Hey there, everybody.

Welcome back to lead the team.

What if a teenage pool tech grew up to run one of the world's most iconic theme parks?

Well, that is Francine Gonzalez, president of Legoland Florida Resort and a true force in the attractions industry.

With 35 years of trailblazing experience, she's launched innovations like slide boarding, led international growth as an executive with Great Wolf Resorts and Whitewater, and shaped global safety standards in the industry.

She's a bold, visionary and refreshingly real leader who's as fearless with innovation as she is authentic with her team.

Francine, welcome to lead the team, my friend.

Thank you so much.

Wow.

I really loved hearing all of that stuff, but it makes me feel really old all of a sudden.

35 years.

Yes.

I tell you, it's.

It is remarkable.

And I can't.

I.

I had so much fun not just learning about your background, but also learning about the industry and how many changes it's gone through.

And I think people are going to be really surprised at, you know, what it takes to run lead and castable vision in this area.

But let's start this out with something maybe a little bit more unexpected.

When did you learn about leadership through failure?

Oh, gosh, I failed many, many times.

I think that's one thing that I did learn is that you gotta fail.

And if you fail fast and you can pivot and change and correct, that's okay.

But I think I first started learning a bit about failure.

I was really, really a young general manager of a park, and I had a really dynamic, amazing set of team members.

I can't say they were a team yet, but they were great team members.

So all really stars in their own right.

But I needed to get them together to work as a team.

And I'd say one of the failures I always recall is they loved to pick at each other's faults.

And so I get one that would come in.

Can do you believe that?

So.

And so did this and another person did that.

And they kind of come to me because, one, I think they wanted to be able to poke at play places where people are not being excellent.

So that's good in the sense that they're trying to help me to understand that we're not being excellent as a leader.

I need to know that.

But what I didn't realize is that they were waiting for my reaction.

And so that's the leader.

They were waiting for me to react.

How is Francine going to react to this thing?

I'm going to tell them about this person who's not Excelling.

And at first I used to react like, let's go fix this.

And I jump up and get ready to go fix it.

And I think that was my first failure.

My first failure is that I didn't seek to understand and I really needed to make sure I understood the whole picture.

While yes, I trusted my people and yes, they were rock stars in their own right, I had to make sure that I could seek to understand the whole picture before I reacted and took an action myself.

So that was, I think the, the first failure was, was how I reacted.

And the second failure was believing them every single time until I kind of started to figure it out like, okay, I need to look at this whole thing.

One of the sad parts out of all of that failure is that some of those team members, while they were rock stars, they were not good team players.

And we had to make the decision that some of them didn't need to be on the team.

And that's hard when you see people that really have great talent and they post good scores and they do great work, but they don't play well as a team.

And so making some of those tough choices I think would probably the right thing to do.

At the end of the day, I feel like I may let some people down.

I maybe could have actually made those people better if I'd known a little bit more back then.

But truly I think that the outcome was the right outcome and that was we had great teams.

Well, look at your background and that seek to understand can be so hard to do when you have the curse of knowledge because you grew up in the industry.

And I want to, I want to, you know, get into those early days a little bit more in a second.

But leaders listening, I mean, it's so important to realize you may not really know what the real problem is and your knee jerk reaction might be, well, I know I've seen this before.

And you go out there and you solve it.

You spend your own time, your money, your resources, and maybe you even prevent the learning from the people that have the problem that can learn a heck of a lot by going to solve it themselves.

Absolutely, absolutely.

You become a firefighter at that point and you're spending all your time fighting the fire rather than going and spending your time on preventing the fire by letting people learn from those experiences.

You mentioned in that example that you had a bunch of team members, but they weren't really a team yet.

What do you like, like, what's one of your favorite approaches or strategies to take a bunch of team members and make them a team, do you?

I can imagine in the theme park world you could get pretty creative, but maybe like trust falls or something.

Well, it's kind of funny, the trust fall thing.

I was just in a meeting, we were talking about building trust and we were talking about building vulnerable trust.

And that vulnerable trust is very different.

And it's not just, hey, do the trust fall, let me just fall back and let's see if I catch you kind of a thing.

It's really about how can you be vulnerable with each other to the point where you can share some of your closest, most personal information and personal pieces because you trust your team members around you?

I think that was not so much that that was a strategy, but that was the outcome.

The outcome was if I knew that that group could be so tight that they would trust each other with their personal information, or if they ran into a challenge that they could call on each other, that's where I knew we were getting to that vulnerable trust.

