Transcript: Episode 182: Wrong Kind of Rally

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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 182. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/182. 

[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.

[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Shari Lied is an attorney turned author, life coach, and professional speaker with an incredible story of self discovery and connection. Born in Korea and adopted by Japanese American parents in Seattle, Shari grew up with a deep understanding of resilience. After practicing law for 14 years and taking time to raise her children, she pivoted to a career in coaching and writing. Shari’s latest book, Table For 51, recounts her quest to visit all 50 states, which is a quest I am also on. During her journey, she met with 50 women, some of whom were strangers, some old friends, some something in between. Today we are going to talk about how travel fosters deep human connections. But before we jump in, we need to answer the call button. 

Call button rings 

The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals and the general public who have burning questions. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at 850-404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Elizabeth. What are some smart safety procedures to put into practice, especially when meeting up with strangers in new cities? Now, Shari, I know that you probably have some good ideas. I think Elizabeth is probably meeting with a Tinder date and not 50 women that she connected with over the internet, but either way, let's give her some good advice. So what do you think? What are smart safety tips? 

[00:02:18] Shari Leid: Well, that's funny because after this as a quick side, I started dating online and I dated one guy. I had, my goal is one guy for a year as I went through my divorce. So I did this with men also. So I have a safety piece. 

[00:02:32] Susan Barry: It's a dual purpose tip. 

[00:02:36] Shari Leid: Absolutely. So similarly though, meeting strangers, meeting women, I was doing this travel by myself across the US, I met in public places. I simply met in public places and except for a few times I did go to their homes, but that was only if I had a connection. Somebody that I knew very well connected me to like their former college roommate or their aunt or something like that.

[00:03:00] Susan Barry: Where you had some social proof that they weren't going to murder you.

[00:03:03] Shari Leid: Yes, exactly. And I didn't know a lot of their background, but I would look online beforehand just to get one, two, so I could recognize them in the restaurant, but also kind of just to make sure that everything looked and felt okay. 

[00:03:17] Susan Barry: And did you have anyone on the side who was kind of keeping track of your travels? Like, did anyone know where you were on these trips or were you just sort of gliding through the United States? 

[00:03:30] Shari Leid: Yes. Well, I have find my friends with my family on the Apple, I'm a Apple user, and I also have a publicist who had my travel record too. 

[00:03:42] Susan Barry: Oh, good. 

[00:03:42] Shari Leid: So, on there, I had it laid out, what, where I was staying at and my flight schedule, my driving schedule, all of that. So yes, so people knew where I was at all the time, all the time. Also, I was careful when I was traveling alone not to post on social media until I left the place or close to leaving the place. 

[00:04:02] Susan Barry: That is such a good tip and it's one that took me a minute to adopt. I'll tell you why I started doing that though, because if I would post that I was in a place and I made like, I'm there for 15 minutes, people would be like, why didn't you call me? We should have gotten dinner. Why can't, and I'm like, bro, I'm here on a business trip. Like I do not have time. So I just quit even making the announcement that I was anywhere because I didn't want to feel guilty about it. 

[00:04:29] Shari Leid: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a great, you know, it's a great safety tip if you're traveling alone, or if you're going to a place to meet someone, maybe that you might have to be, if your social media is public, you might want to be a little careful. 

[00:04:43] Susan Barry: Excellent. Well, you started your career as a litigator. What was the moment when you realized that writing and storytelling were your next calling? 

[00:04:55] Shari Leid: As a kid, I was a great writer as a kid and I always wanted to write and I got into college and I was going to go into communications, broadcasting. I did my first college paper and I came back with a terrible, terrible grade. And just shot my confidence that coupled with, I didn't think I could make a career. I didn't think there was money in writing. You know, I was 18 years old making these big decisions, so I didn't do it. And my first book came out after age 50 and I started writing and now I write articles for different publications. I write constantly. This is book number four. So this career came after age 50. 

[00:05:32] Susan Barry: Excellent. 

[00:05:33] Shari Leid: It was my childhood dream. So don't let go of those childhood dreams just because they haven't happened yet. 

