Carving a Path to Success David Barry, CEO of Pursuit
Willy Walker: Good afternoon, and welcome to another Walker Webcast. It is my great pleasure to have David Barry, the CEO of Pursuit, join me today. I have to give a shout-out to my great friend, John Grossman, of Grossman Company Properties, who saw David take Pursuit public on the New York Stock Exchange and zapped me a note and said, “Having David on the Walker Webcast would be a great idea to talk about hospitality, industry, about the growth of a new concept in hospitality, and David's background is so insightful to the evolution of the outdoor industry, the outdoor adventure, industry, the outdoor hospitality industry that he'd be a great guest.” I'm very thankful both to Johnny for giving me the idea and to David for joining me today on the Walker Webcast. David Barry is President, and chief executive officer of Pursuit. Prior to Pursuit, he was chief executive officer and President of Trust Company of America, a financial services and technology company. Prior to TCA, David was the CEO and President of Alpine Helicopters, Canadian Mountain Holidays, the largest helicopter skiing company in the world, and a leader in rotary wing aviation for heli-skiing, wildland, firefighting, and search and rescue. Now everyone listening to the Walker Webcast understands exactly why I really wanted to have David on the Walker Webcast. David is a member of the Young President's organization, YPO, and has an extensive 40-year career in hospitality, including serving as chief operating officer of Intrawest Mountain Resorts, now called Alterra. David is from a small town outside Montreal and is the youngest of five siblings. He left home at 16 to be a ski instructor before going to college and never went back. So David, let me back the story up a little bit to start because I think it's very telling of you and the way you approach your leadership at Pursuit. You were working at Gray Rocks Inn. As I heard you tell the story, Gray Rocks Inn was a lot like the inn in the movie Dirty Dancing. It was this place in the summertime where they had white tablecloths, and families would come, and there was this great sense of a family mountain sort of lake experience that we all saw in that iconic movie. And you really want to get a job to be a ski instructor. You meet the head of the ski school at Mont Tremblant, and he looks at you and says, “You look too young to be a ski instructor, and your hair is too long.” What'd you do with that feedback? Tell the story from there.
David Barry: He was quite the character. I had taught a year at a small regional ski area a season before, so it wasn't my first ski teaching job, but I’d worked for a guy named Kenny Hall who said, “If you're going to make this a career, young man, you need to go somewhere where you can make a living. You're going to learn some things about business and life and other stuff.” So fast forward, I get an introduction to Réal Charette, who is the almost militaristic founder of the Gray Rock Ski School and leader in Canada in the certification process and a big deal---it's like going to meet Arnold Palmer. So I go to meet Réal, and he tells me exactly that, Willy. And so I waited. I borrowed my dad's car and I drove back up two weeks after my interview, and I got there around 7:30 in the morning. It is a 90-minute drive from Montreal. I've always been an early riser, and it was pouring rain. It's November, but I figured my best shot to stand out was to wait for Real to drive into the parking lot; it seems absurd now, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I had no idea what kind of car he had. I had no idea if he was on a business trip, but it just intuitively felt that if I did this, maybe my chances would improve to get the job. So I drove up there. I got there around 7:30. Waited as every car pulled into the parking lot and the hotels closed. The season hasn't started yet, and right around 9:30, Réal drives up in the pouring rain, and he parks his car. I get out. I’ve got my suit on, the same suit I wore at the interview two weeks before, and I walk over to the window and tap on the window. He puts it down, and says, “Yes, young man, can I help you?” And I looked at him. I said, “Mr. Charette, it's David Barry, sir. I interviewed two weeks ago. I just want to let you know I'm two weeks older, and I did get a haircut, so I really would like that job.” And he said, “Well, thank you very much, young man,” and looked at me like I was very strange and put his window up. I walked back to my car and drove home, and about two weeks later, a letter arrived with an offer, and I thought, “All right, that worked.” And so that was the beginning of the adventure.
Willy Walker: So I find that story to be amazing. But it also says a lot about you as a person, you as someone who sort of literally grew up in the industry. You now have 3,500 partners and employees at Pursuit. How important is that background to you being a successful leader of Pursuit? There are many people with highfaluting degrees in our industry, and there are people who came in from a management background, who went and got an MBA somewhere, and think that they know all the answers. I can't help but think that, as people meet you, and as I read through about Pursuit, David, it's very evident when you talk about the experiences, you don't talk just about the guests that Pursuit has, the people who are paying guests. You talk about the staff. You talk about the people who staff all these incredible places around the globe, and it's very evident that they're not there just for the guests. They're there for the guests and the staff to experience the places that you all have identified. How does that come through? Does everybody know your background?
David Barry: I'm not sure. I think there's always the stuff of legend that sneaks out. But for me, I think, Willie, your first part of the question is about humility. Leadership can shine a light, and it can cast a shadow. I think if you keep humility in mind and remember that you're no better than anyone else. You may have a different job, you may be the leader, you may make more money, whatever it is, but you're no better than anyone else. And so we have probably 18 or 19 different countries and team members that work within Pursuit all over the world. So I would never hesitate to make up a hotel room. I'm pretty good at it. I can get a hotel room reset pretty quickly. And I would never hesitate to clean a bathroom or do anything that our team members do, because that is our culture, and we have a really simple mission. It is not a mission written by committee. It's not a mission that, you know, McKinsey came in and created. Our mission is to connect our team members, guests, and staff to iconic places through unforgettable, inspiring experiences. And notice, we say guests and staff. And the reason we say that is that we have team members from all over the world that come to our locations for an experience. And if you want to be the best place to work, you have to do the work to get there. So humility is really important. Look around, and see how things are working. See what you can do to help, and never be above jumping in would be the way I would describe our style.
