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With programs to serve our youth, to young and middle aged adults, to retiree’s, Grants Pass Family YMCA is here to help everyone in our community.
Tune in as CEO Matt Lund talks about the important role the Y plays in our community, some thoughts on the impact of COVID-19 and a special announcement on their expansion in the area.
Head on over to the Y’s website for more on current news and events – http://www.grantspassymca.org/
Stay updated by following them on Facebook also – https://www.facebook.com/GrantsPassFamilyYMCA/
Transcription
Brian: Matt Lund has been married to his wife Stephanie for 11 years. He has four kids, ages ten, nine, six and five. Matt loves being active spending time with his family, serving the community and discovering how he can make a bigger impact on people’s lives serving a higher purpose.
Matt Lund, welcome to the Grants Pass VIP Podcast.
Matt: Thank you, I enjoy being here.
Brian: Yeah. So why don’t you just let us know a little bit about who you are and where people would know you from?
Matt: Sure. I don’t know how many would know me locally. Although I’ve been here for a little over a year and a half now.
I grew up in Central California. Most of my childhood life obviously.
Then for college, I left and went to New Mexico, actually was an athlete played basketball in college at Florida basketball scholarship.
From there, I moved out to the Midwest and I played Semi Pro basketball in the CBA.
This is now going on 21 years ago.
So it’s been some years, but after playing I fortunately came across an injury and was it not able to play anymore.
Ended up having to decide what to do in life for career, right?
What do we do to support ourselves?
How do we do it and what’s our passion?
I decided to go in and work with youth and work with families and do it around what I loved, which was playing sports, and so I ended up getting a job at a YMCA in Wisconsin and started out as a sports coordinator, did it for about two and a half years.
Then I ended up going to work for the Chicago Metro YMCA as an operations director.
I was running one of the largest sports programs in the country for YMCA’s, ended up having about 6,000 kids that came through my sports programs and running another YMCA as well.
I was able to then take my career and go down to work for the Wichita YMCA. I became an executive there in Wichita, was there for a few years and then moved on to the Twin Cities and worked in downtown Minneapolis, for the YMCA as well.
Was able to really get a well rounded background working in the YMCA and understanding different aspects doing governmental work, doing, obviously nonprofit work for the why learning to work with youth learning to work with older adults, learning to work with families and business ventures.
It just really gave me a well rounded background.
So I ended up wanting to do more around working with people and understanding how do we help people become more balanced in their life.
How do you become healthy spiritually, physically, emotionally, mentally?
So I ended up becoming the Executive Director for the National Wellness Institute, which is one of the oldest nonprofit wellness organizations in the world.
Did that for about three and a half years, we really focused around the mindfulness and resilience and behavior change.
Again, more of the holistic approach, but not so much the physical and nutrition side of it. I got a lot of that information and a lot of that background from the YMCA. Again it was, how do we go about this in the spirit, mind, body?
Having that education and that background working at the National Wellness Institute along with the YMCA. When I left the Y to work for the National Wellness Institute, I learned a lot enjoyed my time there.
And then I got to a point where it was time for me to come back to where my first love was, which was working for the YMCA, and making impact in the way that I thought I could do best, which was serving the community.
I wanted to get back into the Y but I was trying to figure out where was the best place for me, and how can I take my background to then serve a bigger and better purpose in the type of community that fit myself in my family.
That was where it led me to Grants Pass. And I grew up actually again in California, but I grew up coming out to the La Pine and Bend area, to do hunting and fishing with family that I had lived in Bend and also had family up in the Portland area.
We come up and visit and we go hunt and fish and I just I fell in love with Southern Oregon.
When I saw the opportunity down here, that was why I applied, they got me here to this area. And again, I’ve been here now a little over a year and a half.
Having my four young kids and my wife, we are truly enjoying it. I think there are a lot of great things here.
It’s unfortunate that we’re going through the pandemic right now.