[00:05:38] Susan Barry: It's never too late. How did those early experiences of childhood and infanthood, being adopted from Korea, growing up in a Japanese American household, and I think your grandparents history of being in internment camps, how did that all shape your perspective on, or sort of your approach to, belonging? 

[00:06:06] Shari Leid: It was actually my parents that were in internment camps, both of my parents. My dad was born in Seattle, my mom on Bainbridge Island, which is a 30 minute ferry ride from Seattle, and so they were both because of their Japanese heritage, even though to their dying day, they never left the United States except for a visit to Vancouver, B.C. They were interned. During World War Two, along with their families. And so I grew up with the belief that I wasn't necessarily welcome across the U. S. And it wasn't something that was overtly said, but it was something I realized as I grew up because of my dad's experience, that he had during World War Two and the fallout afterwards. So part of my journey across the U.S. is I want to rewrite that belief and believe I'm welcome everywhere. And that was the beauty of it because I did feel like I was welcome across the U. S., at least with everyone I came into contact with. 

[00:07:03] Susan Barry: That's wonderful. A good outcome of a bad situation. I have this question for you. It's a little bit hard to articulate, so you're going to have to be patient with me for a second. But in your book, Table for 51, you talk about how you noticed that many of the women that you met had experiences with adoption, either as a child or as a parent. I've had this experience. I've noticed that what seems to me to be an extraordinary number of my friends are adopted. So I'm curious as an adoptee, as someone who's talked to a lot of people with experience with adoption, do you think that adoption is more common than people realize, or is it that there is some unspoken attraction between people who have been adopted that draw them to each other? Or quite frankly, is this just a function of the fact that we were born in the seventies and maybe more babies were being adopted in the seventies? I have no idea. What do you think? 

[00:08:16] Shari Leid: Well, you know, I haven't looked at the statistics, but I would imagine that there may be more adoptions. Now in different forms because especially with gay adoptions, there's more people allowed to adopt now than there were back in the seventies. And same with single parent adoptions, single parent adoptions in some areas weren't allowed back then. That being said, you know, I didn’t, I grew up not knowing other people were adopted, but people didn't talk about adoption as much as they do now. Sometimes it was hidden, and in fact, a lot of adoptees didn't know unless it was obvious on the outside that they were adopted.

So, my surprise on this 50 states journey. Because this was just somewhat of a random selection of people, women of all different races, economic levels, education levels, political beliefs, religious beliefs. I was surprised how often adoption came up in our conversations because these were organic conversations. And like you said, it was either someone was adopted or they were a parent of an adoptee. And it made me realize that, as you said, I've been searching. The search for belonging is something I realized has been a lifelong search for me and as I spoke to these women and realized adoption is a lot more common than I thought and all of these families are created in so many different ways just all around me and this experience is so rich there was a sense of well one curiosity I was really interested in their experiences two there's a lot of us that are not from your you know typical leave it to beaver families and It's okay.

[00:09:53] Susan Barry: Absolutely it is. So we should probably take a step back and talk about the journey that you went on and sort of the details of that. I have to know first, what sparked the idea to do this and did it, did the goal that you had going into it remain the same or did it change? 

[00:10:16] Shari Leid: So part of it was simply wanting to travel the U.S. I had never traveled the U.S. as I mentioned before. And so that was on a personal level, on a bigger level, I was really disheartened by how divided I felt that we have gotten as a country and as our communities, the pandemic kept us in our physical bubbles, but also all of our, you know, the racial and political strife made us really, I guess divided in the sense that we start to protect ourselves emotionally and mentally from people before actually getting to know them. So I wanted to see if I could go out and simply share meals with people and not focus on the things that made us different and look for connections. So that was my goal to begin with.

And as I traveled around, I found that it was really the differences that made this journey exciting and what sparked the most interesting conversations. And I started out looking for connections with different women. I began to feel like I was having one continuous conversation, except the physical shape of the person and the voice would change. So these people, these women, I said, they were strangers that became friends, but not only that, they are strangers that became my greatest teachers. 

[00:11:37] Susan Barry: Did you expect that that was going to happen or was that an unplanned by product of the adventure? 

