Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Sean Riley on People-First Culture: Delivering Popsicles, Protecting Values, and Positively Impacting Lives

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Sean Riley on People-First Culture: Delivering Popsicles, Protecting Values, and Positively Impacting Lives · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:14
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
• 0:18
  today's guest is Sean Riley, CEO of Main Course Hospitality
• 0:23
  Group, A partnership based hotel management company with a people
• 0:27
  first culture. Founded in 1986, MCHG delivers
• 0:33
  strong financial returns for owners while supporting teams
• 0:36
  who bring hospitality to life. Now.
• 0:39
  Over the years, the company has grown from one property to more
• 0:42
  than two dozen hotels across the US.
• 0:46
  Under Sean's leadership, they have expanded their footprint
• 0:49
  and embraced a culture rooted in integrity, respect, family, and
• 0:54
  fun. Now, Sean began his journey with
• 0:56
  MCHG in 1992 as a General Manager.
• 1:01
  With more than 4 decades of hotel management experience, he
• 1:04
  is known for reaching out personally to associates,
• 1:07
  handwriting notes of appreciation, and engaging with
• 1:10
  employees during holidays. Now before we get into all that
• 1:14
  good stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company,
• 1:16
  Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and
• 1:20
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  and some organizations may not be eligible.
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  To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
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  AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
• 1:58
  today, the CEO of Main Course Hospitality Group, Sean Riley.
• 2:02
  Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
• 2:04
  Well, thanks Anthony. This is great to be be chatting
• 2:08
  with a professional. I mean, you're good and you look
• 2:11
  good, you act good and I love it.
• 2:12
  But you know, we got a lot of fun stuff.
• 2:14
  We can talk about it. You know, we chatted a little
• 2:16
  bit before and I'm just ready to jump in.
• 2:17
  Let's do. It let's do it, you know, and
• 2:19
  actually I'm going to go a little bit out of order here
• 2:21
  because before we started, you were talking about something
• 2:24
  that really caught my attention. We're recording this on December
• 2:28
  18th, 2025 S right heading into the holidays, and I was asking
• 2:32
  you what your plans were for Christmas and what you answered
• 2:38
  really surprised me. What is it you're going to be
• 2:40
  doing on Christmas? Well, I do this every Christmas
• 2:44
  and it's one of the probably one of the biggest pleasures I have.
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  We have over 700 associates in our company, over 28 hotels, 8
• 2:51
  States and they're all working. There's people working on
• 2:54
  Christmas and that's a, that's a commitment on their part.
• 2:57
  Now we pay them extra for it and you know, there's, there's
• 3:00
  benefits for that, but they're working for on Christmas.
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  So I call every hotel every shift on Christmas.
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  Now we have 28 hotels, 27 hotels and three shifts, midnight
• 3:12
  shift, day shift, night shift and just say Merry Christmas and
• 3:17
  thank you for working today. I know it's a holiday, but I
• 3:19
  really appreciate it. And the fun thing is, you know,
• 3:22
  people, some of these people said, you know, Sean, this is
• 3:24
  the 15th year we we've talked, you know, that's good for a
• 3:27
  night audit. You don't want to lose night
• 3:28
  audits because I don't want to do that shift, but you know that
• 3:31
  those are the fun things that to me, I get so much pleasure out
• 3:33
  of an enjoyment and and it's just exciting.
• 3:36
  And so we do that and then then I, you know, it's like I'm an
• 3:38
  overachiever. I said, OK, well, Mike bought a
• 3:41
  Santa suit for my when I might go visit my grandkids when they
• 3:44
  were younger. And so I started doing that and
• 3:46
  I'd go out and visit six or seven hotels within a couple
• 3:48
  hours of us early. Again, I'm an early morning guy.
• 3:50
  So I'd go in and go ho, ho, ho. Sean, I was wondering if you're
• 3:54
  going to show up this year Santa.
• 3:56
  So, but it goes back to this. These people are working on
• 3:59
  Christmas. That's all I do this, I make the
• 4:01
  calls on Thanksgiving as well, but I don't visit the hotels and
• 4:05
  they deserve it. And they just, they come to
• 4:07
  expect it. And I guess that's an OK thing.
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  And the first time I did it was when we had one hotel and I
• 4:12
  called 3 shifts. When we get 27 it takes a bit
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  more time, but it's it's one of the biggest joys I have over the
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  Christmas. So what are you just like up all
• 4:20
  night? No, no, it's 330I mean, I get up
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  at 3:30 anyway, so, so I just call him up and I'll say, you
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  know, and I'll make some of the calls in my car if I'm dressed
• 4:29
  as Santa. So I, I did.
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  I did get pulled over once and the guy put a police officer and
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  I'm in a Santa suit and he said what are you doing?
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  And I'm thinking what the heck do you think I'm doing?
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  What? I got a Santa suit on but so I
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  didn't get arrested though he was OK and I did oh, he asked
• 4:45
  him, I said, wait, can I do a selfie?
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  I thought that would be so cool for social media and he said no,
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  no, I can't. He got a little upset when I
• 4:50
  asked him to do a selfie with me but.
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  Well, I have a feeling we're going to talk a lot more about
• 4:55
  company culture as we get into this conversation just based on
• 4:58
  that little bit that we covered there.
• 5:00
  But before we get to that point, I want to understand kind of
• 5:03
  your entry into the industry because you actually started
• 5:06
  out, I believe as a teacher. Is that right?
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  And how did how did that experience kind of influence the
• 5:13
  way that you mentor and develop talent today?
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  Well, you know that it's a great point because you have to think
• 5:20
  about your career and what you did.
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  And then all of a sudden you start, you know, I've had my,
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  I've been doing this for many years.
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  I've graduated, you know, I graduated from the same school I
• 5:27
  went and taught to taught at. So I taught kids with special
• 5:30
  needs, but bright, bright kids just had little quirky things
• 5:34
  going on with them. And I learned from that those
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  years that you take someone from where they're at, you know, if
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  this, if this kid could only do math and they've couldn't do
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  math, you let me just calculate it.
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  It's the concept of what you get now.
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  Or if it couldn't read, there's ways to work around that.
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  And you take that student from this point and go to another
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  point and they learn. So when I look back at that, how
• 5:57
  did it help me? So when I, we have housekeeping
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  teams that I need to, we need to take from where they're at.
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  They may have a language bearer, they may have personal issues,
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  they may have life issues. And so you take them from where
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  they're at and no two people are alike.
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  But then you take it up a level, you go to assistant managers,
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  it's the same thing. General managers, same thing.
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  We got a general manager who'd be so good at the numbers,
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  someone else was so good at loving the people.
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  So it's the same thing. It's the same thing.
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  And even when you get to the senior corporate people, the
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  same thing. They're all operate given, they
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  have their strengths and weaknesses, just got to take
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  them from where they're at. And how do you maybe this is the
• 6:33
  wrong way to ask the question, and I think you'll let me know
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  if it is. How do you understand where
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  somebody's ceiling is so you can get an idea of where they are
• 6:41
  now and where they can get to? I don't think we can determine
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  that right away. I think you have to do.
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  It's the Peter Principle. I mean, I shouldn't, probably
• 6:49
  shouldn't be in the role I'm in. I rose to my level of
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  incompetence a few jobs ago. But I think what I have is the
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  ability to read people and look at it.
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  But in to me at my job, I can't read everybody we have on a
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  company because that's we're too large.
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  But it's reading the people in between and helping them
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  understand. I think they, I'm real fortunate
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  to be surrounded by people that are really good at that.
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  And when it goes back to what our what our values are, is the
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  positive purposes to positively impact lives.
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  If we keep that as our focus, we're going to look for ways to
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  take them to where they want to go.
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  Now, some people are very happy just doing what they did and
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  they've done the job for 20 years and that's great.
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  But we want to make sure that we ask that question, you know,
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  when they're doing their reviews, are you happy with what
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  you're doing? Do you want to do more?
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  Then that's part of the way we get people out of that.
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  And there are other people that are raising their hand all the
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  time. And that's, you know, those are
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  the ones that are easy to pick out, But it's the other ones
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  kind of the sleepers. And it's like, jeez, we should
• 7:39
  have said something to them years ago.
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  Or we, we have pushed people into a role that they probably
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  weren't ready for. That's the other thing.
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  So that's why you have to be really cautious because you
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  don't want to set them up for failure.
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  Yeah. So whether they're raising their
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  hand or you're kind of identifying them as folks that
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  you know could use some advancement, could use some help
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  in getting from here to there, what is that then mentoring or
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  that coaching or that teaching process look like at main
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  course? I I think it's, it's give taking
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  a step by step, you know, and some people raise the hand they
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  might not be ready and that's OK.
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  And that's where the coaching comes in as well.
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  And you know, when I was AGM, our front office manager, I was
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  doing those things on a daily basis and sitting by side.
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  But I think a lot of our senior leaders are doing the same
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  thing. They're sitting down there
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  coaching and they talk about that and they write it down.
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  What do you want to do? And then you kind of map out a
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  plan how, you know, we're not going to say you're going to
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  your housekeeper today or front desk person.
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  We're going to give you a map to your a general manager and
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  corporate entity. We're not we're going to say
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  you're going to be let's let's get you.
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  Are you, are you helping the people you're working with?
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  You know, I mean, a lot of this doesn't mean a job change.
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  It just means if you're assisting your Co workers, if
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  all of a sudden you earn the respect to your Co workers, then
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  it's like you're kind of get doing the job without getting
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  anything about it. And all of a sudden you're
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  proving himself. And that's one of the things I
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  think most of the senior leaders in that company, including me, I
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  was doing the job, whatever level I was at before I got the
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  title, before I really had the job.
