How to Own Your Very First Hotel with Grant Guinn

0:05

Hey, this is Josh Ramsey. I'm one of the founders of prosper hotels. We support over 300 hotels in north America. With revenue management, performance marketing group housing and revenue management reports. And, you know, I just find the hotel business so interesting. It supports over 2 million jobs in the us. And there are so many different aspects to. Owning and running and growing a hotel that I just want to curiously explore that with friends of mine. And that's my goal with this podcast. It's called unpacking. And today I'll introduce you to a friend of mine named grant Guinn. I think he's a great first guest because he owns one hotel. Tru by Hilton and Spokane valley. And, uh, he worked for the brand for a really long time. And so he's got this depth of experience from. Running things at the brand level that then he stepped in to own and operate his own hotel. And I think he's got a lot of really interesting insight.

Josh: 1:13

So I remember, I guess it was maybe it was shortly after the pandemic and I saw you at an owner, I think it was an owner conference or something. And, you and your son were like headed to dinner and you're like, Hey, just come sit with us. Have a

Track 1: 1:28

meal. And,

Grant: 1:30

think it was at the hunter conference in Atlanta. We did

Track 1: 1:32

That's right.

Grant: 1:33

Yeah,

Josh: 1:34

what it was. I always love like spending time with you because you embody this, this hospitality as a value. Just appreciate that so much.

Grant: 1:45

You're quite welcome. Yeah. It's been a good journey for sure.

Josh: 1:49

there's just this level of respect and love and appreciation for you and what you do as an owner The hotel that you have and I think is yeah. Very very special. I want, I just wanted to say that I think what you are doing is special

Grant: 2:04

it's not easy, right? But it's a little different for us because we have one hotel, one 92 room Tru in Spokane Valley, Washington. And this is where we're from. We live here. We it's just our community and it's important for us to have that culture of appreciation and respect with our team members, because we run into these team members when we're at Lowe's or Home Depot or we're at the park or we're at some sort of event here in, in town and it's important for us to know, important for me to know, what's their name, what's their story, right? What are their kids names? What are their grandkids names? It's a lot easier for us to do that with one or two hotels versus some of these big companies. You just lose some of that. We really spend a lot of time one on one with these team members at the hotel infusing a culture of caring and compassion to understand their story and and help them on their career journey. And it, it takes a lot. It takes a lot of time and we put a lot of money towards that. But it pays off.

Josh: 3:06

Yeah, there's there is this, some people I would say probably see that, okay. There's a game to play in terms of making money with hotels and I'm going to play that game, but it like, It becomes something about just squeezing as much as you can out of this thing. Where like what I see like for you is this matters to me and I'm going to put everything I've got into it and do it well and take pride in it. And this is an extension of, or an embodiment of who I am and what I value. And I'm going to have high standards and take great care of my people and do it well,

Grant: 3:47

that's exactly it. Because we all see these um, larger companies or REITs that they buy these assets and then you're right, they just absolutely squeeze them dry and then they flip them and, disrupt people's lives and move on. But they make a lot of money at it. It's just not our approach. Our approach is this is ours. We're getting ready to do a second hotel. We care about it. It's local for us. And then we'll just continue to grow slowly in kind of this regional area. Some markets that I can drive to but I'll have to get on a plane and go and we'll hold these right. these aren't things that we're looking to do. Flip in five or seven years necessary. We'll just, we'll hang on to these because this is it's turning into a legacy company where we've got kids in the business and they're enjoying it and maybe some grandkids eventually will be in the business. So yeah, you're right. We're just getting started and it's a lot of fun. We're learning a lot. My wife and I like to say that we spent a whole lot of money in marketing research to find out what perfect name of the company is when in reality. It was like a five minute conversation. Oh, we need to create a company. Let's just G grant L Lisa. We've got eight kids. Okay. GL8 hospitality. That's how it is. So yeah, that's how it came to be. huh. how many took very little effort to come up with it.

Track 1: 5:03

Yeah. Yeah. How many of the eight are a part of the

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 5:07

company Yeah. Two, two of the eight.

Grant: 5:09

Yeah. we're a blended family. Yeah. Four and four. So we ended up with eight kids, which is fantastic. Seven boys and a girl, but we have two in the business. One is our asset manager and one is our front desk supervisor. Cause he's still in, in college and has about another year to go. And both of them have attended a few of the different conferences with me and on their own, and I've really embraced the industry and really seem to like it. So you never know, there might be a couple more that, that jump into it eventually once they see how much fun we're having what we're learning along the way, but right now there's just two in the business.

