Transcript: Episode 184: Hotel Room Saddle

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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 184. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/184. 

[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. Lan Elliott has spent her career in hotel real estate beginning with consulting at KPMG and later moving into acquisitions, development, and asset management. She has held leadership positions at companies like Host Hotels and Resorts. It's Starwood and IHG, where she built and led teams responsible for high stakes negotiations and property investments worldwide. Now Lan is a hotel owner and investor through her company, Acacia Holdings, and devotes a huge amount of time to advancing women in hospitality leadership. She is the principal and interview host of It's Personal Stories, a podcast that explores the career paths of industry leaders. And we'll link to my episode of that in the show notes. Today, we are going to talk about how to create meaningful career opportunities for the next generation. 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 anybody else who has a burning question. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at 850-404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Natalie and it's perfect for you, Lan. Here's what Natalie says. I would like to do more speaking. How do I get asked to speak at conferences? 

[00:02:09] Lan Elliott: That's a really good question. I went a long time in my career before I was asked to speak. I do think a big piece of it is getting to know conference organizers, volunteering to be on the conference advisory board so that they get to know you.

[00:02:26] Susan Barry: That's a good idea. 

[00:02:28] Lan Elliott: And another thing I didn't know was that a lot of the publications are affiliated with conference organizers. So if you want to become a thought leader that might get asked to speak at one of the conferences, you might think about writing an article. And that's also a great way to get to know some of the editors, but they're also the people that can help you meet the conference organizers to help you get on the stage. 

[00:02:55] Susan Barry: Gotcha. That's really good advice and didn't you recently help launch sort of a speaker database for women in particular in the hospitality industry? 

[00:03:06] Lan Elliott: Yes, we did in one of our efforts that The Women in Hospitality Leadership Alliance is focused on is getting more women on the stage. And there is a podium committee, which is led by Rachel Vandenberg. And as we were speaking with conference organizers, one of the things that came up again and again was this myth, in my opinion, that there are no women. So I said, let's create a database of women. And what started with 700 women. In July when we launched the alliance's speaker directory has since grown to over 1400 women just a few months later and it continues to expand. So we're really excited to be able to get more women on the stage and it's a great tool for podcasts, for conference organizers, for advisory boards, many many uses. Recruiters as well. 

[00:04:05] Susan Barry: I used it for the conference that I planned for Cayuga Hospitality Consultants last year and got a wonderful speaker from that. It is also nice to have it because I have a secret life as a full time troller of panels that are all men. And so now when I'm writing my little comments, like, Oh, if you need help finding a woman, I can help you. I can also drop that link, which is really nice. Not wanting to be a full time troll, what attracted you to the hotel business?

[00:04:38] Lan Elliott: It's funny, when I left home to go to hospitality school at 18 years old, I only knew two things about hospitality. One was a few really nice vacations I was lucky enough to take with my parents. And the other thing was the 1980s TV show Hotel. 

[00:04:58] Susan Barry: So many people say that. 

[00:05:00] Lan Elliott: Right? Yeah. With Josh Brolin as the general manager and Connie Celica, his uber efficient number two. I never wanted to be Connie Celica. I wanted to be Josh Brolin. Sorry, James Brolin. I wanted to be the person that was in charge. And so I went to hotel school thinking I wanted to be a luxury hotel general manager right up until the time I had a couple of internships in hotels. And I thought, this is not for me. And I was really lucky my sophomore year of school to take a required class called properties. And it might've had a different name. It was taught by a professor named Dick Penner, who is no longer with us, but he changed my life because the first day of class, he turned off all the lights and started flashing photographs of amazing resorts in Hawaii. And it was the first time it dawned on me. There's a whole nother side of the industry that's around building hotels, investing in hotels. And that real estate side was there but not there in a way when I was growing up. And so that was the first moment that I understood that would be my path for the last 30 years.

[00:06:12] Susan Barry: Oh, wow. So you have worked on everything from pretty traditional hotel assets to lifestyle brands from their inception, like W Hotels, what was the or was there an adjustment when moving between those worlds of like boring four walls and W. 

[00:06:34] Lan Elliott: Absolutely at host we looked at a lot of institutional brands and I knew upper upscale hotels, I understood luxury we had purchased or built Ritz Carltons also worked on acquiring Four Seasons and W was just at the beginning of lifestyle when, when I went over there and W had very rapidly because of their ADR increases moved into the luxury arena. But what I didn't really understand was this concept of psychographics. I think the brand people tried to explain it to us at host, but it went over our heads, at least mine. And so I had to learn when I was at W, how to describe these two different worlds of traditional luxury versus lifestyle luxury.

