November 4, 2023 • 64 mins
This episode is Part 2 of 2 of Jon sitting down with his present day mentor, sounding board and dear friend Toni Aspin. These sessions were recorded at Toni’s office in historic and arts-centric Port Townsend, WA.
Toni's career story to date is as remarkable as it is eclectic. She has been the executive director at Centrum Arts in Port Townsend, the managing director at Richard Hugo House Literary Arts Center, and the CFO at the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. She was a founding director at not one but two commercial banks in Washington State, and our paths crossed when she was brought in as the executive director at One Reel during a time of unprecedented transformation within the organization.
Toni recently earned a PhD in transformative studies. She is a CPA. She has earned an MBA from the University of Washington, and graduated with honors from the Pacific Coast Banking School. Presently she teaches at the University of Washington - Tacoma, and has a consulting practice providing guidance to enterprise leaders with an emphasis on start-up planning, strategic growth advancement, organizational capacity building, governance counsel and executive coaching.
This episode covers a lot of ground. Themes include how boards can both help and hinder leadership, mindfulness in the workplace, financial storytelling, the difficulty of achieving change, and so much more. A strong thread of the teachings of sociologist Jack Mezirow and his concept of transformative learning ties the conversation together and presents rich food for thought for everyone in any industry.
Toni's thinking and insights have the potential to trigger transformational changes in your thinking, in your career, and your life.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Toni Aspin - Guest (00:00):
This is Toni Aspin, and you're listening to
One Hour to Doors.
Jon Stone - Host (00:09):
This is One Hour to Doors, a podcast about
the business and soul of thefestivals and events industry.
I am your host, Jon Stone.
Every episode of One Hour toDoors explores the people,
issues, insights, and trendsimpacting the enterprise of
bringing people and communitiestogether in common cause.
This week's episode is part twoof an extended conversation
(00:34):
with Toni Aspin.
Toni's thinking and questioninghave influenced me deeply over
the years, and this conversationoffers you a seat at the table
as we exchange ideas onleadership, the nature of boards
of directors, pride versus egoin the workplace, the challenges
of enabling a real growth inour organizations themselves,
(00:54):
and more.
Throughout every topic runs acommon thread of transformative
learning, a passion andscholarly pursuit of Toni's.
If you have not yet listened tothe part one episode, I highly
recommend you do.
Let's jump back into theconversation, picking up where
we left off last week.
(01:14):
I gave a one-sentence overviewof your current consulting
practice in the intro, but couldyou describe it in a little
more detail?
What kind of projects are youworking on these days?
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:24):
Yeah, I'd love to.
I love the work that I'm doingright now.
So my consulting practice hasflowed and morphed over time
because it's now my almost my12th year of working for myself.
I launched this consulting firmat about the time I was
starting my PhD program.
(01:45):
So in 2011.
And one of the things thathelped me launch it was when I
exited One Reel and I uh had acontract with One Reel to do
some follow-up consulting work.
And that gave me really theconfidence to say, I can do this
because it's you know, workingfor oneself is is a big uh shift
(02:09):
in perspective.
So now I've gotten to a placewhere I'm really interested in
helping nonprofits be asimpactful as they could possibly
be.
And so I've decided there'smany ways you can look at that.
(02:30):
You can you can come at thatthrough strategic planning or
operational stabilization or allkinds of things.
But I decided to come at itthrough boards of directors
because I have had so muchexperience with boards actually
impeding the progress of anorganization, or at the very
(02:53):
least, just not being a factorat all.
And so uh that's where I umthat's where I come from these
days.
What's really interesting is weknow everything's connected.
So what comes up there is thatthere's rarely a a board chair
that comes to me and says, Wow,Toni, we could really use your
(03:17):
help, because boards don'treally think that way.
And so it comes throughexecutive leadership, and
they'll say something like,they'll reach out to me and say,
Can I talk this over with youabout what's going on?
And then I work that way in thesense that um I can see after a
(03:41):
conversation with an executivedirector or a chief financial
officer that the issues thatexist are far beyond the thing
they've right they've said, asas you've had that experience as
well.
When somebody says, Boy, we'rejust our cash flow is just not
there to support and or whateverthe story is, and you find out
(04:03):
that, yeah, cash flow isprobably, you know, something to
deal with, but that's not theroot of it.
Jon Stone - Host (04:10):
Yeah, no, it's it's uh uh the analogy is
somebody saying, Hey, I've got aflat tire.
Can you help me fix the flattire?
And you're like, Yes, ofcourse.
And then you get to the car andit's like, yeah, it's got a
flat tire, but it's also blowingoff oil and the windows are
busted out and any other numberof problems.
So yeah, I get what you'resaying.
Toni Aspin - Guest (04:29):
That's it.
And so that's how um clientsfind their way to me, is that
it's typically through executiveleadership that comes for
something.
My favorite work is whensomeone in the organization sees
the wholeness of it, meaning,if in fact, my I keep clear my
(04:50):
goal, my goal, my drive, myguiding light is to help
nonprofits achieve the greatestimpact they can possibly
achieve.
And so that means getting clearon what impact is, and then how
it is that you're gonna deliveron that impact.
(05:10):
And when we get there, now wecan fix all the operational
issues.
That's easy, and I'm out ofthere by then.
The staff can be capable ofdoing that.
And so that's my favorite work.
And I'm time and time again,I'm shocked at how the problem
that presents itself to me isnever what the problem really
(05:32):
is.
Jon Stone - Host (05:33):
I know exactly what you're saying.
Toni Aspin - Guest (05:35):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so that's what I do.
I spend my time.
So what that ends up being islike um going back to the
wholeness approach, the holisticapproach.
That usually entails deepconversations.
And I'll use the term coachingbecause I also happen to be a
certified coach, executivecoach.
(05:55):
And so I end up coaching theexecutive leadership, typically
starting then from there withthe board, with the board chair.
And now we get this feeling oflike, oh, I understand we need
to work at this from an allpoints place.
And and then I get to reallyget in.
I had a conversation with aclient yesterday and said, okay,
(06:17):
when you're ready to turn meloose on your board, you let me
know.
And that's and that's how thatgoes.
And then, because what's kindof been shaken out over all
these years is that you can'thelp any organization unless you
have absolute commitment fromthe chief, whoever that is,
(06:37):
executive director, CEO,whatever, and then from the
leadership team, and then fromthe board chair who creates the
culture in the entire board.
And then you can make adifference.
And uh I'm grateful to say Idon't work on gigs where I don't
think I can make a differenceanymore.
Jon Stone - Host (06:57):
I'm trying to think if I can say the same.
I'd like to say the same.
I don't know if that's true,though.
A lot of times my work tends tobe more of long-term embedded
work.
Not always, but probably 40 or50 percent of my contracts
involve embedding myself intothe organization so that I can
(07:22):
actually I just find it's reallythe only way that I get to the
root of whatever what's goingon, of whatever the issue may
be.
Toni Aspin - Guest (07:30):
Being in the middle of it is very helpful.
Is very, very helpful.
And because you uh dive intothe deepest things often
operationally, you have to seeit happening.
I can just sit in on a boardmeeting or two and observe, or I
can sit in on an executiveleadership team meeting and
(07:53):
observe and be able to figureout what's going on pretty
quickly.
Jon Stone - Host (07:58):
You've heard those songs enough that you can
more or less recognize them whensung.
Yeah.
Yes, yes, yes.
You have had so manysignificant leadership roles
over the years, and with thoseroles comes inevitably a lot of
weight, a lot of stress.
What techniques have you usedover the years to make sure that
(08:19):
all along you're taking care ofyourself as best you can?
Toni Aspin - Guest (08:24):
I guess first I'd have to say that I've
become aware of the fact thatthat's necessary.
And that that can't beminimized because when we're 40
and 50, we can just keeppushing.
And uh and what that means isif I just put my all my effort
(08:48):
into this, I know I can turn itaround.
But at what cost?
And is it worth that effort?
So I have gotten to a placewhere I can say, wow, some of
the approaches that I took ofjust putting my shoulder down
and working wasn't helping me beobjective about what the big
(09:08):
picture is of what can be done.
That's just a learningsituation.
But in that becoming moreself-aware, I discovered yoga
and meditation.
Out of desperation, maybe atfirst, I dabbled in yoga in the
70s and then got serious aboutit in the 90s and have been a
(09:30):
serious yoga practitioner.
I'm using yoga in the terms ofnot postures.
Yes, postures are involved, butour Western world, when we talk
about yoga, they're talkingabout somewhere kind of close to
calisthenics.
Right.
And that's not what I'm talkingabout.
I'm talking about the yoga ofunderstanding oneself.
(09:52):
And so that's it's a dailypractice that I have of just
quieting myself so I can hear myown voice.
And when we can hear our ownvoice, then we can make some
real decisions.
We have more stamina.
We can say this is thisparticular activity or action is
(10:15):
moving me closer to what I wantto get at, or it's not.
I think that's just beenlearned over time.
And uh certainly the reason wecall it a practice is because
it's never done.
It's never done.
But that's been, I think,central is having a mindfulness
(10:35):
practice.
And that just grows youremotional intelligence, period.
If you just decided that youwere going to meditate every
day, I can guarantee you thatyour emotional intelligence will
grow as a result of that.
Because at the core of emoemotional intelligence is
awareness, self-awareness andawareness of your surroundings.
(10:59):
Without that, you can be thesmartest person in the world.
But if you don't have thatself-awareness, you're you're
not emotionally intelligent.
Period.
It cannot happen.
Uh you can be smart, you can beall kinds of other things, a
good strategist, but you're notemotionally intelligent.
(11:19):
So that just happens, it's likea lovely result of mindfulness
and awareness practices.
And so now suddenly you have atool, emotional intelligence as
a tool to make decisions, tosupport others, to create a path
(11:45):
that is moving you where youwant to go.
And I think just that tool ofemotional intelligence helps
then be able to uh identify allthe other kind of leadership
qualities that you want to bringto the table.
And they just become, they cometo you, they become apparent
(12:06):
when you do this.
Again, it's about it's notchasing the idea of developing
my leadership style.
Maybe at first you have to, andI ask my students this all the
time.
I give them lots of things toread and then ask them to
describe their leadership style.
And um, they struggle withthat, and they use words out of
(12:27):
the journal articles I givethem, and it has to come from
within.
Like that's where it has tocome.
It's like when I'm interactingwith this person, how do I feel
when that's happening?
What am I getting from them?
Is it an exchange?
And are we experiencing respectfor one another?
All of those things come toyou.
That's the only way you can getthere.
(12:49):
You can talk about authenticleadership and all kinds of
things, but the practices,though, of mindfulness then open
up doors for other ways thatyou can reduce the stress.
Mindfulness, for example,allows you to consider the idea
of letting go of your own ego.
(13:09):
And when we have too much egoin the mix of things, uh, it
ruins everything for everyone.
And so, how do we do that?
What's the balance of what roledoes a healthy ego play in what
you're doing?
Stress comes when you thinkit's all on you and you're the
one driving it all.
(13:30):
And without you, nothing wouldhappen.
And that's not true.
And if that is true, youhaven't been a good leader.
So I think those are the boy,that that idea of um managing
the things that all the stressesthat come with uh having
people's lives in your hands,more or less.
(13:53):
Um I think the only way you canget at that is by letting go of
who you think you are andletting the the real
opportunities come out.
Jon Stone - Host (14:06):
You know, you talk about ego, and as soon as
you said the word ego, um itbegs the question of like what's
the difference between ego andand pride, especially when we're
in it, we have an there's anenormous amount of pride that
can kind of maybe blend intothat ego bit a little bit and
get confused internally.
Toni Aspin - Guest (14:25):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (14:27):
I mean, you have you have to have a
tremendous amount of pride inwhat you're doing.
Yeah.
Uh in order to be effective inthis sector.
Toni Aspin - Guest (14:36):
Yeah.
Well, I would ask you to definepride and maybe consider
whether it's a great deal ofsatisfaction from work done
well.
Pride to me is a term thatpridefulness is not a positive
term in my in my vocabulary.
Say more about that.
(14:56):
Well, here's one way to thinkabout it.
What is that famous term?
It's like pride comes beforethe fall.
Have you heard that?
Jon Stone - Host (15:05):
Yeah, I think so.
Toni Aspin - Guest (15:08):
I guess coming from there, pride to me
seems like I'm taking credit foreverything.
Like I'm proud because I didthat.
Now you might think I'm proudof our team, or or I'm proud of
the organization for achievingthis, but it's just that pride
lingers.
There's a lingering thing ofself-accomplishment or something
(15:33):
like that that's not inclusive.
I I don't know.
I can't, I don't know if I candescribe it.
And it might be just somethingthat I've experienced when I
hear people say, I'm proud ofthis, and I think, okay, yeah,
it occurs to me that there issomething that's exclusive about
that.
