- [Michael] Tonight on "WPBS Weekly: Inside The Stories," Maple Leaf Tours out of Kingston shares travel tips for both sides of the border so you can make the best informed decisions before you reach your vacation destination.

And if you live in Canada or the North Country, you know maple is a staple.

Discover how it's done at Massey's Maple Ranch.

Plus your dream job is just a resume away.

Career Coach M. Michelle Nadon, shares tips on creating a wishlist to get you one step closer to the dream.

Your stories, your region, coming up right now on "WPBS Weekly: Inside The Stories."

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "WPBS Weekly: Inside The Stories" is brought to you by the Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center, (upbeat music) the J.M.

McDonald Foundation, (upbeat music) the Estate of Grant Mitchell, and the Dr. D Susan Badenhausen Legacy Fund of the Northern New York Community Foundation.

Additional funding from the New York State Education Department.

- Good evening, everyone, and welcome to this edition of "WPBS Weekly: Inside the Stories."

I'm Michael Riecke.

Winter in the north country means a lot of different things, including the creation of maple syrup.

At Massey's Ranch in Watertown, the making of maple syrup also includes an educational component.

"WPBS" producer, Luke Smith, has more.

(crowd chattering) - [Shawn] That's the freshest syrup you'll ever try.

- [Luke] Don't just take his word for it.

You have to taste it to believe it.

- Oh my God, wow.

That's amazing.

- [Luke] This cup of syrup was made by Shawn Massey, who since 2009 has produced quality maple products for the public to enjoy.

- My father started making maple syrup when I was really small.

And I have memories back when he used to make the syrup.

I didn't really help him, but I did enjoy being in the shanty.

So when this opportunity came to buy some property out here, we decided to have 50 trees and 100 trees, and just kept growing and growing over the last 15 years.

- [Luke] Today, Massey Ranch taps up to 1,500 trees across 40 acres of land.

And to keep the syrup as fresh as it is, one of the most important things for Shawn is to protect the trees in his woods.

- Our woods are very important to us.

We can't just replant a maple tree if we lose one.

These trees are 50 years old, 70 years old.

So we really are a good steward of our forest because that's what produces the sap we need to make syrup.

But you can make maple syrup on a lot of different species of maple trees.

You know, you have sugar maples, which are the best.

They have the highest concentration of sugar.

But you can also do red maples like people have in their front yards.

You can do silver maples.

There's a lot of different species of maples that you can make maple syrup out of.

(men chattering indistinctly) Making maple syrup is, you know, kind of complicated, but I'll break it down to.

We only tap the trees in early spring, we have to wait for the sap to drip out of the tree.

We need sap to make syrup.

But the problem with making maple syrup, it takes 40 gallons of sap out of the tree to make one gallon of maple syrup.

So it's a long process of boiling on the evaporator.

- [Luke] A long process that has become far simpler as technology for making syrup gets more advanced.

- Evaporators have changed dramatically, you know, more of efficient new ways for us to put bubblers in 'em to make lighter syrup.

Just, there's a lot of technology all the time.

And you can even think about buckets back in the day if... You might not know, but buckets were the way we gathered sap traditionally for a hundred years, they've used buckets.

Now we use tubing.

We actually suck it out of the trees.

And again, our yield increases as technology does.

So I can get twice as much sap out of a tree now than I could have five years ago with buckets.

- [Luke] What makes the process most special to Shawn is getting to teach the public how they produce the syrup.

And when Maple Weekend rolls around, Shawn gets to do just that.

- The reason to check out Maple Weekend is if you've never seen how we do it.

I mean, that's the biggest key to it, is people do not realize how we do it.

And after they see how you make maple syrup, they just leave with a big smile and they just really enjoy how nature makes us natural product for us.

You can do this at home on a turkey fryer.

That's how I started.

You can just get a turkey fryer, you tap a few trees in your front yard and just keep adding sap, boiling it down, add sap, boil it down 'till it hits 219 degrees, and you have maple syrup.

And then the other is scale, you can really make a lot of money if you have a lot of taps.

You get up into 20,000 taps, 30,000 taps.

That scale is profitable.

And there's some big, big sugar houses downstate that are, you know, tapping hundreds of thousands of trees and making a big industry out of it.

- [Luke] It's an industry Massey encourages people to take advantage of when shopping for maple products.