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  And that's when it's like, you've got a safety net there.
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  Now, if someone's raising their hand, they're doing the job and
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  they're already doing it, that's easy.
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  Then people say, well, it's about time.
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  You should have had that job, you know, and that's what they
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  say to me. And it's OK, well, he should
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  have had that title, whatever it is.
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  But there's a lot of people who have done that.
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  And then what you do is you're not afraid of, oh, what happens
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  if they don't make it? Now you got to cut them back and
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  put them in a different role. So you just, you're kind of
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  giving them that, letting them get their feet wet and they may
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  find out they don't like it and that's OK too, because then they
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  can do what they always wanted, what they always did.
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  I mean, life is as much about figuring out which hats don't
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  fit as which hats do fit, right? So let's talk about your own
• 9:44
  path. How did you get from being a
• 9:46
  teacher into the hospitality space?
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  Well, teachers need summer jobs. And I had a gentleman we talked
• 9:53
  to, he would go to our church and he said, you know, I'm going
• 9:56
  to, I'm thinking of buying this little motel And the name, we'll
• 9:59
  just tell you about when it was in the, in the hierarchy of
• 10:02
  hotels, it was called Slumberland.
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  It had a, a seahorse on the side.
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  There was 19 rooms. And my wife and I was, were
• 10:10
  teachers and she'd, we just, we're just going to have a
• 10:12
  child. So I left teaching.
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  I mean, she left teaching and was going to live it, stay at
• 10:16
  home with the kids. And we, we ran a motel and it
• 10:19
  was only open summers and weekends through the fall.
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  And so we did everything there. We had like 1 housekeeper would
• 10:24
  help us and we did everything else.
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  And we had one night a week off. We got, we were, we were wealthy
• 10:29
  at that point. I mean, we were getting $4000 a
• 10:31
  year for two of us to run that motel.
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  But you know, it, it taught us the things.
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  I mean, I did the plumbing, my wife did the accounting, she did
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  the housekeeping. We did, you know, we both did
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  these things and we learned a lot from the ground.
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  And, and then we had one employee.
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  So that was how we learned how to deal with employees.
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  But that was, that was the start.
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  And then each time we moved on to a little larger hotel, a
• 10:51
  little larger hotel, we'd get more of the, you know, the
• 10:54
  interaction with associates. And you know, I, I, I, I wrote
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  something somewhere recently. I was on a blog, I think.
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  And it, we, we, the things we did when we had one employee and
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  the way those employees reacted, it's no different than 7700.
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  It's just there's more often, you know, and, and so it was
• 11:13
  they want the same thing. They need the same thing.
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  And if you treat it as if you're talking, if you're a one person
• 11:19
  hotel company, that's the way they want to be treated.
• 11:22
  Even though there's 707 hundred of them, how can you make them
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  feel like this company's revolving around them?
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  Now, I don't have all the answers.
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  You can't. I can't do that with 700.
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  But if that message comes across and we're always talking about
• 11:34
  that and impacting the lives of our associates, then maybe 600
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  of them are going to feel impacted and positive.
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  That's really cool. So how did the opportunity to
• 11:45
  join Main Course Hospitality Group come about?
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  Well, so I was moving that career and I finally gave up
• 11:51
  teaching, gave my notice and actually his leave of absence to
• 11:54
  make sure it's what I wanted to do Yep, I liked it.
• 11:57
  And then as soon as I gave my my final notice, the placement on
• 12:00
  the market, I had to find something else.
• 12:02
  We had to move my family. And that was what probably one
• 12:04
  of those down times, you know, people when, when you're in a
• 12:06
  position like mine, it's, you know, all this guy's done this,
• 12:08
  he's done well and he's done all this.
• 12:10
  And he just got there easily. And that was a tough thing.
• 12:12
  I had to move my family. I didn't know what we're going
• 12:14
  to do. And I've stepped to the bigs,
• 12:16
  40% cut in pay, move to a different area.
• 12:19
  And, and when I got there, I said, OK, I found my place.
• 12:23
  This is going to be it. A little bit later.
• 12:25
  The guy ended up having financial problems.
• 12:27
  The guy that I moved to had financial problems and he turned
• 12:31
  the turn the hotel over to the bank and do a foreclosure.
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  That was during the saving, savings and loan crisis.
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  And then, so then we worked for a bank for two years and then
• 12:41
  these two guys. So the place stayed open and was
• 12:43
  just under control of the bank, OK.
• 12:45
  Yeah, and it it did very well. I mean, this was this that was
• 12:47
  one of his the crazy things, the savings and loans crisis, people
• 12:50
  just calling, you know, loans and this place always did well.
• 12:53
  But so then like these two guys who are young bachelors, the
• 12:58
  older bachelors and just having a blast.
• 13:00
  And they were restaurant guys and they say, hey, let's buy
• 13:02
  this, let's buy this hotel. And they bought it.
• 13:05
  And that was the introduction to Maine course.
• 13:06
  That was the Freeport. And it was back in 80, around
• 13:10
  90, I guess, somewhere in the 90s, early 90s.
• 13:12
  And they, they all of a sudden they said, you know what, We're
• 13:16
  making more money in this hotel than we are in any one of our
• 13:18
  restaurants. And then we did 2 hotels and
• 13:20
  they said, geez, these two hotels are making more money
• 13:23
  than all our restaurants. And we're losing money in some
• 13:25
  of the restaurants. So they said, let's stop moving
• 13:27
  down that path. And so that's how we kind of get
• 13:29
  going. And over time, we divested of
• 13:31
  the restaurants and just focused on hotels.
• 13:33
  It was a, it was a business decision.
• 13:35
  We love the rest. I love the restaurant because
• 13:36
  it's exciting, but it's a lot of hard work.
• 13:38
  We go home smelling whatever food we were serving that night.
• 13:41
  And and when you sell a restaurant, you know, it's
• 13:45
  different than when you sell a hotel hotel, you have an asset.
• 13:48
  When you sell a restaurant, you're selling the business in
• 13:49
  the name. So it does, it isn't necessarily
• 13:51
  as you don't get a good exit strategy.
• 13:54
  So that grew and we said did our first, first Marriott in O4 and
• 13:59
  our first Hilton in O 6. And then we kind of focus mostly
• 14:03
  in those ranges with Hilton and marit franchising.
• 14:05
  And so that's kind of how we get into that.
• 14:07
  And then the main course was something I had a boss.
• 14:10
  He was the president of the company and he was great mentor,
• 14:13
  great man and I and when I when I had when I had what he chose
• 14:16
  to leave and I took over, I was scared to death.
• 14:19
  I mean, he was a he was the most positive guy and the
• 14:22
  inspirational guy. And it's like I wear big shoes
• 14:24
  to fill. But you know, we did and we
• 14:27
  talked about it a lot as a group and, and we did OK.
• 14:30
  You know, we became a hotel company.
• 14:32
  So when I want to back up first to the time where you were sort
• 14:38
  of in limbo, right in between, you had entered the hospitality
• 14:42
  space, tried it out for a year, then put in your full notice.
• 14:44
  Great, this is what I'm going to do.
• 14:46
  And then all of a sudden you're without a job.
• 14:49
  And you know, we kind of glossed over it.
• 14:51
  You touched on it a little bit, but like that loss of
• 14:56
  employment, loss of income, loss of identity, that's a real
• 14:59
  struggle to get through, especially, you know, you've got
• 15:02
  a young family at that point. Yeah, exactly.
• 15:05
  And I think I guess what what you you do is you look back and
• 15:09
  you say, OK, we didn't do anything wrong.
• 15:13
  It was the situation we're in. And I mean, there were two of
• 15:15
  those back-to-back because I, the first one I lost, I mean, I
• 15:18
  left the job because it was going to be sold.
• 15:20
  And the second one I went into, you know, it wasn't bankruptcy,
• 15:23
  but in the foreclosure. And we ended up each one of
• 15:27
  those things. Yeah.
• 15:28
  We just kind of had to take it day by day.
• 15:30
  And I'd be gut wrenching. I'm thinking, what am I going to
• 15:32
  do with my family? What's going to happen?
• 15:34
  And you know, my kids, they were kind of young and I take them to
• 15:37
  school and drop them off. And I had a little Ford Escort
• 15:39
  wagon and it had a backup beeper and it was a sick sounding
• 15:42
  thing. And I'd pull up the school and
• 15:44
  go, my kids dad don't get any way into the building.
• 15:47
  But we had nothing. And we, we were afraid of losing
• 15:51
  what at what little we did have. And it just really took us, my
• 15:54
  wife and I did, we worked together and it, we just, it was
• 15:57
  really hard to say we've got to get through this and we're going
• 16:00
  to be fine no matter what we do. The worst case, we know we can
• 16:03
  get a job. We just don't know where or what
• 16:06
  it's going to be. And I think we just had to
• 16:09
  believe in ourselves and we had to believe that this is was
• 16:12
  going to be OK. And during what's I think a by
• 16:16
  product of this is when we buy a hotel now or a hotel is for sale
• 16:20
  and we're looking at it and we're going to buy a hotel,
• 16:22
  which we do, you know, at least once a year.
• 16:25
  I can relate to those people and what they're going through
• 16:29
  because I went through that without not knowing if I was
• 16:31
  going to have a job any day someone came through for a tour
• 16:33
  and I didn't know what to say to them.
• 16:34
  I don't want to make it sound too good because they might, you
• 16:36
  know, I don't make it too sound too bad.
