Getting started - Craig Poole, Reading Hospitality

[00:00:00] Josiah: Last Friday, I talked to a hotel owner and operator who just might have the most interesting story I've heard yet. I couldn't stop thinking about it and talking about it all weekend with everyone I was with. And there are two reasons for this: first, this person has a radically different way of running his business from living on property to cleaning rooms himself each day to helping his staff buy homes. But what's crazy about all this is it's not just a feel-good story. He's an investor who is crushing every business performance metric from guest satisfaction scores to revenue benchmarks. So, how did this all get started? That's what we're going to be looking at today. 

 [00:01:00] Josiah: Craig Poole is the president of reading hospitality, which owns and operates the DoubleTree hotel in Reading Pennsylvania. He's a three-time Hilton Connie Award winner. And was recognized as general manager of the year by the American Hotel and Lodging Association. What he and his team have done is so incredible that I've decided to use most of this week to share his stories and the lessons that you can use. 

[00:01:24] Josiah: I'm a big believer in the way that you start sets the tone for what you do. So to kick things off in this episode, you're going to learn how Craig starts each day and how he got started on the path to the business that he runs today.

[00:01:39] Josiah: I'm curious how do you start your day and get in the right state of mind to do all the work that you do?

[00:01:44] Craig: I get up my feet, hit the floor, and I go to work. And that's what I've done my whole life. I actually live in the hotel, so I, I get up, I open the door and I'm at work, and then I go downstairs and uh, I meet, the first thing I do is I say hi to everybody in the lobby, the front desk people wherever 

[00:02:04] Craig: And then I hug everybody from the front desk to the security, to the front, to the hostesses. And then I go meet everybody that's at breakfast. Then I walk through the kitchen and everybody working and I walk through every, all the functions.

[00:02:20] Craig: And then I stand in the lobby and I greet people and meet people and I call it my farm. Because that's the place I go to when people come down the steps. I find out why they're here. What's the purpose of here? Can I find any new business from you and what can I, where's your pain? Where's your happiness?

[00:02:39] Craig: We take them to eat breakfast cause most everybody eats breakfast. Then about 8:30 I'd meet with about 20 people for half an hour to an hour and a half every day. That work here. And we do storytelling about the hotel or just what's going on in the world. People's, the people that work here, what's what they call us a standup meeting in the industry.

[00:03:03] Craig: I call it a sit-down storytelling meeting. And I serve them and I try to make their day as successful. To start, takes an hour and an hour, most of the time an hour. And then we break up and we all go to the breakfast and we have breakfast together. People go back to work. People have meetings and I go take care of all the other things that we're doing that day.

[00:03:28] Josiah: I love that. how you start your day sets the tone for the rest of the day, right? Can you tell me a little bit about your career journey to your role today?

[00:03:35] Craig: Iso I started like everybody else, at a young age in the, in hospitality washing dishes and valet and busing tables and waiting on tables and cooking. And then I became a manager of uh, restaurants. And back then I start at a very early age, I started working in restaurants that had issues.

[00:03:59] Craig: I had a restaurant a new restaurant, and did real well in a chain. And then they've set me to other places that were in, in trouble. So I found out at a young age that I do pretty well with troubled places. And then I got promoted to be a GM of a hotel and then a vice president of a hotel.

[00:04:20] Craig: And first it was a district, then a region, and then vice president back in Holiday Inn Times. So we ran about a third of the country. Then I, Holiday Inn at the time built Hampton Inns. They were the franchisee. So I left and I built three Hampton Inns with some friends of mine. We built the 18th, the 21st, and I think the 32nd Hampton Inn in the country in Pittsburgh.

[00:04:45] Craig: And something wasn't going right with our deal and I thought, I'm gonna get out. And I bought a uh, bankrupt business in the inner city of Pittsburgh in the ghetto. That was shuttered. And I opened it and I was going to take this property and then work with banks on, on buyouts and sweat equity and started a business working with dysfunctional businesses.

[00:05:13] Craig: But this restaurant became very lucrative and big and became world famous And I fell in love with the inner city part of it. So I stayed for 17 years and had the best time in my life. And I had one of the top 100 jazz clubs in the world always ranked. Presidents came there, and every movie star. If you came to Pittsburgh, you came to see me. Still today it's not there anymore. But after we sold it, it went bankrupt a few more times. But today, if you went to Pittsburgh and said James Street, people would know me or James Street.

[00:05:47] Josiah: What made it so good? 

[00:05:49] Craig: The people there made it. The same thing as this hotel. It was in a very depressed area with a bad reputation, gangs, and whatever. And I went in and did the same thing. I hired people from the city. I did local. I was very successful. I took care of neighborhoods and people. I worked with the gangs. I worked with the FBI.

[00:06:11] Craig: I did all the FBI secret service parties and the gang parties, 

[00:06:16] Josiah: You brought people together.

[00:06:18] Craig: Yeah, it did. It was probably the first very highly diversified businesses in the country. It was known people would fly in, say this is the one place you could go and be equal. You could be very rich and very poor, cuz Chas does that.

[00:06:32] Craig: It brings people together and we built a structure with people. Most of the people there, 60 some people worked there, most of 'em there for 17 years. Most of the people stayed with me.