Lessons in Leading a Culture of Excellence - Greg Cook, The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island

Josiah: Would you like to learn from one of the best leaders in luxury hospitality about how to empower your teams and deliver extraordinary service to your guests and community? If so, stay tuned, because in this episode, we're learning from Greg Cook, general manager of the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island, about so many aspects of hospitality, from early experiences that were formative for him to how he leads his teams today. This is Hospitality Daily, the show that helps you stay informed and inspired each day by the most interesting people in hospitality. My name is Josiah McKenzie, and my goal is to help you reconnect with why you work in this industry and get fired up to go out there, delight others, and reach your goals. Let's get started. I've been really looking forward to our conversation because, in doing research and preparing for our conversation today, you are one of the best leaders I've come across in the sense of how integrated you are in the organizations that you work in your community. You just look at the awards your property has won over the recognition that you have. Guests love you. It seems that your team members love working there. It's incredible. I want PR listeners to get to know you and how you got into this. sort of rewind the clock. And I wonder if you could share an early experience that you had early in your life or early in your career that made you fall in love with hospitality and you think was formative in the work that you do today.

Greg: Sure. I'd be glad to. You know, as you're asking the question, it makes me kind of go back and just think, you know, my father traveled internationally when I was young, and he'd always come back from different countries. You know, he'd talk about the things that he had seen, and he collected matchbooks, you know, which was crazy, but I'd always see what hotel he stayed at, and it could be in the Philippines or Hong Kong or Canada or South America or wherever. And, you know, I got to meet a lot of his customers too. You know, they would come in, I grew up in Dayton, Ohio. And they would come in for meetings, and they'd bring their families, and we'd go out to dinners, and I always thought how, you know, interesting it was to meet others. Sometimes we didn't speak the same languages, you know, but, you know, we could talk about hockey or something, a sport that we had in common. And so I think the, you know, the travel, you know, piece kind of was always interesting. They're learning different cultures. And, you know, I thought, you know, I wanted to go into construction when I grew up in Ohio, and that was like my summer jobs was a lot of construction work. And, you know, when I moved to South Florida, I was actually going to school for business and construction technology, and I was working in a convenience store while I was in school. A girlfriend of mine, an actual friend, asked if I would take her to Marriott Harbor Beach, and she wanted to apply for a receptionist job. And I actually said, sure, I'll drive you over. And I was sitting in the recruiting office with her, and the recruiting lady walked up to me and said, hey, are you here to fill out an application? I said, no, actually, I'm just here with a friend. She goes, well, would you be interested in the job? And I said, well, what do you have? She goes, well, we have Bellman positions open. And I'm like, well, is that the guy with the funny hat and chinstrap? You know, she laughs, she goes, our guys don't wear the hat and they average about $100 in cash a day. And you know, I was 20 years old, and it was 1984, and I was like, $100 a day, sign me up. So that's how I got into hospitality. And you know, once I started in the business and went through the training and you know, I'll never forget like the first week walking through the garage, you know, trying to find my work area and everyone was talking like, you know, hello, you know, introducing themselves, can I help you find something? And, you know, coming from construction, you know, as an ironworker, uh, people weren't quite like that. They weren't so nice, you know? So I was like, wow, these people are super friendly. This is really nice. You know, everybody wants to help me. So, you know, I'll never forget that. I know it's crazy. It's a parking garage. And I just remember like five people asking me as I was trying to get to my workplace, uh, if I needed help and directions and, you know, it was just, it was a completely different environment from what I was growing up. And so, That was my first memory of getting into it. And I was fortunate. It was a hotel that I went into. It was a brand-new build. It was a Marriott. It's one of the first resorts that they actually built. And one of my first GMs was Isaac Kutry, who later went on to be Ritz-Carlton's head of operations. And I had a really great base from that hotel on my learning what hospitality was all about.

Josiah: Did Isaac share anything that stands out to you? Was formative for you back then?