And so there's a lot of places where you look at trust and you think that it's there.

On the surface, it seems like it's there, but it's not.

So one of the strategies I use, and it doesn't mean that this is what always works in every scenario, is actually listen to how people talk.

And I'm looking for not what is being said, but what is.

Not what's being.

What's not being said in that.

What I'm finding is that oftentimes I don't hear positivity, I don't hear encouragement.

If I don't hear empathy in the language that's being used, that's going to tell me a lot about whether or not I can build trust with those.

With those folks.

While I can learn to trust people, can they trust each other?

And I find that if I'm not hearing those words of empathy, that's going to be harder to build.

Doesn't mean you can't build it.

Do you have an example of a time when that was really helpful?

Like, maybe the group didn't trust each other, maybe it was the other group, or maybe another one of the transformations that you've been involved in and you entered and you're like, you know what?

The warning bells are going off, they're not working together, they don't trust each other.

And you're able to foster that.

And what kind of outcome did you get?

Yeah, thankfully that was a while back, but I was able to see it and I was able to see it by Accident.

It was being on a phone call and there's a whole bunch of people on the call and a whole bunch of people dropped off the call by accident.

This was back in the day when conference calls were a little bit not.

Not always the norm.

And a couple of people dropped off of the call accidentally.

And some people thought I had dropped off the call because I just didn't say anything at that time.

You couldn't see everybody's names.

All I wanted to do, yeah, all I wanted to do was listen.

What was the conversation going to be like if they didn't think they were on the call?

And right away I could see it was.

There were certain people that dropped right into negativity, dropped right into talking about other people, dropped right into gossip.

And as soon as I heard that, I knew exactly where I needed to do my work.

And I think it's that sense of it's subterfuge and people don't see it that way when they're doing it.

They don't actually understand that that is subterfuge and that really takes away from the team.

Fast forward.

Some of those people just didn't make it on the team.

That kind of element just cannot be part of the culture because if it is, it will never get there.

So really it is about how are people talking about others when they're not present.

That tells me a whole lot.

Yeah, I love that.

It reminds me of the Stephen Covey quote about.

I might get honoring the absent.

Right, okay.

Right.

And I understand from.

From what I.

That that you're a 7 Habits fan.

I total 7 Habits fan.

I was really lucky.

I worked for a company and the owners, family owned company, but it was, it was a corporation.

There was 10 parks and the owner would actually take all the general managers and send them through professional training.

We went through a whole series of conferences and the Seven Habits was just part of our repertoire.

That was the first thing that we actually had to listen to.

And it was really good because it wasn't just listen to this CD or read the book.

It was discussion and it was discussion within our organization about how we actually apply those things.

And not a lot of leaders are willing to do that.

It takes time.

It takes time.

But that I learned very early that that was going to pay back and pay forward in many, many ways.

So.

So just to sort of rewind that a little bit, you.

It's something like you maintain the loyalty of those that are present by honoring those that are absent.

So when you talk negatively or badly or Poorly about someone that's not there.

You lose the trust of the group.

Because they're wondering.

Yeah, they're wondering, what are they saying about me as soon as I walk out of the room.

Right, right.

And so you gotta.

You, like, you had an accidental moment of transparency from the team, and you're like, okay, I see really what's happening here, because when the boss is in the room, people always are gonna act differently.

And I know bosses drive the president strive, like, you know, for great relationships.

I understand my people.

But they're gonna act differently, at least somewhat, you know, when you're in the room, and it really reveals a lot.

It's like.

Like the culture is what happens when you're not there, how they interact with each other.

And it sounds like you had to take some bold moves to change out some people, but you were able to strengthen the team overall by finding the right fit.

Yeah.

I'll tell you, working in water parks, some people just look at it and say, okay, that's fun stuff.

Francine.

Gosh, really?

Is that a real job?

I was gonna ask that.

It seems just like I.

Because when we go to water parks or any or theme parks, we have a blast.

We're there to have fun and adventure.

But, you know, as a career, though, not everybody takes it that seriously.

They think, well, water parks, like, you know, is that really a real job?

But I will tell you something.

When you have to train hundreds of people to stay so focused that they are watching this one patch of water, and their vigilance is the difference between a life and a death, that level of training is something that not a lot of people think about.

Now, I remember working for Great Wolf, and we really focused in on the lifeguarding teams, and we had some that were performing okay at the time.

We had 13.

We had others that were just stellar.

But really what it was is how do you instill vigilance in people that are young?

