LISTEN: Alabama hotel director discusses the power of setting and goals

Last week Fireseeds CEO, Cord Sachs came on Yellowhammer Radio to discuss the importance of a device he uses in establishing long term goals called a “vision board”. Jonathan McKinney is here this week to talk about his vision board. Jonathan is the Director of Sales & Marketing at PCH Hotels & Resorts | Renaissance Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa (LION).

Cord Sachs is a Birmingham-based leadership expert and the CEO of FireSeeds, a company that helps companies find and grow great leaders and “the company behind many of Alabama’s fastest growing companies.”

The full conversation with Mr. Sachs can be heard on the Yellowhammer Radio podcast or in the video above, and a lightly edited transcript of his interview with Yellowhammer’s Andrea Tice and Scott Chambers can be read below.

Subscribe to the Yellowhammer Radio Podcast on iTunes. Learn more about Cord Sachs and Fireseeds at www.fireseeds.com

Andrea Tice:

Welcome back to yellow have a radio on Superstation 101.1 WYDE. Andrea Tice here and the voices you heard were Scott Chambers, the regular co-host and a guest that we have in studio. His name is Jonathan McKinney, he is the director of sales and marketing for Renaissance Ross Bridge. He’s here on behalf of Fireseeds and Cord Sachs who had been coming into studio in the past two weeks. You were sent in to explain in detail what a vision board is, which we discussed last week and you’re going to bring it down to the nitty-gritty in describing it and how it’s been useful for you.

Jonathan McKinney:

Absolutely. So just to give you guys some context, I started working with Fireseeds in 2015 and I’m no longer with them but I was heavily influenced by them. One of the things that Cord talked about last week as employees of Fireseeds we created a vision board and so with that I was really inspired by WildSparq which is the leadership development arm of Fireseeds. One of the Wildsparq lessons is called “Leaving a legacy” and so as I went through that I was thinking about what kind of legacy do I want to leave for my wife and my kids and my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. So I took the December break in 2015-2016 and basically did what you guys see here. This is my vision board and so it really is one of the things that is in my office. When my team comes in my office this is a conversation piece. It is one of the things that we just took all of the different magazines that were laying around the house and flip through them at one point over that break and just clipped out things that were important to me that I thought I could look at and be inspired by and say this is the person I want to be and this is what I want to be about doing.

Scott Chambers:

That is awesome. Cord Sachs was on the air with us last week from Fireseeds talking about the vision board and we were saying that can help you out you know in the workplace, it can help you out at home when you have that vision. I’m looking at your vision board here Jonathan and its really neat. It looks to me like your religion is important. Faith, the Gospels reported, maybe world travel, proud to be a southerner. I see neat things on there that tells me just looking at the board I instantly feel like I know who you are and what your background is. And so that’s your vision for your life there.

Andrea Tice:

And just to describe for the listeners so they understand what you brought in is a large framed visual that has glass and everything. It’s not just a bulletin board, it looks artsy in the way you created it.

Scott Chambers:

It’s one of the nicest vision boards I’ve actually ever seen.

Andrea Tice:

Nice frame and everything. I would say two-and-a-half feet by three feet tall. So it’s a large board that you hang somewhere and has all of these pictures and words and it has a nice appeal to it. So that’s what we’re looking at.

Jonathan McKinney:

