Great Guest Experiences Start With Employee Wellbeing - Emily Johnson, Joli Barfield, and Kristi Ellingsworth

Josiah Mackenzie:
I'm really excited to be speaking with all of you because I've had the good fortune of speaking with you, Emily, before, and you, Joli, before, and excited to learn from you, Kristi. But I want our listeners to get to know you a little bit, so I'm going to go to you first, Emily. I wonder if you could introduce yourself and then share one thing that you're looking forward to sharing with our listeners here today.

Emily Johnson:
Awesome. Well, I'm so glad to be back, Josiah. I'm Emily Johnson, the founder of Elevate Hospitality Collective. I created this brand about a year ago now. I'd spent 20 years working in hotels and in development with hotels, in partnership with hotels, but about 20 years ago, I had a sort of thesis about how wellness was going to affect hospitality, and I think we're finally there now.

Today, my takeaway, and why I've invited these lovely two women, who are going to speak about themselves in a moment, is I've really found in the past several months we have a lot of hotels trying to invest in wellness for their guests. But the truth is, in order to really deliver that, it really starts with the employees, and how do we operationalize that and make this something that's impactful for the actual staff to be able to deliver it to their guests?

Josiah Mackenzie:
Absolutely. We don't talk about this enough. I'm excited to get into this today, and we're going to have a lot to cover. But Joli, I'd like to go over to you. I wonder if you could share... I'm going to include some links in the show notes for people so they hear some of our past conversations, but for people who haven't met you yet, can you tell a little bit about yourself and one thing that you're looking forward to sharing here with our listeners today?

Joli Barfield:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me back on the show. My name is Joli Barfield. I'm Director of Human Resources for Dartcor Enterprises. I think for me, my journey has really spanned so many different avenues in hospitality on the operations side, and then I really took a big pivot after the pandemic to go full force into the HR and learning and development space.

So for me, I think the biggest takeaway I'd love for people to understand, especially companies that are looking to scale, it's the investment that you have in your people, and the way that you develop and really care for the people that are working for you is going to just make the most sense for your clients and the people that you work for. Whether it's guests, clients, whatever that is, it's going to be just a better experience when people are well-cared for. So I'm excited to kind of introduce some of what Kristi's going to be working on.

Josiah Mackenzie:
Amazing. Thank you, Joli. And that's a great segue. Kristi, you've done some amazing things over your hospitality career so far. I know you are working on some exciting things now. But I wonder if you could share a little bit about yourself with our listeners.

Kristi Ellingsworth:
Yes, for sure. Thank you so much, Josiah. I'm really, really excited to be here and to have this conversation with all of you. A bit about me, I am the Director of Hospitality for Dartcor Enterprises. But before that, really my whole training ground was Nobu Restaurant Group. I worked at the locations in New York and in Malibu, and that's really where I learned so much. Such a big chunk of my career.

But what I'm so interested in right now is how to better engage and connect with employees, and I'm hoping, really, that people take away from this conversation inspiration. I want them to feel excited and inspired about how they can better connect with themselves and their teams, and I think we're going to give them some really practical tools. And I'm excited to open up what it is that Joli and I get to work on together at Dartcor, because I think it's really revolutionary.

Josiah Mackenzie:
I can't wait to hear about it. It's so great to have all of you here. I want to do more of these conversations because I think we can all learn from each other, including in kind of one conversation, right? And so this is going to be very conversational, but I want to ground this conversation in why this, why now.

Emily, we had the chance to run into each other at an industry event just a few weeks ago, and I was telling you how much I enjoyed our conversation six months ago when we were talking about a lot of different elements of what's possible. But one of the things that I appreciated is how you brought together all the different elements of your career, and you made the case for why taking care of the people who are providing hospitality, the people on the front lines, why that makes so much sense from a business perspective.

And you and I were talking a little bit before our recording around some of the data sets. If we look at a number of different sources, we're finding quit rates in hospitality are about twice the average of other private sector industries. You have kind of a lot of burnout happening. There's just a lot of data pointing to this being an important thing to address.

And I'm curious to get your take on this, like why this, why now? Because you are also doing a lot of audits for organizations to get a sense of what's going on in the company. What are you seeing and hearing with regards to this, and why do we need to be having this conversation now?