- If you don't have access to a local sugar house like we have here or near you, get the stuff of the sugar house, you'll notice it's a little lighter.

So if you go to the supermarket, most of their syrups, even though it says a hundred percent maple syrup, it'll be darker.

That's because it's made in a big factory that kind of taps trees and cooks it a little different fashion that makes it a little darker syrup.

But the one thing you gotta remember, always buy real a hundred percent maple syrup.

There is some fake stuff in the supermarket, but the only ingredient in maple syrup is maple syrup.

- [Luke] In Watertown for "WPBS Weekly," I'm Luke Smith.

(upbeat music) (logo whooshing) - For more information on Massey's Ranch, visit their website at masseysranch.com.

Each year, thousands of Canadian and American travelers take to the skies to visit friends and family or explore other countries.

For first time travelers, there may be some uncertainty.

To ease any apprehension, we offer travel tips from Kristine Geary of Maple Leaf Tours in Kingston, Ontario, to help you get to your destination with competence.

(bright music) - [Joleene] From initial planning to ticket purchase to the actual flight, planning a trip can seem overwhelming, especially for first time travelers.

That's why Kristine Geary of Maple Leaf Tours in Kingston, Ontario, offers tips to make the entire process easier.

And it all starts with charting your course.

- When you're traveling solo, one of the things that I suggest is keeping on you a piece of paper that documents your next of kin contact, telephone numbers and any medications that you're on in case something happens and someone needs to contact someone right away.

Great tip on medication.

When traveling, always carry your medication on you.

Don't put it in your large suitcase that's going underneath the motor coach or on the plane.

Keep it with you.

And also keep the generic name of your medication as well, because when you go to a pharmacy in an international country, they may not know it as the name at home.

So keep the generic thing and keep it with you.

Travel insurance is very important.

Some people believe that they're covered by their credit cards.

Some people believe they're covered by their work insurance policies.

It's very important to check the details because every policy is different.

Have insurance, travel insurance, wherever you get it, but make sure you know the details.

When flying, I always suggest that people take a carry on suitcase with a couple of days of clothing in case your main suitcase gets lost.

That way you've got a couple of days of extra clothing to get you through.

- [Joleene] And once you arrive at your destination.

- I'm a huge fan of renting cars.

Very important though, depending on the location that you're going, check the details of your car: Is it an automatic?

Is it a standard?

What side of the road are you driving on and what insurance is covered?

But renting a car is so much fun.

- [Joleene] No matter where you plan on going, keep these tips in mind and enjoy the time you have once you reach your destination.

For "WPBS Weekly," I'm Joleene DesRosiers.

(logo whooshing) - For more information on Maple Leaf Tours or for help with your next getaway, please visit mapleleaftours.com.

Once you finish your trip, it's time to head back to work.

But what if you're dreaming of a new job?

Perhaps a new career is on the horizon for you.

If so, Canadian business coach, M. Michelle Nadon, discusses the importance of a wishlist and how it can move you to the next level.

(bright music) (logo whooshing) (bright music) - Figuring out your goals for your career is sometimes very daunting, but I would argue that every last one of us really does have an idea of what it is that we wanna do.

It could be a really farfetched idea and it could be a perfectly possible idea, but we have those ideas.

And what I've found in my experience is a lot of people don't action the things that they wanna do because quite frankly, they've been talked out a bit by somebody else, or they've been schooled or socialized not to go above and beyond what they perceive to be their position.

And I think that's inherently maladaptive, to be perfectly honest.

I think that it would behoove us all to get a lot more familiar with what we actually do want and go and pursue it.

Now, sometimes you don't know what you want, and this is where I make the distinction between having goals and creating a wishlist.

So when I have a client who's really struggling to figure out what they wanna do, my favorite question to ask them is, okay, let's pretend I'm a really rich witch and I'm writing the check tomorrow morning.

What do you wanna do?

If you had all the money in the world, all the access are exactly what you needed to go and do what you wanted to do, what would that thing be?

And boom, watch the answers come falling down, okay?

So get comfortable with the wishlist, give yourself permission.

And get them onto an actual list.

After that, executing on the list is easy.

The big chore is making the list.

So having a goals list is an unbelievable and probably the best start you could possibly make with your career.

But once you have your list, what do you do with it?

Well, here's what you do with it.

You go through the list item by item.

You just review it.

And you look at the item and you say, okay, is this a short term, a long term, or a medium term goal for me?