Jon Stone - Host (15:51):
Okay, there you go.
Toni Aspin - Guest (15:52):
Yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (15:53):
I was just going to add that to me, the
definition of pride depends onwhat altitude you're defining
that from.
When I think of that groundlevel, that weeds level
altitude, I can't reallydifferentiate pride from ego.
And you're right, pride has alittle bit of a negative feeling
(16:16):
to it, counterintuitive as thatmay seem.
But when I go up in altitude,somehow that it kind of softens
and is a little more inclusive.
I think, yeah, I think yourexclusive remark kind of gets to
the point there.
Pride in a in a bubble is veryin a very exclusive, not
(16:38):
necessarily constructive thing.
Toni Aspin - Guest (16:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The sense of it is that I'veset us on a path and we've
walked that path and arrived ata place that gives me a great
deal of satisfaction.
That's the sort of the essenceof it.
But pride from anybody feelslike they may have had more to
(17:01):
do with the arrival than theydid.
But it should be an effort thateveryone feels satisfied with.
And I don't know if I couldplace pride as a word to
describe that.
Jon Stone - Host (17:17):
I suppose it's just as much as it's about
altitude, it's about which wayare we pointing that?
I'm asking myself as I'mlistening to you, because like,
what am I proud of?
Have I ever been proud ofanything?
It's like, yes, I am proud.
I'm so proud of my sons.
I I can think of so manymoments that just can't have
been flashing through my mind inthe last two minutes about some
(17:39):
of the teams that I have beenprivileged to work with over the
years and how proud I am of thework that they accomplished,
the impact that they made inwhatever endeavor we were
chasing at the time.
I haven't thought about thisuntil just now, but pride to me
is kind of an external thing.
I'm proud of other people andother things.
(17:59):
Have I ever felt really proudof myself?
I don't know how to answerthat.
I'm gonna have to reserve thatquestion and think on that.
Toni Aspin - Guest (18:09):
Well, it could be that again, that word
is something that we stumble on.
Like things that you've donethat you feel proud of.
I would interpret that as beingincredibly grateful for the
opportunity to have participatedin something like that.
Like I say that about my um myPhD program, the whole program,
(18:34):
and selecting a program that Iknew was going to be incredibly
challenging to me because I knewno language around it at all.
I mean, you know, set me in anorganizational development PhD,
and I already know the language.
I walk in and I understand thelanguage and I understand sort
of what we could be going for.
But I was in this program whereno one was a business person.
(18:57):
Everyone was a social scientistor a human scientist, and I
chose that purposefully.
And so when I think aboutnavigating how lost I felt at
the beginning, the first year,and then what I learned going
through that and how I was ableto apply the learning, I feel
(19:20):
one could say proud that I didit, but I don't feel proud
because I feel like it wasnothing, it was some kind of uh
greater being than myself thatwas able to sort of keep me on
track.
And I feel just hugely gratefulto uh have experienced that and
learned what I learned.
(19:40):
Now it's interesting you say,Oh, I'm proud of um my children,
and I I have that same feeling.
And I use that's the one time Iprobably use the word pride
when I when I'm having aconversation with my sons, and
uh yet talk about having nocontrol over anything.
I mean, really, you just setsome kind of a foundation and
(20:03):
then they go off and do whatthey're doing, you know, and you
have no control over that.
Jon Stone - Host (20:09):
No, but in a perfect world, you've had a lot
of influence.
Yeah.
I like to think that I seelittle bits and pieces of
myself, good bits and pieces ofmyself in my children from time
to time.
Toni Aspin - Guest (20:25):
Yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (20:26):
Uh, but I feel equally as proud of them when I
see characteristics, uh, thingsthat they do, ways that they
act, or that doesn't lookfamiliar to me at all.
Toni Aspin - Guest (20:35):
Yes.
Yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (20:36):
Where the heck is that coming from?
But man, is that is that neatto see?
Yeah.
Toni Aspin - Guest (20:41):
Yeah.
But that makes me think, Jon,of like, it's like a wonder to
you, to me.
It's a wonder to a parent tolook and see how this being has
emerged, you know?
Jon Stone - Host (20:56):
I guess my sense of pride is really
centered around mycontributions, not so much
around my accomplishments.
Maybe that's the best way thatI can articulate that.
Let's go back and revisitbudgets as a form of
storytelling.
Yeah.
(21:16):
This is an idea that I preachall the time.
And it surprises me how wellreceived that particular big
idea is.
Toni Aspin - Guest (22:03):
Something more.
It has to be more than just abunch of numbers.
And so what is that story?
But being able to get people,like the way to practice that is
to look at some set offinancials, some projections,
some budget, whatever it is, andasking people to just extract
(22:23):
the story and tell it cannot doit.
They do the elevator thing.
Well, this goes up, if thatgoes down.
And they cannot, and that's notthe story.
It's like um the the yourability to either to zoom in and
you know, look at the all thenumbers and then zoom out and
(22:44):
see the implications of that.
And that's what's difficultfor, I mean, that's that's what
I find is that most people justget stuck on that thing.
And I virtually cannot look atfinancial statements anymore
without the zoom out first.
I have to do the zoom out andsee what it is.
(23:06):
What and it's also my feelingthat I get when I look at
financials.
And this is probably becauseI've looked at so many
financials that they bore me todeath.
Sure.
But uh, but so it's a techniquethat I've used that helps me
get a the personality ofwhatever the financial statement
(23:26):
is.
I think people want that, butthey don't know how to practice
it.
And all it takes is practice.
So they can say, well, look, ifyou show trends, this is the
best uh way to get people tolook at stories, is to show uh
like a four or five year trendof financials or budgets or
(23:46):
whatever you want.
And they'll do that elevatorthing.
Well, revenue went up, and thenthis administrative expense
went up.
And this is that they talkabout the ups and downs.
That's what they do, andthey're missing the whole story
about that.
I wonder sometimes if it'sbecause we're so unused to using
(24:09):
creativity when we look atnumbers and quantifiable things
that we can't get to anythingelse because it's so connected
with quantifiable that we can'tget to anything.
So I've asked students to justum make things up that are not
even true, just to practiceusing the sentences there around
(24:31):
a trend in a financial,something like, okay, why would
revenue go down?
Right?
That's what they have to thinkof is why would revenue go down?
Well, a new CEO came on boardand nobody uh liked that CEO.
And so everybody got togetherand decided they were going to
stop buying this one particularproduct that they were offering.
(24:52):
Just make something up.
I think that practice of thatcreative practice of making
things up and not not worryingthat they're not true, but just
trying to see if you can make astory up that hangs together.
I think I'm kind of good atthat because I started doing
that with my sons when they werelittle, is that we'd go to the
(25:13):
park and we'd sit at the parkand we'd look at people and we'd
make up completely randomstories about the people that we
were seeing.
Yeah.
And it helps create that partof your mind that allows you to
just explode.
Jon Stone - Host (25:29):
Yes, absolutely.
But you don't typically findthat in accounting.
The notion of creativity inaccounting is kind of a uh
negative thing.
Toni Aspin - Guest (25:39):
Yeah, yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (25:40):
You're not supposed to do that.
So I wonder, you I think youmight be on to something there.
I also am sitting herewondering if it has anything to
do with the fact that in anorganization, your budget
responsibilities tend to getallocated out to departments.
And so your department A isreally dialed in with the
(26:00):
portion of the budget that'sassociated with department A,
department B, department C, soon and so forth.
But it's really only a handfulof people in the organization
whose job it is, responsibilityis to look at the thing as a
whole.
And of course, you can't tell astory without considering the
whole.
So I wonder if this method ofbudget responsibility, budget
(26:21):
allocation per department mightbe kind of its own worst enemy
in some ways.
That gets into your corporateculture.
It does.
As well.
Are you compartmentalized ornot?
Toni Aspin - Guest (26:34):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
It also uh gets into it isculture again.
It's how do we describe tothose that we want to
collaborate with on putting awhole budget together?
How do we start with the story?
How do we start with a story?
So we create a picture foranybody that's responsible for
(26:56):
any aspect of the budget.
We start with the story of whatwe're seeing, and it goes back
to the difficulty people havewith the scenario planning, with
the what-if questions.
But if we present the financialpicture as a story, now even if
you're uh doing one littlesection of the budget, you can
ask the question (27:17):
how would this scenario, how would this story
that we're creating that we'vedeveloped about the next year or
three, the financial future ofthe organization, how would your
area be impacted if this storywere to play out?
So you start with a storyinstead of start with a list of
(27:39):
account names and balances inthere and asking you to what do
we do?
We usually say review all thetransactions from last year and
look to see what ones wereunusual and if we, you know,
need to revise those in any wayor if the same thing is gonna
happen this year.
And what do people do?
Yeah, probably the same thing.
(27:59):
So there's no creativity in aprint and repeat.
Yeah, that's it.
Jon Stone - Host (28:03):
Strategy versus tactics is all that is.
Yeah.
So many people, most people,think that they're developing
strategy when they're reallyjust refreshing tactics, I
should say.
Toni Aspin - Guest (28:15):
That's it.
That's it.
That's a good phrase for it,refreshing tactics.
So somehow we have to getpeople onto the story.
And in some organizations thatI've worked with, it's sunk in.
One nonprofit that I work withthat's an international
nonprofit, and their UnitedStates element is located in a
(28:35):
small town called Ohio.
And I was on the board at thetime, and we developed something
that tells the story.
It's actually a form that yougo through, but it includes
telling stories.
So you develop stories aboutthe various areas of what's
happening, all linked back tothe impact, what the
(28:56):
organization overall is wantingto do.
And everybody tells theirstory, then the numbers start
after that.
And then what the questions arehow does this decision that
you're making and this numberthat you're putting in for this
line item, how does it supportthe story?
And if it doesn't support thestory, then back to the drawing
(29:19):
board.
So starting with story ishelpful because it's very hard
for people to unwind all thequantitative and get to
something further.
But you see how this developsthis the brain uh with regard to
strategy and generativity.
Jon Stone - Host (29:40):
Absolutely.
Starting with storytelling,that's a new catchphrase.
Now, starting with a storymakes so much sense.
And at the same time, that'sjust not how everything works.
I know.
It's just not how everythingworks.
Yeah.
Toni Aspin - Guest (29:56):
But only because we're stuck.
Nobody knows.
We're stuck in our ways.
That's
Jon Stone - Host (30:01):
It's reminding me in this weird tangential
way.
There is this gentleman namedMonty Roberts, and he was a
professional horse trainer.
I don't know if he's stillalive or not.
He's professionally known asthe horse whisperer.
There was a movie that was madeloosely based on.
I I actually went to one of hisclinics back in my horse days
(30:23):
in Monroe at the fairgrounds.
And people would pay top dollarby the hundreds or thousands to
go see a two-hour Monty Robertsclinic.
And he developed a he getscredit for developing this
revolutionary way of trainingand working and being with
horses.
I learned over the years thatyes, he was a developer of that.
(30:45):
He wasn't the only one.
There were a number of otherfolks, Pat Pirelli and some
other really smart folks.
But the I could summarize it bysaying that up until this era,
the kind of the classic way oftraining a horse was breaking
the whores.
It's basically forcing them toheed your will.
And when they resist, you justkeep at it until you mentally
(31:08):
break their will to be horses.
And that's just the way thehorse world has always worked,
for presumably since thedomestification of horses.
But Monty Roberts and theseother practitioners developed a
very different approach and kindof garnered the nickname the
horse whisperer.
But now I'm I'm seeing a newI'm seeing a new seminar tour,
(31:31):
and it's the financialstoryteller.
Tony Aspen, the financialstoryteller at the Monroe
Fairgrounds.
$80.
I don't know what thedemonstration looks like, but
it'd be pretty cool.
Yeah.
Just a new way of thinking.
Toni Aspin - Guest (31:48):
Yeah, I would imagine.
Um, what would it be like?
I would imagine that we'd getpeople somehow um give them some
overarching topic and have thempractice telling a story about
it.
Because that's where the chopsneed to be built.
You have to build your chopsfor being able to think beyond
what you currently do.
Jon Stone - Host (32:08):
It would the presentation would start with
this the presentation of abudget for something.
It could be something real orsomething fictitious.
And so it would be like aclassic boardroom kind of uh
overview, five-minute overviewof this thing, a project, uh a
building, a festival, uh itdoesn't matter what it is, just
(32:30):
something, using just theclassic numbers technique.
And of that, some percentage ofthe audience would be able to
follow that, and some otherpercentage would not.
And then you'd do it over againusing the storytelling
methodology, and people would,the difference would be stark.
All of a sudden, everybodywould would understand it.
Toni Aspin - Guest (32:51):
Yeah, in the storytelling, what we get out
of that is the ability to bringin other aspects besides just
the number aspect.