But you know, I see a community that is still coming together to do more. I’m just myself grateful to be a part of it, and hoping that we can continue to come together and really thrive together as a community as we all come through this pandemic.
Brian: Oh, that’s great. That’s really, really cool to hear. That’s quite a background and you’ve kind of seen a little bit of everything.
So what led you into this line of work versus anything else?
I know it’s kind of been your background up until this point. But why why do you think you’re more drawn toward this versus other things?
Matt: There are very few people that actually get to do what they’re passionate about. I think a lot of people go to work to have a paycheck to support either themselves or their families. Whether it’s their immediate family or their extended family.
But there are a lot of people that unfortunately don’t love the work they do.
I’m one of those on the other side that, I get a chance to come to work and do what I love to do. And, you know, we say serve the community. And really what does that mean?
Do we physically make an impact?
Do we set up programs and operations that we can specialize in that then make an impact?
I think there’s a lot that comes to this is I do take a business approach. I look at the numbers, and I say, well, how do we make sure we’re sustainable?
How do we make sure that we’re going to be around longer than just now when you know that we’re going to be here in 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 100 years from now?
What does that look like?
And so for me, you have a lot of people that are left brain or right brain or A personality, B personality, I have a good mix of both. I’m a builder. I may not physically do with my hands, but it’s more strategic thinking, strategic planning, sometimes decisions that are tough to be made.
My position has to make those. All of them may not be popular, and I’m okay with that because the way my personality is and at the same time, I can also be a big kid, you know, I love Disneyland and I love going out and doing things.
So for me, the alignment of what I enjoy is that this allows me to balance. I think that’s what everyone’s looking for is they’re doing their passion that they want to do for work, but they also trying to find their balance in life.
For me, this work allows me to have my family time, it allows my kids to come in and be a part of what I’m doing.
It allows my wife to come be a part of what we’re doing here in the community. She also works at the Y.
It allows me to actually interact with all different people really diversifying those that I interact with and understanding different backgrounds, whether it’s a wealthy background, or a poverty background, and understanding that we all need to come together and we all need to see how we can make that alignment to thrive as a community, especially again in these times.
I know that’s kind of a long winded answer, but it really focuses in on, where’s your passion?
Where’s your strengths?
How does it best play to where you can balance your life filled with this position allows me to have all that.
Brian: Would you recommend this type of position to someone else that had a similar background?
Matt: To be honest, that’s a tough answer.
There are people that I know that do not want my position. Yeah, they just say no, I couldn’t do it, there’s too much to it.
The reality is, is that there are good parts of my job or my career, and there are parts that just aren’t very good. We have to sometimes in my position, make unpopular choices or unpopular decisions.
And then we have to live with them and we have to see who they affect.
My hope is that when those decisions are made, that they’re made to serve more of a population or an area that needs it more than another and so people get upset by that and so you need to be a little tough skinned with it.
Although emotions I think, always take over in one way or another, so making recommendations to people at all depends on what your temperament level is, depends on what your capacity of dealing with stresses, depends on your desire.
Are you an extrovert?
Are you an introvert?
And what do you like to have as part of your own life?
If you’re an extrovert, this life fits you very well. You have to be in the you are in the public eye. You have to be able to present to people you have to be able to have conversations, awkward conversations with people.
If you’re an introvert that doesn’t like that, and doesn’t want to be the front face of things. This is not the career for you.
I think it’s looking at again, where your passions align. And where you see yourself thriving as a individual to then better your life around you.
It’s tough to say I recommend or don’t recommend it. I would have to know the person and know what their long term goals are in life, you know, and how does this best suit them with their experiences?
Brian: That’s a great answer. That’s really good.
I like that out of all the classes and services that the YMCA offers. What would you say is your top one?
Is there one that kind of shines above the rest in terms of being your best seller or anything of that sort?