• 16:37
  And it was really, really gut wrenching to go through that.
• 16:40
  And our associates did too. And so I can relate.
• 16:44
  And when we're talking to the teams and I said, I know what
• 16:46
  you're going through And it's not because I'm trying to say
• 16:48
  I'm a pathetic or anything. I went through that.
• 16:50
  I know what you're going through and I got through it OK and we
• 16:53
  did fine and I think you will too.
• 16:55
  And I promise you, we're going to earn you respect over this
• 16:57
  time, you know this time, because that's what's going to
• 17:00
  make a difference in you joining our family, the main course
• 17:02
  family. And so are you owning all of the
• 17:05
  hotels that you're also operating or do you operate,
• 17:09
  operate as a manager management company for some other folks
• 17:12
  that own the hotel properties? We do both.
• 17:14
  We do both. So when we began was two guys he
• 17:18
  involved. I mean they're crazy.
• 17:19
  I mean, the corporate name was Dogs R Us and then they had a
• 17:23
  separate one that's dogs unlimited and then Twinkie maker
• 17:25
  and I mean, they just they were crazy bachelors had fun.
• 17:27
  And you know, as we started to get a little more size and
• 17:30
  business. I mean, if you go and pay, pay a
• 17:32
  credit card at a restaurant, you have to give them the whole
• 17:34
  story about the restaurant. Dogs are us.
• 17:36
  So go to insurance. Here comes dogs unlimited.
• 17:39
  But so I I lost the question of the what was the question?
• 17:44
  I I just get going on that. I I lost it too.
• 17:47
  I don't know you. You took me down with you.
• 17:50
  Dogs. Oh, are you a management company
• 17:52
  or do you, Oh yeah, yeah, your own properties?
• 17:54
  Yeah. So when we started, that was
• 17:55
  just the two guys and everything was 5050.
• 17:58
  And then we started saying, OK, one of the guys bought 1 and
• 18:01
  then he bought another. And so we started a management
• 18:04
  company. I mean, we're all kind of, we're
• 18:06
  all dogs, but we started a management company.
• 18:08
  It was a little bit that was main course hospitality group,
• 18:10
  just the entity. And so then we then we had
• 18:14
  somebody asked us if we manage fall and we said sure.
• 18:18
  So we right now I think we have 8 managed properties that we
• 18:22
  have sliver equity and we put equity in everyone because we're
• 18:24
  showing that we want skin in the game.
• 18:26
  But the the other ones, we have majority interest between, you
• 18:29
  know, multiple partners, myself or the other two partners are
• 18:31
  CFO and we've actually opened it up to other leaders in the
• 18:35
  company too, if they'd like to be in the acquisitions.
• 18:38
  And so we so we manage for those people.
• 18:41
  We manage as if we own it. I think that's what kind of
• 18:43
  separates us in some cases. A lot of times management
• 18:45
  companies are purely management companies, but we know what it's
• 18:47
  like to have to pay the mortgage.
• 18:49
  We know what it's like when things go awry, there's a
• 18:51
  hurricane, you got to deal with things.
• 18:53
  It's not a big corporate thing. We we know that we operate
• 18:55
  hotels. And so that I think is a benefit
• 18:58
  and I think that's appreciated by our third party partners.
• 19:00
  And what's nice is that most of our partners, they had one hotel
• 19:04
  when they started with us. Now they have two or they have
• 19:06
  three or they have 4. And that's a nice thing.
• 19:08
  And actually few of them are buying into the hotels that we
• 19:12
  have and they're buying in. So it didn't start out that way.
• 19:16
  It started out we were a management company.
• 19:17
  We get, you know, a percentage of, you know, the percentage we
• 19:20
  charge them and we have a contract.
• 19:22
  Some of the contracts we have now we just, you know, it's like
• 19:24
  there's no outs, we don't need it.
• 19:25
  They want to get rid of us. They do, but they don't and we
• 19:27
  don't go. And so it's just a great, it
• 19:29
  goes back to that the culture we have.
• 19:31
  And I think they believe in what we believe in.
• 19:33
  And that's a nice thing to have. When you choose partners, you
• 19:35
  want to choose people who are going to be no one like you and
• 19:38
  you no one like them. And you don't have to worry
• 19:40
  about, I mean, I just want to shake your hand, say let's go,
• 19:42
  let's go get it, Let's go start a business.
• 19:43
  But you got to get legal. So, yeah.
• 19:46
  But so I'd say the majority, but we we operate them.
• 19:49
  You wouldn't know none of our people, probably some of our
• 19:51
  people don't even know that it's third party just because you
• 19:53
  know within our company. Yeah, interesting.
• 19:57
  So what are some of the personality traits that you're
• 19:59
  looking for in a business partnership?
• 20:04
  You know, when people call and say, Hey, I want to talk to you
• 20:06
  about manage that place. And they said, well, how much do
• 20:08
  you charge? And they said, well, I don't
• 20:09
  know. I said, I said, let's let's get
• 20:12
  together and talk. I said, well, I just want to
• 20:14
  know what you charge. And I said, what's going to
• 20:15
  depend on what you you're going to find out if you like us.
• 20:17
  It makes no sense to talk about money if you don't like us or
• 20:20
  vice versa. And I think we try to look for
• 20:23
  people who have the same way they want to treat associates.
• 20:27
  I mean, I mean, obviously it's a big deal.
• 20:29
  We want to, we want to make more money by having more revenues,
• 20:33
  but not if not, if it's not going to work.
• 20:35
  We had one recently that this, I probably shouldn't get too deep
• 20:38
  into the story, but the guy was quite outgoing.
• 20:41
  And you know, Jonathan and I had the guy that was, we're not
• 20:44
  drinkers. And he kept wanting us to drink
• 20:46
  with him. And we say, well, this is truth
• 20:48
  serum. And I said, well, we tell the
• 20:50
  truth either way. But at the end of the day, this
• 20:53
  was 6, 4 hours at the dinner, which was, you know, we were
• 20:57
  drinking, but someone else was. But when we left, Jonathan was
• 21:00
  new to us and he said, Sean, what do you think?
• 21:01
  He said there could be some money there.
• 21:02
  I said, yeah, I know. But do we want our people to be
• 21:06
  when you go to one of our galas or with our leaders and to be,
• 21:09
  have somebody feel uncomfortable with a partner who doesn't fit
• 21:12
  our, who we are and what we believe in.
• 21:14
  And then we he said that's the healthiest thing.
• 21:16
  It's like, yeah, so we lost couple $100,000 a year.
• 21:18
  It didn't matter to us because it didn't infect the people we
• 21:22
  really love, you know, on our team.
• 21:25
  That's powerful. Yeah.
• 21:27
  I mean, OK, if this guy wants to have a drink with dinner, but
• 21:30
  for him to be pushing it on you, he wants the truth serum.
• 21:35
  He wants the truth to come out. That's.
• 21:39
  It wasn't even a way. It wasn't a wondering, you know,
• 21:42
  by the way, I'll get offline and tell you the rest of it, OK?
• 21:44
  But it was. But, you know, it taught us
• 21:46
  something about we stand for our principles.
• 21:49
  We stand with our people and if we do that all the time, then
• 21:53
  they can count on us that we're not going to bring out.
• 21:55
  We can make mistakes too. I'm sure we could partner with
• 21:58
  someone who's not, and we've had partners who've done that, but
• 22:00
  not in this part of our company. So I, I think just stand true to
• 22:04
  our principles, who we stand for.
• 22:05
  And then it's kind of give back to that said, you know, do is
• 22:09
  this going to help our culture to join with this team?
• 22:12
  Yeah. And if it isn't, we don't want
• 22:13
  it. Well, I mean part of your
• 22:15
  mission statement includes positively impacting lives.
• 22:20
  Can you wrap that in like a real life story that helps to
• 22:24
  illustrate that? Yeah, couple.
• 22:29
  So I, we, we acquired a hotel and we had it about five years
• 22:34
  and I, I write birthday cards for all our associates and that,
• 22:37
  you know. All 700 of them.
• 22:39
  Well, 700 that worked for us and 300 who left the job and came
• 22:42
  back or that kind of thing. So it's about 1000 a year and
• 22:45
  someone else pulls them together for me.
• 22:46
  I don't do the mailing and all that, but you know, when you
• 22:48
  come in your desk and get 70 birthday cards and I don't just
• 22:51
  say Sean, I don't stamp it. I mean, I say, hey, Anthony,
• 22:55
  happy birthday. Hope it's a great one.
• 22:57
  It was great talking the other day.
• 22:58
  Or sometimes it's it's pretty generic because I might not even
• 23:01
  know who they are with 800 people, 700 people.
• 23:03
  But so I do it every year and, and I went to this, I went to
• 23:08
  this one hotel and the housekeeper, the laundry lady
• 23:11
  comes in and she's been there for 20 years or something.
• 23:13
  And she comes, I need to show you something.
• 23:15
  I'm like, oh God, she's going to come.
• 23:16
  She needs a new washer. She's not happy with the table
• 23:18
  or something like that. And I go and she goes, look at
• 23:20
  that, look at that. She's tapping on the wall.
• 23:22
  And I went around and I look it up closely and it was the
• 23:25
  birthday cards for the last five years.
• 23:27
  And then a couple notes that she received from my Mia, the
• 23:29
  general manager, something she goes, that's why I love this
• 23:32
  here. And it just, you know, as I'm
• 23:35
  doing that 770 birthday cards, I walk in, I'm like, shoot, look
• 23:38
  at all those things. But in reality, look what that
• 23:42
  did. She's saving those on a wall.
