then there's qualitative measures as well. And those are not recognized by many scientists as being useful in any way whatsoever. But these are the human stories, these are the things that cannot be measured with a number, but it would be something where you have to go out and talk to people, uh, gather stories. So if one of your measures for a music festival was to, I'm gonna just make something up, lighten the spirit of the participant. Let's say that lighten the spirit or increase the curiosity. These are things that there are goals. I mean, they're unspoken goals, I think, that many uh that festivals have. They because they have their own personalities, right? And so what are they? So you name those and then you figure out a way to get some information about that. It's so much more interesting to me than quantitative, but it is recognized by all researchers, I think, that a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures are vital to really get at what you're wanting to get at.

Jon: 33:56

I'm reminded of an important story from my Totem Star experience. Totem Star, for our listeners, is a Seattle-based nonprofit that teaches various music-related skills to youth. And our target audience are youth from very disadvantaged backgrounds. And for many years, when I first became involved as a board member with Totem Star, the operation was based out of a very small little space, kind of a closet kind of space. And the program grew in popularity over the years, and eventually we reached the physical capacity for how many youth we could cycle through the space in a day, and we started a waiting list. And as the years went on, that waiting list grew and grew and grew. And then one day we were sitting at a board meeting and it was announced that the waiting list had just reached 100 youth. And in that moment, we celebrated. We viewed that metric as a sign of success. We were generating programs that people wanted, and they wanted them so badly they would wait in line to get in. And so we we patted ourselves as a board on the back, and we continued to for two or three months. And then there was a day, and I can't remember what brought this on, but there was a moment where it struck me that's actually not a good metric because considering the reality of day-to-day life for a lot of the youth that we serve, I suddenly realized that it was actually a very, very bad thing that they would be on a waiting list. We needed to get them into the program now. All of a sudden, I just I went from kind of being proud to being kind of horrified that this is a this is a huge problem. We need to expand our capacity. And that shifted the whole world view of our board. And ultimately, it led to a really rapid-fire effort to get into a much bigger space with better access to public transportation all around the region. And happily, we're going to be cutting the ribbon on that new space in just a few months.

Toni: 36:11

Very, very exciting. Uh, and I love that example of the shift in perspective that you had. Really excited, you had a waiting list, and then suddenly this new perspective washed over you. It was jarring. Yeah. Now, Jack Mesaro, the kind of, I'll call him a guru of transformative learning, calls this a disorienting dilemma. And he says, well, he's dead now, but he talked about this thing quite a bit. And I used this in my dissertation as well. Real change happens when we are heading along down our path, and something that we believed to be true, we see some new bit of evidence, and it completely changes our minds. That's transformative learning. And Mesarot calls this a disorienting dilemma, which I love. I just like that. I I welcome disorienting dilemmas all the time. I wish for them because it's that idea where I'm heading down this path thinking that I know everything about some particular topic. And then something happens where you're just, it's like someone put a set of glasses on you with completely different lenses. And it doesn't happen often enough, I feel like, for me. I want to see this happening all the time because it's what makes you reconsider and shift.

Jon: 37:52

Tony, you have a very defined, very unique leadership style. And I'm wondering if you could talk about how you developed that over time.