Right?

And you ask yourself a second question for each item on your list, on a scale of one to 10, how do I feel about this?

Is this a 10?

Is it a 7.5?

Is it a five?

What's its actual weight?

The weight that you give a goal equals the priority it is to you, okay?

And then dividing them into short, mid, and long term is not difficult, but people struggle with timelines all the time.

Well, what's short term?

What's midterm?

What's long term?

Well, you know what?

It's whatever you decide it is.

Back in the day when I was coming up through my career, my short term would always be one or two years, and my long term would be 20 years from now.

And I would have a whole pile of midterm things that I wanted to do in terms of professional development to get to my 20-year list, okay?

So now in my life, I only have short and long term.

I've got no more midterms anymore.

But when you break them into short, mid and long term, just think about what does that timeline look like for you?

Is short term six months?

Is it a year?

You decide.

Your instincts will actually tell you what works, what's midterm and what's long term.

So at the end of the day, your goals list ends up in three different categories: short, mid and long term.

And then you take your priorities, this one's a 10, this one's a nine, this one's an eight, and you put them in descending order and then boom, you've got your list to work from.

And you can take those and you look at it once a week, every business week.

I do my planning on Monday mornings.

I look at my goals list and I say, okay, what needs advancement in either my short, my mid, or my long term?

And then I get those items into my actual calendar so that I can keep my goals moving forward on a really steady basis.

And you know, you get into the habit of that and it works like magic and you actually realize your goals.

What more could you ask for?

(bright music) So we've talked about the fact that writing up a goals list is daunting, and indeed it is when you don't have a lot of experience in it.

But, you know, I always encourage individuals to stop thinking of it as a chore and get a little crazy.

Allow yourself to get a little crazy and own some of those ideas in your head, okay?

Like, if I could go back and start it all over right now, I'll guarantee I'd be a musician.

That's what I would really love to do, okay?

Now, my life didn't take me down that path, and I'm happy with the way that it went, but I knew instinctively what I wanted to do.

And if I had been given permission when I was younger to actually have fun with my wishlist, maybe musician would've made it onto the list.

Maybe I would have given that aspect of myself due consideration and a little trial to see if it would actually work out.

So I always recommend when it comes to your goals to treat them like, I call it brain candy.

So just have a little brain candy with your goals.

Turn it loose, have some fun, be outrageous.

I mean, if you, you know, in my case, one of my favorite expressions is, if you always wanted to be prime minister of Canada, write it down.

Who's it gonna hurt to write it down?

Okay, all you're doing is having some fun with yourself, but what you're also doing is you're opening yourself up to other potential that you haven't allowed yourself to date.

And that is a really great place to be when it comes to your career.

Now, when it comes to your goals, very often individuals have disparate goals.

And so they have a natural propensity towards one area of life.

They're good at it, they know it's reliable, so they figure that it's more worth pursuing than their intangible idea about something else that they wanna do.

I refer to that as dualistic thinking or patriarchal thinking, however you wanna frame it.

And it's what they call the either/or.

So in your mind, you've been schooled to only have this or that, whereas life is 16 shades of gray in between those two.

And when you think about it, it's fine for you to develop one area of expertise or to move towards one area of expertise.

But is that the sum total of who you are?

No, every individual is multifaceted.

So what it really comes down to is if you feel compelled to pursue a given career, that's absolutely fine, but please do yourself the favor of developing your passion on the side, because it's perfectly possible to do both.

And more than that, it's perfectly possible to do way more than just two things, okay?

Bearing in mind that subject matter expertise, in order to acquire subject matter expertise, it takes 10,000 hours on average in a subject.

So you're pursuing your academic strain, and that's absolutely fine, but make time in your schedule for the passion pursuits.

And sooner or later, if you keep them both, if you use time management and you balance the two of them, sooner or later, you might find one competing with the other.

And that is a really great place to be because you've honored yourself and you've diversified your portfolio.

Diversification is very healthy, so keep trying those ideas that you think shouldn't really be done or won't be valuable.

At the end of the day, they will be.

When you're writing up your goals and you're trying to establish whether you should pursue one strain versus another, you wanna be careful not to limit yourself in that.

Because first of all, you do need to at least choose one path and pursue it and keep developing it, and hopefully eventually end up somewhere.

Your passion projects, you should maintain and pursue on the side.