Greg: There's lots of things, you know, Isaac was just a true gentleman. You know, his mannerisms, the way he spoke to people, even the employees, you know, you just never forget that he was, you know, it was always good afternoon, good morning. But his number two was Bob, Bob Fabiano. And you know, as a bellman in this hotel, we literally had to stay in a military post position. So you were constantly pivoting to talk to guests and you know, good morning, good afternoon. We literally, you know, you talk about lineups with Ritz Carlton, We'd have to do the lineups every day. They'd look at our shoes and make sure they were polished. You know, you couldn't wear a T-shirt that had any logos on it because you could see it through the jacket and they didn't want to see some concert you went to. You had to have a crosspin. You had to have a lighter. And, um, you know, if you, if there was a spot on one of the sliding glass doors, it was your job to clean it off. But I swear, you know, Bob Fabiano, it didn't matter how much you would look around to make sure things were clean. and you'd see him walk in the lobby and you'd do a quick check and then every time he walked by I swore he dropped something and then pretended to pick it up and looked at you and said didn't you see this you know and later on I really think he did that just so that you're constantly watching you know everywhere So, I'll never forget that. There are a lot of indelible marks, as we say, on trading, but I'll never forget how we just constantly made sure that the lobby was perfect and that we were constantly interacting with the guests. Good morning, good afternoon. Back then, people smoked. That's why we had a lighter. So, if somebody went to pull a cigarette out, you had to be right there to light the cigarette for them. But that anticipatory service, I learned that very early on in my career as well.

Josiah: Tell me more about the lineup as you think of it now, because I think sometimes we have experiences early in our career. We may like it, but we may not. But as you get more perspective and experience, and then now, obviously, you're running this incredible property and leading so many teams. How do you think about that lineup now, I guess, kind of with all the experiences that you've had?

Greg: It's changed a little bit. Back then, if you showed up and you didn't have your shoes polished or you had the wrong t-shirt on, you'd be sent home. And literally right then and there, and people probably were a little more abrupt on how they told you to go home back then. And the next day you showed up again, or the next week you showed up with, again, non-polished shoes or whatever. you might not get scheduled again, you know? So it was a little different back then, and we talked about leaving those marks that you don't forget. Today, you know, it's the same type of thing. It's more communicated, I think, in our lineups today. It's really about talking about, you know, what's the business in the hotel? If you have site inspections or FAMs, do you know who the VIPs are coming in? It's also when, you know, Ritz-Carlton, we talk about, you know, our service value each day, the gold standards. We do a wow story. Storytelling is very important for us. Because that's how, you know, basically try to drive, you know, certain behaviors, you know, stories help with that. So that's very important in our lineups today. And again, we do the same, you know, we call it CTQ, which is our commitment to quality with Ritz-Carlton. And it's done all over the world every day. So you're going to have the same service value in the same wow story. And, you know, we're a little competitive. We like to submit those wild stories from our hotel and we love when our hotels get featured. I think we're at 111 hotels. We just opened another one last week. So, you know, you want to have your hotel listed in that. So, you know, we're constantly submitting those stories and, you know, hoping they get shared. And, you know, we, we are a very competitive brand, you know, we're humble and gracious, but, and I love all my brothers and sisters, but we like to beat them. And that would create a competitive spirit amongst us. But those lineups, they happen every day in every department, every shift. And it's critical mainly about communication. That's the main thing about hotels, because we're open 365 days a year, 24 hours. You need to know what's happening in the property. And the CTQ really just sets you up for who's here, what they are doing today, and what we need to be prepared for. And if it rains, what are we going to do as a backup? It's that communication that's key.

Josiah: I wonder if we could speak a little bit more about this Wow Story concept. Because in some recent conversations I've had, I've just been impressed with the importance of storytelling. And it feels like we could all get better at this. I wonder if you could share with our listeners a Wow Story that comes to mind for you, just to help people get a sense of what this looks like. Because I'm actually kind of surprised in a lot of organizations, this doesn't take place or it's not taking place as it could. Does a recent wow story come to mind for you that you'd be willing to share?

