Building Local Relationships - Wil Slickers, Hospitality.FM

Josiah: 0:00

I want you to thrive, not only professionally but personally as well, and today we're looking at how one hospitality leader does this by focusing on the people around him his neighbors. Wil Slickers is the founder of Hospitality FM and in this episode, we talk about building relationships, why this matters, how social media and digital storytelling can facilitate some of this, but not all of it, and what he's looking forward to in this area. Wil, it's so good to see you. We were hanging out a couple of months ago in Denver and I was really impressed in spending some time together and seeing your whole setup, how community focused you are. You lead the Hospitality FM network, which is an amazing collection of storytellers, podcasters in hospitality, but even the way your show is structured it's very community focused. But what was cool is to go and actually spend some time together in person and see the physical environment you're in, the community you are in, and then recently you had a chance to connect with others in the Denver area in person. So I wanted to bring you on the show to talk a little bit about building those relationships, those friendships in person, because I feel like, whether you want to call it community building or networking or relationship building, it feels like that is so important to our development as hospitality professionals 100%, and I honestly just as human beings, I think, if you lock yourself in an apartment or a house or wherever and you never see the light of day, you never get to interact with someone outside of a screen or a computer or a cell phone, you don't grow.

Wil: 1:56

I feel like you can't grow as a human in general. Yeah, you can consume content and listen to inspirational podcasts or whatever, but at the end of the day, you're not applying anything, and so I find the in-person aspect is the application of what you can do on you know, what you can consume on your own. So you and I can have amazing conversations on our podcasts, but then if we don't go out and we just continue to just be virtual, where's the application of this? So, yeah, the in-person piece is really important for me. It's something that I believe in. Something that we were talking about personally, like before this recording was you know the power of local community and being like you and I have a global network, right, we have friends all over the world that we get to chat with due to the power of this medium, but how often do we get to connect with the people in our own backyard, in our own neighborhood, our own city, whatever it might be. So I think there's just a whole new level of just looking a little bit closer to home than going to the global network of hospitality and all the other stuff that we talk about.

Josiah: 3:03

Totally, totally. It's so interesting because I see our conferences all over the world and so you're kind of looking at community and developing community and relationships on every level, right Like through the audio format, the videos that you do. You know these in-person conferences, but recently you had, you were at this little get-together in your neighborhood. What did that feel like to show up there? You've been on stage at these massive conferences. What did they kind of energy in the room feel like for you?

Wil: 3:28

See, I love conferences because those are the family get-togethers I like to call them. They're the ones you know once a year, twice a year, depending on the event, where you get to really connect with that same community that you see every year over year. And that is my family gathering, I like to call them. I have one coming up in October that I go to every year. It's the same people with a bunch of new faces on top of it, and that's like bread and butter, amazing, just good for the soul. But this local meetup that I went to with my new business partner you know her and I really understand the power of content, of social media, of networking with this medium, of podcasting. But to walk up and go into the register and be like people are like oh hey, I listened to your podcast, I love this episode with this guest or like getting to see the face behind the number and when I say the number, I'm talking about like the downloads or whatever kind of analytics we look at, and that was just great because then now you have something in common, there's already that bridge and you're able to immediately go. You know, past the hi. My name is will. Who are you? What do you do? You live here, are you out of town? Blah, blah blah, and you just immediately can connect on a topic that is greater than the fluff. And that's what I love. I love these local meetups. Sometimes I always overlook the local, like local, side of community, where it's like, oh, I don't know, I have friends in Denver, yeah, but nothing crazy. But this meetup was a good power, an example of just showing you know, yes, there's a reach, but there's actually a greater reach and opportunity right here in my own backyard, as I'll probably mention multiple times.

Josiah: 5:03

It's so cool because it's, you know, like we're talking about it. It's a piece of the puzzle, right, and I think we'd be remiss to overlook the, the power and the benefit of, you know, storytelling at scale. And I think what's cool is like when you bring guests on your show, you're giving them a microphone, literally and proverbially, to get in front of a lot of people, right, so you can facilitate the spread of great ideas and build relationships, and so, whether it's at a conference or in person, you're able to jump right in. But it almost sounds, you know, listening to you that kind of big in person. It just adds this other dimension and maybe facilitates a certain level of connection. That's really special.