Toni: 38:06

Well, you know, John, that I believe that sort of everything we are today is a product of what we've experienced along the way. Even when you don't know you're learning something, you are. I guess I'll say the first structured job that I had where there was what one might call a leadership hierarchy and um a structure of power, if you will, was in my very first job out of undergraduate working for Pete Marwick, this international, um, this international accounting firm, now called KPMG, but at that time it was just still Pete Marwick. That's how long ago it was. What I saw there, and I was had no leadership training or experience, really, except for maybe managing my dogs at home, something like that. But um I looked at that structure where you just do certain things and get to a level, and now you're a leader, and people that had absolutely no emotional intelligence, no abilities to do uh leadership, which is what I consider to be like bringing everyone along, you know. What I did learn though, there was that you know, there's a power structure, and you have to understand what the power structure is to decide how you're even going to interact with it. But my leadership style has all along, I think it's just been um very organic, let's say that, is that's when I'm with a group of people, what I want is for everybody to be contributing fully. And what do they need to be able to do that? And if I I have some insights and knowledge to be able to add to their resources. Now we're getting somewhere. So it was always uh, for lack of a better use of the term, a servant leadership style. Oh. Yeah. And I mean, I go back when I think about servant leadership, I go back to the source of that, which is Robert Green. Greenleaf, yeah. Um, but where I had where I struggled, I think, or I won't say struggled, because it was really fun to learn this, is how do I also have a presence so that I can um interact with others, be open to their ideas and what we want to get done together, and still have the kind of presence that I can say, this is the direction I think we should go. And people are willing to follow me because they believe that I have given proper consideration to all of the facts. And that takes, that just takes years of doing and uh making mistakes. Um, but I would often where I would stumble at times is that I would think, I'm too soft, which I don't think anybody would really accuse me of. But I think I'm too soft, I'm not being direct enough, and uh what do I need to do to change this? And just feeling uncomfortable with that, and finally getting to the fact that I have everything I need, just like everyone does, has everything they need within them, and they just need to polish it and figure out when to apply it. And that's just that's just doing it.

Jon: 41:48

Your explanation sounds a lot like my experience as well over the years. I'm a sponge, and I've had a lot of just dumb luck in happening to work with remarkable person after remarkable person after remarkable person. I've always believed that everybody I will ever meet has something they can teach me, whether they realize it or not. I even believe that it's just as valuable for people to teach me what not to do. I look back very fondly to a lot of fantastic folks I've worked with that what I learned from working with them was how not to approach something. And I say that with love and and and respect, but that's the lesson that I learned. And somebody, I can't remember how I first stumbled upon Robert Greenleaf, but somehow I did. Somehow somebody put servant leadership in my hand at a relatively young age, probably like early 30s. And it really resonated with me. And so I try on a good day to model that philosophy.

Toni: 42:55

Yeah, yeah. And you know that the modeling has to come from your actual feelings inside how you think you can be useful to someone else to share what you know, to listen to what they have to say. It's a it's a way of being, it's like an essence of yourself. And if you don't have that essence and you're stumbling around with what's gonna look like I'm powerful or what's gonna look right in my position, you're it's never gonna work. It has to come from an authentic place. Your comments about learning as much from people about what not to do. I would say that my two most notable mentors were of that ilk where they had really good qualities, really good qualities, and some very poor execution. I learned that thankfully pretty early on, that you can appreciate and be grateful for someone who's kind of guiding your pathway. Because that's what I think of a mentor as being, someone that's guiding you, even when they don't even know they are. Right. And that you can see them, see their flaws, and still appreciate them. Even when you're saying, Wow, I wouldn't do it this way. That's been, I think, the greatest lesson for me. I didn't I haven't had mentors that I wanted to emulate.

Jon: 44:33

There have been I'm I'm thinking, there have been some that I can say that I've wanted to emulate at least some quality, some attribute, but no one that I've ever wanted to fully carbon copy. I know what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. It's all like a puzzle. It's the puzzle of life. And it's like we talk about the path that we're following, and to me, that that path is only complete, like three or four bricks out, and this my whole life has felt like it's just trying to gather supplies and materials, uh, found objects as I go along and keep trying to lay this path to get a little further into the unknown.

Toni: 45:11

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's it. The only time to worry about that is when you stop gathering. So you you're only three more bricks out on your path and you stop, you know, and you think that you've got everything you need to be able to keep building those bricks and keep continuing that path, but you don't, because you never end up having enough to do that. You're always replenishing, always having to replenish and recycle.