[00:11:44] Shari Leid: It was not planned. There was so much not planned. I mean, I ended up actually filing for divorce at the end, in part because I received strength from these women from hearing their life stories and I started to, you know, these are organic conversations, but I found myself. As I was writing the book, I realized I was asking the question, where feels like home to you? What feels like home to you? And I start to realize traveling back to my home, which was this beautiful home that my ex husband and I had remodeled had so much of me in it. I couldn't understand why it didn't feel like home. And I started to understand a home really is where. Well, you can say where your heart is, but it's where your community is and where you feel in alignment with what's what's inside. And and all these women taught me that. 

[00:12:40] Susan Barry: You created a movement, Flip the Box, as sort of a response to your trip. What is Flip the Box and how can someone who's listening to our conversation participate?

[00:12:54] Shari Leid: This is something I'm very excited about. In fact, the National, what's it called? The National Day Archives just accepted it as an official day, March 5th, is Flip the Box Day. I just got notice for that. 

[00:13:05] Susan Barry: Okay. 

[00:13:07] Shari Leid: Flip the box. So the term flip the box, it comes from this journey. So as a baby, we mentioned I was adopted. I was actually orphaned and found in a cardboard box and I was found with no name, no birth date, no identifying information. And I realized, as I was traveling, I had taken this box I was found in as a baby and symbolically flipped it and made it a table for connection. And I also realized, as I looked around, I'm not the only one searching for belonging.  I mean, this search for belonging is everywhere. You know, we have a loneliness epidemic in our country and it made me wonder what boxes are we all carrying? You know, there's something that's keeping us from connecting with our neighbor, our coworker, our family members.

And so this flip the box is simply asking people to flip the box and take a chance and ask somebody out to a cup of coffee to share a meal because magical things happen when you sit across the table from somebody and share food. I mean, we're all happy when we share food. So there's a private Facebook page called Flip the Box. I'm encouraging people through this movement to one ask somebody simply to share a meal. We owe the next generation examples of how to connect. We've shown them how to disconnect. Let's show them how to connect with one another by something that we've done since the dawn of time, breaking bread, food has always meant safety and belonging. And in 2026, I actually will go around the country again, but this time helping facilitate these Flip the Box gatherings.

[00:14:46] Susan Barry: Oh, cool. I wonder if any of your women that you met with will post something. 

[00:14:51] Shari Leid: Yeah. Several of them said they would and several of them met for the first time in person this past week at my book launch and it was so beautiful to see them together and they greeted each other like they were longtime friends. It was absolutely the most beautiful thing. 

[00:15:09] Susan Barry: Oh, that's awesome. We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every episode of Top Floor with some practical and tangible tips and ideas to try either in their businesses or in their lives. Many, many, many people that I know have set finding or building community as a goal for this year. I am one of them. Community is my word of the year. For someone who is looking to break out of their comfort zone and connect with people in a meaningful way, what advice would you give? 

[00:15:45] Shari Leid: Well, first of all, let it be easy. The easiest thing, and that'll be something different for everyone. But one of my friends, AJ in Portland, who has moved around a lot since I've known him in the last 10 years because of his job, he always seems to have this great group of friends around him, no matter what city he's placed in. So I asked him, how do you do that? And he said, when he was growing up and before he went to college, his parents advised him, wherever you end up, always join some type of health facility, whether or not it's a gym or some type of health club or running club, something join an arts club, whether that means a reading book club or a museum or some type of art that you like music. And third, join a nonprofit of some sort in whatever way is comfortable for you. And those three places, you'll find a diverse group of people who have interest in the same things you do.

[00:16:42] Susan Barry: Yeah, that's so good.

[00:16:43] Shari Leid: Yeah, isn't it? And it's a numbers game also. It's a numbers game just like anything else, just like, you know, dating or whatever it is. It's a number of numbers game. Not everyone's going to be your best friend, your lifelong friend, but everyone, I don't believe in accidental meetings and, doing this. Some are going to stick and some will stick for a long time. 

[00:17:04] Susan Barry: That is really good advice. I love that. What about logistical tips for taking on a project like what you just did? You set up 50 individual one on one conversations in 50 different states over what less than a year, right? 

