Unlocking High Performance Leadership Through Nature Retreats with Yancy Wright

Brent Peterson (00:02.354)
Alright, welcome to this episode. Today I have Yancey Wright with Alternative Vita. Yancey, go ahead, do an introduction, tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life.

Yancy (00:13.461)
Well, thanks for having me on Brent. I don't even know where to start with my day-to-day role. As most entrepreneurs know well, it's hard not to wear multiple hats. I am an owner and founder of a retreat center called Casa Alternavida. And then also another company called Alternavida Leadership. But basically the premise is that we help leaders. We work a lot with executive leaders, reduce stress, overwhelm and anxiety.

and we also do team building. But the unique method that we use is we layer nature, activities out in nature with conscious communication, really helping get at the root cause of things that hold most leaders back or the things that are holding teams back from collaboration. And the third layer is really about doing that with within a framework of optimal wellbeing. So we're feeding people really healthy food.

helping them get into their bodies and move a lot, playing out in nature, whether it's in the waves or in the rainforest. So it's a nice blend that really helps individual leaders or teams kind of open up to a new way of being and really come into a place where productivity and efficiency can be at its maximum from being balanced. And I got to this place from having my own career burnout. So after having had a career burnout,

dove into really trying to understand what causes burnout. And so as a result, about three years ago, I created Casa Alternavita to create a place and space for people that are like me and hopefully help them save the hassle.

Brent Peterson (01:53.546)
That's awesome. I think I know one of your passions and that's probably the kite surfing, but tell us one of your passions in life.

Yancy (02:03.665)
You know, you know that, yeah, I do love to kitesurf and kiteboard, but pretty much anything that gets me out of my head and into my, you know, body in a way that helps me practice being in a flow state. So I love synchronicities and flow states where things just fall together without even needing to think about them. And kiteboarding and kitesurfing is one activity that allows me to do that, that allows me to just be...

to laugh and have fun, to really challenge myself physically and to not need to think about what I'm gonna do next or not have too many problems to solve. There's definitely problems that are being solved, but there's not enough time to really think about it that it just happens in a flow state. So that's one of the things that lights me up the most. Secondary to that would just be working with groups in a similar way of just kind of being out in nature and going with what's happening and leveraging the metaphors in nature to really help.

create a memorable transformational experience for teams or leaders.

Brent Peterson (03:07.094)
That's perfect. Okay, so before we get into content and I have first-hand experience of having you help us in our group, I would like to first tell you a joke. After I tell you the joke, all you have to say is just, Jokes remain free or do you think somebody should pay for it? And I say remain free because obviously I didn't pay for the joke. I'm getting the joke from the internet and I didn't also come up with a joke as some people think I'm not that clever.

Anyways, I'm gonna tell you the joke, just say, should the joke be free or do you think somebody should pay for it? Here we go. I was told I could look at the eclipse through a colander. I tried it, but it strained my eyes.

Yancy (03:51.87)
It should remain free.

Brent Peterson (03:54.662)
You have to admit a little bit of cleverness there and timely. Yeah, it could be, that could be a smart joke. Maybe, maybe what I should do for EO podcast is, is this smart? Is this, is it, uh, is it, does it match the smart methods? Right. The, uh, and I can't remember smart right now, measurable, attainable, uh, relevant, uh, and timely. Right. All right. So let's talk about Casa La Ternavita.

Yancy (03:59.984)
That's a good one.

Yancy (04:19.377)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (04:23.202)
Full disclosure, I was a guest of yours. And it was, I'm just gonna say, to start out our conversation, it was a fantastic experience. But I would like you to kind of tell us how you got there and some of the reasoning behind it.

Yancy (04:41.265)
Yeah, so I started to share a little bit about how I ended up here. You know, why, you know, I was a leader in the green building industry. I was helping Microsoft build their first green building projects. I did a lot for the Amazon headquarters, Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, tons of high profile health care projects and schools projects. And essentially just was working too many hours and was just not equipped with the communication skills that I needed to work through challenging, sticky situations.