And the best analogy that I came up with is if you think about. Yeah. How people gravitate toward towards cars. You might have someone who loves Rolls Royces, the whole luxury with a chauffeur sitting in the back seat being driven everywhere. That's one form of luxury. And another form of luxury is a Ferrari that might be similarly priced. And it is something that you would drive yourself. You wouldn't hire a driver to drive your Ferrari. And that's part of the joy of it. And I think if you think about it as it's not a price point differential, it's a personal differential. It explains, I think people are either one way or the other, and it's just personal preference. And maybe that's why we have so many brands now, but the idea is that there is something for everyone. And that's one of the things I had to learn when I was, when I was at W, because if I was trying to market, a W luxury hotel to a traditional luxury shake in the Middle East. It wasn't going to go anywhere if that was just not the site.

[00:08:27] Susan Barry: And having experienced a W opening that was owned maybe by a more traditional luxury owner, there definitely is a difference and, or at least there was, and there's a certain, definitely a gap in understanding. Do you think that? The word lifestyle has less meaning now in hospitality, you know, 20, 25 years later.

[00:08:52] Lan Elliott: I think it's been used for a lot of different things. I think we used to use the word boutique or design hotels. I think lifestyle is a bit broader because some of those hotels might not be small, so it's not a boutique. And I think it's a broader category. I do think this. Idea of it being very specific to a certain kind of lifestyle It's become used more broadly now so it could be pretty much anything, but I think this idea that hotels are individual properties that they might all have a similar theme. They might be chapters of the same book, but they're each very distinct. I think is a great way to think about lifestyle or a lifestyle brand as opposed to something that that's more cookie cutter where you're going to have a model room that's standardized and gets to be repeated in red or blue in hotels everywhere.

[00:09:53] Susan Barry: That's you know, I'm thinking about as you're talking something like the difference between a. Okay. W and Margaritaville. Margaritaville is certainly a lifestyle brand. But it's quite a different lifestyle than a W. So, that's an interesting way to think about it. You have been winning awards and getting all of this recognition left and right for the last two weeks. Like I had to keep updating this question because you kept winning more stuff, which I love to see. So you were named a top social media influencer, a top woman of influence, and your show, your podcast was included in the top 10 list of hospitality podcasts. How do awards like that affect you? And I, I'll maybe give a little context. I don't mean like, are you happy or are you sad? Obviously you're happy, but do is there any other impact on your sort of approach or your career? And what about on the larger industry? Do you think they make a difference in the bigger scheme of things? 

[00:11:01] Lan Elliott: I think in terms of how it affects me, I think it's been an embarrassment of riches actually over the last couple weeks for me. And I've been lucky to have you in my corner sending me notes to say, Hey, you just got this. Let me go and look. I didn't even think to look. But I do find it very ironic because I toiled for years in the trenches of big companies. And now that this chapter is more about giving back to this industry that I love that has been so good to me. But I don't think it's a coincidence that it's happening now. And I find it very fulfilling work this purpose of advancing women in hospitality leadership really drives me every day and it's really fun to work with amazing people like you and Rachel, David, Dorothy on the podcast and you know trying to make the world a better place for women and the next generation Is such a thing of hope and positivity And I just love that. So if this helps to amplify that message that i'm really happy. 

[00:12:18] Susan Barry: Excellent. Well, speaking of your career and your toiling, which I so identify with, you have been one of the only women in the room for a lot of your career. How do you think that has shaped your approach to leadership? 

[00:12:35] Lan Elliott: In transactions, it can take a long time before one leads a team because deals are a very individual kind of sport. And I had a lot of bosses that were more transactional. And so that's what I knew about leadership. And so when I led my own team, I wanted to do it differently, but I didn't know how I tried emulating my boss at that time, who is very talented and has led a lot of teams and is brilliant. But I was a total, total failure at leading the team and the way that he did. And I was very lucky to be given an executive coach to be sent for leadership training and all of that really helped me to figure out how to lead in a way that's authentic to me that's different and that brings out the things that I want to do and how I want to be perceived as a leader. So there are lots of great tools and the idea of continuous learning is really important. I think I underestimated that when I first came out of school 

[00:13:47] Susan Barry: That's a perfect segue into my next question which has to do with Its Personal Stories. You've interviewed some top leaders in hospitality and I know that you have seen commonalities or traits or things that they do that you think contributes to having helped them make it to the top. Can you talk about what some of those commonalities are like what I don't know are there top three things that you can do to rise to the top? 

