When Mike Bartasuis and Ira Riklis joined forces to create their Charter Sports ski shops, they wanted to create the best shops possible, ones that would help make their customers’ ski excursions that much more enjoyable. That they’ve succeeded in doing so is evident in telling ways. Their shops are the only ones consistently mentioned each year in Travel Y Leisure Magazine’s annual subscribers’ survey of the fifty best ski resorts in North America.
One reason for this is their focus on keeping customers happy. Mike and Ira Riklis firmly believe that good customer service is a key to running a good business and in encouraging repeat visits. If a customer comes in to report a bad experience, they get the full attention of shop staff, who do everything they can—up to and including providing free rentals to the customer’s entire family for a week—to resolve the problem. These customers often become the shops’ most loyal and vocal advocates, providing the word-of-mouth advertising that brings in new customers.
Americans respond in times of crisis such as the recent earthquake that has devastated Haiti, or in New York after the 9/11 attacks. But what about at other times, when nothing big seems to be happening? Ira Riklis knows that even then people face crises in their lives and need the help of others to see them through. That’s one reason he makes it a point to donate blood on a regular (or at least semi-regular) basis. He donates each December as part of his synagogue’s annual blood drive, and he tries to make two or three additional donations throughout the year.
Doing so sets him apart from most of us: fewer than one in seven people eligible to donate blood actually do so. Perhaps that because, caught up in our daily lives, we fail to see the daily crises that go on all across the country as victims of trauma, injuries, and illnesses which require surgery, desperately need blood. Perhaps if we were aware of the magnitude of need—43,000 pints a year, 30 pints a minute. Knowing that, do you think you might make time, say half an hour or so, a few times a year to make a donation yourself. Ira Riklis certainly hopes so.
After their first lesson together, Mike Bartasuis quickly became Ira Riklis’ ski instructor. And as the two got to know each other better, they found a real camaraderie between them and they soon became good friends. The friendship continued after Mike left his job as instructor and pursued other opportunities in Vail. And the two continued to ski together whenever they could.
Mike decided he wanted to operate a ski shop and went into partnership with another person to open Tech Sports in Lionshead. It was actually a confused situation since Ira Riklis had hoped to be Mike’s partner in the venture and had sent money for the purchase of the shop. Eventually everything worked out. Mike’s new partner couldn’t support his ambitions for growth. When the opportunity arose for Mike to buy another store, he and Ira teamed up to create the Charter Sports chain which they’ve since expanded to include a number of shops.
On the surface, the city of Tel Aviv seems to be a prosperous modern center of commerce, the arts and education. It’s home to Israel’s only Opera House, a symphony orchestra, a dance troupe, and numerous museums and theater groups. But Ira Riklis has seen the other side of Tel Aviv where 40 percent of the city’s residents live at or below the poverty level. That’s why he’s long been a supporter of the Tel Aviv Foundation.
For nearly a quarter-century, the Foundation and its international supporting groups have been funding and developing projects designed to improve the lives of Tel Aviv’s disadvantaged residents. To date, it’s established more than 300 projects and raised $300 million to bring them to fruition. Ira Riklis, who serves on the Board of Directors of the American Committee for the Tel Aviv Foundation, has focused his projects on a single neighborhood—Schoonat Ezra—where he and his family have helped create parks, playgrounds and educational and science centers.
After 20 years of skiing and countless lessons, both group and private, Ira Riklis had become a pretty good advanced—but not expert—skier. By that time, he’d pretty much resigned himself to the feeling that he might not ever reach the next level of expertise he aspired to. He could handle pretty much any slope, but not with the degree of confidence or elegance he wanted. Like many people trying to improve in their endeavors, he’d reached a plateau, and had gotten stuck there. Then, during a trip to Vail, he met instructor Mike Bartasuis.
Unlike most instructors, Mike focused less on teaching every move and technique at once, placing the emphasis instead on the one single item in your technique which was most interfering with your rhythm. He’d get you to understand what you needed to change then had you practice that one move over and over until it was ingrained in your muscle memory. Then he had you move on to the next most important skill you needed to learn. Under Mike’s tutelage, Ira Riklis was eventually able to break through the barriers that had been holding him back and reach the level of expertise and grace that he had been aspiring to for so many years.
