Skidlärarpodden

Speaker 1 (00:00)
Alright, welcome to another episode of Skidlärarpodden. And we're speaking English again. We thought it was so much fun the last time. So we've invited another English speaker today to the podcast. So warm welcome to you, Dave Burrows.

Speaker 2 (00:15)
Hi, how are you? Thank you for doing this in English. My Swedish as you can imagine is non-existent.

Speaker 1 (00:21)
Yeah,

and we're trying to grow the listening base of our podcast and also tell a bit about geostructing outside of Sweden, which is super exciting to have you here. Where are you talking to us from today?

Speaker 2 (00:40)
So I am currently in my house where I live in Valdilie in Switzerland. Valdilie is one of the villages that's connected to the Port du Soleil, which is an enormous Franco-Swiss ski area, not far off geographically from Lake Geneva.

Speaker 3 (00:59)
You know, I've been skiing there.

Speaker 2 (01:02)
UK

Speaker 3 (01:02)
I worked two winters in Champéry.

Speaker 2 (01:06)
No way. So that's like I can see shampoos from my house. How about that? Wow. How did you like it?

Speaker 3 (01:12)
little

tongue. I loved it so much.

Speaker 2 (01:15)
interesting because a lot of the Swedes they end up in Verbier but that would seems to be the logical place that you will go to.

Speaker 3 (01:22)
I was one of two Swedish people in the ski school.

Speaker 2 (01:26)
How about that? Wow. We could do with more Swedes here, think. know, Verbié tends to steal them all. ⁓ I can understand why you'd go there, you know, like if you're Swedish, you have a community, you know, know, loads of other Swedes, it's probably really cool. But, obviously the terrain is pretty big there. But yeah, it's a cool place. You know, I really like the Port de Soleil. I've been here a long time. Been coming here even before I was in the industry, coming here on holidays and stuff. But it's...

Speaker 3 (01:31)
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:55)
Yeah, it's a cool spot. You can travel, you can kind of make, I think that's why people like it. They make days out of, know, are we going to go two here today? It's such a vast area that you can't really, you can only ski from one side of it to the other, you know, in a day almost. And it's just limitless. You can ski a different bit of it every day for whole week.

Speaker 3 (02:14)
And you can also end up in the wrong side of the system without coming home. Because it's so big.

Speaker 2 (02:22)
You are the number of times where I've-

Speaker 3 (02:24)
Always

watching what time is it, what time is it, we need to go there, we need to go over that.

Speaker 2 (02:32)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The number of times where I'm just, yeah, at the top of like a lift late on in the afternoon and someone will ski up to me and go, how do I get to a warrior? I'm like,

Speaker 3 (02:34)
just not home this time.

You don't suck.

Speaker 2 (02:49)
Get

to there from here. It's just a 300 euro taxi. There's no other way. You're so far away. All the lifts are all shutting. You just haven't got a clue. You haven't got a chance of getting there. It's really easy to get lost.

Speaker 3 (03:03)
But you're speaking very British English, so it doesn't sound like you're from Switzerland. Tell us where you come from.

Speaker 2 (03:12)
I am Swiss now, so I hold British and a Swiss passport. I get much more use out of my Swiss passport these days. The British one has like zero use coming back into Switzerland. You have to stand in the kind of the rest of the world queue, which takes forever. Originally I was born in London. I grew up there. I was there until I was about 33. Then I came out to the Alps and tried to make a life in skiing. That's kind of my story.

My connection with skiing came from my school used to run a school ski trip. So when you were about, I can't remember how old it was, 12, maybe 14, probably more like 12, I would say you got the chance to go on the school ski trip, which meant you got on a bus, a coach, you know, you traveled 24 hours to somewhere in Austria. think it was St. Johann in Kitzbühler, somewhere like that.

I spent a week there, we ate it, know, obviously had a feeling for it and some memories of that trip, but not very many. And that's what initially got me skiing. You know, in the run up to that, we did a few lessons on a local dry ski slope and I just kept skiing, kept on skiing from that point. And I think I've got into snowboarding shortly after that and I was snowboarding in the indoor snow domes quite a lot in Milton Keynes and Hemel Hempstead.

Eventually was going on holidays and trips to the Alps and kind of made the trip out here and out here. Events forced themselves upon me to come out here and change my life around. Here I am.

Speaker 3 (04:46)
Are you teaching as well?

Speaker 2 (04:50)
Yeah. I managed to plug through 130 hours worth of teaching last year, which is probably more than I should be doing as the director of a ski school. I want to be out on the mountain. You have to be out there as the boss, you have to be out there showing that you can do it. And I think you have to be, your skiing has to be really presentable, so you've got to ski to a really good level.

Also, I go and ski like special and teach like special missions. You know, I seem to specialize in really nervous, middle-aged women. That's my, my, my, ⁓ specialty. But every now and then I'll take on, so there'll be, you know, like a little kid project that I'll take on. right. That, that one is mine. That little five-year-old, I'm going to teach him how to ski. That's got to, and I also fill in holes. So, you know, if someone's sick or someone's absent or someone, you know, is not there.

Every now and then I'll drop into one of the ski groups or the school groups and stuff, just to make sure I've still got it.

Speaker 3 (05:54)
Because you're running a ski school as well.

Speaker 2 (05:57)
Yes, it's my ski school called Snow Pro Ski School. based here. Last year we were about 16 instructors at our highest point. Most of those are based in the Port de Soleil, but we've also got four based over in Villa and those guys do amazing work over there.

Speaker 3 (06:14)
Are you educated in the British system or do you have the Swiss ski instructor system?

Speaker 2 (06:25)
So

I've done a bit of both. So I reached a point, I think in about 2015 or 2016, I was majority of the way through the British system. So I started with a summer gap course in 2009 with the Warren Smith Ski Academy. Did the level one and two there, then worked my way through the three, worked my way through the four. I sort of got to a place where I was sort of thinking, the whole

whole of this system is pointed towards France, right? Like it's got the Euro test at the top. The big goal for everybody who goes through or was at that time going through the British system was, know, I want to work in France, we're going to be an independent teacher. And I was just like, I just don't want that. I was living in Switzerland by that time, married to a Swiss, you know, a Swiss kid. My future's in Switzerland. I don't need to be pointed towards France. It just makes no sense.

I had applied to Swiss No Sports who had for an equivalence, had offered me to come along to the international equivalence exam. So I flipped over into the Swiss system, passed all their tests and then I went through and did all of the other tests, including the full Brevet in the Swiss system. So I'm not a conversion from a full Basie to a Swiss Brevet. I actually went and did the Swiss.

Brevet test, is probably the hardest thing I've ever done. Honestly. Yeah. And then that's kind of, you know, you arrive at the top of a system, which is pretty cool. It's nice to have. It's nice to have that.

Speaker 1 (08:06)
Can you tell us a bit more about that test for Nicole Brevet? How does it work and what do do?

Speaker 2 (08:14)
So if I go through all the various bits of it, so the international equivalence test, essentially you go there and you ski with the head of education for the Swiss snow sports. Mine was with a guy called Arsene. He was the head of education for Swiss snow sports. He took a look at my skiing. They assessed you over two days and they say, yeah, you're either good enough or you're not. Turns out I was good enough. But all that means is that I have skied to a decent level at once. One point in freight, like you achieved was it.

Speaker 1 (08:43)
level.

Speaker 2 (08:44)
So I'm not saying I'm the best gear in the world, but you know, at one point I was good enough. Then you have to take various modules off, then have to either convert your, um, Bayesian European mountain safety as it was called then. think it's called the IMS now. Um, I don't even know if that's the way that the Swiss are doing it now. I think you have to go and take their EMS equivalent. You have to take a law and tourism course, which these days you can do in English, which is pretty cool. Have to, for the Breve, you have to submit a dissertation.

So like a written project or something. On a topic which is topic is assessed, you have to keep it fairly narrow because you haven't got a great deal of time. Same with all of these tests written projects. I did mine on fatigue in ski instructors over the course of a ski season. And then you go along to the full Brevet exam, which is an oral exam. So you go into a room, there's an assessor and a guy who asked the questions.

think it's five out of six topics. My memory is pretty hazy of this. You know, I buried it deep. It was so hard. But the, the, you pick a number of topics. The one I did not pick was the law because it was too complex in French. We just didn't understand it. So I picked questions on the others. So I can't remember what the others were. So it's teaching, technical.

