Life-Work Balance - Alan Young, Puzzle Partner

How is your life work balance these days? Do you feel it's something you can't really think about right now? Stick around to hear some practical steps from a hospitality industry veteran that you can take to recharge and perform at your best today and for years to come. Alan Young is co-founder of Puzzle Partner, a marketing firm focused on hospitality and travel technology, and he also sits on the board of several hotel and travel technology advisory companies. I've known Alan for quite some time and really appreciate his ability to turn difficult concepts into easy-to-understand ideas that drive successful outcomes. We'll talk about this a bit more in future episodes, but the reason I wanted to bring him on today is to talk about what he calls life-work balance. Why do you call it "life-work balance?

Well, I didn't used to call it that. I used to call it work-work balance when I was younger, and I think what really has happened is there was a personal disconnect in my life from my family and also from the people that were close to me, and that was because I was constantly thinking about other things, and primarily work-related, and so I made the conscious decision that when I'm talking to people, I'm not multitasking, I'm trying to listen as best as I can, but still, if that's what I want to do on my daily basis, then I've got to do that all the time, and so it really became the point my life should be the primary thing that I focus on. The work is an enabler. People like a lot of stuff. We live in a world where people love stuff and, don't get me wrong, I love stuff just as much as the next guy but I don't think I need a lot of it, and so I've been lucky enough to say, ok, I'm good, I'm good, I don't need anything more. And so not needing anything more other than paying for my son's college and stuff like that, but not needing anything more, enables me to have a different outlook. So I'm pretty blessed that way. Right. There aren't too many people that can say that so that life comes first. I focus on that. When I'm happier, people around me are happier. When I'm smarter, people around me hopefully can gain some knowledge, and when I'm stupid which happens a lot I can gain knowledge from others and hopefully they'll fuel me to make me smarter. So at the same time as I'm trying to do better for myself, I think that, kind of through osmosis or some way, carries on to people that I'm surrounding myself with. So, yeah, I focus on the life a lot. Don't get me wrong. Work is important to me. It's something that enables me to focus on life, but work has been good to me, so it's interesting. So here's the challenge we all face. My company takes Fridays off Always have since we started. We always will and it's the right thing to do because it does give you time to recharge. You can't recharge on a two-day weekend. You can't do it.

Since you're doing all three, it's not like you're working Sundays. You're aimed to wrap it all up by Thursday. You pick up things Monday morning, ok.

Pick up things Monday morning, but a lot of people will go ahead and start working Sunday night or Sunday afternoon to get ready for Monday, when they're only having a two-day weekend. That doesn't work right. But the challenge we have as an industry is knowing that people have to have a life. But the challenge that people find, especially early times, that they've got a whole bunch of payments to deal with. They've got to keep things rolling. But where do we go wrong at times? Is we go wrong from the standpoint of we don't give people the power to make those decisions, we don't enable them, we don't do lots of things. When I think it was the UPS strike that just completed, there was an article that just landed just that. It was reading the average UPS driver In Canadian dollars makes 170 grand a year. What Right? That's Wow, 170 grand Wow. I know I think it was 140, 130 or something. Us, that's big dollars. So why you know? And here's a, there's an organization that when five o'clock hits, or whenever your run is completed, your run's completed, general bothered again. Until the next day there's no emails, there's nothing like that and it's probably a pretty good life. It's a little hectic when you're driving around, but I'm sure, a pretty good life. So to your point and I was going to get there is we probably under pay? Our employees probably, I know we do. We don't give people a proper living wage in today's environment, especially with inflation, and so that just heaps on more stress, more everything, so they can't really look at their lives as effectively as they should, and so we need to get better at that. When companies are reaping the benefits of the revenge travel world in which we're in and I hate that term because we should just want to travel, we shouldn't travel because we have revenge but when they're making ADRs like they're making, and they're pretty cash happy, they should be helping employees, there's no doubt about it. They should be helping them tactically with maybe some that really need it, and they should be doing it strategically. What are they going to do next for their employees. So yeah, to that point there's a big void between 170 grand driving a UPS truck and 45 grand bringing a front desk operator.