Greg: I mean, it's as recent as yesterday. I mean, that's why it's… In the Ritz-Carlton culture, the wow stories happen every day in the hotel. The crazy thing is, is there is so much a part of our culture that they sometimes just don't get shared because it's just natural. But I was just reading the daily recap of food and beverage. And, um, you know, there's, you know, we have seven different outlets and I'm sitting there reading what happened in each one. And Salt is the fine dining restaurant that we have here. And it's one of the top fine-dining restaurants in the state. And we have a regular guest that comes in there that's a local and through Facebook, our team found out that he was, his health was not doing well. He probably would not be coming back to Salt ever. So when they found that out, um, they decided, you know, a couple of nights ago, this is, let's take a meal to them. So our general manager or chef and one of our servers prepared a meal and they took it to his house, you know, And it was literally one line out of like 10 lines on that one restaurant or what happened. And no one would have told me about it if I hadn't read it. And it's just like, so we have a leaders meeting this afternoon, we'll recognize them for doing that. Just because we want to continue to get that behavior, we want it to repeat, we tell the stories. So we're gonna, as soon as we find stuff like that, we have first class cards, it's something we do every day for people when they do. Um, little wows and big wows. We want to make, you know, we really want to celebrate that because, um, that reinforces the behavior. You know, it's, we just want to show like, Hey, this is what Ritz Carlton is all about. You know, that's why when you're in a luxury brand, you truly get, you have enough, ladies and gentlemen, you have enough resources that you can still truly service the guests and take care of them and create those stories for them. And that's our culture, you know, and you know, I can go into, you know, I talked about hiring the right people and stuff and that's truly what it's about is, um, you've got to find the right people that truly, you know, we talk about being the service business we serve and you've got to love to serve people. And if you don't, you're in the wrong business, you know, and I don't want to make it serve. It's, you know, you've got to find out why people are here and what you can do to make them have a phenomenal experience, and you don't do it because it's your job. You do it because you love doing it. and you just feel good at the end of the day for creating those experiences for people. As a GM or any leader in our hotel, that's our role to make our ladies and gentlemen feel that they can do that every day, that they have the freedom and empowerment to do it, and that we celebrate it. That's why they're here. That's why, in all honesty, that's why we get to charge the premiums, because we have that kind of behavior. Our guests love it, and they're willing to pay for it. It is a business at the end of the day, but if you can provide that kind of service to people, It's nothing new. I'm sure all the people you've had on here talk about selling an experience, but you have to deliver it. And that's one thing, you know, that we do strive to do in our brand.

Josiah: Well, I'm trying for my listeners to explore this concept of culture. And it seems like something that is important, but a little bit vague and hard to pin down. In listening to you talk, though, I wonder if it's something about this environment. I mean, I'd be curious for you. It's kind of a broad thing to try to define culture. But what I'm hearing from you is this environment where people are able to operate at this level. I'm hearing from you an expectation of excellence. I don't know if anything else comes to mind as you think about culture and how you describe it.

Greg: Well, it's what everybody thrives for. And you're right, everybody talks about it. It's hard to describe. How do you build it? We've always said at Marriott that Ritz-Carlton is what our advantage is. And again, I'm going to give you the party line for Marriott. It started literally with our founder and it's very simple. I started as a bellman, so you take those certain things that you learn, and they become part of your management style, and it should be for everyone. So, you know, for Marriott, it was simply take care of your associates. They'll take care of your guests and that'll take care of your business. And it really is that simple. And Ritz Carlton, it's the same way. If you literally take care of your ladies and gentlemen, your associates, okay. And that's, you know, you got to create a vision. You have to create a mission. They have to know what are we striving to do. Then you got to give them the tools to do that. You got to train that, make sure that they're empowered, make sure they have the physical things that they need to take care of the guests. And then you got to have accountability, you know, you have to measure it, you know, how are we doing with that? You know, and that's, you know, there are all kinds of, you can look at audit surveys, all the things that we do. And then, you know, as you see that accountability, you celebrate your successes. And then you look at the areas that you can do better on, and then you tweak your going back to your actual plans and training. You know, you just kind of repeat and start over and you just keep refining that, refining that and getting better at it. You also do the same thing with your team. You know, you got to make sure that you hire the right people. They do understand your mission, vision, the training, and they're receptive to it and that they try to deliver that. And if they're not, there has to be accountability. Sometimes, you hire the wrong people, and you've got to move them out, move them on. I grew up playing hockey, and as I tell my ladies and gentlemen, when you play hockey, there are five guys that jump on the ice, plus the goalie. And as you watch the game, if you watch it tonight, you'll see they're only out there for 45 seconds, a minute and a half, max. But when they're out there, they've got to be given that they're all. And if you've got five guys out there, one guy slacking on that line, you know, you're probably going to get scored on. Something bad is going to happen to you. So the pressure really comes from those other four players for you to perform, because if not, they don't want you on their line, you know, because when they go out there, they want to score. They want the other team to make a mistake. And that's how they want to score. So you have to have team members who want to win. And, you know, the pressure, you know, it really, if you create a great culture, it doesn't come from the managers or GM, it comes from the other players on the team. And that's when you've really created a culture is when everybody wants to win. And, you know, if you're having a bad day, they'll lift you up and help you. But if you're just someone that shows up every day and has a bad day, you know, they're going to want you to cut off the team, you know, because you're hurting the rest of it. And that's where you have to create that winning culture. And again, you have to give the players what they need to win. But once you do that, you know, you really got to have a team that wants to win. And the real, the real win is when the pressure comes from the other players, if that makes sense.

