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The stories from the places where people gather.
Dana Kadwell (01:27)
And today we are chatting with just me about our conversation with Anthony Lobatos from last week. If you haven't already, make sure you go over and you check out that episode. It is so good. ⁓ honestly, it came at a time when I needed to hear so many things as I'm starting new teams and new projects. It was so helpful just to kind of get re-centered. ⁓ it's an amazing episode. So make sure you go check it out.
I love Anthony. kind of mentioned it in the podcast last week that I met him. Actually, I meet him. I just saw him speak at Cater Source a few years ago. I can't remember which one it was, to be honest with you.
I believe it was in Orlando is when I saw him, I was kind of tasked at that time with, um, I had a list of people that had applied for NACE experience and they said, Hey, can you go check out these speakers and let's know what you think. And he was on that list. So that's how I kind of got in his room and I was only in his room for like 15 minutes, but, um, it was so impactful. Like I was like, Oh my gosh, this guy, like he needs to come to triangle. At that time I was like, you know, you need to come and speak at NACE. Um,
But then the more I kind of learned about him, I was like, he would just be an amazing person, just to even come train the team. later that year I was playing my very first venue masterclass and I remember wanting someone to talk about teams and culture and his name. I was like, oh my gosh, I remember I saw this guy at Cater Source and I actually couldn't remember his name at the moment. So I'm like going back to my text messages with the person who sent me the people to go look at. And I remembered Mib and then I remembered Anthony and
Yeah, so I messaged him. I was like, hey, you don't know me, but I'm doing this thing. And if you're interested in coming to speak and he's like, yeah, let's get on a zoom. And then I actually met him in person at the venue masterclass. And then that year we saw each other a lot like we were on the speaker circuit together. So we saw each other at B Sage. We saw each other at Nace Experience and became like actual friends. And he's someone that I just really value his opinion and his ⁓
just what he's doing. Like it's just, you know, he talks about it so easily, but all of us that are in, you know, leadership roles know that this idea of culture is so, so hard. It's hard to maintain. It's hard to execute. it's probably one of the hardest things about owning a business is maintaining a decent company culture. So yeah, so was so grateful for Anthony. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for joining us. But today it was really hard to pick just two topics like I have a topic today and then
next week, it was really tough to pick what I should talk about, But I think I have an arrow down to a couple of good options. The first thing I wanted to really, what I really want to talk about today is kind of, he laid out what the core of company culture is. And I want to talk about it in a very transparent and real way of.
how I have failed in the past and really like where I've had a lot of fear moving into these next two venues and building out these teams. ⁓ Like where my anxiety lies, I think is because I don't know if I got the core right to begin with. let's dig in, okay? So if remember, he had three kind of things. said the core of company culture is three main things. The first is people doing jobs they are good at.
The second is them understanding the purpose and the work of what they are doing. And the third is the relationships you have at your job is it with love, trust and respect. So that those are like really great kind of markers for it. So let's talk about people doing jobs they are good at. Now I struggle with this so much because for myself, like, and he kind of mentioned this, like burnout is not in
like how much work you're doing, it's in the work you are doing. So we feel burnt out and we're doing work that is like mentally, emotionally draining us, not necessarily something we're spending a lot of time on. And I feel that like I am right now as I'm recording this, we're about to go on vacation for a couple of weeks, but I am at the edge and everyone, like all the people on my team are like, you need a vacation. Like I do need a vacation. And it's because I've been doing so many things with these new venue launches.
that are not what I'm good at, but I have to do it because I'm the one launching these venues. ⁓ But finding people what they're good at is really hard because I think too you look at it from somebody and say like, okay, like I see you, maybe you're really successful at this other job that you had, I'm gonna put you in this role and especially if you're moving someone from like a corporate role to like a small business role, it is so different. Like it is like,
And I don't, and I say this as like, sounds like I'm like a newbie when it comes to the business world and I'm not, but like I was shocked And a lot of it's because I wasn't in corporate world. Um, but I was just genuinely like, Oh my gosh, like the way we do things is so different. And it's, it's not even about process. Like the, like the logistics of doing something, a lot of that is similar. It's literally about the mindset behind why we're doing it. Um,
So like for one of my properties, have kind of like a main person that's like handling a lot of, a lot of the things and you know, and eventually we don't have a ton of business there. So it's still kind of growing. And so this person's wearing like a lot of hats, like sales ops, all that. And we were talking about it as like, look, we need to start creating like some policies and procedures and SOPs and
They're like, oh, you know, I got it. It's fine. I'm like, well, no, no, I know. But this isn't going to be your job forever. Every job you have to do, it has to be scalable and it has to be repeatable, right? Like, cause we need to hire people to do these tasks, right? And, and also it allows you to kind of really highlight like, is the thing that you're excelling at? What's the thing that you love to do? And then what are the things that you can like do in your sleep that you're just really good at? And so that's been like a really, really interesting.
