How 75 Conversations Became Hospitality Unlocked - Steve Turk, The Hospitality Mentor

Josiah: Congratulations on the launch of your new book, Hospitality Unlocked. Incredible read, incredible resource. Your podcast has taught me so much over the years, so thank you for the work that you do week after week, showing up with fresh insights with you and your guests. Such a resource. But to put that in book format is A, incredibly valuable, I think, and B, a ton of work. I wonder if you could kind of walk us through the process of A, kind of why you wrote the book and B, how on earth did you think about taking the hours and hours of amazing content on your podcast and translating that into a book format?

Steve: Yeah, well, first, I appreciate you letting me come back on and being a two-timer on your show. I always love chatting with you. So I might have to get that five-timer jacket like they do on SNL at some point down the road. I like that. But this book, like you said, it was a major undertaking. And I was inspired, I have to say, by Tim Ferriss to start. He's written a couple of books that are similar to my style, which is like Tools of Titans. And I forgot the other one that he's got. But I have all his books. Just sitting there, I was like, you know what? I've got all these great interviews and I don't have time to go back and listen to all of them because they're, you know, 45 minutes, hours long. But I just want to distill some of their information. and give it back to myself. Actually, I wrote this for myself and thinking about young Steve, who was a stressed out assistant manager running his apartment for the first time, not knowing what he was doing is like, what advice would I wanted to give myself? And it just happened to be when I first started the podcast, I only have two set questions was, what was your first job in hospitality? That's how I started all of them. And at the very end, I say, you know, Josiah, if you could whisper into young Josiah's ear, what advice would you give to him if he was starting today? And then people give you this amazing advice they wish they would have known all the way back at the start of their career. And so my dad was like, you got to put you got to do something with that. You've got all this. And I was sitting on it. I was like, you know what? We're starting. So I took the transcripts. I started saving them all, getting them all typed out and using a service to help get that done. And then I had all these transcripts like, all right, this is a ton of information. How do I break it down? And that's really what it was was, all right, here's where someone started. Here's their current role. Here's a little background about them. Here's a little quote that I thought was interesting. And then the advice they would give their younger selves. So I had that and I'm like, all right, well, what else can I do here to make this a little bit more sticky and usable? So then we said, all right, from that advice to the younger self, let's build a journey, a roadmap that you can follow as a leader. And so it gives you five bullet points of how to get to that person's place, basically. And then a place to engage and reflect, right? So I just wanted it to have all different kind of formats where you can flip through it easily. you know, make some notes, get a quick inspiration with a quote. I wanted it something where you can just get going in your day. That's who I really wrote it for. It's like, man, I've had those stressful days. It's like, man, who else has gone through this? Let me just read a couple chapters.

Josiah: I love the little behind the scenes view into this book. And people who are just listening to the audio here can't see this, but it's such a punchy layout. So I feel you sitting here, let's say you have just a couple minutes with a coffee. I feel like you can very quickly, you've also kind of formatted it nicely. So, each of the elements that you've described here, you just kind of quickly scan. It's better to sit with these ideas for a little bit of time, but I don't know about you, but it's interesting. I was thinking about some books I've been reading recently. I've actually bought the book and the audio book because there's something about the audio and kind of sitting with it and even with the same content, consuming it in a different format. And so I would encourage people obviously to not only buy the book, this is an insanely good value. Go out, buy this immediately. There's links in the show notes. You think about, Steve spent over a year creating this, years of work in all the interviews that went into this, can be yours in just one book. But I feel, I don't know about you, Steve, but I feel like it could be interesting to kind of scan through this. You've organized it nicely by kind of the role some of these leaders have been working in, but find one that is attractive to you. But then go back into your archive and listen to that full conversation because I feel they complement each other.

Steve: Yes. That was one thing I was like, I wanted people to know, like you could go back and listen to the entire podcast episode. And so there was, I went back and forth, like putting a QR code in the book so you could like scan it and go back to that episode. I don't know, you know, is that too much? But you can go back. They're all sitting there. You can even go on our website, thehospitalitymentor.com and type in that person's name and it'll pop right up. And half of them now are in video, so you can actually watch that person. Because I wasn't doing video at the start, because I was nervous to be on camera. I've got over that now.

Josiah: Plus, you've got a great studio. So everyone can check you out on YouTube.

Steve: Yeah, now I've got a studio, so you can come see it. Now I look official. Back then, I was in a closet. But yeah, this book, really, the way I set it up, it was hard. It was hard to see, how am I going to structure this? And so the way it was set up was like, all right, we have the C-suite, the people who've made it to that C-level, CEO, COO. And I was like, all right, we have a lot of founders that those are really cool stories. Let's get some of the founder category. Then we have the restaurateurs, people who are creating restaurants. And then we had the executive. So it's mixed in with like cruise ship and hotel and, you know, all different backgrounds that are in that section. And then we have chefs because I love interviewing chefs. I came from food and beverage. So they're just really interesting people. So we have really like five categories of different areas you can dive into and just quickly digest like what they're going through. But it was hard, right? Because at first it was supposed to be 52 liters, like one per week. I was like, nah, it's not as cool. I'm going to get to 75. And so it was hard to choose just 75. So I've had some people like, how come I wasn't included? I was like, it's hard to include everybody.

