Ally Stone  
We spent a ton of time at work, what do they say like a third of our lives at work? And if we hate that time, what are we doing with our lives? So I just think that we can I  especially as a leader, we have the opportunity to create this

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to love as a business strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business. We want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from and we believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And as always, I'm here to have those conversations, and hear those stories from real people real businesses real life, and today, I'm happy to be joined by Allie stone with over 15 years of experience in the hospitality industry. Ali has been a key player in developing 12 successful businesses and teams. And as Director of Culture and leadership development, she honed a deep understanding of what it means to lead through connection and become obsessed with creating extraordinary work cultures. Ali has since worked with 1000s of leaders at all organizational levels, earning her the 2022 transformational leader award from the universal Women's Network. Beyond her leadership expertise, Ali is a certified meditation teacher, a Heart Math resilience mentor and an ICF certified coach currently pursuing her Master's certification. And when she's not busy helping others thrive, you could find ally staying active and joining yoga, biking, hiking, and spending quality time with her two canine companions. So I'd love to welcome you to the show. Ally. How are you doing? Thanks, Jeff. Yeah, I'm super excited to be here. I'm doing great. It's fall. I don't know when this will air but fall is my favorite season. I love it. And it's just always makes me happy this time of year. So yeah, I'm excited to jump into some conversation with you today. Absolutely. And two canine companions, you want to specify what what? Specifically what those are?

Ally Stone  
Yeah, sure. I have two dogs. I have a Bluetick Coonhound . Who, so we haven't really talked about this, but I'm up in Western Canada. And so I went all the way to South Carolina to get this dog because they don't breed them here. And and then I also have a miniature Beagle like a pocket Beagle. So I have 100 pound dog, and an eight pound dog. So it's quite the quite the scene watching us walk down the street together for sure. has, has the large dog ever sat completely on the small?

I think he would. He doesn't love her as much as you know, we love her. So I think he would if he could, but he tolerates her, you know.

Jeff Ma  
I love it. It's one of those. That's the I don't know, why is the first thing that pops my mind is giant dog, little dog. Do they sit on each other? Either the large dog and smaller or I would I would I wouldn't be able to keep myself from picking up the small dog and having them ride the large Oh, totally. Yes. Okay..Anyway. So today I was, you know, as I do with every guest, the first thing I'm very, very curious about is really your passion like you as a person. Ally. What is your passion? And where does it come from?

Ally Stone  
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, I think I have multiple passions in my life. But when it comes to my career, and what I've done, my passion is people. It's all about connection. And I feel like that really boils over into my personal life too, right? So I think for me, it's been incredible having the opportunity to have a career that focused and centered around people. And then learning what that looked like for me and learning how that integrated fully into my being and who I am as a person, and how that could like enhance my life. And so yeah, super passionate about people, and just growth and development and, you know, finding finding better ways to live our lives and to be more successful and happier and I just feel like there's just so much out there for us. So

Jeff Ma  
I already you know, I don't prepare for our conversations, but in my head I already have like two things I want out of you in order so so I'm very excited. First, I wanted to really ask you about your story because I think your story is so incredible. And I want to hear more I want to hear and I want the audience to to hear just kind of the the story of Ally stone and just kind of how you got here. And then after that I want to talk more about out, kind of reconnecting and inspiration and these types of things of like, in the things that you work with people on and work on. So splitting those two, please, please, please tell us your story.