I think mountain safety, off-piece mountain safety, tourism, something else. can't remember what the other one was. You go in, you have to defend your dissertation. So you have to make a short presentation on your dissertation. You know, tell them what it is and why you did it. They ask you questions on it. So you've got to defend your dissertation. Then they ask you a series of questions on each of those five topics. The whole thing takes about 25, 30 minutes. And then that's it. Then a couple of weeks later, they write to you to tell you whether you passed or you failed.

was that. The issue for me was all the textbooks were in French. so when I try to revise those textbooks,

You know, know about skiing, but you've got to know about the individual models, their theories and all that sort of stuff. The thing is when you try to read that in French or when I tried to read it French, it just wouldn't go in. So I then, so what I did is I translated all of the textbooks into English. I revised it in English and then I translated it back into French so I knew all the French stuff. French is pretty good. Like it's, it's more or less fluent. It's not amazing, but it's, it's good enough to run a business out here.

Speaker 3 (11:00)
Thank

Speaker 2 (11:24)
That was the hardest bit was, was trying to get all of this information from the textbooks to sink in so that you could answer literally any question that might come up. It was awful. Really, really hard. Really hard.

Speaker 1 (11:39)
Are you, or rather in education and certification, is that sort of the end point or what happens? Like how does ISIA come in to the system?

Speaker 2 (11:50)
You get the ISIA card once you have the Brevet, the full Brevet. I think the ISIA stamp, which is a level three equivalent. don't know how the Swedish system works. We'll have that competition another day. So at level three level, I think is instructor plus maybe mountain safety, maybe tourism and law. That's when you get the ISIA stamp.

Your skiing is finished at what they call ⁓ the IK exam or the Instructeur degré de... I don't know what they call that anymore. But that's where the skiing finishes. And that is ISA stamp level. And I think the card is with the full exam. Then you have to go and present yourself.

Speaker 3 (12:43)
But you have a podcast. ⁓

Speaker 2 (12:47)
I do.

Speaker 3 (12:48)
The ski instructor podcast. Directly translated to Swedish it will be skilärareboden. Is it the same? Maybe, Yes, it is. So we are colleagues. When did you start and how did you start? What's the motivation to keep on doing it?

Speaker 2 (12:59)
Excellent.

Yeah.

Motivation comes and goes. Yeah, I'll come to that I think a bit later, but the reason I started it was because I came out of the top of the ski instructor system and you end up in this weird place and you finished something, but then there's no more exams to take. Right? You get the badge and you put it in a jacket. Yeah, you stop learning. You stop going along to these things. Right? And so all of this time going through the system.

You've been used to learning stuff, each new things each year you go along a trainer, so which is something cool. That all disappeared. I was just like, okay, I'm just like in the wilderness here. I thought about doing a couple of other different things. The sort of like a mini inter-ski, like a ski congress thing, a little bit like Warren Jobbett has done. I had that idea and I didn't do anything about it. It looked too logistically complicated.

I had an idea about doing a thing called masterclass where you would invite like experts and then people would just come along like, you know, to seminars. With that, I went as far as trying to find out how much it would cost to get Dave Riding from the World Cup to come along and see if anyone would be interested in coming along to that. He was very, very expensive for a full day. And so that didn't go anywhere either. And so I thought to myself, why don't I just stop, you know.

do a podcast. I've been listening to podcasts for years. I could just interview people and I could get all of these amazing people on that I know and I could just learn from them. Also, you've got something down. It would be like leaving a legacy of all these people. You've got all these amazing interviews and you're just sort of saying, well, here's what they were thinking about skiing, just making it open access for everybody.

It would be a way if you were say level one or level two instructor, or you're just trying to get into the industry, be a way to shortcut all of that knowledge that I had to go and find, got from being on courses and stuff. And that was the purpose essentially of the idea was to say, you know, let's just, you know, if you're coming through, here's a bunch of resources and you can listen to all these different people think about how skiing works and how it should be done. And I think that's.

going to be the sort of the legacy of it is all of those interviews are just there. You can dip into any of them and just find out what people were thinking.

Speaker 3 (15:43)
And who's listening to your podcast?

Speaker 2 (15:46)
Every now and then I go into the stats and it seems to me, obviously it's from Anglophone countries. There's a lot of British people, there is people from the US and Canada, but the rest of it, there's a whole bunch of people from all over the world and I don't know who they are or what their motivation is for listening to it. I don't really keep a track of anything. And as we were saying before we turned the recording on, essentially I don't even market it that hard because I don't want it to be a commercial thing.

I've got enough commercial things going on in my life. I don't need to try and push a podcast as well. I just want to do it for my own purpose, which gets me out, gets me meeting people and it keeps me learning.

Speaker 3 (16:29)
It sounds like that's the motivation, the learning.

Speaker 2 (16:34)
It is, yeah. And I try not to lose sight of that. I do push it on, say, Facebook, so I just chuck it into various groups, but I spend literally a minute on doing that. People just seem to find it. That's how I'm not fussy about it. Like say, I'm just trying to leave a record behind of all of this.

Speaker 3 (16:52)
I know the feeling.

Speaker 1 (16:53)
Yeah. And I think that, I think what we've learned is that when you have, call it fantastic guests, it's sort of does the job for itself. And also I think building on Anna's question is that we've had the fortune to meet quite a bit of listeners that express how much it means, because I think the people that we are talking to, there's nothing like it. There's no.

Like this is such a niche. mean, we're a niche of a niche on a ski instructor podcast in Swedish, but it's, I think that's the strength of it, right? That because we are talking to a very specific listener and they feel, they feel spoken to it. So have you had any like favorite interaction with a listener yet?

Speaker 2 (17:45)
I get people writing to me. This guy called Bill from Montreal, writes to me like really often and we're sending correspondence backwards and forwards. That's cool. But lots of other people write to me with kind of inspirational stories, which is an amazing thing. I bump into people who say that they listen to the podcast. People are just like, I don't know how, maybe they're looking out for me. I can't be looking out for me. would be...

big headed and they see, oh, that is a guy in a snow broach jacket or something. I wonder if that's Dave. I've had, you know, I've been standing in lift queues and people have been so, oh, it's you. That's amazing. It's not got that many, you know, downloads in terms of, terms of the, you know, the overall number of, but I guess, like you say, it fulfills a very specific niche. If you type in like,

skiing podcasts into, into Apple search. There's not that many that come up and there's not that many are doing it in a kind of a long format. So I think I'm probably the person that's doing it in that style. And all of mine don't tend to be, they're not like Tom Gelley's ones, for example, where Tom's like, you know, Megan, you know, he won't mind me saying this, like Megan nerding out on tech detail and stuff like that. But that's, that's his thing. And if you want that, that's cool because he's providing that.

What mine seems to have gone more towards is not so much technical, although some are like that, but not all. Most of them are like personality pieces or they're like stories. It's like, how did you get here? How did you end up here? How do you think about these things? I don't want to limit them just to a certain amount of time. That's the thing that I want to do. So if they run three hours, they run three hours and I'll split the episode up. It doesn't bother me. And I think people really appreciate that.

I think there is this myth that podcasts should only be like an hour or something or less than an hour. I don't think that's the case. think people really, really enjoy a long format. I think the hour thing is probably if you're commercializing podcasts. If you don't really care about whether it's commercial or not, think you could just make it more whatever you want it to be.

Speaker 1 (19:57)
I understand this might be like picking a favorite child, but do you have like a top three episodes that you want? Like this is what I would recommend you to start with from your library.

Speaker 2 (20:10)
Ay, you put me on the spot now. The one that I think is one of the most popular ones, which was reasonably controversial at the time, is I went to interview Simon Butler. So Simon was quite a controversial character. He was the guy that's taking on the ESF in France.

Speaker 3 (20:28)
Hmm, what?

Speaker 2 (20:30)
So that's to this day is an incredibly popular one. Um, one of the original ones, in fact, number one, which was Phil Smith, which is, you know, I'll always have some affection for that because, you he was there and I just, you know, it was the first time I tried it. I literally just recorded it on my phone in a, in a hotel reception. You know, he had a lot of amazing things to say, you have to appreciate it. It was probably something like 70 plus episodes in, in a long format. can't really remember.

everybody that's ever been on it. I'm not really someone who is sort of hung up on the past. So for me, it's all about who's coming up and what I'm doing in the present. Really, I'm not really stuck on kind of, that was an amazing one. I've got like a list now of ones that I want to do. That's got plenty of names on it. Yeah. So I'm, you know, on the way to 100, that's for sure. There's enough there to get to to hundreds of episodes.