Matt: Well, here’s the beautiful thing about the Y is that we are so diversified and inclusive, that it’s hard to say this is the one that is the best.
Me personally, the one that pulls my heartstrings and what I love going and seeing is the youth development, how we develop kids in sports, how we get kids in our pre-K programs and educate them and to support them.
Especially in today’s society is that there are a lot of grandparents that are raising kids. There’s a lot of single parents that are raising kids.
And then you do have great families that are they’re married parents and everything is going well.
But unfortunately, we’re in a time that that seems to be not the norm.
I love seeing kids thrive. I mean, to me, that’s what’s important.
Overall, what we do is that you have this other side of the spectrum away from the youth is that you have your senior population, maybe your retirees, a lot of them are widowed, what’s for them. And so what’s important to that generation, we have programs here that we offer, you know, day trips to go have lunch together, or trips to the coast or just social activities.
It’s the purpose that drives them in life.
So you have this youth side that’s here to support our future leaders. But then you have this other side that’s there to support this community, very much like Grants Pass, you have a big retiree community here.
We have to have programs here for them.
But then you have this other part, right, that we have to support our young adults or that middle aged adult that is trying to stay healthy in some ways.
And so it’s tough to say this is our favorite program.
The bottom line is, we must socially be healthy.
I think that’s the thing with the pandemic right now is that there are a lot of people that are mentally not healthy.
The Y is here to help support that whether your youth, middle age or senior population, to me, they all encompass into this. This is the best program is that we are here for the social aspect.
We’re here to strengthen people through conversation through education and development. There’s a lot of programs that people don’t know the Y runs, and they don’t know.
I shouldn’t say they they don’t realize the impact of how many people we have each year is that we serve 12 to 13,000 people a year through just this facility.
You know, and we serve meals to the youth last year, we served over 16,000 meals.
I love the youth sports, I love the senior programs. I love the swim programs that we have.
All of these pieces are the tools that we build people on right we give them hope we give them purpose, we give them away for an outlet, and that’s how important the Y is to the community. And so, again, another long winded answer but the bottom line is there is no one specialized program.
Because everybody has a different need. And so that need that is when it’s met. It’s special to them.
Brian: Absolutely. That’s great.
What project do you see coming up in the next six months or so that you’re most excited about here at the Y?
Matt: We have a few projects that are coming up trying to like is this the time to announce it?
I would say that we are venturing to expanding Y services and we are we are moving towards having a second YMCA facility here in Grants Pass that will be specialized in overall well being programs.
That is up and coming, that is working with a committee right now and board members.
We’re also talking with members of the community to make sure we do this right.
We are also growing in programs here.
We’re making more partnerships.
We’re doing more stuff with the schools.
You know, depending on what happens with the restrictions that come out, we’re going to try to do more after school programming and full time childcare programming.
So there’s a lot of things happening in the community. And so we’re expanding in many, many different ways than what we ever have before, depending on what happens with COVID. What happens with the restrictions.
It’s going to depend on timeline, but there are some exciting new projects happening. We’ve had a lot of work that we’ve done over the last year, year and a half here.
Yes, we’re excited about it.
Again, I don’t want to say too much, because there’s still more details that need to come out. But yes, the Y is expanding and having more reach than what we have had in years.
Brian: Yeah, that’s great. And you’ve mentioned the COVID pandemic and everything.
How was the focus changed here at the Y in-terms of the all that and everything else that’s going on right now?
Matt: It’s unfortunate. Everybody is feeling the pressure from the pandemic.
There are, I would say probably 95% of the business out there and feeling it from one way or another. And I think a lot of this, we need to leave the politics out of it.
Remember that we have to think community and people first and impact from within and then outreach from there.
This pandemic has created….I hate to say it this way, but it’s created an opportunity for us to look at how we can redo things to better look at, who and what we are.
And I hope that other businesses are doing that, too is that the way that we used to do things is probably not going to be that way for years.
You have to venture out and say, what risks what strategic risks do we have to take?