I think, to the leaders that are listening to this, this is a really important point, whether it's how you think about compensation, whether you're thinking about how do you empower your teams. As you mentioned and I just recently conducted some research we do not work in hospitality. What do they think about it? What would perks and benefits would get them to work in hospitality? Number one on the list was a free or discounted hotel room. So there's ways, I think, to work with it. Probably is not going to be a shock to anyone, but there's ways to work with these different levers to empower people. So let's bring it back to the personal. I love how you started with. It wasn't a tactical thing. It's like let's start at the high level. How do I reduce my overall needs, which will increase my happiness? But then also and actually something personally that inspired me, I'll say, is some of the posts that you've made around breaks that you've taken and time out nature. Tell us a little bit about that. What practically does this look like? You have the weekly cadence and then are you also layering in bigger times to disconnect and recharge?

Well, I got a dog. So having a dog lets you disconnect because they have to be taken care of, and that's pretty good. From my perspective, the way I disconnect is I'm lucky enough to enjoy outdoor activities. One of them during the summer, which is a passion for me, is fishing bass and pike fishing primarily and so I'm lucky enough to have a place up north, a very tiny place, that I can go to with the kayak and go fishing off the kayak for hours at a time, and to me not only is it cathartic but it's also meditative in nature, because there's a cadence to throwing out a line, reeling it in, throwing out a line reeling it in, and so with that, I find it very meditative. It's something for me that really enables me to feel better. So that's kind of where my head's at when I'm trying to decompress. I still have my phone with me. Don't get me wrong. I catch a big fish. I want to take a picture of it. God forbid, it's got to go somewhere, it's got to go up on social media, but at the same time I'm not checking emails or doing anything like that. So a lot of us believe that in order to decompress, we have to cut ourselves off 100%. I don't necessarily believe that's true. I believe people have a certain sense of responsibility to their work, their coworkers etc. And that can be done within 15 minutes if you're away for a day, just to check up to see if there's any fires. But really, as my business partner and I always tell each other when we get stressed out is, slow down. We're not saving lives or curing cancer. We're not doing that. We're helping people with their branded content and their exposure and hopefully we're helping people try to do things better, but at the end of the day, we're not curing cancer. So to me that's super important to put things in the perspective.

Yeah, well, and it's interesting you say that because I think if you're working in technology, if you're working in a role like you are, that should be also true for operators. I've had a number of operators tell me the same thing it's at the end of the day, we'll figure it out, we'll figure it out, and so I've heard this from faster across the board. So I think the principle holds regardless of what company you're working in. Don't brush this off and say, oh, unless you're literally an emergency room doctor, and then you should make sure you have coverage, but everyone else it's gonna be okay. And your story resonates with me, alan. I had so many good memories growing up fishing in the lakes in Northern Ontario and with my dad and just time on the lake, and so it resonates with me on a personal level, but on you know, it might look different for our listeners. You know, maybe it's fishing, maybe it's something else. You give some practical tips I think people can think about. But is there anything, any other tips or advice you'd have on this topic of better life work balance for our listeners before we go?

It's all about prioritization, and you've got to step back and say to yourself at times are those the things I need to be happy, or are there other things? We live in an industry of experiences now, and to me that's pretty cool. I have no idea why we give stuff to people. Why wouldn't we give them experiences? And we made a conscious decision in our family that when everybody has a birthday, we don't give them anything, we take them somewhere, we do something with them, and to me, that creates memories, it creates a bond, and it's just that much better as a gift, and I think if you can do that and sometimes that gift is just giving yourself time or giving somebody some freedom so from that perspective, I just believe that we need to be better at trying to prioritize what's important, and to me it's trying to create memories and trying to be able to be as stable mentally as I possibly can, and so I've got to focus on all areas of my wellness.

Well, the results. I love that and the results speak for themselves. I think, some of your deep thinking around personalization or some of these strategic things. It's clear that you are thinking deeply, so I'm gonna link to that in the show notes up this episode. People should read this stuff, but I always love hearing the story behind that right, and so people might hear three-day weekends or stuff like this and like, oh, that's all well and good, but if you look just objectively at the outputs of this way of life and work, the results are there. So, alan, thanks so much for taking some time to chat.