Riding The Waves Of Change - Julie Noonan - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode #50

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy. Welcome.

I'm excited to talk to our guest today. She's an executive coach, a transformational change leader, speaker, consultant, and futurist. She spent her career working with companies of all sizes, helping people ride the waves of change. She's founder and CEO of Julie Noonan Consulting. Welcome, Julie Noonan. How are you?

I'm great. Thank you for having me, Joseph.

Ah, thank you for being here. It's exciting to talk to somebody that, uh, loves to change about as much as I do, so I'm excited to see where this conversation leads us. All right, um, well, let's get right to it. I enjoy asking people the simple question to start things off, which is, um, something around, uh, an interest or an area of expertise or something that you found out there in the marketplace that you think would be very intriguing for other C-suite executives or business leaders to be thinking about or aware of today?

Okay, obviously there are a couple things, but the, the first thing that comes to my mind is the concept of reverse mentoring. Jack Welch brought that up in the early '90s, and it's now gaining more traction since there are 4 to 5 generations in the marketplace and/or in the workspace. And one of the things that I've been watching very closely is the, the exodus of the, the last of the boomers. So the boomers are within 9 years of, of actually being, if they all retire, which some of them won't, out of the door. And what does that mean then for the generations that are coming behind them? What kind of legacy are they leaving? But better yet, what are they going to do for the next 9 years? Because I think a lot of them are struggling with the rapid pace of change. Where do they fit in? Ageism, worrying about, you know, the economic impact of actual retirement, that sort of thing. And so one of the things that I've been really paying attention to is this idea of reverse mentoring. So that they can pass on their legacy, they can pass on the business knowledge that they have, as well as gain enough new knowledge and enough exposure to the younger generations to be dangerous while they're still around.

Interesting. So what— I'm not, I'm not totally familiar with reverse mentoring. So tell me, how does that work? And how did it work when it was back in Jack Welch's days? How has it changed to today?

Well, back in Jack Welch's days, he put executives with interns and/or individuals that were high performance. They were tapped for, you know, leadership ongoing. That's, you know, the high potential programs and stuff. So he would put them together and they each had to have an objective of something that they wanted to learn from each other. Okay. So it was very structured. It was very much a part of the responsibility of human resources at the time. But he really encouraged his leadership to get involved with the younger generations, which that's the part that has stayed around. Currently, I'm seeing it come up as part of the DE&I efforts. I've seen it come up as a part of The new initiatives that are coming forward, the move to more social media marketing for a lot of companies. Crypto is another big hot topic that most of the boomer generation really hasn't even dipped their toe into for fear that they won't understand it, etc., etc. And so I think that now there's an opportunity for more of a balanced mentoring equation. So for instance, I would like to see some programs being taken out of the organ— or of an organization and have them more of an industry or a community situation so that we eliminate the power structure. And eliminate the performance management scary stuff that somebody with power over you, you know, can really hold over you if you decide to be honest and hold truth to power and speak truth to power. So I would like to see more organic movement in the area.

So this one, how would you facilitate that? Would you bring in a third party organization or person to oversee this mentoring relationship?

It could be a third party. Absolutely. It could be an existing organization like SCORE, or, you know, one of the, the entrepreneur, entrepreneurial organizations, maybe, maybe a nonprofit that focuses on business development for small businesses. Obviously, I would do it for any organization that wanted to participate, and I would get my millennials from other companies.

Okay.

Yeah.

So you could take millennials from one company, imagine, with seniors from another company, just for lack of a better word, and avoid the internal power struggle that might hold people back from truly mentoring one another.

Absolutely, absolutely. And if we keep it, for instance, in an industry or a particular functional type skill area, it would give them enough to have in common that they could really actually benefit a lot from each other.

So how do you make it a mentoring relationship versus just like a training opportunity?

A mentoring relationship is two ways. So it's not just I'm training you and you're training me. First of all, it's not training. Second of all, it's really more about providing resources, providing quick answers if, if that's necessary from the executives, providing coaching on positioning and that sort of thing, as well as Here are some examples of how this has worked in the past. On the other hand, the mentee or the other mentor, reverse mentor, can provide the executive with quick answers on and not be afraid to say— if the executive could not be afraid to say, what does this particular thing mean? What when someone says that they're non-binary, what does that mean? When someone says, um, just go on and build a sales funnel and they're not familiar with that, what does that mean? How do we do that, etc., etc.? So there are plenty of topics that I've taken a look at that they could discuss between the two of them.