And the toll of that time created a health issue for me. I actually ended up in the ICU needing to have my heart reset with the defibrillator about three times. And that was a huge wake-up call for me at age 37 to ask myself like, what's going on? How did I get to this place? The doctors also asked me the same. She was assuming maybe I was on some heavy drugs or doing an awful lot of caffeine, which I...

I don't do any drugs, I don't even drink caffeine. So yeah, fast forward a few years, I realized that it was really easy for me to be stuck in kind of a blaming mindset or a mindset of a victim stance and easy for me to get stuck in drama and recreate that drama regularly with people I was working with. And I realized that there were tools and resources, some really amazing ones from

Gay and Kathleen Hendricks from the Hendricks Institute, and Diana Chapman at Conscious Leadership Group. There's some really phenomenal resources out there from learning how to reveal versus conceal your emotions, to taking 100% responsibility, to also just understanding like what's mine, what's theirs, sorting those files of what I actually have control over. A lot of amazing mindset shift tools that exist.

that I thought, wow, wouldn't it be great to create a place and space that leveraged the healing power of nature with healthy food and like baseline wellbeing with this place for people to come, especially executives to come and learn conscious leadership skills. And so it sounds like a lot of layers, but the ideas for people to be able to reconnect to themselves and reconnect to their purpose as a leader and leave feeling super rejuvenated.

Brent Peterson (07:04.822)
Yeah, I can I can share some Apprehensions from our group maybe that before we came and we visited as our eo forum and entrepreneurs Organization is the organization I'm in And every forum does visit or go on a retreat every year but I think one of the things that

I'll just say your typical forum goes somewhere and part of that is just for some forums, not all, is the party nights. Like you're going away and maybe you do team building, but a lot of that too is just going and partying. And I think that we had different types of parties. So tell us a little bit about how maybe you're pushing people out of their comfort zone or you're giving them an alternative experience to what would be the...

what would be the everyday experience that somebody would do on a retreat.

Yancy (08:01.973)
Great question. So one of the things that I've really specialized in over the last several years is authentic leadership. And there's a wide spectrum of what people consider authentic leadership. And I have even an assessment for authentic leadership. But in general, I find that it's hard for leaders to be authentic with each other and really get into the low 5% or the high 5% in a very...

vulnerable, transparent way if substances are involved. It changes the frequency and how we interact with each other. Some people can tend to drink more than others. And so what we do is we create a place in space where it's more of a detox, a detox from any substances, a detox from your devices, a detox from just the busy lifestyles of like being in a busy city. It's actually, it feels more like a bubble of getting

you know, simple and really in a nature environment where the idea is being able to connect to each other in a really deep authentic way. So the forums that come here tend to leave feeling far more connected than they ever have and tend to feel really rejuvenated from the conscious leadership skills and tools that we teach them in, you know, in fun, playful ways. So does that kind of answer your question there, Brent?

Brent Peterson (09:26.614)
That's fantastic. Um, so one of the things that you also do is you lead people into the jungle, literally into the jungle and, and through some of those, through just some of that exercise and it's not strenuous, but you help us understand, uh, life lessons through nature. Am I getting that right?

Yancy (09:48.253)
Yeah, so one thing is that we're here in Puerto Rico and we technically don't have a jungle, but we have a rainforest. And that rainforest is such a great space to learn some of these mindset shifts techniques. One example might be conscious listening. Most of us leaders, we think we listen well and we're good, but...

It's about starting to dial up our senses and those senses being how we smell, how we taste, how we hear. And so the first step of conscious listening is we'll take you into the rainforest and really help get you dialed into your senses. Because we tend to be super busy in our brains and not really present to the level at which we can pick up so much more information. When after doing a little bit of this exercise, it helps bring people down to...

literally the smell of the earth beneath our feet and the sounds of the birds all around us and the water running from the rainforest. It just dials everything up so that people can truly become present with each other and with themselves. And so that's like the first step. And then getting into this idea of how are we typically listening? If we aren't hearing all these types of things typically, then how are we listening in our own day to day? Well, most of the time we're listening through listening filters.