You cannot sum up an activitylike an event with just numbers.
It's impossible.
So you miss the whole humanelement of it.
(33:15):
And it's certainly looking atthe numbers says something.
I mean, it'll say, Did I hit myrevenue goal?
If not, why not?
I mean, you can develop thosekind of stories, but they're
still just completely centeredon, you know, the direction the
numbers are moving.
Are they positive or are theynegative?
And all of these areassumptions that we're making.
(33:39):
And so so stories say they putthe qualitative aspects in, they
center the qualitative aspectsalong with the quantitative
aspects.
And it takes it's more work.
True.
It's more work.
True.
So no no CFO is gonna want todo that.
Jon Stone - Host (33:59):
There's no denying it.
Yeah, absolutely.
It is the the harder road.
Toni Aspin - Guest (34:03):
Yeah, yeah.
At first, anyway, until youstart seeing in in stories.
And then suddenly you have, oh,wait, I can't go anywhere until
I understand what the story is.
And then when the story comes,now you can you can respond to
it and you can put numbers onit, but you have to start with a
(34:24):
story.
And it's only hard at first.
Once you're good at seeing astory, then it's not hard
anymore.
I mean, when you think aboutyour life, John, and you think
about how you envision your lifeto be 10 years from now, how
does that come to you?
Does it come in images or doesit come in what what visually
(34:48):
visually?
Mm-hmm.
And then from there, uh youmaybe examine those things.
Like if you say, I want to beum wildly wealthy, and then in
your mind, perhaps an image of aproperty where you're living,
and these other things come in,and then you examine those
things and say, you know, whatis the cost of that out of my
(35:14):
soul and out of my pocketbook?
And then you start puttingsome.
Oh, I guess if I actually wantthat, I'm gonna have to put some
dollars there.
And now you can start putting,you can start adding in.
And that's the same for anorganization.
Jon Stone - Host (35:31):
I'm thinking of the quarterly, the monthly
financial report, right?
And so you tell your financedepartment, give me the detail
for this, this, this, and thenwe ask them to put a top sheet
on it that's just got the supersummary.
And that we should start sayingon top of that, put the one
paragraph story.
Yeah.
What would happen if everybodyrequired the top sheet to be
(35:53):
this a narrative form?
Toni Aspin - Guest (35:55):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That wasn't an elevatoranalysis.
Jon Stone - Host (35:58):
Yeah, but that it was really like No, the only
the only rule would be youcan't actually mention the
numbers at all.
Toni Aspin - Guest (36:05):
Yes, exactly.
Jon Stone - Host (36:06):
You have to tell a story some other way.
Toni Aspin - Guest (36:08):
Yeah, exactly.
Or even though that would be afun experiment.
You can't even uh mention theline items, even.
Right.
Jon Stone - Host (36:14):
You know, but you're gonna tell that would be
a great you'd have to tell astory, a paragraph or two from
the customer's perspective.
Toni Aspin - Guest (36:23):
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Wouldn't you like to hear itfrom the CFO's perspective or
from the CEO's perspective?
Jon Stone - Host (36:32):
There's all sorts of different perspectives,
and I wonder how much thatstory would change.
Yeah.
Given the same person writingfrom all these different
viewpoints.
That would be an interestingexercise.
Toni Aspin - Guest (36:43):
Absolutely.
This is how we start to learnour own perspectives, because
these embedded assumptions thatwe have are invisible to us.
We can't see them because wejust presume and we don't notice
that we're presuming becauseit's using some other part of
your brain.
(37:03):
That's why this recent workthat has completely enthralled
me is Robert Keegan, who talksabout why we can't change, no
matter how much we want tochange, what are the challenges
of change?
He's not saying we can't, he'sin fact saying we can.
But he uses the example of thecardiologist who tells seven of
(37:26):
his patients that have severecardiac issues, and he tells
them if you don't do thefollowing things, you will die.
And one out of seven can makethose changes, even though they
know that they're going to dieif they don't.
Jon Stone - Host (37:44):
Really?
Toni Aspin - Guest (37:44):
Yeah.
One out of seven.
And so that tells us that it'snot for lack of motivation,
because you know, most peopleare pretty motivated to live,
but they cannot make the change.
So he's talked about how uhmaking change requires setting a
(38:05):
goal that you want more thananything else, like identifying
what that is, which throws mostpeople off right off the bat,
right?
Because they can't think of,they can't land on one, but you
have to land on one, and it hasto be uh something that you care
deeply about.
And then we practice walkingthrough what are you doing
instead of that?
So you can start getting towhat the assumptions are.
(38:29):
Because what we do is insteadof changing, we immediately busy
ourselves with other things sowe can say, oh no, we can't make
this change because I'm toobusy, you know, eating uh red
meat or I don't know, whateverthe thing might be.
It's a little more subtle thanthat.
But you you formulaically digout those underlying assumptions
(38:51):
so that you can see what yourbeliefs are hidden to you that
are keeping you from making thischange.
To me, it's just about he putit in the context in his book,
uh Immunity to Change.
He put it in the context oforganizational change and team
change and like that.
(39:11):
But to me, it's life changebecause at the crux of it, it is
transformative learning, right?
Because what we have to do issee what is keeping us, what is
the thing?
So we're trying to have adisorienting dilemma in a way,
because we want to say, oh no, Ibelieve that if I don't eat
meat every day, for example, uh,the of the cardiac thing, if I
(39:36):
don't eat meat every day, I'mnot having a complete meal.
Let's put it that way.
Like that's an assumption thatyou have because that's been
embedded in us for so long.
And then if you dig into that alittle bit more, maybe that has
to do with prestige in a way,of maybe you've lived in a in
your youth with not enough foodto eat at all.
(39:57):
And so to you, it wasprestigious to eat a steak.
See, that's these things getuncovered in that, and then you
realize, oh, that's what'skeeping me.
It's not the fact that I cancan't stop eating red meat, even
though it's killing me.
It's that that underlyingassumption is if I don't eat red
(40:18):
meat, I somehow am poor.
Right.
And so we have to get at thoseas subtle as they are to be able
to say, I can choose what Iwant.
Jon Stone - Host (40:28):
This is fascinating.
Staying on the cardiac study.
We just talked about why thesix out of seven are like they
are, but what about the one outof seven that who can change?
Like, what's that all about?
Toni Aspin - Guest (40:41):
Yeah.
Who who knows?
It could be like willpower.
Do you believe in willpower?
I don't know if I do.
Jon Stone - Host (40:50):
I don't not I don't think I do.
Most of my life I have, uh-huh,but recently I've started to
question that.
Yeah.
Toni Aspin - Guest (41:01):
Yeah, because what is it anyway?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
Jon Stone - Host (41:05):
Yeah.
Point two willpower.
Yeah.
Where is that at what organgenerates that?
Right.
Toni Aspin - Guest (41:12):
I mean, if anything, it's the brain, and
the brain does whatever it'sbeen programmed to do.
So we're talking about at thismoment, what if you want to
change doing what the brain istelling you to do?
It's like you're workingagainst it.
What makes that happen?
I mean, in that case of the onewho made the change, the only
(41:36):
thing I can think of is thatthey actually were able to see
that by doing what they weredoing, they were on a path to
destruction.
Why can one person see that andnot six others?
Very fascinating.
Jon Stone - Host (41:50):
Well, I don't know that the six others didn't
see the path.
I mean, what I think in thatspecific example is I think
everybody can is capable ofseeing the path.
It's just an inability to doanything about it.
Yeah.
Toni Aspin - Guest (42:03):
Or the perceived inability to do
anything about it.
Because we can't willpower islike I'm going to will this into
being.
That's what it seems like.
It's just do it, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's it.
It's just do it.
Just do it.
And then and that might holdfor even a few months or a
(42:25):
while.
But if you haven't reached theunderlying issue, it's gonna go,
it's gonna spring back to whereit was because you haven't
really changed the circuitry.
Jon Stone - Host (42:36):
I think of the pursuit of weight loss.
There's really no mystery leftanymore, scientifically, around
what causes weight loss, whatcauses weight gain.
Right?
The only mystery is why can'twe do anything about it?
And so many people withwillpower, I think, yeah, but
willpower, I'm going to reducethe amount of calories I take
(42:58):
every day.
I'm gonna cut sugar out orwhatever, whatever it is, right?
I'm gonna stop drinking coffee.
Any one of us can do that for aday or a week or a month.
Uh, but I use the example ofweight loss because we it's we
now understand pretty well thatwillpower isn't it's a false
hope that your body will fightback against you.
(43:20):
And just depending on thestrength of your willpower or
the strength of your body'schemical reactions, that battle
may go on for an extended periodof time.
It could go on for a lifetimeon one end of the scale, or that
battle could be over by the endof the week.
Uh and maybe you can choose tostart that battle over again.
(43:40):
But yeah, I don't know about Idon't know about willpower.
Toni Aspin - Guest (43:44):
Yeah, I don't either.
Jon Stone - Host (43:45):
It's intense I mean really there's intention.
I certainly believe inintention.
But whenever will we thinkabout willpower, it's usually
we're usually using that in thecontext of against what our own
body is trying to do or tryingto tell us in one step into that
end.
I don't I I don't know ifthat's a real thing.
Toni Aspin - Guest (44:05):
Yeah, and if that if that could ever
materialize really on apermanent basis, there are
probably cases of that.
There are probably some casesof that where you can say, you
know, I'm not going to do thisanymore.
I'm not going to behave changebehavioral change.
But mostly we know that we needto do some rewiring in our
(44:26):
circuitry.
I mean, that's how smokingclinics work.
Jon Stone - Host (44:30):
I was just thinking about uh alcohol.
Yeah.
I know many people personallyover my lifetime that have had
problems with alcohol.
And a very small percentage ofthem, they wake up one day for
whatever reason, they say,enough's enough.
I'm gonna stop.
By God, they do.
Toni Aspin - Guest (44:51):
Yes.
Jon Stone - Host (44:52):
I'm thinking of one fella I grew up with, and
he said, I'm done 35 years ago,something like that.
And to the best of myknowledge, hasn't touched the
drop.
Yeah.
And hasn't even really appearedto struggle with it that much
either.
Interesting.
Just said all of a sudden youcan flip that switch.
Yeah.
And of course, the vastmajority of everybody that I
(45:15):
know that is not the case atall.
And they want they want to sobadly.
Yeah.
But willpower alone isn't goingto get the job done.
And I'm talking about thesepeople, they're I consider them
to be powerful people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Extremely powerful people.
But somehow willpower doesn'tkind of fit into that same power
(45:37):
gradient.
Toni Aspin - Guest (45:38):
Yeah.
Well, I want to go back tothat, to thinking along with
Jack Miserow and thedisorienting dilemma, the fellow
that you know that justseemingly woke up one morning
and said, No more, I've had it.
Something happened that shiftedhis mindset.
So he may have had his ownquiet, private, disorienting
(46:02):
dilemma, something that hebelieved to be the case, thought
absolutely was true, and thenlearned that it was not.
Some kind of a disorientingdilemma like that.
And it just maybe wasn'tapparent to others, but that'll
that's the thing that causes youto change.
It's a shift in yourperspective, a complete shift in
(46:23):
your perspective.
Not a little bit, not a like,well, I thought it was rose
colored and now it's actuallyruby or something.
It's not like that littlething, it's like a big thing.
Have you ever had anything likethat?
Jon Stone - Host (46:38):
You know, I'm thinking of an experience right
now, but I I it's more of a it'sa it's a trauma experience.
And I don't know that that'sthe same thing that we're
talking about, but uh it was awarm summer afternoon, and I was
in my early twenties, and I wasliving with a bunch of friends
(46:59):
at a house in Everett, and itwas early spring, and it was
unusually warm.
And all of my friends, it waswe'd gotten off work, all of my
friends said, Hey, let's go.
They wanted to go somewhere anddo something.
I'm like, you know, I've workedall day and tired, I'm just
gonna sit, I'm gonna stay hereand enjoy this weather.
And so they all left.
I had the house to myself.
I was sitting on the frontporch, and this beautiful the
(47:22):
cherries were blooming.
That's how I remember what timeof year it was.
It must have been February,March, early, one of those early
springs that we sometimes getaround here.
And it was just ideal.
And I had a rolling rock beer,which was my beer of choice at
that time.
And in that moment, justsitting peacefully under the
blooming cherry tree with myrolling rock.
100 feet away from me nextdoor, there was a little corner
(47:44):
neighborhood market.
This is a residential area.
Little corner neighborhood,mini mart kind of a thing, mom
and pop.
And then beyond that, there wasan intersection of an arterial
and then a side street and uhtraffic light.
And as I was sitting theresipping this late afternoon
beer, I could hear the vehiclecoming speeding down the street.