Willy Walker: So you were a ski instructor at Mont Tremblant when a series of things happened that I think are important to sort of talk about how you moved, if you will, from the front lines of being a ski instructor to the back office of being a manager, and you'd passed your CSIA Level 4 exam. There was a gentleman who had been one of the analyzers, if you will, one of the teachers in the CSIA, who was a legendary figure in the ski industry, who also happened to be at Whistler Blackcomb, and when Intrawest, which to those of us who are old enough to remember, started to do a roll-up of the ski industry, they went from their first acquisition, which was Whistler Blackcomb to buying Mont Tremblant, which is the second resort that they bought. How was it, David, that you moved from being out there on the cold tundra day in and day out teaching turns to moving into sales and marketing at Whistler Blackcomb?
David Barry: It's a crazy journey. I'll backtrack just a little. One of the processes of being interested in a sport, whether you're becoming a golf pro, or, in my case, a ski professional, is that you’ve got a lot of hard work to do. It doesn't happen easily. If you really want the qualifications, you’ve got to push yourself. So in a combination of learning, you've got a series of courses you've got to go through, and it takes time. It took me five years to get my full national certification, which is a big deal. The Canadian certification is really valuable around the world. You can work pretty much in any European country, or Australia, New Zealand, etc. So the certification was the first hurdle. It was the first goal. I'm not sure if you've ever had it happen in life that you set a goal, and once you get there, you realize, all right, now what? That was the first part of my journey. So I was passionately learning and working on my skiing and working on my teaching and coaching each winter, and that was the obsession after five seasons. But I'd also every summer have a different job in hospitality. So that might have been, you know, front desk working as a bellman, working at the marina, working in laundry and housekeeping. I did a whole bunch of things, so I already had a really good grounding in how the business worked. So when I passed my Level 4, I thought, “Well, what next?” And the days of becoming a ski school director, and having your own rental shop and ski shop were fading, and so it was becoming more sort of a corporate role, and I was intrigued by the business. Intellectually, the business side pulled me in. So I got a job, you know, a Jack of all trades kind of job at a smaller hotel, worked my butt off, went back to Gray Rocks, was leading the sales operation. The gentleman you're referring to is John Burl, who was the general manager of Blackcomb, and John was working on the acquisition team, the Intrawest team buying Mont Tremblant. John called me and said, “Hey, I have this job that I think you'd be perfect for,” so I interviewed, and I got the job. Imagine Mont Tremblant when we bought it. I mean, every tire was bald; every motor was broken. The resort was bankrupt. They hadn't paid their hydro bill or their electrical bill. So we're running on generators in the resort. We closed September 1st of 1991. We had to open by Thanksgiving, and nothing's ready. Imagine just the challenge of putting that together. I think we had nine felony arrests in the first year that were within our team member group and all kinds of other stuff that happened. But again, we learned to focus on the thing that was most important. For pretty much flat out, almost 4 years, I had my head down just trying to make Mont Tremblant the best place it could be. We won the Grand Prix of Tourism for hospitality, which, in Quebec, was a big deal. So we took a place that everybody hated, where service was terrible, and really transformed it from the inside out in terms of hospitality, and within four years, it had won an award that the Ministry of Tourism gives out for the best tourism business in the province, which is a big deal, a big accomplishment. So anyway, long story short, Hugh Smyth, who is a legendary figure in skiing, and someone who was a great mentor to me, as was John, was incredibly kind, and he saw my potential and knew what I didn't know and what I had to learn. And so he said, “Hey, we've got an opportunity, and we think you'd be a great fit.” So I moved from Quebec to British Columbia to take over marketing and sales at Blackcomb Mountain, which was before Whistler Blackcomb, if you could imagine, because that was 1994, and Blackcomb was still the up-and-coming underdog ski area. That was the first sort of step into what I would describe as the big show where you've got a national position that people know and recognize. And you know, you sort of wonder. “How did I get here?”
Willy Walker: And the story has it that a couple of years later, after being successful at Blackcomb, Hugh comes up to you and says, “Hey? We got this new resort down in Colorado. Would you want to go down there and take over Copper?” To which you said, “Let me think about it, and about three minutes later, he came back and said, “Have you thought about it?” And next thing you know, you're on an airplane flying down to Summit County, Colorado. I'm not a resident of Summit County. I'm a resident of Arapahoe County, but I know Copper all too well.
And so now you've gone from living outside of Montreal to living outside of Vancouver. And now you're moving to the States to take over Copper Mountain. By the way, I was curious, as I looked at Alterra's resorts, Copper is no longer owned by Alterra. How did Copper get into the Intrawest and then Alterra Group and then get spun back out? I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I was just interested that Copper is no longer on that list of resorts.
David Barry: Well, there was a step in between. In 2005, Intrawest announced that it was going to look at strategic alternatives. There were several businesses within that group. You had the Resort Club.
Willy Walker: And you were COO at that time, right?
David Barry: Yeah. So I was the COO of the US Operations. So I had the series in the US and some other hospitality businesses. And it was a big division with lots of people, lots of complexity, etc. And what was interesting was that Intrawest, as a whole, went from being a public company on the NYSE to being a private company and being acquired by a group of private equity groups in 2005. That transaction closed in 2006 in September. After a couple of years, that's when I transitioned fully over to the CMH Heli-ski side and the Alpine side. The interesting thing was that the owners decided it would be better for them to sell Copper, which they did, so they joined Powder Corp, a great company based out of Park City, and they own a variety of resorts that they run and operate. So Copper joined that group, and then Intrawest continued again divesting assets and eventually transforming itself into Alterra with a powerful transaction involving KSL and the Crown family and others. So Alterra is quite a different iteration than what Intrawest was. But now, you know, two big companies in the world of skiing.
