Hiring isn’t your only problem

there's still a lot of technology i think that we can leverage in the hospitality industry but i also think that there's so much of going back to the basics as well you know i think it goes back to investing in staff training in those staff members i notice even when i'm on a project like how much of an impact you can make when you really sit down with your coordinator or really sit down with that analyst and explain why you're doing things hello everybody welcome back to the future of hospitality actually this episode is part of our special series unscripted hospitality where we really just talk honestly without filters about industry trends we're seeing and of course the amazing people that are impacted by it and today's episode is powered by aohi leading global sales organization represent the world's finest luxury hotels and resorts and so let's dive in today my guest is someone that i'm really excited heather dwyer we met each other fairly recent through mutual friend and she has a remarkable journey you know moving from the hotelier side like myself but you know being a very successful business owner supporting hotels you know from a consulting perspective with her dwyer consulting and then also staff in placement agency concierge right they're pronounced correct or yes okay awesome so heather welcome thrilled to have you and looking forward to the chat absolutely well thank you so much for having me growing up in the hospitality industry i've always admired a lot of people that speak on these podcasts and use it as a way to just further knowledge in our industry which is something that i think we're always craving as hospitality people so i'm honored to be here thank you absolutely talking about that why don't you share a little bit about your own journey right how you got started in the business and then some of the highlights throughout the career that eventually led to be where you are your current place yeah yeah absolutely so i mean when i was younger you know grew up in an italian neighborhood started working in a bakery that was kind of my first entry into customer service from there i worked at community centers and and started doing site visits there at a young age and i had a mentor there that said you'd be great in hospitality i said what does that consist of she said hospitality hotel industry restaurant industry so i ended up applying to university of nevada las vegas unlv go rebels and started my journey out west before that i worked at a golf course actually a private golf course in boston and and then when i ventured out to work at a restaurant group in las vegas and got my feet wet in food and beverage catering private events all of that have never worked harder in my life than when i worked in food and beverage i'll tell you that natural progression was at unlv i got an unbelievable opportunity to apply for a post college management training program with mgm resorts international so i was one of the 50 people selected out of about i think it was 3,000 people that applied to this from all over the country and i got selected so i was able to start my hospitality career as far as hotels and you know group sales goes in that segment i rotated in every department in the hotel so i was a bellman one day i was valet another day housekeeping so i really got a full scope and view of what it was like working in every area of the hotel and really how all of them pieced together started my career working in group and convention sales absolutely loved it and then i ventured out to california ended up starting to work for boutique and luxury hotels which i really really enjoyed i found that i could just be a little bit more hands on in that kind of segment rather than larger hotels i really like the personalization of boutique hotels so fell in love with that segment and was doing that for five years and then a little something called covid happened which i think we all know what happened i was hanging on by a thread my hotel closed down i was luckily able to get absorbed by a sister property and the sister property i was there for five months was in the trenches just like everyone else in the hotel industry we were doing lateral service helping fold pool towels roll ups for room service i mean you name it we were all doing whatever we could just to come together as a team then the inevitable happened it was unprecedented times group business was not coming back so august of 2020 they ended up dec to let the sales arm go the group business go anyways because in california we couldn't have group gatherings over a certain number of people i had an entrepreneurial itch that was kind of always in me and it was louder than ever working at that time especially when i saw the way that hotels kind of needed to pivot and do things differently so i took the severance that i got from my company and i basically put it all into entrepreneurial classes i invested in a life coach so really just started to entrench myself and immerse myself in that world and it was the best thing i could have done i mean i would say after kind of looking back and then starting my consulting projects i think i was a consultant before i knew i was a consultant i was always the person that when i started a new hotel and like why don't these delphi templates upload correctly do you know you can upload them differently so the coding matches who's your marketing team how come we don't have a restaurant one sheet to send to customers in cvent so i was always kind of the person that was like partnering with marketing or i was working with the it team to fix issues or just trying to find where the holes were and the gaps were and where i could kind of fill in i would say probably where i really shined and where my passion was was always investing in the coordinat or the junior staff below me so that was a natural transition