• 23:43
  This is a 65 year old woman that's proud of getting a note
• 23:50
  from the CEO. Yeah.
• 23:52
  So that, that was one thing. The other one relatives, the
• 23:54
  birthday cards too, is that I, I had a like I said, I do those
• 23:58
  things on a regular basis and I went out and visited a hotel and
• 24:01
  a lot of times they'll say, Hey, thanks Sean, for they'll see me.
• 24:03
  Hey, thanks for sending me a birthday card.
• 24:05
  Someone else will say they'll send me a text.
• 24:06
  Hey, I really appreciate the birthday wishes.
• 24:08
  Well, I went to this one hotel and the guy said, hey, Sean, I
• 24:12
  just want to thank you for the birthday card.
• 24:14
  They all do that. I said, well, that's great.
• 24:16
  I'm really glad. I'm I'm, I'm glad you, you know,
• 24:19
  you meant something to her. No, no, Sean, I want to tell you
• 24:21
  it really was important. I said, well, good, I'm glad of
• 24:24
  that. You know, it makes me feel good.
• 24:26
  He said, Sean, I mean, I really mean it because I come home
• 24:29
  every every day on my birthday, every time I have a birthday, I
• 24:32
  come home and I go to the mailbox and my mother's always
• 24:34
  got a card event for me and she didn't have one this year.
• 24:38
  And you know, so then I'm getting, Oh my God.
• 24:41
  And he and he said the only thing in that mailbox was your
• 24:44
  card. And you know, and I, I still get
• 24:47
  choked up talking about it. You know, it's such a, that guy
• 24:51
  needed that. And then he said, and
• 24:53
  furthermore, my girlfriend just broke up with me and I came home
• 24:56
  and the only thing that was in there was your birthday card.
• 24:59
  So as much as I think, OK, there's two hours of my life
• 25:01
  every every once a month on a Saturday sign a birthday cards,
• 25:05
  those are the kinds of things that matter.
• 25:06
  And that's where the positively impacting lives.
• 25:08
  We don't know at my level or any level how we're impacting lives
• 25:13
  when we do something, whether it be a note or card or a call or a
• 25:17
  text, you know, to someone who's sick or someone's in the
• 25:19
  hospital or something like that. And that those two stories
• 25:22
  really remind me of how important what we do every day
• 25:25
  for our team and for our family, make a difference.
• 25:30
  So I have to assume that a big part of what makes all of this
• 25:35
  work, this people engine, is that you're leading by example.
• 25:41
  And your leaders, the folks that report to you, they're seeing
• 25:46
  this, they're following your example.
• 25:48
  But how else does this get communicated down through the
• 25:53
  ranks that hey, this is the way that we run Main course
• 25:57
  hospitality group, this is the way that we treat people.
• 26:02
  You know, it's not, it's not 100% success rate.
• 26:06
  I mean, it doesn't get all the way through the organization.
• 26:08
  Not everybody does that. We have leadership meetings and
• 26:11
  that's always on the sculpture. Now when I go to visit hotels,
• 26:14
  it's always the conversation with the GMs and it's and if I
• 26:18
  run into the housekeepers, if I run into the assistant managers,
• 26:22
  I will I talk culture, I talk our values and somehow I'm going
• 26:25
  to mention the Word family because that's one of our
• 26:26
  values. And my, my, my behavior shows
• 26:31
  the fun. I always do crazy stuff.
• 26:34
  And you know that the integrity and respect is, you know, you go
• 26:37
  in there and ask for it. When we buy a H1 of the first
• 26:40
  things I say is my job now is to just earn your respect.
• 26:43
  You don't have to give me respect.
• 26:44
  I want to earn it. And I think yes, it does get
• 26:47
  passed down to people pick up on that.
• 26:49
  And I think when we're all in the same boat, we're all
• 26:53
  believing the same thing and we all talk about it and we believe
• 26:55
  in it, it just oozes out of not just me.
• 26:58
  I mean, I'm part of it. I'm just no question, I'm part
• 27:00
  of it. But I'm not the only guy.
• 27:01
  And I've said for years, if I get hit by a bus with this
• 27:04
  culture live on, and I'm positive it will.
• 27:09
  And we do social media within, you know, in in team social
• 27:12
  media, you know, our main course, Facebook main course
• 27:14
  website, we do so we have a gala which has all our leaders with
• 27:19
  this spouses of significant others, vendors.
• 27:22
  And it's a great event. We have like 200 people there
• 27:25
  and we always do some we do fun stuff.
• 27:27
  And I think what tells people about that kind of thing oozes
• 27:33
  our culture and what we stand for.
• 27:36
  I have a tendency to have fun and we do a videos.
• 27:40
  I probably send you one, I'll send you one of those.
• 27:41
  But the videos are really, you know, just down to earth.
• 27:45
  Here's the CEO acting like a geek.
• 27:46
  I was Bruno Mars one year. I was Justin Timberlake another
• 27:50
  year. This year was probably our best
• 27:51
  production because we used some some people, some students from
• 27:54
  a college, and they helped put us through the recording.
• 27:57
  But I was cool in the gang. We were cool in the gang and I
• 28:00
  was cool. And it was just, but you know
• 28:02
  what? It goes back to saying when I go
• 28:04
  out and we go recording some of these videos at hotels, I'm
• 28:07
  standing in side by side with people.
• 28:09
  We're having a blast. We're laughing and we're
• 28:10
  giggling and we're watching someone dance silly.
• 28:13
  So it goes. So yes, I do that, but so do
• 28:15
  others. Yeah, we have a thing that
• 28:17
  started you talk about when we first started with the first
• 28:19
  hotel, we, I was AGI was a front office manager and it'd be a hot
• 28:23
  day in the summer. And I said I'm going to bring
• 28:25
  popsicles. I'm going to go out and get
• 28:26
  popsicles and go around and give it to each housekeeper and each
• 28:29
  front desk person. And you'd think that you'd given
• 28:31
  them gold and it's just a popsicle.
• 28:35
  So you do 1H2 hotels, 10 hotels and started getting out of way
• 28:39
  for me to be able to do that, get to 15 hotels.
• 28:42
  So now we start our people that report to me that the OPS
• 28:45
  leaders and then they would do it.
• 28:47
  Now when we do it, someone said one time they can, but you're
• 28:50
  going out and say here's a popsicle.
• 28:51
  I know today's a really a hot day, but you know, thank you for
• 28:55
  what you're doing. So one person told me one time
• 28:58
  and I'll never forget she said it.
• 28:59
  She said, Sean, you're so cheap. It's a popsicle.
• 29:01
  It's like $0.29. And then I started feeling bad.
• 29:05
  I'm like, wow, am I meeting cheap?
• 29:06
  And then I went back and I said no.
• 29:08
  And I and I wrote a blog about it.
• 29:09
  I said it's not about the pop, you know, it's about the CEO or
• 29:13
  the corporate operations person going out and saying thank you
• 29:16
  for what you're doing. And it's just, it's crazy.
• 29:19
  So then we build a construction hotel right next to where we
• 29:22
  operate. I went and gave it to the
• 29:23
  contractors. They almost started crying.
• 29:26
  They said thank you so much. That.
• 29:27
  And these are contractors, you know, they're up there spitting
• 29:28
  and swearing and everything, and they're just getting excited
• 29:31
  about a popsicle. But it goes back to that same
• 29:33
  thing. You don't know.
• 29:34
  Yeah. Thank you for what you're doing
• 29:36
  today. I know it's hot and you know
• 29:38
  it's a, it's a gratitude thing. It's a human moment.
• 29:41
  It's it's an opportunity for connection, expressing your
• 29:45
  gratitude. I see you.
• 29:47
  I recognize what you're doing and I appreciate it.
• 29:50
  Yeah, it's authenticity. I think it's, it's like
• 29:53
  authentic. I mean, what CEO or what
• 29:55
  corporate person is going to hand out you a popsicle?
• 29:57
  And if you told someone that you'd think how nutty we were.
• 30:00
  But it's, it's amazing the reaction you get, whether it be
• 30:03
  a popsicle, a birthday card or a, or a call, you know, at
• 30:05
  midnight and it's, it just goes back to that.
• 30:09
  You do things like that for your family.
• 30:12
  You give your kids popsicles, you write them birthday notes,
• 30:15
  you do that thing. And we just a bigger family than
• 30:17
  than most. We got 700 in our family.
• 30:20
  And that, that Word family is, you know, we've got a family
• 30:22
  within. We all have our personal
• 30:24
  families and we value that. We try to make sure we people
• 30:26
  take care of their families. But we have a housekeeping
• 30:29
  family at this hotel. We have one at this hotel.
• 30:31
  We have a whole company family and we've got a corporate
• 30:34
  family. So that's a big deal for us.
• 30:37
  I love this. I want to pause just for a
• 30:39
  second to draw even more attention to what we're talking
• 30:43
  about here. Because you know, whether
• 30:45
  you're, you know, you're in a position of leadership like you
• 30:48
  are, and you're doing this for your company and your employees,
• 30:51
  or you're just doing it for folks around you and your
• 30:53
  community. I mean, hearing your stories
• 30:56
  about how positively affected, how emotional some people get
• 31:01
  because of a popsicle, right? It's not the popsicle.
• 31:04
  It's not the $0.29 that you spent at Target.
• 31:07
  It's the human gesture. It's being recognized, having
• 31:11
  that authentic human moment. What a beautiful thing if we all
• 31:16
  did just pause for a second in our day and showed that kind of
• 31:21
  recognition to somebody around us with a popsicle, with a card,
• 31:25
  with a kind comment or a word, right?