Willy Walker: Talk for a moment, David, about when you're COO of Intrawest North America. You're running resorts. You're also looking at real estate development and how to create a sense of community and town centers and get people to come to the resort and buy ski tickets and invest. If you will buy everything from going to the restaurant, go to the ski rental shop, etc. And now you're moving to CMH, which is an incredibly experience-focused business to the extent that someone can go to a…Let's use Copper as an example. You can go to Copper for the week. You’ve got the family, great snow, bad snow, but there's a broad experience around why a family comes away from either a weekend or a week at Copper and says, “Wow, that was great. I went to some great restaurants. I did this, etc.” When people are going heli-skiing, they're going to do really one thing, and that’s ski, and you don't control the snow. And so the interesting thing about CMH is that it has a net promoter score that is off the charts, and CMH had, I think, when you were running it, about 7,000 skiers a year would go to the various CMH lodges in Canada. First of all, there are many people who are listening who don't understand what heli-skiing is all about, so give people a little bit of a quick, you know. “We're going to a lodge in the middle of nowhere for a week.” And then the second thing, as you were transitioning, if you will, from managing the broader experience of real estate development of restaurants, of everything else, to such an experience-oriented management experience, what was different? What did you have to do as a leader that made the experience so unique at CMH?
David Barry: Yeah. Again, I'm sorry this story is so complex because it's a hard thing to follow without a flow chart. But if you go back to the Intrawest days when you think of my role, I was the chief operating officer for the US. There's a separate team that worked on real estate development. You worked on it closely together as partners. But really, the real estate development team gets the full credit for the work that they did in the sense that we were participants in that. But it was not something that we drove solely on our own. But experiences are always really important. In 1999, we acquired a minority interest in CMH, and then in 2003 acquired the majority. So we had Alpine helicopters, Kachina Aviation in the US and CMH, which mysteriously, somehow made it into my portfolio. So my connection to the business predates that 2005- 2006 period, and I had been involved in it over a long period of time. I'd gone as a guest previously. I knew the team quite well. I had a passion for skiing and experiences. That's really the genesis of it, and so it was a natural progression for me. I felt in 2005 and 2006 that I had pulled every rabbit out of the hat I could pull in the ski industry, and I'd done all the things that I felt that I could do. I was intrigued to go into a new business, and I've done it a couple of times. These are all related, my career journey, but they've all been a little bit different. And so then, all of a sudden, you're learning about rotary wing aviation in detail, and you know what it's like to bid on firefighting contracts in Southern California, or what it's like to work with the Forest Service and other things, and the DOT and the FAA, and at the same time you're absorbing on the mountainside in big mountain skiing. So Hans Gmoser was the founder with Leo Grillmair of this amazing company called Canadian Mountain Holidays. CMH has been welcoming guests since the 1960s to come heli-skiing, and it is an experience that really defies explanation. You're in a remote lodge, probably 40 to 50 kilometers from a highway that you fly into. You're there with a group of guests, and you're experiencing---there's a German-Austrian word called Hüttenzauber, which is hut magic. And if you think of Hans Gmoser 's vision, you could be Willy Walker. And right next to Willy Walker, financial titan powerhouse in the world of real estate, is the best plumber in Saginaw, Michigan, who's there on a heli-ski trip that he’s been saving for a while. Right next to the two of you is a local guy from down the road, and you've got a team of guides and a cook, and someone who runs the hut. And that idea of hut magic is that feeling that the boundaries of society fade away and everybody's place in the hierarchy disappears, and you become a group of adventurers in a remote location in the mountains. And that's really the spirit of CMH, and it's based on the world's oldest philosophy, which is the Golden Rule. Treat people the way you would like to be treated and do so with humility and care and a focus on safety and adventure. And that really is what CMH is all about. So for me, it was a progression. I felt it was an exciting time. We had grand plans. This was right before the global financial crisis, f you recall, right around 2006. So we were off on an adventure to grow an aviation-based tourism business on a global basis and expand. And we were looking at other heli-ski locations around the world and that all came to a screeching halt in 2008. But you know, it was one of those experiences that, you know, I continued through 2011, and it was a natural progression into the next thing, so hopefully that that answered the question.
Willy Walker: You've obviously skied at a lot of resorts, and you've also heli-skied in a lot of different places. What's the top of David's list?
David Barry: There are places that resonate from the experience you had with the people that you had them with. So if you're a fan of ski racing, and you remember Ingemar Stenmark, that would be one. I had a couple of runs with Franz Klammer at Beaver Creek that totally made me laugh because the snow-making is on. He's on the phone talking to his wife about a horse that's sick back in Austria. His boots aren't buckled. He's got his gloves tucked under his armpit, and we're skiing, you know, at 50 miles an hour to get somewhere, and it's just one of those moments. And then heli-skiing, amazing memories with great guests from around the world. Then, obviously, skiing with your kids and turning them into passionate skiers. And so there are a bunch of adventures. We took our kids heli-skiing multiple times. Those are memories they will never, ever, ever forget.
Willy Walker: I have a question for you. If you took your daughter heli-skiing several times, how did she end up becoming a fencer?
David Barry: Julia is our youngest, and Julia is a fascinating human being, an incredibly determined fencer for Notre Dame. She won two national titles. They were on their way to a third. She liked the sport. We went to a movie, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and read the book, and the heroine in that movie and the book was a fencer, and she was intrigued by it, did a weekend clinic, and then boom. It started at 8 or 9 years old and continued.