into kind of where the trajectory took me after that so was always the one saying to the coordinator here roll your chair over look over my shoulder i want to show you what this means this is why you take this attrition clause out or when you merge a cancellation grid this is why you have to change these so i always just took an interest to mentoring younger staff because i felt like that's where my success came from was i had so many great mentors that invested in me and showed me how to do things so again i was just always appreciative to kind of send the elevator back down so starting in my consulting practice in 2020 and i now just hit milestone of five years not being a w2 employee and that's a thank you it is a milestone i do not take for granted that definitely when i was rounding the corner to that i was like oh my goodness i'm so grateful so starting out i started helping hotels with various projects and they were like heather can you help us with this and then it just naturally kind of morphed into me assisting hotels with task force projects i was helping some non hospitality companies upskill their customer service as well as their sales organization but then when i really started working in the task force side of the hotels i was really starting to see where the areas of opportunity were and where the gaps were because again it was an unprecedented time in covid where we had a mass exit of great people or people got laid off they shifted to other industries we lost a lot of knowledge in large sizable volumes that we had to replace very quickly so you didn't have the next generation that was training and mentoring the next generation that was taking over these positions in a lot of cases so again natural things to me when i was working with these hotels of well where's your restaurant one sheet and do you have a room type one sheet or where do you send customers when they're looking for this do you have a landing page for that so i started to notice just the impact i was able to make to kind of you know again bridge that gap of some of the knowledge that was lost in these hotels and then i started to see just other niches of like maternity leave coverages and hotel openings or hotels that were transitioning to new owners and then you know that staff left so i had to duplicate myself in a way and that's where concierge was born where i basically found other great people in the industry that wanted project work and wanted to help hotels in the same way i did so i ended up having some people that took a leap of faith with me and i started to place them at great hotels some of them being al high hotels the four and five star boutique luxury hotels is really where our niches and then from there you know hotels were saying you know heather this is great that you found us temporary staff are you able to help us find someone full time and i was like actually i do know someone that's looking for a job so every arm of my organization that i've added from dwyer consulting co with the training and the coaching and the speaking and then again kind of branching off with concierge with the task force and recruiting and the fractional leadership all of it was birthed out of basically what the industry needed at that time so i'm extremely grateful that i'm able to still serve an industry that i love and it's just doing it in a different way now wow wow that's amazing well so first there's a lot in here but first congrats to your point five years you know building something from zero in you know in a very challenging you know dynamic in our industry it's not easy right and it takes a lot of guts so you know congrats i know that's just the start i know you know hasn't been easy probably and you can talk a little bit more you know later about that but a few things that i that i loved right i think number one if anyone that's listening to this that is considering hospitality or is this studying hospitality right it's just about to start the journey you know reach out to heather i mean as you heard she did every type of job that there is right so i think you know you have great insights into you know what takes to perform well in certain areas you know to your point about fnb is very there's a lot of time requirement it's very hard job can be very fulfilling but it takes a lot of commitment right holidays nighttimes weekends whatever to then sales which is a different type of pressure a little bit more structure you know time commitment in a way but you know you have the constant pressure delivering results but i love the you know what you mentioned about pivoting because you know in life a lot of times we have hard times right and you mentioned like hey they they closed they they let an entire sales team go so be easy for someone at that time to kind of you know give up or feel sorry for yourself and i loved what you said about hey you know i used every cent that they gave me starting away and invested in myself right invest in my education my coach and my business so do you think that because of that situation it kind of helped you had the itch so it kind of gave you no excuse to go all in and try hard or i don't know how did you process that time that's a great question i think that i'm a type of person that's always very curious person and i'm always wanting to learn and try new things so at that point in time i thought to myself okay what are my options here do i go back to another hotel a different type of hotel i'm like okay i've done the big box hotels i've done the branded hotels i've done the independent hotels the luxury hotels for me i was craving a new challenge i was like i need to learn new skill sets i need to try new things and i also just saw just a very quick glimpse working with entrepreneurs how they were in control of their business where that can be scary right because it's a double edged sword if they make