And how long does a typical mentoring relationship like this last?

It lasts as long as the two individuals decide that it will last. So for instance, they set their own objectives. They have— they each have driving factors as to why they want to engage in a mentoring relationship. They have to be very honest about that. And then the third party or the objective person that matches them up basically keeps them, you know, on track. And if it fizzles out, it fizzles out. You know, if it's, if it's meeting the needs of both parties and they want to continue, they can continue.

So do you have like a range? Where is it? 3 months, 6 months, 3 years, 6 years? Like, what's, what's it look like?

Ideally, I would like to see no less than 6 months. Okay. For it to be impactful. This isn't a short-term deal. This is not a one-and-done. There are other things I'm thinking about for one-and-dones, but for a true mentoring program, reverse mentoring program, I'd like to see it at least last 6 months.

Yeah. Okay. And it's called a reverse mentoring, but it really sounds like it's like two-way mentoring or—

Yeah, yeah.

Exchange mentoring or something, because it's not, it's not one-way reverse. It's, it's both people are learning, both people have objectives, both people are mentoring.

Yes, you're exactly right. And I have thought about changing the name, at least that I market, market it to. But Jack Welsh came up with the original, so I wanted to have some.

Yeah, right.

To—

might as well try it. Yeah. Very good. So, uh, what makes you so passionate about this type of work?

Oh, I see so many missed opportunities. I see division in so many different areas of our lives right now that I hate to see the same thing happening within organizations where The, the unchanging, the inflexible mindsets are causing innovation to be crippled and are, you know, disappointing our younger generations. We're not getting, we're not getting the productivity or the innovation or the creativity that we could get if we could just change some mindsets. And, and open up a little bit more about the good stuff that each generation brings, as opposed to, you know, your stereotypical boomer whining about the young people not wanting to work or whatever the case may be, and the young people whining about the boomers who won't ever leave and they're stuck in their ways and it takes forever, etc., etc. So that's— I think we just have so much opportunity And I hate to see the boomers exit the workforce within the next 9 or 10 years without being able to make their last hurrah, their last mark. And I'm speaking as one myself, obviously.

So, well, it's not so obvious.

No. Well, thank you. I'm the last year of the boomers.

So, so if you think about To this reverse mentoring in today's kind of remote-first environment, is it a— is it different to do this type of mentoring over Zoom and over remote via technology than it— than it was back in Jack's day where it might have been more like actually in-person mentoring? Has that changed?

I think the really cool thing about the remote situation and what COVID did for us, I think, as a working society, is it basically ripped the Band-Aid off. There was a big change and nobody, nobody could deny that it was going to happen. I think that, that being able to have Zoom and the, and the face-to-face, I think, number one, we've had 2 years to get used to it and most people are used to it by now. Number 2, it is a whole lot, a whole lot less time-consuming. So you're, you know, we've gotten ourselves used to being able to get on, get the job done, get off. And on the one hand, that can be really great. And on the other hand, it can be really bad. But the really great part about it is It's very, very difficult to nail down an executive for more than 15, 20, 30 minutes. And if you can have a very targeted, very cordial, very excited, engaging 30-minute mentor session, how would you not be able to do that? It also takes a lot of the good old boy network out. I hate to say it that way, but it's true. It takes out the come on, junior, let's go play golf kind of a thing. It levels the playing field to some degree because my mentor could be in my same town or my mentor could be, you know, in Boston or wherever, a different country. If I wanted to learn about international business, or the culture of doing business in Japan. That would be phenomenal to me, and it would be easy to set up via Zoom.

Yeah. How long? You said 15, 30 minutes. Is that a typical session for a mentor remotely?

Typically, you know, the first couple are longer because the third party is in there trying to make sure that they understand the guidelines and that they're both very clear about what their needs are and their objectives are from the mentorship. And then after that, they can set their own timeline. So for instance, they could do an hour for a while and then bump it down to 30 minutes, um, or they could start out with 30 minutes more frequently. Bottom line is they can make the experience whatever they would like to make it together, um, yeah, as long as they're meeting each other's objectives.

And then what is a good frequency typically?

Typically it's every other week. So, bimonthly.

Bimonthly. And is there an established framework for how the, that 15, 30, 60 minutes is run, like an agenda recommendation?