Josh: 5:43

I'd love to hear a little more on your journey, I know you from Hilton originally and.You were a senior director of brand performance, yet for Hilton Garden. Yeah. And so you were at the brand for quite a while? I, a long time.

Grant: 5:58

A long time. My, my career being a Hilton employee, a real Hilton employee was over 20 years, a little over 20 what I thought. Okay. Yeah. But it started with back in the red lion days, honestly, back working on property at a red lion in 96 and then got gobbled up by Doubletree in and then went to work at a second Doubletree hotel and then uprooted my family and moved to Boise, Idaho, and. And worked at the DoubleTree, the Hilton managed DoubleTree in, in, in that market. And then it was Hilton managed, but it flipped to be a franchise a couple of years after I got there. And I just didn't want to work for that specific franchise. And so I applied at the Hilton corporate office at the time in Beverly Hills and got on with them as a regional director of brand performance support for the Northwest region for Hilton Garden Inn. And really, Enjoyed it and it really took off and got to understand and be the brand which is you may hear It's my comments throughout this podcast and just be the brand be anything but the brand that you are because that's what you're buying into So I bought into that for 20 years of be the brand I was the Hilton Garden in the guy for the Pacific Northwest and then did that I think for about a year and a half and Then became the director of brand sales support. So the brand sales guy not selling franchises, but really supporting the different hotels around the country at the time. I think we had about 140 or so Hilton garden inns in three countries. And we were like, all right, we're starting to grow. All these Hilton garden inns, a lot of them have salespeople and we, we need to give them some attention and. Let's add this sales support function, which then was the role that I got added into and led the sales conferences all the sales training, all the. It just became the sales resource guy within Hilton Garden Inn and did that for, I don't know, five or six years, and then became switched back to the brand performance support side, the operational support side as the senior director, as the brand really started to take off and launched. Garden Inn and in Europe. And then ultimately at the end of my career with Hilton spent a lot of time in Asia as Hilton Garden Inn, grew in China we launched the first one in China, I was there. And it was, we spread from East to West and China and Indonesia and Vietnam and, all those locations. Not only oversaw the operations in the Americas for the brand performance, but then also got things going. In Asia for Hilton Garden Inn. And it was great. I loved it. And by the time I left, I think we were in like 20 something different countries and about 700 or so hotels. So to be part of those openings and just the excitement of those hotels, just really set something in motion for myself that I never thought I would do, but got dealt that hand once Hilton restructured for the, who knows how many times after 20 years of being there and my team and I, the brand performance team. We're let go as they consolidated different departments within Hilton. And that kind of forced me to look at, all right, got to figure out and do something else. And so at the time short term rentals were really starting to take off in the country and short term rentals on the commercial scale, on the, just bulk scale. And so I joined one of those fast growing short term rental companies. And. Let a team where we would go into all the major markets in across the U. S. And Seattle and Dallas and L. A. And Miami and would master lease entire apartment buildings, furnish them with hotel level furnishings from companies like Hilton Supply Management and then take those units and then list them on Airbnb and all the short term rental sites and run them like hotels. And under master leases for five or 10 years. And so I did that for a couple of years with a company at two different companies. And I learned a lot. I learned about real estate. I learned about development. I learned about growth. I learned about short term rental industry, which I quickly realized really just wasn't my industry. I didn't enjoy short term rentals. There's something about just a transactional experience of providing lodging, which is what short term rentals do. And. Providing hospitality, which is what hotels do. more. than check in, pick out experience. You're there to talk to the customer and greet the customer. You don't get that at short term And so did that for a couple of years and then those, some consolidation and some of those companies are going in and out of business and left that industry. And then sat back and said you know what, for years, I saw hotel owners, some hotel owners that didn't run very good hotels. Still make a lot of money despite the fact that they didn't know what they were doing. I said, if I only know, even just part of what I should know, I'll probably do okay with hotels. And at the time Hilton had just launched the Tru brand for a first time developer owner. is fabulous. And the reason for that is because it's just a hotel and a kit, right? You don't have to have an interior designer. It's just all chosen for you. But I knew the locations after having been part of so many Hilton garden and openings over the years, I knew good locations. I knew good locations. Then I knew good locations when I was in the short term rental industry. So I knew good locations in my own backyard, went out, figured out, okay, how do I buy a piece of land? How do I then get a franchise? And then how do I go about the whole process of security and general contractors, architects, all that sort of stuff, and just really taught myself. How to do it. And in November of 2019 broke ground on our Tru hotel. And then in December of 2019 the first time we all heard the word COVID appeared on our TV screens and arrived in Seattle. And we then proceeded to build a Tru hotel in the middle of COVID, was. Really interesting and asking ourselves, what in the world did we do? What did we get into as the hospitality industry and started tank Probably good timing for us because as we finished up the Tru 12, 13 months later, we were starting to come out of COVID and then just it just took off Wow. and no stopping. So That's my career journey from red lion, double tree, Hilton garden in all the way up to our own hotels.