Ally Stone  
Okay, sounds good. Well, you know, it's a long story, obviously, as with most of our stories, so I will keep it as concise as possible. But, um, so as you mentioned, you know, I was in the hospitality industry. In the end, it was about 17 years, I spent about a decade as the director of the organization, and my two main tasks were leadership developments and culture. And so it was an incredible experience, I was really connected to what I did in that time. And, you know, with a team of like, 350 people and multiple locations, it was very dynamic, there was a lot of learning. I'll tell you, Jeff, I got into this when I was like 22, or 23 years old. So I was pretty young. I didn't really have that business acumen or that experience. And I always now say, I have like a PhD in business from, from my career, from my experience. Totally, yeah. And so yeah, so the hospitality industry wasn't necessarily an industry that I was interested in going into, I wasn't even really sure what I wanted to do with my life, I was kind of one of those people who's like, I don't really know what I'm gonna do. And so what ended up happening was, I met my husband when I was 20. And he was so passionate about hospitality, he loved the industry, he wanted to open a restaurant by the time he was 25. This was like his life goal. And so as I was like, okay, and then all of a sudden, at 23, this opportunity comes up to partner with a local franchise, and to get involved. And so we don't really know what this means for us. But it's a big deal at this at this stage in our lives. And so we decided to go for it. And I decided to kind of come on this journey with him. But with a couple caveats in mind. And number one, it was that we just kind of had to do things a little bit differently, because hospitality was known for, you know, long hours, not really great pay, unfair labor practices. I hadn't had the best experiences, I had had some good experiences, but hadn't had the best experiences. Working in hospitality. I knew I loved people, and I love connecting. And so I said, like, if we're going to do this, we got to do this different. And we got to go out and really, like try to change the game. And he was in total agreeance of that. So we set out to do that. And it was like, an incredible adventure. You know, there were so many learnings that was thinking before we got on, like, what are the stories like there was so many moments of humility, and vulnerability and those early years that you're just like learning to lead and learning more importantly, learning to work with people, and learning what like a good culture could look like and how you could create that. And a lot of mistakes were made along the way. You know, I think a lot of times, you probably get this from other people who listen to your podcasts or have read your book, or like, it's so great that you guys have this great culture, but I don't even know where to start. And it's like, well, we didn't know where to start either. But we just, we tried, we made some mistakes, we corrected we you know, it was a constant navigating. It's like an aeroplane in the air. And so there was all of these experiences that came along with it. And I'll, I'll hop you through till about halfway into the story. So for the first seven years, I ran a specific individual location. And I took that location from one of our underperforming locations to one of our highest performing locations in the entire system. And I look back on that time, and I think, oh my gosh, like I learned so much. And it wasn't about me, like this was about the people, the team, the connections, I don't think any of that would have happened without the people that were interested in coming with me on that journey, you know, in that time. And I'm still friends with them. I've been to their weddings, I've been to their parents funerals. I've like there's just It's crazy how connected we become when we create this culture. That means that means so much to our experience of life. And so one of the really beautiful things, and I kind of read about this in your book a little bit too when I was kind of making the correlation. But one of the really beautiful things that I think comes out of a an amazing culture or amazing career story like this is creativity, and innovation. And we start to have all these like amazing ideas, and we create safe spaces for these ideas to come forward. And so it's about halfway through kind of my tenure. And one day my husband came back from a run and everything was great. Our culture was awesome. We were doing really great things. But we had gone through massive expansion. So we went from two locations to 12 in like I don't even know it was so fast, though. Like we were just scrambling to keep up and the biggest detriment was that  we couldn't keep up with the team, we couldn't keep up with messaging, we couldn't keep up with connection we couldn't keep up with, like, creating that culture that we had when we had 100 people when it went to, like 400 people, right? It was just beyond our capability at that point. And so my husband came back from around one day, and he said, Hey, Ali, I just had this like, crazy idea. For the restaurants. He's like, I think it's gonna change everything. And I just, I want to share it with you, but I don't think anybody's gonna go for it. And so he sits down and tells me this idea that he has, that he wants to take our marketing dollars for an entire year, and invest them in a food truck, and that the food truck would not be used for marketing. So I'm sitting there going, okay, like, I'm not really sure, I understand where you're going from here. And so he starts talking about how we've spent so much time building this culture, so much time connecting with people and created this beautiful organization. But now it's gotten so big, we don't really know how to how to share the messaging in a productive way. And so the food truck idea is that it's not a food truck at all, that it's a community vehicle, and we use it to take care of people who take care of people, and we start sharing that idea. Yeah, and that vision with our team. And I remember when I was talking to him that night, it was like, I don't even know what to say, like, I love this idea. Like, it's just so. Right. It's so out there. I'm sure you've had these ideas around your tables too, right? And you're just sit there and you're like, This could be a total game changer. Yeah,

Jeff Ma  
we think about a lot. We think. Do you know, I mean, just we want to go eat at them. But no, we haven't. 