Willy Walker: You realize that's like the child of a D1 basketball coach becoming a D1 hockey player. Seriously, it's like you grow up around the sidelines of a basketball court and decide you're going to go over to the ice and start skating. I mean, the idea that you have a daughter who's a fencer rather than a skier is really quite something.
David Barry: Well, Olivia, her older sister, who's a super strong skier, one day said to me, “Dad, I don't know, those kids ski racing, they don't look very happy. They're going up and down on the same run the whole time. Let's go find some snow and ski some big mountains.” And that is more her style. And you look at her and think, how is she going so fast, that girl? But it's one of those things.
Willy Walker: We had a ski competition here in Sun Valley this weekend, some western states high school meet where the teams from Jackson and Park City and everything were here. It was probably one degree yesterday morning, as all the kids were trekking out. I was there early with some friends to go up, and it did not look like a lot of fun in those Lycra suits. They were all bundled up in their jackets and then got to the top and dropped them. I would also say my son Jack is on the big mountain team at the University of Colorado with his girlfriend, Caroline, and we were down in Chile this past summer. I was heli-skiing, and they were there for a big mountain competition, and I, like you, sat there and watched how fast they ski off of some unbelievable terrain, and he is also a sky jumper. I have a lot of friends who are like, “Hey, Willy, can you get Jack to stop jumping out of airplanes?” And I look at him. I say, “He's probably safer jumping out of an airplane than he is racing Big Mountain, given what those kids jump and throw themselves off of, and the routes that they have to take down the mountains.” But you and I have some shared experience and shared trauma, I think there, as it relates to our kids and the path they chose.
David Barry: The thing you have to be careful with is sometimes when they're skiing, it looks so easy. You have no idea what the snowpack is like because it looks way better than it actually is. And so they're 3, 4 turns ahead, and you get there. It's super wind-affected, and all chopped up. You think, how are they skiing that? Well, anyway, it's lots of time spent doing something you love.
Willy Walker: Yeah. So clearly, GFC hits the heli-skiing industry hard, and the overall ski industry and the overall economy and things of that nature. You transition to financial services, and my tummy tells me that there was something in the back of your head throughout your tenure as CEO of a financial services company, saying, “I got to get back to the mountains. I got to get back to the travel and leisure industry.” What was it that brought you back to Pursuit and to Viad? And if you would talk a moment about the history of Viad, because the history of Viad, which is now Pursuit, is a fascinating one because my understanding is, that it's the old Greyhound Bus Lines, and there are plenty of people listening to this who have no idea that Greyhound either existed or that Greyhound turned into Viad. But for a second, just talk about the transformation of Viad into Pursuit, because Pursuit is now basically the remnants of the old Greyhound Bus Lines.
David Barry: Viad was a conglomerate, and founded in the 1920s as the Greyhound Corporation, then the Dial Corporation. And this is ancient history for me. So if I get any sequencing wrong to any of the historians listening or if I'm off in the order of something, just send me a DM. And I'll correct it. But it's one of those things where it was a company that, over time, was the classic American conglomerate with all kinds of businesses within it. It had the largest airline catering company. It had Greyhound, it had Dial soap, it had Moneygram. It had a whole variety of things, including GES, the Global Exhibition Specialists, and a company called Via Travel and Recreation, which really was an amalgamation of some hospitality businesses that were completely disconnected. And so one, how did I get financial services? I was planning to take a year off in 2011. I was tired. I wanted to ride my road bike, grow my hair long, and go climbing. I’d been working since I was 10.
Willy Walker: Yeah, I was just gonna say, this sounds like when you say you're gonna go be a ski instructor for a little while and go back to college, and that just didn't materialize, right? There's a theme there that you go deep on everything.
David Barry: Well, the thing is, if you want to learn stuff, this would be my advice. If you're a young person listening, and anyone tells you in your life that you can't do anything, disregard their advice completely. If you decide that you want to learn something, you can learn it, and I'm proof positive of that. I mean, I sat in a room with a bunch of guys that went to Wharton and Stanford and Harvard and everywhere else, and I had no idea what they were talking about, and I had a very kind boss slide a book down the table at me, two of them wrapped together, and he highlighted all the chapters. One was The Economist Guide to Analyzing Companies, and the other one was The Essentials of Managerial Finance. He'd taken a highlighter, and he'd marked up all the chapters and all the exercises I should do to familiarize myself with financial structuring and how businesses work from a financial standpoint because I was good at managing labor. I was good at generating revenue. I just didn't understand investment math or anything. So you know, I just went chapter by chapter and just kept working until I figured out how the thing worked, and you can do that. So financial services? I was on the board of a company and an independent director of Trust Company of America. We had a guy who was struggling with running the company, and the board asked me, “Hey, you're taking a year off; would you coach him?” You know the CEO that we had running the company, and I did, and I did it. We coached them and eventually decided it was better to make a change, which we did, and then the Board said, “Hey, would you run the company in the interim while we do a national search?” And I said, “Sure.” You know, I'm riding my bike. I'm happy to do it. And so I did for a couple of months, and then, after a national search, we decided we didn't really like anybody better than how we were running the company, so they asked me if I would.
Willy Walker: So you pulled the Dick Cheney and said, “I'll do it.”
David Barry: Well, I was intrigued, and I'm intellectually probably the most curious person you will ever meet. And so I just got interested in something that was very different than what I had done, and it was a break. It was a sense of “Hey, I've been doing something in a couple of related industries my whole life. This is something completely different that I'm quite intrigued by.” And so I learned how that industry works. And so, as a custodian for independent financial advisors, you're really a practice management firm. You're helping them grow their book of business. You're dealing with compliance. And, by the way, I tell this story a lot. People think financial services compliance people are tough. You should meet the people from aviation, my friends, because, like financial services is easy, just follow the rules of aviation. There are some tough, tough folks in that world.
