Outlier TV Episode with Daniel Mee Founder of Hakuba Snow Sports School
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Andrew McCombe:
Hi there. I’m Andrew McCombe. Welcome to Outlier. In this week’s episode, I’m in beautiful Hakuba, Japan, where I’m going to be speaking to Daniel Mee, who is the founder of ‘Hakuba Snow Sports School. Okay, guys, I’m excited as always I’ve heard Dan’s been up to some incredible stuff and I’m really keen to share this one with you. Let’s go and meet him.
Daniel Mee, welcome to Outlier. (Thanks Andy. Proud to be here.) Where are we, mate? We’re in the middle of paradise in the snow.
Daniel Mee:
Yeah, we’re in a place called Hakuba, the Japanese Alps. We’re five hours from Tokyo. If you go by car. And currently, we’re sitting on the Hakuba 47 ski resort. Yeah, it’s beautiful.
Andrew McCombe:
What a life mate. So you’ve created this incredible life. You’ve got a fantastic ski school up here, 60, 70 instructors, three, four, five months a year, but it wasn’t always like that. Where did it all begin?
Daniel Mee:
Well, I’m from the same place as you, Dunedin, the bottom of New Zealand and went to school there and played a lot of sport growing up, predominantly rugby and cricket, which is a New Zealand fundamental sports. And from there did a little bit of skiing growing up, started when I was three years old but didn’t do much until I was about 20 when I realized I wasn’t going to be an all-black. So I decided to take up skiing, which I’d liked when I was a younger kid. (And so all black was the dream at that time?) no, probably not, cricket was probably my big one there, but I sort of got a bit disillusioned and went for skiing, and it was the first sport I’d done for myself, always playing team sports.
Daniel Mee:
I really enjoyed that aspect of it, where whatever you did, you’ve reaped the rewards in your own development. So that was something that really appealed to me, skiing being an individual sport, as opposed to the team sport.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it? You have to be self-driven in the skiing realm; you don’t have people to rely on?
Daniel Mee:
Well, that’s right. I was doing it purely for enjoyment, but coming from a sporting background, I always wanted to be good at what I did. So I found that I progressed really quickly. And of course, when you progress in something, you get a real passion for it. So I went from being a pretty average skier to being a fully qualified instructor.
Andrew McCombe:
So you dropped the cricket and rugby, and it became full-time gig. Like you became an instructor. Did you have to go to university for that? Or how does it work?
Daniel Mee:
I was at university in Dunedin, the Otago University. I was studying physical education and marketing management. And I realized when I was 20, I was going to be a good rugby player, but I wasn’t going to play for Otago or anything. I still had cricket in summer, but over winter, I thought, “Hey, I’ll go up and have a go at skiing!” And went up with a mate every weekend during university. And we ended up doing our ski instructors test at the end of that season. So our idea was it’d be a good qualification for us to travel over university holidays.
So because there are all sorts of opportunities over summer in New Zealand, you can go to the Northern hemisphere and teach skiing, you know, rather than doing a summer job to pay off your fees. We got our stage one, a New Zealand ski instructors association license, and that got us green cards to go to America where we went over and taught for next summer, Northern hemisphere, winter. So that’s where it all started. I ended up spending little time at university and spending all my time at Wanaka, where I worked at a drone Alpine resort as an instructor. So I do five days a week up there and then two days at university.
I did some hard yards to get fully certified. And the ski instructors or snowboard instructors are different certifications, written exams, learn how to teach people and what you’re looking for. You have different licenses. So to get your full license was harder than me getting degrees at university. My hardest thing probably was realizing; I wasn’t that good as a skier. I was always very athletic, and I was doing like competitions, the backcountry, big mountain skiing competitions. And I started to get into freestyle, which I was doing all right.
But that’s very different from presenting a nice picture for demonstrating to customers and stuff like that. You can be a charger, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be good. I really had to work on my technique to the level where they’d pass me to get my full license.
Andrew McCombe:
So seven years. But in that time, you’re working as an instructor at a certain level, but not the full-blown.
Daniel Mee:
I think in 1995, I qualified as an instructor. And then I did a season, went and taught at Cadrona for a few seasons. And then I went over a university holiday. I was still at uni at this time and did a season over in the US. Then I came back, and I was finishing my degrees at university. But I was a bit disillusioned. I didn’t know what I was going to do. And I became a qualified high school teacher. And then from there, I tried a little bit of that, a bit of long term relieving, but I was still young, and the kids looked older than I did, at high school, being a ginger.
I was looking for a job. I thought, “Oh, school teaching is not for me.” So I might look for something to use my marketing management degree. So I was applying for jobs at Coca Cola and things like that. And I was looking for jobs in the ODT, the ‘Otago daily times’, our local newspaper. And I saw just a tiny little ad saying, “ski instructors wanted for Japan.” And it had a phone number on it. And that was it. I called up that phone number, and two weeks after I was away to Japan, did my first season, Japan, in 1998. I went over there. I still didn’t have my full license. I was sort of mid-qualified in the reigns of instructors. So I went up in Hokkaido, the Northern Island of Japan, working for a company called ‘club med’, which is all-inclusive resort.