Emily Johnson:
Yeah, absolutely. So I think last time I was on, I was talking about a little wellness ROI audit tool that I've created, where when I'm engaging, especially with independent hospitality operators and owners, really trying to dig into what's going on before we decide to implement a type of new program.

And what I've repeatedly been finding is it's hard to implement a new program when there are these underlying issues. And I think one of the reasons I even thought, "Let's get Joli and Kristi in here today," was I understood what they're doing in their organization, and I felt like that's something that most of these hospitality organizations aren't doing.

So I'm excited to learn from them myself. But we talked back and forth about research. I think everyone likes to tie back to Cornell research. There's a lot of data out there that there is actually a direct correlation between service quality and guest satisfaction. So when we look at delivering wellness experiences, it's the same thing.

And I've found repeatedly that because of this higher increased turnover rate, there were a lot of trainings that did take place, but then those folks left, and they didn't stay because they themselves were not being taken care of. So the hotels have created sort of a guest-facing wellness program or wellness promise, but the employees that are delivering it weren't even included on the design or training on the outcome.

A lot of them hadn't experienced those wellness programs themselves but were meant to sell and explain it. There's definitely a psychology component to this, and even when I launched this brand about a year ago, I did launch it with two friends in the mental health space, one of which is a psychiatrist, because I do feel there's a mental health component that needs to be included in the training of some of the staff that are delivering these programs.

I found a lot of times operations, marketing, and sales are telling different stories. So when I was doing some of these audits, even just sitting with staff and understanding what are you delivering, what is the meaning that you're trying to impose with the guest, oftentimes what you see on the website is very different than what sales is selling, what operations is delivering, and what's actually maybe happening down the hallway in the spa itself. And I felt that we've got to really start at level one, which to me is the employee wellbeing.

I see some companies offering this as sort of an app that they give with their benefits or maybe an EAP, but they're not actually dealing with the understaffing, unpredictable schedules, no real break times. How are they nourishing and providing that to their staff? So they're providing these great food and beverage programs to guests, but not really even thinking about are their staff taking breaks? Are they having the nourishment? How are they supporting them mentally, physically, emotionally?

So I've really been digging into that more lately, and I thought, Josiah, again, to kick off getting back on board with you, to me, this is level one. Before implementing a wellness program, we've got to set the stage for employee wellness.

Josiah Mackenzie:
I love it. We've got to set the stage. And Joli and Kristi, I'd love to get your take. Joli, I know we've spoken before about the challenges, the pressures that working in hospitality can bring up, and I'm curious kind of what you've seen with regards to this. Why does this matter so much right now?

Joli Barfield:
Yeah. I mean, hospitality has one of the biggest turnover rates of any industry, and burnout, it's baked into the culture, unfortunately. So we're just trying to see what does it actually take to fix some of that. And really what Emily said, the employee experience is the guest experience. You really need to make sure that you're delivering exceptional hospitality to your own people, because you can't deliver it to anyone else if you have a depleted workforce.

So for me, joining Dartcor, I can't really take any credit for getting this off the ground for our company itself. I just joined a little over 90 days ago. So this was something that was in motion as part of the scaling trajectory for where the company is going. But what I would say is we have a great chief growth officer, Jason Leeds, and our CEO, Warren Leeds, who have been just understanding that the people are what's going to make or break the scaling of the organization.

So when we get down to the employee wellness journey, it starts with providing some of the same nourishing meals that we do for our different accounts here in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, to our own people, right? So it's the meals, it's the tools, the resources. How can we help our managers be really efficient with our people and be a little bit more care for themselves?

So I think that's where Kristi comes into play.

Josiah Mackenzie:
I want to get into the details, because this is really fascinating. I think there's kind of a case study that you're building now. But Kristi, before we get into the details, you've worked in a lot of different contexts, and you've seen the industry from different perspectives. Why do you think this matters, taking care of the people providing hospitality, the frontline teams?

Kristi Ellingsworth:
Oh, I mean, it's everything. Your people are everything. Joli and I constantly are talking about how our employees, our teams, they are the first customers that we are serving. And the way that they feel, that is the way that our clients are going to feel, that the people we get to take care of in all of our restaurants and cafes.