Willy Walker: It's so interesting you say that. I had no sense that I was going to say this. Yesterday I was with somebody who has a very talented daughter, a senior in high school and valedictorian of her class, applying to very elite schools. The person asked me, “Have you always been a perfectionist?” And I was like, “No, I've not always been a perfectionist. When I was a kid, I was anything but a perfectionist. She was like, “Well, when did you really start establishing standards that were things had to go right all the time?” I said it was when I started an airline in Argentina. The aviation industry is not one that you can have anything go wrong with, and the number of checks and balances that go on in running an airline is incredible. And so that's what taught me that there was absolutely no margin of error when you're dealing with people's lives, and therefore that raised my level of expectations of my entire team, and it carried on for the rest of my management career. But it was really funny that you go back to that because I had a similar type of experience where you just sit there and you say, “Man, there are a lot of standards we’ve got to live to at Walker and Dunlop. It’s not anything close to the airline I started back in Argentina in 1996.
David Barry: Yeah. And I think if you remember that you're a fiduciary right? And people are putting their trust in you, they're putting their trust in the fact that you're running a business that's compliant, you're being very careful. You're working with the FDIC. You're working with FINRA and the SEC. So I mean managing those things very appropriately is important as a fiduciary, and these are folks that have saved hard for their retirement. So you don’t want to go down in history as somebody that messed up somebody's retirement savings. Hell, no, you want to be focused on doing the best job you can. Over a period of four years, we grew that business considerably. And I would get phone calls. “Hey, are you interested in coming to this ski area? And you know, be this key area president. What about this thing and that thing?” And I looked at some stuff, Willy, but there was nothing that I felt was transformational, and I had begun working consciously and subconsciously on the next sort of idea in a business model, which is: is there a way to have the benefit of what comes with the ski industry in terms of volume and pricing opportunities, and the way that you establish a business that is an attraction that brings hundreds of thousands of people, and once your costs are fixed, can be a high margin performing business, but at the same time can be very experiential, very authentic? The third trick was not to be dependent on anybody's athletic ability. When Bob Defreeze, who leads the search practice for hospitality for the world for Spencer Stuart, leaves a message on your mobile phone, you best call him back, right? So I called him back, and he said, “No, you're gonna think this is interesting, but would you be willing to have a conversation,” which led to other conversations. Then, in June of 2015, I joined Viad, and the leadership team had done work previously on the strategic potential of that business. Did it make sense for those businesses to be together, because they had sold Moneygram? And then what was left in Viad was basically GES, which was a fantastic exhibition business, but not necessarily a great public company business, and then you had the beginning of Pursuit. But we weren't even called Pursuit yet. We were called Viad Travel and Recreation. There's a catchy moniker for you, Willy, like nobody would remember. So anyway, in 2015, though the vision that I had was clear in my, could we bring the pieces together? Could we take the strong performance within GES and the free cash flow and put it to work in growing Pursuit, which we did so effectively from 2015 to 2019. We tripled the size of the business and on the top line and on the bottom line grew the business significantly through a series of things such as a great allocation of capital, the right investments, the creation of Pursuit, the brand, but also the way of thinking that everything was different across our businesses, pre-Pursuit. And what we decided was, could we run things in an effective way, protect the authenticity of the locations because we operate in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Iceland---but in regions within these countries that are incredibly different? I mean, Alaska is very different than Montana, and I can tell you that Banff is a very different town than Jasper, and so all of these experiences are unique to the place. Iceland is not like anywhere else on the planet. And so our opportunity to go and create authentic or something that just is really unique. And then today, we're 15 major iconic points of interest, sightseeing attractions, 28 hotels, 50 plus bars and restaurants, 50 plus retail stores, 5 transportation businesses, 4,000 team members in 3 countries.
Willy Walker: So the core, though, that you were building off of is essentially beautiful views, experiences that have at their center a view that everyone will go home and talk about, an experience that they go back and say, “Man, you should have seen the view from the top of the SkyTram.”
David Barry: Yeah. Jasper SkyTram is a great example.
Willy Walker: By the way, are you building that? Or is that being built by somebody else?
David Barry: So, Jasper SkyTram, we announced on December 31st, is an acquisition. It's a business that has been in Jasper for a long time, for 50+ years. It has a great team. Todd Noble and his team are terrific. The owners that owned it were looking for a way to step away from it and focus on their other businesses. We were intrigued because we have a really simple strategy called Refresh, Build, Buy. The question we ask ourselves: Is it iconic? Is it unforgettable? Is it inspiring? And if it is, does it have perennial demand? Are there barriers to entry? Is this a business that is unique enough that people will want to come and see it in 500 years? And so we're not buying something that is for the next quarter or the next year. We're buying something that, 500 years from now, people are going to want to go see. And we think Jasper is a location like that. And so the SkyTram, we will redevelop, thus the “refresh.” We will put in a new lift and new installations in partnership with the town of Jasper and Parks, Canada to build something that's really compelling and beautiful that guests will want to visit. But that's really the principle around iconic point of interest attractions that people want to see. It doesn't matter what country you're from, or doesn't matter what your ethnic background is, or your athletic ability. Everybody in the world loves a beautiful view. So that's our focus.
Willy Walker: I guess the question I'd have there is, once you've seen the view, you've sort of checked the box. I've been to some pretty amazing places in this world and seen some great views. Once I have gone to the top of the SkyTram, for instance, and seen the view and walked around for half an hour, I'm like, “Okay, great. Glad I came here. It was great to see it.” But now what? So what's the piece to Pursuit that's the “now what?” Because you're bringing these people to these places, moving them in some instances through these really cool kind of things. They reminded me of the people movers at Dulles Airport, where you put them into these things and you move them out to see this amazing view. But once they've actually done the “I've traveled this distance to see this great view,” what's the “now what?”