Josiah: You got to bring your A game when you show up on the Hospitality Mentor podcast. You better be ready. I love this. Steve, you mentioned before that you want people to use this book as a resource, however they like reading. But I'm curious for you, you also wrote this for your younger self, as you mentioned. If you kind of go back in time, you know, how do you think, you know, younger Steve would use this or kind of how would you approach using the book?

Steve: Yeah, so I have it in front of me here. And so the way I like it is, first, I'm a quote guy. And so I love that I have a quote. Right when you open up somebody's chapter, there is a big quote on the page opposite that person's name. It's like, all right, that's a motivational quote. I love motivational quotes. And so that's just something for me, something to chew on and sit on. But for someone like young Steve, I would say, and even people in the industry now, find someone in your industry. You're going to see some knowledge that you may not have thought of or they've been through something that you thought you were the only one who had been through. There's so many people here too that have started as barbacks and dishwashers and ice cream scoopers that are now at the top of the chain in hospitality. And so for me, that's really motivating for me because You don't see that when you're starting your journey, especially. You're like, how am I going to get to that level? It's going to be impossible to climb this ladder. And I think for people out there, it's really flipping through there and having that mindset. But also, my favorite part is the engage and reflect part of this, where I have some questions just to ask yourself. Think about a time when a challenge led you to a personal professional growth. What did you learn from it? Maybe you do some journaling. I love journaling and writing down goals of mine. And so I tried to make this in multiple formats. So if you just need that quote to get you through the day or you love storytelling to see where people come from or you need a game plan, this has it all in it. And you have to pick and choose which ones you want to use. And so it's not meant to be read all in one day. I can tell you that it's not meant to be read that way. It's meant to really guide you day to day, week by week, maybe hour by hour. If you're in a bad spot and you need some motivation to make some moves, that's how I really built this.

Josiah: Amazing. What a great resource. I would love to hear, Steve, if there's so many great interviews here. I imagine this has come up in the conversations you've had. I know on this show, people I've spoken with again and again say this is one of the biggest life and career hacks that you can make is learning from people who have been there before. And for the price of a reasonable lunch, you can get access to 75 of the top leaders. And you think about the access, the insights, these are lives and careers of wisdom you can have here. I'm curious for you, it's been a little while since you were putting all this together. I want to leave our listeners with sort of a bit of a teaser or a piece of advice that they can take into their day to day. And I'm curious if there's an advice or story in the book that stands out to you that you might be willing to share with our listeners.

Steve: Yeah, there's, first I put a little bit of mine in there so you could read where I came through. And there's, it was funny because I was talking, I didn't name that person, but there was a time where I was coming up and I thought I was hot stuff and I was just starting out. And three of my supervisors sat me down and said, you're the worst. Like you are terrible. You're not good. And I took their feedback and I could have, you know, quit. But I said, I took that feedback and I studied and I got better. And I showed them that I would walk the walk. And now they're still friends of mine 20 years later, and we work together actually on projects now. So that's one part from my journey at the very beginning. It's not my biography, but I just wanted to show, like, everyone comes from somewhere. But there's a quote from somebody in this book. And it surprised me, because this is the one that stuck with me the most, is a gentleman named Santiago Rodriguez. And he was president of Nobu Restaurants. He's general manager of some Nobu hotels. But he's been also an entrepreneur, too, where he had some rough times, right? And so His quote, can I read the quote? Would that be all right? I would love that. So his quote is this, and this one, I think to me, stands out the most because I've been in those shoes. When you're on top, you're not as good as people say you are. And when you're at the bottom, you're not as bad as they make you feel. Success is about learning from mistakes, staying humble, and pushing forward. Keep walking, no matter how tough the fire gets, because every challenge makes you stronger." And so it was clear, some of you might know this, you're at the top of the hotel, everybody wants to have coffee with you, everybody wants to sell you their product, everyone wants to give you the tickets to the events. But as soon as you make a change and become a vendor or do something else, those phones stop ringing. You're not as important. And I've been on those areas. And especially when you're having challenging days as an entrepreneur, you're like, man, what did I give up to do that? And so his up and down and then back up is something that stuck out of all the interviews that I've done. That little piece of advice always stuck with me. He's humble enough to know you're not as hot as you think you are when you're all the way at the top, and you're not as bad when you're thinking that you are. So there's quotes like that. That's just a tiny piece of his chapter, just one quote. And so those are the kind of things that I love in this book.

Josiah: Such a great piece of advice for all of us, regardless of where we find ourselves. I feel like also working in hospitality is so many ups and downs, right? So this is important to stay grounded with something like this. Actually, what I'd love to do, Steve, is link, if I could, to that conversation with you and Santiago talking about this, because not only should people go out and buy the book, I want them to make sure that they're subscribed to your podcast because every week you're bringing new conversations like this. I want them to get a sense of the style of how you are pulling out some of these best insights from leaders across the industry. So I'll link to that in the show notes. Check out the book. What an incredible resource, Steve. Thanks so much for writing it. Thank you for the work that you do. And thank you for the time to speak with you today.

Steve: Yeah, just, I appreciate it. And for all the listeners and viewers out there, it's available on Amazon and paperback, hardback and Kindle. So any way you like to read, it's all available there for you. And, uh, I hope you enjoy it. Let us know on social, if you do post it, we'll definitely retag it and repost it. So thank you very much again, everybody. Incredible. Thanks, Steve.