But sooner or later, you may find that it's time for a transition and your passion really is taking over.

You have discovered that you're good at your passion, and now you actually wanna transition.

There is no harm in that.

We are all organic individuals and we grow and we change through the course of our careers.

It's way different being 25 years old than being 30 or 40 or 50 or 60.

But I would argue that if you weren't growing and changing, I would actually be worried about you.

So I would encourage you to grow, and change and evolve along with your career path and have your marketing tools evolve in accordance with the things that you are learning and developing.

And that will put you in a position of being a much more diversified and professionally satisfied individual at the end of the day.

Being diligent about your goals is very important, obviously, because the stronger of a plan that you have, the faster you're going to realize it.

But diversification is something that happens pretty organically in a career, and you wanna give yourself permission to explore as much as possible.

So I wouldn't be, I would encourage you not to be too rigid in your thinking.

You know, elders in your community will encourage you to follow this path and not deviate from it.

But life is beautiful and it's very rich, and there are problems and solutions absolutely everywhere you go.

So I would just really encourage you to staying open to the process and being diligent about revising your goals every year on your birthday, and having your goals keep pace with who you are as an individual internally instead of just being subject to the external, and your internal never gets the care that it actually needs.

And it gets that care by you taking care of your goals every year and growing and allowing yourself to change accordingly.

(logo whooshing) - Finally, tonight, regional musicians have a lot to offer, and we want to showcase those musicians as often as possible.

Tonight we highlight Shawn VanBrocklin.

We hope you enjoy this segment just as much as we do.

(upbeat music) (logo whooshing) (bright guitar music) ♪ Always on, on the run ♪ ♪ From what I never know ♪ ♪ Will your legs ever tire?

♪ ♪ If you're close let me know ♪ ♪ 'Cause I still hear the sounds ♪ ♪ Of those Holland feet ♪ ♪ Echoing through these empty streets ♪ ♪ I unraveled in with you ♪ ♪ With you ♪ ♪ With you, oh-oh ♪ ♪ You're never far, far from me ♪ ♪ Sleep walking through my dreams ♪ ♪ Your shoulder's cold on me now ♪ ♪ Am I a fool to try and part these clouds?

♪ ♪ But I still hear the sounds ♪ ♪ Of those Holland feet ♪ ♪ Echoing through these empty streets ♪ ♪ I unraveled in with you ♪ ♪ With you ♪ ♪ With you, oh-oh ♪ ♪ Letting doubt keep creepin' in ♪ ♪ The many voices in our heads ♪ ♪ Oh they seem to always win ♪ ♪ But this could be everything ♪ ♪ Come on, lets settle in ♪ ♪ Get in, get out ♪ ♪ Get in, get out of the way ♪ ♪ Come on, let's settle in ♪ ♪ Get in, get out ♪ ♪ Get in, get out in the way ♪ ♪ Come on, let's settle in ♪ ♪ Get in, get out ♪ ♪ Get in, get out on the way ♪ ♪ Come on let's settle in ♪ - That does it for this Tuesday night.

Join us next time for our fresh look inside the stories.

Johnny Spezzano of "The Border" teams up with Eric Senior Soluri of the "Full Throttle Saloon" TV series to make you a killer chili we won't soon forget.

And when we think of an octopus, we think of an eight legged creature with more than one heart and blue blood.

But there's so much more to learn about this incredible creature.

We'll tell you more.

(logo whooshing) Meantime, if you have a story idea you'd like us to explore, we'd love to learn more.

Drop us an email at wpbsweekly@wpbstv.org and let's share it with the region.

That's all for now, everybody.

Have a great night.

We will see you soon.

Take care.

(bright music) - [Announcer] "WPBS Weekly: Inside the Stories" is brought to you by the Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center, a free resource offering confidential business advice for those interested in starting or expanding their small business.

Serving Jefferson Lewis and Oswego Counties since 1986.

Online at watertown.nyspdc.org.

Additional funding provided by the J.M.

McDonald Foundation, the Estate of Grant Mitchell, (bright music) the Dr. D. Susan Badenhausen Legacy Fund of the Northern New York Community Foundation and the New York State Education Department.

♪ Get out in the way ♪ ♪ Come on, let's settle in ♪ ♪ Get in, get out ♪ ♪ Get in, get out on the way ♪ ♪ Come on, let's settle in ♪ (bright music)