I love stories. More than that, I love true stories and stories about people.

Whenever I find myself in a window seat on a long flight, without fail I’ll look down at the roads that crisscross the view below, pick out a car and let my mind realize that the person driving that car has been through an entire life’s worth of experiences.

They struggled through school, fell in love, and found a way to make a living with the talents they had. That person isn’t just a dot, they’re the result of millions of seconds of living and trying.

Working Backward
No matter where we are in life, our lens into the future is always imperfect. Looking back, our hindsight may not be 20-20, but we can usually begin to connect the dots that led us to where we are today. And, with that retrospection, learn valuable lessons along the way.

I’m finding this is especially true in the ski industry.

We’ve got resort marketers who have graduate degrees and some who never went to college. We’ve got corporate burnouts who were looking for a change as well as lifties and pro snowboarders who found their way into a role they excel at but never expected.

Gathering
The new project I’m starting this week is something I’m going to call “Roots”. Simply put, it’s a collection of interviews with resort marketing and ski industry leaders about how they got to where they are today.

Not only is it incredibly fun for me to scratch one of my favorite itches, I think it will be a cool opportunity to learn more about the people in our industry and the diverse backgrounds that make up the resort marketing landscape.

Rather than email interviews like I’ve done in the past, these will be audio recordings. My interviewing skills leave much to be desired, so any patience you can muster would be appreciated.

Co-Pilot
Think of the first four interviews this week as the pilot: if it goes well and I get good feedback, I’ll keep it up.

And remember that I still know a relatively small number of people in skiing. If you have someone in mind you’d love to see interviewed in a future round, by all means, let me know.

Tomorrow is the first episode. I hope you enjoy it (and all the others) as much as I have.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.