January 29, 2007
Philip Popkin, retired Chartered Financial Analyst; Terry McEnany, retired cardiologist; Jim Sbarbaro, retired cardiologist; Debbie Sbarbaro, nurse; Kim Sheelar, retired senior vice president, Coca Cola Consolidated; Bernard Philips, retired pilot; Michael Conniff; and Zele director of marketing Lisa Zimet.
Michael Conniff: What does being a surgeon have to do with teaching skiing?
LM: To have the ability to teach anything dangerous is based on confidence-building. It parallels the interview to get a patient’s permission to rearrange their innards. It takes confidence in the safety of it.
Philip Popkin: What I did [as a CFA] had nothing to do with preparing me for this. As a financial analyst, it was coming down to the bottom line. It was a job mostly of solitude and of me meeting with corporate America—“What can you do for me now?” It was about exchanging information, and it wasn’t a friendly business. In essence I wanted to break away from that. This is all about not only studying the behavior of individuals, but the study of mass behavior.
Jim Sbarbaro: I was thinking about it on the lift today. When we approach our students, they’re very much like our patients. It’s like the word “disease.” Our students come to us with dis-ease. Our job is to take a history, talk to them, watch them ski, find out where they are to get them from dis-ease to ease.
Terry McEnany: I take the low-brow approach. They’re both important customer service jobs. The goal of a physician is to help patients and to please the patient. You always have 10-15 balls in the air trying to please everyone. The other thing is that the higher intellectual aspects of practicing medicine are not transferable. I had to do seven years of training and bumps at a defined level to get the appropriate recognition I desire.
Bernard Phillips: I’ve been teaching skiing part-time for eight years now and I never considered anything transferable. Except contrary to everyone’s beliefs the airline business is a service industry. As a pilot I was isolated from our customers. I would greet them and say goodbye when our duties permitted.
KS: I think it translates much as Terry said: you’re providing a service, dealing with a customer who’s paying a bill. It brings you to positive results.
JS: There’s a fundamental thing that’s happened with this generation of ours. We’re the first of the baby boomers. Retirement has fundamentally changed. It used to be your feet up on the porch—as long as you had income to put food on the table and take a vacation one or two months a year. Retirement basically was a nothing, people sitting around this table. Now it’s a much more active process. We have to be doing something we consider valuable. More and more the fundamental thing is different.
PP: I went from doing something to doing nothing. That lasted three weeks and it was pretty boring and I had to do something. I do some volunteer work. Then I was invited to do ski school.
TE: I didn’t start skiing until I was 47, and at age 51 knew I wanted to be a ski instructor, then I plotted for eight years so I could become a ski instructor. I tried to get hired when I was 58 but I was told us you had to promise 100 hours of teaching. I could not arrange that with my partners. So I told them I was going to quit at 59-and-a-half.
LM: Somewhat it was serendipity. We’ve known each other for 30 years and I’ve been coming here since 1968. I never really thought it was something I could do. I’m not athletic. They were so happy with Terry, the person hiring got the suggestion to me to think about trying out for the ski school. It took a year of training to get hired. Look around you, there are a lot of professions, but not many physicians. There are two major personality types: commanders and pleasers. Pleasers make good doctors and ski instructors and there’s the idea of gaining satisfaction and joy of accomplishments with someone you’re teaching. That’s the absolute best reward—to get the positive feedback.
TM: We’re results-oriented as doctors. That fits hand-in-glove with skiing. You can identify the result. Pleasers are people-oriented.
LZ: What do your students think about your medical background?
JS: I never tell them.
LM: Most of my students figure it out. The answer is yes. It may hurt tips but it improves their confidence level.
TE: It’s a great job but you can’t tip a cardiac surgeon.
KS: You’re going to be rewarded. But they want to know you can ski.
LM: Kim said something interesting. Do they respect you more for how you ski or how you teach? If you show somebody something, that’s better than saying: “Watch these turns.”
BP: I was a ski school junkie for years and years–all lessons all the time, all the way through middle age. I knew I wanted to retire to a ski resort. Somewhere along the line, I reached the point where I said: “I can ski as well as these people who are teaching.” So I found out what the hiring process was at a nameless resort 100 miles east of here.
TM: I always felt it was a goal I was trying to attain. Starting at 47, you can afford a lot of lessons.
LM: I didn’t learn to ski until I joined ski school.
JS: Two-thirds or three-quarters of what physicians do is magic. From here to there, you make a bond with them. In my humble experience, if they can bond with you and make a relationship, then the information transmits more.
PP: Trust is the key element.