Josiah: It makes a lot of sense. And you alluded to training being a piece of this. I mean, it starts with hiring the right people. You mentioned getting the right people on the team. Step one, training being a piece of this. I imagine the sharing of stories that you referenced earlier is almost a great way to train in a sense and reinforce the culture that you expect from the ladies and gentlemen working at your property. Has anything else in your experience been effective with regard to training? Because I hear examples all over the place, and I'm on a bit of a mission to see what it looks like to kind of teach and train people to function well in hospitality. What's worked for you?

Greg: Well, the training is really the follow-up. Anybody can roll out an amazing training. I have Forbes come in a couple of times a year. I have corporate trainers that come in. I've got trainers that are on my team here at the property. And you can go and have an amazing training. Everybody's all pumped up. They walk out. And then if everybody goes back the next day and we're back in the whirlwind and we're not practicing what we learned, then in less than a week, whatever, all that excitement is gone. So, what are you doing to follow up on the behaviors that you just basically taught? And for us, we do audits. So, basically all of our leaders are required to do at least two audits each week on any staff members of the property. So, it doesn't have to be their own team. Our leaders also have lobby duties, so they have to basically take two hours out of their week. and be walking around the hotel. So that's a great time to do your audits because you're absorbing the behaviors of some of our ladies and gentlemen. And then there's a follow-up. The audits are not trying to catch somebody doing something wrong. It's really about reinforcing the behaviors that are correct. But if there's something that needs to be tweaked, then that's where you can point that out. So that's really where you do that training, and then the lineups reinforce it, that are done every shift. So you can talk, you know, we actually will go and add, if we just did Forbes training, we have what we call the Forbes Energizer. It's on our CTQ every day. So every day, that Forbes training that we received, there's going to be a section on our daily lineup quality to commitment training about Forbes. So that's going to reinforce what they have learned in that training. So again, it's that repetitive piece. Execution is the hardest thing about execution and operations. which is what came up in execution every day. Flawless execution is the most difficult thing that we do. As I say, it's the pursuit of perfection that we strive for every day, and we might get perfect, but just like winning the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup, as soon as that scoreboard turns and you win, that's perfect, and five seconds later, you're thinking about, okay, how do we do it again next year? Perfection's gone, it's start over. So perfection doesn't last but a split second and then you're still having to say, okay, how do we stay on top? Because everything we just did right, everybody just watched this and they're gonna copy it. So that's where the innovation and all other things come into play. How do we continue to recreate ourselves and be the best that we can be and stay in front of everybody else? But that repetition is key. I mean, we've all heard 21-day habits. You have to continue to repeat the behavior for it to stick. And that's where the audits come in. That's where the training that's on the daily CTQ, you just continue to reinforce it. And you can only choose so many things. So you have to be very selective. And what do we really want to drive? As we say, what's the 20 going to get us 80? Because if you try to do the 80, you're going to get 20. So you've got to be selective in what's really going to drive us. We have Stephen Covey breakthrough leadership training. We went through that. Marriott did 15 years ago, probably now not more. And, you know, I, my favorite term is weaving. You know, you got to weave all the different directions and directives that you have. So if we have stuff that Forbes wants us to do, Ritz Carlton wants us to do, we have these things called BSA audits that we have to hit as well. There's compliance stuff. It's like, how do you take those things and weave them together? and then create some kind of tool that makes sure you've got to prioritize which ones are really important to get to our end goals. And that's why we use the Breakthrough Leadership Training software programs that we use. In each position, we will pick maybe three, no more than five things that if they do every day with every guest or every interaction, that's going to drive that success. If you give them 20 things, it's not going to work. And the poor front desk you know, ladies and gentlemen, there's so many things that everybody wants them to do. And they want them to do it in a certain time, particularly Forbes, that you do have to select what is it we really want them to do. And some of that stuff you just, you know, have to put to the wayside because you can't do everything. You know, you got to pick the stuff that really drives results.

Josiah: Well, I like that advice to focus. And I imagine, though, as a leader, that is very, very hard to do. Are you able to share a little bit of insight into how both you personally and you advise those who are working for you to do that prioritization? Are there sort of these couple big things that you find are especially important? What do you think about that?