Oh, yeah. You guys could get your own and just roll it up outside anyway. So we I said, okay, like, I love this idea. I love it. But if we don't have buy in from at least our senior leadership team, it's not going anywhere, right. So as happenstance happens, we actually had a senior leadership team meeting the next morning. And so Chris, my husband walked in and proposed this idea to the team. There's about 12 people in the room, and it was like, you could hear a pin drop, like silence, but this like, amazing silence. This is like reverberating Yes. Yes. This is so awesome. And it was the next questions. Were just like, how do we do this? What do we do? Where do we buy a food truck, right. And so it was just like this, this idea that spurred into this amazing thing, and it completely changed our organization. And so it took us about eight months to get it, to get it wrapped. To get it going. We ran competitions with the team on what to name it, we ended up naming it after our core values, which is called the heart card, our core values or acronym is hearts. And we labeled it as our community vehicle. And so we started taking it out. And so we started taking this vehicle out only on two conditions, number one, that we would never transact $1 through it. So we're a restaurant, we're supposed to be making money, but we are not making money through this food truck. This is not the intention of building it. And the second intention was that we were out to take care of people who take care of people. So the ideas would come from our team, from people that were that were a part of our organization. And they would come to us and say, hey, when I was young, I got kicked out of my house, and I stayed at youth emergency shelter for six months, I'd really like to show up there and just take care of the team. Can we do that? I'd be like, yes, we can. You are coming. And we're going to put this event together. And so we started doing these events with our team. And I'm sure if you talk to some team members, they will have some life changing stories. But Jeff, my life was profoundly changed by this experience. The very first time I took the food truck out, we actually went to youth emergency shelters. So that's probably why I'm clicking on that one. But they had a team event in the river valley in our city. And so we pulled this first time the trucks been out we're driving down the street people are like, Oh my gosh, the original dose food truck and they're like what's going on? Right? So it's like this big thing. And we get to where they're having their event and so we we show up and we're like surprise, we're here to feed you. We want to take care of you. We have like we made these little gratitude jars that they could put you know, notes in and we put notes in for them. We just had the most amazing experience. They're playing games that we stayed in. Finally were like, Hey, we have to go like we've been here forever. And so we're packing up all our stuff and leaving and we're getting in the truck and we start to go to drive away. And the entire team from youth emergency services comes in circles the front of the truck so we can't drive away. And they started like clapping and they have some sort of internal I wish I would have videotaped it. They had some sort of internal like cheer that they did for when people did amazing things for them. I'm or with them. And just because they're in the business of really hard times with kids, and so they had this way of cheering each other on. And so they, like 50 people did this for us. And I remember we were all sitting there in tears. And I was looking around, I was like, Is this what these events are? Is this what's gonna happen? And it happened over and over and over, and I drove that truck all over Alberta, and just had the most incredible experiences with it. So it was really beautiful. I'm gonna pause there and see if you have any questions about that story.

No, no I'mtrying to keep from tearing up myself right now. That's incredible. And and how long ago was this, like the this part of the story.