Speaker 3 (21:26)
Do you have a dream guest?

Speaker 2 (21:29)
That's a great question. No, actually not. What happens is that the way that I do it is that if I just come across someone who's interesting, I just write their name down on a list and then I work out how to find a connection to that person. I imagine you guys have got a similar list and mine is a really scruffy bit of paper. Yours is probably super organized, you're way more organized than I am. Yeah, I've just got this scruffy bit of paper and I know, fact today I thought of it, I've got to bring Bill because Bill's...

I said I'd call him in May and I'm going to see him. You know, that'll be a good one because it's in person. And I've got a bunch of others as well. So, you know, I've probably got six like recordings either. So I've got enough to get through to the autumn easily because I publish on a schedule about once a month. I'd say there's 20 more probably that I'd love to get stuck into, but I haven't got anyone that sort of, do you know who I would love actually?

to get would be Richie Berger. I'd love to get to Richie Berger, but apparently he's bit of a recluse. Just because I love the way he skis and he's been around forever and a lot of the videos that he's got online in terms of his technique and style are personally very inspirational to him. And I'd love to chat to him about the evolution of skiing from like how it was in the eighties and nineties all the way through to now.

He doesn't ski that much differently, but the equipment's changed obviously under his feet. And he's also like, huge in the Far East. I don't know. I just, I think it'd be an amazing story to get that. But, and I know someone who knows him, but apparently he's not, he's not, you know, mega keen on interviewing. I might put him back on my list and have another go, but we'll see. I've tried.

Speaker 3 (23:22)
How often do you ski with your guests in the podcast?

Speaker 2 (23:29)
⁓ like never. ⁓ lot of the people that have been podcast guests have been like people who've taught me in the past. You know, like I was very lucky or grateful that, that, the guy who was very, very influential for me, a called Peter Kuhl. ⁓ I learned so much from that guy and I've done a very, very interesting podcast with him. which is well worth a listen. He knows everything.

Speaker 3 (23:38)
Mm, that's

Speaker 2 (23:57)
He's the guru. I have skied with a lot of these people or skied maybe past them. No, I don't go regularly skiing with a lot ⁓ of the guests. They're just people that I've come across.

Speaker 3 (24:11)
In this podcast, we have had like a team for a while. Joel has been training a lot for the Swedish. How do you say it? Examen.

Speaker 1 (24:26)
Exams, the sweetest certification.

Speaker 3 (24:28)
So that has been a team for a while. We have interviewed guests who's worked with it and mental training and lots of things to ⁓ perform ⁓ when it's time. As you described, when you did your test, do you have a team sometimes when you get stuck into something, when you have the same question for many guests?

Speaker 2 (24:56)
Let me see. That's good question. So I have a format that I use for the podcast interviews, which sort of goes something like, tell me about your ski history. That's like the first. So before the podcast goes live, send them a list of questions or topics to think about. So I'm not looking for them to come back.

you know, to write out my paragraphs and come up with an answer. Like, you know, it's not that kind of interview. I do say to them, would you have a think about these topics? These are topics that I want to talk about. And that normally will be based on what I know about them and what I've seen on their social media. The podcast normally starts with like, how did you get into skiing? What's your story? And then we'll get into the meat of the topic. Which.

I think will be the most interesting to the guest. As you know, I think interviewing people is an art in itself. know, knowing not to make it about yourself, knowing when to shut up and just let someone talk, knowing when to let someone talk, even if they're making a fool of themselves. Because it's not my place to make that judgment. It's the listener's place to make that judgment. And essentially you're trying to get out of the way

so that the listener can form their own opinion of that person. And then the other thing I really like is like disappearing off onto tangents. That's one of my favorite things is like the weird stuff that comes out and the odd places you end up going. And then the role I try to put myself in, which is quite, I think quite difficult to do on the fly, but it's possible, which is to say,

I've got to imagine myself as the listener and during the interview process, I've got to ask the question that I think the listener would want to know the answer to. So not just me, but I'm also sitting there, you know, I'm interested in certain things. I imagine myself as though I was driving in the car somewhere and I didn't ask that particular question. So I, you know, I always got a pen in me. I just like write those down quickly while we're in the middle of the conversation because it's important I think to come back and

do those points that I think the listener would like to know the answer of. Because it might be that I already know the answer as an expert within the ski system or one of the ski systems, but it might be that the listener doesn't. It's really important, I think, to bear in mind that you're not just the host. You've also got to be aware that you've got to look at it as a potential listener as well, who doesn't necessarily know everything.

Speaker 1 (27:52)
But you said that you lived a different life before coming down to the Alps and doing sort of a career switch. What were you doing prior to becoming sort of a professional ski instructor in that way? And what inspired you to leave that behind?

Speaker 2 (28:09)
Yeah. What inspired me to leave that behind was the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis of 2008. I went to work in the city, the city of London in financial stuff when I was 18, so I couldn't wait to get out of school. Went to work for various banks, Barclays, JP Morgan, Bank of New York, Citibank, various others. Laterally, I ended up being

something called a commercial finance broker. So what we would do is arrange finance for people who wanted to buy hotels or other stuff, commercial property, commercial property investment, healthcare, that kind of stuff. And all of that relied upon the banks lending money at fairly fine margins. The opportunity essentially was for us to save clients' money compared to what they could get with their own

bankers. We did quite a lot of that and it went very well. I was working for another firm. Eventually we started our own brokerage, which was cool. Good times, really amazing fun. When the 2008 credit crisis came around, essentially there was a market that provided funds for all of the banks called the interbank market. That's where the banks got their money. Overnight, the interest rates tripled, quadrupled and there was no money to lend.

at, certainly not at the rates that we had been lending it at. And as such, was no business to be done. The only business that we, you we would have had to diversify into God knows what gradations, bankruptcy stuff. don't know. And neither of us wanted to do that. So my business partner went off and he carried on financial advisor. He's still doing that. He's very successful. He's just almost retired actually now. And I came out here to ski. So I drew up a big list of stuff I like to do.

And skiing was at the top of it. And then at the end of that first season, I didn't want to go home. So I had to find. And, I became a football, football coach, soccer coach, depending on who's, how you call it. Yeah. And, and I just, you know, then it was a case of like, how do I make money out of skiing? There's a couple of ways, but really the only way that you can really do it is by getting your own ski school and having people working for you.

Speaker 1 (30:37)
How has it been sort of building a business in another country and how is Snowprose doing today?

Speaker 2 (30:43)
It's nice that you ask. The ski school is doing very well. We had another record year. We were up something like 50 % on the year before and every year just keeps on getting bigger and bigger and more complex. Last year in terms of complexity was not that complex because we didn't really have any issues. didn't have any nonsense, no staff issues. We just had a great year where everyone worked really well together. That was fantastic. And we got through a ridiculous amount of work.

When my colleague Alicia told me at end of the year, she was just like, you realize that we've done this much extra compared to the year before. was like, that's why it felt a bit busy. But our systems held up and everything worked and we made three mistakes, which everyone tells me is amazing compared to the volume of lessons that we did. Good enough. I'm very unhappy about that. the reason that I'm unhappy about that I should say is because

Though it's a mistake from our end, it messes up. So they were like system mistakes. A bit of technology didn't work or something. so the instructor wasn't there or, that happened twice. So one was a system mistake. one of the instructors granddad died the night before and he was a bit caught up. You know, that was understandable. We managed to save that one, but there were two mistakes that were system mistake or something that we didn't know about. The issue with those things is that you're messing up.

someone's holiday or their life in some way. Whilst people say to me, yeah, that's, you know, it's really, you know, it's an amazing error rate, but like, it's an amazing thing. We, we managed to get through the season with only that many errors. We've, we've, we've messed up someone's holiday, right? It's not good enough. You're stuck, they didn't show up. That is not good enough. It has to be perfect. And so that's what I drive towards. Not everyone.