Jon: 45:41

It makes me think again of the pandemic and how suddenly that hit. And then all of a sudden, if you're in the entertainment business, there's nothing with no notion whatsoever of when that was going to end. And so initially I did effectively nothing. I stopped gathering those materials, so to speak. And I I took up some new hobbies and stuff, you know. I just okay, if I can't work, if I can't do what I do, I'll just figure out something else to do while I'm waiting this out. But that was only satisfactory for me for about six months, and then that feeling started to turn on me, and I became very uncomfortable. And this may sound a little sarcastic, uh, it's not meant to be, but maybe I don't know, nine or ten months into the pandemic initially, I had this thought cross my mind that oh my god, this might be what retirement is like. And it it scared me to death. It's like I I because I whatever this is here, not having something to do every day, not having a job, a responsibility, an opportunity to make change and do the magic that we do. It literally made me sick. The notion of not being able to do that. That's kind of when I entered kind of the angry phase of the pandemic. It's like, all right, I've gotta, I just have to force this issue. I have to do something. It also just kind of made me re-evaluate whatever longer-term plans I thought I had. And now, to me, the notion of like retirement, I I don't want that. Seriously, I I don't I don't ever want to stop. Yeah, I just want to keep doing what I'm doing and doing what I love uh until I die. Yeah, that would be ideal.

Toni: 47:33

Absolutely.

Jon: 47:35

Otherwise, I'm just gonna go crazy. And it also led to fears about relevance over the long term, too. And everybody struggles with this in any career in any industry. You start off as the up-and-comer, the new kid on the block. At some point, maybe you're the rising star, and then you're in the captain's chair. But how do you maintain relevance? Especially, I think it's difficult in the entertainment industry because so much of the industry is driven by trend. And it's difficult to keep heck, it's difficult to keep up with trends uh no matter what your age for any five-year block of time, much less over a lifetime. You know, again, a lot of people just aren't naturally inclined. It's hard work. I think of multidisciplinary arts programmers, or even music programmers for that matter. Uh, you don't see a lot of people in programming who do it for decades and decades and decades, especially within the same genres or the same audience, right? Maybe you do it for 30 years and you start off in rock and roll and then you move on to some other genre, and but you have to stay current. I think of our old colleague Chris Porter, was like one of these rare cats that had that knack where he could somehow keep his finger on the pulse of what 19-year-olds are thinking. Yeah. Uh, I've worked with a with a few people like that. Chad Anderson at USC Events, the EDM organization that I worked with for a number of years. Exact same thing. Somehow that that the EDM market, that is like 18 to 23, is 95% of that market. And Chad got into that when he was that age, if not a little younger, and discovered he was really good at it, but somehow he managed to again keep his just finger on the pulse of that scene over decades. Accurately. It's just uh it's a gift, I think. I think some people just I think you have to have a genuine interest. I think that's I don't I don't think you can fake it.

Toni: 49:52

I think you I think you you hit the nail on the head, so to speak. Uh and to me it has to do with how we define relevance. Uh so those people that have that gift, maybe what they're not after is appearing relevant or being relevant. They're just identifying what moves them, and then it's coming from their the their authentic selves, and it just so happens to be, you know, what 19 to 23 year olds like. I mean, maybe it's something like that. I was thinking for me, John, that I am so fortunate because I love learning so much. And so I found the pandemic a time that allowed me to dive in to subject matter that I would otherwise have not had time to look into. And so I have so many topics that I'm interested in. Civil society, is it meeting uh its full potential? And why or why not? Um, how we change our minds, that process, how we change our minds. So many things that I'm interested in. And now, this gift that came from working my butt off to earn my PhD, I feel very comfortable calling myself a scholar. And so, what do what do I want to do? I want to increase my scholarship and look at ways that I can be practically applied. So I could spend the pandemic studying, reading, researching, and writing a few notes down. And suddenly something comes up out in my world, and I have this store of information that I can go look at and draw on. And I feel like that's totally relevant. And so I think that begs the question: how are we defining relevance and whether we're chasing it or whether we're harvesting it from ourselves?

Jon: 51:57

Ooh, that's an interesting question. I understand what you're what you're getting at. Chasing relevance. I'm actually, as I so often do when we're talking, I'm gonna make a quick note on that. Friends, this conversation was of the all-day variety. So we are going to call it a wrap here for this episode, and we will continue next week with part two of Tony Aspen.

Toni: 52:42

This is an all-call, one hour to doors.