Yes. At the very beginning, that's part of the guidelines that at least I provide. Is here's, here's a typical agenda, or here's a typical topic that you might discuss. We give them some ideas, then they put together, okay, here's what I want to accomplish, here's what I want to accomplish, and then they set their own time frames from that.

Okay, that's very fascinating. I can see a lot of value in it. I have an organization that we've started called the Fractional Professional Association, and there's a lot of peers in that group. And taking the reverse mentoring concept just to a peer mentoring concept would be very—

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And it's not just networking. And that's the other thing. Some of the old-school mentorship programs, were more about getting to know people from a how can they help me with my career perspective as opposed to how can I learn from them perspective. And I'm, I'm really interested more in the how can we proliferate the learning and the innovation. Not that it's not very, very important, obviously, to build relationships and to continue to network. That's obviously something that we should I'll be doing to some degree or another. But for the purpose of this, it's really all about learning, and it's, and it's about exchanging ideas.

Yeah, that's terrific. Um, so what other areas do you focus on to help people with change?

Yeah, so, um, currently I really focus on executives who are sponsoring transformational change in their organizations. So many of these executives get assigned, they get tapped to sponsor these big change initiatives. A, they didn't make the decision. B, they may not even agree 100% with the direction or the change that is, or the project that's being kicked off. C, no one tells them what sponsorship really means. And D, you know, a lot of times it could be there's a lot of money sitting on the table that's going to get spent over the next year or 2 years. For instance, in a technology transformation or a digital transformation, or, you know, we're going to do a big merger or an acquisition. The sponsor of the change typically doesn't get the kind of training, the kind of hints, tips, tricks. How do you deal with the people side of this thing? You know, you can't just hand it off to the project leader and expect the change to happen. You have to actually put yourself on the line to be an active and visible sponsor. And that's what I like to coach for, is I like to, in addition to doing some of these change initiatives as a change manager, which is the consulting side of my business, I also do executive coaching for those sponsors themselves. So that if they're in any way feeling overwhelmed by it, a little bit afraid of it, they hate, they would rather have a root canal than deal with people and drama, which most of them would rather have a root canal. I'm there to help them talk through how do they show up authentically still to their own, you know, their own leadership style, but deal with those issues so that the change is actually adopted into the organization and it reaps the benefits that's supposed to happen. So that's what I absolutely love to do.

Well, what are some of the high-level fundamentals for— from a coaching perspective that you share with your executives without giving away all your secrets?

Well, um, Well, I have to give Linda Ackerman Anderson a lot of credit for helping me come up with what I think sponsors should be. Sponsors for transformational change are dealing with a change that's so big and so complex that they have to be solid in their own leadership ability. They have to understand what the change is supposed to accomplish. They need to be able to describe it, walk the talk, and understand that they're not exempt from the impacts of the change. And that's probably the hardest thing, I think, in the coaching that I do is to help them understand this isn't about everybody else. This change is about the whole company and you're part of it.

Yeah.

And that might mean that you have to do a lot of things differently as well. So I like to, I may, I may, um, very empathetic, compassionate person, but I'm also, okay, let's just say it like it is. You can't, you can't say one thing out of one side of your mouth and then do something else, or the change is going to die on the vine and it will be a disaster.

Yes. So I'm a fan of the book Four Disciplines of Execution by Stephen Covey.

Yep.

They talk about change and the 4 disciplines of how change is accomplished. Are, are those some of the similar fundamentals to how you see change happening?

Um, there, to some degree, yes. Most of the change models, you know, talk about, um, the initiation of the change, meaning the vision, the idea the benefits, you know, figuring out who the stakeholders are, etc., etc. Then the impacts during the execution of the change are, oh, things are changing and my world is falling apart. It's the grief cycle. It's all of that stuff. But the bottom line for all of these methodologies and all of these models is you're dealing with human beings, and human beings will adapt to change in different, in different times and in different ways. And you can herd cats, or, or you can say, here's the situation. Do you want to play or not? And if you want to play, we're going to do everything we can possibly do to help you make that transition and to help you be successful so the company is successful. If you don't want to play, you have a personal choice and you can decide, hey, you know, this isn't for me. And that should be okay as well. Also, if, if they have concerns or issues, listen to the squeaky wheels. At least give them, you know, an ear, because most of the time those squeaky wheels have identified something that's going to cause you problems later on. But don't spend an inordinate amount of time with people who are just not going to make the transition. You know?