the wrong decision they take the accountability for that right so your marketing piece failed your email campaign failed but i also saw how quickly you could get things done i'm from the east coast we want everything done yesterday okay so you give me an idea and i want to see it come to fruition right away i would say that working with independent hotels where i really thrived is i did have more autonomy there and things came to fruition much quicker than at bigger companies but still not fast enough for me so i think for me when i was an entrepreneur and i started to create a linkedin page or create a website and i wanted to do a lead form i just saw how quickly things were coming to fruition and how much of an impact it was making so quickly also so i would say the salesperson in me just felt like wow if i really set these goals and milestones and i see what's happening and how it's coming to fruition that was just really fulfilling for me wow that is great yeah thanks for thanks for the share and then now you're five years in these two different but complementative type of business what are you seeing right now from the needs of hotels the things you help usually properties the most i don't know what insights do you have to share with everybody from that end yeah i mean i would say that staffing in hotels since 2020 has still been an ebb and flow you do have some of those companies where they were lucky where they got to retain a lot of staff and or that those staff members kind of got to bring up the junior staff members but i would say in general i mean there is still a lot of burnout in the hospitality industry i have found now just working with other industries and now being in the entrepreneurial world there's still a lot of technology i think that we can leverage in the hospitality industry but i also think that there's so much of going back to the basics as well i think it goes back to investing in staff training in those staff members i notice even when i'm on a project how much of an impact you can make when you really sit down with your coordinator or really sit down with that analyst and explain why you're doing things i am very hopeful for hospitality when i see how much more departments integrate with each other i mean back when i first started in hospitality i didn't really fully understand how revenue tied in and how digital marketing tied in and adr and kind of all those things and i have found now being on projects that these 25 year olds they're speaking dorm lingo i mean they are director of revenue management are really sitting down and explaining to them you know what it means when you're kind of setting those rates and transient versus group and group mixes and i am very impressed in that way but i would just say as far as what i'm seeing it goes back to are you investing in the staff and really their quality of life i know that everyone got a taste of kind of working from home and we still do get a lot of applicants with our company that say you know we want to be part of this company because we want to work remote which as we know we're in a people business that isn't always possible when it comes to hospitality to work remotely it has certainly you know ebbed and flowed and it's changed but you know a lot of companies now are involving dose when it comes to kind of roi and the expectations of owners and doing ownership decks and so i'm noticing a lot more transparency i think overall between owners and as well as other departments so i think just upskilling and being knowledgeable about all those things ultimately is good use of knowledge but again going back to the basics of how are you treating your customers how are you treating your clients those quiet luxury service moments are really what it's all about and what pays the bills is making clients and customers happy yeah yeah that is great i've been seeing to your point as well and i love that piece like on better education more collaboration more transparency where because similar to you when i started my career you know i kind of just learned you know the little style of my job and i had no idea like how the hotel really made money you know a little bit but nowhere near where it is today and i think it's great because it helps everybody right to make better decisions and understand how each role can really make a contribution even if you're not in a revenue generation position to your point right just having the ability of building that great experience with a customer you help with the revenue because that person will come back and so on so i think there is a lot of you know more understanding of how it works in the ecosystem and then on the other hand i imagine you do this right i've been previously with management companies and brands and i've been exposed to very different type of ownership groups right you have those that have long term investments that really you know don't focus too much on the cost for now within reason right as long as the value will be there and then you have those owners that you know is their family legacy or their that's the everything that they have and every cent is you know truly measured which sometimes can pressure them to make decisions that is not in the best interest of the overall you know business long term and for you right when you're coming in and you see things like these and you believe hey yes i believe you should do x y and z that may require investing more than you want but there could be a better return whatever the case may be how how are these conversations happening from your end and if that happens right i don't know if you if you feel or see that all the time i would say everyone kind of goes in with a plan and you have a way that you think that things should be done and certainly there are plenty of industry standards of the way that things are traditionally done in general i would