And those listening filters might be like a listen to fix or a listen to defend or listening from, you know, a place of trying to be right or wrong or listening while multitasking. There's a lot of listening filters. And so helping people become more conscious of the default listening filters that they put on. And then really getting into the nuances of realizing, well, maybe that person didn't want to have you fix it, especially a spouse.

If you come home and you're always listening to fix things for your spouse, that may create a different reaction in your relationship that isn't optimal. So the idea is like teaching some concepts, but not from a lecture-based format, from an experience-based format, so that you're feeling it in your whole body and you're starting to understand it from a whole body perspective rather than just from your head. So...

Yancy (12:00.805)
One of the statistics I heard from the Institute of Noetic Sciences in San Francisco, like maybe 10 years ago, is that less than 20% of people will change a major behavior based on something they read or hear, versus more than 80% of people will change a major behavior after a transformational experience. And so that's what we're in the business of, is creating those transformational moments for groups like EO groups or teams, or just even leadership groups, to have these moments of,

creating connection, creating a shared experience of learning these conscious communication skills, and then having a shared adventure that they may be slipping through the mud and need to support each other, or they may be challenging each other to go on a rope swing for the first time, or they might be even doing a competition of seeing who can swim from one end of the river to the other, or who can hold their breath. There's a number of different things, but our main purpose is to help.

people become more present and be able to translate that to when they get back to work, what does that mean? How can they listen better? How can they show up in a way that makes them an even more profound leader and see the things that they're not seeing about their own business?

Brent Peterson (13:14.498)
Do you think as an entrepreneur, some of those things that you ask are scary to people and maybe they're not willing to go over and try that thing? Or do you think it's easier for an entrepreneur to try to jump into that and just say, I'm going with this for the weekend or the four days or however often or however time we're here. I'm going to just participate and not anticipate what I should or shouldn't be doing.

Yancy (13:42.933)
I like this question. There's a number of different ways I can answer it. First off, I want to preface that 90 to 95% of our brain body, if we're looking as a whole system, is operating unconsciously. So if you think about that much of this amazing intelligence is operating unconsciously, then I'm sure it's going to feel uncomfortable for some people to start to see what they're not seeing about themselves.

So that's first. Second, people come at different levels. Some things are more challenging for one person than someone else. It might be, you know, we have an onboarding survey and one of the things I ask related to the nature adventures is, you know, are you part goat? Can you go anywhere? Do you want me to challenge your comfort zone safely? Or do you want, or do you have a fear of heights? Or do you not like getting muddy? Like,

We get people that are just like, I don't like to get muddy. And so we're going into the rainforest and most likely they're going to get muddy, but it helps me start to prepare them and understand. I get some people that don't know how to swim or say they don't know or have a fear of swimming. I always see that it translates to something in their business. So for example, not getting muddy, it typically translates to that person not liking messy situations.

and not wanting to deal with that piece. There's often something even deeper, but the point of it is to push those comfort zones so that they're learning something new about themselves and they can see how it translates to how they're showing up in their business. Because it's often fear, most of us men are like, I'm not afraid of anything, but it's often fear, whether we wanna acknowledge it or not, that holds us back from scaling, from growing, from...

delegating from looking at ways to change and pivot things because that fear tends to keep us in a comfort zone. So what's great with EO groups is that you all tend to really support each other because it might be one or two people that are having a challenge in one area, but then in a whole nother part of the adventure, someone else is being challenged. And if they're not being challenged at all, then I tend to have a capacity to...

Yancy (16:02.753)
to challenge, see something that I'm noticing to challenge them a little bit. That's something I have to get an agreement on way up front when everyone arrives is just their willingness to have me present in more of a group coaching format so that everyone gets to learn and grow together. But in general, yes, the whole purpose of this is to go deep with each other, to challenge each other's comfort zones and to see how that translates and hopefully send them back to their day-to-day.

in work environment in a new way, in a fresh way that has potential for shifting mindsets.

Brent Peterson (16:38.375)
How does your role change when you're hosting a group at your facility in Puerto Rico compared to when you travel somewhere else and participate with a group offsite for everybody, including yourself?