[00:17:24] Shari Leid: Yes. Eight months. I planned it about six months to a year ahead of time, these meetings, but the actual meetings took place over an eight month period. 

[00:17:32] Susan Barry: So did you learn anything for the average planner or average person in terms of logistics that you would want to share? 

[00:17:42] Shari Leid: Again, yeah, I think it's let it be easy. It's going to be different for someone else. I mentioned to you before we recorded that my love language is structure and it's structure organization. So this 50 states and all this, it fit into the way I like to do things. I like graphs and tables and checklists, but not, I'm not a spontaneous person by any stretch of the imagination, even when I try to be spontaneous. And I have friends who are spontaneous and this would never work for them. This trying to put this would give them so much stress, even thinking about it. So they won't, they wouldn't even start. So that's why I say, let it be easy and do what works for you. And this whole Flip the Box movement is simply start with one. Start with one. And it doesn't have to, it’s whatever is easy. If the easiest thing is just to go outside your door and ask your neighbor, Hey, let’s grab a cup of coffee and let's go for a walk. Start with that and go from there because it's always easy. It's always easy to make ugly pretty. You can't make perfection. It's harder to make perfection pretty. So it seems overwhelming to take on a project like this. Just start. Simply start. 

[00:18:50] Susan Barry: Do something. 

[00:18:51] Shari Leid: It's okay if it starts out ugly. Yeah. It's okay if it starts out ugly. 

[00:18:54] Susan Barry: Okay. So you know that I am a longtime hotelier and a lot of our listeners are in the hotel business as well. So as someone who's spent a ton of time in hotels during this epic journey, what is something that you wish hotels would stop doing and what is something that you wish hotels would start doing? 

[00:19:15] Shari Leid: The stop is easy for me and especially traveling alone as a woman and a lot of the places I went to were smaller towns and not necessarily the best neighborhoods to stay by yourself. There weren't a lot of women traveling by themselves. So it always made me cringe when the front desk announced my room number. 

[00:19:33] Susan Barry: Oh my gosh. Yes. And that is like such a no no across the industry, but it happens all the time. And I feel like it's happening more than it used to. 

[00:19:42] Shari Leid: It happens all the time. You are in room number, as opposed to just having the key and pointing and saying, this is your room. And I had one occasion where a man did follow me and I thought, Oh, well, he knows what room number and I moved the furniture from the door and it had me a little shaken. So that would be the one thing that please, don’t say out loud what room your guest is in. 

[00:20:07] Susan Barry: Thousand percent. Okay. What about something that you wish they would start doing? 

[00:20:12] Shari Leid: See, I love the south and I know you're in the South right now and I'm in Seattle and the culture is very different in the way we talk to one another. And the reason I say I love the South is because there's a communication that I feel in the South where people say, how are you? And they want you to answer and then they bless you after you've answered. And I found that even when I was in these hotels that weren't fancy and I was in the South, I felt so welcome. And like I was at home there because the way the front person greeted me, how's your day? Where are you coming from? Oh, that's great. I've always wanted to go to Seattle. It doesn't rain there a lot or, you know, whatever it was and they weren't. It wasn't as if they were just following protocol to check me in, it was as if they were having a human connection with me when I was checking in. 

[00:21:05] Susan Barry: You know why? Because they were following a deeper protocol than work, which is mom and their grandma teaching them how to make conversation at the dinner table. It's like, you have to hold up your end of the conversation. I don't know if that's as true anymore, but when I was growing up, that was a very big part of what I had to learn as a little girl. 

[00:21:28] Shari Leid: Yes. You know, in fact, I was just in Birmingham in the Birmingham area, I flew back last night and I stayed at so many hotels. It's hard for me to remember where I stayed. I walked in and I recognized the person at the front desk, even though the hotel looked like the, cause it was a chain hotel, looked like many of the hotels I stayed in and because how warm she was the last time I was there and I said, I remember you, you were that kind woman who took my picture here and welcomed me so warmly. So that changes the game for the guest experience. It didn't matter that that was, the tier number two of this hotel chain. It could have been the four, the five star hotel with that greeting. 