What is the $5,000 mistake opposed to the $50,000 mistake?
What are we going to learn from it, when those mistakes come up, realizing that mistakes are going to happen?
For us, it did have a hard impact here is that we went through trying not to furlough staff or have to terminate staff. We were able to pay a good majority of our staff through the whole pandemic.
While we were closed down, we had a fantastic support from majority of our members that did not cancel and allowed us to draft which is fabulous and that shows that we have built a lot have great relationships, and people put a lot of trust and then what we’re going to do.
So that speaks highly of the community and it’s fantastic.
We wanted to make sure that we supported those in the community with our employees.
We have over 200 employees here and I don’t know a lot of people know that is that we paid all of our full time we were able to pay a lot of our part time. We did have to furlough a few, just because there was nothing for them to do that, you know, you have childcare area that is shut down.
But yet we still did emergency childcare during the pandemic, and we were the only one at the time doing it.
So families that needed it, our first responders, medical workers, we were here for him and they were here for us. Definitely a relational piece.
We have to think about how we do programs differently.
We have to reevaluate the current programs we’re running. And we have to look at business just on a opportunity level, and not so much as a demise level.
I would encourage all business owners and all CEOs and all leaders that don’t come back and say well, this is the way we’ve always done it and expect to do it that way again, because we have to look through a whole other lens.
That’s going to be important for every business that is coming through the pandemic.
Brian: That’s awesome. That’s a great way of looking at it.
If you and I were to get back together and say like a year, and look back over the past 12 months, where we are now to where we will be, what would have had to have happened for you to feel happy with the progress concerning your life and the Y is in general?
Matt: That’s a good question.
I think a lot of it is going to be in a year from now, if I’m able to turn around and say, we made a positive impact in the community. We saw people that were emotionally distressed, that were able to come have an outlet where right now I don’t know that a lot of people do.
We want to make sure that we were safe, that we brought common sense into it, that we went about it in the right direction. Which nobody on this earth right now walking and breathing has ever been through this experience, unless there’s somebody out there who was born before 1918 and they went through the Spanish flu.
The reality is when someone says, Oh, yeah, I’ve been here, oh, yeah, I’ve gone through this. They’re lying.
This is something that no one has ever been through that is currently in a leadership role, or anybody walking around, is that we are all learning day to day.
In a year from now, if we’re able to come back and say, you know what, we did it right. But there were bumps and bruises along the way.
We learn from them.
When we adjusted and we made the right corrections. I will be more proud of the fact that we either took strategic risks, or at least took the leaps for the right purpose, to then better the community in ways that no one else could.
If I can turn around a year from now and say, with the integrity that we did that, then I’ll be proud of what we’ve done.
Whether we succeed or fail, as long as we tried to figure it out and went through the right steps while it was occurring, because in a year from now, there aren’t going to be leaders out there who say, oh yeah, I went through that. You know, a lot of young leaders, I hope they will learn from the ones that did go through it, so they then can turn around and not make the same mistakes that were made.
So we can then better the people around us.
Brian: Oh, that’s great. And what what do you think are the obstacles stand in your way of kind of reaching that goal?
Matt: I think a big one is fear. Fear of the unknown.
What does it look like without the media?
What does it look like without politics?
What does it look like without people having masks on?
You know, what does it look like with medical facilities that are fully staffed and not having to furlough people?
I think there’s a lot of factors that come into that. And I think there’s so many unknowns that it’s tough to get the right answer. So it’s tough to answer that one.
Brian: No problem. What other questions, could I ask that I didn’t ask yet?
Matt: Yeah, that’s a good question.
I’d be really curious to hear where other leaders or other organizations will bring in conversation, I would almost be curious to have a panel put together and say, hey, from the nonprofit world, here’s an individual and from the for profit world, here’s an individual, from the public sector, from the private sector, you know, governmental.