Ally Stone  
So this was in like, 2015. I'm really bad with dates. But around 2015, I think we got on the road. It's been on the road for about seven or eight years now. So. So he does this every summer. And this is how this happens. And our team comes up with these events. It's still running, I'm not working in the company anymore. It's still running. It was out all summer. And so yeah, so I mean, like when it comes to culture, I know that not everybody can have a food truck. And that's a really big thing. But what I want to highlight with that story is I think that we all have the opportunity to help ourselves and our teams and our people see the power that social impact can have not only in our businesses in our lives, and I'm sure there was an ROI on that for us, I'm sure there was at some point, but we didn't care. Like it was just all about people, and love and taking care of people and just some of the most beautiful moments in my life. And so my career was on a total high total hype, and everything was amazing. And then in 2018, so my husband is a competitive marathon runner. And in 2018, we went to Japan. So he could run the Tokyo Marathon, he was trying to run all six of the world majors. And when we got there, he felt ill, he ran his marathon and two days after he fell into a coma, and he nearly died. And he, it was probably the most terrifying experience of my life, I can't even imagine his and we, he was never the same after. So he never returned to work after that with me. And that really challenged me in my career or challenged me with original joes and like how it was showing up because I felt like, I kind of lost my partner in life, I lost my partner in the restaurants. And they're gone, I went through this, like really kind of devastating loss of purpose. And what I was doing, I just didn't see the point in it anymore in doing it without him. And so I found myself in this position where as leading the company, I wasn't alone, obviously, we had another partner, but I felt alone, right. And I felt I felt isolated and all of these things. And I was, you know, taking care of him at home and then trying to take care of 350 people at work and try and I was just, I was maxing myself out. And it wasn't it wasn't working for me. And so what I recognized was that I needed to take some time to take care of myself. And I also needed to take some time to take care of my husband. And so, um, you know, for him not coming back to the organization was devastating for those people. They, you know, when we first got back from Japan, and people started to hear that he was sick and something had happened. People started dropping things on our doorsteps. So I would you know, go to the door, and there would be like a fresh baked pie, or a loaf of bread or a bottle of wine or a package of letters from a store or whatever you name it, Jeff, like it went on and on and on until one day opened my door. Trying not to cry about it. One day, open my door. And there was three months of food packed and prepared for us just to put it in the freezer so that we could eat in this time that things were so hard. And this was all coming from the team. This was all coming from Original Joe's and I didn't expect any of this. I didn't expect people to show up and do this. But this was how they were showing their love and their care. And they're honoring, I guess the experience that they had had in the restaurants, right. And so it was, it was a pretty remarkable time. It was one of the most challenging times of my life, but it was also like holy smokes like it's pretty crazy when we take the time to actually truly authentically and genuinely connect with people care about their lives. Give them an experience in their lives. That's also up leveling my experience in my life and have this opportunity and give them you know, something happens to us and they have this opportunity now to show up in a way that It develops their authenticity that helps them show up as different human beings. And so it was a really impactful time. And so my husband never got better he basically, they feel like he had contracted a virus that got into his spinal cord and into his brainstem and cause swelling. And the resulting effect was a memory loss. So very much like, no short term memory, pretty spotty long term memory. And so you can imagine what it's like being a 38 year old man living with something like that is really, really challenging for him. And so we were always looking to the medical world to see if there was anything new, anything innovative, there's anything we could try with him. And so I found this neurological treatment program in Portland, Oregon. And they had treated Sidney Crosby after his concussion and had helped him and they had really good results. And so I thought, like, I have to, like figure out how to take my husband here, we have to do, we have to do this program. But it was $25,000. US for a 14 day intensive program. And for a Canadian, there's a 30% ticket price increase on that. And I was like, I don't even know, like, we lost a salary with him working. But I was like, you know, like, I think that if we don't do this, I'll always wonder if it could have helped him. So we decided to go and we went down there. And we like, did the whole treatment. And it was super intensive. And you actually did see some progress from it. But I think he would have had to keep in this treatment for it to continue to progress for him. But anyway, while we were there. What we didn't know what was happening back home was that the entire organization was rallying to pay for his treatment. So yeah, people had bottle drives bake sales. People who are photographers did free photo shoots for donations, like yoga class, I don't even know I don't even know just how it all happened. And when we came back, they handed us the money to pay for his treatment. And like, yeah, I still I was thinking about it. I'm like, I don't even know. Like, what do you even say, I don't even know what I said in the time, you know, like, what do you even say to people besides like, thank you. But I don't even know thank you is a big enough word. And I realized in that time that we had created something really special, and these people were creating something really special. And even though all of these really hard things were happening in our lives, I was so grateful to be a part of something that was just so amazing. So amazing. And so yeah, so it's been a really incredible journey through the restaurants for me. And I mean, there's a lot more stories than that. But that kind of is like a big part of the story and a big part of the evolution. And that evolution of what happened with my husband is kind of what has brought me to where I am now and why I've kind of made a bit of a career change, and I'm trying some new things. So

Jeff Ma  
Ali, thank you so much for sharing that story. It was not too long, it was very, very impactful for me to hear the highs and lows. But especially really, really admiring your attitude to seeing so much of the positivity and so much of the hardship. I think that's really inspirational. So I really appreciate you sharing that. And, you know, as I talked about earlier, the second part of of this interview really comes to where you ended, right. So there are all these life experiences through all these learnings. Can you share a little bit about now and kind of The Inspired Leader kind of approach? What what what are you channeling all that into now? And what can we learn from it? Mm hmm.

Ally Stone  
Sir, that sounds good. Yeah, I'm so inspired. I think I've always been inspired. And that's why I had to name my company after it. But this idea of living and leading from an inspired place, I believe, changes the world. And so it was a couple years after, after everything happened in Japan, I was asked to speak at a business conference and to talk about original Joe's and talk about the culture and so I went up there and I shared some stories and these people were like flabbergasted by my stories, these 100 leaders in this room and I was like you I just don't have these experiences what. And I had been living in my bubble, right? I've been living in my original joes bubble and creating this experience. And it was wonderful. But I didn't recognize that other leaders or other companies didn't necessarily have at least some of this experience. And so I started to recognize that there was maybe something in it something where I could start to help share that with other leaders to share the message to share some of these stories to help them see that they too, can create this type of experience, right, in their careers and in their lives. Because I mean, you and I both know this, we spend a ton of time at work, what do they say, like a third of our lives at work? And if we hate that time, what are we doing with our lives? So I just think that we can I  especially as a leader, we have the opportunity to create this. And so I help people create that for themselves and create this experience.