People come, they get their food, their lessons, their lift tickets, everything included. So it was really good time. And then I started doing back to back seasons. It’s when you do the Northern hemisphere in winter when that’s finished; you go to the Southern hemisphere to New Zealand, you’d teach there. So I was doing eight months a year teaching skiing, and I did that for a long time, from 98 through to 2007. 2007 was my last winter in New Zealand. I fell in love with Japan. When I came here, I’ve found that snow’s second to none in the world. It’s amazing here, the backdrop, the snow we’ve got, it’s fantastic.
The mountains are really spectacular, and it’s just a beautiful place to go skiing and snowboarding. I found a Japanese ‘snow bunny’ that appealed to me. So I ended up getting married. I live here, in Hakuba, I moved down from Hokkaido to Hakuba in 2005. I’ve got a house here. I live here all year round, with my Japanese wife and a couple of lovely children. Some people would say they’re not lovely, but (Andrew: perception’s in the eye of the beholder. Isn’t it?) That’s right.
Andrew McCombe:
So mate, obviously, that was the personal journey. Hakuba in itself is a bit of an outlier, isn’t it? It hasn’t been renowned for too long. Like it’s becoming really, it’s become famous in the last what 10, 15 years?
Daniel Mee:
when I came here, I was going all around Japan, and I decided I want to make a ski school somewhere. And so I went all around Japan, looking at different resorts and I came to Hakuba, and I just found that it had everything that my customers, future customers could possibly want. You’ve got a lot of snow, you’ve got amazing mountains. You’ve got a variety of mountains. And in the Hakuba Valley, there are nine resorts you can go to within 20 minutes drive. So it’s a lot of variety here as opposed to Hokkaido, you tend to get a lot of snow at once and then you’ll get blue sunny days.
Whereas Hokkaido being further North, it tends to get more inclement weather all the time. A lot of my customers that enjoy the sun with the snow. That’s why I found Hakuba was the ideal place for us. But yeah, Hakuba is a place that’s growing in popularity now. It wasn’t so much when we turned up here; there weren’t many foreigners here at all. But I believed in this place cause it’s spectacular. They did have the 1998 winter Olympics here. It is world-renowned. Within the Japanese population, Huckabee is arguably the most famous resort in Japan. On the national scale, like it’s always been like really popular, but of last say seven years, it’s really starting to take popularity overseas.
Andrew McCombe:
Which I guess is perfect timing for you. So you’ve gone from being a sole practitioner as an instructor, traveling the world, you are offering your services to other businesses in that. You obviously had a vision. at what point did you start going, “I would like to create my own school.”
Daniel Mee:
It was one of those points. I got married when I was 30, and we’re looking to have children and stuff like that. The skiing and snowboarding instructor’s life’s not easy. You’re doing it for passion. You’re not doing it for money. And basically, you’re living on nothing. You save enough money to buy an air ticket, to go back and teach, and you have a good time while you’re doing. But then I came to a stage in my life where I was married.
I was looking to have children, and I said, “well, you know, you either have to go and get what people might call a real job, or I have a shot at doing something that I’ve invested a lot of time and then make a business with what I know.” And I’ve spent a lot of time here, snowboard instructing and sharing my passion with the customers. And so I thought, “well, I might as well give it a chance and use all that experience to try and, you know, further my life and keep passing on the passion to the customers.” So I started up a small school, we call it “Snow instructors, Japan,” and this was in 2005, and we’d go anywhere in Japan and teach for a minimum five-day private lessons.
And just start off with me and a friend, Dougie. He’s now one of the owners of Hakuba Snow Sports’. We were going around Japan anywhere. But our base was Hakuba, teaching private lessons.
Andrew McCombe:
Did you get flown in and flown out, or how did you choose where you were going?
Daniel Mee:
Well, yeah, customers would through word of mouth; of course, we’ve met lots of clients over the years, teaching. When we’re teaching for other ski schools and snowboard schools, you get a bit of a following. If you’re doing a good job. I like to think I’m pretty personable with customers and they enjoy your company and that as well. You get a bit of a following.
Over Christmas, I’m going up to Hokkaido to ski; my customers would ask, “can you come along with us?” But then we started basing and Hakuba. There are all the expenses you’d include that as your expenses, the flying, the travel to go and teach them, and they’d pay you a set fee sort of thing. But we’re here in Hakuba, and it was going really well. hotels and even the resort actually approached me and said, “Hey, would you want to set up a full-blown ski school week and cater to people that want group lessons?” So in 2009, we moved away from just doing the privates to setting up Hakuba Snow Sports’ School. It was a bit of a gamble because I was doing really well the other way.
And all of a sudden, I had to become a manager rather than an instructor where I was employed. I think it was 15 people for the first season. It became a different sort of challenge. I took a big pay cut for many years, which all small business owners have to do, I think, to succeed. You can’t think you just go on and just start creaming it from the start. It was quite tough there for quite a few years, but it’s kept growing season after season. And we’re living seasons and now the snow sports school, about 62 instructors this year, plus a few other staff, so about 70 all up and it’s going well. We’re slowly growing, and it’s come good for me.