It's on the same boat as me, but I'm the leader and I have to set the tone. In terms of the journey itself, obviously before you start a business in Switzerland, you've got to get yourself qualified to Brevet level. So that was the first objective to qualify for a certain A system. Yeah. And then you have two options, right? You can go and work for yourself. So you can be an independent, but you've only got so many hours in the day that you can sell. So you're limited in terms of how much you can earn.

Or you start a ski school and you have this multiplying force of how many people can work for you. You don't have to be on the mountain. And that's, as far as I can see that, selling your time for a ridiculously high premium is the only two ways that you can make it work. I think probably, there is one third way, which I'm very interested in, but Tom's already cornered the market on it, which is to essentially be an online ski coach.

⁓ you know, then you've got a whole different business model, which is more like a tech model where you've got a bunch of subscribers and they pay you every month irrespective of whether you show up or not. That's a cool model. I kind of like that, but I, I'm too late. There's already like two or three people doing that. not, and I haven't got the time. It's not my skill set. Yeah. Long story short, that's how it evolved. And the thing that's been the most interesting to me in recent times is how you go about building that.

Speaker 3 (34:07)
When is your high season? How many high seasons do you have?

Speaker 2 (34:12)
Yeah, December to April. actually here in the Port de Soleil, it's pretty short. it goes from about mid December to, well, I don't know, we've extended that recently. Like we've been using the Glacier 3000 quite a lot. Actually we're getting lessons in November now, but November to essentially first or second week of April is our season. So, you you're looking at five months.

Speaker 3 (34:36)
Do you instructors coming in for like a few weeks when you have some extra, when you have more work or guests? Is it the same persons who's working the whole winter?

Speaker 2 (34:51)
I would like it to be that, I want our ski school. So we have a slightly different model to everybody else. So we have a couple of very nice contracts where we work with international schools, which provides a whole bunch of work in January and March. In February, so February high season, literally anyone could start a ski school and you make money out of it. Right. That's like shooting fish in a barrel. We don't have to look that hard for customers.

during that time, they find us. We don't really do that much marketing for high season to be honest. Same applies for Christmas, New Year. So we get those people because they're coming and there's an undersupply of ski teachers. But if you don't have work in January and March, you haven't got a ski school. So you have to find a solution for that if you're going to run a ski school. We're very lucky in that we work with a few schools for that and that keeps us busy during that period. And that in itself,

also allows us to attract staff because they see how busy we are and that we've got work to give. So I've been very much occupied with how to build the business. I would say almost to the point of obsession, you know, it's like my baby and I want it to be amazing. I don't know, that also has taken away a little bit from my own skiing in the last few years. Like it's only in the recent years, the last maybe two years that I've really concentrated really hard and trying to bring back my skiing to a decent level.

because it's been so preoccupied with trying to get the business off the ground and make it to be what I want it to

Speaker 1 (36:24)
Who do you hire to your ski school? Who are you looking for?

Speaker 2 (36:30)
I have a ⁓ target of trying to have 75 % of my staff return year on year. So we don't hire much if we hire at all. These days, unfortunately, so all of our work is in English. We don't really have much use for languages. So the majority of our work is done in English. That used to be okay when we used to be able to hire British people because there's a sort of oversupply of well-qualified British ski instructors who

understand, you know, lot of our clients are international people, but essentially most of them want their tuition in English. We've got on the team, people that speak Spanish, Czech, French, ⁓ German, that kind of covers most of what we need, to be honest. So what I'm trying to do lately is push the level upwards.

So I don't really want to be taking on too many more level ones and two instructors, mainly because I don't want to be constantly making that judgment that we are trying to sell this lesson to. Is the instructor good enough to be able to teach them? So we don't take on people with no experience and we don't take on people below, ideally below a certain qualification level.

So we're a great place for people between levels two and four, you know, to learn workloads and progress their level of skiing. you've got a lot of good skiers in the ski school who are able to pass on what they know. But yeah, in terms of recruitment, we've taken enough chances on people who don't have experience to learn our lesson on that. We can't do that anymore. Especially with the price that we charge for and we only do private lessons, right? You you're taking a real chance on someone if they've got no experience.

We've been burnt like that before. And like I I'm trying to gradually up the level of the school where essentially I want to be taking on maybe level threes and above. I think we're a really good place for those people, especially with the work that we do. It's all lovely, lovely work. It's not hard. We don't do group collectives. ⁓ It's just like private lessons and international school stuff and nice tourists.

Speaker 3 (38:47)
If

we have Swedish listeners who are curious and looking for a job in Switzerland.

Speaker 2 (38:55)
You should write to me and you should people, more people should write to me. And yeah, I think the bit that really, the bit that really works for me is, the bit that I really want when they write to me is that I need to know that you're interesting. That's the main thing. If you, in an average lesson, right? Right, Joel and Anna, in an average lesson, how much time do you spend sitting on the lift? Yeah, at least half. 30, 50%, right? Something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:13)
interested in.

Speaker 2 (39:27)
You as a ski instructor have to be able to converse with a really wide, diverse range of people, right? Like you might be chatting with a kid who's six. What do you know about what six year olds like? Then the next day you might have another lesson and the guy that comes is the CEO of a company that manufactures plants or something, right? Like, what do you know about that? What do you know about that guy's life?

The next day you might have private lesson with a nervous middle-aged woman. Can you empathize with her and all of her issues? You've got to be so wide in your ability and you've got to be interesting in your own right. So, know, like what do you do in your spare time? What is it you're into? Do you play guitar? I don't know. Do you rock climb? Whatever it might be, whatever your interest is, it doesn't matter really what it is.

But as long as you're interesting and you have the ability to relate to different kinds of people, I think that actually is way, way more important than qualifications. The qualifications, all that is really is it just tells me roughly on a scale how good you are at skiing. Right. It just tells me you've done a certain amount of hours. And so it means that I don't have to put your CV to that side.

I can put it over that side and say, yeah, okay, he's got a level three or he's got a level two. Like I know what his skiing is going to look like. ⁓ I don't know how much kind of teaching experience he's done, but they're the things I'm looking for mainly is, you interesting? Have you got experience? Can I just like leave you to it? Because you'll remember from your time when you were in Champery, like it's quite an independent kind of place. Like you haven't really got a great deal of support. You're out just teaching skiing. lot of the time you're just doing your own thing.

There isn't like a, it's not like, you know, working in, I don't know, Vale or something. You've got, know, you're in the kiddie garden and then you've got a manager who's telling you what, you know, all the things you've got to do. Your lesson, Anna, is at the top of the lift at two o'clock. this is her name. This is her ski level. Good luck. That's how it is.

Speaker 3 (41:42)
On the way to the lift in the morning you pass a cafe. The manager of the ski school is sitting there and giving us those yellow small notes. So you got one today. Okay, is it six hour or three hour? Okay, six hour. Let's go.

Speaker 2 (41:53)
Yeah, I give-

And it's like that, and that catches people out a little bit. So we had a lovely, lovely guy join our team this year called Valentin. He's Argentine. He was working previously at Northstar in the US and he was working within that sort of corporate structure, right? So he didn't really just showed up to the place that he had to show up to. know, he did his thing. We expected him and he was lost, you know, really with us. He won't mind me saying that he was lost with us for maybe the first month or, you know, we expect our people to be really, really independent.

And that's tough, you know, if you haven't got that in you. ⁓

Speaker 3 (42:39)
loved it. It was perfect for me.

Speaker 2 (42:41)
Yeah. And it is for a lot of people, right? You just show up where you've got to be. You know, I try to make our ski school, ⁓ just like all you've got to do is show up and deliver a good lesson. That's all I want you to do. Don't want you to do anything else. That's, that's my only criteria. Really. I don't ask you to be at a lineup. I don't ask you to do anything extra, extra beyond that. I just want you to be there on time, ideally before. Meet the guests, give them an amazing experience.

go home. There's nothing more to it than that. Not everyone has that ⁓ capability to adapt on the fly. Their guest needs, a lot of people need a lot of direction and that's the problem. You're trying to look for all of those qualities, but you're only doing it on the basis of a 30 minute interview. That's hard.

Speaker 3 (43:31)
I don't know if there still is, but when I worked in Champery, was on the French side one of those restaurants that was very famous and had one of those chilean stars. You know which one I'm talking about?

Speaker 2 (43:47)
yeah, okay. I

think so. Yeah, I don't remember the name.