(48:09):
I couldn't see it because itwas behind buildings, but I
heard it and it's like theaccelerator, it just kept
accelerating, going faster andfaster and faster and faster.
And then it hit the steeltelephone pole, the light pole
that was out there.
And again, I couldn't see theactual impact.
It was hidden behind thebuilding.
But this it was like a littleDotson, one of those little
(48:31):
Dotson pickup trucks at thetime.
This is early 90s.
And uh it hit a steel telephonepole that did not go anywhere.
Probably, I don't know how fastthey were going, but it was,
you know, it was probably, Idon't imagine it was any less
than 70 miles an hour.
And so there was just thisexplosion, and then there was
silence, and then I rememberseconds later, the sound of
(48:57):
parts raining down out of thesky, glass, metal, and then
there was just kind of silenceand this this metallic rain
falling, and it stunned me.
But then after some period oftime, I got up and I I ran to
the intersection, and there wasnobody out there, and to this
(49:18):
day, that still strikes me asodd, but there just wasn't
anybody else out there, no othertraffic, no other cars.
But uh, I could see, you know,then I come around the corner of
the minimart, and there's thethe car there, and it's
literally wrapped, they use thephrase wrapped around the light
bulb, but it was wrapped aroundthat, and there was steam from
the radiator and oily smokeeverywhere, so I couldn't see
(49:39):
very well.
And I looked around, it's likethere's no other cars, and I ran
over to that car to help, and Iput my head in the window so
that the driver side, so I couldsee what was going on, and that
was uh that was one of thosethings that nobody should ever
uh see that kind of thing.
And uh there's a driver and apassenger male of uh probably
(50:12):
30s or something like that, andthey had alcohol in the car.
I don't know if they were ifthat was the cause of the
accident or whatnot, but theyhad there's lots of containers
of beer, and a lot of those hadcracked open.
So there's just this smell ofof what the insides of people
smell like, and motor oil andgasoline and and antifreeze,
(50:38):
coolant, uh steam, and thenbeer.
It's really strong sensethough.
The beer is almost thestrongest sense or strongest
scent that I could pick up.
And then anyway, that I I Irealized pretty another little
shocking kind of moment, youknow, taking that in visually
(50:59):
and through all the senses.
And then I figured it wasobvious they were both deceased,
uh, clearly.
Uh then the responders gotthere and and I told them my
observations, and that was it.
And then I eventually went backto that porch I was sitting on,
and my rolling rock was stillsitting there half empty, and I
went to to pick it up, and thatsmell of beer hit my nostrils,
(51:23):
and I couldn't touch it.
And to wrap up my long story, Icouldn't, not that I chose not
to or didn't want to, but Icouldn't drink alcohol again for
I think three years.
No kidding.
It was just like, you know,like if you're walking around on
a carpet and there's a lot ofstatic electricity, and if
you're you get zapped enoughtimes, like your muscles like
(51:46):
won't let you touch somethingmetal, you know what I'm talking
about?
It's that same kind of thing.
It's not that I didn't desireto drink beer, it's just that I
could not physically causemyself to drink alcohol.
Toni Aspin - Guest (51:58):
Wow.
Jon Stone - Host (51:58):
Or get or even be anywhere near where that
odor was.
It was such a negativereaction.
Wow.
So that's a that's a traumaresponse, which isn't what we
were talking about initially,but yeah, it was an example of
maybe it was an example ofsubconscious willpower.
I don't know.
Toni Aspin - Guest (52:15):
Yeah, maybe so.
Maybe it was, yeah.
I think that um, yeah, a traumaresponse is unique in that way,
where you you know it gets youat a very guttural level.
And I think that's the sameidea as a uh disorienting
dilemma in the sense that it'sit it is meant to be something
(52:37):
uh as Mesarot describes it, it'smeant to be something that
virtually changes your mindabout something.
Has this happened to you?
I mean, it's happened to meseveral times where somehow I
just mistakenly thoughtsomething was right.
Like, uh even if we use it thesimplest thing, so-and-so's
(52:59):
lived, no, so-and-so's lived inSeattle their whole life.
And then someone pipes up andsays, No, they didn't.
They they haven't lived inSeattle their whole life.
They uh spent the they wereborn in Arkansas.
I know because I met him whenhe was, and this completely
changes your mind about thisperson in some way.
(53:20):
It completely like somethingyou believed you knew, like
that.
Like, no, they're they've livedin Seattle their whole life,
and then evidence comes to yourattention that is counter to
that very strong knowing thatyou thought you had.
Jon Stone - Host (53:35):
I've I've experienced that through uh my
own memories, like my likeearly, earlier life childhood
memories being incorrect, havingbecome corrupted over time.
I've experienced that, but Ican't think of an example where
I've experienced that just basedon belief, mistaken beliefs.
(53:56):
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Toni Aspin - Guest (53:57):
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (54:00):
Well, since we are here in Sunny today, Port
Townsend, I would actually liketo hear about some of your best
memories from your time atCentrum.
How many years were you atCentrum?
Toni Aspin - Guest (54:12):
Seven.
Jon Stone - Host (54:13):
Seven years.
Yeah.
Toni Aspin - Guest (54:14):
It's the longest I've ever worked for any
employer.
Jon Stone - Host (54:17):
I was gonna say that's a little bit of a
long stretch.
Toni Aspin - Guest (54:19):
Yeah for you.
Yeah, it is.
I loved that job because itwas, I was just soaking up
everything.
I was learning so much.
I was coming from, it was stillvery early, not long after the
American Civil Liberties Union.
So I had started thinkingdifferently about how I could
use my skills, but I stillalways thought within the
(54:41):
context of financial stuff.
The founder of Centrum, JoeWheeler, one of my uh one who I
consider to be my mentor, he hehired me from a a random letter
that I wrote to him when I gotto Port Townsend, kind of not
totally happy about being here.
I was trying to hold a failingrelationship together.
(55:02):
So I reluctantly agreed to cometo Port Townsend.
And when I got here, I thought,oh, what am I gonna do here?
And I knew about Centrumbecause they produced the Jazz
Festival and you know that.
And I knew, I knew about thewriters' conference and such.
So I thought, well, it's theonly place I'd ever even
consider working, is at Centrum.
(55:22):
So no job opening, nothing.
I just virtually wrote a letterto Joe Wheeler and said, this
is what I do.
And I know I know that I wouldhave focused mostly on financial
turnaround stuff, becausethat's where my mind was at that
time.
Yeah.
And so I wrote him a letter andhe essentially said, This is
(55:43):
what I do, and I'd like to do itat Centrum.
Well, serendipitously, thatletter landed on his desk the
day after a board meeting, andthey had just completed a
capital campaign and uh rebuiltthe performance hall.
And as you know well, um,capital campaigns almost always
(56:05):
cause a deficit.
Now, approaches have gotten farmore refined these days, but in
general, people say,absolutely, I won't let this
impact my annual gift oranything like that, but it does.
So they had a deficit, and itwas significant for that size
organization, which was barely amillion-dollar budget.
Okay.
And so the board chair said,Wheeler, you need to get some
(56:29):
financial expertise in here.
This is a story that Joe toldme much later.
You've got to get somefinancial expertise.
He was a brilliant fellow, uh,PhD in music.
Okay.
And a musician.
That was his love.
Uh, and jazz particularly.
So he thought to himself, hesaid, I have no idea how to even
(56:49):
talk to a financial person.
Yeah.
And he comes to work.
That happened at the boardmeeting the night before he
comes to work, and there's myletter sitting on his desk.
And he told me later that hesaid, There must be a God.
So he called me up and we hitit off really well.
And he didn't know exactly whathow he wanted me to work this
(57:12):
because he had a long-standingaccountant that worked there.
And she was still using recipecards for various things like
registry.
It was like really not at all.
So I had to go about this verycarefully because, of course, I
didn't want to muck around inthe day-to-day recording
entries, but I needed hersupport in order to be able to
(57:35):
get to the bottom of why thingswere, you know, happening as
they were.
So that was my number onelesson.
But it was like getting to thebottom of things.
You need to have people be ableto speak with you honestly
about that.
And there I was, you know, uhtrying to guide the way.
My favorite part then, it grewand grew and grew.
(57:55):
And Joe was a registeredlobbyist.
He was a gifted moneywhisperer, if you will.
And so he taught me the ropesthere.
He took me to Olympia.
We had funding from theNational Endowment for the Arts
and for the state from the statesuperintendent of public
instruction.
So I learned the ropes.
He took me to Olympia with himand showed me the ropes, and I
(58:18):
learned effectively how to goabout working within the
legislative system and manyother things that he taught me.
Many of the lessons I learnedfrom him were not to do things
the way he did them.
Yeah.
But he really gave me full reignwhen it came to learning board
dynamics and what I felt like Icould sort of instinctively and
(58:42):
by watching him uh with theboard, I felt like I could make
some changes in the way thatworked.
Jon Stone - Host (58:47):
How much overlap time did you have with
Joe?
Toni Aspin - Guest (58:51):
Oh, four years.
Okay.
Wow.
Yeah, four years.
Because I was I was justworking.
He I was hired as a contractor.
Okay.
So I was doing financialconsulting.
And then after about a year, 18months, he made up the position
of managing director and mademe managing director.
And then I worked with him foranother two and a half years or
(59:13):
something as managing directorbefore I became executive
director.
Jon Stone - Host (59:17):
So yeah, I when he made the managing
director, did he make himselfthe artistic director?
Is that the no?
Toni Aspin - Guest (59:23):
He kept executive director.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
He kept executive director.
Yeah.
So we didn't change any ofthat, the structure.
It was just he was still theboss, but giving me managing
director allowed me more purviewbeyond just the financial
aspect of it.
So then I got to start learningprogramming and, you know, all
of that stuff from very talentedpeople that were there.
(59:45):
So that I have such fondmemories of that, of staying up
all night finishing a grant forthe NEA.
Of our season started reallyearly in springtime, although we
had a chamber music festival.
In the winter.
And then we had a tiny jazzfestival in the February because
(01:00:06):
it kept all the vendors, allthe merchants in town like
alive.
Right.
And then the summer seasonstarted, and we had festival
after festival and ended up withMaristone Youth Symphony
Orchestra here.
So it ended in about September.
I have so many great memoriesof being out.
(01:00:27):
I mean, in those days, and insmall nonprofits, you did
everything.
So even though I'm a managingdirector, I'm going around to
the clubs during jazz andcollecting the door from there.
And the man that owns thislittle Thai food place, he could
see the drop at the bank, youknow, he would watch over me.
So he would see me droppingmoney in the bank and making
(01:00:50):
sure I was okay.
And then he'd always have ameal waiting for me at the end
of the at two in the morning,he'd stay open through the
festival so he could make mefood.
It was fantastic.
Wonderful memories.
Yeah, yeah.
And also gave me a real feelfor what event management is
like.
Jon Stone - Host (01:01:09):
Where did you go after Centrum?
What was the poll that uh madeyou leave that wonderful beloved
environment?
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:01:16):
Oh gosh, it was the hardest thing ever.
But what I got to, and this isa good um uh lesson for people
that are dealing with belovedfounders.
So he was very much behind me,as was the board, in making me
executive director.
But after serving in that rolefor almost two years, I realized
(01:01:36):
that I would the organizationwould never flourish because
everybody saw me as Joe's pick.
Jon Stone - Host (01:01:43):
Okay.
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:01:44):
And this often happens.
There's always kind of a lameduck, if you will.
Yeah, I know what you'resaying.
I won't call myself a lame duckbecause I think we did a lot,
but it was always still, therewas kind of that generator on
it, you know, that uh governor,let's call it, that said, like
this is still Joe'sorganization.
So I just didn't know what Iwas gonna do, but I thought I've
(01:02:06):
got to let it go.
They've got to go through anational search, right?
And they've gotta, they'vegotta grow up.
So I resigned without knowing.
And I resigned before they hadreally seriously undergone the
national search because theyweren't even doing anything.
They couldn't believe I wasactually going.
(01:02:26):
And you know, this happensoften.
It's just like, no, no, and oh,we have time, and they were
underestimating what it wasgoing to take to actually
replace someone.
So six months notice I gave,though thinking it was gonna be
plenty of time.
So I finally just had to go.
And they finally went through anational search and they
stumbled, but they foundsomebody, and I had to just let
(01:02:49):
them stumble.
It's one of those things, youknow, that's often, you know,
the old adage if you love, youhave to let go.
So I cringed a little bit atall the stumbling that happened,
but they're solid now and havebeen for a long time.
Jon Stone - Host (01:03:05):
What is your favorite sound?
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:03:09):
Water.
Say more about that.
Uh the sound of water flowing.
Uh so that could be waves, itcould be a river, it could be a
little trickle.
That's my favorite sound.
Jon Stone - Host (01:03:22):
Same with Chris Weber.
Really?
Listen to his podcast, exactsame answer.