How do you instill vigilance by people wanting to do a good job even when no one's looking?

And that level of training and that level of teamwork and that level of excellence is something that not a lot of people have an appreciation for.

Actually, our lifeguards were so good that parents.

We had a problem.

The parents would actually leave them in the water park, leave their kids in the water park and then go back to their room or go other places.

And because they felt so safe, because there were so many lifeguards, and they could see that they were doing a great job.

But going Back to the whole concept of team.

When the training is life or death, when the discipline has to be there, that dynamic is so different from everything else.

So, yes, you go into a theme park and you're going to see the same level of vigilance for ride safety, and you're going to see that vigilance in the lifeguards that are in the water parks.

Do you go to any other job?

Very few jobs other than EMS and firefighting, are you seeing life and death outcomes when the job is life or death, completely different type of team dynamics are needed.

What are you.

So when you, you're instilling, what I hear is, hey, I'm, I'm really good at instilling care and focus.

Like you're, you're getting especially younger, could be their first or second job, and you're making them care, you're making them focus for hours on end.

What are you telling them or what are you, what are you making work?

There, there.

There's a couple of things, but, you know, I, I like to, to say that you, you kind of have to use both tactics, and one is the, the tactic of, of fun and future, and the other tactic is actually fear.

And so I'll share the fear part only because you kind of have to know that people are in the right mindset to do this kind of a job.

So there was a really horrific drowning at a pool.

Somebody had gotten a video.

This is even before the days of iPhones.

They got a hold of a video from a security camera and you witness the entire drowning, you witness the entire drowning from the little kid going underneath the water.

Another little kid seeing them telling the lifeguard, the lifeguard's not doing anything.

Finally they pull them out and you see this whole thing and it's really awful.

It's really awful to watch.

And we actually use that in our training to weed out, to make sure people are really in the right mindset to do the job.

So that was one, was just.

This is the reality.

So I shouldn't say fear.

I should say share the reality.

That was the reality that if they didn't do their job, that was the outcome.

They would be doing CPR or somebody would be doing CPR and a kid.

That could possibly die and what's at stake.

And it's hard to communicate that if you're just standing up there talking about it.

And there's a reason that metaphor of a picture is worth a thousand words works.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

But I will say on the flip side of it, the motivation can Absolutely.

Be about fun and future.

And that fun being that every day training is fun every day the job is fun every day your environment is fun every day it's full of friends and camaraderie and teamwork and celebration and, and if you can create that environment, boy, they will do anything and they will do anything for each other.

So if you got that magic of I know what I'm getting into, there's a lot at stake.

I personally want to do a good job and oh, by the way, this is my network, this is my environment, this is my family, this is who's counting on me.

I want to do a good job.

And so the want has to be there.

But a lot of people just don't understand what it takes.

In some of these environments.

The amusement industry and the water park industry, we're creating super employees because of what's at stake.

Wow, love that.

So taking this in a slightly different direction, you Got started at 14 testing pool water and you it, it, my perception is you got to the executive ranks fairly quickly, not from 14, but you, you got that real quick.

So one, I wonder if you could share a little bit of your passion and journey there.

But what I really like to hear is, you know what, what would you tell that younger person back then getting started?

Maybe something that they could do differently to accelerate their success or try differently or maybe a success idea that would, that you should tell that person to try.

Sure.

Well, so, so my first job was, was I was 14.

My mom worked at this local water park.

She was a teacher, so in the summer she worked in accounting at this water park.

And so I was a season pass holder.

So I was that annoying kid that would just kind of hang out at the water park all the time.

And my mom finally said to look, it's time for you to get a job.

And so they had this pool technician job that was open and I got the job.

I won't go through the whole story of getting the job, but think about it, I'm a hundred pounds, probably five foot five, five foot four, skinny little girl, kind of taking on this job where you're going to be carrying like big equipment and cleaning pools and climbing into filtration rooms.

And I think probably a lot of people thought I couldn't do it, but I had to kind of prove that I could.

And while it was a tough job, at six in the morning getting to freezing cold water, vacuuming pools and cleaning them, and then working until the park opened and then you get to play in the park all Day.

So that was kind of fun as the first job.

But where it accelerated was I just kept doing water park jobs all through high school and all through college, thinking, this is just my summer job, I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life.

And I studied pre med thinking I'm going to be a doctor.

But the reality was I went to a trade show and I went to a conference and I realized, wow, these things are everywhere.

I could actually do this as a living.

And my mom wasn't real happy at first.