Andrew McCombe:
What was the tipping point for you? Like you mentioned initially 15 and your first year of instructors, and it was a battle when you’re paying yourself hardly anything and you obviously got other overheads, you’ve got all your staff to worry about. When does the tipping point occur, timewise, and also a business-wise?
Daniel Mee:
The company was making a profit from day one, but it was very small. And the thing is that, when I started the ski school being an instructor myself, it was always tough because I knew instructors don’t make much money, and it’s really hard. It’s a hard life; you do it for passion. That’s what you do it for. But a lot of people get burned out because it seems there’s no future in it. People get older, or like me, they would get married, or when they have kids or something. So you need more financial security. So when we started, we thought, “well, you know, we didn’t want to be like other schools and pay the instructors very little, while they’re making a mint.”
We decided we’d try and pay our instructors quite well and try to provide really nice accommodation for them. Even older guys, we got 56-year-olds working for us now, and they are happy with the living environment, and they’re getting decent pay. And so they can actually, rather than just having enough to buy a couple of beers and sort of survive, they can actually save some money and go on holidays. The tipping point, I suppose, was about four, six seasons in, so last five years, we’ve really seen big growth, and that’s come with Hakuba becoming more popular. So we get more and more customers. Of course, we only try and hire. We try and predict for the next season, the business levels we’re going to have, and then we’ll hire accordingly.
We don’t want to hire too many instructors, so the instructors aren’t getting work and that sort of thing, it’s not fair on them. There’s a lot of variables we take into consideration, but one of the primary ones is we try and keep the instructors we’ve got employed and keep them happy because if we’ve got happy instructors, we’ve got happy customers. I think that’s one of the cruces to this business and in any service industry, isn’t it? If your staff are happy and are serving your customers, the customers are going to be happy
Andrew McCombe:
So mate, obviously happy staff, happy customers. What are your customers experiencing? Like how does it work on a day-to-day? If I’m a customer and I come, what are you doing for me?
Daniel Mee:
People are coming to us because they want to learn to ski or snowboard. People come on holidays, and we get a lot of first-timers. In this ski industry, your business models are like a pyramid. You have more beginners that want to do lessons. And then the more advanced they get, the fewer lessons they’ll do because they are advanced. So they don’t need so much instruction. We get a lot of people, but we still do get all levels of people, and they come, and basically, they want to get better at what they enjoy. And it’s like anything, the better you get at something, the more fun you can have. We’re on a big mountain environment here, the speed record on skis is over 250 K an hour.
It can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. And it can be scary. So we get people that want to enjoy the mountain environment and the snow, and we try and educate them so that they can go and have a good time being safe and share this beautiful environment with their family and friends and not be scared at the same time.
Andrew McCombe:
And so private lessons, group lessons, you’re snowboarding, you’re doing normal skiing. They’re doing anything else other than that?
Daniel Mee:
Yeah, we do private and group lessons. Private being, you hire an instructor specifically for you or for a group of you. So you have that one instructor with just with your group or for you individually, or you can join group lessons where you’ll join a specific level of ability. And you’ll join with people who are like a homogenous group, so you can all learn at the same level. So that’s what our group lessons are. Of course, the group lessons are cheaper; the private lessons tend to be more expensive. We do all those sorts of things in skiing and snowboarding. There are other places here that do like backcountry tours and that. I’m not much of a backcountry, So we don’t do that, but we can recommend other people that in Hakuba you can see the backcountry here when you ski.
And so we can recommend people that can do that for you. But I’m a big believer in ‘stick with what you know,’ and what I know is how to teach people to ski and snowboard. And then my knowledge and passion, I can pass onto my staff. I know how things should go. Our staff know what they’re doing. They’re professionals at skiing and snowboard teaching. And that’s when the customer gets a really good experience, and they can enjoy a sport which crosses generations. We have three-year-old skiing with 80-year-olds. You can come as a family, or let’s say you could have four generations of family come and skiing together. So it is an amazing time for that family sort of trip.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, I noticed too, back when I think the last time I skied might’ve been 25, 30 years ago, when I was maybe 10. What I noticed is back then there was only advanced intermediate beginner, and you get chucked in. And, but what I love about what you guys are doing already, it was really noticeable from the start. You’ve got levels within levels. And then you’re allocating an instructor relevant and not just in a way of expertise, but whether you actually think they’ll fit, that instructor will fit with that type of person and vice versa.
Daniel Mee:
And that’s something that we pride ourselves on here. We have the experience, we’ve taught so much, Doug, he’s been teaching for 40 seasons, and we do all the bookings. We don’t have an office staff that do it for us. So every book that comes in, we do ourselves, between the two of us. And then what we try and do is match the personalities of our instructors with the customer. And that’s the beauty of being a smaller business. People might say 70 people wasn’t small, but we are a small ski school, and we’re privately owned ski school as opposed to owned by the resort. because it is our business, we really care about the customer and try and match the customer to the teacher and vice versa.
What you’re saying about the levels, yeah, We have different levels. So you can be the very first time where we call level one, and you can go up to level six, the highest level. And that’s when you’re almost an instructor yourself. And so everywhere between them, we try and get people with the same ability level learning together. So no one’s feeling slow. No one’s going too fast. Do you know what I mean? So everyone’s in a comfortable environment to learn and progress at their own level.