Yancy (16:53.285)
Yeah, that's so several years ago, I realized that it's not fun. Always using a hotel or some sort of traditional space for facilitating retreats, like I like to facilitate that. What I've created here at Casa Alternavita is that we have our own team. We cook our own amazing food. We get weekly farm deliveries.

We're teaching people about where all these root vegetables are coming from and where the food is coming from. It's like a show and tell. There's a whole process, a whole experience that people get to have when they're here at Costal Alternavita. So my role is different in that technically, it's my team, I'm in charge, I need to make sure that we're walking our talk. We do our own team retreats every three months to make sure we're tight as a team. Doesn't mean we're perfect, but it's a common comment that I get from people that are here is just how flexible and amazing our team is.

When I'm not here, my role is different in that it's primarily just to facilitate and to do group coaching. I also am still trying to take people outside. The dynamics are often different. I don't have as much control over the food. I don't always have control over, we try to do everything as zero waste here. I don't always have control over that when I'm somewhere else and someone else has set up the event. And I'm required to be even more flexible and quick.

at coming up with a team building scenario. So for example, a few weeks ago, I was in California and I had a leadership team and an executive team and that leadership team was new and the executive team was just learning to trust the leadership team. And so I was not far from this place, a boardwalk where they had some bicycles, but these were four wheeled bicycles with four seats and one steering wheel. So just after seeing them,

The next day I created a team building exercise where we blindfolded one of the executives and we put three of the leaders in the rest of the bicycle. And those three leaders had to give the executive instructions on how to maneuver around a large palm tree and come back. And there were three of them and they were competing against each other. So the offsite stuff I love doing as well and it's just I get to be creative and come up with different scenarios. Now the way this worked out is that...

Yancy (19:17.045)
The leaders were all shouting instructions to the executive at once. The executive was blindfolded trying to steer. They ran into each other. There was a lot of chaos happening and they learned quite a bit about how they could have planned a little different, how they could have delegated one person to be the communicator, how they could have, there was a lot of learning that came from that experience. So my roles are different in just the scenarios. I have a higher responsibility here at Costa Alternavita because I have my own team and own space.

So I sort of take it personal if there's anything, if a lizard shows up in someone's room, whatever it is that happens with the space, but when I'm away, I don't really have as much control over that. And so it's just focused on facilitation and team coaching.

Brent Peterson (20:01.47)
That's awesome. So I am in, I'm holding one of your cards right now and I want you to just help me, help our listeners understand. I'm holding the criticism and appreciation card that you gave us. And the first thing that really stands out to me is for the criticism that it turns off the area of the brain responsible for creativity. And from a leader, from an entrepreneur, how-

important creativity is and how people don't ever put those two together that being critical and being hard on somebody really doesn't help you to be creative. First, just tell us about the cards that you gave us and then tell us about the appreciation. Looking for what's right is a better motivator. Increased happiness, decreased depression, fights stress.

All those things are so positive, but still people just end up criticizing.

Yancy (21:03.293)
Yeah, it sounds simple on the surface and most of the work I do is nuanced and really subtle. So the inner critic, there's a whole bunch of work that we can do around the inner critic. And like I said earlier, most of us are unaware, we're unconscious of how much energy an inner critic can burn up. And some of us have more than one, I'm sure I have more than one.

It depends where they're developed from. Most of our inner critics are developed from our parents at some point or a grandparent or someone that was influential on our earlier stages. And the idea is to understand how much invisible stress weight those inner critics are creating for ourselves, then beginning to rewire. And so these shift cards that I create,

for all the different mindset shifts, they're really reminders of like, oh wow, I'm noticing I'm being super critical, what do I need to do? And you flip the card over and it gives you instructions on what to do. And you're totally right in that when we're in a critical mindset, it limits our ability to come up with creative solutions to problem solve. And as entrepreneurs, you all know how we really need that freedom of space to.

be able to quickly problem solve. Decision fatigue, I'm sure most of you are familiar with, is overwhelming and if we're being self-critical while trying to make important decisions, then it really impairs our ability to make smart, well-informed decisions. So the anecdote to this, and there's a number of processes that we would go through if you were here and we'd unravel this even further, but the anecdote that doesn't seem as intuitive is the self-appreciation.