Yeah.

And I think a lot of change efforts, a lot of organizations try so hard to get everybody on board. And we need to be realistic. Not everybody's going to be on board. And that's okay. Yeah.

Are those squeaky wheels, those like the canaries in the coal mine, they're the ones that are giving you the heads up that something bad might happen if you don't?

Absolutely. And there's usually a great kernel of truth to that. And some of the projects that I've been on and have seen really, really struggling and fail. To, to be honest with you, are the projects that nobody wanted to hear any bad news.

Yeah, don't, don't tell me the bad news, just keep it to yourself, right?

And that's— so that's what I mean about the squeaky wheel. Yeah, we always have negative Nellies running around, and there's always the, you know, oh, the world's going to fall apart, and they never can see anything positive. But those aren't the people that I'm concerned with. I'm concerned with the people that speak up at the beginning and say, oh, what about X, Y, and Z? If they don't get listened to, we usually will have a problem at the, you know, towards the end.

Yeah, I think it might be Seth Godin that when he wrote a book called What Is Marketing, I think he's described a marketer's chief job is to manage change. As a marketer, that's how he's put it. As a marketer, your job is to manage change. And I always thought that was an interesting assessment or kind of articulation of what marketers do every day, because you're trying to make somebody change their behavior some way, buying your product or service. So a lot of the, probably the common techniques around marketing align well, which generally with change management, I would guess.

Absolutely. There is definitely an element of motivation, persuasion, benefits, you know, understanding the audience, what their pains are, what their needs are. All of that is at the very beginning of change management. Because otherwise you're going to get surprised when you throw something out there and they reject it. Yeah, same thing when you put a product out there and people reject it because you haven't thought it through all the way.

Yeah, I think he says make change happen. I think that's what it is. But yeah, so what are some of the general leadership fundamentals or guidelines or traits and characteristics that you see in people that are really good at being change sponsors? Like, what kind of characteristics do they possess that, that makes somebody better at leading change than maybe others?

Um, I would say number one is the ability to pay attention to what really matters.

And how would you articulate what really matters in that case? Does the people really matter, or is it a specific change outcome that we're seeking?

I would say pay attention to anything that's going to get in the way of achieving the benefits we want to achieve from the change. It could be anything. But some of these projects, especially transformational projects, are so complex that sponsors a lot of times don't know where to focus. And if they're not careful, they, they, they will delegate their power away because they, they don't want to understand, you know, the intricacies. But by the same token, they can't get into the weeds either. So it's, it's being able to sit in a steering committee meeting and understand and keep track of, okay, here are the issues. Here are the issues from the last time. Why haven't we solved them? What do we need to do to resolve them? Is there anything that I need to do as a sponsor to resolve them? To make sure that we're meeting our goals. Another thing is to pay very, very close attention to the impacted audience or impacted stakeholders in your organization. So the people whose jobs are changing to 100 degrees— 180 degrees, sorry. The people who have been doing the same thing for 30 years, and now you're asking them to do something entirely different. The people who built your last product line and you've decided to retire that product line and go in a different direction, the paying attention to the emotional impact is very, very, very important and acknowledging that it's not just about business. We are impacting people's lives and how they see themselves and how they interact with each other. I think that's the number one thing for a terrific transformational sponsor.

How does a sponsor get other people excited about the change?

Lobbying, lobbying, lobbying.

Okay, what does that mean?

So number one, go for no surprises. Um, as a sponsor, you also have peers within the organization. There are other departments or other groups that need to be kept informed and not surprised by this, this thing. So building a coalition amongst your peers, making sure they understand what's going on, that they've had input if their organizations are being impacted, uh, that's, that's key right there. Now I forgot my last— what else I was going to say. But that's the key one. It's building coalitions, politicking. It's like being a member of Congress, I would imagine, you know, trying to get the right people behind you, trying to get the votes to make sure it goes through. It's amazing to me sometimes that some of these The biggest transformational changes that companies decide to make, when they're actually making them, all of a sudden nobody made that decision. Yeah, it's, it's kind of amazing to me. Okay, now that the rubber's hitting the road and you're actually going to have to do things differently, who made the decision to begin with and where are they?

Yeah, I think the politicking, the lobbying makes sense, but is there— are there techniques to get people genuinely interested in making the change and not having to be coerced into it?