• 31:28
  Absolutely. I think.
• 31:29
  And, you know, I, I look at my next career, my next part of my
• 31:32
  life, I'm, I'm kind of mature now.
• 31:35
  But you know, how can I do that? Maybe in some other way, some
• 31:39
  other vehicle, some way that we all can make the world better.
• 31:44
  I mean, that sounds pretty grandiose, but it only takes one
• 31:47
  person. It only takes that housekeeper
• 31:49
  who got five birthday cards on the wall or that guy whose
• 31:52
  mother didn't send him a birthday card in all those
• 31:55
  things. One person is really, and I'm
• 31:57
  probably going to be OK for the rest of my life by just impact
• 31:59
  one person a day. But add up to I said we, I use
• 32:02
  this example, add up 700 people in our company and they all
• 32:06
  impact one person a day times 700 * 365 days a year.
• 32:11
  There's a lot of people impacted and it you don't know if it's
• 32:13
  that person you impacted or the person's child or the person's
• 32:16
  your mother, or you don't know if that was just a funeral and
• 32:19
  you did something like that. So those things that it just
• 32:21
  takes a gesture and an effort. And, you know, I know that's my
• 32:25
  job's pretty busy too. You know, I'm not, you know, I
• 32:28
  mean, people say, well, I'm really busy and it's OK.
• 32:30
  But what's it take when I'm driving to my car to call up and
• 32:32
  just say hi to AGM? Or someone who just had a gal on
• 32:35
  our team that just had search for surgery for cancer.
• 32:39
  Just call her up, tell her I'm thinking I'm gonna say a prayer
• 32:41
  for her. And she wasn't there and I hung
• 32:42
  up. But you don't know.
• 32:44
  You don't know what that's going to do.
• 32:45
  Is that going to help her or is she just going to go, wow, I
• 32:48
  needed that today? You don't know.
• 32:50
  You reference the next chapter in your life.
• 32:54
  Are you thinking about future steps here?
• 32:57
  I am, yeah. I, you know, I'm, like I said,
• 33:01
  I'm mature. And if this is a video one,
• 33:03
  right? So you can see my Gray hair and
• 33:04
  the wrinkles and all that. We see how good looking you are.
• 33:07
  There's no hiding. Yeah, I think I, I think I've,
• 33:13
  we've started a succession planning.
• 33:15
  We have someone that could, could step into this role and
• 33:17
  what we're trying to do is make sure it's right because it's so
• 33:20
  critical for us to take care of people, the rest of the family.
• 33:24
  It's not just Sean moving on to something different or moving on
• 33:26
  to a different role within the company or whatever it might be.
• 33:29
  So, but we'll get, we want to do it right.
• 33:32
  We don't want people to be afraid that Sean's going to
• 33:34
  leave a hole. And so I, I prefaced previous
• 33:40
  conversation. I talked about, I walked out of
• 33:42
  the Camino to Santiago. It's a trail and I spent a lot
• 33:44
  of time reflecting and thinking about it and everyday I kept
• 33:48
  going, OK, I put my hands up, I said, OK, is it is where there's
• 33:51
  the epiphany. And it wasn't the next day, then
• 33:53
  the next day, no epiphany. But I think when I came out of
• 33:55
  it was saying maybe I need to talk with the people within our
• 33:57
  teams and all that company that really value who we are and what
• 34:00
  we stand for and say, what are you afraid of?
• 34:03
  Not that anybody can't handle the job.
• 34:05
  We can get anybody to handle the job.
• 34:06
  We've got a great person who can handle the job.
• 34:08
  But what might make it a little easier for people to deal with
• 34:11
  that kind of transition? So we did and I got 10 people
• 34:14
  that all gave me their real heartfelt information.
• 34:17
  And I think, you know, there's certain areas that they don't
• 34:20
  want anything to slip by. And one is the culture.
• 34:24
  And 1 is that we are a management company that they
• 34:27
  want came to join because of who we are and how we do things.
• 34:32
  I'm some of the people that have longevity is crazy and it's like
• 34:34
  20 years for a lot of our GM's and, and, and those are the ones
• 34:38
  who say we don't want to mess this up.
• 34:40
  We got here because of who we are.
• 34:42
  Now we get a change. We have to evolve, we have to
• 34:44
  use technology, we have to do things differently and the world
• 34:46
  is changing, but we still don't want to lose that.
• 34:49
  And so how do we make sure that we don't embrace that piece of
• 34:52
  our company, the culture, the, you know what we stand for?
• 34:56
  And that's it was really rewarding for me feeling like
• 34:59
  that meant that much to those people.
• 35:01
  It wasn't Sean. They were saying they don't want
• 35:03
  there to be a whole. And so I, I think over the next
• 35:05
  six months or I'm going to spend a lot of time working on filling
• 35:09
  the gaps or filling the holes and then embracing the people
• 35:11
  around it into a deeper part of our organization.
• 35:14
  So it's not just Sean, yes, someone has to lead it and be
• 35:18
  embrace it. And I, Jonathan will be able to
• 35:20
  do that. But it's got to go deeper than
• 35:22
  that. And it's got to go to the OPS
• 35:23
  leaders, but then it's got to go to the GMs and then get those
• 35:25
  GMs general managers in that language it.
• 35:28
  So the general managers have so much they can do for their teams
• 35:33
  and a lot of them embrace it and are great at it, but we just
• 35:36
  want to make sure more of us are so that when Sean steps away, I
• 35:39
  can just step away cuz this is my identity.
• 35:41
  I've been here 37 years. This is my identity.
• 35:43
  When someone talks main course, they talk Sean and people
• 35:47
  recognize me as main course. Now it, it isn't me, it's all of
• 35:51
  us, but it's still something I've got to get over.
• 35:54
  And the best way I can do that is to embrace the fact that
• 35:58
  maybe I can make it better when I do step away and make it
• 36:01
  better for them and so they can take the culture to the next
• 36:04
  level. It could go much further I'm
• 36:06
  sure, but then with 10/20/50 people embracing culture.
• 36:10
  So you're trying to set them up for future success.
• 36:13
  Once you step on to whatever the next thing is, what do you think
• 36:17
  the next thing might be for you? Positively impacting lives in
• 36:21
  another way. And I don't know what that is.
• 36:23
  You know, I think I have to, I have to prepare myself for my
• 36:26
  future. I read a book called Strength to
• 36:29
  Strength by like he lost his name, but strength to strength.
• 36:33
  And it talks about different parts of your career.
• 36:35
  And the first part, you know, you're striving, you're getting
• 36:37
  faster and you're doing a lot of stuff.
• 36:39
  You're, you're articulate, you're fast, you're equipped
• 36:41
  with a memory, you're quick with everything you do, you're
• 36:43
  creative. And that that's goes on to your
• 36:45
  20s and 30s and then you get into your 40s and it let kind of
• 36:47
  levels off and then 50s and slows down.
• 36:49
  But at that same point, there's another curve that's coming up.
• 36:52
  And that's the things, the, the, the EQ, the emotional IQ, the
• 36:56
  ability to inspire, the ability to see visionary think, think a
• 37:02
  little differently. And so it's a different mindset
• 37:03
  because I, I can't remember, you know, I, I probably say your
• 37:06
  name wrong three times in this thing before it's over.
• 37:09
  But what I can do is impact you maybe and try to help you in
• 37:11
  some way or help help your listeners.
• 37:13
  And I think those are the areas that I probably have strength,
• 37:15
  that I do have strengths in that I've kind of been over it.
• 37:17
  I'm not moving the boxes. I used to work side by side with
• 37:20
  all the housekeepers and the maintenance guys and I'd boost
• 37:22
  up and I'd snow blow outside. I'm not doing it anymore.
• 37:25
  My body's not ready for it. And, and I can't remember much,
• 37:29
  but I can use those new skills that I have and utilize them
• 37:33
  better for the betterment of our company.
• 37:35
  And so I, I think part of it's going to be for the benefit of
• 37:37
  our benefit of our company and our legacy as a company, but
• 37:41
  also for maybe there's something further than that, you know, and
• 37:44
  I and I, I don't know what that is, but I think right now I'm
• 37:47
  really exploring what I can do best for our people. 700 people,
• 37:50
  what will be 800 people by the other year, 900 people by
• 37:53
  another. And how can I set that up?
• 37:55
  And maybe that's still part of it is like if we're going to now
• 37:58
  instead of 700 people impacting lives, maybe we have 800 where I
• 38:02
  am still somehow impacting people through that legacy.
• 38:06
  You know, you mentioned people don't want things to change,
• 38:10
  right? They love the culture that's
• 38:12
  there. Obviously, in your words, you
• 38:14
  have to continue to evolve as times change.
• 38:17
  What are some of the big changes that are occurring now in your
• 38:21
  industry? In the industry, I think
• 38:24
  technology, I think there's a fear of technology.
• 38:27
  I'm not, I mean everybody embraces it.
• 38:29
  I mean, you got to, I mean, you got to do that.
• 38:30
  But I think some of the fears of technology, they're always going
• 38:33
  to take away jobs and we're just going to be a bunch of, we're
• 38:36
  going to go up and check in at a, you know, at a kiosk or
• 38:39
  something. I think what in our industry, I
• 38:42
  mean, we're in hospitality. You know, there's a difference
• 38:45
  of service and hospitality services.
• 38:47
  You, you bring a coffee cup to a guy and you a person and you
• 38:51
  pour the coffee. Hospitality is recognizing that
• 38:53
  they're left-handed and they turn the cup to the from six O
• 38:57
  clock to 8 O clock so they can just grab it.