Josh: 12:39

Yeah. I have so many questions. But okay. It's like the first thing I would love just what you were just talking about the what, so you said, what a good property looks like, what are the things you're looking for Yeah. Finding a good property,

Grant: 12:54

Yeah, more of location, location, location, So I knew in my market we have a a city owned conference center that the closest hotel to that conference center was about a mile and a half away. And they'd been there. It's really nice facility. With 80 acres of undeveloped land right across the street from it, right on the river. And I was like, wow, who owns that piece of property? could they carve off an acre and a half or two acres me do a hotel? Cause looking at the mall is a mile away. I'd be across the street from a city owned conference center. That's never going to go away. And then there's other revenue drivers, businesses and industries rather close. And I just knew it was a winner. What kind of stuff comes into this conference center? it's 50, 000 square feet of meeting space. anywhere from home and garden shows to weddings, to business meetings, that sort of thing. So there was no place for, they would have to have meetings or they would have meetings there, but then they'd have to get in their car and go drive to the next closest hotel to stay when I put a hotel across the street, so they can walk across street to That's amazing. knowing that facility, yeah, it's just never going to go away, especially if it's since it's a government owned entity. Okay. So how did you go about figuring out I guess that next part was find out who owns this and let's see if I can pitch them on carving off an and a half.

Josh: 14:20

How did you do that?

Grant: 14:22

It's funny because the organization or the company that owned that is one of the, they own a lot of land in this city and it's it's old money in this city and they just have been sitting on it and it's what I did then I went out and I contacted HBS and I had them do a market study based on the brand that I Thought would be good. I got an architect who did some renderings for me, and then I went and approached the landowner and I walked into his office study, a feasibility study on land before you even owned it or to them about it or anything. And come to find out this landowner had other people approach him with ideas. But what sold him on me was that I walked into his office and I showed him studied it I know it works. Here's the brand that I want to put there and I'm ready to go. Here's the art and here's the renderings So he got on a plane with one of his colleagues he flew to Boise where there was a Tru hotel He toured the hotel to see what like and came back and said, okay, I'll sell you the land.

Josh: 15:24

Wow. That's amazing. Okay, how much did that cost you to do the work of feasibility plus like architect renderings?

Grant: 15:32

say between the feasibility and the markets or the market study and the architect, just initial renderings, probably 10, just to get the idea developed enough that I could show it to somebody some sort of. Document was pretty pictures and some numbers associated with it And have a little credibility that it's going to work, he liked it because it was a well known name, Hilton name. He wanted this property to be anchored by a reputable brand. And he'd been approached by some others that wanted to do something else some other ideas But he just didn't like the brand so he said okay I'll anchor it and good for him because he's told me a number of times grant you walked in you showed me this stuff and Then he it kicked off the development for the entire 80 acres we were the first in we anchored it

Track 1: 16:17

Yeah.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 16:19

And then he was able to probably up the price for the rest of the real estate that you're selling because he added a branded property there on the corner. And we did a first right of refusal on a second piece of property, a more primary. Piece of property right on the river. Just two lots over from my Tru, which I then secured under a first right of refusal pen, a thing, which I have since purchased from him to do a second hotel.

Track 1: 16:45

that was so same owner for that as well.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 16:48

same, yeah, same owner, but it was the original piece of property that I wanted. It was the property that was on the river.

Track 1: 16:54

Okay.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 16:55

thought years ago was I want to put a Hilton garden in there because I was a garden guy. I knew my locations.

Track 1: 17:00

Yeah.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 17:00

then they what changed was Hilton came out with Tru. And for a first time developer, Tru was like, okay, that makes a lot more sense to It's just an easier build because so much of it's the work is done for you. So I said, okay, let me buy a secondary lot, which I did put the Tru, and then I'll go back by their initial piece of property, the prime piece of property that I want and put, the right brand on it, which ultimately has turned out to be, we're doing a home with suites. They're not Hilton garden in. Cause it doesn't make sense. It didn't make sense to Garden Inn. So with all the meeting space, when I got 50, 000 square feet of space across the street, so we'll do. A homewood suites there with it with its new 10. 0 prototype.