Oh yeah, for sure. I think number one, the what's in it— answering the what's in it for me. It's not just about what's in it for the business and how can we be more profitable, but what's in it for me, the person. So for instance, we're going to go 3 days hybrid, 2 days in the office. Well, what's in it for me? I don't want to drive into the office. What's in it for you is when you do come into the office, this is where we're going to be sharing our work efforts. We're going to be reconnecting with each other. We're going to have pizza at lunch for everybody. How do you motivate them and get them excited? The other thing too is a lot of times the ideas and the decisions that have come out before that created the change decision, if you can figure out why, I mean, where did this idea come from? Because a lot of times it actually came from the population of people in the organization. And if you can say, hey, this idea for this particular change came from this group or these kinds of people in our industry, and this is what they think we're going to get out of it, you as a person or you as a member of a group, the benefit statements are obviously huge. The other thing that that sponsors can do is actually get in front of and take questions from the impacted groups. So it's not a roadshow where they're up there talking for an hour. It's really get up there, give the bare bones, be very authentic, be very transparent. If you're going to have layoffs, say you're going to have layoffs. If you know when the timeline is, say when you, when the timeline is. Be as transparent as you possibly can with the good news as well as with the bad news. And then finally, at the end of the project, probably one of the, one of the most beautiful examples of sponsorship I have ever seen was on a project that I did at the State of Tennessee. Where we put in a new driver license system. So everybody can understand the pain, you know, of an old driver license system. And this thing was 30 years old, had not been updated. It was COBOL programming. And we were moving to, you know, web or cloud at the time. So the entire department had to do their jobs entirely differently on a brand new system all at the same time. We were ripping the Band-Aid off over a weekend. And yes, and the citizens of the state of Tennessee were the, were the main stakeholders. So you can imagine, you can imagine how nervous these folks were. Well, I wound up having a change agent and our change champion in every single driver license office. And I trained them and we talked about things and I gave them insider information and I got their feedback for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, probably 4 months before the go-live. And after that, after the go-live, we gave it a couple of weeks and I went to the executive sponsor of the project and I said, I would really, really love it if you could write thank you notes. You know, I'll print them out, I'll do whatever. I'll actually write them, but if you'll sign them, right? She wrote individual thank you notes to every single one of those change agents and the leaders in every single office. And she got on the webcast, whatever we had at that time, and congratulated everyone.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah. And she had the metrics to prove that the citizens were happy with it. Yeah. So her involvement the whole way through— I didn't— there was not one time when I went to her and said, hey, could you do this for me, or could you send this message, or could you talk to so-and-so? There wasn't one time when she said no.

How long does it take— when, when, in your experience, how long does it take for change to, to not be change again? Um, and when does it start to become the normal?

I could have answered that 2 years ago. I don't think there is— I think change is the normal. I don't think they're, you know, it's funny that you asked me that because my daughter, I'm helping her out with, you know, thinking through what does she want to do next in her career. And one of the things that she really loves is stability, is operational stuff. And I said, oh boy. Okay, so let me just share with you there isn't going to be a 9 to 5, you know, you do these 5 things every day and you go home. That's just— it's just not— that's not our reality. Every single day there's something new that we learn. Every single day there's a new app that comes out, or there's a new possibility for— or a new influencer, or you know, Twitter gets bought and whatever the case may be, that's our new— that is our reality, is change. And so if you're looking— if you're somebody that needs closure, you're going to really struggle for a while, right?

I was thinking, uh, and I, I love your answer. Change is just— that is, we have to just be constantly dealing with change in our That is our normal. But a transformational change, like a big new driver's license system or large technology, you know, retrofit of some sort. When does the change kind of timeframe, it's just now the norm, it's what it is. It's not—

Yeah, we're not gonna put in a new one. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Is it a couple months, 3 months, couple years? Like how long does it take for that to just become norm?

It— I hate to say it, but it really does depend on the size of the change. So I'll give you the example of the driver license system. They were up running and reaping the benefits within 2 months. But that was because that was the best project ever worked on, and every single part of that project was perfect as far as I've ever seen. Some of the worst ones that I've been on, that they didn't get fully deployed. They stopped. They were bleeding money, so they said, we're not doing it anymore. We can't get what we need out of it anymore. So it could be, you know, anything. To be honest with you. But when you get— when you do have good change leadership and you have devoted sponsors, the benefits come very quickly, and the learning curve can go down to very minimal time, even in the most complex changes, if it's managed well.