• 38:59
  That's that extra bit of hospitality.
• 39:01
  So if I'm spending my time, someone checking in and going
• 39:04
  through 12 steps to get them just to find out where their
• 39:06
  reservation is, another 12 steps to get them checked in and then
• 39:09
  go over and make their key. Now, if you could have
• 39:11
  technology utilized there when you check in, I can say thank
• 39:16
  you for joining us. I'm really glad you're here
• 39:19
  today, Anthony. And see, I forgot your name
• 39:20
  already when I was doing that. Thank you, Anthony, for checking
• 39:23
  in. I I know you were here last week
• 39:25
  and I really appreciate that. How's your, how's your kids?
• 39:27
  I know you talked about that. One of them had a soccer game.
• 39:30
  That's what hospitality's about. And so if we can embrace
• 39:33
  technology enough so that. Yeah, yeah, you're still going
• 39:35
  to. I mean, I am mature and I always
• 39:37
  say that you don't get old as long as you're relevant.
• 39:41
  So I have to stay relevant in this technology stuff.
• 39:43
  But I think if people can, we can take away those soft spots
• 39:49
  that take time that people don't want.
• 39:51
  They just don't want it make it easier for them, then they're
• 39:53
  going to come back. So what restaurant would you go
• 39:55
  to, Sean, or what, where would I go?
• 39:57
  What's the best place to go for a walk?
• 39:58
  Where can I go for a jog? What's a good I got to get my
• 40:01
  flat tire fix? Where do I go?
• 40:02
  That's what we can do to the hospitality.
• 40:04
  And so it gives it, I think it creates.
• 40:06
  But the fear is that first of all, it's the cost.
• 40:08
  And there's a fear of people losing their jobs with AII mean
• 40:11
  I use AI and. It does so much for me and by
• 40:14
  using AI it frees me up to do other things so I can make those
• 40:17
  calls, well, make. Those calls, write those
• 40:20
  birthday cards. Yeah, yeah.
• 40:21
  Have that personal connection. And you know, I and I, I, I do
• 40:25
  believe in there is a, a segment.
• 40:28
  I mean, yes, you can use AI, you can use technology, you can do
• 40:29
  all that stuff and send out birthday cards.
• 40:31
  And if we all go out, the difference is I think when you
• 40:33
  make it personalized, so you just choose your weapons, you
• 40:36
  know, AI and technology is amazing and you need to use it.
• 40:40
  We do it in our accounting. You know you what used to take
• 40:43
  10 steps now takes 2. And that's great.
• 40:45
  And then nobody's lost a job. Now they can just double check
• 40:49
  things or they can be better, or they can go next door and talk
• 40:51
  to the person next to them because there's a little more
• 40:52
  time. You know, and that's where I
• 40:55
  hear a lot of business leaders who are very people centric talk
• 40:59
  about AI not as a tool to be able to replace people, but a
• 41:05
  tool to be able to support their people, to allow them to
• 41:08
  accomplish more and to focus on the parts of their job that
• 41:12
  really require that human interaction.
• 41:15
  Whether it's just the human interaction in terms of being
• 41:19
  able to critically assess something or that human to human
• 41:23
  interaction, you know, like a lot of your front desk workers
• 41:26
  would have. That's the kind of human to
• 41:28
  human touch that you don't want to lose.
• 41:30
  Yeah, absolutely. And I I talk about AI.
• 41:33
  So back to my, my transformation into a new person in a bit of
• 41:38
  time. So I, I had the 10 people and I
• 41:41
  had taken notes and I put it up on a Word document.
• 41:43
  I said, how am I going to get through this and try to figure
• 41:46
  out what each one of these men and how it happened and said,
• 41:48
  well, let me try it. So I went on the copilot, copied
• 41:50
  it and said, I told him the AI, what I was doing, what I had
• 41:54
  planned to do, how I did it. And then what, how do I now what
• 41:58
  do I do? And then I click go or whatever.
• 42:01
  And it came back and it gave me the top key areas that are
• 42:05
  between 10 people, what things that were causing angst, what
• 42:09
  things that people would like, what people don't want to lose
• 42:11
  and what they do want to get and how they want to be better.
• 42:14
  And then it said, now these are some steps you can go through
• 42:17
  and this is what you can do, Sean, to do this.
• 42:19
  And I'm like, whoa, that was cool.
• 42:22
  But, and it's so I, it basically it was all the people side of
• 42:24
  things. It was one-on-one and I cried.
• 42:26
  They cried. I mean, because some of these,
• 42:28
  you know, we worked together for 20 years.
• 42:30
  So there was a lot of emotion in those conversations and that
• 42:32
  didn't come through in that thing, but I knew that it, but
• 42:35
  the things that they said and then it really zeroed in on the
• 42:39
  things that are important to me. And I, that was what really made
• 42:42
  me feel good is that they took all those things.
• 42:45
  It was the culture, it was the values, it was the the taking
• 42:48
  care of ain't guardrails. How can we have guardrails for
• 42:50
  the company so they don't get away from what's gotten us to
• 42:54
  where we are now? We've done OK.
• 42:57
  You know, we went from one hotel and $2,000,000 to $125 million,
• 43:01
  twenty $5,000,000 and and we're OK.
• 43:04
  But we can still get better. Doesn't mean we're going to get,
• 43:06
  we don't care about development for this.
• 43:08
  I think it was a question about growth strategy.
• 43:10
  We don't really have a strategy for growth.
• 43:12
  We have a way if growth happens. I think our first step was, and
• 43:15
  I'm getting off track of what you were saying, but but I think
• 43:18
  the, the strategy that we we have is we want to choose things
• 43:21
  that are going to not impact negatively our culture.
• 43:25
  So, you know, buy a 10 pack of hotels.
• 43:27
  We've got some investors that we could do that, but is that going
• 43:30
  to throw a real wrench into who we are?
• 43:31
  And then we're not taking care of our 700 original people.
• 43:35
  So we try to make sure that that's not going to impact us
• 43:36
  negatively and then make sure our investors get a return.
• 43:39
  And it doesn't mean we're going to cut prices or take advantage
• 43:42
  of people or anything like that. We're just going to say, we know
• 43:44
  where we stand and what we'll do.
• 43:46
  And then the part of it is embracing those people that we
• 43:48
  just brought into our family. We just bought a hotel in
• 43:51
  Saratoga, NY a month ago and we we talked about it.
• 43:55
  We said, you know, we want to welcome you to our family and
• 43:57
  we're going to earn your respect.
• 43:58
  But we're going to take some time.
• 43:59
  We're going to get to know you and we want we want to embrace
• 44:01
  it. And it's OK to be nervous.
• 44:03
  And Sean was nervous because I was in the same boat.
• 44:06
  And then we're going to get them into our family and make and
• 44:08
  then some of our people that we've bought into our company
• 44:11
  have gone risen in the rolls and we only bought them three years
• 44:15
  ago. So it and those are great
• 44:17
  examples to share with the people.
• 44:19
  It's interesting how you talk about your growth strategy.
• 44:22
  It it what I think I heard there was can we get a return for our
• 44:27
  investors, but can we do it in a way that's not going to mess up
• 44:29
  our culture? It's sort of like 1A and 1B.
• 44:33
  Those are the questions that you ask.
• 44:34
  Absolutely. And I think the reason being is
• 44:37
  we know what got us here and we we don't want to waver on that
• 44:42
  and we don't really want to waver in giving an investment
• 44:44
  because these investors are going to put money in and they
• 44:46
  want a certain return. And if we screw it up, there
• 44:49
  goes our growth strategy. So those two things are just so
• 44:52
  critical. And then it so that's affecting
• 44:54
  our associates and affecting our investors and ownership.
• 44:58
  And if we take care of both of those, and Mr. Merritt said it
• 45:00
  well, if you take care of the associates, the associates will
• 45:03
  take care of the guests and the guests will keep coming back.
• 45:07
  If that happens, we'll all make more money, including our
• 45:10
  investors. But we have to go back to taking
• 45:12
  care of our associates in the right way.
• 45:16
  Shawn, in my experience, some of our biggest growth opportunities
• 45:18
  come from overcoming our biggest challenges.
• 45:23
  What is a big challenge that you've had to overcome and what
• 45:29
  did you learn going through that process?
• 45:32
  Well, this is about a bunch. I mean, because I've, I've been
• 45:35
  doing this for a number of years and some of them seemed big
• 45:39
  before and as big now, you know, that job I didn't have or that
• 45:43
  chance that someone is going to buy us.
• 45:44
  And it was scary, but then it was scary then, but it, it's not
• 45:48
  quite as scary now. I think, you know, I would 911
• 45:52
  was a big scare, you know, that really impacted the industry.
• 45:56
  We didn't know how much I mean that those days that it
• 45:58
  happened, it was just horrific. But then the, the same is a lot.
• 46:00
  I mean, the, the, the Great Recession, that was, that was
• 46:06
  scary because we said, OK, we're going to, you know, I took cut
• 46:08
  and pay and we, we froze wages and did all that stuff.
• 46:11
  And, you know, the banks were just going to come at you and it
• 46:14
  was just pretty scary. But we got through it.
• 46:17
  But then COVID hit and COVID was a, a scary thing because we, no
• 46:22
  one had a clue. And what is it going to impact
• 46:26
  our business? What's going to happen?
• 46:27
  I was at a meeting in Memphis with the Hilton and they came on
• 46:33
  this shit, this is what we're going to have to do.