Andrew McCombe:
So Dan, I’ve noticed yesterday, looking at the levels, people come in, they’re really pumped. Right. And I’ve also noticed you don’t do a lot of marketing. So a lot of the businesses, is it repeat business? Is it word of mouth? How does that work?
Daniel Mee:
We’ve got a very good reputation, within the Hakuba Valley, we have a few clients that we’ll come to Hakuba specifically because they like a particular instructor. And instructor can become a very important part of a family for an individual ski holiday, or friend groups of friends or whatever. Sometimes people follow the instructor wherever they go. They’ll only ski with that instructor.
So you have that loyalty following through instructors, but also we have, within the travel agents, the hotels and stuff, we’ve got a good reputation for providing a good product. And when people go on holidays, a whole string of things need to come together for them to have a good experience. If they are flying from New Zealand to Japan, for a ski holiday, if something goes wrong and they’d get their baggage lost, that’s a real bad start. The transport from the airport to Hakuba, it gets delayed, or there are traffic jams, or there can be things out of their control, but they’ll know that the transport people have dropped the ball. If they turn up to their hotel and the hotel’s not what they’ve expected, or the services aren’t great or things like that, then that is a detriment to the thing.
And then they come to us, and they have a crappy lesson or don’t enjoy their time on the snow. That’s going to deplete from their holiday. It’s the old cliche – the chain’s only as strong as its weakest link. But it’s true. And so, I try and suggest people stay with people that I know will provide a good accommodation experience. If they ask me if they want a ski rental, I’ll point them in the direction where I know they’re going to get a good service. And I think that’s what’s happening here. That’s where our marketing is. We’re very lucky because we’ve shown to the providers, the travel agents, and the local combinations and things like that, that we care about the customer, we provide a good service, then they are confident that they can send their customers to us and know they’ll come back and have a good time. And that’s great for the combination cause they don’t want to deal with people whinging or crying because it hasn’t gone like they wanted, either.
Andrew McCombe:
So when you started the business, looking at a planning process, what was the vision? I know your original vision, you mentioned, was just to have enough money for a ski ticket for the next day. Right? So it’s incredible that what’s occurred from that passion just to go skiing. But then when you sat down at the start, after being an instructor for so long, what was your process to design what you have now, or Was it not about that?
Daniel Mee:
I knew the business cause I’ve managed ski schools in New Zealand and stuff like that. I knew that snow schools can be profitable and can do well. So I knew that there’s a good model there to succeed. I identified Hakuba as a place; we lacked a really good international ski school, snowboard school, snow sports school. So I knew there was a place for us here and that we could do well, but there was always when you start a new business, you’re unsure, “are people gonna like it, are people gonna want to come back and ski with us?” the big one for me is, are our staff going to want to come back? Can I get enough customers to pay my staff so that they can come back and want to come back and work for me?
So then I can start building a pool of great instructors that can provide the service that I want to. Did I plan to get to where I am? Not really, I was sort of just going along with what I knew, I knew schools were good business, and so it’s going really well now. I hope to keep expanding. As Hakuba is becoming more famous, we’re going to have a bigger pool of customers to deal with. So, of course, we have to evolve as the village evolves as well.
Andrew McCombe:
You’ve got some great vertically integrated businesses that have now spun off the back of the school. That wouldn’t have been part of the vision initially, would it? You’ve got the accommodation for staff here.
Daniel Mee:
That was through the necessity really. In Japan, It’s not easy to get accommodation for seasonal workers. You need to have all sorts of documentation and Japanese abilities to be able to rent your own houses and stuff. So what we found is that, for us to keep expanding, we’d need to provide accommodation for our staff. So we’ve actually bought quite a few properties. We’ve got three lodges and nine apartments and another small house now that we have, in total, 58 bedrooms. So that’s been really good for us because not only are we doing the ski school, but we’re acquiring property, which is in a market which is growing, and the land prices going up, and things like that. So there is a bit of a spinoff there, but the whole thing with that, it was through necessity.
I need places to put my staff (Andrew: otherwise, you can’t expand.) Well, that’s right. And that’s a problem with property price. And I think it’s a problem everyone has, around the world. And old resorts have staff accommodation. It’s a big problem. I know coming from New Zealand, Queenstown, and there is a massive problem. And let’s face it, seasonal staff, They’re not getting paid heaps and heaps of money. They earn enough money to sort of live, but they can’t afford to pay 500 bucks a week for rent and stuff like that. It gets ridiculous. So we’ve bought these accommodations at good rates and stuff like that. And we try and provide affordable accommodation. It comes down to the staff enjoyment, if they’re having to pour all their money into their rent and stuff like that, they don’t have enough money to go to Bali or Thailand after the season before they go back to New Zealand or Australia or Chile or Argentina. We’ve got a few businesses that have sprouted up through necessity. But it’s going well, and the property is always a good investment. Isn’t it?
Andrew McCombe:
So what are you doing with the apartments and stuff in the offseason? Are they empty or?
