Leading Through a Firestorm - Gregory Day, Malibu Beach Inn

Josiah: Can you walk us through what happened?

Gregory: Yeah, it was very unpleasant. That's all I can say. So Franklin Fire was actually far closer to us. I mean, it was so close, I can point to you, I'll show you the burn scar. You can still see it from across the street. I really thought we'd lose the hotel that night. I was like, we're done. That's gonna be terrifying. But we didn't, and we got out, and we were back in, you know, sort of, as they say, back in Blighty pretty quickly in about a little less than two weeks. Palisades, I was out here, it was just, insane. When the fire started and it started, you know, in the Palisades, obviously, we could see the enormous plume of smoke come up. It was during the daytime. It was around, probably around now, right? 11 in the morning, something like that. And I remember seeing it and going outside of my office and going, Huh, so that doesn't look good. And I'm really cognizant, we've been through enough fires up here or fire threats that sometimes it's not as close as it looks, right? So I called my wife and said, hey, grab a go bag for me, you know, a dop kit and a quick change of clothes. and could you run it out for me?" And she did, because I was going to stay here that night just to see what happened. As the day progressed, it was clear this fire was moving very quickly, and the problem was the winds were so high. And more than anything else, and I've been through a lot of them out here, I've never experienced the winds that high. We've got all these, all this PPE that we had leftover from COVID, right? Which included these safety goggles. We had to go get the safety goggles out for all the staff, because just walking from the front desk to wherever, you know, grains of sand, you know, smoke, everything was hitting you so hard. It was pelting your skin so hard. These winds were over a hundred miles an hour, hurricane force. And it was insane how quickly the fire started to move. We then, you know, a lot of guests wanted to self evacuate and they were coming to us. And we said, we'll take you, but here's the deal. You know, you've got to help us out because we don't know if we get evacuated, we will need, you know, do not unpack and start, you know, laying things out in your drawers, in your closets, because we may have to go at some point. And as it turned out, just a little after 1.15 in the morning, we did the fire crested the ridge over here. And we could see it and we were all kind of like, OK. And I had literally just stepped into a guest room, took a shower and kind of got cleaned off. I hadn't even finished toweling off before the front desk called me and said, we got to go. And so thank goodness my lovely wife dropped this stuff off. I changed my clothes and we went through our process. We have a process we got. Of course, we sounded the alarm literally and let all the guests know, you know, we've got to evacuate. work with our ballet team, got everyone's car staged so everyone could get out. We, you know, helped anyone who needed to get help with their luggage. And then the last piece, which is, you know, it seems sort of funny to say it, but, you know, we've been through this enough times that we know what we're doing. You know, you have to go through every single guest room to make sure everybody's out. And not every room was full, almost every room. I think we had 43 of 47 rooms were full. you go through and two things one make sure any food they might have had from room service is out which you know because who knows when you're gonna get back in the hotel and second is that we make sure all the windows are those sliding glass doors closed tight from their terrace and we turn the ac on as low as possible and as high as possible this way if smoke gets into the ac system it's hopefully pushing it right back out again at least as long as our generator will last So we did that. I was literally the last person out of the hotel and driving through the canyons to get to the 101 was really one of the more horrifying experiences I've ever, I've ever had. I was never in a place where I really thought I was in that level of danger, but driving, you know, through the canyons when there is literally fire, things were on fire on either side of you. it does feel pretty bad. It feels like, okay, this is not really great.

Josiah: I can only imagine. It must feel apocalyptic. It does. For the moment when you're evacuating, I mean, we're recording on a beautiful, calm Sunday night. That moment, I imagine, feels like chaos. It feels like, well, I don't know about chaos, but imagine it feels like everything's happening at once. How did you prepare your team? How did you help your team in that moment? Because it sounds like you were just there on property making it happen, but it was a team as well that was showing up. How did you lead through that moment?

Gregory: It's less leadership than you think. Our team is ridiculously talented. They all know what to do. Look, I think my whole leadership style in general is I call it an inverted org chart, right? So what is your typical organizational chart look like? Who's at the top?

Josiah: CEO, managing director.

Gregory: General manager, whatever, right? And you go down and all your managers are below that. All your staff are below that. And then you get down to the bottom and that's the guest. Well, that doesn't work. So we put the guests in the top, the guests, the top of the org chart, and I'm at the bottom. So my job, if I'm doing it right, is support each layer above me, right? We've got managers here who know, they know all know exactly what to do. they don't need me getting in their way. What they might need is, hey boss, who's your contact at this hotel? Because I'm getting pretty nervous that we're gonna have no place to put some of these guests, right? And that's where I can step in and like, I know a guy, right? So that's sort of the value I bring to that.

Josiah: But it also speaks to the culture and the environment you created leading up to this moment. Because if you were trying to create this on the fly, as all this was happening, it's too late. Couldn't avoid it. It's too late. So this is the months and years leading up to this moment where the team understands this is how we operate here.

Gregory: And as an example, our front office, there were my front office manager, who's had been here for a number of years and our assistant front office manager at the, at the desk. And I, whatever it was 11 o'clock at night, I told her she had been here since she'd opened since seven in the morning. I said, go home. There's nothing you can do. You're going to need me if it, I'm like, it's okay. And so she left. And then, you know, two hours later, when I, when I got back to a place on, on the one-on-one where I got cell signal back, the first text I got was from her. She goes, I knew I should have stayed, but that just tells you how dedicated they all are to what their core competency is. It wasn't chaos. It was controlled, but we did have a few moments of, and some of it was, you know, quite some levity as well. We had some guests that, you know, look, you're everyone's here. They're waiting for this thing to happen. Maybe they've had a few glasses or bottles of wine. And these guests who I knew, they came to me and that was happening at the front desk. And they said, so what do you think? I said, if it were me, I would probably go. I said, but I can't tell you whether we're going to evacuate or not. I said, let me tell you what the story is. I said, right now, I've got eight guest rooms in Santa Monica and four in Sherman Oaks. And I can get you a room right now. We're not going to charge you anything for tonight. If you leave now, you're guaranteed of having it. If you wait until we evacuate, there's not going to be time or resources for us to make phone calls for you because we're going to have to get out really, really, really fast. So it's sort of risk and reward. You kind of got to have to, you know, make a decision. They thought about it and they were like, okay, we're going to risk it and stay. I'm like, okay. So just so we're clear, went through the whole thing. Yep. Fine. Great. So sure enough, we have to evacuate. And they literally, as I'm putting bags in their car, they're like, can you call one of those hotels? And I go, so do you not remember the whole risk or work conversation we had a couple hours ago? And you know, they laughed and I was like, yeah, I really can't do that right now. We don't even have phones at work now. We've only on generator power, right? There's no cell signal. Sorry. Turn left, keep going, and you'll be all right.

Josiah: So there's something in this, though, that's interesting. So all these calls, you're making calls, your team's making calls, and there's a network effect where, hey, we're going to get something done here. This is bigger than just our hotel. This is about our community. This is about providing for people. We're going to reach into these relationships and make sure that you're taken care of.

Gregory: you know, some quick shout outs, you know, Fairmont, Santa Monica, unbelievable to work with so lovely, so great. The Georgian as a sister property of ours with leading hotels. They were fantastic. The main board in Beverly Hills, the GM and I go back many, many years. I mean, he gave me his last two rooms. And it's nice because And of course, if it ever needed to be, it's going to be reciprocated, of course. And it really is a community, and we all want the same things. We all want to give great levels of guest service, full stop.

Josiah: Today we heard how Gregory led through a firestorm, and tomorrow you're going to hear how he's helping Malibu rise again. I hope you can join us then.