KS: It’s that way all the way up. Technical issues change, skiing abilities change to a certain degree. There has to be some means of communicating on a two-way street.
LM: Medicine makes you a good listener. It attunes you to some subtle messages of apprehension, body language, and if you address those back to someone there’s a connection. “You’re hearing what I’m saying.” It’s 80 percent body language, 20 percent verbal but you can tell. That creates that bond.
MC: What’s it like working with the younger instructors?
KS: Again, it’s not just the world we came out of. They’ve worked their way up through these same tools. It’s a people business, along with the communication skills: “I want to be a ski bum, I want to be a ski instructor.”
PP: I didn’t ski until I was 33.
KS: It’s phenomenal. There was a meeting of 22 of us–there was maybe three ski instructors over the age of 40, and only four born in the United States. It was a phenomenally handsome group with a love of life and the sport and the profession. All you could do was wish them the best.
BP: Ski bumming has changed.
LM: It’s the ski school and how they go about hiring people. There are marvelous people here that you’re happy to have as your friend. That’s a function of how they hire people. They were so proud they had not hired a submarine commander. He was someone who skied well but his personality did not fit the mold. They’ll exclude folks. “I can teach you how to ski, but I can’t fit in here.”
JS: These are incredibly talented kids who have a love for skiing. It’s completely divergent from the ski bum experience.
KS: They’re all highly educated.
PP: They get 1,400 applications. They hired 80.
LM: Some are between college and a job.
TE: With short-term commitments.
PP: You can’t be a ski bum any more. It’s too expensive.
MC: Is it work or play?
PP: It’s all play for me.
LM: 99 percent play.
BP: Except when it’s 20 below zero.
KS: Tomorrow might be a powder day.
LM: It’s a hobby and a passion.
LZ: Maturity might be an advantage.
BP: We’re all bundled up. People have no idea how old we are. And then we go to lunch. I love seeing the shock. They’re panting and we’ve barely broken a sweat.
LM: I teach children about half the time. They don’t care one whit how old you are. With the older population, beginning adults are more than happy to have a mature head guiding them around. They don’t trust their husbands to raise their children, but they’re worried about the sport. They see somebody coming down the hill with a yellow tarpaulin and a sled. Go to the Snowmass clinic after the lifts close. It looks like a MASH unit. It’s a potentially dangerous sport. Ski School does a remarkable job keeping things under control.
MC: Are you ever called upon as a doctor on the slopes?
TM: I would need $2 million in insurance, and I’m not as good as the ski patrollers on the hill.
PP: I took the Outdoor Emergency Care course twice. I was a first responder once.
BP: We all had to learn cardiopulmonary EMT or basic CPR.
PP: Now you don’t need it. They dropped it.
LM: Ski Patrol has a mobile defibrillator.
MC: Is this a dream job for all of you?
PP: I didn’t have the dream.
TM: It’s a privilege to be doing what I do.
PP: There’s a great amount of camaraderie. We’re all independent, vying for the same work.
BP: And we’re training in our own skiing. We get wonderful training.
TM: There are fifteen mandatory hours of training and you get paid for 25. You get paid to go to ski school at a very high level!
LZ: Is the camaraderie true regardless of age?
LM: There is some separation. The cooperation is always there, but the South American instructors tend to work among themselves. This is a group, we’re the same generation.
PP: There’s priority systems. Priority one is if you got work yesterday, the other person works today.
LM: This year was the perfect storm. The cheap dollar. No snow in the Northeast or Europe. South Americans brought a lot here. Lots and lots from Australia, New Zealand. If it wasn’t for the storm in Denver and travel problems I don’t know how we would have done it.
PP: They had to call in part-time pros after New Year’s.
LM: Everyone was happy.
TM: I never heard anyone quitting because of too much work.
JS: We all like what we do.
MC: How big are the classes?
LM: Kids up to 12. That’s manageable is you allow to match people up much better by ability—twelve children where one and twelve are the same in ability.
KS: We’re blessed with our clientele. We’re the best ski school in the nation, the best-paid, providing the finest product to the best clientele. Every place is going to have a one percent problem child.
LM: We work with a Snowmass population that takes lesson, a lot of the parents have children in ski school, and they’re here because of ski school. In Aspen, it’s probably a difference in the population, a different demographic.
KS: We’re all Snowmass. But they’re just as dedicated, just as hard-working in Aspen.
PP: Our training is the same. But the sense is its guest-centered training. A lot of it is training. Unlike in Europe, this is about understanding their needs and motivation. It’s all about a partnership with your guest. I tell them: “This is a partnership. What are your needs?” They’re getting the change they want.