So it's vital, it's imperative that they feel so looked after and authentically, genuinely cared for by leadership, by all of their teams. And so the question is: How do we do this? How do we provide meaningful care and not, as Emily was saying, send them someplace else to something external that is not related?

How do we connect it back into the infrastructure of what we're building every day and make it a part of the routine so it's just natural and it's there, it's a part of who we are?

Josiah Mackenzie:
Amazing. Well, that's the big question, right? And I'm excited to get into that. Now, Joli, I want to go back. You gave a little bit of context. You're just 90 days in, right? So this is a case study that you are building that's unfolding. I wonder, because you've seen hospitality in a lot of different contexts, you've been building programs in different organizations. Can you tell me a little bit more about Dartcor and a little bit of the context, and then kind of the opportunity that you and your team are seeing? And then I want to get into some of the specifics of kind of what you're creating.

Joli Barfield:
Yeah, absolutely. I think for me specifically, and Kristi as well, we come from operations backgrounds, so when we're thinking about learning and development programs or how we can best support our leaders, it has to be something that really makes it an easy lift for them. How we can add something into their day that's going to just really make their life easier as well.

So I just say this because sometimes we have learning and development programs or something that's added into a culture within an organization, and it's not really well thought out on how it's going to affect the person that has to deliver it and how their day-to-day might be substantially impacted.

So breaking down some of what we try to implement into really easy-to-digest information so that our managers can then trickle that down within our organization. So really, I would say, the line level management is who we're focusing on the most for this. And just thinking about wellness in general, Kristi is such an advocate for making sure that our leaders are taking breaks and things like that, because what we primarily deal with are food and beverage operations.

There is such a physical wellness, standing during your shifts, you have irregular schedules. It's such a toll on the body, and really, mental health is definitely a part of that because we're all existing in high-pressure environments.

And then I think when we're building some of these things within Dartcor, Warren Leeds, our CEO, is a Cornell grad, and he's had this company for 40 years, and just thinking about making sure that we're bringing people on who really understand the basics in hospitality, and we want to make sure that we're selecting the right people, training the right people, and then making sure that everyone has a clear development plan.

So I think that's something that we're really taking to mind when we're looking at the next phase of how to build the company further. It's looking inward and how we can improve some of the systems that we have as well as adding new things to our programming.

Josiah Mackenzie:
Amazing. I want to come back to the details of this, but Emily, I'd just love your take because I know you think a lot about the systems and the structure. I hear, Joli, you were talking about a lot of components there, the physical demands of doing the work, right? And all the different factors leaders need to be thinking about. Emily, what comes up for you when you're kind of thinking about that?

Emily Johnson:
Well, and truly, even as Joli was talking, I was thinking about this too because obviously she's talking more in the F&B space, but this is exactly what I'm seeing on the macro level, is that so many decisions are made within the ownership group, at the corporate table, but we're not thinking about how is that going to be implemented by, as Joli said, the line-level management, line-level employees.

How does that impact their day-to-day? And some of the decisions that are being made are great, or they're really made with the care of the guests in mind, and we appreciate that. But again, I think why this is level one is before you can do something that's going to affect the guest experience, how does it affect the employee experience?

And that's, again, going back to sort of this wellness ROI and doing some wellness consulting with owners and operators. I think they all have fabulous ideas, but when I back up and say, "Well, let's talk about implementation and what does that look like?" You're talking about what happens to the actual employees and staff themselves, and I find a lot of times we see hotels with the best intentions not actually including the line-level employees or line-level management even in that dialogue and that decision-making process.

So even as we were chatting about getting on the show today, one of the thoughts that I sort of had was around how often do any of us really see those folks even being brought into those conversations? Because when you have the buy-in of the team themselves, so when the team themselves are like, "Yes, this is something we want to do. Here's why we think it's going to improve guest experience," and they even have the buy-in and the feeling of being part of that decision-making process, right away I think that is part of the wellness experience. They feel included. They feel like this is a decision that's for the best of everyone, our guests, ourselves.

