Unseasoned: Sheree Denetsosie

What happens when an outdoor dream job is no longer your dream?

Welcome to the March Unseasoned interview!

Unseasoned is a series interviewing folks who leave behind outdoor seasonal gigs for 9-5s, entrepreneurship, or other year-round work. You can read more about the premise here.

This month we welcome Sheree Denetsosie, a southwestern river guide and manager turned accounting professional. Yes, she’s ready to help you tackle that scary room full of receipts. 

Sheree uses her guiding skills to talk clients through their financial fears, promotes building wealth to build power, and is ready to help her kid cousins become figure skaters, if that’s what they dream up.

As always, I’d love to hear what you thought of this interview and how you budget and plan your finances, as a seasonal or year-round professional. Either reply here or find me on IG: @emeraldlafortune

-Emerald

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THE INTERVIEW

Name: Sheree Denetsosie

Location: Flagstaff, AZ

Current Job Title: Student for Accountancy, Northern Arizona University

“I think that journey of being afraid of what my financial position was, then actually looking at it, then figuring out there's a way to get outside of it was really important to me.  I realized I can do this and if I can do it, other people can do it. I wanted to figure out a way to help people through that process.”

EMERALD: Tell me about a great “day in the life” in one of your past outdoor seasonal roles.

SHEREE: I don't know if I can remember a particular day, just the general feeling of what it was like to be away from day-to-day technology and really have a chance to be in the moment and take in everything that's happening. With guiding, so much of what you do is pay attention. Attention to what your clients needs are, attention to what the water is doing. You’re making sure everyone's okay. It takes so much of your intention too. It's almost like a day-to-day meditation. You get to be present a lot, which is something I definitely miss.

EMERALD: What was the hardest part of outdoor seasonal work for you?

SHEREE: I think the hardest part, especially when I started so young, was understanding positions of power. I think more than anything when I first started, I didn't have any authority or didn’t believe I had any authority. So it was difficult to do the work, which does require you to have some position of, “You have to listen to me cause I'm saying these things,” or “I'm asking you to do these things.” I’m having them do these things for safety reasons. But if people don't take you seriously, then you end up sounding like a little chihuahua until some other guide steps in and sets them right. Which can be a little discouraging when no one will listen to you unless someone else steps up and says it for you. 

EMERALD: What were you most worried about when leaving seasonal work? Did those fears actualize? 

SHEREE: I think there were some mental health kind of things. What would I be leaving behind? Like I said, so much of it, the work, was grounding to me and I had a hard time visualizing what my mental health would be like without long-term access to the outdoors. Because you'd be gone for days at a time. 

But then I went to day trips, where I still got a little taste of it. And then eventually I ended up in more office roles. So I was still adjacent to the outdoor world for a very long time. 

It was a weaning off of the longer trips more or less. I was worried about leaving for a while because when I stopped doing multi-day trips, I was very much a dramatic teenager! And it was like, “Oh, I'm gonna die without going on these trips. It’s gonna be the end of the world.” And then it wasn't. You learn how to deal with stuff and you move on, more or less. But teenage brain, it takes a little while to get past it.

EMERALD: You mentioned mental health. Speak to this as much or as little as you're comfortable: were there any particular tools you used for your mental health as you shifted out of that outdoor role?

SHEREE: It took a really long time, actually, to find my grounding again. A lot of the time it was just hikes or spending time outdoors as much as I could. Family was also a big part of that too. We have a ranch out on the reservation, so it was always nice to go out there. That's my other sanctuary away from modern life. The phones don't work as well out there, so you are kind of in a remote environment. 

Aside from those moments, it took a really long time to be more comfortable with not not having that long-term access to the outdoors. Or, it took time to find a more even keel to my own emotional well being and health.

EMERALD: How did you end up in your current role as an accounting student?

SHEREE: I was doing river trips in my teenage years. Then I started to work with the Forest Service and did interpretation down in Sedona. After that, I wanted to get into something a little more long term. It was always in the back of my mind that I'm not making a lot of money doing seasonal work the way I was doing it. I wanted to have something with a little bit more income. So I tried different things, and ended up in a lot of office positions throughout the years.