Yeah, that was going to be my follow-up question, like how long do you give your stakeholders to adopt the change, then at some point they have to decide that they're not adopting it and leave the organization.

Yes.

Or the state.

Yeah.

Tennessee. I don't like the driver's license.

Yeah. Typically what will— in well-managed change efforts, you'll— those individuals will make their decisions before the change actually gets implemented.

Okay.

Yeah. And if they don't, it's shortly thereafter. Um, a lot of, a lot of folks, um, because of their past experience with the fly-by-night, you know, one day here's our strategy, the next day here's another strategy, they will put their heads in the sand and hope that it goes away. And the funny thing is A lot of us have experienced that, you know, it's the flavor of the month, whatever it is that a corporation will come out with. But the changes that are transformational in nature typically will not even get approved and funded unless the organization is pretty serious about it. Obviously, that makes sense. Yeah.

Well, let's switch gears a little bit. Let's change ourselves.

What's up?

What are some of the things you like to do for fun?

Oh boy. I love the theater.

Oh, really? What's your top, top more recent shows you've seen?

Oh, I saw Hamilton on Saturday.

Yeah, that was a good one. I saw that.

An awesome one. I want to see Hadestown. I haven't seen that yet.

I'm not familiar with that. I'm not a theater. But I'm just curious. Hadestown? Is that like— Yeah, Hades.

Like, it's— I don't know the whole story of it, but I just keep seeing it. And a lot of my friends who live in New York have been to see it, so I want to see it. My very favorite of all time is Les Misérables.

My daughter just went to Les Mis in Philadelphia last weekend and she was so excited. She went all by herself. She's like, I bought a ticket all by myself to go see this.

It is. It is. Oh, I can sing every, every word.

Yeah, that's a good one.

I used to be in theater in college, and when I got out of college, I did some local theater. I was a director. I was never good on stage unless I was choreographing or I was in the chorus.

So, uh, do you go to theater often then yourself?

I try, yeah. I try to go to as much as possible. Um, other than that, I just— I love gardening, or I used to. Now I don't have a garden anymore, um, but I do love being outside. I like to go over to the beach and watch the rockets go up. Um, when they had those, uh, the beach is gone now.

So from the hurricane?

Yeah. Oh geez, pretty sad. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty sad. There's a lot of work that has to be done over there, but I'm on the East Coast.

So does, uh, does the beach come back naturally from those events?

Um, typically it needs a little help. I mean, literally, there are, there are houses that the, the sand and the, the soil got pulled out from underneath them and they fell.

Oh geez.

Oh yeah. So the beach is like a cliff now, not a beach.

Okay.

Yeah. But they'll work on that. They'll have, you know, they'll replenish the sand. I don't know what they're going to do as far as the the people's homes.

But, you know, and rockets— where do you watch the rockets?

Port Canaveral or, um, uh, Cape Kennedy.

Yeah, I've never seen a rocket take off. What's that like?

It's pretty awe-inspiring.

Is it?

Yeah, it really is, even if it's just a, you know, a satellite carrier. It's, it's just so powerful and way brighter than you imagine when you see it on TV. It's not— it doesn't do it justice. But it's amazing. It's just amazing, the power. And then to be able to watch it go all the way up, it's crazy.

Can you hear it and feel it and see it like all in one big Like, does it get hot? You know, when you're not that close to it?

Oh, we're not. No, we're not allowed to get that close. But we will every once in a while, we'll have, we'll get a sonic boom that we can actually hear here in Orlando. We're 40 minutes away from the beach. We had one actually the other night and people were posting, you know, was that a boom or was that something else?

Are those pretty loud?

Yeah, the sonic booms can be pretty loud. But I like to go over to, um, to Port Canaveral and watch the cruise ships go out too. That's pretty fun. There's a lot of bars right there on the river.

Yeah.

Um, and just to go out there and have lunch on a Saturday and watch the cruise ships go out and come back in, it's really fun.

They're probably always departing or returning. It's not like a destination spot. It's not like they're stopping for a night, they're taking off for the next place.

No, no, this is the, the actual terminal. It's a— yeah, yeah. But they do come. I mean, the Disney Cruise Line goes out of here, obviously. Um, so those ships are fun to watch.