say that i learned a long time ago from a teacher and i myself used to be a theater teacher is you have to meet people where they are you can't just dump 20 ideas onto an owner who might not even have a hospitality background they may be real estate owners and they don't know what adr is or they don't understand the complications of uploading a group rooming list into passkeys so you have to meet people where they are and show them the value and you kind of have to reverse engineer it into baby steps like groups expect a group code after they sign their contract and these are the steps that it takes to get there this is why you need a group rooms coordinator because that group rooms coordinator is what produces this and manages that room block and does name changes so it's really about just breaking things down in a very simplistic way of this is how it's going to impact your client and your customer and these are reasons why a group won't come back third party does not get paid a commission they're not coming back to your hotel you know you have someone that's frustrated with with rooming list changes and housing methods they're not coming back to your hotel so it's really about you know what does that specific hotel need and every hotel is different i mean if you have remote properties in hawaii you maybe having a site visit manager makes sense for that hotel and again it's laying out what that person's going to do to say hey you have all of your salespeople working remotely but you have clients that want to do site visits and there's knowing to do site visits you need to kind of create this position for your ecosystem because this is how it's going to benefit your customers it's more likely that if a customer does a site visit they're more likely to convert into a sale so again it's just a matter of showing that value to that owner and showing them how it's going to impact not only the staff but also the client and then their bottom line you know yeah yeah that makes sense and then building on this you know what are the biggest needs you see right now from the customers you work with right it could be from the consulting or the agency side the staffing agency any common things that you see overall as the biggest needs or kind of trends yeah i would say outside of staffing i mean once you find the right people it really comes down to training those people and onboarding them properly i have been in a building where i've walked into an office and they say yep we have two coordinators here we have this there we have this there and then when i sit down with those people and i ask them what do you do i'm a little bit taken back and floored by how much they're not doing for how much they're capable of doing and what that role requires so i'll say to them you're merging contracts right or you're merging the proposals and uploading and you're doing the cvet proposals for your sales managers correct and there's so much that people could be doing in those positions that again they're finding the right staff so good news there you know they no longer need task force they found a full time recruit but then that full time recruit is there you don't want them to be a warm body you want that person to be in there and you want to maximize what their skill sets are you want to make sure that you're sending the elevator back down for them to become the next person that graduates into that senior role that is going to ultimately keep passing that baton to the junior people coming into this industry got it and what you know after you go in a project what kind of gives you the most fulfillment like when you leave somewhere or after a period what gives you the most joy it's always the people it's the connection that i make with people it's knowing that i made a difference in their confidence knowing that something that we built together is sustainable for their hotels so it's great to go in put my cape on be a hero for a day but that that that's such short term fulfillment for me it's more about long term fulfillment so my going into this hotel and really fixing like the the foundation of the issues or you know kind of building an onboarding plan that they now can just copy paste and use for the next person and then just having people years later that i don't even necessarily know how much i impacted them and i get these you know i have one actually right here on my desk but i get these adorable cards in the mail of you don't know how much confidence you gave me in my career or thank you for sitting and showing me that i know that's not what you were hired for but i'm so grateful that you took that time to show me that so i would say just the lasting relationships i have with people is always what's made a difference for me and that's how i built my business right so i mean even cesar the person you and i met through i mean i've known her for over 15 years and again it's really about relationships in general but in hospitality especially all of my business that i pretty much have had i could build fbi agent spiderweb on a big white board showing you how basically all of them have been through reflection referrals so whether it's someone you know referring me a contractor that contractor introduces me to a new hotel that new hotel introduces me to a new hotel when they leave so for me it's all about you know just keeping those relationships going so yeah that's what makes me happiest when i leave a project that's awesome yeah and it's funny like to your point about the referral and like how the web works i remember still today like i was a really bad student i don't remember much from college but what i do remember one of the things is like one of my professors he told said cesar you will not need a resume probably after your second or third job right and i was thinking what is this guy talking about right and then it is right it comes to fruition