Greg: I think, you know, for me, you know, where I'm at now, it's, it's a lot easier than maybe it is for a young leader. Um, cause I've done it a lot of times. I've, I've moved a lot of hotels will be called from the red zone to the green zone, you know, for the company. But it really is, you know, you do have to sit there and you have to learn. And a lot of times it, it might be through a company program that you have. Marriott is actually Ritz Carlton. We have the quality assurance team, you know, and that's all they do is go from one property to the other and try to drive, um, to recommend. scores for our guests, and they look at defects and say, what's preventing this hotel from moving forward? They prioritize what are the things that, if we do, are going to really drive results at this property. In a roundabout way to answer your question, I think on defects is probably one of the first things that I would look at. If I go into a hotel that's not performing well, The first thing I'm going to look at is let's look at the defects. You might find a lot of them, but it's what are the biggest ones? What's the low-hanging fruit that we can fix right away? Some of it might be literally a stroke of a check. You might just have to buy something that's going to take care of it. Robes is your biggest complaint because you don't have any. Well, that's easy. Go buy robes. But if you find out that it's a plumbing issue or a noise issue, you might find out that the walls aren't insulated properly. So how do you fix that if it's your biggest complaint? Well, you basically make sure you have data, and then you take that data and you put numbers to it. And how much is that costing you? You know, both in actual physical dollars of having to rebate, you know, customers' nights because they couldn't sleep. What's it costing you and your scores as far as the guests not being happy? And how frustrating are you, ladies and gentlemen, having to deal with that complaint every day? So then once you put those hard numbers to it, then you go to your ownership group and say, look, not having this insulation between the walls is costing us X amount of dollars every year. and have a number of what's it going to take to resolve it. A lot of times, owners will look at something like that and say, yeah, here's a check, go fix it. You got to have data to basically do that. Nobody's just going to hand you money. But the prioritization is really looking at data and saying what's really causing the issues for us. Let's look at the things we can fix really quickly and the ones that are long-term, start putting a business plan against it, and see how much money we are going to need to do it and how much it will cost us.

Josiah: Super helpful. I would like to ask one follow-up question just on this notion of kind of teaching others, and then we'll get into talking about the amazing things you're doing on property. But before we start recording, you shared that you have kind of five F's that come up as you're giving advice to others. I wonder if you'd be open to sharing that with our listeners because I'm always interested in kind of a framework. And it seems like this is one that you keep coming back to when you're advising others or mentoring others.

Greg: Yeah, it's, you know, it started as a three F's. You know, I'll age myself here. My first supervisory development class was in 1988, and, uh, it was at, I think, it was still at Moran Harbor Beach. Sean Keeney was a young man who actually got a position at that hotel, and he was a banquet captain at the time. We both go through supervisor development, and we were talking about management styles, and Sean goes, well, he goes, I believe in the three F's, and he goes, my mom told me to be fair, firm, and friendly. And, uh, you know, he elaborated on that, which I will. And I was like, I really like that, you know, and again, you know, we develop our management styles based on things, you know, from others that we hear and we like and we, you know, we add it to it. So the fair piece was basically just treated everybody the same, you know, whether they're your best employee or worst employee, you know, and if they are late, you do the same thing, you know, they get written documentation. And again, it could be my first person that I wrote up was my roommate when I was an assistant belt captain, you know, because he was late several times. And I'll never forget it. And I felt bad. I said, hey, I'm sorry I have to do this, but it's my job now. He goes, it's not your fault. He's fine. I was like, well, good. I'm glad you feel that way. In the firm pieces, you have rules. Follow them. And the great thing about our company is Mr. Marriott was in the Navy. So we have an SOP or an LSOP for everything. And if we don't, we create one. So as I always say, the playbook is there. You know, you join a team, it's like, here's the playbook, learn it and follow it and you'll be successful. You don't have to, you know, it's not rocket science what we do. It truly is not. And I know we try to make it rocket science. But, um, you know, it's really just take care of your people. And, uh, and then that's a firm fare and then friendly, be friendly about it. You know, don't try to be mad, pound your desk, you know, act like, you know, it's, you know, at the end of the day, like my roommate when he, you know, I wrote him up, you know, like, Hey, I'm sorry, but you know, it's my job. I have to do this. And, and he understood that. And, you know, over the years, it's crazy how many people, you know, our systems change. Now I actually don't turn people anymore the way it's done, but, I had so many people that would get up and hug me or shake my hand and tell me they were sorry they let me down. And, um, again, it's cause I never got upset or anything. It was like, you know, Hey, this is either you did this to yourself and I'm really sorry. You know, as I say in orientation, we don't hire you to fire you. We want you to be successful. We want you to be the best you can be. And then later on, I added fun, you know, because, you know, we are in the hotel business. I mean, it's the greatest industry I think out there. My ladies, gentlemen, you know, literally make a living coming in to create experiences for guests every day that are here on vacation or learning about our product or celebrating a baby moon or honeymoon or free scanning cancer or whatever it is, you know, and our job is to make sure they have a phenomenal time and we get paid for that, you know. So have fun doing it. And then lastly is my forward motion. And if you saw I spelled it, I did M'Ocean. It's also the name of my boat. And that's another story. I'll tell you how the forward motion name came. But it's really like each day, we have what we call the hotel business balance scorecard, the guests, the employees, and finances. Those are the three things that we have to focus on. So for hotel businesses, what are you doing today to drive your guest results? What are you doing today to drive your employee results? What are you doing today to drive your financial results? And if you're pushing levers forward every day on those, That's the forward motion concept. Now, you might get pushed back. Something bad could happen to you and you get pushed back. What are you doing to step forward? Just keep driving things forward and you're going to win. Even when you get pushed back, what are you going to do to move it forward? That's the forward motion concept. The reason it's a boat name is because I got that from when I came up scuba diving with about eight people. A storm had set in, and the wind had turned the boat where the back end was facing the waves. So when we got in the boat, it had about eight inches of water in it, and it was a thunder and lightning storm, which we didn't know was happening because we were scuba diving. And we got in the boat, everybody's unloading their gear. And literally, I'm waiting for the boat to sink as I'm trying to start it. And all I could think was forward motion. If I can get the boat moving forward, all the water will wash out because it's a self-bailing boat. And we won't all die out here. So it actually worked out. I'm still here today. But I'll never forget my cousin. As I started to go forward, all the dive gear started shifting towards the back because it was floating. And I'll never forget his face as he's trying to hold everything in the boat. But we all survived. It was eight hotel people, too. We're all still around.