Daniel Mee:
Yeah, they’re currently empty. We’ve thought about renting them out, but not at the moment. We sort of like to clean them up and get them ready for, you know, do some maintenance or renovations and that sort of thing. So they’re ready for the next winter.
Andrew McCombe:
So just on that, you have a big offseason, right? Is it like four or five months on and seven to eight months off? What are you doing in your spare time?
Daniel Mee:
Well, I used to, when I first started, I was working all sorts of jobs in the summer over here. I did some painting, worked for an outdoor adventure company, doing some rafting, sort of river walking and things like that.
As we got bigger and bigger, of course, salaries increased, which supports me all year round now. The ski season usually operates from the end of November to the start of December. It’s all about the 5th of May, every year. So we’re open all those times. The rest of the year now I have a lot of free time. I have some certain busy times, like June, we do the hiring of staff for the next season. But the other times from that we were a bit of a man of leisure at the moment; I always seem to try and get into a project. I took up tennis again, started playing tennis a couple of times a week, which is great.
And play cricket. I did have a dabble in cricket there, Andy, I got into cricket over here, and that managed to make the Japan national site. I went to become an international cricketer. I’ve played cricket for a while. And then, my kids were getting to an age where I had to spend more time. Cause over here, cricket, you gotta travel three or four hours to play. That’s getting there and then get back. So with young kids, it was difficult. So my kids are eight and ten now. So I actually just got back into it last year. I’ll run a marathon. I did that for a project one summer, also golf. I’ve got into that two years ago.
And so I’m trying to get my handicap down now on that. So that’s the next project. (Andrew: What are you playing off?) I’m playing to a teen at the moment. So the dream is to get to single figures. If I get enough rounds this year, then maybe I’ll be able to push that way. I have a bit of a patience issue. I tend to get a bit angry on the golf course. I think once I learned to master my own emotions, I might delve to do better there. Summer’s a great time for me. I’m very lucky that I had my kids growing up, I’ve been able to spend months with them while they were growing up over summer, especially when they weren’t at school. I’d spend all day with them and take them down to the river or to the Lake or something. I was really lucky in that regard to be able to have that time with the kids while they are growing up.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, I guess that’s a really important point. And it’s important about Outlier as a series, is we’re trying to inspire other outliers or entrepreneurs to do similar to yourself. Right. So they can be themselves and turn it into an income source or a business to then be able to afford you the ability to live the life that you want. Right?
Daniel Mee:
I think the big one there; I just followed through with my passion. I knew about skiing and snowboard instructing. Then I just keep with that. It was hard at times, but now it’s come good. And now I can have a lot of free time and do what I love doing. I love playing sport and being outdoors; I like windsurfing a lot and things like that. So I dunno if I’m lucky or, I’ve put in hard yards in there, but.. (Andrew: if you’re honest with yourself, does it just happen? Like the success just happen?) No, no, it doesn’t. It takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and you worry, you know, “geez, we’ve got this Coronavirus at the moment.”
There’s a lot of things in this industry that are out of our control, global warming. Is there going to be snow? We had the Fukushima disaster, and the season after that, because everyone was afraid that if you come to Japan and leave with a third league or something. But it’s not the fact of the matter. So there’s a lot of things out of our control that make you worry—and having your own business as well. And it’s not a worry, but you got to take these risks to get the rewards and the rewards I’m having at the moment is I have a lot of time off. I work hard over time, and I’m living a fantastic life.
I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, right. When you think about that, you are going to go and look for other jobs for other companies and stuff versus what you’re doing now. Do you really think you could have ever worked for someone else in that regard?
Daniel Mee:
Well, no. Something would have to go extremely wrong here and which is possible. I say all these uncontrollable outside events that could destroy the snow industry in Japan. You never know. Mount Fuji could erupt. Who knows? So in that case, maybe I will have to go to work somewhere else. But I’d be pretty picky.
I like working for myself. Because it’s like skiing development, and what you put into it is what you get out of it. You know, whereas perhaps working for someone else is more of a team environment. Someone can be letting the team down. And so the whole team suffers, you know what I mean? So that is one thing. And I’d advise anyone who likes the challenge is do your own business and that sort of thing. And what you put into it is rewards. It’s pretty self-explanatory. That one, I suppose.
Andrew McCombe:
What about for someone who just goes out now, and just couldn’t do it. Like what’s the real difference, say between doing it and not doing it in relation to, I guess, time, money, effort. It’s gotta be worth it, surely, to do it than not do it. Don’t you think?
Daniel Mee:
I’d say for sure like just look to where I am now. I’m leading a dream life. It’s just the hard yards and willing to take the risk. That’s what it is. But you’ve got to have confidence in what you’re doing in your own abilities. I knew the ski and snowboard in the street, so that’s what I stayed with. But some people start doing businesses that they don’t really know much about, and it’s going to be tough. Of course, you can learn on the spot. We have a lot of people come over here, lodge owners, they think it’s going to be a walk in the park, come over, “I’ll buy a ski lodge.”