and you know it doesn't mean you don't need a resume right but it's like the calls come right the referrals like hey they're looking for somebody you know meet this person and and then it really allows and that's one of the things that i really love about this industry i can speak to other industries but i think this industry especially is a lot of these right these opportunities these relationships that you build that you even if you never worked with someone you see them in trade shows you see them in functions associations and you develop those relationships and you can really support each other throughout their careers in you know very very unique ways that is you know i'm sure it comes extremely handy now as well for you even even i think especially from the recruiting side right because to get task force to your point people probably had to trust you when you're starting because you're not established business and say hey i'm doing this and then someone said yes right i will do that and then to help attract new talent to your customers yeah and i think it comes down to i trust other people that are experts in their field i would never tell a barista how to make my coffee at starbucks because i don't know how to use that machine i do know a little bit from my restaurant days but i like to say kind of like the brand fubu you know for us by us i like to say that hospitality you know for me with concierge it's you know we are hospitality people that built this for us and by us you know so it's like i don't claim to be an expert on recruiting or consulting or hotels you know i have a passion for it and i know what it takes to really make operational you know efficiency and really what makes staff really light up and and want to work hard you know it's not necessarily about what is what it is that you want to get out of them from a productivity standpoint it's what are they really good at that they can actually offer to your organization that you didn't even know they knew how to do i mean sometimes i sit and shadow these you know 22 year old coordinators when i'm on a project and i'm like oh i didn't know you could do that in excel you know and i'm like wow you know so i think that we always are trying to teach something that maybe we needed to learn and again it's great to just be able to have these consultants on these projects and these task force contractors because they're teaching hotels knowledge that they're also learning from other hotels so it's kind of lighting a match and it's spreading the knowledge throughout all different types of hotels and you know it's not talent that this hotel might have got otherwise if it wasn't just a temporary contractor interesting on you know the projects you have been part of from the consulting side it seems like training the team is a common denominator right for the most part are there any others that usually there's a you know kind of a consistency across every place you go regardless of the type location yeah i mean every brand that i've worked with they kind of have their own like you know signature that they use and there's certainly great training companies that i actually refer business to when a hotel needs something that's a little bit more you know laid out and a little bit more formal like you know teaching like the funnel method you know and whatnot i would say where i try to thrive when i go into an organization again is really i don't have necessarily like a training program that i put into place i go in and ask them what's working what's not working let me see your market you know i kind of delve in and look at some of their reports to see you know what what segment they're handling are there certain industries they're handling are there certain trade shows that they're not going to and i tried to kind of do more one on one vip coaching with the teams to try to get them to understand okay this is what you need to do for your market specifically that this person over here that has a local market doesn't necessarily need to do so i would say i approach it in that way and really like you know when it comes to some of the younger staff too i mean it's great there are companies that have a great onboarding process when it comes to like new hire orientation they talk about the values of their hotel and the commitment there but i try to also kind of delve in with these coordinators or salespeople and really just coach them on mindset so what is it that it takes to be a great salesperson are you listening more than you're talking how are you giving your site visit just really talking about asking questions and not necessarily being the one that's always talking so a lot of sales etiquette i focus on let me see how long your emails are are you actually answering the questions that customers are asking you so again it's more sales refinement i would say than me building kind of like a curriculum of like a sales 101 when it comes to hotels yeah yeah that's awesome and then you know as you were talking i don't know why i wasn't necessarily linked to that but it triggered my mind like so you spent many years the majority of your professional career as an employee right where it's fairly structured and all that and then now you're responsible for your own success to your point right you know the wins and the losses it's right it's truly on you and you don't have anyone right you know in theory anyone else kind of what are like was there any like big shock or i don't know unexpected things that came in these last five years that you know you just didn't have exposure to or never thought about as you're getting this started and running oh yeah i am a salesperson at heart i want to make people feel good i want to bring business in i want to sign contracts i was not anticipating all the operational things that i had to do in my business taxes cash flow payroll accounting