David Barry: So the “now what” is that if people have had a great experience, then they're naturally searching for the next great experience. So you have the power of the network. We have many visitors that have come to us in the Canadian Rockies that are planning, say, a trip to Iceland, and then they learn, oh, my gosh! The same company that I just experienced SkyTram with has a location in Iceland called Sky Lagoon, which is totally unique on their trip to Iceland. The power of perennial demand moves people through the Pursuit world, because whether it be the constant search for Alaska, or the constant search for Banff, or the amount of people that key in the words “Iceland” because they've had friends that visited, or they've decided that that's an experience they want to have. So the power of network is something that connects our guests from one place to the next, and they know what kind of experience we're going to deliver and how unique that is. And then they seek out those experiences as they travel through the Pursuit world.
Willy Walker: Some of the values of Pursuit--there are four of which each one is very interesting in and of itself. I don't think that “safety first” would be first unless you'd had your experience at CMH, that most people who would approach this type of an endeavor with the mission would put safety at the top, whereas you place it at the top. The second is “honor place.” So let's go to some incredible places where we honor them in the sense of taking care of them and being custodians of them, so that they are here 500 years from now. I want you to talk about “anticipate toes, not heels” and then finally “bring your best.” So dive in on those. I think on number one, Safety first, I think that does come from your background at CMH and making sure that guests are safe. I would also imagine, David, that if one of the prerequisites is not being an athlete, you're putting people into trams and mobile lounges that may not have been in that type of an experience before, and therefore want to feel very safe in what they are doing. But let me leave it to you to talk about these in more detail.
David Barry: I have a long passion and history for culture. I don't mean culture. I mean corporate culture building, corporate culture building, the culture of a company and the team, and so at Intrawest, we were fortunate. Hugh Smith and Joe Houssain led a company with many others in which they created a very strong culture, and that rubbed off on me. And then I worked for Réal Charette, going all the way back to the beginning. I mean that ski school. You might have been late once, and you paid your fine. You might have been late twice. You paid 50 bucks. You weren't late three times in a row. I never saw anybody be late three times in a row, so there was a discipline and focus. So “safety first” came from the focus on our energy to do everything we can to make every aspect of the experience focused on safety. And it's not just for guests, but it's also for our team members. And you know, team members may feel a sense of urgency. Oh, my gosh! You know, guests arriving, and I'm going to scamper up that ladder to change that thing. But we remind everybody every day to make sure somebody's holding onto that ladder because, you're important in this endeavor. So we focus on safety all the time, and we talk about it all the time. So that's an important piece.Honoring place is about “We are so fortunate.” You know, you're in Sun Valley today. Beautiful place. So how you behave in that environment? You're mindful of the Harriman legacy. You're mindful of the history of Sun Valley. You're mindful of your place in that environment, and our teams are in their environment. So we want to be respectful of the privilege of being able to operate in these pristine places. So you pay attention to everything from fuel to how you're controlling waste to your sustainability, etc. “Anticipate” really comes from being attentive to the needs of guests, and being on your toes, not your heels. If you're having a dinner party at home or just having friends over, you're going to get a little organized. And so we do that every day. I ask team members just to think. When we create values, it's not a committee. I'm designing these so that if you're 19 and this is your first job, you can remember four things: safety first, honor our place, anticipate, and finally bring your best. Imagine you and I have a day, and you've had a tough day, and you've had trouble dealing with something, and at the end of the day I just quietly say, “Hey, Willy, was that your best today?” You've got a chance to reflect on that, and to say, “You know what? It wasn't, and so tomorrow, I have a new opportunity to bring my best and to manage my own energy in terms of how I deliver things.” We like the simplicity of really simple core values and then communicating those and, most importantly, modeling them. You can write stuff down and put it on plaques on walls, but if everybody doesn't model the behavior, it's not real. So you’ve got to model the behavior, and every day ask, “Am I bringing my best?” That's the discipline that comes from being attentive to your core values, if that makes sense.
Willy Walker: It makes a lot of sense. Dive into hiring practices at Pursuit because I read about them, and as someone who's employed a lot of people and focuses a lot on culture, I was extremely impressed with the purpose and the focus on the types of people that you have at Pursuit. As you said in something that I read, employees at Pursuit are chosen. They don't choose us; we choose them. But talk about your first conversation with somebody and focus on the self-analysis, and then the second conversation with them, as it relates to continuous learning.