• 46:35
  These are the things we're going to, you don't know whether you
• 46:36
  handshake, hug, put, put sanitizer on or there were no
• 46:41
  masks or anything. And it was just no one knew it
• 46:44
  was scan. I flew home.
• 46:45
  There was nobody in the airport when I got home.
• 46:47
  It was just impactful. But so then we started saying,
• 46:50
  what do we have to do? And we said, how do we take care
• 46:52
  of our people but still keep our business?
• 46:56
  And so we came up with, and this was a team of us.
• 46:58
  And I remember sitting in a hotel because we were ready to
• 46:59
  open a hotel during this time. We had a hotel already.
• 47:02
  The staff was there, we were training when they coming in, we
• 47:04
  say, OK, no more handshakes. We'll just no fist bump and
• 47:06
  we'll do elbow bumps. And, and we still had a couple
• 47:08
  meetings during this time, but it got worse and worse.
• 47:11
  And we saw it was, and, and then what happened, It was the, the,
• 47:14
  the municipalities and the cities and the states were
• 47:18
  hunkering down and not letting us operate.
• 47:21
  So we had to shut down, you know, some of them.
• 47:24
  So we probably said we, I think we probably had the time maybe
• 47:27
  set 18 hotels, maybe 20 hotels and we shut down like 14 of
• 47:31
  them. But we found a way to be able to
• 47:35
  take care of people. Now that was the, our frontline
• 47:37
  associates were getting the, the premium unemployment thing.
• 47:40
  And they were all whole, even our leaders, though we, we tried
• 47:43
  to make, we made them whole by making sure that they got
• 47:45
  insurance and they, and if they were ever, they were not down.
• 47:48
  So we covered. So they were whole, they had
• 47:50
  insurance and they had, and we kept the hotels there.
• 47:54
  We had, we weren't operating, we kept them there, but I remember
• 47:58
  sitting there trying to make these decisions.
• 48:00
  How do you take care of the people but still maintain your
• 48:02
  business? And then once we get going, I
• 48:04
  think what I found, we started, you know, lightening it up a
• 48:07
  little bit. I found it really inspirational.
• 48:12
  We started working with the brands, Hilton and Merritt,
• 48:15
  serving on committees. What are we all going to do?
• 48:17
  It wasn't what if franchisees going to do it, What's Hilton
• 48:20
  going to do? It's what are we going to do?
• 48:22
  We got to get out of this together.
• 48:23
  What can we do to help the guests but make sure that we're
• 48:26
  not losing a shirt and we're going to go out of business
• 48:28
  because they were scared. I mean, Marriott went from 90 to
• 48:30
  10% of what they had, you know, it was unbelievable.
• 48:34
  So they would work together. There was a lot of synergies
• 48:37
  between Marriott and us because we have Marriott and Hilton and
• 48:40
  us and I probably, you know, you know, that's when Teams and Zoom
• 48:43
  really came, came to be is during that time and and it was
• 48:48
  resilient. The ideas that people had.
• 48:49
  What can we do? How can we do things different?
• 48:51
  How do we do the rules? What are we doing?
• 48:52
  We've had our people working on. We had some, we kind of had our
• 48:56
  COVID Tsar, one of the guys on our team and, and he was looking
• 48:59
  for safety and security and all that.
• 49:01
  But, and every time I go home, I wouldn't know what to do.
• 49:03
  So part of my role during that time was I want to, I want to
• 49:06
  keep people in life feeling like we're going to be OK.
• 49:11
  And I mean, and I was, I'd have my crying sessions.
• 49:14
  Don't quit. I mean, it was crazy.
• 49:15
  And, and I, I would do what I would consider somewhat
• 49:19
  inspirational little snippets, you know, a 2 minute something
• 49:23
  from Sean, whether it be a song or, you know, a song and some
• 49:27
  words or something. And just trying to say, well,
• 49:29
  this is what we're doing. This is we're trying to
• 49:30
  communicate what we're doing, how we're doing it and how much
• 49:32
  I could understand what they're going through because I feel the
• 49:34
  same way. So, and I'll kick off to this
• 49:37
  other thing is that during that time, Marni Sorensen, who was
• 49:40
  the CEO of Marriott, was a wonderful, wonderful leader.
• 49:43
  Everybody respected around the world.
• 49:46
  He, he found out he had cancer just before that and he was
• 49:49
  pretty sick. And then, you know, he ended up
• 49:53
  COVID hit and so he was no one's in the office anymore.
• 49:56
  He wasn't in the office anymore. And he had, he was shit, he had
• 49:59
  his head shaved because he lost his hair through treatments.
• 50:01
  And I remember I when he had, when he found out he had cancer,
• 50:05
  I just heard Sean's notes. I would send him notes, you
• 50:08
  know, once every two or three weeks, I'd send him a note just
• 50:11
  saying, hey, I'm thinking of you now.
• 50:12
  We'd met a couple times, but we weren't like buddies or friends.
• 50:16
  And he tried. I wondered if he ever knew who I
• 50:17
  was. But he would write back to me in
• 50:19
  an e-mail. I'd send a thing within a week.
• 50:22
  And I'm saying that's just his, you know, his admin sending it.
• 50:24
  But then I realized it wasn't, it was him.
• 50:26
  And he was appreciative. And he'd always say something
• 50:29
  with wisdom. And it's almost like he was, I'm
• 50:31
  here. I'm trying to help this guy
• 50:32
  who's got a death sentence, whose company's falling apart,
• 50:36
  and he's inspiring me. And it was it the resiliency of
• 50:40
  people. And it was one of those examples
• 50:42
  that just said, you know, doesn't matter what you got, you
• 50:44
  can change something. He impacted my life
• 50:46
  tremendously. And we we would joke around and
• 50:49
  we he talked about it. He says, yeah, he talked about
• 50:52
  my grandkids and I talked about his kids and he said we're home.
• 50:55
  And a funny story, right before Christmas, it was Christmas Eve.
• 50:58
  I sent him a thing and he'd answer me.
• 50:59
  And if I sent him something at 5:00 Christmas morning, he sent
• 51:01
  me something at 7:00 in the morning once.
• 51:03
  We're all doing emails. And he said, Sean, he said thank
• 51:07
  you for the notes and you know, thank you for your friendship.
• 51:09
  Now, again, I didn't know the guy.
• 51:11
  We were pen pals and that's what I'd signed and most of that in
• 51:13
  my pen. Your pen pal.
• 51:15
  And he told me, he said, Sean, don't tell anybody this and it's
• 51:18
  OK now because he's passed away. But he said my wife and I, I, I
• 51:21
  told him about a song. It was on this white Christmas,
• 51:23
  the movie that we watch Christmas Eve.
• 51:25
  And he said we, we sang that song, me and my sister and my
• 51:29
  wife and I get wigs on. I put wig on and we, we dance
• 51:32
  that with my kids. And I'm thinking this is the CEO
• 51:35
  of Marriott who's trying to make my life better.
• 51:39
  And, and, and then he passed away 3 weeks later.
• 51:43
  But that's what this that's what really makes the difference.
• 51:47
  So that COVID, that hurt all of us gave me a belief in our
• 51:52
  society. You know, we were all hurting,
• 51:55
  but we ended up doing OK and we found ways to get around all
• 51:59
  these things and we pulled together.
• 52:00
  Now there was some negativity about whether COVID vaccination
• 52:03
  or that, but in general, our country and our world pulled
• 52:06
  together. So you know, that, that two,
• 52:09
  that two years that I might not have had a job, this was minimal
• 52:13
  compared to that kind of thing. And, and we were able to come
• 52:17
  out whole. We, you know, I, I took a 50%
• 52:20
  cut in pay and my wife had just switched jobs within our company
• 52:23
  and I, I laid her off. She was the first one.
• 52:25
  So at least set an example. But we all made it through and
• 52:29
  we kept going back and talking about our culture.
• 52:32
  So you're leading a, a group of hundreds of employees during
• 52:38
  easily one of the most difficult times in, in human history.
• 52:42
  And a lot of people are looking to you for strength, for
• 52:44
  guidance for the, you know, hey, let us know that this is going
• 52:49
  to be OK. But Sean, here you are kind of
• 52:52
  flying by the seat of your pants.
• 52:53
  You don't really know if it's going to be OK.
• 52:55
  You're just as uncertain as the rest of us.
• 52:58
  What, where, where are you pulling support from?
• 53:01
  Where are you kind of pulling this confidence from to be able
• 53:06
  to lead your team? Well, yeah, during that time, we
• 53:09
  had some people. We were, we were so close, the
• 53:12
  senior leaders of our organization at that point, we
• 53:14
  were so close that I think we did that for each other.
• 53:18
  Each one of us would crash at one point or another.
• 53:20
  You know, I'm I'm an Irish standard, you know, quiet blue
• 53:23
  light special that came out, you know, so but so I was, but I
• 53:26
  would, you know, the emotional side of things.
• 53:28
  I guess what I drew from this was that this is what I got to
• 53:31
  do. This is our people.
• 53:33
  And they're hurting and sucking up Sean.
• 53:36
  And, you know, I cry at night. My wife and I would talk and I
• 53:40
  mean, I had a friend and stuff I could talk to, but you know, it
• 53:42
  was it suck it up. We got to get this done.
• 53:44
  Someone's got to. And I'm not going to solve the
• 53:47
  world and solve COVID, but I can just maybe give a little light
• 53:51
  to someone who's really hurt. And I call the GM, they were
• 53:54
  working. Every GM got hurt from me on a
• 53:56
  regular basis because they would, they basically they, they
• 53:59
  were still on full time and they were protecting their hotels,
• 54:02
  you know, flushing the toilets every day, running the water
• 54:03
  every day and, you know, walking around.