[00:22:09] Susan Barry: Oh, I love that. We have reached the fortune telling portion of our show. So now is the time to predict the future. So we can come back later, see if you got it right, maybe read about it in your next book. What is a prediction that you have about the future of travel and human connection? 

[00:22:27] Shari Leid: Oh, I hope I'm correct on this one with all the AI coming out and virtual working. I predict that human travel and connection will increase because we have to. I mean, we were made here to increase the two things that AI and virtual working and all this other stuff can't change is our need for human connection and our need for food. And we're kind of flowing one way because we did, the pandemic kind of pushed us that way too. And anytime you go far one way, a lot of times you come back the other way. And so my prediction, which I hopefully will highlight in the next book is this increase that we're seeing feeling as a society in connection. 

[00:23:11] Susan Barry: Excellent. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the way that we interact with people who have different backgrounds or beliefs, what would it be?

[00:23:24] Shari Leid: I would take off the labels. After this project, I told the women I was going to do a survey and find out what everyone's religious and political beliefs were, and then I was going to share it. I did that survey, but then I decided not to share it because we had already connected over Zoom. I had brought these women together and I thought, I don't want to ruin these beautiful friendships with labels that would make somebody believe some that a person is a certain way because of who they voted for or what church they go to or whatever it is. So sometimes those labels get in the way of us really listening to one another. 

[00:24:01] Susan Barry: All right. This is a tough one. Did this trip satisfy your curiosity or do you feel like there's another big adventure ahead?

[00:24:11] Shari Leid: Oh, it's just starting. There's another.

[00:24:14] Susan Barry: I knew you were going to say that. I had a feeling. Yeah. Okay, folks, before we tell Shari goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”

[00:24:31] Susan Barry: The loading dock is brought to you by Foxfold, creator of refillable toilet paper and facial tissue dispensers for hotels that lower costs and reduce waste. I talked to their CEO, Ludo Siofi, in episode 143, and honestly, this product is really cool. I have a sample in my house. If you want to stop seeing half used rolls of toilet paper at your loading dock, visit foxfold.com. Shari, what is a story you would only tell me on the loading dock? 

[00:25:08] Shari Leid: Well, this is one I don't talk about publicly much. I actually don't know that I have. So, when I landed in Cleveland, Ohio, I wasn't expecting anything. Everything was going fine, landed, got into the rental van, going to, or the van going to the rental car location. And as I was sitting there, I started looking around and I noticed that there was a white supremacy rally and as you mentioned, yes, going on, there were some police cars, there were other cars in this kind of rally. And you could tell by the flags, it wasn't a political one. This is a supremacy rally. And I looked around in the van. It was just, I was the only person of color in the van and I actually started physically shaking. It wasn't something I expected. And I got to my car. And I have a bad sense of direction. I really do. It's actually a wrong sense of direction. I always go the wrong way.

So I'm in my car. I'm in my car and I'm, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, I'm going to drive right into this rally. So I'm picturing these headlines of Asian women crashes into white supremacy rally. But by the time I got to my hotel, I was actually physically shaking. It had, it shook me up and it was, I wasn't expecting it. And I got inside and I did some online research and I found out there have been problems in the area. And the next day though, I met the woman who was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and tall, beautiful, blonde hair, blue eyed woman, and she and I hit it off like we were childhood friends.

We got along so well that we stayed for hours. Luckily, the restaurant lad us and they thought we were old friends catching up. And by the end of that day, I said, I can't wait to come back here. And we're still, we feel like we're really good friends now, I could pick up the phone at any time and call her. And it was just such a lesson for me that a place, the place where I felt the least welcome initially was the person I felt most at home with who was from there. And there is such a such a lesson to again, and this kind of goes back to labels or or just seeing something on the surface and not going deeper and it just reminded me not to not to let a few minutes of a day ruin a whole experience.

[00:27:35] Susan Barry: Excellent. Shari Leid. Thank you so much for being here. I know our listeners are going to go out and get Table for 51 and I really appreciate you riding up to the top floor. 

[00:27:48] Shari Leid: Thank you so much. This is a great ride. 

[00:27:52] Susan Barry: Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/182. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. And your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.

[00:28:28] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor Podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.