And I think too often these decisions are made at this higher corporate level without even thinking about that impact.

Josiah Mackenzie:
I love that. Joli, I would love your take on kind of what that could look like practically, because it sounds like you have great leadership that understands the importance of this sort of stuff. But even in that environment, I imagine there's still work to be done at every level of the organization to include people at the right times and the right places, get the buy-in. What is that looking like for you now?

Joli Barfield:
Absolutely. For our company specifically, there has been many changes over the last 40 years, and there are so many different ways they've navigated things. I hate to bring up the pandemic, but big changes, especially in food and beverage organizations when we've had dips and peaks and valleys, and how even our staffing levels have changed over the last decade.

So we are really just focused on first kind of stabilizing what has been working and really now dialing down to the different levels of managers within our organization.

We have one segment of the business, Dartcor Hospitality, that's primarily account-based in doing food and beverage for all of our businesses that are bringing people back into the workplace and less remote work. So we're making really good impact there in a guest experience for creating great places for them to work.

And then our Chelsea Hospitality side is our restaurants, cafes. And I would say on both levels, we want to just make this really approachable for our managers, so taking the time to do training on different topics that really they need more support on, and then finding tools within our organization and the people, connecting to the corporate office on how we can make it happen.

Josiah Mackenzie:
Amazing. I love it. I love it. I think...

Joli Barfield:
Kristi needs to share what she's been working on, because I think it'll make more sense. I won't be talking in such elusive terms.

Josiah Mackenzie:
Well, it's helpful. It's helpful context. And Kristi, I'm not asking you to speak to your Nobu experience specifically, but I am curious, you've seen the industry, you've worked these roles, what are you excited about building now? And I wonder if you can kind of get into some of the details of this.

Kristi Ellingsworth:
Yes. So one thing that I think is important to touch on is I was with Nobu for 10 plus years working in an extremely high-stress, high-stakes environment where it did not let up. You're working a dinner shift on a Saturday night, you're two hours behind, you don't have enough tables. Now something's gone wrong in the kitchen. Now Leonardo DiCaprio is standing in front of you. What are you going to do?

It is a pressure cooker, and I was so young, and it was amazing, but I wish I had known how powerful I was when it comes to transforming all of the anxiety and the overwhelm that I was feeling inside of my body into calm, into steadiness.

And so that is what I am so excited about building with Dartcor Enterprises right now. The fact that Jason Leeds is so forward-thinking and that Warren is as well, and they want to create this opportunity to really build in for our teams these somatic tools, and to provide education about how to use the technology that is your body in order to really learn how to regulate yourself.

Because like we were saying before, our customers feel the way that our employees feel. So if we can arm our employees with the toolkit to be able to recognize when things are feeling chaotic, and to bring their internal state back into one of calm and steadiness, and actually to see in real time that that steadiness can be contagious.

Your calm can be contagious. Chaos can be, but calm can be too. And I really want to empower people with tools that they can rely on on a regular basis, multiple times throughout the day, and also give them ways to reframe what's going on. A lot of times we don't talk about the psychological component and weight and pressures that come with being someone in this industry and wanting to serve and take care of people.

And really, we've forgotten, I think, in the old school model of hospitality, that we have to take care of ourselves too. Even on an airline, right? You have to put on your own oxygen mask first. So that's what we're really doing here, and it's so exciting.

Josiah Mackenzie:
So Kristi, what you shared, we're going to have to take a little bit of a detour here because there's a couple things...

Kristi Ellingsworth:
Let's do it.

Josiah Mackenzie:
A couple things we've got to get into. So you said we don't talk as an industry about what the pressure feels like. If you were to describe it, what does that feel like, in your words?

Kristi Ellingsworth:
I mean, I can talk about, for me personally, feeling like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, feeling like if you get one thing wrong, your entire life will explode, and you will be letting so many people down, feeling like you could burst into tears at any moment because 50 things are happening, and how can you possibly prioritize and keep them all straight?

Yeah, it's enormous pressure, and we sign up to do it again and again and again. So you really do need rituals and practices, and we need to come together as a team and as organizations to talk about this. We're not talking about it. We're just asking people to go back in and do it again and again.