Jeff Ma  
How does I guess how do you approach? Are you are you a kind of one to one coaching kind of thing for a certain level of leader? Are you more broad? Like, can you what are the specifics there? Yeah,

Ally Stone  
for sure. So I'm an executive coach. So I tend to work with mid to upper level leadership, I just find that they can affect the most change, right. And with a mindset shift, they can change an entire organization obviously have to get buy in, but right like, so I feel like there's a lot of purpose work there. And then I also do a lot of team building work. So I during that time with original Joe's, I spent over a decade developing leadership development models, we even talked about that. But that was the other part of my job. And so my job is to develop leaders. And so I have a whole system of proprietary model, workshops that I do with teams, you know, around the idea of accountability and partnerships, building a great culture, coaching and feedback and like all of these pieces, and so I can help bring those into organizations and help people, leaders change their way of thinking and then help their team sell. So it's kind of a full service package that I offer right now.

Jeff Ma  
That's awesome. And I guess when it comes to kind of, you know, you mentioned a lot of things like accountability and feedback, all these important, like, work skills, really, at the end of the day, when it comes to The Inspired Leader approach. What Where do you kind of, I won't say differentiate, but kind of what makes it the inspired leader approach specifically,

Ally Stone  
it is different. I will tell you that. So I obviously I will always offer technical skill and know-all, know-how and strategy, I will always offer those things. But what my hope always is, or my goal is, is to create an energetic shift in a team member in a leader to help them think differently to help them stretch the edges of what I call our consciousness. Because once we become aware, and we start to think about things differently, we start to move differently, we start to lead differently, we start to challenge the status quo, creativity and innovation comes in strategies only help support those things once they're in place. So there's a root thing to all of this. That's really, really important. And it's a really high EQ trait. It's really important to cultivate so. Yeah, I think my describing that well, I'm hoping I am but,

Jeff Ma  
Yes, you are. And, yeah, okay. I feel like it's so needed. I mean, maybe this is my own lens, but it feels like especially since the pandemic and people have gone through kind of the wringer lately in terms of whether it's work their careers, life and the world. It feels like that energetic shift would be so refreshing, I think, whether it's complacency or burnout, we were getting stuck in ruts is one of the reasons I'm so motivated to bring humanity back to the workplace. It's the same world that we're dealing with here. And I'm really, really excited that there's someone like you trying to energize that because that's one thing that I haven't been focused on is that is that shift. There's a lot to work on emotionally and when our own self reflection and introspection and all these growth moments, growing is of course, great and learning and all these things. But but then there's this piece that you're really opening my eyes to have just that. I mean, for lack of a better word is inspiration and energy shift that it really can be the most important spark and kind of thing that really makes the difference. So that's amazing. And I'm inspired right now!

Ally Stone  
Well, it really is, because what's going to carry us through? Right? You know, like we need, we need these things. And I think this is where the power in my experiences come from is that I'm willing to be vulnerable and willing to share the experiences that I've had, both professionally and personally in the hopes that they highlight something in other leaders to help them see that that it is possible for them that, you know, the world, the world really is your oyster, if you choose to believe it. And it's not like toxic positivity. It's like, this idea that if you go out there and you work for it, you can have what you want, you can create what you want. And so I really, I really love helping people see what's possible for them. Because I think we're all capable of much more than we're often willing to give ourselves credit for.

Jeff Ma  
I love it. I'm leaving this conversation fully, fully energized and inspired, at least for today. We'll see if it lasts forever right now.

Ally Stone  
Just call me later.

Jeff Ma  
I will I will I need to sign up. So inspired leader where it can anyone go to read more, learn more get in contact?

Ally Stone  
Yeah, I mean, I'm on LinkedIn as Ally Stone. So I think that's always a great place to connect with me. And I also have a website. It's just the inspired leader.com. Super simple. So I think those are two great ways to connect. And if you're interested, yeah, I'm always willing to chat to people to some questions I love. I love hearing from other leaders and helping them think through the things they're challenged by. So yeah, that's great.

Jeff Ma  
Holly, I really appreciate the time we've had today. I really appreciate your vulnerability and your willingness to share so openly. And it's it's been an amazing time this this time has flown flown by. So thank you so much.

Ally Stone  
Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff Ma  
To our listeners. As always, we thank you as well. We hope you enjoyed this conversation with ally, and you're still tuning in subscribing, all those great things for our podcast. And if you haven't checked out the book yet, why not? Please go check it out, pick it up and leave a rating for it. I want more, more Amazon book reviews. Five stars. Thank you. Anyways, with that we're gonna see each other next week and I hope you all have a wonderful week.