Speaker 3 (43:52)
I don't remember the name. Very often the thing was to go there on time, have lunch and go back. They didn't really have the ski technique to do it on their own. So they need help to get there because it's quite a long distance to go on skis. Long way. Terrific lunch. And then, oops, back again. I like teaching.

Speaker 2 (44:15)
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:21)
And I like when everybody is getting more out of the skiing and they don't get so tired if they ski properly. So I had one guest, he was like, can you stop teaching me? You're supposed to take me. I was like, if you're going to do this again, you're going to do it.

On half the time, you just do as I say. Three days later he was like, I booked you again. okay. Do you have one more reservation? No, this time it's skiing.

Ski-er, a skier. You made a skier? Sounds more like-

Speaker 2 (44:58)
That's like

kind of like a Zermatt or a Vervier experience rather than ⁓ a Port de Soleil experience. My experience of this area is that people come here to ski. They're not really about the kind of the going to lunch. can't remember the last time I

Yeah, it's funny

Speaker 3 (45:20)
Took

me to London afterwards. Come to my hotel.

Speaker 2 (45:25)
Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, amazing.

Speaker 1 (45:31)
I think what you talked about, the skill of a ski instructor to be interesting and also be interested in the guests is also I think why ski instructors are good podcasters. But that's just a recent reflection, perhaps a personal one.

Speaker 2 (45:44)
That's a very, very good point. And I hadn't really considered that one. That's a good point.

Speaker 1 (45:50)
Because in Sweden, it's like you don't really have, or I'd say it's more uncommon to have multiple ski schools in a resort. But if I understood the scale of the Alps is that you do have multiple ski schools. So how does that interact? For example, how many ski schools are in your vicinity? How do you interact between the ski schools?

Speaker 2 (45:58)
⁓

It's pretty friendly. let me think. Champéry, one, two, three. Shutdown. Probably including, we roam between different resorts. So we're not particularly tied to one, but there's three in Champéry. There's one in Champes-en-Borges. There's two in Bourgogne. You know, on the Swiss side, there's probably six or seven other ski schools kicking around. So much competition for work that.

Everybody's fighting with each other. Everyone seems to be doing okay. ⁓ Really everyone's pretty friendly. Like you see another instructor, you wave and say hi. That's normal. When you go to a bigger place,

So I'm thinking, say the occasions that I go to Verbier or whatever, the instructors, they don't say hello to each other unless they already know each other. But it's only because there's something like 20 plus ski schools in one resort. So it's impossible to just be saying hello all the time. So I guess that's why it doesn't really work. So there's niceness about, about, you know, having other, other schools there. And I think in terms of

We have our own little market, talking about niches within niches. We have our own little niches, the kind of guests that we like to ski with. And that isn't the kind of guests that all the other ski schools are trying to attract me. So we're in a very, very small niche market of our own making. It's more like a club almost really. So yeah, we don't get much bother from the other ski schools about

you know, in terms of competition and stuff, because we're not really going after French speaking guests. You know, that's not our thing. We don't want them. So we just, you know, do our own thing and just get on with our stuff. And that's kind of how it goes. It's all pretty, yeah, it's all, know, every now and then there'll be a ski school that's a falling out with another ski sport or something, but that's just the nature of small places and small mountains. It just goes like that. It probably is like that everywhere you go.

I've heard.

Speaker 1 (48:25)
How is the regarding ski instructors, let's say in your place, is there a community? Like how does the, how does ski instructing look around where you are? Like is there community, do you ski together, et cetera? How do you keep evolving?

Speaker 2 (48:36)
around.

I am the wrong person to ask about that because I'm not really one of the guys anymore. As much as I would like to be, I am the boss and the boss doesn't get invited to all of these things. So I think there probably is a community amongst the skein strats of this. Certainly is in Champery. Lots of people hang out together and I could probably testify to that. In the other villages.

Maybe Mojang, certainly, Villa, some of the others not so much. We are a little bit limited by the fact that we just sort of go there, do our private lesson and then go home. So there's not that much sort of hanging around with our guys. There's definitely a scene. I don't know much about it because I don't drink anymore.

at all. I'm not in bars and stuff. So I don't see anybody just, yeah, I've got a family. So I've kind of, I've moved on from that. Like I did all of that. I hit it pretty hard for a long time, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not part of that scene. So I can't, I can't tell you. And I don't really have any idea what the younger folks get up to. Yeah. But also I don't know, I don't know how it is, but there's a whole generation coming through. They don't drink anymore. And this particular generation, especially the younger one,

They're really different to what we were doing. They're very difficult for me, me ⁓ as a Gen X person to relate. You know, I have no idea. I have to have a buffer in between me and my team because I'm too old school. You know, so I've got Max, who's my team boss. I think he's millennial, so he can relate better to the younger people than I can. My approach is too direct. It's too rough. ⁓

We have to have that buffering between me and, and you know, if anything goes wrong, Max provides that little bit of space between me going mental mistakes and, and the instructor on the ground. There, there, is a whole bunch of stuff to do with that, which like say, I just don't see because I'm not in part of that world anymore. I'm swimming in a different lane. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:03)
of awareness, right? To optimize for the outcome.

Speaker 2 (51:08)
Yeah, yeah. Self-awareness of what I am. Yeah. And that's fine. You know, I'm okay. I'm comfortable with who I am. It's just, it's just how it is. We see the world differently and it's about, it's about the environment and the world that you grew up in. And it's so different these days for the kids that are growing up now, coming of age now. They see the world in a very, very different way. And it was different in my time. I'm a product of, you know, like Boomer parents and, and you know, we are what we are, the Gen X people.

There's a real lot of stuff in that generational differences and every generation, my generation, were considered soft by the generations that had just come back from the war.

Speaker 3 (51:54)
But now you're like you're 70 years old. How old are you? I'm older than you.

Speaker 2 (51:58)
⁓ I'm 48. I ⁓

just think, like, I don't know, I see the world in a certain way, but I know the young people don't see it in the same way.

Speaker 3 (52:11)
Very

interesting and you learn so much by hanging out with the younger people.

Speaker 2 (52:17)
Yes, it keeps you young. Yeah, that is cool. It's hilarious sometimes to see the way in which they view the world. It doesn't work like that, but to them it works like that. But for me, doesn't.

Speaker 3 (52:20)
You learn so much about yourself.

But

since you and me are in the same age, I have a question for you that I've been thinking about for a while. When you ski, what's your favourite turn and what's your favourite terrain?

Speaker 2 (52:50)
Great question. So I like, ⁓ I don't like to go fast anymore. I can do half decent long turns as long as it's not too steep. I like, I love doing short turns. Short turns is my thing. Like shmeary short turns. I could do those all day long. That's my movement pattern. My body works really well. this year I stumbled across a few.

Speaker 3 (53:11)
Yes.

Speaker 2 (53:17)
Yeah, I came across a whole different way of thinking about how to get the turn. And that really works for me. It's become a lot softer. And if anything is enhanced, yeah, I think my skiing got better. But my default mode would be that. I also love to ski kind of fairly gentle bumps. love skiing bumps. No, that's too touristy. The chevronet is a nice thing, but it's a tourist trap. There are better bumps.

Speaker 3 (53:38)
Yeah, that's

Speaker 2 (53:45)
Even literally one lift over there are better on the cubore. the, yeah, it's, I don't know. You end up doing what you like.

Speaker 3 (53:55)
But

we did lot of snow.

Speaker 2 (53:58)
Yeah, Chabonet's a lovely place when you've got a lot of snow, but I mean that is not very often. But it's a lovely steepness when it's got a lot of snow.

Speaker 3 (54:07)
It is. And it's long.

Speaker 2 (54:09)
It's long. But what you often find on the Chabonnet from a bumps perspective is that the bumps are really badly formed because it's a real tourist trap, right? the bumps that are on there are the product of the fear. so, you you'll get in a sequence of a few decent ones and then they'll just all be cut off. There'll be like a big line all the way across the slope. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:30)
You need to plan your skiing a lot.

Speaker 2 (54:33)
Yeah, there's better bumps, Phil. It's easier to say that. And it's better to go to those ones than be on the chavonet.

Speaker 1 (54:42)
From the winter that has just passed, how has it been for you? in context, in Sweden, it's been kind of a bad winter for most, like maybe three exceptions, but it's been a bad winter. has it been for you?

