How I'm Creating New Beginnings for Others Through Hospitality - Craig Poole, Reading Hospitality

Craig: Why am I successful? Because people follow me, and that means I have to be worthy to be followed, right? You have to want to do things that are worthy of following. You know, my pockets are full of trash in the morning because I pick up trash all the time. Because people see me pick it up, they pick it up. And it's even more important when you're in the inner city that you do this because people watch you do it. They watch me do it, then they do it. But I don't do it for that reason, but I know that's what happens. Then they have to be behind them. People are in jail, they go back. One of the reasons they go back is no one was behind them when they got out. Somebody had a drug problem. All kind of people have drug problems in their families. Now, it doesn't matter what income bracket you are or what status you are. They fall and then no one's behind them, so they go back again. The behind somebody is critical. How did I learn this? Real simple. I'm 70-some years old. So I grew up when Martin Luther King was around, and that's what he, follow me, I'll take you to the mountain, follow me. And he walked out front, he took the rocks, the dogs, the water, he took the beatings, he went to jail, but he was always behind the people he was leading. And I thought, Mahatma Gandhi, he did the same thing. He said, follow me, we'll take some salt out of the sea, we'll free ourselves. And he went to jail and took the beating and he was always there. And Jesus Christ did the same thing. Follow me, I'll make you fishermen and men. So it's the same thing. I looked at three three people plus more and said, you know what? Work for them. Can't be that hard. So it's to be behind. What's wrong with hospitality today? You're the manager. Here's your hotel. Are you behind them? Are you going to be behind them? And if you're not behind them, they're going to go to another hotel or you're only going to get your you're only going to get the money. You get bad money, quick money, bad money. They're giving you the money, but they're not taking care of the asset or it's bad money. It's not even real. It's not authentic. They're ripping somebody off. I'm sorry. It's the truth. I'm just speaking the truth. I've been there.

Josiah: I wonder if you could speak a little bit more about what it looks like to be behind someone and to meaningfully support them.

Craig: So it's the most powerful thing you can do. Not many more things you could do if you're going to lead people. It's life-changing. They cry. If you saw the film, you'll see. I didn't do that. The documentary was done for another reason, became a documentary. But when you see a person that's been in prison for 20 years crying, And this guy did some hard time for, when you're in 20 years, that means you did more than stole a candy bar out of a store. Somebody got hurt real bad, real bad. And they're crying because nobody was ever been behind them. The people will jump over, they'll climb mountains for you. You don't do it to have people climb mountains for you, but they will. It's so empowering to me. It's like, it's everything. It's more than money when I know life's more important to me than money. Money comes, but it's not that much. You know, I'd rather have the love of people. So we bring people, we say love them where they're at. We tell people here, love the child, hate the act. That's probably the biggest thing that you can tell people. If people want to be in prison, I would tell you if you're bringing people out and you're giving them to new employers between you and I is when you go to the employer, Love the person that I'm giving you. Don't like the act. Focus on the act. If you can focus on that act, that person will move forward really fast. And teach a simple concept called selflessness. If you're selfish, you will not work for me. I have 300 people now that work here. I will fire you tomorrow if you're selfish.

Josiah: How do you pick up selflessness?

Craig: If they're selfish, they don't even come in. You know when you walk in the door. Because this is the case, if you walk in this door, you're going to know whether you fit or don't fit. You're going to see it in their eyes. You're going to see it in their story because you know it. And the people here know it. They know it in a minute. So it's like they eat their young here. If somebody does get in, they're not here for long because people want to work with selfless people. It becomes part of the culture, part of the blood that runs through our businesses. Culture is the most important thing. So that's what we base it on.

Josiah: How do you define culture? Because it is such an important concept.

Craig: So I'm very careful about this because we have to be careful it's not a cult, but it's culture. That's real critical because we're taking people that are broken and they look for that, right? So you always have to keep that forefront in your mind when you're teaching it. So culture is authentic. What is hospitality? It's serving others, right? So it's serving others, it's selflessness, it's helping each other, and you have to guide people to be selfless, to guide people to be loving to people, to be kind. It's not hard. The hard thing is to do it every day, every minute, every hour. So people say, well, I'm going to do this. Well, you can only do it if it's in your blood. And there's people out there like me and like the people I hire, my other 300 people that are like me. There's people here that are much better than I am. We just had to let them know they are. But you recognize, we recognize. What did I do first thing in the morning? I recognize and I appreciate all the guests. and all the employees, and then I'll recognize and appreciate all the guests and all the employees. I'll know their story. I'll sit down. I'll eat with you. I'll know your family. I'll take care of your family. Today, just today, it's a good story. We can help people get houses, right?

Josiah: Tell me more about this. This is a really interesting program. You help people get houses.

