Why You Should Be More Transparent As An Owner / Operator
By Isaac French
I’m currently in Mexico for a short-notice missions trip and it’s been a busy time. I’m in a town called Bernal, about 2.5 hours from Mexico City. It is a gorgeous little village nestled high up in the mountains, under an iconic rock—the tallest freestanding stone monolith in the world actually!
And, it’s supposedly the safest place in the whole country. Could be an awesome place for an experiential property, with great proximity to Mexico City, and a 2 hour direct flight away from DFW. Talked about all this in the community call on Tuesday.
Anyways…
I just have a short tangent to go on.
Not enough places are eager enough to engage in authentic conversations about being innkeepers, or to show and talk about the behind-the-scenes operations. People like myself crave this. And I don’t think I’m alone.
What if more hotels, restaurants and other hospitality businesses actually peeled back the curtain on their operations and economics? Both show and tell.
Founder-led storytelling has rightly rocketed many modern brands. Think Elon Musk: Tesla/SpaceX.
Devon Loerop is a phenomenal example of this in our very own experiential hospitality space. He built over 1M followers by posting self-made short-form videos of himself building The Pacific Bin on social media.
One of the reasons this worked was the intimacy followers felt in his authentic approach to telling his story in public.
It was magnetic.
Now, I’ve always been a curious person. To a fault, sometimes.
I mean, I have difficulty restraining myself from asking TONS of questions every time I meet someone new. It’s just who I am.
Some of my favorite questions to ask are about what people do to support themselves. And best of all are the ones that run their own businesses.
I find it endlessly fascinating to grill someone about the brass tax of their business. All the numbers. How they do it. How they started. Where they’re going, etc…
Whenever I visit a cool hotel, I like to research the management team a little, and try to find the GM (or at least someone who knows something) and interview them. Recently, I’ve used this newsletter as my “Press credentials” to talk with them.
I tell them I’m in hospitality media, and it usually works. But most of the time they’re still fairly reticent.
I have a premonition that there are a lot of other guests out there that would love a behind-the-scenes look at how such a business operates.
Picture a 1-2 hour experience involving a walking tour or golf cart ride around the property, showing the back-of-house facilities like housekeeping/laundry, groundskeeping, inventory, software and systems (for restaurants, of course also the kitchen).
The tour could be married with an explanation breaking down all the numbers. And the founder / genesis story could be woven into the whole experience, like a How I Built This episode.
I don’t know— I just think this could be an amazing experience for a lot of folks, a great way to connect, and also one that could be easily monetized. It would combine hands-on business education with fun storytelling and inspiration.
A lot of businesses and their owners are scared to delve into numbers and systems that are traditionally not public. Why? Modesty. Orthodoxy. Not wanting to brag…
I get it. But the internet has changed the world, and sharing more gives you a big advantage, especially when so few others will dare.
When I first began posting transparent content on Twitter, and going on podcasts to talk about Live Oak Lake, I was scared, too. And there are plenty of things I’ve learned about the right ways to do this.
But overall it was a massive propulsion to both Live Oak Lake and my own voice as a builder in the space. A lot of folks just simply appreciate transparency.
So, now it’s in your hopper. If you’re starting or running an experiential hospitality business, you should seriously consider sharing more publicly. Both on the internet, but also especially to your guests/patrons.
I believe a ton of unique stay guests would opt-in to an experience like this, and you could build another revenue stream just like that, if you decide to charge for such an experience.
That’s all for this week.
What else do you want to hear about?
—Isaac