Speaker 2 (54:56)
Difference between what a ski instructor thinks is a bad winter or a good winter versus what a ski school director thinks is a good winter. As in, I don't want a ski school director with my hat on for that. I don't want any cancellations. So if it snows a lot, then goes cold and then it's blue skies for two months. All good. Like that's perfect.

Absolutely perfect for me. From a ski instructor perspective, I don't think I skied a single powder day this year. I was just like not available on the days that I was doing something else when those days were there. I maybe skied one or two last year, but the difference was this year. I've got quite a good memory for ski season. I would say this year was the best snow season, not in terms of quantity, but in terms of quality since 2017.

Speaker 3 (55:53)
That's good.

Speaker 2 (55:54)
Yeah. And it was the major difference this year is it snowed early and then it went cold. So the cycle often here in the Port de Soleil is that it, you get these crazy warm bits and then rain. That's what destroys the slopes. But this year it just stayed cold. It came early. The snow came early. We were skiing mid December. It wasn't as early as in previous years.

but it stayed cold. was cold all the way through January, February, March. And we were just skiing this hero snow like every day. Glorious, absolutely glorious. So it was a real peaced year. Like it was a year to be peaced, which is good because that's what I was interested in this year. But the snow, you couldn't fail to ski well on it. It was amazing, really good.

Speaker 3 (56:42)
Does people ⁓ cancel lessons if it snows too much?

Speaker 2 (56:49)
That's right. So if it snows, and especially on weekends, like if you have bad weather on the weekends, you get cancellations. I say you lose money.

Speaker 3 (56:56)
That was so new for me when I came to ⁓ Champery because in Sweden nobody cancels because it's snowing, because it's always snowing in the winter. So I showed up for lesson and Luke came to me, ⁓ it's cancelled, it's snowing. Doesn't you understand? like, no, this is perfect for everybody. No snow, no skiing.

Speaker 2 (57:19)
Yeah.

No, it's a very funny one. So we have, draw a lot of our clients from the Vaux area by the lake. And those people don't want to go skiing as a generalization. Those people don't want to go skiing if the conditions aren't optimal. They're there for a bit of a lesson. Nice ski and nice slopes and a nice lunch on a sunny terrace.

That's kind of often what our clients are looking for. I know, like you can't do that when you can't see or it's foggy or snow's too difficult. And also that has a knock on effect into later on in the season because, know, after the February holidays, most people consider here, a lot of the people who live in that region consider the ski season's over. You know, so they're really only looking at two months because where they live, it's already 20 degrees.

you know, down by the lake. It's tough to motivate people to ski on into April. ⁓ We have to kind of make up constantly telling them the snow is amazing because otherwise they just don't believe it.

Speaker 3 (58:34)
I've got one more thing I'm curious about. Brexit, has it made any difference for you as you're having guests from ⁓ Great Britain?

Speaker 2 (58:49)
No, no, it hasn't changed that at all. The only thing it changed was the availability of British instructors. ⁓ Their ability to come here and work. There's a priority system, Switzerland is part of Schengen. The priority for employing people goes Swiss people, European people, they're essentially all in one bucket.

Speaker 3 (59:04)
Okay.

Speaker 2 (59:18)
rest of the world people. And you have to have a really, really good reason to employ a rest of the world person. So to try and employ a Brit these days would be the same as trying to employ someone from the United States or Japan or whatever. Even though there's proximity to Europe, it's very different. So that's how it is for ski instructors. In terms of how it is for tourists, it doesn't seem to have made any difference. If you can afford to come skiing in Switzerland,

you can afford to come skiing in Switzerland. We don't have people that are on a real budget ski trip. I say this respectfully, it's just how is. Switzerland is an expensive country as I think Sweden is. If you can afford to go on holiday there, then you can. But we're not in the same market as trying to attract people who are on a budget who might be going to Bulgaria or Georgia or various other places that are slightly less expensive.

In my experience, my former business partner used to say this, is that the people with that much money, they don't get poorer. They get more better off. And so we don't see a great change in the number of British people that we know coming here. They're all in the same, they're all in a sort of a similar socioeconomic band.

Speaker 3 (1:00:38)
I have a question that I'm thinking about a lot since I work on a quite high level in Sweden. Don't have that many ⁓ colleagues who's women. The gender equality on the higher level in your ski school, how do

Speaker 2 (1:00:56)
question. have one, two, at the moment we only have three women out of I think a high season of say 15 or 16, which was, includes me, of those, of those, of those ladies of their level. So Gabby has level three, I say stamp.

Alex is working her way towards that. So she's level two, but she's also dual qualified ski and snowboard. She's super valuable to me because of that. Aisling who's working for us in Villa next year has think SSBS level one or two, remember which it is. It's the other Swiss, it's not Swiss snow sports is the other one. I don't know what that equates to. It's something like a level two, think. Last year we had two other women working in the school.

One of them had the ISAA and one of them had a level two. So they broadly, the ladies that we employ broadly fit in with the level of everybody else. In terms of the overall proportions of women to men, it's roughly in line with what we see in the industry. But we also don't get a great deal of applications from women. So when I put out 70 % of the people that apply are men.

I think Verbié gets all the women and Zermatt gets all the women. Like if you go there, there's female instructors everywhere. They just don't come to the port to select. I don't know why. It's probably just less glamorous or something. Who knows? I'm not sure. It just seems to be the way it is, but it's not for want of trying. You know, it's just the case that we don't get the applications.

Speaker 3 (1:02:46)
that's the problem in the industry. There is too little. We need to be more.

Speaker 2 (1:02:53)
How do you do that? mean, what would be the solution? It's an interesting question because I don't think it's not like there's like a sort of a secret group of men who are blocking women, right? that did not exist. So, know, the way I look at it, you know, I'm looking, I did receive just an amazing application actually the other day from a female ski teacher from New Zealand. She's got everything that we want.

Speaker 3 (1:02:58)
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (1:03:22)
literally everything, but I'm not sure that we've got enough work for her. So I need to that conversation with her next week and say, you know, like, I would like to take you on, but I don't want to bring you all the way over from New Zealand to not give you enough work. That's really important to me. I don't want to bring anyone over here without, but she'll be great for somebody. And I'll probably recommend her over to, one of the other ski schools or to someone I know in Verbiere say, and say, you know, look, he's, he's an amazing ski instructor. You should definitely take this person on.

I don't know why necessarily ski instructing is not attracting us. Or do you think it's a dropout rate? What do you think?

Speaker 3 (1:04:01)
Yes, because when in level 1 and 2 there is like 50 % women, 50 % men and when you're passing level 5 and then you're taking your ISIA, the rate is going down. Something is happening after level 2.

Speaker 2 (1:04:22)
What might that be? What do think it is?

Speaker 3 (1:04:26)
I don't know. I want to find out.

Speaker 2 (1:04:29)
It's an interesting question, because it's not like the skiing level is too much. Level 3 is a very achievable level.

Speaker 3 (1:04:36)
It is.

Speaker 2 (1:04:37)
You know, it's very, very achievable.

Speaker 3 (1:04:39)
And

since you have done level 3 you can do level 5.

Speaker 2 (1:04:43)
Yeah

Speaker 1 (1:04:44)
Also

in my experience for the past few years at the Swedish exams, the sort of the gold star or the best ones has been women. The ones that have received that nomination. So it's very much not that.

Speaker 2 (1:04:59)
So the proportionality is there actually at level two, it's about the continuation beyond that. It's about who wants to make it a career, isn't it? Anna, is that what you're more serious ⁓

Speaker 1 (1:05:15)
Yes,

on your note.

Speaker 3 (1:05:16)
I want more people, more women to make a career out of this and do more. I think like everybody who has a Browns' ski school or like me and Joel and you as well having a podcast important that we are making portraits of women as well. We are trying to

Speaker 2 (1:05:39)
Mm.

Speaker 3 (1:05:43)
It's hard to get it like 50 % but it's maybe 40 or something. So we are trying to make it, to lift those people up so we can have good...

Speaker 2 (1:06:03)
They're role models.