• 54:06
  So, you know, I, it was, it was crazy.
• 54:10
  And, and I, you know, I had my moments where I wasn't, but it
• 54:14
  was mostly private moments And, and that was, and I think that's
• 54:18
  OK. You know, I mean, you can only
• 54:21
  go on for so long. And, and I'm an optimistic guy
• 54:23
  too. And I keep saying it's going to
• 54:24
  get better, It's going to get better.
• 54:25
  So, you know, when I wasn't getting better, I'm like, oh
• 54:27
  man. But so we and, and I kept going
• 54:32
  back to the resilience of the people that we're working with,
• 54:34
  whether it be the brands or whether it be our leaders or
• 54:36
  their associates. And, and then when we started
• 54:38
  opening up again, I mean, we, it's still, we open up.
• 54:41
  But if no one's going to travel, what are you going to do?
• 54:43
  And you know, we, we basically said we can get down to 10%
• 54:46
  occupancy. And then at that point we have
• 54:48
  to shut down. We're going to be eating up.
• 54:50
  We can, we can cover it down to 10% occupancy.
• 54:53
  I mean, we're going to cut back, but not.
• 54:56
  So we set a set point of where we knew that we could or
• 54:58
  couldn't. And then it was just eating up
• 55:00
  money. You know, we're, we're not
• 55:02
  fortunately. And the other, the other nice
• 55:03
  thing about this was we, it goes back to the relationships that
• 55:07
  we've formed. And I don't think I've talked
• 55:08
  about relationships, but that's where I am.
• 55:10
  If you want to know how I get to where I'm, it's relationships.
• 55:13
  I was able to, I care about people and I build
• 55:17
  relationships. And so let's talk our bankers.
• 55:20
  He said, we don't know what to do.
• 55:21
  And they said, what do you need? And they give us interest only
• 55:25
  or they'd say, we'll talk in six months, we won't pay anything.
• 55:29
  We'll put it on the other end of the loan.
• 55:32
  We had people that gave us partial release.
• 55:34
  We had vendors who said, what do you need?
• 55:36
  Well, we'll not charge you for this.
• 55:38
  We're going to give you half of this.
• 55:39
  We know we have a regular fee, but we won't charge you for
• 55:41
  that. And so it, it kind of also said
• 55:46
  that we, we and maybe everybody had that, I don't know.
• 55:49
  But we realized that the vendors and the people we work with, our
• 55:52
  partners, our bankers, our owners, all of us really kid and
• 55:57
  they helped us through it. So I think it it this to me, it
• 56:00
  was the silver lining is I learned so many positive things
• 56:03
  about our company and our relationships with people.
• 56:07
  And it was just, it was amazing. So yes, it was tough, but what I
• 56:10
  take out of it is like, wow, could have been a lot tougher if
• 56:13
  we didn't have great relationships.
• 56:16
  How do you think about developing those relationships?
• 56:20
  Well, that's, that's one of my plans and my, my, this thing
• 56:24
  Sean always does. And my transition is like, I got
• 56:27
  to figure that one out to me. I think people go in to relate.
• 56:31
  A lot of people go into relationships, say, what am I
• 56:33
  going to get out of this? I'm going to go in there and
• 56:35
  serve on the Marriott board. I'm on two boards with Marriott
• 56:37
  and two with Hilton. I'm not there to because I want
• 56:40
  to get something. You know, I'm there because I
• 56:42
  want to contribute. I think we have a message that
• 56:44
  can assist Hilton or Marriott get better for everybody.
• 56:49
  And then in turn, we're going to get something because they're
• 56:51
  going to get better for everybody.
• 56:53
  And yes, I formed their friendships and relationships.
• 56:55
  But if you keep going back and you keep treat treating people
• 56:58
  correctly and caring about the people, you know, the fact that
• 57:02
  Lauren, my buddy from Mario and his wife and his and his kids
• 57:05
  and he just, I just saw on Facebook his kid get, you know,
• 57:08
  just graduated from college. And those are the kinds of
• 57:10
  things that people want to hear that.
• 57:12
  And that's the friendships in the relationship you get.
• 57:14
  So then when you call and say, look, I'm kind of in a mess
• 57:17
  here. I don't know how to deal with
• 57:18
  this. And they say, what do you need?
• 57:19
  It's the same thing, but you got to invest in that.
• 57:22
  You've got to invest in that. You know, it's like an, an
• 57:24
  emotional bank account. You got to invest in the people
• 57:28
  and you keep investing and keep investing.
• 57:29
  And sometime it's going to come back.
• 57:30
  Sometimes it won't. And that's OK.
• 57:32
  But you feel good about making someone feel good.
• 57:35
  And I, I do and, and sometimes that pays off.
• 57:38
  You know, you got someone you can call when you, and it's not
• 57:40
  like I'm calling for favors. Sometimes I feel guilty calling
• 57:42
  for favors because they're my friends.
• 57:44
  But I'm saying, hey, we're in a situation, what do you think we
• 57:46
  should do? And they'll come up with an
• 57:48
  answer that may be helpful to us.
• 57:50
  But it was, it was the investment we made for 20 years
• 57:53
  as a company into these brands, into the friendships and into
• 57:56
  the, you know, the meetings we had in COVID.
• 57:58
  I mean, shoot, I was on 2/2 Hilton and two Marriott meetings
• 58:01
  a day. That was an investment in our
• 58:04
  relationship and it was appreciated.
• 58:07
  But you didn't go into it with what it can I extract from this.
• 58:11
  You went into it with what can I add to this and how can I
• 58:15
  connect with this person on a human level?
• 58:17
  Yeah, I guess I do get stuff out of it, but it's a new friend.
• 58:21
  I get a new friend and I get a new relationship and I get the
• 58:25
  joy of knowing that maybe I've done something that's helped
• 58:28
  someone And I that's probably sounds all, you know, touchy
• 58:31
  feely and all that stuff. But I truly do.
• 58:33
  I get it. I really get excited about that
• 58:35
  stuff when I, I can, I can call up somebody that you know, that
• 58:40
  they're hurt and I can call up and say something to it and you
• 58:43
  know, I can't, I don't say that I'm doing it for me, but it's as
• 58:46
  much for me as it is for them. You know, that that I can give
• 58:49
  to them and then all of a sudden they just, it really matters to
• 58:51
  them. Then I feel good about myself.
• 58:53
  So it's it, it wasn't done because I want to feel good
• 58:55
  about myself. It was done because I care about
• 58:56
  them. But when it comes back to me,
• 58:58
  it's like, wow, that's pretty cool.
• 59:00
  That's a nice return on investment there, isn't it?
• 59:02
  Yeah. Sean, I've just got one more
• 59:04
  question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to
• 59:06
  do 3 quick things. First of all, anybody who wants
• 59:08
  to get in touch with Main Course Hospitality Group, their
• 59:12
  websites really easy, just 4 letters, mchg.com, Main Course
• 59:17
  Hospitality Group. So mchg.com and their phone
• 59:21
  number. Is 207-865-6105.
• 59:27
  All right, give it to us one more.
• 59:28
  Time 2O7865. Six one O 5.
• 59:34
  Also as a reminder, if you want to get more hotel employees,
• 59:37
  access to doctors, therapists and prescription meds that
• 59:40
  actually carries a financial upside for the company, reach
• 59:42
  out to us at adbackbenefits.com. Finally, if you will take just a
• 59:46
  moment to leave us a comment or a review on your favorite
• 59:49
  podcast app, you'll hold a special place in my heart
• 59:51
  forever. Thank you so much.
• 59:53
  OK, so last question for you now, Sean, a year from now, you
• 59:57
  are celebrating something big. What's that big thing you hope
• 1:00:00
  to be celebrating one year from today?
• 1:00:03
  You know, for me and that that's a good timing for me and my role
• 1:00:06
  and where I'm doing. You know, I want to come back
• 1:00:09
  and I want to celebrate how we've infused and we infused
• 1:00:12
  culture deeper in our organization and that we're
• 1:00:17
  inspiring our culture to be deeper and not, not just Sean
• 1:00:20
  and not just our senior leaders with this transition that I'm
• 1:00:24
  going through. That to me is very, very
• 1:00:26
  important because this is my legacy.
• 1:00:28
  So the celebration for me would be, I'm going to, I'm going to
• 1:00:32
  sit back and watch and watch it grow and watch how it's taken
• 1:00:35
  off to the next level. I'm not that.
• 1:00:37
  I'm not the driver of this. I'm a part of it.
• 1:00:39
  And it'd be really exciting for me to celebrate them when the
• 1:00:43
  culture gets even better. Sean Riley from Main Course
• 1:00:48
  Hospitality Group, I want to be the first to thank you for
• 1:00:50
  sharing both your time and your story with us today.
• 1:00:53
  I really appreciate it. Thank you.
• 1:00:55
  And you know, thank you for sending this kind of message.
• 1:00:57
  I think, you know, we need these kind of things in the world.
• 1:01:00
  It doesn't matter what I mean, the things I said, it happens to
• 1:01:02
  be a hotel, but it could be widgets, it could be
• 1:01:04
  restaurants, it could be anything.
• 1:01:05
  And so when people like you do a podcast and sends goods
• 1:01:10
  messages, you're helping, you're helping the country.
• 1:01:13
  You're you're positively impacting lives.
• 1:01:15
  And thank you. I appreciate those kind words,
• 1:01:17
  Sean. Folks, that's a wrap on another
• 1:01:19
  episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
• 1:01:21
  Thanks for learning with us today.