Track 1: 17:40

That's amazing. Did you already had you already talked to the brand about build or that comes

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 17:47

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Cause I knew I had known not necessarily the brand, but the development team who I knew at Hilton said, listen, I'd love to do a Tru and they were just like, well, if you, if you sign on here soon, you could be the first Tru in Washington state. If you get going and we sign on right for a Tru. And right after or right before the Tru at Seattle airport signed on. So it was a race to the finish line who could open up first at building during COVID and we got shut down. They did. It was just, it was crazy. Just because of COVID. But ultimately, we beat them. And 12 months and six days built a Tru from the day we broke ground to the day we opened 12 months, six days in the middle of COVID.

Track 1: 18:28

the middle of a pandemic.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 18:30

Yeah,

Track 1: 18:31

Wow. Okay. So then you have to you have a lot to figure out after that, right? Like you get the land, then you've got to figure out construction. Is that the next thing? Or what was the,

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 18:43

Yep. Yep. So all happening at the same time okay I'm going to get this the guy seems like he wants to sell it to me. Okay, who's going to build this thing, reach out to my owner network and Obviously a lot of Hilton Garden Inn owners I knew. And up in this part of the country, there was a a general contractor out of Montana that had built all the Hilton Garden Inns in Montana and a bunch down in Texas And back East. And so I just reached out to them and it was there, there were smaller company and they're not a big GC, but I said, Hey, this is what I want to build. They hadn't built a Tru before they built at Fairfield by Marriott's and lots of garden inns and courtyards and things like that. But he was the only one I knew that had built hotels before. So he gave me a price and. I went with it, right? So

Track 1: 19:24

okay.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 19:24

yeah, that's how I chose him. I didn't even talk to very many, Maybe one other, but I didn't know who they were. It was just A random phone call to some other GC.

Track 1: 19:33

Yeah. And that's for you, it seems like a lot of this is very much like you just, you already had this deep level of relationships and trust with people that it makes it easier when you're coming out to do something

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 19:48

yeah, definitely. The owner network that I had has been invaluable to me, really, because they've coached me along the way. They've different ones. They've provided different, yeah, coaching and advice and even, there were some of them that had already had Trus and I probably spoke with half a dozen different Tru owners before I finished the construction documents for my Tru. What did you like? What didn't you like?

Track 1: 20:14

The flip side of that relationship thing is I think like you do the same thing, right? Like you work with people that you trust. And so the contractor, it's not worth trying to find the best deal.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 20:25

Yeah.

Track 1: 20:26

it's about, I'm I want to work with someone that I trust and know that it's going to handle this and do it well.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 20:33

Yeah. Yeah. we have taken over management of the hotel. So we own and manage now the one hotel, and that will be our strategy going forward. We'll be our, just our own management company because back to what I've said multiple times it's important for me to be the brand. Don't the mistake that some of these management companies make is they try to infuse their own culture, which is a culture that they've developed to put across multiple brands. And but you have to really be the culture of the brand that you are because a Tru culture is very different than a Hilton garden in culture, which is different than a double tree care culture and Hilton's blue energy culture or whatever it is. You have to be the brand. And if you're not the brand. You're trying to be somebody that you're never going to be.

Track 1: 21:19

What are some examples of ways that you've asked the team there, like to be the brand?

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 21:24

The best known culture in the hospitality and Hilton world, at least out there is that Hamptonality culture, right? That's out there. But Tru is all about just being fun, vibrant, Spirited, colorful, meaning you walk into that Tru hotel and there's colors everywhere, right? And you have your team members wearing purple, Tru logo shirts, which is the brand with jeans. It's a little bit more relaxed and a little bit more quirky, a little just different. And that's the culture of being more fun and engaging versus, stuffy and buttoned up with your Cintas uniform on. It's just. A different type of culture. And if, in if you're a larger company and you're trying to infuse a Marriott culture into a Tru or a best Western culture into a Tru, it just doesn't work. It really just doesn't. So you have to be the brand. And then the brand does a great job with providing you tools and resources. You're paying them large franchise fees to buy the franchise. And it's essential that you be the brand and use the resources.

Track 1: 22:29

Yeah,

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 22:30

of these management companies, they don't, and it's to their detriment. They try to do their own version across all their hotels and desanitize the whole thing when they really just need to adopt what they're paying for to begin with.