Josiah: Well, I'm glad you made it. Inspiration comes from anywhere.

Greg: I've got 12 execs on my team. I have 98 managers, and they're all what I consider the best in the business. I'm sure a lot of leaders feel the same way about their people, but I truly do on mine. My job is just to keep things interesting, right? When I got here at this property, and I've done it in the previous ones, It was like, we need to activate the hotel. And I got here during COVID, so it was kind of a crazy time. So I actually started the weekend of COVID at this property. But the good thing is I had worked with the property in a regional area GM role four years prior, so I wasn't completely walking into a place I didn't know. But as we came out of it, it's like, we really want to activate the hotel. And from previous properties, you know, for me, you know, the big things are important. There's the wellness piece, you know, in which we have a spa. So, you know, create some great events around the wellness. Culinary, you know, that is probably the biggest thing that, you know, everybody wants to experience, you know, in hotels when they go to, you know, who's got what great restaurants do they have. And so what we did is we built some things around that. The first thing that I asked the team to do is, you know, I have amazing chefs and we were building back the culinary team. And one thing that I think is important for the chefs is, you know, we'll go in and we'll create a restaurant, we'll have menus, and they end up then just, you know, executing the same menu over and over. So for me, it's important that they have the opportunity to have some kind of way to have specials so that they can show their creativity. The other pieces, you know, I've created through the team, what we call Master Chefs Theater. And so what we do is each month, each chef, they get a month, and they have to basically create a theater, a menu, and they present to, a lot of times it's locals, because we've built this kind of group now that sign up for these. And they can do whatever they want. It's just like, look, you got January. Whatever you want to do, do it. And so they have to create these menus, and a lot of times we'll videotape it. And people sign up that are local because they love going to these things. And even our exec chef, who's in charge of all the chefs, he actually had last week. So I actually had my director of food and beverage, he used to be a chef for me. He was a master chef from France. I made him do it. I says, look, I don't want you to lose your creativity because you're just going up the road. So he's like, yeah, boss, I got it. His French accent. He's now a hotel manager down in Bell Harbor. So, you know, again, the other big thing in my role is I love to see these guys get elevated and get bigger jobs. And then we also created the Amelia Island Cookout, which is probably on a list, you know, that we sent you. And last year, you know, that thing was a huge success. It was the first year we did it. And, you know, we based it a little bit. I helped originally with the South Beach food and wine when I was at the Stanton, which is the South Beach Marriott. With Lee Schwager, when he started that with FIU, I think I did his first wine tasting in my ballroom. And it was only like a 3,000-square-foot ballroom. and now that thing's grown into three counties. It's huge. So I got to learn a lot from Lee in watching that event grow. So the Million Island Cookout, between that event and also the Cayman Cookout, which is at our Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman, that's become one of the probably best in the world cookouts with some of the top, well, the top chefs in the world. And, uh, so, you know, it's just like, you know, I challenged my team, let's start our own here on Amelia Island. You know, this is a great place for people to come into. Let's pick a needed time that we have, you know, in October to find a weekend that we're not usually busy. The Island's not busy. We partnered with CBB and Mr. Visitor's Bureau. And, uh, we're actually going outside and doing other, you know, restaurants that are in the local area. We'll be a part of it. So this will be year two and it's already, we're having, it's hurting people down on chefs and stuff. You know, so that's, you know, you hate turning people down, but that's a good thing that people want to be part of it. So we're looking forward to it. And then lastly, the entertainment piece, you know, when you look at, you know, trying to activate hotels, the culinary wellness and entertainment. So during COVID, we were the first hotel