Do you spend much time at the Disney parks?

No. Are you kidding me?

I mean, it's right there.

I know they so bloody expensive, even for a Florida resident. And just, I go, I will go to Epcot for, you know, the Food and Wine Festival or the Garden Festival, but unless I had visitors that haven't been, well, I lived in Nashville and I never went to the Grand Ole Opry. I went to the Ryman, but not the Grand Ole Opry.

I'm going to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in March, I think. My daughter, my youngest daughter, is in show choir, and that is their final competition year of the year. And they have a— they rent out hotel rooms at Opryland. What is it, the Gaylord?

Yale Opera Land.

Yeah. And then they sing in the Grand Ole Opry House. Yes.

Wow. Well, you'll get the whole— you'll get the tour and the description. I mean, I've been on the Opry stage.

Okay.

Our company actually had one of their anniversaries on the stage, so we had a big celebration and there's a big round cutout of wood where the main microphone is. And that's from the original Opry House, which is the Ryman Auditorium downtown Nashville. Okay. And so if you're standing in that circle, you're, you know, you're in the circle from heaven, right? Yeah. But I mean, it's— I love Nashville. I loved living there. I lived there for 12 years. Loved it.

What did you love most about just the music and the scene?

Music and just being it. You could go pretty much anywhere in the city and there's live music all the time. You never know who you're going to run into, um, because a lot of the artists, if they're recording in town, they will just pop into a bar and, and jam with the local, the local band. It's just amazing. Now, a lot of that's changed because the people like Blake Shelton and, you know, some of the other very well-known people have bought pieces of downtown and have made these massive bar restaurant places. So it's not as quaint or as— I don't know, it's not as down-homey as the hometowns were when I moved.

Kind of commercialized now. Everybody's got to take their piece out of the Yeah. If you have those really authentic, iconic places that then get commercialized, that kind of take away that initial appeal.

Yeah.

One of those— a lot of places, I think, are like Colorado, the ski towns and the small towns that just seem to be no more. It just doesn't feel as folksy and homey as it used to be when you'd go visit.

Yeah. They have Jimmy Choo stores. They have— Yeah. It's like, no, no, no. But if you get a chance when you get there, don't stay at— don't stay out at the Opryland because there's nothing really there. Yeah, downtown.

We, we actually went the same trip for my oldest daughter 7 years ago. So big, big gap in age group there between my oldest and my youngest, but Same show choir tournament, whatever. But we stayed downtown that time and much more to do. It was a lot more fun. We actually stayed out by the— right near the university there. What is that?

Oh, Vanderbilt.

Yeah, we ended up staying near Vanderbilt. So not quite downtown, but near.

Close enough. Yeah.

But this time we are staying at the Gaylord because my wife's like, I want to be around all the parents and all the kids. Our last.

Yeah.

We're going to be locked in the Gaylord for 3 nights.

You know, it's beautiful. It's— and there's plenty of shopping. There's plenty to do there. It's really beautiful. It's a beautiful hotel. Yeah. But other than the hotel, that's really a whole lot.

And if I remember, it was like a 30 or 40-minute drive from the hotel to get to downtown.

It's not that far.

Maybe with traffic it was.

With traffic, yes. It depends on the time of day. Yeah. Um, but they do have the mall there, um, near, near the hotel there.

We took a riverboat, uh, cruise dinner, dinner on the riverboat. They had a performance. That was really fun.

Yeah.

But it's going to feel like the exact same trip again, just with a different daughter.

Pretty sure. Oh, well, I'm sure she'll do beautifully.

Yeah, well, that— maybe they'll win this year. Last year they came up— um, not last year, but last time they were semifinalists. So this one might be, might be a chance for them to be finalists. That would be the only saving grace, I suppose.

Do you just have the two girls?

I have four children. So one fresh— or one senior in high school, and then a junior in college, and then two that have graduated to adulting. They are in Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Oh, wow.

Very cool places to visit, right?

Yeah, exactly. They took off from you, huh? That's great. Well, mine took off down here and I followed her.

You followed your kids? Where are they?

Well, my, my oldest daughter is here in Orlando, but on the diagonally opposite side. So it still takes an hour, hour and a half to get there. So she's good with that. And then my younger daughter is a geologist, graduated during COVID and only found her adult job as a geologist a year ago. So, and she's, she travels all week. So she stays here on the weekend. And she stays in hotels the whole rest of the week. So I can't really throw her out, you know. Yeah.