sending invoices following up with invoices so that was certainly a learning curve for me and that's why early on i was so grateful when i took those entrepreneurship classes a saying that people will always kind of you know mantra if you will in the entrepreneurial world is hire your weaknesses so the first person that i brought onto my business was a operations manager and he runs all of that side for me so he does all the invoices to clients he does the payroll to my consultants they invoice him they send expenses to him so i would say that that part of the business did not light me up and that's not where my strong suit was i know enough to be dangerous i know how to run a p and l statement out of my you know my quickbooks and you know read kind of cash flow i had to go down to you know my bank and take out a line of credit for the first time because you know you're only as good as your word and when you start taking on payroll for 10 12 people you know that's their livelihood and that's what kept me up awake the most i would say in my business is not paying myself and going into an emergency fund or rehearsing what i might say if i can't pay someone i would have never got to that point and that was the part probably that was the biggest learning curve for me was the financial piece the you know kind of cash flow piece and then you know and then just learning everything that there is to know about partnerships and referrals and llcs versus s corp so all of that you know kind of came in baby steps of me learning and now looking back now i'm like wow that back then it seems so complicated now five years in it's you know i can explain an llc versus an s corp versus sole proprietorship in my sleep so that is awesome that is i would have no idea how to go to a bank and make my case right i gotta gotta be you know i think to your point there's so many new things that you really gotta just kind of learn and congrats that's exciting and and love the you know higher your weakness because it's so true right then really allows you to focus on what you're amazing at what no refuse your bucket right your energy and and allows you to be successful and grow you know however you want to grow you know and then from your all the jobs you've had except for this one now what was your favorite oh you know i have to say well i've had so many great jobs and i've worked with so many great friends there is definitely something really fun about working in the restaurant business in particular you know you do an employee meal before each shift so you know we used to call it comida so we'd all come together we'd break bread we'd eat we'd go over the specials and then we would work a shift we'd get off we all kind of had a routine of different restaurants we'd all go to after work to then be waited on you know oh make sure you order three of these get the bottle of the montepuciano that we love we'd all like hang out on a sunday night i had no email i had to check i didn't think about you know anything that i had to do after i left that job until i had to go back the next day so i would say i had a lot of fun working in the restaurant industry i think the breaks after you worked in food and beverage were so fulfilling because you worked so hard during your shift physically mentally just trying to keep the pieces going i would say that probably working in the restaurant business was one of my favorite jobs that i had that is awesome yeah it can be a lot of fun and to your point even though you build a lot of that in sales teams as well but yeah you get so tight together right to your point because you know you you gotta work in sync 100 every day but then you have the pre and post you know shifts that really builds that super tight and yeah yeah yeah i think i think it was at a time in my life too where life didn't feel as serious so you know my rent was still cheap i had a roommate you know it was kind of just oh i'll figure that out later you know i was 21 and you know 22 years old so i would say that that was just a lot of fun just being able to just have that time in my life where i had a lot of really close friends that we just spent so much time together inside of working outside of work yeah yeah got it and then you know as we come towards the close i have two things that i would love to hear your thought and i think you you have great value to add one is like you know for any listeners that are just really starting or they're not sure what they want to do you know given your expertise and experience what are some tips or thoughts you can share with them oh there's a lot i would say one of my favorite quotes that i always like to kind of sprinkle into my linkedin post or even personal post is what steve jobs says about the dots don't always connect looking forward but they connect looking backwards you know there was times that i had tough days working as a w2 employee where i'm like why am i the one stuck doing this or you know like like i'm getting so frustrated no one's calling me back but you clarity doesn't come from thoughts clarity comes from action so i find that a lot of people that i mentor which i'm very grateful that i get to mentor people that are just starting out in their careers i say just try something what you learn from working at a coffee shop you never know that may carry on to something that you might use someday or the way you might organize something in a hotel someday might come from something that you learn even if it's not the exact same way you learned it at that coffee shop you might say oh well when i worked at a coffee shop we used to do our scheduling like this i'm like whatever it is there's so many transferable skills i would say that you know people who are starting on their career just just listen to what people have to say you can take it with a grain of salt but meet up with as many people as you can like