In this episode of The Dive Locker Podcast we share why friendliness could be the most important value in a diving business.
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So I mentioned in the last episode that over the holiday break I was able to go to Colorado and take my family on their first ski and snowboard trip. We went to Steamboat Springs and skied at the famous Steamboat Ski Resort in and it was fantastic. So, on the sentimental side of this are a couple things of interest. First my wife and I have not been skiing or snowboarding, she skis I snowboard, for 20 years!
That’s because when our first child was born our priorities shifted and skiing just wasn’t on the radar anymore. And frankly I’m a bit of a ski snob and I didn’t want my kids to learn on the more affordable trips that we could take to the Carolinas or the East Coast because the majority of my ski background and snowboard background has been in Colorado, Canada and Europe. So we have never been able to afford a ski trip with the family to Colorado until last year.
The second emotional connection is that I learned how to ski at the age of 16 with my mom at Steamboat Springs. I was an only child, mom was a single parent and she saved up for years so that we could do that trip and on my 16th birthday that’s where we went. So it was amazingly cool to take my kids to Steamboat for their first ski trip and their first times learning skiing and snowboarding. My daughter is 19 she learned skiing and my son is 16 and he learned snowboarding. So as you can imagine this was an emotional and positively charged family vacation.
Now, I don’t think I’ve mentioned this to you but I’m writing a book. And interestingly enough it is not a diving book. It’s a business book on workplace culture. And for the book I interviewed Nelson Wingard the Director of the Steamboat Snowsports School. We dug into one of their biggest Workplace culture values and that was friendliness.
But when I actually got to go to Steamboat and my entire family was able to participate in skiing and snowboarding lessons, I got to experience their workplace culture firsthand. And I want to tease out some attributes for you in this episode. And the reason why this is so important is that the friendliness model fits any business, but especially businesses that deal with risk and stress. Especially in the area of newbies.
Items In This Episode
- Steamboat Snowsports School
- Friendliness
- The nervousness of new divers
- Connecting and building trust through friendliness
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