Who do you think you are?
A pupil.
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:03:37):
What do you believe?
Well, at the risk of soundingcorny, I believe in love.
And that love guides everythingwe do.
Jon Stone - Host (01:03:51):
Toni, as always, it has been wonderful
spending time with you makingconversation.
Thank you so much for makingthe time.
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:04:00):
Oh, thank you, Jon.
And as always, uh, we never uhfall short of things to talk
about.
I'm so glad that you're workingon these podcasts.
I think it's important, and Ithink that you'll bring some
real insights into the industry.
Jon Stone - Host (01:04:16):
It feels good.
That's how I know that itprobably is good.
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:04:20):
Yeah, yeah.
This is Toni Aspin, and you're listening to
One Hour to Doors.
Jon Stone - Host (00:09):
This is One Hour to Doors, a podcast about
the business and soul of thefestivals and events industry.
I am your host, Jon Stone.
Every episode of One Hour toDoors explores the people,
issues, insights, and trendsimpacting the enterprise of
bringing people and communitiestogether in common cause.
This week's episode is part twoof an extended conversation
(00:34):
with Toni Aspin.
Toni's thinking and questioninghave influenced me deeply over
the years, and this conversationoffers you a seat at the table
as we exchange ideas onleadership, the nature of boards
of directors, pride versus egoin the workplace, the challenges
of enabling a real growth inour organizations themselves,
(00:54):
and more.
Throughout every topic runs acommon thread of transformative
learning, a passion andscholarly pursuit of Toni's.
If you have not yet listened tothe part one episode, I highly
recommend you do.
Let's jump back into theconversation, picking up where
we left off last week.
(01:14):
I gave a one-sentence overviewof your current consulting
practice in the intro, but couldyou describe it in a little
more detail?
What kind of projects are youworking on these days?
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:24):
Yeah, I'd love to.
I love the work that I'm doingright now.
So my consulting practice hasflowed and morphed over time
because it's now my almost my12th year of working for myself.
I launched this consulting firmat about the time I was
starting my PhD program.
(01:45):
So in 2011.
And one of the things thathelped me launch it was when I
exited One Reel and I uh had acontract with One Reel to do
some follow-up consulting work.
And that gave me really theconfidence to say, I can do this
because it's you know, workingfor oneself is is a big uh shift
(02:09):
in perspective.
So now I've gotten to a placewhere I'm really interested in
helping nonprofits be asimpactful as they could possibly
be.
And so I've decided there'smany ways you can look at that.
(02:30):
You can you can come at thatthrough strategic planning or
operational stabilization or allkinds of things.
But I decided to come at itthrough boards of directors
because I have had so muchexperience with boards actually
impeding the progress of anorganization, or at the very
(02:53):
least, just not being a factorat all.
And so uh that's where I umthat's where I come from these
days.
What's really interesting is weknow everything's connected.
So what comes up there is thatthere's rarely a a board chair
that comes to me and says, Wow,Toni, we could really use your
(03:17):
help, because boards don'treally think that way.
And so it comes throughexecutive leadership, and
they'll say something like,they'll reach out to me and say,
Can I talk this over with youabout what's going on?
And then I work that way in thesense that um I can see after a
(03:41):
conversation with an executivedirector or a chief financial
officer that the issues thatexist are far beyond the thing
they've right they've said, asas you've had that experience as
well.
When somebody says, Boy, we'rejust our cash flow is just not
there to support and or whateverthe story is, and you find out
(04:03):
that, yeah, cash flow isprobably, you know, something to
deal with, but that's not theroot of it.
Jon Stone - Host (04:10):
Yeah, no, it's it's uh uh the analogy is
somebody saying, Hey, I've got aflat tire.
Can you help me fix the flattire?
And you're like, Yes, ofcourse.
And then you get to the car andit's like, yeah, it's got a
flat tire, but it's also blowingoff oil and the windows are
busted out and any other numberof problems.
So yeah, I get what you'resaying.
Toni Aspin - Guest (04:29):
That's it.
And so that's how um clientsfind their way to me, is that
it's typically through executiveleadership that comes for
something.
My favorite work is whensomeone in the organization sees
the wholeness of it, meaning,if in fact, my I keep clear my
(04:50):
goal, my goal, my drive, myguiding light is to help
nonprofits achieve the greatestimpact they can possibly
achieve.
And so that means getting clearon what impact is, and then how
it is that you're gonna deliveron that impact.
(05:10):
And when we get there, now wecan fix all the operational
issues.
That's easy, and I'm out ofthere by then.
The staff can be capable ofdoing that.
And so that's my favorite work.
And I'm time and time again,I'm shocked at how the problem
that presents itself to me isnever what the problem really
(05:32):
is.
Jon Stone - Host (05:33):
I know exactly what you're saying.
Toni Aspin - Guest (05:35):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so that's what I do.
I spend my time.
So what that ends up being islike um going back to the
wholeness approach, the holisticapproach.
That usually entails deepconversations.
And I'll use the term coachingbecause I also happen to be a
certified coach, executivecoach.
(05:55):
And so I end up coaching theexecutive leadership, typically
starting then from there withthe board, with the board chair.
And now we get this feeling oflike, oh, I understand we need
to work at this from an allpoints place.
And and then I get to reallyget in.
I had a conversation with aclient yesterday and said, okay,
(06:17):
when you're ready to turn meloose on your board, you let me
know.
And that's and that's how thatgoes.
And then, because what's kindof been shaken out over all
these years is that you can'thelp any organization unless you
have absolute commitment fromthe chief, whoever that is,
(06:37):
executive director, CEO,whatever, and then from the
leadership team, and then fromthe board chair who creates the
culture in the entire board.
And then you can make adifference.
And uh I'm grateful to say Idon't work on gigs where I don't
think I can make a differenceanymore.
Jon Stone - Host (06:57):
I'm trying to think if I can say the same.
I'd like to say the same.
I don't know if that's true,though.
A lot of times my work tends tobe more of long-term embedded
work.
Not always, but probably 40 or50 percent of my contracts
involve embedding myself intothe organization so that I can
(07:22):
actually I just find it's reallythe only way that I get to the
root of whatever what's goingon, of whatever the issue may
be.
Toni Aspin - Guest (07:30):
Being in the middle of it is very helpful.
Is very, very helpful.
And because you uh dive intothe deepest things often
operationally, you have to seeit happening.
I can just sit in on a boardmeeting or two and observe, or I
can sit in on an executiveleadership team meeting and
(07:53):
observe and be able to figureout what's going on pretty
quickly.
Jon Stone - Host (07:58):
You've heard those songs enough that you can
more or less recognize them whensung.
Yeah.
Yes, yes, yes.
You have had so manysignificant leadership roles
over the years, and with thoseroles comes inevitably a lot of
weight, a lot of stress.
What techniques have you usedover the years to make sure that
(08:19):
all along you're taking care ofyourself as best you can?
Toni Aspin - Guest (08:24):
I guess first I'd have to say that I've
become aware of the fact thatthat's necessary.
And that that can't beminimized because when we're 40
and 50, we can just keeppushing.
And uh and what that means isif I just put my all my effort
(08:48):
into this, I know I can turn itaround.
But at what cost?
And is it worth that effort?
So I have gotten to a placewhere I can say, wow, some of
the approaches that I took ofjust putting my shoulder down
and working wasn't helping me beobjective about what the big
(09:08):
picture is of what can be done.
That's just a learningsituation.
But in that becoming moreself-aware, I discovered yoga
and meditation.
Out of desperation, maybe atfirst, I dabbled in yoga in the
70s and then got serious aboutit in the 90s and have been a
(09:30):
serious yoga practitioner.
I'm using yoga in the terms ofnot postures.
Yes, postures are involved, butour Western world, when we talk
about yoga, they're talkingabout somewhere kind of close to
calisthenics.
Right.
And that's not what I'm talkingabout.
I'm talking about the yoga ofunderstanding oneself.
(09:52):
And so that's it's a dailypractice that I have of just
quieting myself so I can hear myown voice.
And when we can hear our ownvoice, then we can make some
real decisions.
We have more stamina.
We can say this is thisparticular activity or action is
(10:15):
moving me closer to what I wantto get at, or it's not.
I think that's just beenlearned over time.
And uh certainly the reason wecall it a practice is because
it's never done.
It's never done.
But that's been, I think,central is having a mindfulness
(10:35):
practice.
And that just grows youremotional intelligence, period.
If you just decided that youwere going to meditate every
day, I can guarantee you thatyour emotional intelligence will
grow as a result of that.
Because at the core of emoemotional intelligence is
awareness, self-awareness andawareness of your surroundings.
(10:59):
Without that, you can be thesmartest person in the world.
But if you don't have thatself-awareness, you're you're
not emotionally intelligent.
Period.
It cannot happen.
Uh you can be smart, you can beall kinds of other things, a
good strategist, but you're notemotionally intelligent.
(11:19):
So that just happens, it's likea lovely result of mindfulness
and awareness practices.
And so now suddenly you have atool, emotional intelligence as
a tool to make decisions, tosupport others, to create a path
(11:45):
that is moving you where youwant to go.
And I think just that tool ofemotional intelligence helps
then be able to uh identify allthe other kind of leadership
qualities that you want to bringto the table.
And they just become, they cometo you, they become apparent
(12:06):
when you do this.
Again, it's about it's notchasing the idea of developing
my leadership style.
Maybe at first you have to, andI ask my students this all the
time.
I give them lots of things toread and then ask them to
describe their leadership style.
And um, they struggle withthat, and they use words out of
(12:27):
the journal articles I givethem, and it has to come from
within.
Like that's where it has tocome.
It's like when I'm interactingwith this person, how do I feel
when that's happening?
What am I getting from them?
Is it an exchange?
And are we experiencing respectfor one another?
All of those things come toyou.
That's the only way you can getthere.
(12:49):
You can talk about authenticleadership and all kinds of
things, but the practices,though, of mindfulness then open
up doors for other ways thatyou can reduce the stress.
Mindfulness, for example,allows you to consider the idea
of letting go of your own ego.
(13:09):
And when we have too much egoin the mix of things, uh, it
ruins everything for everyone.
And so, how do we do that?
What's the balance of what roledoes a healthy ego play in what
you're doing?
Stress comes when you thinkit's all on you and you're the
one driving it all.
(13:30):
And without you, nothing wouldhappen.
And that's not true.
And if that is true, youhaven't been a good leader.
So I think those are the boy,that that idea of um managing
the things that all the stressesthat come with uh having
people's lives in your hands,more or less.
(13:53):
Um I think the only way you canget at that is by letting go of
who you think you are andletting the the real
opportunities come out.
Jon Stone - Host (14:06):
You know, you talk about ego, and as soon as
you said the word ego, um itbegs the question of like what's
the difference between ego andand pride, especially when we're
in it, we have an there's anenormous amount of pride that
can kind of maybe blend intothat ego bit a little bit and
get confused internally.
Toni Aspin - Guest (14:25):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (14:27):
I mean, you have you have to have a
tremendous amount of pride inwhat you're doing.
Yeah.
Uh in order to be effective inthis sector.
Toni Aspin - Guest (14:36):
Yeah.
Well, I would ask you to definepride and maybe consider
whether it's a great deal ofsatisfaction from work done
well.
Pride to me is a term thatpridefulness is not a positive
term in my in my vocabulary.
Say more about that.
(14:56):
Well, here's one way to thinkabout it.
What is that famous term?
It's like pride comes beforethe fall.
Have you heard that?
Jon Stone - Host (15:05):
Yeah, I think so.
Toni Aspin - Guest (15:08):
I guess coming from there, pride to me
seems like I'm taking credit foreverything.
Like I'm proud because I didthat.
Now you might think I'm proudof our team, or or I'm proud of
the organization for achievingthis, but it's just that pride
lingers.
There's a lingering thing ofself-accomplishment or something
(15:33):
like that that's not inclusive.
I I don't know.
I can't, I don't know if I candescribe it.
And it might be just somethingthat I've experienced when I
hear people say, I'm proud ofthis, and I think, okay, yeah,
it occurs to me that there issomething that's exclusive about
that.
Jon Stone - Host (15:51):
Okay, there you go.
Toni Aspin - Guest (15:52):
Yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (15:53):
I was just going to add that to me, the
definition of pride depends onwhat altitude you're defining
that from.
When I think of that groundlevel, that weeds level
altitude, I can't reallydifferentiate pride from ego.
And you're right, pride has alittle bit of a negative feeling
(16:16):
to it, counterintuitive as thatmay seem.
But when I go up in altitude,somehow that it kind of softens
and is a little more inclusive.
I think, yeah, I think yourexclusive remark kind of gets to
the point there.
Pride in a in a bubble is veryin a very exclusive, not
(16:38):
necessarily constructive thing.