And I do think this is why there is so much burnout because after a certain point of this elephant in the room not being recognized, people are just going, "I can't take this anymore, and something's wrong, and I can't quite put my finger on it, but I feel depleted and empty and sad." And it doesn't have to be that way.

We're in the business of connection. We can actually create such an opportunity by being vulnerable with one another and talking with leadership and employees across the industry about this.

Josiah Mackenzie:
Yes.

Emily Johnson:
Josiah, Kristi's so spot on for me in terms of this is exactly why it starts here, right? Because there are just so many examples, even as she's telling that story. I remember starting in hotels and being told... I worked at a five-star hotel, the first hotel I worked out of college, and being told, "You're on stage." And absolutely, I embodied that and believed that. When I got out at the front desk and I was a front desk manager at 20 years old, I was on stage, right?

But immediately as a 20-year-old, you're sort of told you have to be perfect. You've got to get on stage and smile through it all. But then how do I then regulate myself? With that stress building up inside of me, there was no tool to sort of figure out, like, well, how do I calm down? And how do I also understand that, you know what, I'm not a perfect person. Nobody is.

So take it 20 years later to my most recent job. I had a boss tell me, "We've got to get it right. We've got to get it perfect every time." But with the 20 years of experience, I was able to look back at him and say, "I know I'm not perfect," right? And I'm not necessarily striving to be perfect either. I want to do as best as I can, but there will be mistakes.

What does service recovery look like in that example if you're front-facing? And knowing that we will make mistakes, we have to be able to have that correct path of re-regulating ourselves, providing the right service recovery.

And truly, even as Kristi was talking, I was thinking about an experience I had even just a week ago at a nicer restaurant location where I could just tell my server was so stressed out. And again, I get it, it's a higher-end environment, et cetera. But you could just tell she was having a tough time making eye contact. She was running back and forth. And in my mind I'm like, because I have this 20 years of experience and talk on this subject, I know that what's probably going on behind the scenes for this person is that they're probably not having the tools that Kristi is talking about.

I do think it is pretty rare in hospitality right now to find organizations that are truly actually providing the support that Dartcor is doing. And again, that's why I invited them here today, because to me, more organizations need to start thinking about this from that lens, that the guest wellness is the outcome, the employee wellbeing is the operating system.

Until we get the employees regulated, calm, and ready to deliver the service, we're not going to be able to provide this guest wellness that we're talking so much about these days.

Josiah Mackenzie:
Really well said. I love the operating system analogy.

Emily Johnson:
Yeah.

Joli Barfield:
Just wanted to add, so that we're all clear too, we're really just in the building stage for Kristi's role. So rolling this out with the company. I just think the number one thing from an HR perspective for me is just thinking about turnover and how it's something that's industry-wide, right?

So we want to make sure that we're giving tools to our line level associates, but also our managers, because a lot of people leave organizations because of a leader or a general manager or someone that really just isn't giving the same kind of hospitality to their internal employees as they are to their external guests.

So we want to really just take a step back and look at each individual and how we can help give them tools to be the best version of themselves so they can really show up for their own teams.

Josiah Mackenzie:
Amazing. Yeah. I want to talk about giving tools, what that looks like at scale. But Kristi, I want to go back to you for a moment because you also shared an interesting little anecdote there of kind of what does it feel like when you have this VIP guest coming, and Emily, you touched on service recovery, like how do you navigate that moment?

Kristi, you talked about kind of the pressure, here's what it feels like, because I know you're building tools at scale now. What I'm curious about is what you've learned about managing your own emotions given the pressure, and you know you need to provide service to this guest. What have you found useful in kind of managing your own emotions so you can have a good outcome for yourself and your guest?

Kristi Ellingsworth:
Yes. So I've learned so much that I'm so excited to share. One of the biggest things that we can do is just recognize what's going on inside of our bodies. I do think culturally, we almost get conditioned to be these brains that are just floating around detached from our bodies.

And don't get me wrong, the brain is incredible, but in order to deliver true hospitality, to really get that feeling of warmth and groundedness that we want, you have to be dropped into your body.