Wil: 5:39

Yeah, and it makes it real. You know, sometimes I think we can become very consumed in our own silo of, alright, I'm doing this podcast, I'm doing content, I'm doing this, and blah, blah, blah. But you don't get to see like, yeah, you see the engagement, you get the dopamine hits from Instagram and LinkedIn and you know all the other. You know social media pieces that do show Engagement. Right, that that does show a piece of community engagement. But when you get to have that in person moment, where you get to have a two-way conversation rather than a one-way, where you know, a lot of the times you and I, if we're doing interviews, it's us having a conversation but there's no path for the listener to Participate outside of being a fly on the wall. That local meetup or these conferences or whatever it might be, opens that gate to make that a real community and not an Observatory, if that makes sense. So I think it makes it makes it really, really important and impactful to kind of what we do with media and content and brand building, and I think without that piece, none of this would be possible. That's where this loses its kind of meaning and freshness, to where it adds. I don't know just that, that piece of humanity that's really important for, obviously, hospitality guys like you and I who just love connection and love being with people and love to Literally just form our business around relationships. So that's, that's what I've been really taking away from that. I.

Josiah: 7:03

Love that and I guess you know as we head in, as we head into, you know the months ahead. What are you most excited about in terms of taking some of these learnings and living them out, either on a personal level or for Hospitality FM? You know what are you looking forward to.

Wil: 7:19

Yeah, for the personal level, I'm excited to do more of that. I was kind of telling you before this. I've done a lot of travel in the 2022 year, plus the beginning of this year, and, as of late, I think July has been the first month where I actually haven't left Denver, which feels great to say because I've been. You know, I have a community here. I have friends and friends that are married with kids, or friends that are single and starting businesses, whatever it might be. I have a community here I really haven't been able to spend a lot of, you know, genuine time with, and so now that I get, I'm like I've been asked to go to Cabo in August. I've been asked to go do all these other things and, as much as I love those people that are inviting me and wanting me there to Be in that in-person community connection there, I really do feel that for me on a personal level, for my just for the sake of my soul and for business and just all this stuff, I need to be grounded locally. So just saying hey, I appreciate the opportunity I'm gonna pass on this time is so hard for me to say that you have no idea how I'm very much a yes man. So if anyone asked me to do stuff I'm like yeah, usually I'm like let's go. But this one for me is just being really intentional, being Connected locally. So on a level of personal and business, hopefully hosting a couple of these meetups ourselves the one that you saw in linkedin it wasn't really me hosting, I just knew the group that was putting together. So happened to win one of their prize giveaways and got to speak for a little bit. But for me I would love to continue to do those. I think when people think of meetups, specially within our world, a lot of people think they have to put this huge conference and they have to have a venue and catering and all. No, we just met up at a short term rental. We opened up, make sure that there's no gas and it was clean and all that stuff, and just invited everyone to come out To tour it, to meet up, to kind of present on how that short term rental looked when they bought it to where it is today and going over regulations and community and all the other stuff. So it was a really good balance of learning and networking but at a very low cost point. You cost almost zero dollars outside of the beers and maybe some of the appetizers that were there, but outside that you can host anyone locally and have a really good deep connection. So that's kind of something we're looking for to do more.

Josiah: 9:38

Yeah, it's really interesting to think about how do we make this seem less intimidating. But there's a piece on there I do want to call out where there is some thought ahead of time around what are we hoping to cover here? So you touch on education and kind of show people the property of it, and I feel like that's helpful. As a host, right, you know, sort of think about Maybe we are just having drinks and networking, but maybe there's another piece in this and then also it seems like it's sort of a collaboration. Right, there's a couple Folks involved in this and everyone's bringing a different perspective or maybe some different people. So maybe those are some takeaways from our listeners. You know whether you're doing this professionally or personally. Think about what I want this to feel like and who might I work with to make something like this happen.