in the U.S. to do an outdoor concert. And we did Mercy Me. We did one show is what we originally booked. It sold out so quickly that we did a second show. That was something that literally I had seen online. I said, well, it was pretty cool. They did it in Australia. And I left, then I just let it alone. And like a couple of days later, one of my massage therapists, Amanda, walked into my office and said, Mr. Cook, I got a great idea for something we could do to get business in the hotel. Again, we're trying to come out of COVID. And she goes, I saw this thing in Australia, you know, where they did this concert. And I just kind of smiled and said, yeah, tell me about it. So then I called my director of sales and marketing and said, hey, look, I got an idea for you. I said, see if there's anybody else who would want to do a concert. And sure enough, there was. And we're looking at it this year. We're trying to do something in the courtyard. I've got people that I know in the business that are saying, hey, look, this band would like to do X with you. So we're pursuing that right now to continue that type of thing. events here and we'll do them in need months when you know we're at 40-50 percent because it's December you know it's a perfect time to do something like that because you can have fire pits and blankets and you know do a cool concert you know I've challenged my director of uh marketing to see if we can get because we work a lot with the local um music festival to see if we could do an orchestra you know in the our ocean garden and that's inside the u-shape of the hotel and it's you know we could sell the balconies which we've done on some other events recently and put tables and stuff out there and have a really cool black tie event in December with an orchestra outside. Because we've already got this huge Christmas tree out there and the hotel's decorated for Christmas and the holidays. So it's like, what else can we do to activate it? And if we have those really dead months or weekends or whatever, it's like, this is an opportunity we can do an event. We did Women of F&B for Marriott. Um, two of my chefs walked in my office and said, Hey, look, we'd really like to, we need to have more networking of women culinary chefs. And you know, we'd like to do an event here. And I was like, great, put a business plan together, bring it to us, pick a weekend that it makes sense. And last year was the first year we had 160 women from all over the world come in for it. This year we're looking at probably doing about 300. It'll be the second year. It's in December, another need month that we have. And I've got Eric Alexander from, she's our vice president, global operations. You know, she's an old friend of mine. I reached out to her and she wanted to come last year, but she had a conflicting thing. She's coming this year. You know, it's just, it's like these little ideas that come up. It's like, how can we grow them and create business and at the same time, you know, celebrate women in F and B create some entertainment. You know, it's kind of back to that wedding thing, gives opportunities to our chefs to show off what they do. Uh, again, it's a fun business and you know, it's, it's a balanced scorecard approach. You know, how do we create an event for our guests, you know, make our associates happy and make money. And if we can do those things, then we went.

Josiah: Yeah. Well, hearing you describe each of these activations and programs, you kind of see how I imagine it contributes to every element of that balanced scorecard. I think one of the things that stands out to me is how you're creating opportunities and engagement for your teams. You're giving them growth opportunities, you're providing ways for them to use their talents. And so many of the activations you mentioned all started with someone on my team coming to me. To me, I think our takeaways for our listeners include openness and being willing to have these conversations. And then there's empowerment thereof, okay, come up with a plan, let's deploy it. But I think another aspect of this, maybe part of that balanced scorecard, is how you think about community engagement. Because it sounds like the culinary program, some of these other things, Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like this is an opportunity for the broader community to be engaged. And this seems like a big opportunity. I'm curious how you think about community engagement, because it seems that you are deeply embedded in the community. And I guess to make that more of a question, why is community engagement important to you?