So do you remember doing the self-appreciation exercise, Brent? And people will be like, why do I have to appreciate myself? Why can't I just appreciate someone else? And the point is, if you're one of those people that often deflects an appreciation and sort of says, yeah, but I could have done this, and this better, then it's quite likely that it's hard for you to appreciate yourself. And that is difficult because of your inner critic.

Brent Peterson (22:53.706)
Yep, absolutely.

Yancy (23:20.893)
And so the practice then, especially before you go to sleep at night is if you would be willing to appreciate yourself and be witnessed by maybe your loved one or someone else before going to bed, you can enroll them in this process as well so you're not feeling too weird. They have to appreciate themselves as well. But that if you do like five self-appreciations a night for a while and just kind of get in the habit of doing that, then it starts to rewire that part of the brain that's so focused on looking at all the things that are wrong.

And then over time, you'll start to notice it's easier for you to appreciate others. But our society is kind of stuck in this place of like, oh, we shouldn't appreciate people too much because then they're going to think that we're trying to get something from them or that, you know, if I appreciate myself too much, my ego is going to get swollen. Well, the point is not to do it from a place of putting others down, but to do it from a place of like, hey, I actually have the capacity to.

appreciate myself and to increase the level of dopamine release that I can give to myself and to allow myself to go to sleep from a place of feeling great about what I accomplished that day and great about how things are going even though there are so many challenges because it's much easier to get stuck in that criticism place where we're always looking for what's wrong.

Brent Peterson (24:46.274)
Tell us a little bit about the diet portion of the retreat. I know that it was focused around anti-inflammation. Sorry about that. Tell us a little bit about why that's important in the journey for the weekend or the week or however long you're doing it. So, I'm going to start with the diet.

Yancy (25:10.249)
Yeah, so we tend to emphasize all the different energy sources that create a healthy baseline for executives. And one of those energy sources is food. And we've created a low inflammation diet here. And diet sounds like a heavy word, like we're going to starve people. It's not like that at all. We'll feed you really well. But the point is, is that since most people are showing up with a certain level of stress and anxiety and maybe even overwhelm or even...

burnout is that we want to feed you in a way that helps also reduce the stress from the inside because that inflammation in your system is also compounded when you're eating a lot of refined sugars, eating gluten, eating non-organic fruits and vegetables or non-organic fruit in general or just heavy amounts of carbs with lots of gluten but the idea behind our

our food is that most of it is super vital. It's coming from local farms. It's literally been cut a few days ago. We're feeding you vegetables, but we're feeding you a lot of vegetables that are probably new to people. They're root vegetables that are grown here locally on the island. We're also giving you a good balance of teas and tinctures or, you know, that are

from the land. So we might have stinging nettle tea that helps ease your nervous system naturally, or we may have hibiscus tea, or we may create like a ginger lemongrass tea with blue pea shoot flowers. There's all kinds of things that have like blue pea shoot flowers have been used for thousands of years to increase vitality. There's a number of homeopathic remedies that we actually provide as a tea to also continue to help support the system. But we're teaching people about all this stuff at the same time.

And it's not that we don't have fish or we don't have eggs or we don't have some of those things. It's just that we have a higher percentage of vegetables and healthy fruits that are from the island that most people don't get to experience regularly. And we notice that a lot of people that come to us with already having arthritis or other things, within three days, they're already noticing a difference in their mobility and their ability to interact.

Yancy (27:33.353)
So that's kind of the purpose behind the food. And then we have daily movement and we have also, really unique sleeping spaces to help people just really get a good night's sleep. And then also the nature adventures help release additional dopamine. And so all of these things combined, we find our good formula to just supercharge everyone while also giving them the time and space for their forum.

Brent Peterson (27:59.47)
Yeah, and I don't want to frighten anybody by saying there's not going to be coffee because there is coffee and there is food and it's not vegan. So there's all types of food and I like the way you said that it's local food. So you focus on what's local to Puerto Rico that is important as part of a diet.