But I think that what was quickly realized was one, I loved being in these team environments.

The owner of the park used to fly me home from college every weekend from spring break all the way through until the park opened.

And so here I was going from San Francisco to El Paso, Texas every weekend and working all weekend.

And literally I was almost carrying a full time job and going to college.

And I can't say my grades were the best, but it was, but it was a lot of fun because I was the director of operations.

So that is very kind of unorthodox.

But I loved it and I loved that environment and I wanted to do a good job.

So I'd say that the lessons that were learned, there was one I didn't get a chance to experience, maybe some of that university experience I probably should have done and learned a couple of other new things.

But I will tell you, I was already working at a very high level coming out of college and then immediately going into a higher level of management.

So what made you so valuable at that young age that the leader of this, of this theme park is buying you plane tickets?

Like, we have to have Francine here to do this because you must have figured something out, how to be valuable, that valuable, where he's like, I gotta, I gotta have her ear.

I mean, it's flying two time zones back and forth.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I, I'll say so.

Barry Edwards was his name.

He was an attorney who ended up owning a KOA who turned it into a water park.

And his daughter now operates that water, that same water park.

And he was really incredible.

He was my mentor for, for many years.

I learned a lot about risk management from him.

He, he tried his own cases.

He won every single one of them.

He was a really, really excellent thinker, very pragmatic gentleman.

One of the things I think that what made me valuable was I was a hard worker.

And he knew it.

He knew I would put the time in to make sure things got done right.

And I remember There was a time where, you know, he's the owner of the park, and at the time, maintenance teams reported into me.

Well, what would happen is he'd go in and he'd tell the maintenance guys, go do this.

Go do this.

Go do this.

Finally, I had to say, hey, Mr.

Edwards, can you do me a favor?

Can you stop telling my people what to do?

Because I've told them to do something else, and now I can't get my part done.

I'll do yours gladly.

And you tell me, I'll make sure that my team gets it done.

Because right now, all they're telling me is, well, Mr.

Edwards wanted me to do this, so, sorry, Francine, I'm gonna let you down and not do your piece.

So, you know, I had to learn very early on to have that level of conversation with my owner and my boss.

And so, yeah, I think so.

He was quite a bit older.

Right.

So you're already at a.

At a young age, you're sort of naturally speaking to the.

Like, you don't.

You're not putting up this facade of, hey, I can't talk to the owner of the park.

No, We.

We had a very good relationship.

I felt like I could be pretty straight up with him.

And.

And.

And that was.

That accelerated a lot of things where I.

I didn't hide anything from him.

I wasn't trying to sugarcoat anything.

I wasn't trying to look good.

I was just trying to do good work.

And if I saw something in my way, I would tell him.

And he was really good.

He actually was really good about that funny little story.

And he knew that I was a driven person that just wanted to get stuff done.

He was late for a court case, and he's got all of his stuff.

He's got his car, but somebody backed in a semi truck behind his car.

Car.

And so anyway, I went into the semi because it was abandoned.

The.

The driver was somewhere else.

I actually got in the semi truck, and I figured out how to drive it and air brakes and all.

So I drove this semi truck down the road so that I could get it out of the way of my boss's car.

And so the semi truck driver comes running out, thinking it's.

It's being stolen.

Like, no, just.

You parked it in front of my boss's car, so.

Oh, that was always me.

He.

And I think he was a little surprised seeing this.

This small woman coming out of his semi truck.

But literally removing obstacles from your boss.

That's right.

That's right.

And that was Really, I think he knew that that's the kind of person that I, that I was, and he needed somebody like that.

Yeah.

Wow.

That is.

That's a really cool story and it sounds like a treat that has served you well after that.

I understand you went to Six Flags, right?

You went to some.

Really.

Did you just decide, hey, I'm gonna go.

At that point, I'm gonna go deep here, I'm gonna go work for the big brands of water parks or.

Yeah, it wasn't so much about big brands at the time, I think, for me.

So I, I left that local water park where I grew up and I was family owned, very family owned, and a lot of autonomy.

I wore a lot of hats and I went to go work as a general manager for this family owned company that had 10 parks in Arizona and California.

And they were phenomenal.

It was very different because it was still a family owned company, but had a lot of processes in place and they had a larger footprint and that was.

That was great.

This is where I learned a lot of the Stephen Covey pieces and got a little bit of that, that background.

But when I went to Six Flags, that was purposeful.

I didn't.

I've been recruited for almost every.

Actually, I've been recruited for every job that I've had.