Speaker 1 (1:06:05)
Thank you. ⁓

Speaker 2 (1:06:06)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, definitely. mean, if I look back at my podcast, it is, I think, male dominated, but that's not for want of me asking. I've invited a lot of women onto my podcast and a lot of them don't want to come on for whatever reason or aren't interested. But also I think because I'm interviewing people at the upper end generally,

IE form certification, then you're into the same proportionality that we were talking about earlier. You know, like there's only 20 odd percent to choose from out of everybody else. And if you don't know them, you don't know them. So yeah, it's true. I'm actively hunting around for women to interview. Cause I really want that perspective. I want that female perspective on skiing. I also want to have that conversation.

you know, about, you know, female biomechanics and how all that stuff works really in depth with someone who knows all about that from a female perspective. Cause that's a very interesting topic and one in which I come across a lot in our day to day work on the mountain. ⁓

Speaker 1 (1:07:23)
The mission is on. I'm curious, you said this was a piece year for you. Could you take us back to your favorite run of the season? Perhaps paint the picture a bit for me who has never been in Switzerland Ski.

Speaker 2 (1:07:42)
For sure. spent a ridiculous, so my goal this year was to ski more and I started in October. So I was shadowing some stuff for the professional ski instructors of Europe with a view to being able to run our own level one courses. And so that was great getting going quite early on. And then my habit would be

You know, so say I've got a nine or nine 30 less and my habit will be to get up there for the first lift. You know, so eight 30. In La Crozé, we've got an eight man lift, which serves the STAD piece. And next to the race piece, there is another piece of a equivalent sort of pitch and very wide. I tend to kind of keep myself within a five or 10 meter corridor of the left side. I've got just run laps of that until it's time to start my lesson. And so the steepness.

varies. It's a red pitch. It's got steep bits on it. It's got flat bits on it. It's got a nice roller that then goes into something quite steep and then flattens off towards the bottom of the lift. The lift is three minutes, right? So it's not a very long run. I wanted to get into a sort of a groove, a groove movement pattern where I'm kind of

The thing I'm really into at the moment is working with the terrain and painting a really nice picture with the skis on the terrain. So I'm not so much thinking of technique. This year I was thinking a little bit about technique so I'm thinking about keeping quite a long distance between my inside shoulder and my outside leg and keeping the inside shoulder high at the point of angulation.

but with a very long ⁓ inclination. So a long tip in and then a very positive movement once the pressure starts to arrive. Combining that with softening of the old outside knee, which will be the new inside knee. Softening and rolling of that knee over into the turn, which creates a nice soft transition. Letting the skis go away from me using that long inclination movement.

And then waiting for the pressure to build and then feeling the hip come around and feeling a very, very internal feeling of the hip moving underneath my spine as the skis come around, blending all of that movement with, ⁓ with skillful use of the terrain. And so that was my habit every morning this season was just like relentlessly doing that.

And then I'd have another loop where I go around the blue loop. So it's a blue loop that's sort of nice just to roll edge to edge. It's not a very easy blue, but you know, try and generate some power on the flat bit. And then it rolls over into quite a steep red. And then the other thing that I was trying to do was these kind of stiffer smear turns, like a carve turn, but using all of the same movements that I just described earlier. That would be, and those two pieces were kind of more than enough to just amuse me for an hour before.

before work and then just go off and deliver an amazing lesson. that was kind of my habit this season, which was, yeah, it's pretty cool. I didn't really want to let go of that movement pattern. That was the bittersweet feeling at the end of the season. I can feel that I'm skiing well, but it's got to stop because I'm just tired. And so it was a really tricky one towards the end of the season later.

Speaker 3 (1:11:33)
your last ski day.

Speaker 2 (1:11:35)
12th April. Okay. So we finished off a Level 1 exam. then after that, I went and did one more run of exactly what I just described and then just walked away. And that was that. Done.

Yeah, the Queen's season. I work on the ski school. well, in addition to, I've got a whole, I've got a massive, massive list of like things that need doing around the house that have been let go over the winter season because of me just skiing non-stop. So I'm gradually doing a bit of those, which is why I was in the garage earlier. Yeah, I just work on the ski school. So I'm just trying to make sure the big list of things that we can do better is executed well.

And then by the time we get to the end of August, I'm already selling lessons. So we've got in place like the schools programs. So that sets the framework for the season and then it's like private lesson sales after that. And I'll be doing that all the way through September through to December and then into the ski season again. But my plan to start a bit earlier this year. So I'll be going to the Sassvet in September, just in an attempt to try and get that movement pattern back.

Um, as soon as I can, just so that I'm skiing well for the start of the season.

Speaker 3 (1:12:57)
was a good plan.

Speaker 1 (1:12:59)
You mentioned PSIe. Can you tell us a bit more about that because that's quite a new phenomenon.

Speaker 2 (1:13:06)
It is a new phenomenon. The reason that it was attractive to us because we have, the reason that I originally thought about it, I know Jamie and Derek from old, I know Derek really well. He's been on the podcast a couple of times, maybe even three, but they started this. What really attracts me about it is that you can deliver courses under license. As in, if I want to deliver a level one for a certain, I thought about it for the

the international schools that we work with, the schools that we work with, we take them all the way from like baby skiing all the way up to like when they finished school, when they're 18. But in the years from like 16 to 18, they don't get much skiing because they're so busy with exams and whatnot. I said, well, why don't we put in place a ski instructor exam, right? Like you don't have to use it, but you can put it on your resume when you're applying to university or anything like it. So it's a cool thing to have. And it gives us something to aim for at the top of the pyramid.

I looked around and, you know, if you want, you know, if you want someone like Bayesie or Aayzee or any of the, any of the others to come along and deliver one of those for you, you have to pay them for their trainer to come along and deliver the course. And that just wasn't within budget. Certainly not our budget. And also for a level one, frankly, I can deliver a level one. Right? Like I know what I'm doing. I've been around the block a little bit. Big deal, really.

I was very attracted by this way that they license you to become a trainer and you just get on and run your own courses. That's a really cool idea. I think to be fair, the Irish do a similar thing. I went on the various things that you need to do to qualify for that. We just got on with it. And I'm very interested in the philosophy of how they teach. It's much, much more about the guest experience and the kind of the fun of it and the adventure of it.

The technical skiing I very much resonate with in terms of how they think about skiing is how I think about skiing. Yeah. So we're a pretty good fit. All told. I'm very, very happy to be, you know, to be a part of it and to add in, you know, what I can do that thing. It's really cool. I think it will become something. The number of courses that are running, you know, they can't, they can't fail to succeed because they just.

They're so busy already and they've only been going a year or two. It's crazy. Good. Yeah. think, mean, you would not believe though, the number of people that, that don't seem to think that. You know, I did, I did an interview with Jamie and Derek and they're just starting off. Same thing with the guys at the professional skin shelters of Canada. The number of calls and messages that I got from people going, you know, Jamie and Derek doing this. Yeah, fine. But they, they just, they've just created.

Speaker 1 (1:15:38)
is

Speaker 2 (1:16:03)
you know, another association, it's okay. You know, there's, there's, plenty of room for associations for giving out ski instructor badges. Right. There is. It could be whatever you want to, the hurdle that they're going to have to, to cross is the one where they get ISIA recognition at some point. And that is because of a rule within that that says, you know, you can only have one per country.

Speaker 3 (1:16:32)
No.

Speaker 2 (1:16:33)
You know, I don't know how they'll get around that. Short of registering PSIE in a country that doesn't have a representation. I think they're just the sheer weight of numbers and the sheer amount of good stuff that they're doing. I think it's inevitable that they'll get that recognition.

Speaker 1 (1:16:50)
In Sweden, you have multiple organizations giving courses and then you have one, the Swedish, what we call it, ski instructor organization, ⁓ holds the ISIA rights. And that is owned by all of the members.

Speaker 2 (1:17:11)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I don't know, like I said, I don't know whether that's an archaic outdated system in itself anyway. the fact that you can only have one, one organization per country. And why is that the case? You know, it doesn't, doesn't even make sense, but you know, as long as there's some sort of framework within there that way you can, you know, you develop ski instructors.

Speaker 3 (1:17:43)
We have different organizations doing ⁓ education in Sweden. They are like, you told me, organized in the Swedish ski council, as we call it. But we also have a Norwegian organizations who's doing education in just because of that particular reason. The ski council does not, is not an

organization who's doing education. So they are in our system because there is another organization in Norway who's having the ISIA there. it's a problem. You can work around.

Speaker 2 (1:18:27)
Yeah,

I think eventually it will have to change. But I put that in the same box as, you know, what we were talking about with climate earlier. It's just too big a topic for me to worry about. It solves a problem for me and I'm very happy that solves that problem.