The biggest game changer was when I started to work for a company called Grand Canyon Adventures and rose among the ranks until I was a manager with their company. That was really the first time I came into my own. And then the pandemic happened and I had a moment where everyone was laid off and I was bored! I was like, “Well, how can I use all of these skills to get a degree?” I had an Associates at the time, so I decided to put myself back into school to get a Bachelors. I'm good enough with numbers and I had the background. I had my own process coming into financial stability because I was definitely one of those people that was like an ostrich. As in, “There's debt over there, we're not gonna pay attention to it!” If you don't see it, you don't have to fix it. 

It took a great friendship to enable me to face my debt and change my habits. I definitely had a lot of help getting through that. And I think that journey of being afraid of what my financial position was, then actually looking at it, then figuring out there's a way to get outside of it was really important to me.  I realized I can do this and if I can do it, other people can do it. I wanted to figure out a way to help people through that process. Because I think that avoidance is a lot of what people do, especially in the guiding business.

Another big reason that scared me away from getting too deep into guiding was wondering, “How do I make money? How do I make a long term life for myself and how do I even approach retirement? What does that look like? Can I actually afford to put away funds for retirement?” I just had so many questions I didn't know.

“Being a guide and being the person to de-escalate situations or recognize that someone is having trouble, that’s what I do in my current role now too.”

 EMERALD: Was your seasonal experience a help or a hindrance in securing your current position?

My seasonal experience has always been a help. It fostered a really strong situational awareness. It forces you to be a lot more creative with your solutions and how you approach any kind of problem. And I bring it up in just about every interview I have. I think it's a really good background to have because it teaches you so much about how to understand people and how to keep people safe, and how to help people understand their fears and get past them. If you have someone that's afraid of heights and is hiking in the Grand Canyon… it's nothing but really scary narrow pathways to get 'em into this really cool thing that they definitely want to see. You need to help them get past those fears to get them there in the first place.

Or, what do you do if you are trying to cook people breakfast and somehow the gas wasn't closed all the way and you lost all your gas? Things come up and it’s a problem solving type of job. I think it is a sink or swim business certainly. You get really good at thinking on your feet. And you get really good at just talking to people and making them feel at ease. You see some very spectacular things at the end. It's a really neat experience and it's a good storytelling tool as well, that I think speaks to a lot of different jobs and a lot of different applications.

EMERALD: For folks who might not be familiar with accounting, what are the connections between your role as a financial supporter or accountant and people skills? Why are those so intertwined and important?

SHEREE:  I think a big part of it is getting people to trust you and having a certain type of personality to say, “I know you're scared, but we can handle this.” For a while, I was a bookkeeper and the personality that I took on was a big part of the personality that I started to develop as a guide. You say,  “I know it's scary, but we'll get through this.” I had someone once that took me to a room and said, “All the receipts are in there. If you have any questions, find me, but I'm not going in there and I need you to take care of whatever is happening in that box.”

And I assure them that we've got this. We'll figure it out. Let me just organize it, try to get it to a place where I can see what's happening and we'll go from there. Some people are really scared of what their finances are or if they've done something wrong.

You either get into tax or auditing mostly when you're an accountant. As of now, I’m going the audit route. So this applies even more so with that, as it's this company that's coming into your business and asking a lot of really hard questions. Sometimes it feels really invasive.

An auditor is trying to find your mistakes. And there's a lot of pride involved with pointing out people's mistakes or pointing out the weakness in how they've built their business. I mean, their business is their pride. So if someone else comes by and says, “You're doing a terrible job and you need to fix these ten things,” it brings up a lot of emotion and defensiveness. 

Being a guide and being the person to de-escalate situations or recognize that someone is having trouble, that’s what I do in my current role now too. If you have someone that's dehydrated, you have to remove your own emotions from it and say, “Hey, this person is really touchy and getting arrogant and mean about stuff, but he also hasn't drank his water. I don't think I've seen him have any snacks. Let's take care of these things first.” Kind of take a breath and then revisit. Guiding really teaches you these core people skills.