Track 1: 22:44

You want as a management company sometimes maybe to try to make it more homogenous across the whole company. But what, like what can happen then is it's, it comes across as bland across all of it. a lot of times we try to put a company's values on a person to live those values out. But what happens is, if if you're telling somebody to take the values of that company, then they're not being fully themselves anymore. And so they need to know what they value and they need to know what they care about. And, I like what you're saying because you're saying be the brand is. like embody the culture of the, like where you are, that doesn't mean take on someone else's values. It means let's act out, let's be part of what this was designed to do. How do you do that with your team? Because I've, in talking with people on your team can see that they're engaged I can tell that they feel safe. Also that they feel challenged, that they're growing, you're pushing them in a kind, gentle pressure way. So could you talk about that? What does that look like for

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 23:53

yeah, it's okay at our Tru hotel to be a little bit quirky and just outside the box, for example, These team members, including myself, have complete ability to stop what they're doing if they see a kid or a teenager or a business person sitting and playing At the pool table in the Hilton lobby and bet them, something free out of the market. If the other person wins, right? Play them a quick game of pool. Engage with the customer. The customer beats you even if they don't beat you at the end of the game. You go and you let them choose something out of the market. You put it to, it's a hotel expense and away you go. I tell you what, it adds a lot of fun and excitement. And. Engagement with the customers that is, that we just see nonstop. It's the feedback is tremendous. It really is.

Josh: 24:47

And I think that's that's also helpful for the customer. Like you're saying, there's so much that has been invested in developing the brand that for the customer to feel that experience and the distinction of that specific brand out there. It's not just about the design. It is also about the service and the interaction and the engagement. And when you try to be something that you're not it's less it's less memorable and it's you, it's also like confusing, I would say, probably to a customer.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 25:23

Yeah, it really is. And that's what we're going back to the management company side of things. There's some good management companies out there. But you think about when you bring on a team member and you sit them down in front of the computer and they do their Hilton or Marriott or whatever training, right there, they're told, Hey, here is what the brand is. And then they have to go through and do a training for a management company saying, but here's what your management company is. So then what is the employee supposed to do? Which Philosophy, which ideals are they supposed to adopt? And our philosophy is you adopt the brand, right? That's where you work. When you walk out, you have that uniform on and you are going to be the brand. And very focused in our world of. And they all know this is focusing on our real four, four, key areas, and that's driving revenue, encouraging loyalty, making, doing what we need to do to help those customers be loyal, increase profitability. What things can we do to make this operation more profitable? And then investing in our team members, those four things, revenue, loyalty, profitability, and investing in our team members, because you have happy team members, you have happy customers everybody seems to connect much better when people are happy, for sure.

Track 1: 26:39

So those four things are what you would say as part of your GL8. Like these are the four things and these

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 26:48

That's what's important to us. And, but the way that you make money can be done in different ways. You can squeeze every penny out of it and just not put any money into that. That's not our approach. Our approach is then, encouraging loyalty. What kind of things are we doing to encouraging, encourage the loyalty of our customers that they come back to us time after time. So it's the revenue side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Making sure that we're engaged with companies like yourself and the revenue management team at Hilton to drive that revenue on the top, encourage those customers to come back, manage our expenses on the profitability side, doing what we need to do to Sharpen our pencil there and to just increase the profitability and then invest in those team members, having a fun committee, which we have at the hotel and supporting a budget line item that supports growth, training growth. And activity growths for not only our team members, but we pay for their families to come to all of our activities, whether we rent a box at the baseball stadium and for all the team members and all their families, we rent a cruise boat at Christmas time and we cruise across the lake to Santa's village with their team members and our family and their families. We do trail pick up with our team members and our family and their families. So it becomes more of a family environment. And like I said, it's not cheap, but it's something that we've invested and it seems to have paid off. People enjoy working for us. I,

Track 1: 28:13

yeah I love that.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 28:16

Yeah,

Track 1: 28:17

You're saying like, we are going to be more profitable by putting this investment in the team and we're going to spend the money on the box and the cruise

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 28:25

And just what we ask them, what can we do in your department, in your area of responsibility to be smarter what can we do? Let's talk breakfast. What type of things can we do at the serving our complimentary breakfast to allow us to still provide what we're supposed to provide. But make more money in doing it, right? Instead of individual milk containers, go bulk milk, that, that can save you some money. We weigh our product at the end of breakfast. So we monitor how much waste we have. And we have that set is one of our green initiative goals that we reduce our food waste at the end of the day. And ultimately that supports profitability as well. Making sure that we. We price and manage our market items that we're selling Make sure that we price laundry and EV stations and all that sort of stuff appropriately based on what the cost is associated with it. It's just taking a look at a detailed look at the expenses associated with it and what we ultimately charge the customer. And how can we continue to tweak these areas without impacting the satisfaction of the customer