So the way that you return to all of that is, one, your breath. And again, Emily and I were chatting about this. I wish that we learned these things when we're five, in kindergarten, because these are invaluable life skills. But the way that you can recover in a moment is, one, recognize it's happening.

"Oh my gosh, I have flipped into fight or flight mode. I am panicking right now. My thoughts are fractured and scattered. I'm disorganized." So being able to witness that in yourself, then not to judge it, to allow it, and to go, "Oh, I have a tool for this." And maybe the tool is, "I'm going to place my hands on my belly to send myself a physical cue."

All right, I want to go from shallow breathing into deeper breathing back into my diaphragm, and I'm going to count in for four and out for six, making your exhale just longer than your inhale. It's a really practical tool. It takes one minute, two minutes. You can do that in the kitchen. You can step outside. You could do it on the floor. It doesn't matter.

But just noticing and going, "Okay, I'm just going to breathe for 60 seconds right now." And you'll notice all of a sudden it just syncs everything right back up. You have access to the problem-solving centers in your brain. You feel your shoulders drop.

You feel yourself become more present. You haven't left. You're not in outer space. You're here for it, no matter what the issue is or what the guest concern might be. Now you can be here for it.

Josiah Mackenzie:
Yeah, I love it. Well, I think this is, regardless of where listeners are working or find themselves, I think that's a very practical tool, and I think it's really cool to hear it coming from your own experience because now you and Joli are building something at scale.

Joli, I want to go to you. You've touched on some elements of this, some of the context. I think you both are building the next great case study of what it looks like to take care of your associates and to do this at scale, which is really, really hard to do both of those. What are some of the components of this program that you're looking at, that you're building towards right now?

Joli Barfield:
Yeah. I think just adding new things to the employee experience, so kind of carving out a learning and development section of the company that hasn't really existed before. There's always been managers doing training and things like that, but having Jason and Warren invest in Kristi as our learning and development lead to start working on some of the programming.

So it's kind of just, I would say, taking shape. We don't have too many things. I can tell you, like, some of the things that we're looking to track is really kind of the turnover by brand and by role, just so that we're having a baseline set and see what our programs might be impacting. Internal promotion rates.

In order for any company to scale, it's really just important... This is one of the things I learned best probably when I worked with Danny Meyer at Union Square Hospitality Group, is he always used the analogy of sourdough and having the starter and planting it in your different businesses so that you had someone that was really within the organization helping to create that culture in the next location.

So really, just those internal promotion rates. How are we developing our own people? Are people looking to leave just because they feel like they need to grow elsewhere? We don't want that to happen, and any healthy organization would want to be growing their people. And then our learning and development participation.

How many managers will be attending these classes that Kristi's going to be getting off the ground? As well as having Kristi do some monthly check-ins within our entire organizational leadership team, just to have everyone be working on the same tools within our different segments of the organization.

So I think last thing, when we see people leaving an organization, we look at exit interviews or things like that, but we're just trying to get some also internal engagement scores and just see how we can start some of these conversations with people before leaving.

So, food and beverage, it's tricky. We have chefs that want to move around. We have all different people that are looking for internal mobility as well as we're expanding the business. But I'll let Kristi talk a little bit about some of the specifics that we're building on, because I think really she's the expert in this field on kind of where we're going to be adding some really forward-thinking tools for our managers.

Kristi Ellingsworth:
Thank you. I was just going to add in there one thing that I'm super excited about, and I really applaud Dartcor for recognizing the possibility here, is the pre-shift meeting. This is something across the industry that we all know. It's 5 to 10 minutes before the shift starts. And in so many places, I think it's used to go over operational things, which is really important. We need that.

But also, it can be a huge vehicle for inspiration and connection with ourselves and with our teams. And so a lot of what we're building here is really the reinvention, the relaunch of the pre-shift meeting and giving our leaders the tools to do that, whether it is something to do with meditation or somatics or a silly question that we go around the group and get an answer, a game.

There is so much opportunity for fun and joy and really rallying our troops before we go out there. It doesn't have to just be a checklist of, okay, we're 86 salmon today, and go have a great shift. It can be so much more, and so really getting our leaders excited about the opportunity that they have every day to rally people.