EMERALD: I meet many employers of seasonal staff who are struggling to retain employees, particularly highly-skilled senior staff. What changes, if any, to the workplace or outdoor industry, would have extended your tenure in a seasonal role?

SHEREE: I don't think I've ever really stayed in a single place more than four years at a time. I think that partially it’s just a part of the industry. But I'm starting to see a shift in how the industry is keeping people on for longer periods of time. I think Grand Canyon Adventures, right when I was leaving, was starting to implement insurance policies for employees that did a certain amount of hours throughout the year. And I think they were trying to put together a first version, a test version essentially, of a retirement plan for the employees that stick around for longer periods of time.

There’s also Grand Canyon Youth here in town and I'm a part of their equity board. And they're trying to figure out what's feasible and what phase they should be in to keep people on for a longer period of time. So I think it's a conversation that's starting to happen in a lot of different settings. I’ve heard bosses come back from some outdoor kind of conference and that was the buzzword. It's like, if you want to keep people, you have to start introducing long-term benefits for people who stick around. 

Particularly I think Covid scared away a lot of people from doing seasonal work just because it the industry was 100% gone for a period of time. And depending on where you were at, you maybe could weather the storm and go back to work when the pandemic receded again. But because there was so much uncertainty, all of the tourism and the outdoor industry just took a big hit.

EMERALD: How did your family (defined broadly as any intimate familial, romantic, or platonic connections) interact with your seasonal work? 

SHEREE: I think for my immediate family, it was always a lot of fear. My mom definitely, every time I mentioned a river trip, she’s always like, “Be careful, don't die!”

But then after awhile she was like, “I'm not gonna say don't die…” but also she'd be really quiet, when I was really excited to go. And she's just like, “I'm not gonna say anything and that's the best I can do.”

So I think there's always that fear of you going out there and that's pretty much from my whole family. It felt super dangerous to them, like something's going to happen to you and it's not going to be good. But they were also always excited and proud of what I did out there. So it was a double-edged sword of, “Yeah, she's a guide that's cool. Also, it's terrifying me having her out there.” Which is a little tough.

EMERALD: Did it feel dangerous to you?

SHEREE: No. I mean, obviously not “no” in an arrogant way. I love being out there. I never really felt super in danger, I never feared for my life.  I was scared sometimes but I'm kind of a risk averse person anyways. I mean, accountant here, it's a part of the personality type! If there was an easier route through a rapid, I would take the easy route for sure. I’m not an adrenaline junkie by any means.

EMERALD: Are your relationships different now that you are in a year-round role? If yes, how so?

SHEREE: I don't think so really. I've always been a hyper workaholic. So even without seasonal work, I'm in and out. I'm close to my family. I go to as many of the functions and things as I can, but I definitely sometimes feel like I'm an outsider with family. I think that's also just where I'm at personally. Like I don't have a romantic partner. I don't have kids. 

Most of my cousins now - we're all close family, so cousins are like brothers and sisters to me - have kids and I don't. They're in their own parent bubble. And I'm in my non-traditional lifestyle outside of everybody else. So I definitely sometimes feel like the eternal outsider. Because I probably at this point won't have kids and I don't really feel a strong need for them. It feels like the rest of my family is on this strong American values path and I'm somewhere else.

But whenever I get rich, I'll definitely… there are alternate plans of mine for putting together scholarships just for my family or putting together different funds to help get these kids to college or help, you know, if someone wants to become a figure skater or something. I want to put aside money so that they can do those things. Because I know I probably won't have kids to support. And I feel like with accounting it's not a small amount of money that I'll be making. I definitely want to be mindful about how I spend my money in the future and be really conscious of that for sure.

EMERALD: How did moving from seasonal work to more year round work pursuing your degree change your financial situation. Or as a student, I suppose I’ll ask, how do you anticipate it will change your financial situation as you move into that career path?

SHEREE: It helped me get out of debt. It definitely put me in a mindset of, if I can rely on this paycheck, I can plan to plan. I can do all these plans to pay down this, put aside money for this. I can actually budget, realistically budget for the first time. It gave me a lot more stability to trust.