“I’ll come over, go skiing every day.” but that’s not how it works. A lot of my friends own lodges here. And they’re really great entrepreneurs as well. They put incredible yards to satisfy customers on a day-in, day-out sort of thing. Hats off to them because that is a tough job. I don’t think I could do it. But this is what they wanted to do. And they enjoy that. So that’s the thing, you got to enjoy what you’re doing before you’re going to succeed in it.
Andrew McCombe:
What do you say to someone who’s, I guess, scared of the hard yards or when challenges occur, but like how do you overcome it for yourself? What are you doing on a daily basis, If things are not working out for you?
Daniel Mee:
Get angry at myself around it. Like when things don’t go your way, I think that’s a growth thing as well. I tended to get angry a lot earlier. I’m a redhead with small men syndrome, Andrew. So it’s a dangerous combination.
You just got to give it a go, and then you got to work. You got to do the yards and don’t expect to succeed straight up. You’ve got to prepare to take steps back. You might be working for a company doing really well, but if you’re going to start your own business, you can’t go paying yourself what you are getting paid. You got to invest all your time back into the business. Otherwise, it will never work.
Andrew McCombe:
I think that’s one of our things with Outlier, about living life outside the comfort zone, you’ve got to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, don’t you?
Daniel Mee:
Then you’ve got to be comfortable with yourself. You’ve got no one to turn to really, you can ask for advice from people, and that’s where like mentoring, TV shows like this might inspire people, but maybe through Outlier, you might be able to make contacts with other people who are doing the same thing that might be able to help you out as long as they’re not in competition with me. (But you have helped a few people in the past, haven’t you?). Yeah. I have helped a few people in the past, and sometimes that comes back to bite you in the ass. (But that is just a measure of a person though, isn’t it?) Yeah. It is. I don’t know, saying, being copied is the biggest form of flattery or something like that. I suppose when you get people copying or stealing your ideas. It’s almost like they are saying, “well done, aren’t they?”
Andrew McCombe:
It’s a compliment. So do you have any mentors for yourself? Like other than yourself getting fired up at yourself, is it people you look up to or look to for advice?
Daniel Mee:
I mean, there’s been ski school managers who I’ve liked, the way they’d run ski schools when I’ve worked under them. There’s one guy from France, who was one of my first ski school bosses in Japan. And he was an amazing guy. Just the way he ran the ski. It wasn’t his own company, but the way he ran the ski school and the respect he showed his staff and how he looked after his staff is something I’ve always aspired to do. You don’t get it right sometimes. I role modeled myself off him a little bit. There’s another guy, Michelle Marshawn, another ski school director in New Zealand, that I worked for.
He’s just a really lovely guy. You learn a lot from him, you learn from your friends as well. I’ve got one of my partners here, Kevin, he runs a big business. He’s fantastic businessmen, and I’ve learned a lot from him just in dealing with people. He’s a lot more level headed than I am. I’ve learned a lot of feminine ways of that. I talked to these lodge owners; they’re almost role models for me, the way they deal with people day in, day out, that I don’t have to. They’re looking after them 24/seven. Those guys are heroes, I suppose as well.
Andrew McCombe:
What about like, your redhead, with a short man syndrome, who, growing up, I guess the part of being an outlier is sometimes people don’t feel like they belong or they don’t fit in. Right? What advice would you have to those people to keep going, keep being true to themselves, and trust that it’s going to all workout?
Daniel Mee:
Well, I think, A being redhead, I didn’t have much confidence in myself cause I always got ridiculed at school. But you know, I had other strengths. I was very good at sport and things like that. And I did well at school. So I think what you gotta do is focus on your strengths and believe in yourself. And what I actually realized is that when you believe in yourself and your own strengths, other people look past your weaknesses, they don’t even see them. People won’t even see that when you’re successful in other things in your life, you’re a beautiful person to everyone; if you believe in your own strengths, your weaknesses, they just disappear.
Andrew McCombe:
It’s a great point because you know, that’s the Instagram generation now and everything’s about how good everyone’s looking, but it’s just an illusion, isn’t it?
Daniel Mee:
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Because you can’t see what the person’s like on Instagram. It’s just a photo. And is that photo you, it’s not, is it?
Andrew McCombe:
So what we think people are thinking versus what’s actually happening, or is it not true?
Daniel Mee:
Not true at all. Well, let’s say if you’re good at something, go down that road, find what you’re good at by trying lots of different things. And that’s one thing I’ve found in the ski industry as well. Like this is an example, some people say, our instructors even, “I don’t like moguls.”- “Why don’t you like moguls?” It’s because I can’t do them. So they’re scared because they’re already instructors. They don’t want to look like an idiot being a beginner through the moguls. Again, the only way you’re going to learn to do moguls is by doing bloody moguls and going back to being a beginner. We should always try and put ourselves into situations that make you uncomfortable because that’s how you learn.
Our instructors should be able to teach everything. There shouldn’t be any discipline within the snow category that you can’t teach if you’re going to be a true professional.
Andrew McCombe:
So the power of the beginner mind and every situation. Y.
Daniel Mee:
Yes, you can’t be afraid to look stupid. Beginners don’t look stupid. That’s the thing. I think people think, “I’m not very good, you know? And won’t be good at it. So I can’t do it. Cause I’m going to look dumb.” If you’re a beginner, no one thinks you look dumb. Because you’re a beginner, otherwise, you’ll never do it. It’s just crazy. And you’re missing out on so much in life.