So I don't know they've ever gone really looking for another job, which is a very privileged place to be.

So I'm really grateful for that.

But being recruited by Six Flags to go there, the only reason I was really intrigued by it was I wanted to work for a publicly traded company.

I had done the private stuff.

I had done family stuff.

I really wanted that experience of a publicly traded company, and that was Six Flags.

So I knew there was going to be a financial acumen that I was going to learn.

I knew that there was going to be a discipline that would be associated with that because it was publicly traded.

I got all of that and more.

It was pretty challenging at first, but.

But every single time I've moved jobs, it has been.

I don't say yes to everything, obviously, but I have been purposeful in the things I want to learn.

So every single time it's about learning.

So great, great, Wolf.

I wanted to learn resorts, Six Flags.

I wanted to learn public, public company.

Great, Wolf.

I got both.

I got public company and then we went private.

So I got both of that.

I went from domestic North America to wanting to go global.

That's why I went to Whitewater.

So each time it was all right, you Want me to come work for your company?

Tell me what I'm going to learn out of this.

And if it's compelling enough, then that's where I make that choice.

Sounds like a great North Star.

Too many people make changes just for the paycheck, but hopefully, you know, asking a deeper question like that can.

Can go to bigger results, you know, beyond that.

Yeah, I get that question a lot.

You keep stacking jobs, you keep moving to bigger and bigger roles.

Well, I think that sometimes what I find is that it's not always that paycheck or that title, but it is about what you're going to acquire from a knowledge base.

But what can you give?

Like, you see a place where.

What can you give?

And, and I think there's also that opportunity where if, if you are going to make a change, make account.

Love it.

Well, what's.

What's something that would surprise our listeners who have been attending water parks and resorts and theme parks their entire lives, but have never gotten behind the scenes.

To say, well, I'd say that, you know, behind the scenes of a lot of these places, it really, it's probably all the same stuff.

If you go into, you know, there's orange juice that's made just right around the corner here from, from Legoland, and if you went into their back of house, you probably see a lot of the same things.

There's machines that make money.

I think the difference is that the machines that we have can hurt people if you don't take good care of them.

So I think that's one thing is that behind all of these wonderful machines that have been innovated and created and are spectacular experiences, there are people who care a lot about keeping guests safe, keeping employees safe, and keeping the machine running.

And that takes people.

I've seen a lot of changes in this industry over time.

It's gone through this evolution from a whole bunch of privately owned parks to then corporatization, where they all consolidated, were purchased by a few companies, and then they all got sold off again, depending on what's happening in the markets, depending what's happening in real estate, and then they consolidate again.

We're seeing that right now.

In between all of that expansion and contraction or handover and change, there's always people in the middle of that.

And I feel like every single time that there's a transformation or there's a change of ownership or there's a change of leadership, the people can either prosper or they can suffer.

And I think we all have to be very, very as leaders, we all have to be very, very mindful of what is the impact to the people.

Yes, you're looking at the impact to the bottom line.

Yes, you're looking at the impact of the share value, but really think about the impact to the people, because if you don't pay attention to that one, your EBITDA and your share value are going to be in the toilet.

Yeah, it's a people business.

I mean, you've got all these other factors like the machinery and the safety, but ultimately people are the ones running the thing and checking on it.

Well, I'll tell you, during COVID we saw a huge, we saw a huge drop in the number of people with the right level of knowledge.

So, so during COVID all the parks closed and a whole bunch of people left the industry.

And either they never went back to the industry, or they aged out and said, no, it's not worth it, or they changed industries altogether.

And we know this, we know that we were seeing big shifts.

I was working for a manufacturer at the time.

All of our customers, all of our points of contact are all changing.

And so when we saw that, we were very worried that are they going to have enough knowledge about those rides and attractions to make sure that they can operate.

And so.

So, yeah, I think that anytime you have some of these big, big shifts, you have to be kind of mindful of knowledge base and that and the, the technology is going to change, but you really need to have the people with the aptitude to be able to operate those things.

One of the things you're known for is transformation, and really right in the ship, you know, everywhere you've been.

And I'm curious, what are the traits and, or the hard conversations that you believe leaders need to get good at to make that happen?

Well, now, now that I've gone through a few of these, I think what I'm finding more and more, and I, I can't blame technology and I can't blame social media.

I can't blame any of those things.

But all of them put together are affecting culturally what's happening with people and their ability to have very transparent, open conversations with each other, one on one.

We hide behind the text.