Often, when we give of our time or money to a worth cause, we give ourselves a pat on the back for being so generous and virtuous. We tend to call such acts “charity.” But in keeping with Jewish tradition, Ira Riklis believes that it is a privilege to give. In this view, giving is an important part of living a spiritual life and is a way of restoring justice and fairness in the world. The “gifts” you give weren’t yours to begin with. They rightfully belonged to the recipients who were in need of them.
It’s not only important to give, it’s also important how you give. Jewish scholars have long recognized different levels of honor in how gifts are presented. When one gives grudgingly, or only when asked, that’s considered a lower form. Giving gladly, generously and anonymously in a way that helps those in need achieve self sufficiency so that they now longer need to rely on gifts is considered much more honorable. Ira Riklis gives with gratitude in his heart for having been granted the means to help others.
Jean Claude Killy, whose father owned a ski resort, began skiing at age 3. By the time he was 18, he was a senior member of the French national team. But it was his performance at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France that made him a hero to Ira Riklis. A daring athlete with superb reflexes, dazzled the world that year, becoming only the second skier to win the Olympic skiing triple crown—downhill, slalom and giant slalom. No one’s done it since.
Killy dominated men’s skiing at the time, having also won two World Cup Championships. Many younger skiers attempted to emulate his brash, instinctive, speed-at-all-costs approach to the support. Ira Riklis even went so far as buying the same skis as those used by Killy, a pair of Dynamic VR17s. The move turned out to be a bit premature. Nowhere near ready for true racing skis, Ira broke his leg within the first week of using them. It took him many more years of practice and learning to be able to handle skis like that.
Last summer Jon Stewart, host of the popular Daily Show, urged fellow New Yorkers to show up for a bone marrow drive. He took action after learning that a fan who was fighting leukemia was having no luck find a bone marrow donor for a transplant needed to save his life. Ira Riklis, who’s been registered on a list of potential donors for years, knows this story only too well. Matching bone marrow donors with potential recipients is orders of magnitude harder than matching blood types. To be successful, a very close match with someone from a similar demographic and ethnic background must be found.
Although there are seven-million people registered in a national database of those willing to donate, none were close to the patient in this case. This is one reason why Ira Riklis urges people to register as donors: the more people who register, the more likely a match can be found for people in need. It’s easy to register, you’ll find the info you need online at sites like the National Bone Marrow program. And while just one in two hundred on register ever get called to donate, if you are called upon know that the actual procedure is simple and relatively minor.
If you really want to get good at something you love, you often have to go through a little pain. That has certainly been Ira Riklis’ experience in his quest to become an expert skier. To become an exert skier, you need to be able to make expert turns. And as he notes: “There is no easy way to learn to make an expert turn.” Non-experts are scared of falling, so they tend to lean into the slope so that, if they fall, they fall on their soft, padded rear ends.
But to make an expert turn you have to lean away from the slope. That means that any mistake will basically launch you down the mountain face first—a move that Ira Riklis has dubbed a “face plant.” He’s performed many face plants as he was learning and can assure you that each one feels like getting a hard punch in the face. But that’s what it takes to master the turns. And if it’s any consolation, he likens it to what’s said about the childbirth—after a while you forget the pain you’ve endured and simply enjoy the results.
When you’re driving a car, how many steps are involved in approaching a traffic light at a busy intersection where you’re planning to make a left turn? Chances are, you’d have a hard time listing them all. Check to see if the light’s changing. Check the rearview mirror for traffic behind you. Check for traffic approaching from the cross street. And on and on. Do you think of all those steps at the time? Nope, if you’ve been driving a while and feel confident in driving, you just do them automatically. Ira Riklis can tell you that it’s the same when you’re speeding down steep mountain slopes on skis.
Once you’ve learned, and practiced, the techniques you need to know, you just perform those techniques automatically. Skiing—done well—is a complex, rhythmic ballet of motions, movements and shifts of balance. With experience, the correct motions simply become, muscle memory. Today, Ira Riklis doesn’t even notice the turn he’s currently making; he relies on instincts born of his prior training and experiences. He’s thinking about a half mile down the mountain choosing his path to most effectively use the terrain, find the most enjoyable path and to avoid people and obstacles ahead.