Craig: Yeah. This is brand new. I'll tell you the brand new one, and then I'll tell you the one that I completed. Owning a home is critical to me. Poor communities are poor because people's credit rating are poor. So if your credit rating, if you went into any, into San Francisco and you said, let's go to a poor area, they're going to have 200, 300, 400 credit rating. And when you go in there, there's going to be crimes. There's going to be, kids are getting out of school, dropping out of school, a lot of divorces and they're dirty and cars are stolen. And the credit rating is 27%. if they have credit rating. You go into a better area of San Francisco or anywhere USA, and if the credit rating is 700 or more, there's people are married, kids are going to school, there's less crime, it's cleaner. It's a 700 credit score rating, right? So we have to teach people to get financial learning. If you call it financial literacy, that means you're illiterate. So we called it, this is called financial learning. So we teach them financial learning. We help them get citizenship. When DECA was going on, everybody was complaining about it. I said, this is not that hard. I'll just get you citizenship. So we paid for citizenships for people so they don't have to hide. So homelessness, when you live in a city like this, eviction is a big problem, right? So there's homelessness and then there's eviction. Why do people get evicted? Because they don't have financial literacy. They don't understand it. So they move to 10 schools in this area right here. 10 schools a year these kids go to sometimes. So they have no stability. So now this gets them into homes. So I'm part of Habitat for Humanity in this area. So we have a program, and I've been on the board for a long time and a good contributor. So I have a little influence. So I have a girl that's a bartender here. She's been with me eight years. She does good. And we want to get her a home. She has four kids. She came to me, I said, go to Habitat, apply, and we're going to get you a home. about three weeks ago. She came back, her eyes were this big and black and crying, mascara running down her face. She says, I can't get it, I don't qualify. I said, well, why not? She said, well, I make this much and I need this much, which was about $8,000 more. I said, this is great. She said, she's looking at me. I said, you just got an eight thousand dollar raise. So they called me the day and she was with them. And she said, the person that Habitat said, what are we doing? And I said, I'm waiting for the phone call. So I got off the phone. I went back to Human Resources. I said, you give her eight thousand. She was hourly. Now she's salary. I said because she has to make that every year. I says, give her eight thousand more dollars. I said, it's not $8,000. If I need $8,000, I'm already broke, right? You can't do it to everybody, but you can do it to somebody. We did the same thing to a girl named Jen. And Jen has told this story to lots of other people, including people here. That's why she's getting it. Someone said, well, how often can you do this? I said, every time someone wants a home, I'm going to help them get a home. And guess what? We gave her the raise, we gave her 8,000, most likely something that was gonna break that was 80,000 won't, or I'll get an account that'll give me 80,000, or somewhere the money's gonna come in. I don't really know from where, and I'm not that stupid, because it happens every time. If it happens every time, you're not stupid, right? You're not lucky, there's no such thing as luck. So we gave her a raise today and she'll get a house and she'll stay here longer and she'll tell the bar people that she did it. Right. He helped me get a house. So what are you going to do if you're a guest here? I'm bringing my company here. I mean, that just comes this is a natural act of support.

Josiah: Yeah. When it breaks the cycle, a lot of this stuff feels very cyclical, right? And you spoke to this, right? How one thing leads to another and this leads to instability. And then that leads to, you know, a credit score, which causes this. And what I'm hearing from you is an opportunity to break that and make a meaningful change that changes not only that person but their family and probably generations to come.

Craig: Oh, generations. And think about this. I owned a business in the, really in the bad part of Pittsburgh, bad part, world-famous. High-end people come in there. Two presidents went to this jazz club I owned. If you were, if anybody listening was ever in Pittsburgh, I had a place called James Street. They were there too. I waited on them. I waited on everybody in the world at one time. But I never got robbed. I never got tagged. I never had an issue with a guest. I never had any problems that people took care of me. Same thing here. We have this building. Nobody bothers me. I'm the safest guy in the city. I'm not going to walk down the street with $100,000 in my pocket, but I probably could because people respect you and they take care of you. They don't damage your asset. They take care of your asset. They know that you're giving to the community. They know you care, so we care. Even the person that's sitting in the homeless curb, when I walk by, they'll look up and say hi. They go, hey, DoubleTree. Hey, DoubleTree, how are you? But I tell them to look at me. Don't look up at me. Let's do eye contact. Don't look down. They have better worth than looking down. So I'm the curbsitter. That's what I do. I sit on curbs. I learn point of impact. I learn from them. I sat on curbs in 1970 in Washington, D.C. I had a restaurant. 1970. I sat on the curbs at five o'clock at night when I closed the restaurant back then on 12th and Pennsylvania Avenue, across the street from the old post office and FBI building. I had a restaurant called Fatted Calf in 1970. And I would sit with the people at the end of the night because I wanted to understand who they were. And they were my neighbors because it was a nice area, but they were the homeless and they were in my neighborhood. And I need to know who you are and why are you here? What can we do for you and how can I help you? What can I do for you? And they took care of me. So it started a long time ago. How many years is that? 60 years, 70 years ago, it started me sitting on a curb and it's paid off for every year. So it's so far my stupid ideas worked.

Josiah: Well, I think what's so cool about this is it seems beautiful things don't just necessarily happen overnight. It is a it's sort of this compounding over time. Right. And it starts with something small. It starts with attention to an individual, a conversation. Right. And I think it for me listening to you, it highlights the importance of small decisions. These little moments matter. Right. What we're doing now matters because there's these run on implications years or decades down the road.

Craig: Decades. And people will take care of you and they will love you. You love them. They will love you and they will take care of you.