How a Top CEO Aligns People Across Teams and Properties to Drive Better Results: Sarah Eustis, Main Street Hospitality Group

Sarah: In the cycle of how we think about doing our business, our people, each other, the way we lead and the way we treat each other is the most important thing, and then it leads to good outcomes for everything else and the bottom of the P&L at the end of the day. So that is where I focus a lot of my time. And I had the privilege through the course of my career, which was not always in hospitality, but working with incredible leaders and mentors and thinking about how I became who I am. If you think about your background and the different chapters in work and life and the people who influenced you, good or bad. Anyway, so we have a monthly leadership meeting, and by leadership we mean we include everyone in the organization who is stewarding people or a process of any kind. It doesn't mean you have to have 10 direct reports to be a leader.

Josiah: Yeah.

Sarah: So these folks are on a call once a month. We're talking about important topics for Main Street Hospitality. We started it in COVID, and because we are so disparate, our diaspora of people is now over 10 properties, five states, it's the way that we stick together and maintain the glue that is Main Street.

Josiah: I appreciate you getting into that. I just gotta jump in there because I feel like these properties are so unique and we can include some links in the show notes, but they're so unique and they're so different in being across five states. There could be this tendency where there are these cultures in each hotel, and that's going to happen organically to some extent, but you also need to have sort of one culture around Main Street. This is how you do it, right? Everybody on one call, this is the leadership. This is even, you might be working at this property over here, but you need to understand what we're doing as an organization, what other properties are doing, that kind of thing.

Sarah: Yeah. We turned 10 last year.

Josiah: Congrats.

Sarah: And on the business side, we had to make some hard decisions. You know, our overhead was a little too heavy. Some of the business that we anticipated didn't hit in Q2 the way we wanted it to or whatever, and we had to make some calls. And we had to do some, a little bit of restructuring and a little bit of hunkering down and thinking about our core functionality, our core systems, what's really important, what are the projects and the partners that really have high ROI. And so it was a year of, not to be corny, but kind of the year of the snake that everybody's talking about, which was shed the clutter, get down to the core, figure out who you are, and 26 is about more accelerated growth.

Josiah: Last year was really hard. 25 was a very tough operating environment for many reasons. It was for everybody. I'm curious for you as a leader, as CEO, how do you think about navigating these hard decisions? Because you could just unilaterally say, hey, we're gonna do X, Y, Z, and... How did you approach navigating some of these tough calls that needed to be made?

Sarah: Well, I guess we do it with an open heart and transparent communication and a lot of rationale and logic that has to underscore these decisions, whether they be for our home office operational team, understanding where we need to make some adjustments there, or at our properties, which to your point, are all very unique. We have different partners, owners, investors at many of them. Each hotel has its own kind of playbook, both operationally and financially. So how we make those decisions, there is a, there certainly is a through line in terms of how Main Street looks at things. Then we have to tailor it to what's happening in the Hamptons or what's happening in Newport or what's happening in Canada or the Berkshires, whether it be a market decision because of how the market is evolving or a response to an owner or partner initiative. So, I don't know if I'm really answering your question, but there's a lot of bespoke kind of nuanced decision making that we have to make at the properties. But how Main Street behaves and operates and delivers in a sustainable and responsive way to our partners is something that we have total control over.

Josiah: Yeah.

Sarah: That is what I work on with the leadership team, which is to say our internal culture is very well defined, and I think now after 10 years, people really understand what's expected of them, and it's a privilege and a choice to be part of the group.

Sarah: And so, and then how we... We operate like we own every property, but we don't. And so we are accountable to our constituents and our investors and that requires a lot of emotional intelligence and responsiveness and alignment with them, which I stole from my friend Alex Cabañas, who should be credited for distilling it down into those three things which I've now adopted.

Josiah: I love it though. And I think, I mean, to the point of alignment, it sounds like these leadership calls are important for that. Are there other things that you found effective as a leader to drive more alignment among your leadership team and just among the properties at large?

Sarah: Yes. One thing that we do pretty relentlessly is invite the group at the leadership level and beyond to be part of the process and the authorship of whatever it is. I might have an idea of something that I think is important for the company. I don't know. Our hospitality training needs to be more robust. I can just feel it. Okay guys, how do we build that? I'm not gonna dictate it. It gets built by our culture team, but also with input from the general managers and the properties about how that can best get more internalized by their teams. So I just find that adoption and engagement and kind of accountability, you get more of it when you actually invite people to help you help craft whatever it is. And then I'll endorse it in the end and take responsibility for saying, okay, good. That's it. We're going with it. Right? But I think when there's been authorship and not, we're just, we're just not an authoritarian kind of company.

Josiah: It makes a lot of sense and the data backs it up. If you look at your eNPS score, it was at the most recent run was 78 in an industry where, what is the average, 44? So the data backs up that, hey, this is not only an effective way to lead and run the business, but across every level of the organization, it's felt by your teams.

Sarah: Yeah, I think so. And that was a really, that was a really profound moment this year if we're talking about wins this year. And yes, we opened a couple new properties and that was great and fun. This was the thing I was most excited about because coming through the last few years where everyone is struggling or talking about struggling with hiring and retention and finding the right people, and I listen to it and I respect it and I appreciate it. And I'm not saying that it's a breeze, but I want to say, guys, focus on your company and your culture. Make it a place that people wanna be. See how that goes. Right. I just, I think it works.