Are you alluding to texting?

Yeah, I'm just going to text them and see if they can see through my text to understand what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, and I think sometimes it's.

You get so used to exchanging information through text, WhatsApp, iMessage, whatever it may be, you get so used to exchanging in These little snippets.

And that's fine for a lot of stuff to get stuff done, but when you're having to have a conversation about performance or having a conversation about results or having conversation about goals, those have to be done face to face.

And a lot of times people don't know how to do that.

I think the hardest part is when you have people that are older and they've never had that experience because their management in the past never taught that within their environments.

And so I can expect them to do something that they've never experienced positively themselves and they don't practice.

Yeah.

And now there's actual conversation that needs to happen.

Yes, yes.

It can be a silly thing like, you know, are you wearing your badge?

So we always wear our little Lego badges.

In fact, I can show you, I've got a whole collection.

But those are simple things that, where you just need to be able to say, because that's a brand standard, so you want to be able to say something about it.

If you've got management teams that are afraid to do that, that's a problem.

That's a problem.

So I guess if I could say that over time, what I've seen is that skill and that diplomacy and having that ability to have, you know, very direct conversations in a productive way.

That's a lost art.

I think I'm seeing it now.

I spent 11 years in manufacturing.

I ran into some of that there, but it was not a little.

Not surprised.

But coming back to Parks, I was surprised to see that.

That's a very good point.

It does seem like it's becoming a lost art.

And it wasn't easy before, Chuck.

Technology, texting, and it's a message.

But now it's even tougher.

Yeah, it's a really big, big thing.

So I'm curious from your standpoint, I'm wondering if it may come a little more naturally for you based on your stories of you talking to the koa.

But what do you, what do you, what do you say to your team about this, like the badge situation?

If they're not used to it, if they're not ready to have this, you know, to really become a more direct communicator.

And it's so valuable, you know, what is your conversation with them look like or you know, what are you, what's your advice to leaders who are like, you know what, she's absolutely right.

And I don't quote like confrontation, even though a badge conversation.

Hopefully it's not a full blown out conference.

Yeah, you would think That's.

These are simple, simple things.

But, yeah.

Yeah.

Keep in mind that my background is about vigilance and perfection in the performance because it's life or death.

So those little things like badges make a difference, because if you won't do the badge, what else won't you do?

So for me, there's some people that might say, gosh, Francine, that's a bit pedantic of you to be talking to us about how are we going to get people to perform better?

Because we want to have honest conversations.

You have to.

You have to.

And I don't think people realize just how much of a dearth of that is there.

Think about your own families.

You got that one really poorly behaving cousin.

It always goes to the.

To the Thanksgiving dinner and is total jerk.

Who's going to be the one to go and have that conversation with them to say, hey, you're being a jerk.

Nobody.

Nobody wants to be that.

Well, I'm calling you.

I'm gonna call Francine to come to Thanksgiving.

I'm the one that will have that conversation.

And it is.

It is an art, and it is something you learn over time.

So what I would say to leaders is, go listen to your teams.

If they don't know how to have those tough conversations, you need to teach them, and you teach them by practicing, and you practice it yourself by giving them that feedback.

And it's a lesson I need to learn.

I think I came back into park operations and thinking, I can do this.

And then all of a sudden, you get into the environment and you're like, oh, I can see that this is a little bit harder to have that direct conversation.

And mostly because there's a lot of moving parts.

There's, you know, and especially when you're in complex matrix organizations, that's a little bit harder than a hierarchical organization.

So where it might be pretty easy, I'm your boss.

I can have that conversation with you.

Maybe I'm your peer.

And now I have to have that same conversation.

So I think there's been a shift more to matrix organizations.

I'd say that that you becomes a little bit harder again, it goes back to that vulnerable trust.

If you can get there, then everybody should be open, having those conversations.

So I have a lot more questions.

I don't have a lot more time, but I want to ask more about Legoland.

I want to hear about the largest concrete pour in Florida, y' all.

There's a lot of concrete in Florida already.

Yeah, yeah.

So the standard and the benchmark Is high.

Yeah, Yeah.

I would say it was the largest continuous concrete pour.

So I want, I want to say, I don't know the stats in front of me, but I want to say it was like 300 cement truckloads of concrete.

300.

Yes.

And so they had to have three different plants constantly running so that we could get concrete here.

And so this is our brand new attraction.

So it's still somewhat secret, but been announced as an indoor roller coaster.

So we're really excited.

It'll open in early 2026.