Toni Aspin - Guest (16:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The sense of it is that I'veset us on a path and we've
walked that path and arrived ata place that gives me a great
deal of satisfaction.
That's the sort of the essenceof it.
But pride from anybody feelslike they may have had more to
(17:01):
do with the arrival than theydid.
But it should be an effort thateveryone feels satisfied with.
And I don't know if I couldplace pride as a word to
describe that.
Jon Stone - Host (17:17):
I suppose it's just as much as it's about
altitude, it's about which wayare we pointing that?
I'm asking myself as I'mlistening to you, because like,
what am I proud of?
Have I ever been proud ofanything?
It's like, yes, I am proud.
I'm so proud of my sons.
I I can think of so manymoments that just can't have
been flashing through my mind inthe last two minutes about some
(17:39):
of the teams that I have beenprivileged to work with over the
years and how proud I am of thework that they accomplished,
the impact that they made inwhatever endeavor we were
chasing at the time.
I haven't thought about thisuntil just now, but pride to me
is kind of an external thing.
I'm proud of other people andother things.
(17:59):
Have I ever felt really proudof myself?
I don't know how to answerthat.
I'm gonna have to reserve thatquestion and think on that.
Toni Aspin - Guest (18:09):
Well, it could be that again, that word
is something that we stumble on.
Like things that you've donethat you feel proud of.
I would interpret that as beingincredibly grateful for the
opportunity to have participatedin something like that.
Like I say that about my um myPhD program, the whole program,
(18:34):
and selecting a program that Iknew was going to be incredibly
challenging to me because I knewno language around it at all.
I mean, you know, set me in anorganizational development PhD,
and I already know the language.
I walk in and I understand thelanguage and I understand sort
of what we could be going for.
But I was in this program whereno one was a business person.
(18:57):
Everyone was a social scientistor a human scientist, and I
chose that purposefully.
And so when I think aboutnavigating how lost I felt at
the beginning, the first year,and then what I learned going
through that and how I was ableto apply the learning, I feel
(19:20):
one could say proud that I didit, but I don't feel proud
because I feel like it wasnothing, it was some kind of uh
greater being than myself thatwas able to sort of keep me on
track.
And I feel just hugely gratefulto uh have experienced that and
learned what I learned.
(19:40):
Now it's interesting you say,Oh, I'm proud of um my children,
and I I have that same feeling.
And I use that's the one time Iprobably use the word pride
when I when I'm having aconversation with my sons, and
uh yet talk about having nocontrol over anything.
I mean, really, you just setsome kind of a foundation and
(20:03):
then they go off and do whatthey're doing, you know, and you
have no control over that.
Jon Stone - Host (20:09):
No, but in a perfect world, you've had a lot
of influence.
Yeah.
I like to think that I seelittle bits and pieces of
myself, good bits and pieces ofmyself in my children from time
to time.
Toni Aspin - Guest (20:25):
Yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (20:26):
Uh, but I feel equally as proud of them when I
see characteristics, uh, thingsthat they do, ways that they
act, or that doesn't lookfamiliar to me at all.
Toni Aspin - Guest (20:35):
Yes.
Yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (20:36):
Where the heck is that coming from?
But man, is that is that neatto see?
Yeah.
Toni Aspin - Guest (20:41):
Yeah.
But that makes me think, Jon,of like, it's like a wonder to
you, to me.
It's a wonder to a parent tolook and see how this being has
emerged, you know?
Jon Stone - Host (20:56):
I guess my sense of pride is really
centered around mycontributions, not so much
around my accomplishments.
Maybe that's the best way thatI can articulate that.
Let's go back and revisitbudgets as a form of
storytelling.
Yeah.
(21:16):
This is an idea that I preachall the time.
And it surprises me how wellreceived that particular big
idea is.
Toni Aspin - Guest (22:03):
Something more.
It has to be more than just abunch of numbers.
And so what is that story?
But being able to get people,like the way to practice that is
to look at some set offinancials, some projections,
some budget, whatever it is, andasking people to just extract
(22:23):
the story and tell it cannot doit.
They do the elevator thing.
Well, this goes up, if thatgoes down.
And they cannot, and that's notthe story.
It's like um the the yourability to either to zoom in and
you know, look at the all thenumbers and then zoom out and
(22:44):
see the implications of that.
And that's what's difficultfor, I mean, that's that's what
I find is that most people justget stuck on that thing.
And I virtually cannot look atfinancial statements anymore
without the zoom out first.
I have to do the zoom out andsee what it is.
(23:06):
What and it's also my feelingthat I get when I look at
financials.
And this is probably becauseI've looked at so many
financials that they bore me todeath.
Sure.
But uh, but so it's a techniquethat I've used that helps me
get a the personality ofwhatever the financial statement
(23:26):
is.
I think people want that, butthey don't know how to practice
it.
And all it takes is practice.
So they can say, well, look, ifyou show trends, this is the
best uh way to get people tolook at stories, is to show uh
like a four or five year trendof financials or budgets or
(23:46):
whatever you want.
And they'll do that elevatorthing.
Well, revenue went up, and thenthis administrative expense
went up.
And this is that they talkabout the ups and downs.
That's what they do, andthey're missing the whole story
about that.
I wonder sometimes if it'sbecause we're so unused to using
(24:09):
creativity when we look atnumbers and quantifiable things
that we can't get to anythingelse because it's so connected
with quantifiable that we can'tget to anything.
So I've asked students to justum make things up that are not
even true, just to practiceusing the sentences there around
(24:31):
a trend in a financial,something like, okay, why would
revenue go down?
Right?
That's what they have to thinkof is why would revenue go down?
Well, a new CEO came on boardand nobody uh liked that CEO.
And so everybody got togetherand decided they were going to
stop buying this one particularproduct that they were offering.
(24:52):
Just make something up.
I think that practice of thatcreative practice of making
things up and not not worryingthat they're not true, but just
trying to see if you can make astory up that hangs together.
I think I'm kind of good atthat because I started doing
that with my sons when they werelittle, is that we'd go to the
(25:13):
park and we'd sit at the parkand we'd look at people and we'd
make up completely randomstories about the people that we
were seeing.
Yeah.
And it helps create that partof your mind that allows you to
just explode.
Jon Stone - Host (25:29):
Yes, absolutely.
But you don't typically findthat in accounting.
The notion of creativity inaccounting is kind of a uh
negative thing.
Toni Aspin - Guest (25:39):
Yeah, yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (25:40):
You're not supposed to do that.
So I wonder, you I think youmight be on to something there.
I also am sitting herewondering if it has anything to
do with the fact that in anorganization, your budget
responsibilities tend to getallocated out to departments.
And so your department A isreally dialed in with the
(26:00):
portion of the budget that'sassociated with department A,
department B, department C, soon and so forth.
But it's really only a handfulof people in the organization
whose job it is, responsibilityis to look at the thing as a
whole.
And of course, you can't tell astory without considering the
whole.
So I wonder if this method ofbudget responsibility, budget
(26:21):
allocation per department mightbe kind of its own worst enemy
in some ways.
That gets into your corporateculture.
It does.
As well.
Are you compartmentalized ornot?
Toni Aspin - Guest (26:34):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
It also uh gets into it isculture again.
It's how do we describe tothose that we want to
collaborate with on putting awhole budget together?
How do we start with the story?
How do we start with a story?
So we create a picture foranybody that's responsible for
(26:56):
any aspect of the budget.
We start with the story of whatwe're seeing, and it goes back
to the difficulty people havewith the scenario planning, with
the what-if questions.
But if we present the financialpicture as a story, now even if
you're uh doing one littlesection of the budget, you can
ask the question (27:17):
how would this scenario, how would this story
that we're creating that we'vedeveloped about the next year or
three, the financial future ofthe organization, how would your
area be impacted if this storywere to play out?
So you start with a storyinstead of start with a list of
(27:39):
account names and balances inthere and asking you to what do
we do?
We usually say review all thetransactions from last year and
look to see what ones wereunusual and if we, you know,
need to revise those in any wayor if the same thing is gonna
happen this year.
And what do people do?
Yeah, probably the same thing.
(27:59):
So there's no creativity in aprint and repeat.
Yeah, that's it.
Jon Stone - Host (28:03):
Strategy versus tactics is all that is.
Yeah.
So many people, most people,think that they're developing
strategy when they're reallyjust refreshing tactics, I
should say.
Toni Aspin - Guest (28:15):
That's it.
That's it.
That's a good phrase for it,refreshing tactics.
So somehow we have to getpeople onto the story.
And in some organizations thatI've worked with, it's sunk in.
One nonprofit that I work withthat's an international
nonprofit, and their UnitedStates element is located in a
(28:35):
small town called Ohio.
And I was on the board at thetime, and we developed something
that tells the story.
It's actually a form that yougo through, but it includes
telling stories.
So you develop stories aboutthe various areas of what's
happening, all linked back tothe impact, what the
(28:56):
organization overall is wantingto do.
And everybody tells theirstory, then the numbers start
after that.
And then what the questions arehow does this decision that
you're making and this numberthat you're putting in for this
line item, how does it supportthe story?
And if it doesn't support thestory, then back to the drawing
(29:19):
board.
So starting with story ishelpful because it's very hard
for people to unwind all thequantitative and get to
something further.
But you see how this developsthis the brain uh with regard to
strategy and generativity.
Jon Stone - Host (29:40):
Absolutely.
Starting with storytelling,that's a new catchphrase.
Now, starting with a storymakes so much sense.
And at the same time, that'sjust not how everything works.
I know.
It's just not how everythingworks.
Yeah.
Toni Aspin - Guest (29:56):
But only because we're stuck.
Nobody knows.
We're stuck in our ways.
That's
Jon Stone - Host (30:01):
It's reminding me in this weird tangential
way.
There is this gentleman namedMonty Roberts, and he was a
professional horse trainer.
I don't know if he's stillalive or not.
He's professionally known asthe horse whisperer.
There was a movie that was madeloosely based on.
I I actually went to one of hisclinics back in my horse days
(30:23):
in Monroe at the fairgrounds.
And people would pay top dollarby the hundreds or thousands to
go see a two-hour Monty Robertsclinic.
And he developed a he getscredit for developing this
revolutionary way of trainingand working and being with
horses.
I learned over the years thatyes, he was a developer of that.
(30:45):
He wasn't the only one.
There were a number of otherfolks, Pat Pirelli and some
other really smart folks.
But the I could summarize it bysaying that up until this era,
the kind of the classic way oftraining a horse was breaking
the whores.
It's basically forcing them toheed your will.
And when they resist, you justkeep at it until you mentally
(31:08):
break their will to be horses.
And that's just the way thehorse world has always worked,
for presumably since thedomestification of horses.
But Monty Roberts and theseother practitioners developed a
very different approach and kindof garnered the nickname the
horse whisperer.
But now I'm I'm seeing a newI'm seeing a new seminar tour,
(31:31):
and it's the financialstoryteller.
Tony Aspen, the financialstoryteller at the Monroe
Fairgrounds.
$80.
I don't know what thedemonstration looks like, but
it'd be pretty cool.
Yeah.
Just a new way of thinking.
Toni Aspin - Guest (31:48):
Yeah, I would imagine.
Um, what would it be like?
I would imagine that we'd getpeople somehow um give them some
overarching topic and have thempractice telling a story about
it.
Because that's where the chopsneed to be built.
You have to build your chopsfor being able to think beyond
what you currently do.
Jon Stone - Host (32:08):
It would the presentation would start with
this the presentation of abudget for something.
It could be something real orsomething fictitious.
And so it would be like aclassic boardroom kind of uh
overview, five-minute overviewof this thing, a project, uh a
building, a festival, uh itdoesn't matter what it is, just
(32:30):
something, using just theclassic numbers technique.
And of that, some percentage ofthe audience would be able to
follow that, and some otherpercentage would not.
And then you'd do it over againusing the storytelling
methodology, and people would,the difference would be stark.
All of a sudden, everybodywould would understand it.
Toni Aspin - Guest (32:51):
Yeah, in the storytelling, what we get out
of that is the ability to bringin other aspects besides just
the number aspect.
You cannot sum up an activitylike an event with just numbers.
It's impossible.
So you miss the whole humanelement of it.
(33:15):
And it's certainly looking atthe numbers says something.
I mean, it'll say, Did I hit myrevenue goal?
If not, why not?
I mean, you can develop thosekind of stories, but they're
still just completely centeredon, you know, the direction the
numbers are moving.
Are they positive or are theynegative?
And all of these areassumptions that we're making.
(33:39):
And so so stories say they putthe qualitative aspects in, they
center the qualitative aspectsalong with the quantitative
aspects.
And it takes it's more work.
True.
It's more work.
True.
So no no CFO is gonna want todo that.
Jon Stone - Host (33:59):
There's no denying it.
Yeah, absolutely.