I think that to me would spur an opportunity for more questions to be brought up and actually have some dialogue and have some good discussion in there.
So I don’t know that there are other questions to ask me. I think we’ve covered a lot today.
I mean, if you guys ever want to put a panel together, I think it’d be great to be a part of it.
For me, I would love to see Grants Pass, be a leader in how we can help other communities like ours in the state of Oregon, or even in California, Washington, anywhere and how we might start some dialogue around this and what it might look like.
Because I think right now we’re all playing this guessing game in this game of well, who’s right, who’s wrong?
Right now, I don’t think there’s enough data or evidence or anything to give us any clear direction.
And I think there’s just, there’s a lot of it that is in a fear base right now.
It’s tough to have a lot of those answers come out. And I think there’s a lot of information that wrong, right, or indifferent is going out. And so you’re getting these split sides.
So I think a panel from having all these different sectors and outlooks having some good hard dialogue, getting some more data from it, will then give better direction to leaders around our community and other communities.
Maybe this is a place to start that I don’t say there’s more questions, I think there’s more possible designs for the future.
Brian: That’s fabulous, awesome answer. And that’s a great idea for putting together a panel.
We’ll definitely have to look into that in the future here.
What can a listener do, if they’re interested in finding out more about the why and all the services that you guys provide?
Matt: Yeah, we encourage people to come by and and get a tour of the facility. Take a look at where and how we’re being safe.
You know, having wipes and sanitizers and custodial crew going around and cleaning.
We’re taking all the right precautions, and I want people to know that this is a very safe place to come.
You know, we are doing what we can what we can control. In order to have a safety we screen people when you come in.
I know this whole mask thing right now, you know, we encourage people to wear masks. If they have a health condition, obviously we want to be mindful of that. We want people to feel as safe as they possibly can.
But understand that we’re taking a lot of the right precautions.
We’re thinking of our members first.
So if people want more information, you know they can go to our website. They can go on our Facebook page, our Facebook page is what we have is most updated.
If people just want tours of the facility.
We have program guides here to talk about the programs we offer. We have everything, something from your youth all the way up to your senior in between families.
So we’d highly encourage people just to come by and check it out. I think this is the the best kept secret in Grants Pass to be honest with you, as I’ve been here a little over a year and a half again, this facility isn’t talked about enough.
And I think that people, once they realize the more that we have and what we are offering, they’ll find that we meet some of their needs that they may be looking for.
And so I just encourage people to come and check it out and see our beautiful pool, see our weight room, our cardio center and all the programs that we run for people.
Brian: Great information and really appreciate you being on the show. Matt Lund, thanks for being on Grants Pass VIP.
Matt: Thank you, I appreciate it.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Really cool sitting down with Matt Lund, I got to go straight into his office there at the YMCA, see the pictures of his family up on the wall and everything else.
A few concepts that came to me after our conversation. One thing was that Matt has this willingness to dive in the community and become a connector hasn’t been here that long.
He knows a heck of a lot more people than I do. And it’s just really cool to see somebody just go in with guns blazing, so to speak, and really get out there and get to meet people and do the things that are necessary when you’re such a major part of the community like the YMCA is in Grants Pass.
Another thing, it’s really cool how they’re handling the COVID-19 situation they’re at the YMCA.
They’re not taking it too far in any one direction. And I think that’s commendable.
I think you have to be realistic while also sticking with as many regulations as you can. And I think they’re doing a really good job.
But that while still trying to provide as much as they did previously, so that’s really a good thing in my book, and overall man just holds himself in a confident, professional manner.
He’s friendly, and you need someone like that. If you’re looking to hire someone to run your business for you, you need a personality, somebody like Matt, and like he said, you really have to have the personality for this type of job, can’t just put anybody in there.
You have to have the right type, the type of person that goes in with the idea of solving problems and making things work, and Matt is certainly that type of guy. Happy to have someone like him in charge of the YMCA.