People don’t want to be beginning skiers and snowboarders. You know, they see stuff on the Olympics, “that looks cool,” but it’s actually not that easy.
Andrew McCombe:
That’s another thing. You know, I haven’t done skiing for 25 years or whatever. And I used to be a competent skier. I would never say I was a good skier. But you know, you’re a great skier, but it’s not about you. Right? You weren’t there for you. You were there for me to help me to get to where we had to go.
Daniel Mee:
That’s right. You know, it’s not like that at all. I knew you’re a good skier. And look at you now after a couple of little pointers, boom, got your mojo back.
Andrew McCombe:
I would just appreciate the fact that you know, a lot of people are gonna think that guy he’s really good. He’s going to think I’m a dick or whatever. It’s just not the case, is it? Cause I mean, you wouldn’t be running a ski score if that was the case.
Daniel Mee:
No, and the thing is, we’re all mirror images of each other. We all make the same mistakes in life and in skiing and snowboarding. We all make the same mistakes to a lesser or greater degree. So when I’m teaching a beginner to ski, I’ll be saying, “okay, you got to concentrate on this.”
So my ability level is getting better as well. When I do a demonstration for them, I have to demonstrate correctly. So I am learning from them because they are mirroring the mistakes I make, but they’re doing it slightly to a greater degree.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, you’re not passing on the best information if you’re not doing it correctly yourself.
Daniel Mee:
That’s right. But what I’m saying is we can’t see ourselves in life as well. And we can’t see the mistakes we’re making, but if you turn around and look at some other people, “Hey, that guy looks like me. Maybe I’m doing that.” If you have a look around you and see, “Hey shit, that’s a mirror image of me. Maybe I shouldn’t do that.” You know, or maybe,” I should fix that in my own life.” it’s easy to look at other people and say, “look, they’re an idiot, or what’s he doing?”
Andrew McCombe:
So what I love about skiing is it’s a flow process. It’s like golf. It’s like a lot of sport, you know, on paper. It looks like you’re just trying to get down there. Hell, But there’s a process to it, but it applies to business and to life, doesn’t it?
Daniel Mee:
For sure. And like to get better at things, the harder terrain you can negotiate. There’s a process to learn, as a beginner manager, or getting into the intermediate stage, there’s still a lot I have to learn, and you know, I can learn off, I love watching documentaries on Bill Gates and things like that.
Just amazing people, doing amazing things. And you can learn a lot from them. They are like life coaches almost. But it’s a process just like skiing. I think sports is an analogy for all sorts of things in life.
Andrew McCombe:
I also think that the better you get at something, the more simplified it actually becomes. Like you don’t need a lot of information. Do you? When you’re at that level and when you turn around as a great instructor, you’re not overwhelming them with a lot of info, are you?
Daniel Mee:
No. I think as you get more experienced as a teacher or something, the true understanding is that when you can explain something to a layman in layman’s terms, I can explain something quite complicated in a way that you’ll understand.
And that shows a true understanding of what you’re teaching. I can explain to you skiing; we talk about gravity and centripetal force and things like that. But I can explain that stuff to you without getting really ticky to the beginner. But once we get up the levels as well, I need to use these words and stuff so that you can get this depth of understanding as well as you get more advanced. I mean, you’re your own best teacher. If you understand what you’re meant to be doing, you don’t need many teachers because you can teach yourself. You know what I mean, lessons, it’s a shortcut to success. That’s all it is. All we’re teaching in skiing and snowboarding is teaching people to have more fun on the mountain, and you can do it in one lesson, as opposed to battling for a week.
The lesson is just a shortcut to success. Learning from the mistakes that we’ve made as teachers to get where we are. When you’re teaching something, you’re just teaching people not to make the mistakes that you learned not to make.
Andrew McCombe:
So for the viewers out there or anyone who’s interested in coming to Hakuba, and obviously hanging out with you guys, what would you say?
Daniel Mee:
Yeah, come along. It is a beautiful place. And if you like skiing and snowboarding and you can’t find a better place to come, there’s great accommodation here. We can put you in the direction of the easiest ways to get there, the nice places to stay. Come to the snow, and we’ll show you why we live here and why we love it so much.
Andrew McCombe:
What’s interesting to me is it’s the worst snow you’ve had in 70 years? And yet it’s the best snow I’ve ever experienced on the ski field. And I’m from New Zealand, which has some pretty good snow.
Daniel Mee:
We are very lucky here with the snow conditions we get. It’s world-class, it’s second to none.
Andrew McCombe:
So then when you look back at yourself, you know, as a young upstart ski instructor, starting out failed a few times, to where you are now, what advice would you have for yourself back then?
Daniel Mee:
Well, my big thing is I thought I was better than I was, and I didn’t listen to people that knew better than I did. You gotta be humble. And have a good look at yourself. Are you as good as you think you are because there are other people and all sorts of things in life that do things better than you do. And so you gotta be open to learning. And that’s what I say. You gotta be prepared to take lessons from everyone and learn from people. And that’s something; I think that’s a young person’s thing. They think you get out of university and you think you know everything. But you don’t, I don’t, we don’t, you know what I mean? You’re always learning, and you should. The moment you start learning, you’re gonna make more mistakes.