Yeah and I think you know vision is important. Andy Stanley is a leadership guru that kind of listen to a lot and he said that it’s a mental picture of what could be fueled by the passion that should be. I know when Cord was here last week he talked about Daniel Pink’s book, “Drive”, talking about autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Really for me it’s Pink’s external motivators don’t work and so for me these are either words pictures or phrases of different things that really inspire me to be a better man, a better husband, a better father, a better leader. Those were the things that really stuck out to me as I was flipping through these pages and just trying to put different things together. One of my favorite things is in the center can if you kind of read it down it says, “take it on, stand tall, walk worthy” and shows a picture of a man standing on top of a mountain overlooking a sunset. Then right below that is a picture of a small boy doing something similar to that and it says again, “stand tall, walk worthy because your son will be a man one day.” For me it really is a great reminder of the calling as a father and as a leader and the type of man that I want to be not just for myself but so that my sons and my daughters and and other folks that see me and interact with me will will be impacted by that. So those are the things that motivate me and to drive it home about what you guys are talking about with the boardroom to the family room. How does this impact them in work and at play. I think a couple things I would share briefly, I do strive to be better man to my wife Christy who I love dearly. One of the things on the vision board says love the girl of your dreams and so for me that’s my wife. I want to try to do that on a daily basis so in my phone it says tell my wife I love her. That’s one I’ve got to check the box on and then do one thing today that shows my wife that I care for her. Really wanting to reach her heart and be a better husband for her. Regarding work this is really kind of my “why”. This is why I’m doing what I’m doing. At Renaissance Ross Bridge one of the things we’ve said is our vision as a team is to create unforgettable moments that forge human connections to change the world and so we talk about that as a team daily. One of the things we started out this year doing was asking my teammates, “Why are you here?” And for them one of the most memorable moments of that for me was a new sales manager that had been there only two to three months, she’s driven and she’s really excited to be there. So we open the floor and asked, “Who would like to share their why this morning?” and she said, “I would love to.” As she began to talk about why she’s here why she’s doing what she’s doing, she said, “When I was being recruited I really enjoyed where I was but I was excited about the opportunity here and I was really vacillating back and forth.” I talked to her that afternoon, I’d totally forgotten this conversation, and she said as we’re closing the conversation you said just listen I know you’re kind of going back and forth here but just pray about this over the weekend and let’s talk Monday. That was just really kind of nonchalant. I wasn’t really trying to be overly religious or anything, just let’s check on this and then let’s go for it. Anyway she said that that really stuck with her and it was one of the things that she said the reason I’m here is because I feel like God wants me to be here. She said, “I feel free that I can say that here in this workplace.” It was one of those things to for our team that there was not a dry eye after. She didn’t come in and say my goals are the reason I’m here or I want to make the most money that I can. While those can sometimes be motivating factors it wasn’t that penultimate for her. I think that was one of the things is learning about our why and understanding why we do what we do and to see that motivate our team has been huge for us at Ross Bridge.

Scott Chambers:

That is awesome. That is absolutely awesome. Our guest is Jonathan McKinney who is with us on behalf of Fireseeds today, who is with Ross Bridge. I have a question for you, Jonathan. How has this actually impacted your life at home and at work?

Jonathan McKinney:

Great question, I think for me it really is one of those things to where daily I want to get up and have a vision for my day, I want to have a vision for my week and a vision for my month. In scripture it says without a vision people perish. I think that nobody goes through life saying I just want to coast by. You really want to have an idea of what you want to do with your life and so I think for me as I’ve created this and kind of gone through and take a look at this each day you know it really does remind me of who I am and why I do what I do. I think that one principle application of this is that being free seeds doing. Some of these words and pictures on this vision board are just an aspiration of who I want to be as a man. That’s impacted both me at work and at home.

Andrea Tice:

So I see that the benefit of you doing this visual is that it forces you to take some introspection into what really motivates you and then to just bring it out in the open and place it in a visual way with these words so that you can’t ignore it, you can’t deny it or pass it off. You’re laying it down, it’s in writing just like signing a contract to your marriage license. You’re doing that on this vision board and it’s present in front of you.

Jonathan McKinney:

Yeah I think it solidifies it for me I think you know the folks that are runners would tell you that they don’t look down a lot they’re going to look ahead to the horizon and in that account that’s where they’re heading toward. And I think that for me this is kind of it. One of the words you’re going to see on there is the word “journey” to remind me that this life is a journey and this is not a get from point A to point B. I’m a work in progress. I’m broken and messed up as an individual but I need this. I need to be reminding myself of this and it’s one of the things to that I feel like walking through this process has helped me identify better, different values and characteristics of others so that I can look to them and encourage them and speak words of affirmation and truth and encouragement to them as well. That’s been a process I think for me that’s been really helpful just in and being a leader and trying to encourage other people.

Andrea Tice:

I have another question. You mentioned the one employee who shared at your request why she was there. Now, has anybody at work shared with you if they have gone through the process of creating a vision board and come to you afterwards saying any stories about how it affected them? Anytime that it you know it hit home for them?

Jonathan McKinney:

Great question. I think for us we’ve got a few folks that are in the process of doing this right now actually and so then being able to set their goals and set their vision for who they want to be and what they want to be about has been hugely helpful.

Andrea Tice:

We’re going to take a picture of your vision board. We’ll put it on Twitter so people can get a better idea what we’re talking about.

Scott Chambers:

We’re in the final 40 seconds of the show but if you can maybe make a 10-second answer, why should our audience make a vision board?

Jonathan McKinney:

Great question. To know where you want to be and to be able to head in that direction. I feel like that’s usually important and really lacking in today’s world and society. We need direction.