Speaker 3 (1:18:46)
Have you been to Interskiisam?

Speaker 2 (1:18:48)
I've never been to Innski. No. I have no chance of skiing to Innski. But I am, I've never been. I'd be quite interested to go see what it was like. Have you guys been?

Speaker 3 (1:18:58)
Yes,

I have. My first was like in 1999 in Norway. Then I was there just watching and listening because I was working in a ski school pretty close in Norway. And then afterwards it was in to ski in Kramantana. Then I was working in Champery. I managed to get a ride to Kramantana for one day.

From that on, I've been on the Swedish demo team for two, the Inderskis, both Bulgaria and Levis. So it is a fantastic platform for those kinds of questions that we are talking about right now. To get the industry to grow and to make it.

Speaker 2 (1:19:41)
Yeah, nice.

Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3 (1:19:57)
to make the ski world a better place.

Speaker 2 (1:20:00)
Yes, I think so. I wonder, I do wonder whether we need, you know, a lot of the courses that are being, if you look at all the gap courses that are being run around the world, right? Like the world probably doesn't need that many level one and level two ski instructors. Reality is, that the vast majority of people who are taking those, those level one and two gap courses.

Speaker 1 (1:20:09)
being run.

Speaker 2 (1:20:26)
aren't ever going to go on and do anything with those qualifications. They're doing it as part of a gap, you know, so they'll go on and they'll do something else. I think things only suddenly start to pick up, you know, then you're a serious, if you go then ahead and you're starting to work your way towards your three and your four, then you'll probably, you separate yourself from all of those people and you, you know, you're, you're serious about what you're doing. You know, you're serious about making a life within skiing. ⁓

A lot of those level ones and twos that are given out, ourselves included, the ones that we're doing with the school, we're doing it for a reason because we think it's a good idea and it's a nice pinnacle to your school kind of skiing career. ⁓ I think a bigger question is does the fact that we sell so many level ones here, there and everywhere, does that devalue the...

Or is it a thing in yourself? don't know.

Speaker 1 (1:21:25)
I suppose if you want to have lots of fully cert or level four or whatever, you need to throw as big a net as possible also at the level one. It's a drop-up rate.

Speaker 2 (1:21:33)
Yeah,

that's right. I suppose you, yeah, you never know who you're going to touch. You know, that's, that's the other thing that we, know, as key teachers, right? Like it's the other thing that we, you sometimes find out about, but only later. You don't know how much of an influence you've had in people's lives. So if you, you know, you deliver an absolutely amazing level one or someone delivers an amazing level one, you might change the course of that person's life. like, wow, this is something I can actually do.

You might unlock something within that. No, you do never know.

Speaker 3 (1:22:05)
You never know. ⁓

Speaker 2 (1:22:23)
Let's go.

Speaker 3 (1:22:35)
all those years with this. So it was nice. It was in a very good way.

Speaker 1 (1:22:46)
was supposed to say was that sort of a veiled insult.

Speaker 3 (1:22:49)
⁓

No, it was in a very positive way.

Speaker 2 (1:22:56)
cool. I met recently one of my old bosses. He's a guy I would love to get on by the way. He took that bucket list. He's this guy. He will never ever come on. that classic Swiss man. He'll never come on. he, my first kind of boss, the guy I learned a lot from and I met him recently and it was very, very interesting. He was on the training team and I just happened to be skiing about. was on my way somewhere and I joined them for coffee.

But what was really interesting was that when we spoke, although I still have a lot of respect and lot of deference for him, he was then speaking to me basically as if I was one of his peers, right? Like on a level with him. I'd had this kind of weird sort of, I don't know, you call it like an imposter syndrome. Like you almost can't believe that, you know,

You're a guy from London, right? Like there's no mountains there. You managed to ski to a similar level with guys. You managed to pass all the exams. You managed to start up a ski school. You managed to make something work. You still can't believe it's real. Actually that chat I had with him was kind of like a, it was almost like a turning point. So I'm chatting with this guy, but he's chatting to me as if we're on the same level, talking about the same

you know, troubles of being a ski school director. Fine. can, I can believe it now, you know, like this guy thinks I'm all right, which is a cool thing. ⁓

Speaker 1 (1:24:31)
It's a

dessert to be sustainable and to be still in the industry since we've talked about earlier, it's so hard. I mean, the respect comes with being, still being here, I suppose. Everything else.

Speaker 2 (1:24:45)
Just hanging around for ages. And eventually they work out you're not going away. Yeah, that is true. That is true. That's a real one.

Speaker 1 (1:24:53)
I think it's actually funny because Anna was my course instructor for my level three. And I'm fairly certain that that leadership that I got to experience made sure that I continued. No, but we've talked about this at least. I think it's very crucial. I remember every level and the instructor that sort of helped you along.

Speaker 2 (1:25:02)
Yeah.

Yeah? No.

Speaker 3 (1:25:11)
So we have, we have.

Speaker 1 (1:25:23)
with what you needed at the time.

Speaker 2 (1:25:27)
Yeah, yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 (1:25:30)
We've talked for almost two hours and I think we can talk for way longer. I think we should at another point, but we usually have a final question that I do like because it sort of highlights why this is the world's greatest job. Can you bring us back to your favorite memory as a ski instructor?

Speaker 2 (1:25:53)
Wow. I'll go with the one that just immediately jumped into my head. It's probably not the one, but you know, something about the one that jumps, jumps first is probably it. But it was when I was a very fairly new ski instructor. There was a little girl from, she was from Brazil. She might have been called Paula or something.

She was super cute, but she was very young. She was only like maybe four or five or something like that. And at that age, not every kid has the ability or the knowledge of how to rotate their legs. So as a skin strip, so that phase, you've got the kids on the snow for the first time, you're just sort of going down the beginner slope and you're controlling their speed, you're desperate for them to do, make the pizza.

That's what you're paid to do. You're paid to get the kids ski. This kid was so sweet and it took ages and ages and ages and multiple lessons to get it. And then one day, one day she just got it and she just went and she got her feet. It just, was, it was a proper, like you're sitting there like, yeah. You know, it's absolutely cool. And that happens fairly often these days. And it's a bigger step than.

Most people like it's bigger ⁓ achievement than a lot of people realize. It's a real thing to be celebrated. And you know, that first moment when the kid can go down the slope on their own. And it was the case with this little kid, cause we'd worked so hard at it and she got it. Everyone was happy. Parents happy. I was happy. She was happy. Just amazing. That's the kind of, yeah, that's the magic, isn't it? That's the thing that keeps you coming back successfully.

taught something to somebody and they got it. And then you've given them something for life, right? You know, especially a kid from Brazil who's only here for maybe three years, her parents have been relocated. Do you mind ever ski again? You know, when she goes back to Brazil or whatever, and you're just like, yeah. To this day, that moment still really gets me. know, like I've had another kid this year, was the same, took him ages to get it, but when he got it, there's no stopping him. Like he's just awake.

That's what we do it all for, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (1:28:22)
It is, it is.

Speaker 1 (1:28:24)
is so deeply satisfying each and every time.

Speaker 2 (1:28:28)
Yeah, it is. I don't know, what do we had another one this year? Yeah, same thing. Literally celebrating on the slopes, know, hugs with clients and stuff. Yeah, we really got this. Great. These amazing shared experiences. Just so cool.

Speaker 1 (1:28:42)
Thank you for that. is exactly why we asked this question. Yeah, it's beautiful. think we'll put this plane down now. So I'm wondering if, where do you want to send the listeners to? Where should they learn more about you and what you're doing?

Speaker 2 (1:28:50)
We're gonna...

You can have a look, if you go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you can see the Ski Instructor podcast. That will just come up if you search for that. The ski school is Snow Pro Ski School. We're based in the Swiss side of the Port de Soleil and I'm on Facebook. You can find me under Dave Burrows. That's it. I don't look at Facebook very often. So if I don't reply to you or I don't respond to your friend, it's not personal.

Speaker 1 (1:29:27)
Super, we will make sure that all of that info is clearly seen in the episode description. Thank you so much for this conversation until we speak again. And thank you to everyone that is listening and make sure to listen to the ScreenStruck podcast for even more. Nerdery.

Speaker 3 (1:29:34)
Hmm?

Speaker 2 (1:29:46)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (1:29:47)
Thank you.