[00:14:18] Lan Elliott: I think the first thing that jumped out to us when we first started doing the interviews and we were surprised, but not surprised. But the first thing that came out was curiosity. It is the one thing that has come up again and again, in terms of people leaning into their curiosity, either to learn how to, for example, be a better leader or to learn how to learn, develop new skills that maybe they didn't have to have early in their career, but then they had to develop later or to get to know people just to be curious about other people, this idea of being interested rather than interesting. And and also continuous growth. As we talked about, I think there was a perception in my mind that when you came out of school, you did all your learning. You had to learn how to do your job. And that was pretty much it. But the real leaders are continuing to improve themselves all the time. And now when I speak to young people, I recommend that they do something every week.

So pick an article, pick a podcast. Pick a book, read one chapter, do one thing every week to improve yourself. This is great advice that came from Greg Keneally when I interviewed him, who I think is just such an incredible leader in our industry. He talks about how that one article won't change your life, but if you add it up over 10 years, you will be in a very different place and you'll be able to have conversations with senior leaders that you would not be able to have if you didn't do that work over time. 

[00:16:01] Susan Barry: Oh, that's so interesting. Sort of like compounding interest. 

[00:16:06] Lan Elliott: Absolutely. Absolutely. I also think asking for help. I was really bad at asking for help and all these leaders asked for help, asked for advice. And I always felt because I was the only woman in the room. I had to have my act together. I had to know everything. And there didn't leave a lot of room to be vulnerable enough to ask about what you didn't know. So I think if you can be confident enough to ask for help, that's an important piece. And the one thing that I think is a little controversial, but came out in an interview I just did recently with Cesar Wurm, is vulnerability as a superpower, which I really love. Because it's such an important key attribute for truly connecting with people.

[00:16:58] Susan Barry: I've been thinking about something similar to that lately which is the things that we just as people, not women specifically, but probably women a lot, have been told over time, our weaknesses to work on are probably our super powers. Like I'm pretty sensitive. I can get my feelings hurt easily. I can cry at the drop of a hat like a big old baby. But I also think that being sensitive means that I am empathetic and caring and, you know, relentless in my trolling of all male panels. So I, I can't wait to listen to that interview with Caesar. I wonder if he is barking up the same tree. 

[00:17:45] Lan Elliott: Yeah, I think so. What he shares and his journey is just so incredible.

[00:17:50] Susan Barry: Despite having an aversion to it, you discovered that you can sell, especially when it's something that you feel strongly about or passionate about. I think that one of the biggest challenges for folks who become entrepreneurs or consultants or founders is that they are unwilling to sell. I don't want to be salesy. I don't want to, you know, be a salesperson probably because they're scared. What is your advice for people who struggle with sales, but just have to do it? 

[00:18:27] Lan Elliott: I'm going to admit I'm still not very good at selling myself. So I don't have all the answers here. But if I have something that I really believe in, it can work. I think back to Castellet college, which was a program that was part of Peggy Berg's Castell project, but we were bringing panels of executive women to speak at hospitality schools around the country. And the idea was to young women see more representation, more options of different careers. And what I thought we were doing was giving away gold for free. And because of that, I was really motivated to reach out to people, send cold called emails, follow up with conversations and really advocate for this thing that I believed in. And it's the same way with the Women in Hospitality Leadership Speaker Directory. I think it's such a great tool. So it's been great to be able to talk about something that I believe in so much.

[00:19:33] Susan Barry: We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every single episode of Top Floor with some specific, practical, tangible tips and ideas to try either in their businesses or in their lives. You have been on all sides of the table, consulting, ownership, brand, asset management, in deal making. What is a negotiation tip that you swear by? 

[00:20:00] Lan Elliott: For me, it's listening for what's not being said. 

[00:20:03] Susan Barry: Ooh, I'm listening for what you're not saying now. 

[00:20:08] Lan Elliott: Because having been on both sides of the table, I understand what drives value for each of the players. So if I'm in a negotiation and someone says, I need X. For these reasons, it allows me to think through the reasons that they've given me. And if I put myself in those shoes, and I might've been in those shoes in the past, when things don't add up and what they're sharing with you, don't hang together. It's really important to start asking questions to get to the root of the problem. Because while they might ask you for X, to solve a problem you can't you might not be able to give them X but if you understand what the problem is you might be able to give them why that gets to that same issue and solves it in a different way. So I think really understanding what the problem you're solving for is really important. And people don't always share everything you need in order to figure that out. 