David Barry: You know you want to take responsibility. As the CEO, I believe I have responsibility for the top 200 leaders in this company. So even though many of those folks don't report directly to me, obviously, and they work for other people, I want to know and understand the top 200 leaders. That then cascades. And you think, all right, do we understand what makes people successful within this culture? You're looking for a reinforcement of the culture of curiosity. You're looking for people who genuinely find satisfaction in providing hospitality. There's an old quote from Danny Meyer: “Service is this thing that you provide. But hospitality is how you make people feel.” And so what we're working on is to provide the environment where that hospitality instinct in you can come alive. We focus on that; we nurture it. We give people opportunities. And then at the leadership level, we teach some learning dimensions that are a little bit odd from the outside. People might be curious to wonder why in the world do you teach that? But we focus on five really simple things. One is self-awareness, which is where we start. Do you know your own shadow, your own light, and are you able to focus on that and improve it? The second one is curiosity, innovation, and forward thinking. Are you curious? Are you innovating? Are you forward thinking? Are you always thinking about where we're headed in terms of maybe the experience you manage? But it's also where we're trying to take the company. And then we talk a lot about a sense of urgency and execution focus. So sense of urgency is restlessness, Willy. It's something where people could be very satisfied and very grateful for what we've just done, and we're thankful. And we celebrate as a team. But I've noticed in this group there's like a little twinkle in everybody's eye that they're like, “I think we could do that just a little bit better.” I'm looking for those folks. I'm looking for those folks that are not satisfied with the status quo, that are always thinking about how to make things a little better. The fourth one for us that we teach leaders is courage to lead and intellectual honesty. And what do I mean by that is we debate and discuss investments within our capital allocation strategy, within the business on the refresh side, and new things. We debate and discuss those extensively, and team members who are junior might see something that the senior team misses. We encourage them that great ideas have no rank and that you need to express yourself. If you think we're off track, you should say it and we welcome it. We welcome the challenge, that courage to lead, and being honest intellectually, when the whole room wants to go one way, and you think you should go the other. That's something you've got to teach folks and make sure they know. Then, finally, the financial acumen that we believe everybody can learn, and I am proof positive, my friend, that if you put the effort in, you can figure stuff out. It's challenging, but you can figure it out. And then, once you do, you're like, “Oh, that's how that works--the secret language of IRR and return on invested capital and figuring out allocation.” But once you get it, then you can really make good decisions. And so it's something that we work in our leaders’ journey. So in that top 200 leaders group that I mentioned, almost the first half is through the first part of the leader’s journey, and will complete it in the coming year. And then we've got a base and foundation of knowledge and training and identity that we want people to know and to learn and be ready to focus on as we go forward.
Willy Walker: It's really interesting that you talk about those two books that have been handed to you, as it relates to financial management, and then expecting your team members to have confidence in financial literacy, if you will. When I got out of college, I was a government major undergrad, and I hadn't taken a whole lot of math and Econ courses undergrad. My dad gave me a Hewlett Packard 12C calculator, and he gave me a book that was 12C for Dummies. And it was this book that just basically told you all of the calculations to calculate an IRR and all the other things that we now do every single day. It was when I moved to Latin America and was living in Paraguay, and I just devoured that book. I think I probably learned more out of Hewlett Packard 12C for Dummies than any highfaluting course I took when I ended up going to business school. But anyway, your point is extremely well made and taken that, similar to the way that you interview people who are going to join Pursuit, when you show up at one of your properties, there are four questions you have for your team that I find to be fascinating, and say a lot about your management style, and then also that trust that you are looking for people to lead, and to be willing to say, “We can do better.” One is, “What do you like about working here?” That makes sense. “What would you change?” Many people are fearful of asking that question, because they're going to get feedback like, “Well, I’d change the way you're leading the company. I’d change the way your vision is put out there,” all that kind of stuff. But the one that I find to be really interesting, which I'm curious whether people actually, willingly, and freely answer this question when you're meeting them, is, “What can I tell your boss off the record?” I find that to be interesting. Do you get, in group settings when you're at a site, really open feedback of what would they tell their boss off the record as the CEO of the company?
David Barry: There are a couple of things that will give the four questions some context. Very often I will gather a group of frontline team members or I might be at the supervisory level, or it might be at the managerial level, or it could be 10 salespeople, whatever it is. It's small groups. We sit in a circle and we talk, and we generally allow 90 minutes to two hours for the conversation to ramble. We talk about where we come from, and you do some icebreakers, and you get people feeling comfortable. I don't think I'm an intimidating presence with folks in the sense that I explain my background and beginnings and what I believe. And we talk about our values. And also they've seen me. So, you know, if it's a laundry crew, I might go fold towels for two hours, and then we talk about stuff, right? I still know how to use the big sheet pressing machines that we have and the commercial laundry machines. So you start in a position of humility and vulnerability, and you share some stuff that you're working on as a leader or stuff that you're not doing that well. And then I ask four questions. The first one, as you mentioned is, what do you like? And people tell you, no, I really like this. What would you change is important because it does allow them the opportunity to give you feedback, and very often, you will hear exactly what you just mentioned. Like, you need to change every damn system on the technology side, or this ticketing system sucks. Or you know, the way we've got to put a work order in is stupid and like, are you all old people who don't understand technology? Why do our technology interfaces work so poorly? I gotta give a guest refund. I gotta go to four screens and it drives me crazy. So that feedback is honest. And if you don't want to know, well, then, sit in your office. Don't go anywhere, and then you won't learn anything, and then you'll just be that guy on the website. But I never wanted to be that guy, so the next question is all right, what can I tell your boss off the record? And I preface it. And I said, “Listen, I don't burn the messenger here. I will not ever tell anybody what is said outside of this room, and I'm trusting you all. We're having a candid conversation, and you're trusting me. So you don't have to say anything, but if there's something I can share that would be helpful, I'm more than happy to go for a walk with somebody and give them some feedback.” And you hear stuff, and sometimes it's like, “Yeah, I think my boss is stealing liquor.” And you know this is not in a Pursuit world, but it's a previous world. And you know, you have that conversation, or you find out there's some other thing. But generally people, if the environment of trust and respect is created, will give you that feedback. “What can I tell your boss off the record” has proven to be a great question that leads to us getting better. The final one is, “Where should we focus going forward?” I find this is the most inspiring question for me, because people will share their view of where we should be headed. One of the latest ones was, call center teams said, “Good gracious, our wait times are long and people are calling to find out if their mobile phone is gonna work in the Canadian Rockies, and, you know, is there a way for us to use AI to answer that question rather than some poor soul has to wait on the phone and ask that question?” You're always learning about what's going on in an organization and how to make it better.
Willy Walker: It's fascinating. I spend a lot of time on the road. I spend a lot of time with my colleagues.