It is the the harder road.
Toni Aspin - Guest (34:03):
Yeah, yeah.
At first, anyway, until youstart seeing in in stories.
And then suddenly you have, oh,wait, I can't go anywhere until
I understand what the story is.
And then when the story comes,now you can you can respond to
it and you can put numbers onit, but you have to start with a
(34:24):
story.
And it's only hard at first.
Once you're good at seeing astory, then it's not hard
anymore.
I mean, when you think aboutyour life, John, and you think
about how you envision your lifeto be 10 years from now, how
does that come to you?
Does it come in images or doesit come in what what visually
(34:48):
visually?
Mm-hmm.
And then from there, uh youmaybe examine those things.
Like if you say, I want to beum wildly wealthy, and then in
your mind, perhaps an image of aproperty where you're living,
and these other things come in,and then you examine those
things and say, you know, whatis the cost of that out of my
(35:14):
soul and out of my pocketbook?
And then you start puttingsome.
Oh, I guess if I actually wantthat, I'm gonna have to put some
dollars there.
And now you can start putting,you can start adding in.
And that's the same for anorganization.
Jon Stone - Host (35:31):
I'm thinking of the quarterly, the monthly
financial report, right?
And so you tell your financedepartment, give me the detail
for this, this, this, and thenwe ask them to put a top sheet
on it that's just got the supersummary.
And that we should start sayingon top of that, put the one
paragraph story.
Yeah.
What would happen if everybodyrequired the top sheet to be
(35:53):
this a narrative form?
Toni Aspin - Guest (35:55):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That wasn't an elevatoranalysis.
Jon Stone - Host (35:58):
Yeah, but that it was really like No, the only
the only rule would be youcan't actually mention the
numbers at all.
Toni Aspin - Guest (36:05):
Yes, exactly.
Jon Stone - Host (36:06):
You have to tell a story some other way.
Toni Aspin - Guest (36:08):
Yeah, exactly.
Or even though that would be afun experiment.
You can't even uh mention theline items, even.
Right.
Jon Stone - Host (36:14):
You know, but you're gonna tell that would be
a great you'd have to tell astory, a paragraph or two from
the customer's perspective.
Toni Aspin - Guest (36:23):
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Wouldn't you like to hear itfrom the CFO's perspective or
from the CEO's perspective?
Jon Stone - Host (36:32):
There's all sorts of different perspectives,
and I wonder how much thatstory would change.
Yeah.
Given the same person writingfrom all these different
viewpoints.
That would be an interestingexercise.
Toni Aspin - Guest (36:43):
Absolutely.
This is how we start to learnour own perspectives, because
these embedded assumptions thatwe have are invisible to us.
We can't see them because wejust presume and we don't notice
that we're presuming becauseit's using some other part of
your brain.
(37:03):
That's why this recent workthat has completely enthralled
me is Robert Keegan, who talksabout why we can't change, no
matter how much we want tochange, what are the challenges
of change?
He's not saying we can't, he'sin fact saying we can.
But he uses the example of thecardiologist who tells seven of
(37:26):
his patients that have severecardiac issues, and he tells
them if you don't do thefollowing things, you will die.
And one out of seven can makethose changes, even though they
know that they're going to dieif they don't.
Jon Stone - Host (37:44):
Really?
Toni Aspin - Guest (37:44):
Yeah.
One out of seven.
And so that tells us that it'snot for lack of motivation,
because you know, most peopleare pretty motivated to live,
but they cannot make the change.
So he's talked about how uhmaking change requires setting a
(38:05):
goal that you want more thananything else, like identifying
what that is, which throws mostpeople off right off the bat,
right?
Because they can't think of,they can't land on one, but you
have to land on one, and it hasto be uh something that you care
deeply about.
And then we practice walkingthrough what are you doing
instead of that?
So you can start getting towhat the assumptions are.
(38:29):
Because what we do is insteadof changing, we immediately busy
ourselves with other things sowe can say, oh no, we can't make
this change because I'm toobusy, you know, eating uh red
meat or I don't know, whateverthe thing might be.
It's a little more subtle thanthat.
But you you formulaically digout those underlying assumptions
(38:51):
so that you can see what yourbeliefs are hidden to you that
are keeping you from making thischange.
To me, it's just about he putit in the context in his book,
uh Immunity to Change.
He put it in the context oforganizational change and team
change and like that.
(39:11):
But to me, it's life changebecause at the crux of it, it is
transformative learning, right?
Because what we have to do issee what is keeping us, what is
the thing?
So we're trying to have adisorienting dilemma in a way,
because we want to say, oh no, Ibelieve that if I don't eat
meat every day, for example, uh,the of the cardiac thing, if I
(39:36):
don't eat meat every day, I'mnot having a complete meal.
Let's put it that way.
Like that's an assumption thatyou have because that's been
embedded in us for so long.
And then if you dig into that alittle bit more, maybe that has
to do with prestige in a way,of maybe you've lived in a in
your youth with not enough foodto eat at all.
(39:57):
And so to you, it wasprestigious to eat a steak.
See, that's these things getuncovered in that, and then you
realize, oh, that's what'skeeping me.
It's not the fact that I cancan't stop eating red meat, even
though it's killing me.
It's that that underlyingassumption is if I don't eat red
(40:18):
meat, I somehow am poor.
Right.
And so we have to get at thoseas subtle as they are to be able
to say, I can choose what Iwant.
Jon Stone - Host (40:28):
This is fascinating.
Staying on the cardiac study.
We just talked about why thesix out of seven are like they
are, but what about the one outof seven that who can change?
Like, what's that all about?
Toni Aspin - Guest (40:41):
Yeah.
Who who knows?
It could be like willpower.
Do you believe in willpower?
I don't know if I do.
Jon Stone - Host (40:50):
I don't not I don't think I do.
Most of my life I have, uh-huh,but recently I've started to
question that.
Yeah.
Toni Aspin - Guest (41:01):
Yeah, because what is it anyway?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
Jon Stone - Host (41:05):
Yeah.
Point two willpower.
Yeah.
Where is that at what organgenerates that?
Right.
Toni Aspin - Guest (41:12):
I mean, if anything, it's the brain, and
the brain does whatever it'sbeen programmed to do.
So we're talking about at thismoment, what if you want to
change doing what the brain istelling you to do?
It's like you're workingagainst it.
What makes that happen?
I mean, in that case of the onewho made the change, the only
(41:36):
thing I can think of is thatthey actually were able to see
that by doing what they weredoing, they were on a path to
destruction.
Why can one person see that andnot six others?
Very fascinating.
Jon Stone - Host (41:50):
Well, I don't know that the six others didn't
see the path.
I mean, what I think in thatspecific example is I think
everybody can is capable ofseeing the path.
It's just an inability to doanything about it.
Yeah.
Toni Aspin - Guest (42:03):
Or the perceived inability to do
anything about it.
Because we can't willpower islike I'm going to will this into
being.
That's what it seems like.
It's just do it, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's it.
It's just do it.
Just do it.
And then and that might holdfor even a few months or a
(42:25):
while.
But if you haven't reached theunderlying issue, it's gonna go,
it's gonna spring back to whereit was because you haven't
really changed the circuitry.
Jon Stone - Host (42:36):
I think of the pursuit of weight loss.
There's really no mystery leftanymore, scientifically, around
what causes weight loss, whatcauses weight gain.
Right?
The only mystery is why can'twe do anything about it?
And so many people withwillpower, I think, yeah, but
willpower, I'm going to reducethe amount of calories I take
(42:58):
every day.
I'm gonna cut sugar out orwhatever, whatever it is, right?
I'm gonna stop drinking coffee.
Any one of us can do that for aday or a week or a month.
Uh, but I use the example ofweight loss because we it's we
now understand pretty well thatwillpower isn't it's a false
hope that your body will fightback against you.
(43:20):
And just depending on thestrength of your willpower or
the strength of your body'schemical reactions, that battle
may go on for an extended periodof time.
It could go on for a lifetimeon one end of the scale, or that
battle could be over by the endof the week.
Uh and maybe you can choose tostart that battle over again.
(43:40):
But yeah, I don't know about Idon't know about willpower.
Toni Aspin - Guest (43:44):
Yeah, I don't either.
Jon Stone - Host (43:45):
It's intense I mean really there's intention.
I certainly believe inintention.
But whenever will we thinkabout willpower, it's usually
we're usually using that in thecontext of against what our own
body is trying to do or tryingto tell us in one step into that
end.
I don't I I don't know ifthat's a real thing.
Toni Aspin - Guest (44:05):
Yeah, and if that if that could ever
materialize really on apermanent basis, there are
probably cases of that.
There are probably some casesof that where you can say, you
know, I'm not going to do thisanymore.
I'm not going to behave changebehavioral change.
But mostly we know that we needto do some rewiring in our
(44:26):
circuitry.
I mean, that's how smokingclinics work.
Jon Stone - Host (44:30):
I was just thinking about uh alcohol.
Yeah.
I know many people personallyover my lifetime that have had
problems with alcohol.
And a very small percentage ofthem, they wake up one day for
whatever reason, they say,enough's enough.
I'm gonna stop.
By God, they do.
Toni Aspin - Guest (44:51):
Yes.
Jon Stone - Host (44:52):
I'm thinking of one fella I grew up with, and
he said, I'm done 35 years ago,something like that.
And to the best of myknowledge, hasn't touched the
drop.
Yeah.
And hasn't even really appearedto struggle with it that much
either.
Interesting.
Just said all of a sudden youcan flip that switch.
Yeah.
And of course, the vastmajority of everybody that I
(45:15):
know that is not the case atall.
And they want they want to sobadly.
Yeah.
But willpower alone isn't goingto get the job done.
And I'm talking about thesepeople, they're I consider them
to be powerful people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Extremely powerful people.
But somehow willpower doesn'tkind of fit into that same power
(45:37):
gradient.
Toni Aspin - Guest (45:38):
Yeah.
Well, I want to go back tothat, to thinking along with
Jack Miserow and thedisorienting dilemma, the fellow
that you know that justseemingly woke up one morning
and said, No more, I've had it.
Something happened that shiftedhis mindset.
So he may have had his ownquiet, private, disorienting
(46:02):
dilemma, something that hebelieved to be the case, thought
absolutely was true, and thenlearned that it was not.
Some kind of a disorientingdilemma like that.
And it just maybe wasn'tapparent to others, but that'll
that's the thing that causes youto change.
It's a shift in yourperspective, a complete shift in
(46:23):
your perspective.
Not a little bit, not a like,well, I thought it was rose
colored and now it's actuallyruby or something.
It's not like that littlething, it's like a big thing.
Have you ever had anything likethat?
Jon Stone - Host (46:38):
You know, I'm thinking of an experience right
now, but I I it's more of a it'sa it's a trauma experience.
And I don't know that that'sthe same thing that we're
talking about, but uh it was awarm summer afternoon, and I was
in my early twenties, and I wasliving with a bunch of friends
(46:59):
at a house in Everett, and itwas early spring, and it was
unusually warm.
And all of my friends, it waswe'd gotten off work, all of my
friends said, Hey, let's go.
They wanted to go somewhere anddo something.
I'm like, you know, I've workedall day and tired, I'm just
gonna sit, I'm gonna stay hereand enjoy this weather.
And so they all left.
I had the house to myself.
I was sitting on the frontporch, and this beautiful the
(47:22):
cherries were blooming.
That's how I remember what timeof year it was.
It must have been February,March, early, one of those early
springs that we sometimes getaround here.
And it was just ideal.
And I had a rolling rock beer,which was my beer of choice at
that time.
And in that moment, justsitting peacefully under the
blooming cherry tree with myrolling rock.
100 feet away from me nextdoor, there was a little corner
(47:44):
neighborhood market.
This is a residential area.
Little corner neighborhood,mini mart kind of a thing, mom
and pop.
And then beyond that, there wasan intersection of an arterial
and then a side street and uhtraffic light.
And as I was sitting theresipping this late afternoon
beer, I could hear the vehiclecoming speeding down the street.
(48:09):
I couldn't see it because itwas behind buildings, but I
heard it and it's like theaccelerator, it just kept
accelerating, going faster andfaster and faster and faster.
And then it hit the steeltelephone pole, the light pole
that was out there.
And again, I couldn't see theactual impact.
It was hidden behind thebuilding.
But this it was like a littleDotson, one of those little
(48:31):
Dotson pickup trucks at thetime.
This is early 90s.
And uh it hit a steel telephonepole that did not go anywhere.
Probably, I don't know how fastthey were going, but it was,
you know, it was probably, Idon't imagine it was any less
than 70 miles an hour.
And so there was just thisexplosion, and then there was
silence, and then I rememberseconds later, the sound of
(48:57):
parts raining down out of thesky, glass, metal, and then
there was just kind of silenceand this this metallic rain
falling, and it stunned me.