EMERALD: In your bio, you write you are pursuing your degree to, “Advocate for a more financially secure generation of Indigenous leaders/artists/non-profits.” A generation from now, what does succeeding in this advocacy look and feel like?

SHEREE: I think that the idea of supporting nonprofits or Indigenous leaders and artists is a big part of giving voices to people. Because we live in this capitalist world where money is a big part of how you take power. I think if I can support more people who have a deeper view of how they want to make money and spend money, and participate in that role, I think that's something that I should support.

A big part of it too was during the pandemic folks who were roadside vendors, all of a sudden they were out of work for months at a time because they didn't have any structures to sell their wares. If they had, for example, an online store, how cool would that have been to have something like an Indigenous Amazon store. There are so many cool ideas. It’s important to support people making their own wealth especially when jobs are needed wherever they are. 

And there are so many different organizations that do that already. Change Labs is a big one that I really admire. They support Indigenous entrepreneurs and have an incubator that helps people work through their program. People consider how they put together their finances and it gives them a big support system and internet marketplace. I think they're also building an office so people can have a communal workplace to come together. There are some really cool initiatives out there that I definitely want be more a part of and help them grow as much as they can.

EMERALD: What does “dream job” mean to you? Has this definition changed?

SHEREE: I think it changes like every 10 years! I've been lucky enough in pursuing what my dream jobs are that I can usually make it happen. When I first started out, I thought, “I want to be a guide.” Then I was for a bit. Then I thought, “I want to try something a little bit more long term.” I tried to work for the Forest Service and I did for a bit, then I kind of bounced around and now I'm in accounting. 

Who knows, in ten years I might be like, “Oh, whatever, I'll just become a pilot!” I'm not super committed to things but I think in a good way. I always like learning new things and I think that's the thread between it all. As long as I'm learning new things, I'm engaged and I really enjoy what I do.

Guiding provided that for a while. Because I was always learning something new about my interpretation and how I went about it. 

Finance was a big part of learning something new because it felt like it was a hole in my own education. How to handle money, how to interpret a budget… I was always kind of clueless on that for a while. I realized, “This is super important and I want to eventually learn how to do it.” 

It’s never a finish line, what a dream job is. I think the dream job is always the next thing.

EMERALD: If someone in outdoor seasonal work is interested in shifting to pursuing a degree or a year-round role, what would you suggest they consider? Why?

SHEREE: The Forest Service was a nice kind of shift, I think especially if you're okay with moving around. If you can find seasonal work in one spot, you'll find seasonal work wherever. Especially if you get good with your higher up, the more you move around, the higher chance you have of being there long term. Personally, I think that's part of why I didn't really stick with the Forest Service. It was almost expected for you to move around with the seasonal work. When you were ready or high enough to kind of settle down, then maybe you eventually could.

I'm a really big fan of day trip type tours. Like the van tours were where I started to actually feel settled and ready to kind of make that final switch to accounting. Day trips gave me enough stability to really be able to make that switch. That was when I was their office manager. So if you can get behind the desk but still be a part of the guiding community, I think that's also a really great first shift. If you need to hop in a van because a guy got sick, then you can at a moment's notice. But also, you know that you're going to be at an office desk from Monday through Friday and there’s a set paycheck as well.

EMERALD: Imagine you’re eighty years old, retired, living your best life. In three - five sentences, describe the scene.

SHEREE: 80 years old. My goodness.

At that point, I think I would be on my family ranch, having built up my home out there. I’ve built up the land a bit. I’m spending time with my family. Nothing fancy.

“It’s never a finish line, what a dream job is. I think the dream job is always the next thing.”

Past Non-Seasonal Roles: 

• Grand Canyon Adventures (Office Manager)

• Bookkeeper

• Grand Canyon Trust

Past Seasonal Roles: 

• Grand Canyon Youth

• AZRA

• US Forest Service

Education & Certifications (Current or expired): 

• WFR

• Associate of Arts

• Masters in Accountancy (2024)

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