Wil: 10:19

Yeah, and the cool part about this meetup wasn't even that we are all hosts and like host properties. It was real estate agents and lenders and other types of like contractors and developers. So Not just like. Hey, I talked to, I think, three developers who have never hosted a property but they built multiple homes or communities focus around this type of hospitality. So, yeah, they may not care about the hosting aspect, but they care about the people that are hosting in order to help them grow and continue to build these moments and experiences and spaces. So you know, it doesn't have to be everyone's doing the same thing and learning from each other. We can actually all find ways to weave the multiple segments, just like in a hotel. You know, when I was front desk, we had front desk housekeeping, bellman, bar, and then, of course, you know your valet and security and all these other pieces right. So there's so many different Segments that really fit the bigger picture. So I think these local meetups can really showcase hospitality people. You know there's more than just your specific role, which is great, and you can see the grander scheme and just I think you actually kind of talk about this when you are on my podcast, but one of the things I feel like. I feel that as a hotelier, or even within my hotel career, before moving into podcasting all this other stuff, was that I felt like we failed to look within the five block radius around us when it came to hospitality. We wanted to have Starbucks in our lobby and we wanted to have this and we wanted to have that. They're all global companies, but we never thought about the local Roastery or the local brewery or like other things. Not saying that all hotels do that, but sometimes I think we can miss what's right in front of us which could be way more beneficial than kind of the global scheme.

Josiah: 12:04

That's so cool and I always love when I see hospitality providers thinking about what's going on in their city or their region. But it's more than that. It's the neighborhood, and I love the five block notion where it's even more specific than your neighborhood, literally the couple blocks around you, because that's most likely the people that are staying in our properties. They're going to be walking out the door and who might they interact with, who might I collaborate with? It almost goes back to this notion of community or building relationships, especially with other business owners, other operators in our couple block radius. These are people we can work with. That's awesome, I think. The final thing I wanted to call out from what you mentioned that stood out to me was you said it kind of makes your soul feel good Without getting too woo-woo. I do feel we're integrated, holistic beings. If we want to be good hospitality providers or professionals in this industry, it's not only getting good at the tactics of what we do but making sure that we're in a good place as people. It's really cool that you felt that. I think I would encourage all of our listeners to be dialed into that as well, kind of like where's your soul, your spirit or whatever you want to call it, you'll feel like where it's at and how do you bring that back to life? How do you get more life, get more energy? I feel like it always comes back to people 100%.

Wil: 13:19

To be honest, one of the themes I've been experiencing lately on a personal level with one of my business coaches is we keep coming to this theme or conversation around you can't lead others unless you can lead yourself. A lot of us want to lead others. We're in this industry to serve and to help empower anyone in our team to have that voice or to have that inspiration to go above and beyond the norm. That's our true, genuine. If we're going to look and peel back the layers of hospitality, that's where we're at. But if you can't even lead yourself with taking care of yourself and making sure you're exercising, you're eating, you're getting sleep, you're unplugging from things that you need to unplug from in order to give yourself some rest mentally going on vacation, as I saw you got to do for a little bit, and unplugging from the podcast Doing other stuff I think that's where, if you can't do that, then you can't expect others to then, of course, be good stewards and stepping up and other things like that. So lead by example, lead yourself before you lead others. And I think that ripple effect. It sounds maybe counterproductive or maybe even kind of what's the term? Kind of wrong to lead yourself first before others people, because we are here to serve. But I think if you reverse it and just kind of do the math behind of like, okay, you can't give from a cup that's empty, then that's a big sign to make sure that you're still sustaining fulfillment in your life to then continue to pass that along to others.

Josiah: 14:55

I appreciate that, will. I'm grateful to know you and I love what you're doing with Hospitality FM. I encourage everyone to check out your podcast. Check out the amazing network of storytellers and podcasters that you're leading there. It's pretty incredible. So thanks so much for taking some time to share this with us today.

Wil: 15:12

No, of course. Thanks for the invite. I love your podcast. It's a great dose of the true hospitality culture we love and know, so I appreciate all that you're doing as well.