But then after some period oftime, I got up and I I ran to
the intersection, and there wasnobody out there, and to this
(49:18):
day, that still strikes me asodd, but there just wasn't
anybody else out there, no othertraffic, no other cars.
But uh, I could see, you know,then I come around the corner of
the minimart, and there's thethe car there, and it's
literally wrapped, they use thephrase wrapped around the light
bulb, but it was wrapped aroundthat, and there was steam from
the radiator and oily smokeeverywhere, so I couldn't see
(49:39):
very well.
And I looked around, it's likethere's no other cars, and I ran
over to that car to help, and Iput my head in the window so
that the driver side, so I couldsee what was going on, and that
was uh that was one of thosethings that nobody should ever
uh see that kind of thing.
And uh there's a driver and apassenger male of uh probably
(50:12):
30s or something like that, andthey had alcohol in the car.
I don't know if they were ifthat was the cause of the
accident or whatnot, but theyhad there's lots of containers
of beer, and a lot of those hadcracked open.
So there's just this smell ofof what the insides of people
smell like, and motor oil andgasoline and and antifreeze,
(50:38):
coolant, uh steam, and thenbeer.
It's really strong sensethough.
The beer is almost thestrongest sense or strongest
scent that I could pick up.
And then anyway, that I I Irealized pretty another little
shocking kind of moment, youknow, taking that in visually
(50:59):
and through all the senses.
And then I figured it wasobvious they were both deceased,
uh, clearly.
Uh then the responders gotthere and and I told them my
observations, and that was it.
And then I eventually went backto that porch I was sitting on,
and my rolling rock was stillsitting there half empty, and I
went to to pick it up, and thatsmell of beer hit my nostrils,
(51:23):
and I couldn't touch it.
And to wrap up my long story, Icouldn't, not that I chose not
to or didn't want to, but Icouldn't drink alcohol again for
I think three years.
No kidding.
It was just like, you know,like if you're walking around on
a carpet and there's a lot ofstatic electricity, and if
you're you get zapped enoughtimes, like your muscles like
(51:46):
won't let you touch somethingmetal, you know what I'm talking
about?
It's that same kind of thing.
It's not that I didn't desireto drink beer, it's just that I
could not physically causemyself to drink alcohol.
Toni Aspin - Guest (51:58):
Wow.
Jon Stone - Host (51:58):
Or get or even be anywhere near where that
odor was.
It was such a negativereaction.
Wow.
So that's a that's a traumaresponse, which isn't what we
were talking about initially,but yeah, it was an example of
maybe it was an example ofsubconscious willpower.
I don't know.
Toni Aspin - Guest (52:15):
Yeah, maybe so.
Maybe it was, yeah.
I think that um, yeah, a traumaresponse is unique in that way,
where you you know it gets youat a very guttural level.
And I think that's the sameidea as a uh disorienting
dilemma in the sense that it'sit it is meant to be something
(52:37):
uh as Mesarot describes it, it'smeant to be something that
virtually changes your mindabout something.
Has this happened to you?
I mean, it's happened to meseveral times where somehow I
just mistakenly thoughtsomething was right.
Like, uh even if we use it thesimplest thing, so-and-so's
(52:59):
lived, no, so-and-so's lived inSeattle their whole life.
And then someone pipes up andsays, No, they didn't.
They they haven't lived inSeattle their whole life.
They uh spent the they wereborn in Arkansas.
I know because I met him whenhe was, and this completely
changes your mind about thisperson in some way.
(53:20):
It completely like somethingyou believed you knew, like
that.
Like, no, they're they've livedin Seattle their whole life,
and then evidence comes to yourattention that is counter to
that very strong knowing thatyou thought you had.
Jon Stone - Host (53:35):
I've I've experienced that through uh my
own memories, like my likeearly, earlier life childhood
memories being incorrect, havingbecome corrupted over time.
I've experienced that, but Ican't think of an example where
I've experienced that just basedon belief, mistaken beliefs.
(53:56):
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Toni Aspin - Guest (53:57):
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Jon Stone - Host (54:00):
Well, since we are here in Sunny today, Port
Townsend, I would actually liketo hear about some of your best
memories from your time atCentrum.
How many years were you atCentrum?
Toni Aspin - Guest (54:12):
Seven.
Jon Stone - Host (54:13):
Seven years.
Yeah.
Toni Aspin - Guest (54:14):
It's the longest I've ever worked for any
employer.
Jon Stone - Host (54:17):
I was gonna say that's a little bit of a
long stretch.
Toni Aspin - Guest (54:19):
Yeah for you.
Yeah, it is.
I loved that job because itwas, I was just soaking up
everything.
I was learning so much.
I was coming from, it was stillvery early, not long after the
American Civil Liberties Union.
So I had started thinkingdifferently about how I could
use my skills, but I stillalways thought within the
(54:41):
context of financial stuff.
The founder of Centrum, JoeWheeler, one of my uh one who I
consider to be my mentor, he hehired me from a a random letter
that I wrote to him when I gotto Port Townsend, kind of not
totally happy about being here.
I was trying to hold a failingrelationship together.
(55:02):
So I reluctantly agreed to cometo Port Townsend.
And when I got here, I thought,oh, what am I gonna do here?
And I knew about Centrumbecause they produced the Jazz
Festival and you know that.
And I knew, I knew about thewriters' conference and such.
So I thought, well, it's theonly place I'd ever even
consider working, is at Centrum.
(55:22):
So no job opening, nothing.
I just virtually wrote a letterto Joe Wheeler and said, this
is what I do.
And I know I know that I wouldhave focused mostly on financial
turnaround stuff, becausethat's where my mind was at that
time.
Yeah.
And so I wrote him a letter andhe essentially said, This is
(55:43):
what I do, and I'd like to do itat Centrum.
Well, serendipitously, thatletter landed on his desk the
day after a board meeting, andthey had just completed a
capital campaign and uh rebuiltthe performance hall.
And as you know well, um,capital campaigns almost always
(56:05):
cause a deficit.
Now, approaches have gotten farmore refined these days, but in
general, people say,absolutely, I won't let this
impact my annual gift oranything like that, but it does.
So they had a deficit, and itwas significant for that size
organization, which was barely amillion-dollar budget.
Okay.
And so the board chair said,Wheeler, you need to get some
(56:29):
financial expertise in here.
This is a story that Joe toldme much later.
You've got to get somefinancial expertise.
He was a brilliant fellow, uh,PhD in music.
Okay.
And a musician.
That was his love.
Uh, and jazz particularly.
So he thought to himself, hesaid, I have no idea how to even
(56:49):
talk to a financial person.
Yeah.
And he comes to work.
That happened at the boardmeeting the night before he
comes to work, and there's myletter sitting on his desk.
And he told me later that hesaid, There must be a God.
So he called me up and we hitit off really well.
And he didn't know exactly whathow he wanted me to work this
(57:12):
because he had a long-standingaccountant that worked there.
And she was still using recipecards for various things like
registry.
It was like really not at all.
So I had to go about this verycarefully because, of course, I
didn't want to muck around inthe day-to-day recording
entries, but I needed hersupport in order to be able to
(57:35):
get to the bottom of why thingswere, you know, happening as
they were.
So that was my number onelesson.
But it was like getting to thebottom of things.
You need to have people be ableto speak with you honestly
about that.
And there I was, you know, uhtrying to guide the way.
My favorite part then, it grewand grew and grew.
(57:55):
And Joe was a registeredlobbyist.
He was a gifted moneywhisperer, if you will.
And so he taught me the ropesthere.
He took me to Olympia.
We had funding from theNational Endowment for the Arts
and for the state from the statesuperintendent of public
instruction.
So I learned the ropes.
He took me to Olympia with himand showed me the ropes, and I
(58:18):
learned effectively how to goabout working within the
legislative system and manyother things that he taught me.
Many of the lessons I learnedfrom him were not to do things
the way he did them.
Yeah.
But he really gave me full reignwhen it came to learning board
dynamics and what I felt like Icould sort of instinctively and
(58:42):
by watching him uh with theboard, I felt like I could make
some changes in the way thatworked.
Jon Stone - Host (58:47):
How much overlap time did you have with
Joe?
Toni Aspin - Guest (58:51):
Oh, four years.
Okay.
Wow.
Yeah, four years.
Because I was I was justworking.
He I was hired as a contractor.
Okay.
So I was doing financialconsulting.
And then after about a year, 18months, he made up the position
of managing director and mademe managing director.
And then I worked with him foranother two and a half years or
(59:13):
something as managing directorbefore I became executive
director.
Jon Stone - Host (59:17):
So yeah, I when he made the managing
director, did he make himselfthe artistic director?
Is that the no?
Toni Aspin - Guest (59:23):
He kept executive director.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
He kept executive director.
Yeah.
So we didn't change any ofthat, the structure.
It was just he was still theboss, but giving me managing
director allowed me more purviewbeyond just the financial
aspect of it.
So then I got to start learningprogramming and, you know, all
of that stuff from very talentedpeople that were there.
(59:45):
So that I have such fondmemories of that, of staying up
all night finishing a grant forthe NEA.
Of our season started reallyearly in springtime, although we
had a chamber music festival.
In the winter.
And then we had a tiny jazzfestival in the February because
(01:00:06):
it kept all the vendors, allthe merchants in town like
alive.
Right.
And then the summer seasonstarted, and we had festival
after festival and ended up withMaristone Youth Symphony
Orchestra here.
So it ended in about September.
I have so many great memoriesof being out.
(01:00:27):
I mean, in those days, and insmall nonprofits, you did
everything.
So even though I'm a managingdirector, I'm going around to
the clubs during jazz andcollecting the door from there.
And the man that owns thislittle Thai food place, he could
see the drop at the bank, youknow, he would watch over me.
So he would see me droppingmoney in the bank and making
(01:00:50):
sure I was okay.
And then he'd always have ameal waiting for me at the end
of the at two in the morning,he'd stay open through the
festival so he could make mefood.
It was fantastic.
Wonderful memories.
Yeah, yeah.
And also gave me a real feelfor what event management is
like.
Jon Stone - Host (01:01:09):
Where did you go after Centrum?
What was the poll that uh madeyou leave that wonderful beloved
environment?
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:01:16):
Oh gosh, it was the hardest thing ever.
But what I got to, and this isa good um uh lesson for people
that are dealing with belovedfounders.
So he was very much behind me,as was the board, in making me
executive director.
But after serving in that rolefor almost two years, I realized
(01:01:36):
that I would the organizationwould never flourish because
everybody saw me as Joe's pick.
Jon Stone - Host (01:01:43):
Okay.
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:01:44):
And this often happens.
There's always kind of a lameduck, if you will.
Yeah, I know what you'resaying.
I won't call myself a lame duckbecause I think we did a lot,
but it was always still, therewas kind of that generator on
it, you know, that uh governor,let's call it, that said, like
this is still Joe'sorganization.
So I just didn't know what Iwas gonna do, but I thought I've
(01:02:06):
got to let it go.
They've got to go through anational search, right?
And they've gotta, they'vegotta grow up.
So I resigned without knowing.
And I resigned before they hadreally seriously undergone the
national search because theyweren't even doing anything.
They couldn't believe I wasactually going.
(01:02:26):
And you know, this happensoften.
It's just like, no, no, and oh,we have time, and they were
underestimating what it wasgoing to take to actually
replace someone.
So six months notice I gave,though thinking it was gonna be
plenty of time.
So I finally just had to go.
And they finally went through anational search and they
stumbled, but they foundsomebody, and I had to just let
(01:02:49):
them stumble.
It's one of those things, youknow, that's often, you know,
the old adage if you love, youhave to let go.
So I cringed a little bit atall the stumbling that happened,
but they're solid now and havebeen for a long time.
Jon Stone - Host (01:03:05):
What is your favorite sound?
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:03:09):
Water.
Say more about that.
Uh the sound of water flowing.
Uh so that could be waves, itcould be a river, it could be a
little trickle.
That's my favorite sound.
Jon Stone - Host (01:03:22):
Same with Chris Weber.
Really?
Listen to his podcast, exactsame answer.
Who do you think you are?
A pupil.
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:03:37):
What do you believe?
Well, at the risk of soundingcorny, I believe in love.
And that love guides everythingwe do.
Jon Stone - Host (01:03:51):
Toni, as always, it has been wonderful
spending time with you makingconversation.
Thank you so much for makingthe time.
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:04:00):
Oh, thank you, Jon.
And as always, uh, we never uhfall short of things to talk
about.
I'm so glad that you're workingon these podcasts.
I think it's important, and Ithink that you'll bring some
real insights into the industry.
Jon Stone - Host (01:04:16):
It feels good.
That's how I know that itprobably is good.
Toni Aspin - Guest (01:04:20):
Yeah, yeah.
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