Josh: 29:33

Where I see it, like with the team is they probably, they also are happy to pursue that with you because it's not that you're pursuing profitability at all costs, they're also benefiting when everybody on the team's benefiting because we're reinvesting this in the community and the hotel and the resources for you. Where. Some folks, it's like, how do we squeeze every last thing out of this? But that can leave your team at the hotel feeling depleted. And then that leaves to worse service, which leads to, lower revenue. that it's this downward spiral, but you're I love how you are reinforcing it by, because we take such great care of the team. Everyone's happy to be creative in the ways in which they find these other opportunities to help increase profitability. That's

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 30:28

And as we took over the hotel a little over a year ago, I asked myself, my gosh, there has got to be a different way to reduce turnover out there than what has been done over the prior few years. And we sat back and said, how can we do this kind of on the profitability side? How can we stop spending so much trying to recruit people? And the drug testing associated with it and the background checks and all that sort of stuff, which we require we, we do. Which is expensive, but how we can increase profitability by reducing the turnover. What could we do? So we found kind of the secret sauce. At least it worked for us. We went, I went out and I tried to find some of these different organizations that are dealing with these refugees that are coming into the country, right? We're talking folks that are displaced because of political or war or whatever it is, and they're coming into the country legally. And they're looking for places to stay and places to work. So I went to a couple of different of those and, had some conversations, but ultimately landed on a partnership with an organization called World Relief, which helps displaced refugees in our community. Get settled and they provide them with translators and help them find housing and help them find jobs. And we have had extreme success with reducing our turnover and filling our hotel employee pool or employee talent with folks from that have been referred to us by world relief. And it's great because these folks come to us again, they're legal. They've got all their documents. They're here. They want to work. They show up for work, they're drug free, and they come back and they, because we treat them well, they refer their friends and other family members to come work for us, and our turnover has just decreased. Because we now have our core and our base group of folks from an organization partnership with that company and we didn't pay them anything. They were thrilled to be able to work with somebody like us that wanted their employees. And do we have multiple languages talking in the break room? We do, but we use the phones and we use the apps, the translation apps, and and we make it work.

Track 1: 32:47

This is another example of how you are solving problems creatively, I would assume the natural tendency, which is like, Oh, why are we having to spend so on recruiting? Like you went above instead of below. You didn't try to cut it. You actually solved a new problem,

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 33:05

Yeah. Yeah. Some operators take the approach of, Hey, reduce the expense by stop, stop doing the background checks, stop doing the drug testing. And so it does, that could increase profitability. But our approach was we're keeping those because we want higher quality employees working for us. But We can reduce the turnover by providing a good place for them to work in partnering with a company that has a talent pool of folks that want to work and they're willing to work.

Track 1: 33:38

Yeah, I have so many more things to ask you, but I think, maybe we can do another one soon if you're open to it. And so you think there are still markets that need a new hotel to be built, like a branded property that would get enough demand

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 33:52

in the market that, in the region that I'm in, maybe now, if you're talking like the southeast portion of the United States, listen, everywhere you go, there's a Hampton, there's a, But there's not a Hilton and Marriott properties in all the markets that are that there could be here in the Pacific Northwest. We're a little bit forgotten maybe because we're so spread out up here. Sometimes you can drive a couple hours between some of these markets, not have much in between, You land a home too. And one of these markets or even a Hilton garden in man. The Hilton Garden Inn would be the Hilton in one of these college towns In our region. So yeah, there are definitely still some markets out there that are ripe for the picking.

Track 1: 34:34

where are those spaces that there's enough demand like that?

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 34:38

University campuses. Those are a good starting spot, but then there obviously has to be business there to support a hotel as well on the corporate side and the leisure side as well. It's maybe not all. University markets make sense, but there are plenty out there that do.

Track 1: 34:53

Yeah. That's great. Grant, thank you so much for being here today. Like I yeah, I really appreciate just your openness. I see that you've found your thing and I love like seeing that you're just like fully lit up right now. You're fully in the in the space and you're doing such a good job. So yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us.

grant-guinn_1_04-05-2024_090005: 35:15

Yeah, There's definitely a passion that I have and and we try to feed that through all the way to the entire organization of the hotel. Thank you, Josh. Appreciate it.