And I say diet in the terms of just eating in general, right? It's not a diet in terms of trying to lose weight, but a diet in terms of how you're switching your lifestyle and how changing up is good for you. And maybe we can kind of close out here with, it's not just a mental thing, right? It is a physical thing. And I'm a, as you know, I like to run and I tried to get you to go running and you didn't, which I'm still hurt about.

joking. But having physical, mental, having those different aspects, a diet, physical, all those things come together to form maybe a new way of doing things and letting entrepreneurs and letting leaders see different angles and how they can approach problems.

Yancy (29:14.345)
Yeah, I, you know, one thing you mentioned is around like a vegan diet. We have had some groups that say they do want to really push their limits and only eat a plant-based diet while they're here. And there's a lot of people that have a big opening in their awareness because they think it's just a bunch of salad and it's not. Some really filling amazing options. But looking at the ways in which something as simple as a diet can translate into habits that support.

your productivity as an entrepreneur. One example is comes back to that self appreciation. Like how often are you just throwing something in your mouth and running out the door and just kind of not even paying attention versus giving yourself five minutes to actually make something that looks a little bit beautiful and putting that positive vibration energy into yourself and like actually stopping enough to breathe while you eat.

not always something that entrepreneurs do because they're typically running and they're already in their heads about all the things they've got to sort out. And so they don't even give themselves a chance to be present and eat. And so some folks that have ulcers and other things, it's often because of that disassociation with how we feed ourselves and the time we give ourselves to fully digest things and the types of foods we're putting into our system. Like, you know, how many of you out there put, say for example,

premium gasoline in your newer vehicles, well, most newer vehicles need it to perform better. It's similar for us. No, I'm not recommending you put gasoline in your body, but food is a form of fuel and making sure that you're putting the type of fuel in your body so you can be a high-performance leader and lead high-performance teams. And that requires you to be at your optimal health and optimal functioning.

versus kind of being strung out and stressed out and tired. I know this from personal experiences. I still push the edges sometimes, but I also know that one of my mantras now is that if I tell myself I don't have enough time to do something related to my self-care, my mantra is to do the opposite. So if I'm getting ready to give a presentation and I'm thinking, man, I just don't have enough time to do a meditation today, I'll go, nope. Actually, I'm gonna make myself do that so that.

Yancy (31:33.201)
I get that chance to recharge because I typically see like a 30 to 40% increase in productivity once I give myself even five or 10 minutes to either eat something healthy, meditate, just relax or do some movement or whatever. But that's the hard thing is rewiring and creating those mindset shifts so that you're operating in a high performance mode.

Brent Peterson (31:57.418)
That's perfect. Yancey, we have a few minutes left here. At the end of the podcast, I gave everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you'd like. What would you like to plug today?

Yancy (32:11.305)
You asked me about this earlier and I honestly, I don't have something super profound, I guess. Come visit us in Puerto Rico. It's a beautiful island. There's a lot of amazing people here. And especially if you're in a winter place like you are Brent in Minnesota, it's probably helpful to get away and get a break. If you're curious about an EO retreat, then you know.

clearly you can give me a call or if your team is looking for something that is unique and different and you want to work through some challenges and leave on the other end feeling a lot more connected as a team and more efficient then that stuff that we love to help people with. And yeah, I really appreciate this opportunity Brent to spend some time with you and to connect.

Brent Peterson (32:59.018)
Yeah, and I'll make sure I get your links on the show notes. And I would encourage any EO forum to reach out to Yancey to go to the website, Casa Alternativa. And again, we'll put that in the links. To reach out and explore what can you do for your next retreat. And I can say from our own personal forum, and this is not forum confidential, we all had a great time. And.

We were all very impressed by the experience we had, by the amount of attention we had as a group, by the living, our rooms are fantastic. It was great. There was so much to do. There was never time where we're just like, what are we doing here? There was time to relax, time to do stuff. And every day I liked that what you did, we went to the beach every day, which is.

Such a treat for so many people.

Yancy (34:00.065)
Thank you, Brent.

Brent Peterson (34:00.826)
and have a great day!