But it's, it's three feet of concrete that is the foundation of the, of the, this ride.

And it's a highly technical ride.

The, the, the, the margin for error.

Any one of the bolts that supports those foundations could be off only less than 2 millimeters.

That was it.

That was the tolerance.

So.

So when you're in the poor concrete, you better get it right.

Yeah.

There's not a lot of changing, changing around after that stuff's poured.

Yeah.

So I was really impressive.

I was super excited about it, but I geek out on stuff like that, so.

Yeah, but we're super excited about that ride.

Well, although I was imagining and as you brought up.

So like we had our driveway port and the big, you know, the big truck comes and it's spinning constantly right the back of it because it doesn't want the concrete to get to harden.

Yep.

I'm assuming you had 300.

Maybe you had the same truck periodically come back, I don't know.

But there you had a lot of these things turning one.

Yes.

And you can see the big arms that'll come in and just import.

We've got some really great, we got some really great video of that.

So I'll send that your way.

Well, well, it's only apropos that Lego Land, the, you know, the, the headquarters of Legos is building cool stuff.

I'm assuming that concrete.

You don't have concrete Legos at this point.

No.

You're.

But you're good at building stuff.

Yes, yes.

Well, 2025, I would say it doesn't feel like Legoland out there.

It feels like Construction land.

So we just built a brand new sea life that just opened on my birthday, June 6th.

It was really great.

It was a really great gift to be able to open up sea life.

So 3,000 new sea creatures there and they're now part of our family, so we have to take good care of them.

State of the art life support system.

Really cool exhibits.

It's theme park under the sea.

So when you go there, a lot of the exhibits are very.

You'll never.

You won't see anything like it anywhere else.

So that's exciting.

And we're continuing to grow and we're continuing to expand and improve parts of Legoland.

So as we.

And we had a previous conversation about the hidden gems of Legoland, I know it's one of your favorites, but what's your favorite secret detail in the park?

And what does it say about the culture that you're building?

Oh, gosh, there's a lot of little secret places, but I will say one of the best places.

And.

And not a lot of people know, but.

But Legoland was built on the site of Cypress Gardens.

And so Cypress Gardens got started in the 1920s, 1930s, and literally the banyan tree showed up as a banyan tree came out of Southeast Asia, showed up in a pot.

They literally put it in the ground at Cypress Gardens.

And it is now a cathedral of a gorgeous, gorgeous cypress banyan tree.

And it's, It's.

It's unbelievable.

Anybody, when I say, well, have you seen the banyan tree?

They're like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Then they see it.

You can just see their eyes are just, like, in.

Just.

It's incredible.

It really is incredible.

And it is such an amazing spot.

That's probably one of my favorites on the LEGO side.

One of my favorites is going to Miniland.

Now, Miniland is always the heart of a Legoland.

And what people don't always know is that the buildings there are not the same.

At every single Legoland, every single one has something different.

We have a whole section of just Florida stuff.

So you'll see Bach Tower there, you'll see Daytona, you'll see a space shuttle launch.

But Miniland in particular, pay attention to the scenes.

There's so many little scenes there.

And interestingly, I remember I got a.

It was an email from a.

From a guest, and they were questioning why there was two males being married at the.

In the Las Vegas chapel.

And so.

And I think for them, they were trying to explain to their.

To their child, like, why is there two males that are being married at the chapel in Las Vegas?

And so, you know, everybody gets married in Las Vegas.

And so, you know, you have to have that conversation that we are open to everyone.

And so there's little details like that that you might not see at a mini land until you actually go in and take a look at the scenes.

Now, there's all sorts of really fun ones, too.

Like the marching band that's in front of the Capitol.

And that one's really cool to see because you're actually seeing the marching band come around and you know, the pirate scene that has, there's a, there's a pirate ship that's kind of like half in the water and just every little scene has a story.

And I love that.

That's, that's what Miniland is all about.

I love it.

And so starting to wind this up because I actually, this is the, this is the question that I was either going to open up with or.

And kind of start.

We kind of went and we went the other order, which is fine.

I mean, LEGO is iconic.

I mean, it has been around forever.

You know, I'm, I'm 49 years old and, you know, I had Legos.

My daughter's 14, she has Legos.

What is it like having a theme park based on such an iconic thing?

That I don't want to be hyperbolic about it, but I believe that LEGO is, is really important in the world for kids.

Imaginations about building, about creating, empowering them to think about building things.

And some of the greatest buildings in the world have been built and designed by people that were kids playing with legos.