[00:21:10] Susan Barry: If someone is early in their career and wants to get into hotel investment or acquisitions. Where do you think they should start? I'm going to tell you a little bit of context about this. This is the most common thing for hotel property level salespeople to think in their heads. I want to do those kinds of deals, but It is. There is not a clear path for that. 

[00:21:34] Lan Elliott: I do think it's hard once you get into operations. And I was just with an educator this past week who said, Oh, I always advise people to get into operations first. And I think my personal view is if you've gotten some summer jobs and operations, like I did, two was enough and I had a sense for what it was about. I think where you want to start focusing is to develop the skills that you need to be successful on the real estate side. So it's a lot of Excel, especially at the beginning, advanced Excel skills are really important. And for me, consulting was a great place to start because it gave me great foundations to understand how does an owner think about a hotel as an investment? And what are the different levers you can push and pull to create value in a hotel? What are the things you can do to make a hotel worth more money. I'll give you an example. I was in a negotiation for the W among many years ago, and one of the questions on the table was we have a couple small rooms. Should we combine them into a big room? Is that better? And my question back to them was the rate that you can get for these two small rooms? Is it equal?

If you were to combine those rooms, could that space get double the rate? Because that's what you're giving up. You're giving up two rates. Can that one bigger room make more money than two smaller rooms? And that's the economic factor. And in certain locations, like in London, for example, we did a W that had smaller rooms than we would have liked, but every room in a W ended up being worth a million dollars. So as you're designing a hotel, understanding the impact of different decisions that you're making can be really important. And when you're looking at valuations, 10, 15, $20, 000 that then gets capped and when we convert income to a value, it gets magnified. And so really understanding where you're creating value, how a hotel can be worth more or less just by some smaller decisions can be really important. So I think consulting is great, um, and really trying to learn how to think about hotels as an investment vehicle. There are some courses, STR has some courses, Cornell hotel school has an investment course and there are a number of different places. But I do think that at the beginning trying to get an analyst role or a role where you have a chance to understand putting together hotel pro formas that can be super important to give you the foundation.

[00:24:36] Susan Barry: Got it. You made a pretty big career pivot after leaving IHG. I want to ask about suggestions that you have for people who have had a huge career as you did and are looking to reinvent themselves at a certain point. What did you do? How did you decide what you were going to do next? 

[00:25:00] Lan Elliott: It seems like a pivot, but it was really a direct result of my 30 years in real estate being the only woman in the room. I think now that I work with a number of women, maybe I'm just balancing the first 30 years with the next 30 years, but I really wanted things to be different for the next generation. And what I did was I leveraged my existing network because I stayed in this industry. I leveraged my existing network. And another thing you can do now that there is LinkedIn out in the world is just to reach out to people who inspire you. It might seem a little scary, but I think it's less scary than emailing someone you don't know. 

I mean, if they don't respond back to you, it's not the end of the world. If you can really make a note personal as to why you're reaching out and why you're inspired by them. They might respond back. And I think the other thing you can do when you have a career pivot is to be curious, ask questions, reach out to people who are subject matter experts, read, learn about your new area. I spent a lot of time doing that in my first year. It was really about getting more educated in in the area that I wanted to go into which is advancing women and hospitality leadership and it's funny I ended up on the podcast because I was curious to learn more and understand what is it that makes some people really senior leaders. How how do they develop into those kinds of careers and I ended up in the podcast as a result of wanting to learn more and I gained so much more than I ever thought I would. So, and now I'm here with you. 

[00:26:54] Susan Barry: Excellent. We have reached the fortune telling portion of the show. So now you're going to predict the future and we will test you later and see if you got it right. What is a prediction that you have about the future of hotel real estate and investment? 

[00:27:11] Lan Elliott: It's more a hope than a prediction. If you look at hospitality companies, there are 16 men for every woman that's a CEO. But if you look at hospitality, chief investment officers and chief development officers, it's 27.5 men for every woman. And the trends going in the wrong direction, because in 2019 before the pandemic, that 27.5 was only 16.

[00:27:43] Susan Barry: Oh, wow. 