David Barry: Start asking questions, man.
Willy Walker: You gotta ask questions, and it's true, but I find it to be super insightful in both the specific questions, and then the overall focus and it says.
David Barry: Live Town Hall. Sorry I didn't need to cut you off, but live town halls are important now with teams. So what we learned during COVID is that we were doing weekly messages. We now write them about every 10 or 15 days and they go onto the portal that everybody sees. But then also, we do a live town hall once a month and anybody can ask anything at the end and they can ask it anonymously.
Willy Walker: Right.
David Barry: The level of questions in the beginning was the typical ones that you would expect. You know my boss is a jerk. What are you gonna do about it? And I would say, “Well, Mr. Anonymous, you know I appreciate that. But I don't know who your boss is. So how do I go have a conversation? Come on, man, tell me what's going on.” There's multiple ways, like when I send a message out to the company, I put my mobile phone on there. Somebody can text me and say, “Hey, you know, let me talk to you,” and the same with our senior leaders. So it's not like it’s just me that’s super transparent. Our leaders are. Everybody's very transparent. Those questions lead to in that town hall environment, which leads to great questions and learning, and people will ask stuff, especially trying to understand things like why did we, for instance, sell the GES business, transform Viad, become Pursuit. Why did we do that, right?
Willy Walker: And go public.
David Barry: What I was able to explain is, our board over a long period of time evaluated the situation that we were in. Strategically, we all decided the best thing we could do would be to transform the two companies. GES traded at one valuation and we traded at another, and you go look at all the public analyst reports that you know would say, well, Pursuit is a higher valuation than GES, and is a growth engine. GES was a business that could perform. But would it perform better if these businesses were separate? And so, the board had a very rigorous process. They went out, hired a bunch of bankers that assisted, and talked to some different buyers and ended up, circling down to a sale, and that transaction closed on December 31st. Viad renamed itself, and then folks that work primarily on the public company side within the holding company transitioned and joined one team within Pursuit. I became the CEO of the public company, and we changed our ticker symbol from VVI to PRSU, and our unique focus now is that we're an attractions and hospitality company with a global view to growth around the world. It's high margin, high barriers to entry, perennial demand and great opportunity to expand on a global basis.
Willy Walker: It's all great. The final piece of the puzzle which I was just curious about is you have these flyover experiences in Chicago, Vancouver, and Vegas. Talk for a moment about when I saw you actually had “something in Vegas,” I was like, “Hold it! That's antithetical to the places that David is trying to push this company.” But it's actually quite interesting to bring, if you will, a rural experience to an urban center. Talk for a moment about Flyover.
David Barry: We purchased FlyOver Canada, which was the first flyover business in Vancouver. There was a group of entrepreneurs that had created something that was a great attraction. It sits right in the cruise ship terminal, in the port of Vancouver Canada Place, and it's a terrific experience. So if you've been to Disney and you've experienced soaring over California or soaring over the world, it's basically the same concept where you're capturing incredible footage, and telling a story visually with music and sound, and the sensation of flight. And the equipment is flight simulation equipment that's been adapted for larger groups, and so you can be there with 10 of your friends, and it literally feels like you're flying over Iceland. We have four locations: Vancouver, Reykjavik, Chicago, and Las Vegas, and content moves between the different locations and it tells a story of the countries. In Chicago, for instance, we're telling the story of the grit and determination of the city of Chicago. So next time you're in Chicago, stroll down Navy Pier and I promise you it's worth the trip. You can go and experience an amazing architectural journey through Chicago, using music, and light, and filming. And we filmed it all with drone technology in Chicago. So the angles and things of where you go up and down buildings, make you feel like you're Spiderman flying through. And the soulful connection to the Chicago story of grit and determination is really powerful. These are gateways for folks to learn. And if it's an incredible way to look and see Iceland, and you're in Las Vegas for a weekend, and you know your kids have a big volleyball tournament, and you're taking a break from that, and you're taking the team to go do an activity, you'll come to fly over Las Vegas and then go see something which may lead to where your next trip goes. These are attraction-based businesses are serving hundreds of thousands of visitors in each in each location and growing. And you know, we're still in the process of “how do we adapt?” They're long to come to market. So one thing we have indicated is that we're going to focus on the iconic location side, for now, as we stabilize and grow the FlyOver business. But they tell a great story, and it's a great way to show people a country in a one-hour experience.
Willy Walker: Well, you and I've just spent an hour, and this has been a wonderful journey of hearing your background, what you've built, what you've managed, and all the success you've had. I'm super appreciative. I very rarely have guests on the Walker Webcast, David, who I really am keen to go either on a bike ride with or go skiing with, and you are one of them. I very much hope that you and I can get together, either in Boulder or down in Denver, or head up to the mountains to make some turns together. But there's a lot more of our shared experiences and time on bike saddles or in the powder skis that I'd love to continue talking to you about.
David Barry: That would be my pleasure. There'd be nothing more fun than doing that, especially when we can almost call it work.
Willy Walker: Right, we can almost call it work. We had a bunch of clients up here in Sun Valley last week for our annual client ski trip. And I did turn to somebody on Thursday morning when we'd just gotten 16 inches of powder the night before, and I said the thought that I'm actually working. Doing this is really quite something; had to kind of pinch me on that one. But, David, thank you so much. It's been just fantastic and I greatly appreciate all that you've shared. The leadership lessons are really impressive, and the culture you've built at Pursuit. So thank you very much for sharing in such detail.
David Barry: You're very welcome. We're passionate about it, and if anyone's listening, you know, please feel free to connect on LinkedIn. You can check us out at pursuitcollection.com and PRSU.
Willy Walker: Thank you.