Daniel Mee:
So that would be my advice to the 20-year-old Daniel. Listen to people and take learning seriously. Yeah.
Andrew McCombe:
What was the turning point for you on that? Going from you thought you knew everything or that you were better than you were to actually go, and, “you know what. I’ve got to adjust.”
Daniel Mee:
I keep failing. I think the big problem I had growing up was, I was good at school, and I was good at sport. I never failed anything. So I went ski instructing, and that was the first thing I ever failed in my life. I never failed anything until I did that. And I couldn’t understand why I was failing. And so, you know, I started blaming things on the examiners, the guys testing me don’t know what they’re talking about. But I keep failing, you know, so there comes to a point I just almost gave up skiing, struggling, but I had to reassess and had to break down my own technique or pass my teaching in the first time, you know, you have the teaching part and the ski part.
My ski part wasn’t what they’re looking for. And if you’re true, you should be able to skin a number of different ways. You should be able to change your technique according to how people want it if you’ve got true mastery. The big one is learning how to fail and then learning how to build yourself back up to get through.
Andrew McCombe:
So what fascinates me, Dan, is you’ve failed multiple times in your instructor’s course, you were even suspended from school, but now you have one of the best ski schools in the world, I’d say. So it’s fascinating that you’ve gone through that journey of failure to actually come out. The other end is almost a bit of a master in learning and sharing that learning with others. It’s pretty impressive.
Daniel Mee:
Yeah, you don’t think of yourself in those sorts of terms. I like to think we are a world-class ski school for sure. My instructors are as good; if not better than any instructors around the world, we are a fantastic team. They do me credit every day. They’re out there. So I’m really proud of that. The people we’ve got working for us.
Andrew McCombe:
It’s just interesting to observe that, just from a self-reflection perspective, I’m fascinated by that, that you’ve had to go through what you’ve gone through to get where you’re going and obviously wherever that’s going to take you.
Daniel Mee:
Yeah. And I mean, it’s trial of passage or whatever, you know? I think everyone that’s done does that. Like, I mean, you read books and stuff about entrepreneurs and stuff. How many times they fail and go bankrupt and then get back up and do it again. You know, I’m lucky that I’ve had good support with my parents and stuff like that. And I did fail a few times, but, you know, I think through planning and education, I was lucky to do marketing management. It helped me, and I had physical education, which has helped with my teaching. So these things are blended together. So I had a really good base to start my own business in the ski industry.
So I think with that sort of base, I’ve minimized my failures so far. That’s the thing, failing the actual skiing part. That was really humbling. Because I had everything else. I was a qualified high school teacher and stuff like that. So the teaching wasn’t a problem. It was the actual physical doing because sports were my forte. And I’ve become a better person because of it. If I flew straight through those things, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I’d probably be like an examiner or something doing back to back seasons. It’s these failures that said, “well, maybe I’ve got to do something different.”
It was sort of like fight a little bit, those failures I passed through. I probably wouldn’t be where I am now. It’s weird little turning. If I hadn’t read that Otago daily times on that day, I might’ve been working for Coca Cola.
Andrew McCombe:
What was fascinating, again, back to resilience and for the viewers, it’s like, just keep going and it’ll make sense later. But just persevere if it’s in your heart and you’re passionate about it, make it happen. Who knows what will happen, but something’s going to happen.
Daniel Mee:
Yeah, what you say there, the passion is key in self-belief. You got to believe in what you’re doing. I think that’s the key to anything; you got to want to do it. You got to believe in yourself, and you play to your strengths, play to your strengths.
I knew about skiing, snowboarding. So I knew I could do this. If I went and did something else, maybe I wouldn’t be successful because I don’t know anything about it. That’s why I don’t do backcountry. And I don’t pretend to do it because I don’t know enough about it. I can ski backcountry, but I don’t want to learn about the snowpack or ever lunches and stuff like that. That’s another guy professional, you know? Specialize, do what you know,
Andrew McCombe:
Which again, simplifying purely by trusting who you are and what you feel is right for you. And that just makes it easier. You’re not trying to be something that you’re not.
Daniel Mee:
Yeah. I get that thing. Like people say, “Oh, why don’t you do something in summer? Do mountain biking.” I don’t know anything about mountain biking. I don’t want to do mountain biking. It’s not the same.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, Dan, you’ve obviously shared some fantastic life stories, business stories, and helped inspire the viewers and an amazing environment.
Daniel Mee:
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate being here now. And it’s a thank you for coming in. You know, I hope you inspire a lot of people yourself. We’re running good businesses. And, um, what a great show, like going out and trying to be an inspiration to other entrepreneurs. And so people know we’re not the only ones out there, you know what I mean? Hopefully, we can get a network together and start sharing these stories and, um, who knows what they’ll have to merge businesses and all sorts. Yeah. Thank you very much.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, Dan, you’re officially an Outlier mate. Thanks, brother. Well done.
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