LZ: As an adult beginner, it’s very nice to have a peer as an instructor versus a twentysomething the year I turned 50 who kept calling me “Mom.” An older core of ski instructors understand you don’t have the strength but you have the fears.
TM: I’d agree very strongly with that. The comments I received said: “I was so patient.”
LM: People appreciate that more than anything.
LZ: Younger ski instructors might not have that.
LM: Across the board, age brings patience. I’ll speak for us who’ve had our own struggles becoming good skiers.
BP: You have to keep them on terrain that’s appropriate. A lot have had bad experiences because invariably they’ve been taken on inappropriate terrain. You can’t learn the skill set like that. Then maybe move them to more difficult terrain. Move it back to easy terrain. We know where to take them.
TM: You teach for success. They become less fearful.
LM: They are more than happy if they are improving and progressing. You are eliminating variables. If you keep taking them on the same terrain—then terrain is no longer an issue. That actually makes them happy. Assay Hill is a nice piece of terrain. People I was teaching didn’t want to go anywhere else because it’s working for them. People operate best in the green zone, not the orange or red.
TM: This is not Baghdad.
PP: Then you introduce a new skill, orange or red, and then it drops down to green.
JS: If you’re patient and they trust you.
KS: Taking around level 2s or 3s, you carry it through. It’s the same exact thing going up AMF, a double-black for experts, as Assay Hill.
MC: What do you all do when you’re not teaching skiing?
JS: The truth of the matter is that I’m skiing four months a year, working four months in Pueblo, Colorado, then teaching biking for four months. I’m afraid of the total transition. I decided in 1974 that some day I’d like to do this. Same with the cycling experience. Then I’ll decide what to do when I grow up. Larry said: “You wait and see.” I’m new this year.
LM: Off-season is travel, visiting family, staying home in summer time, mollifying my wife for allowing me to do this. That was a real moment when I told her I was teaching skiing. “Going to do what?” She wondered if I had really retired. I approach this the same way I did medicine, at 100 percent. I’m out every day even though I’m still on a part-time agreement.
BP: My former spouse had exactly the reaction Larry’s did. Then when I was spending days and days in training she was pretty upset. Five or so years later she left her job and became a ski instructor.
LZ: When Phil and I got together, he taught me to ski, and he says “she taught me how to be patient.” That brought me more into the culture of skiing. This year was the turning point. I have skis that I love.
MC: What do you do, Debbie?
Debbie Sbarbaro: My real job is as a nurse.
JS: I told my partners I was going to leave them ten years ago.
DS: It’s nice to see how excited he gets.
KS: My wife is teaching as well. She loves the coat.
LM: It’s all about that. Except the zipper pulls.
JS: You’ve got to have a paper clip.
MC: How about you, Phil?
PP: I used to do a lot of wilderness guiding, but over the last two years I’ve been building a house. When I got here, I decided I didn’t like the way my real estate agent treated me, so I got a broker’s license, just to do it for my own account. Just to do it for myself. Remodel, rent, or sell.
MC: Kim?
KS: I have a landscape business in the summer and it’s done very well. We have a house down in Texas on the coast.
TM: I’m pretty busy. I volunteer one day a week at a public radio station. I fly-fish, play golf three times a week. And as a grandfather I spend ten weeks of the summer in Wisconsin. My grandchildren go to camps and they fish. We’re four minutes from the golf course. And I sail three to four weeks.
LM: Retirement depends where you come from. People are very active and then they quit. The beeper, the cell phone, they’re on-call. I think those folks wither. Their days were all occupied and now there are a lot of hours in the day. One of my partners in Dallas, he’s going to die in the operating room. Short of being a Cowboys fan, his only interests are medicine and surgery. The other model is if you retire, you have to know when you’ve had enough. Work another year and you never realize you have enough to live the life you live.
JS: The hardest thing about the transition is most physicians tie up their self-worth in what they do to patients, then to go to being a first-year ski instructor at the bottom of the pole. This is the first time I applied in 37 years I applied for something, but it’s good for you. Now I’ve got a new sense of self-worth that I did it.
TM: You define yourself by your job or who you are. When I decided to retire and told my colleagues, a third thought it was crazy, a third were non-committal, and a third were very envious.
LZ: What would have been choice number two for retirement?
LM: I have no idea.
PP: My other summer job as an operations manager at the Aspen Music Festival. They’ve been calling me back for twelve years.
BP: I play the cello, and I took music lessons from the cello faculty at the Music Festival, and I’m in a string quartet. It helps you ward of senility.
JS: Like teaching skiing
LM: There is longevity in this job.
BP: We call it the wrinkle room.