[00:27:44] Lan Elliott: So it's one of the key reasons I started teaching. An introduction to hotel ownership course that I teach virtually and my goal is to offer it to many many hotel schools that class that I mentioned at the beginning that changed my life I'm hoping that I can spark an interest in the hotel real estate world to some students who maybe had never thought about it before. So I have a 30 year plan and I hope the future of hotel real estate includes many more women in leadership in the chief development officer chief investment officer roles.

[00:28:24] Susan Barry: I hope the same. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about how women advance in hospitality, what would it be? 

[00:28:34] Lan Elliott: There's a concept called prove it again bias where someone might do something once and they go, great, you're talented. And another person might do something and they go, that was just a lucky coincidence. And it's not until they've done it several times that they go, Oh, maybe that person does know what they're doing. 

[00:28:53] Susan Barry: I have never heard of this before. My year of learning. Oh, this is so interesting. 

[00:28:58] Lan Elliott: So currently I see a lot of women getting promotions after they've been in that job and have been doing it for a while. I know that happened for me for my first promotion. I was doing the job and negotiating with CEOs. And I finally went and said, I think I need a promotion and my boss was great. It took a little while, but he did get me a promotion. So I'd like to see if I had a magic wand, I'd like to see women being given opportunities based on their potential, like I see happening for men, versus after they've already been doing the work for a while. 

[00:29:35] Susan Barry: That is so interesting. Prove it again, bias. And the idea that we're promoting based on aptitude, not based on we've proved it again and again and again and again. Wow. I already know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask anyway. I think I know the answer. What legacy do you want to leave?

[00:30:00] Lan Elliott: One day I'd love to see an equal number of men and women in chief development officer and chief investment officer roles. And I really hope that some of the people in my introduction to hotel ownership class will lead hotel real estate teams in the future.

[00:30:16] Susan Barry: I feel certain that that's going to happen. Okay, folks, before we tell Lan goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”

[00:30:32] 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 interviewed their CEO Ludo in episode 143 and I can tell you that this product is really cool. He was nice enough to send me one of the facial tissue boxes and we love it. It's in our bathroom. If you want to stop seeing half used rolls of toilet paper at your loading dock, Visit foxfold.com. Okay, Leanne, what is the story you would only tell on the loading dock? 

[00:31:13] Lan Elliott: The story that I have is more a reflection of how different people's experience working in hospitality just can be very different from one another. And it's also about my general naivete, I think. My husband and I both work in hotel real estate and in the mid nineties, I was working at KPMG and he was working at HBS and we both had our hotel projects. And so when we went to get married, we did a destination wedding in Laguna. And we went out there with his mom and sister to do all the fun things, cake tasting, menu planning, all those things.

So we also had to find a hotel or several hotels for our guests. So I made a list of hotels and we were touring different hotels and we got to this one hotel, more of a motel, on the side of the road that could be a lower priced option and the salesperson was lovely and toured us and took us into all these rooms and they had suites that had different themes like with a jacuzzi and a a fence with a saddle. And then there were other rooms they had all these themed rooms and as we're walking out of the hotel, I thought that was really interesting to have all these themed rooms in this hotel. That's so different. And as I'm walking to the car with my husband, his mom and sister are a little bit further behind. He says to me, Lan, that hotel rents by the hour. 

[00:32:50] Susan Barry: Oh my God! I knew you were going to say that! Oh no! 

[00:32:56] Lan Elliott: So you would have known what was happening when you were touring, but I had no idea. 

[00:33:01] Susan Barry: I mean, I wouldn't have in the mid 90s. Now that I'm an old lady, I would know. What did your future mother in law say? 

[00:33:09] Lan Elliott: Well, luckily we were far enough away from them that I don't think that she or his sister heard. I can only imagine how mortified my husband is touring this hotel with his mom and sister and his soon to be wife But our kinds of projects we worked on in consulting were very very different and I just was. 

[00:33:31] Susan Barry: Yes. 

[00:33:32] Lan Elliott: So naive to this part of hospitality, and it's a big part of hospitality, but it was just not one I had encountered and I didn't know it when I saw it.

[00:33:45] Susan Barry: That is so funny. I wish you had pictures. I mean, I kind of do. I bet you don't wish you had pictures. Well, Lynn Elliott, thank you so much for being here. I know that our listeners learned so much about the real estate and investment sides of the business. And I truly appreciate you riding up to the top floor.

[00:34:07] Lan Elliott: Thank you so much for having me on. It has actually been one of my hidden dreams to be on this show with you. So thank you, Susan, for having me on Top Floor. 

[00:34:18] Susan Barry: Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/184. 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.

[00:34:54] 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.