30 Jan 2025 What The Big Guys Are Doing
Having never been on a pair of skis in my life, I did not realize until reading an article in Bloomberg this week what dominant forces the “Epic Pass” and “Ikon Pass” are in that world. Products of Vail Resorts, Inc. and Alterra Mountain Co., respectively (which collectively own about 20% of all ski slopes in the US, including most of the high-profile ones), these passes boomed during COVID and continue to brings folks in droves to the likes of Vail and Brekenridge and Stowe, not entirely to the delight of locals or skiers who hate long lines. The way the products work is that you can buy one pass and get access to dozens of different slopes around the country, making it an easier booking experience for skiers and certainly a better P&L and cashflow experience for Vail and Alterra.
But the little guys are taking a page out of this playbook. Indy Pass is doing a similar thing, but instead of the big corporatized slopes in Vail or Breckenridge, one of their passes gives you access to almost 250 smaller, independent slopes across North America and even Europe and Asia. The pass is much cheaper than the Epic or Ikon passes, and caters to a skier who may be a bit tired of the ski cultures that have become the norm at the bigger slopes.
This is all interesting enough as a business case study, but it was what I found all the way down at the very bottom of the article that made it worth writing about in today’s Brief:
“It’s introduced a lot of new customers,” says Jon Schaefer, owner of Berkshire East Mountain Resort in Massachusetts, which joined Indy Pass in 2020. “I’m certain we see the moral, conscientious-objector, anticorporate skier, but I’m not sure how big that population actually is. I also don’t sit around and worry too much about what the big guys are doing.”
“I also don’t sit around and worry too much about what the big guys are doing.”
That is an aspirational attitude.
In our own lives, it is dreadfully easy to be too worried about what “the big guys” are doing. Those big guys might be the folks in our neighborhood or peer group with the nicest cars, vacations, and houses; they might be the influencers and celebrities we see on all our various screens; they might be the folks in our professions who are more successful; or they might even just be the internal projections of ourselves that we don’t quite see in the mirror each morning.
If we are to get clear about what is important to us financially, to set appropriate goals and make wise decisions, if we are to ever sniff the concept of contentment, then the first thing we have to do is let go of the big guys. Let them do their thing, and don’t expend any energy worrying about them, much less trying to keep up with them. They are playing a different game—one that has nothing in common with the life you are trying to live well.
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