So what, what's it like and what's that responsibility like?

Well, you know, I remember I was telling you about, you know, you make a decision to go places.

When this opportunity came up, it, it really was not about coming back to a theme park.

It was actually coming back for lego.

And I had never worked for the LEGO brand before, and I had never worked on a brand that was so powerful.

I mean, it is the number one toy brand in the world and it has been built over nearly 100 years.

And so.

And the family that started it all still owns the company that owns lego.

And so having the family environment and they really treat Legoland as they don't think in terms of the next quarter, they think in terms of decades.

And so they're constantly looking at how are we taking care of our brand.

They're very, very strict with the brand is the quality there.

One of their mantras is only the best is good enough.

I loved that because that would really embody kind of the way I think of things is that, you know, you gotta, you gotta, your game's gotta be up here.

And for them, quality was the piece of it.

So one, long term investment and two, that the quality was going to be there.

So those two things are values that align with mine.

But I wanted to work with a brand like that.

Now I've had opportunities when I was in working for Whitewater, working for other brands like Nickelodeon and others, and those were really fun, really, really fun projects.

I couldn't wait to do those.

So when this came up, I said, okay, I'm going to get a chance to work on lots of projects with a really powerful brand.

And that's been an amazing experience.

I'd also say that everything was about and creativity.

You know, you go to Disney for princesses and you go to Universal for storylines, but you come to Legoland to play, and that's so different.

And you're coming for creativity.

And there's so many different places where you get to, you know, play with lego.

And I'm gonna have my tough conversation with you, Ben.

It's lego, not Legos.

That's something I learned right away.

So it's like deer.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

The plural of LEGO is lego.

Like.

That's right, that's right.

Well, so now you blew your mind and now.

Well, you have many times.

And now you just did it again.

So thank you.

But yeah, so, so LEGO is really, it's, it's a differentiated experience.

You're going to play with LEGO in ways that you cannot do by going buying your set at Walmart.

It's something that's completely different.

And, and really, kids and adults that love lego, this is the place to come.

So what a couple more questions because you just unroofed other, other ones coming them on here.

What is the future of LEGO going to be?

And what's its role in the world of AI, when kids are just becoming more and more and adults on their phones?

You know, in this abstract world, what do you see as Legoland's place?

Well, I can't really speak for the LEGO organization because this is Legoland, which is operated by Merlin Entertainments.

But what I would say is that the world is changing and it's changing to this digital world, but there's this, there's still always going to be this tactile kind of visceral world that we have to pay attention to.

Where is your emotion come from?

Is your emotion tactile?

No, not always.

But you do emote when you play with lego.

So, you know, if you really think about it, what is digital?

Digital is a concept, but it's also really, it's not tactile.

So what is it?

Can you emote in the same way by doing something digital, or can you emote the same way by doing something tactile, like playing with lego?

I think there's going to probably be a marriage of both.

And you're already starting to see it.

There's.

There's LEGO masters that are actually designing spectacular creations.

Oftentimes they're designing digitally and then they're building tactilely.

So if you really think about it, I think there's going to probably be.

A marriage, a very happy marriage, it sounds like.

Yes, I can see it.

And.

And so what is Legoland gonna look like 10, 15, 20 years from now?

Well, my plan is that I will transform it into something really, really spectacular, along with all my other colleagues.

But I would say one of the things I liked about this property is the history of Cypress Gardens.

It's a lush, gorgeous, beautiful space.

It sits right on the lake, and.

And when I walk around a lot, I've been to thousands of parks all over the world.

Thousands.

And it doesn't matter what continent, maybe, except for Antarctica.

I've been to parks, and very rarely do they have the richness of landscape that is a natural setting where it feels like they put the park into nature versus putting nature into a park.

And.

And so this one feels like they put a park into nature, and they did it very nicely.

So there's shade, it's beautiful, it's lush, it's green, and there's a calm that you feel.

It's not a concrete jungle.

And it's really an experience because it's not just about standing in line for a ride.

In fact, a lot of people don't come here for the rides.

They come here for the play experience, and they come for the environment.

It's just really, really beautiful.

So that.

I think that's.

So going back into 10 years from now, we will probably have expanded, we'll probably have replaced a lot of stuff, but I think, by and large, the bones will still be there.

It'll still be about lego, it'll still be about beauty, it'll still be about family.

Well, that's how you lead the team, everybody.

Francine, thank you for coming on the show today.

It was a fun one.

Good.

I had a great time.

Thanks so much.