Is she like searching for oil? Like, what is she doing as a geologist?

No, she does, um, she takes— she does the field analysis of— oh, what did she call it? Anyway, it's gypsum mines. There's a lot of gypsum mines down here, and if they're not closed down properly, it will cause sinkholes, massive sinkholes. And so her job is to— after they close the mines down, they go in and they drill And her job is to manage the drillers and take samples and make sure that there— it's land that you can build on again or do something else with.

How cool. What an interesting job.

Yeah.

How did she get interested in geology?

Ooh, I don't know. She's always liked rocks. Yeah, she's also, um, she also has her own business doing, um, creating jewelry.

Yeah.

So I don't know which way she's going to go. She really does need to go get her master's degree if she wants to get further into geology, but we'll see.

She got some sort of, uh, like gypsum jewelry line that she— that's some premium gypsum from the drilling.

No, but that would be kind of funny, actually. Yes, the stuff they put in wallboard.

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't make for good chalky stuff.

No, that's fine. She's covered with it head to toe when she gets home. So yeah, she loves it.

Well, it's always fun talking about kids and what they're doing, and absolutely at our ages, getting to see them go off into adulting is pretty Pretty fun. It's pretty special.

It is. It is. I'm ready for her to, uh, really truly get out off the payroll, as I say. Well, yeah, she pays rent, so I can't—

Oh, she does?

Oh heck yeah, she's 25. Absolutely.

Good for you.

Hey man, they were doing their laundry at 13.

My, my middle daughter, the one that lives in San Fran, she just started in July at a hotel and she's in a management and training program and she graduated in hospitality and all that cool stuff. But as part of the compensation package, she gets free rent for 6 months. So she's living in the hotel.

Wow.

It's great for her. Because she's saving some money. But then as soon as she's done, you know, they don't— like, she doesn't get a bump in pay that's going to offset her suddenly having to pay San Francisco rental rates. So I think she's in for a rude awakening when—

I'm sure. What hotel chain is she working for?

It's called Hotel Nikko, which is a Japanese hotel chain. They only have 2 hotels in the US, 1 and 2. And one in Maui or Hawaii. I don't know if it's Maui or not, but then they have a bunch of chain hotels, not chains, but a bunch of hotels around Asia and Japan and some in Europe, but they're all independently run. So it's like not, she's not going to be moved around to another location. She's pretty much, if she stays, which I think she is, she'll be at that particular location in San Fran for a bit.

Well, you know, she could always come down here.

Yeah, I did.

We have Marriott, we have Hilton, we have IHG. We— all of the big ones are here.

Well, she graduated from the University of Denver. They've got a very, um, well-known hospitality program, so a lot of the Disney, uh, folks come there and recruit. And I told them that some of the best training you can get in hospitality is from Disney.

Oh, heck yeah. Yeah.

But hers is more interest. Her interest lies more in food and beverage. And so I think this stepping stone to learn a little about the hotel industry and then she'll get into some sort of food and beverage role.

But yeah, that sounds like fun. The big weddings and the banquets and yeah.

Yeah, I was, uh, I have another little business in the video production world, and one of the things I said we would never do is weddings because I didn't want to, you know, what my wedding was, you know, was an ordeal enough. I don't want to be in anybody else's wedding planning and brides and mother-in-laws and all that fun stuff.

Yeah, so my daughter got married last year and I made a shirt for myself that said Mama Zilla.

I don't want to screw up somebody's wedding event.

Yeah, for sure. Not at all. Yeah.

Well, great. Well, Julie, thank you so much for your time. It was fun talking to you and talking about it. Um, if somebody wants to reach out to you and connect on the change management or the reverse mentoring, what's the best way for them to connect? And we'll have the details in the show notes.

Okay, the best way is to go to my website, is www.jaynoonanconsulting.com, and they can send me a note from there, or they can get with me on LinkedIn.

Yeah, LinkedIn's always a great place to connect, so we'll make sure that is in the show notes. But thank you very much, I appreciate having you.

Oh, thank you so much, it's been a pleasure.

And to our audience, thank you for listening. If, if you wouldn't mind, follow us or subscribe. I think my producers always tell me to ask for that. So please subscribe, and we will talk to you next week. Thanks for your time too. And that's a wrap.

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