It's game time. What are we going to do? We get to go make someone's day. How are you going to do it? How can we be creative, and how can we highlight all of the talents of the unique individuals on our teams, and really work with them to connect better with each other and the guests?

Josiah Mackenzie:
I love it. Your energy is contagious, and I feel like I'm ready to start a shift now.

Kristi Ellingsworth:
Let's go.

Josiah Mackenzie:
I love it. I love it. So I think it's so cool to hear that. Joli, I appreciate how you think about kind of like taking care of people, also the business considerations. Emily, I'd like to go to you to wrap this all up and speak to leaders that are listening. I feel like this is not only the right thing to do, as we've talked about, it can drive outperformance, but there's a lot of leaders listening that are thinking about, okay, this sounds interesting.

How should I be thinking about this? How can our organization start to adopt some of this way of operating? What would you share with them to help them move forward in their organizations and make progress here?

Emily Johnson:
Yeah, a couple things. I wanted to say, too, when Kristi said pre-shift meeting, I think about, both on the restaurant side and the hotel side, sales teams typically get together. We have a daily at the front desk, same thing, usually a daily meeting, and my first feeling even when she said those words was sort of like a PTSD feeling of like, "Oh, no," because those meetings are just so often, "Here's what you need to do. Here's what you need to do. We have this, this, and this. This VIP is coming in today. We've got to make sure we also get these reports out the door."

And it's not typically a meeting of refresh and revitalization. So again, I think it's changing the thinking patterns. My argument, again, I'm still very focused on the commercialization of wellness and hospitality, but my argument's not that we should stop investing in that. It's that employee readiness, employee training, and care for the employee is part of that equation.

So if there's going to be money set aside to implement a new program or bring in CapEx and build a beautiful new spa, if you're not including in that budget what is, how does that impact the employee? How do we train the employee? How do we take care of the employee? But it's almost like, well, what are we doing, right?

And again, I've had the personal experience of staying in hotels in this past year where you can tell that the staff doesn't really even understand what it is that's being provided at the hotel. And then so how are they really selling that? How are they really communicating that?

I do really feel that when the team's supported, they're involved, that offer has a better chance of generating participation, driving ancillary spend, which again, I'm all about. Let's, how do we boost revenue? And I think it starts, it really does start here.

You can't just add a wellness amenity and expect there to be an ROI. The ROI is really going to come when the employees understand it, they believe in it, they can deliver and sell it, and they come from that place that Kristi's been talking about. They come from their own place of really believing and understanding how to take care of themselves first.

I think that is the area where we still as an industry have a long way to go. I know Dartcor is just launching this, so I am really excited too to see in six months, 12 months, because I think we do need more data around that as an industry of, yes, there's been some basic research from Cornell about that, that link the two, but we need to really be able to go back to owners and operators and say, "Hey, when you've invested X in this, here's how it's actually going to affect your ROI, the P&L, your NOI."

Because at the end of the day, I've been working with operators that are more focused on that than anything else, and the business case is this is important if you're going to be doing this. And again, I think for me to close up, that's why I brought us together, is I'm going to keep doing the commercialization of the wellness stuff.

It's my passion, but this is a part of it, and I think people are typically surprised when I start talking about this piece because they're like, "No, no, no, Emily, we want to add new biohacking tools." That's great. Like, how do the employees factor into that? Are we training them? Have they learned about it? What do you do for them?

And they kind of give me this look sometimes of like, "Huh? What do you mean?" And I do think it breaks down if we don't actually translate this. The actual ROI is going to come from that training and development, working with your employees, taking care of your employees, and all too often as an industry, I think that comes last.

Josiah Mackenzie:
I am so excited to see what you build, Joli and Kristi. I think from what you've shared, you have all the makings of an incredible case study. So I would love to bring this group back together in six months, 12 months, and we check in and hear the latest and greatest. But I think this is not only the right thing to do, but it is going to be great for organizations that adopt this way of operating.

And so thank you all for taking the time to chat. I'll include a bunch of links in the show notes where people can learn more about your organization, some of these themes that we've talked about, some of the research, and would love to have the chance to bring this group back together sometime soon. But thank you for your time today.

Joli Barfield:
Thank you. Thanks, Josiah. Thank you so much.