one thing i did when i got you know laid off and let go from my hotel job is i made it a point to always meet up with people for coffee so whether it was someone that i hadn't talked to in a few years and then that sparked her talking to me about like independent health insurance i had no idea how to get health insurance at that time and that ended up spiraling into me meeting my health insurance broker and she and i started a networking group together that's local here in orange county so each each dot can kind of connect to different things that you might not know or realize that might be end up being a resource for you someday and i think to myself wow thank goodness that i stopped by that happy hour at imax because if i never had that conversation with this person i would have never ran into them on the show floor and i met that person so for younger people just starting out i would just say just keep yourself busy keep your network fresh ask that person hey do you want to go get a coffee after work do you want to go grab a cocktail whatever it is i mean it can't hurt being active what's going to hurt people from moving forward is being idle you know again that clarity is not going to come from you sitting on your couch thinking about redoing your resume no get your resume done and then email it to someone like me and say hey i see you own a staffing company do you mind looking over my resume sure i'll look over your resume and i'll give you pointers and then i actually have had some of my friends sons and daughters do that and i'm like add your linkedin profile change this picture you know and again i think that there's more people out there in the industry that are willing to help than the younger generation realizes but also in hospitality i mean hospitality people it fills our cup we love helping other people so i would say just reach out don't be afraid to reach out yeah brilliant recommendations and i couldn't agree more i think i'll double down on that i think i believe that if you call anybody right if you would call i would call or someone just started to call anyone for you know like a tip i want to pick your brain almost no one is going to say no right because people generally want to help and you know everybody can find five minutes or something to help you or find someone else that can help but yeah just asking right and worst case scenario you here they know your status quo then move to the next right and and it's amazing how much you can find and your point about like you know going to that you know extra reception or whatever i read a book a couple of years ago called the power of one more by ed mylett and it speaks to that right it's like you're sometimes in life you're almost there right and you give up or something and sometimes just that one little extra step that one little extra meeting can unlock everything right and and you never know and that goes also for taking care of yourself right so doesn't mean just go go go and then you crash right but yeah that resonates i mean i even bring that up to salespeople you know when i'm going in doing these speaking engagements or trainings at hotels i say ask for the referral you know i'm like you never know like hey do you know any other organizations that are looking to plan a meeting or hey do you have any other meetings that you plan i said the worst they can do is say no you know i mean for me even with recruiting i'll randomly reach out to someone and say hey cesar do you know anyone in the orlando area looking for a new job and you might say actually i do you know i'm like we all have a lot of resources more than we realize and i've never seen anyone get upset about somebody asking for a referral or asking a question so for me that's how i've built my business is asking people hey i see that you have a position open online can i help you with that and then people say actually you can so you just never know what the answer is going to be but i would say just don't be afraid to ask yeah yeah that is awesome and then finally heather's like what makes you excited about the future you know it can be about your business the hospitality anything what makes you like wow i would say what makes me excited about the future and just about my two businesses is that exactly what we just talked about the segue is that there's so much more to learn out there and there's so many more resources and tools and amenities and things i think that we can bring into this experiential industry i think just as technology evolves and as we evolve people more i just think that there's so much more room to grow for us to have these just really cool experiences on earth it's like between cool bedding or diffusers white noise machines restaurants the curated cocktails i just think that we keep up leveling as an industry and again i'm an innovator and entrepreneur at heart so i think innovation just really excites me about the future and the new experience experiences that we can have that we don't even know are possible yet yeah that is awesome very good thank you you know thank you heather it's really really amazing stuff that you shared and and i'm sure it's going to be super helpful for whomever tunes in right because i think there is great green tell for someone that's just started someone that doesn't know necessarily what to do is someone that knows like hey i really want to have my own business right and you shared some great tips things to consider some lessons along the way so you know very comprehensive appreciate you really sharing from from the heart and yeah has been has been an honor yeah same to you cesar thank you so much again for having me and i hope something that i said today resonated and again reach out and ask i'm always here if anybody wants to pick my brain on anything that is awesome i'm sure they will thank you everybody for tuning in and until the next one