Greg: I mean, it's huge. First off, it's where we live, you know, and it's just doing the right thing. We have the means to do that, so why wouldn't we? You know, when I got here, we did this huge Christmas tree lighting that they've done for, I don't know, 20 years, I'll say. It's been a lot of years, and we weren't charging for it. And, um, coming out of COVID, we wanted to kind of somehow restrict the number of people that would show up. We'd have 3000 people show up from the community for this. And so, you know, I said, well, let's charge for it. You know, that'll possibly control the numbers. This is, but every dollar we make, we give it to charity, you know, so that way, you know, it's not like we're trying to make money off this event, you know, cause we never have, so let's don't. Um, but that way we can get the number in control, you know, during coming out of COVID people were still worried about it. At the same time, give back. Some people were resistant to that, and then others were like, okay, let's try it. Now we've done that for the last three or four years, and we raise about $40,000 just for that event. It goes to five different charities, and there's no pushback. Actually, we're close to getting back to 3,000 people. You know, which is okay. We're out of COVID now, so we're okay with it. You know, there's a lot of, you do an event back, you know, three years ago, you don't know which way it's going to go. You know, people are going to be mad at you or not mad at you. But at the same time, it was a tradition, this tree lighting, so we didn't want to not do it. And we just, you know, tried to control the numbers. But now that raising money piece has become something we're very proud of. We doubled basically our goal last year for community footprints. We do Gracie's Kitchen, something that the hotel's always done. We do once a month, we feed about two to 250 families. It started off as they did it at this kitchen out in Yulee where people would come in and sit down and have meals. But during COVID, we ended up just doing like you pull up and say, how many meals do you need? And we literally have a lot of old ladies and gentlemen's kids run the meals out as we put them together. And that averages anywhere from two to 250. But another thing we did with Barnabas, which is a local food, shelter, and clothing place here in Nassau County. We used to go and set up off-site to do what basically we would provide the food and the drinks and at no cost to the hotel. And Barnabas would raise money, he's called the Empty Bowls. And two years ago we decided to do this here at the hotel. And we're probably three times now the revenue that they used to make, because it's after Ritz-Carlton, we charge nothing to Barnabas to do the event. And for them, that helps them a lot to get people interested in it. Because if they felt that Ritz-Carlton was, you know, we were making money off of it, they might not donate as much. But, um, that event, I think last year was around $700,000 that we raised for Artemis, um, by allowing, you know, by having it here at the hotel at no cost to them and providing them the soup and, uh, the drinks for that event. And it's a great event. And we do lots of things like that. We do Micah's place. Uh, it's a domestic, uh, violence shelter for women. With a lot of environment stuff we do, turtle conservancy we contribute to, invasive plant removal. We'll have teams go out and take the invasive plants off the dunes. We plant sea oats on the dunes. We have beehives that we've added to the hotel here as well that we're creating stories around the honey for, again, tying that weaving, I like to use my word, weave it into the lobby bar and also into the spa for wellness and granola and stuff that we do. You know, again, it's, it's how can we, you know, put all these things together to benefit all aspects of our business in the community. Um, but, uh, like I said, our hotel, we're benchmarked from Ritz Carlton. We were, we literally had brand come last year and do a lot of video shoots here with our team and the stuff that we did. Um, because we're known for, for doing a lot of community services here. You know, going back to what you had asked about, you know, people coming in and hearing their ideas and giving them the stories, you know, again, that's Mr. Marriott, you know, I've been fortunate to know him through my career. I grew up with him. I see him, you know, at least once or twice a year, even today. And, you know, he will tell you that his best ideas came from somebody else. He's just basically a system implementer. And, you know, I think he's done pretty well in our business. But he'll tell you like the rewards programs, courtyard, residence, the brands, buying Ritz-Carlton, buying Starwood. These were ideas that came from someone else or presented to him. And he said yes, he'd find a way to make that happen. And again, you learn from your mentors. And I think I might put him down, obviously, as one. He always asks the question, what do you think? I've had many drives with him where he's asking me questions and just, very casually wanting to know what I think. And the next thing you know, he's got all the global presidents on a phone call with someone. And two days later, I'm getting a phone call saying, hey, what'd you say? But again, I said, Hey, you asked me a question. I said, no, you did the right thing. Basically, if he asked you, you tell him the truth. I said, yes. And since I was 20, I've, I've known that you know, so, you know, but that's, that's how we learn is engaging with our, our ladies and gentlemen, our managers and leaders. And you know, if you're not doing that, you're going to, you're going to fall asleep at the wheel. You know, you really need to know what's going on in their worlds and ask questions.