journey of figuring out how to kind of bridge that gap, I guess. But anyway, kind of what I was trying to say before is that you have this person that come from corporate and you see they were so successful on this side of things and you throw them in a small business where they have to wear so many hats. And it's not even like, and this is where I've had to like really like really understand me. First off, my brain works so differently than I think 90 % of the world. Like
I, my ability to multitask, have hold multiple things at once is very, very, very high. And so like, I'm constantly thinking about everything. Like one of the biggest complaints my daughter has is we get in the car and it's silent. And she's like, mom, why are you driving in silence? It's like, what you talking about? She's like, it's silent in here. There's no music. You know, listen to a podcast. I'm like, oh, well it's not silent because my head is consistently.
talking to me. Like it's constantly going over and over again. You have this and you have to this and like, had to this hard conversation. So I'm working out those bullet points in my head. we had this on my, on my plate. I gotta make sure I have this thing. It's never quiet. The only time my brain is quiet is when I am watching TV. That is the only time. And it's only if I'm engaged in the television. If I'm not engaged and I'm still thinking about something else. So
you bring someone into this world, right? And the difference between corporate and small business, in corporate you have a very specific job, you have a very specific lane. It does not mean that you don't have a lot on your mental plate and it doesn't mean you don't have a lot to think about. It's just you have a very specific things you have to think about. Whereas when you bring someone into small business, it's not like, you don't have one lane, you have multiple lanes, right? So it's not just thinking about how do operations work, but it's like, what about the sales? Okay, well the sales.
Okay, cool. We can think about that. But now you gotta think about how are the leads getting there and like the advertising and the lead funnels. Like it is just, it is a constant domino effect of things that you have to think about. And what I had to come to terms with in these past like, you know, few months of owning these venues is that that's not how a lot of people think. It doesn't mean less than, it doesn't mean I'm better than them. It just means that there has to be clear like roles and like clear understandings of what
of what they need to be doing, if that makes sense, because they're not thinking about all the small pieces. they might, and the thing is, a lot of times they're thinking about things that I'm not thinking about, because that's not what I look at it from a perspective of how do I run a business. They're looking at it from maybe a different perspective of how do I make the clients happy, which I'm grateful for and that is definitely 100 % necessary. But there's that piece of, you know,
taking a step back and saying, okay, like if your passion, like one of my employees, when I took it over, said, you know, what do you hate? She's like, I hate sales. And she's been doing the sales and you know, it's evident that she doesn't love it, you know? But she's like, I love the operations. I love being there on the day. I love managing the venue hosts. And so taking that off for play and then you can see her thrive in this role because she is doing exactly what she wants to do. And it's even the output I get from her is.
so much higher because she doesn't feel burnt out because she's not doing the thing that she hates. She's doing the thing that she loves and that she's good at. I don't know. I feel like that's one of the things I have to remind myself often is just because they can do it doesn't mean they should be doing it. ⁓ and same thing with me, just because I can do it doesn't mean that I should be doing it.
Dana Kadwell (10:50)
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Dana Kadwell (11:28)
The other thing he talked a lot about, and he mentioned it a couple of times, is really understanding the why behind why our work matters, ⁓ and to really feel like our work is bigger than ourselves. And I think that this is one of the things I failed the greatest at. And I mentioned it in the podcast, this idea that when we started the company, we started the Bradford,
There was so much like camaraderie, you know, because we were in the trenches with them and for so long they made more money than us and we let them know. I don't think it came from like a negative place. I think it was just more of us trying to be transparent because
I think in our heart, really wanted to pay people more, but we couldn't. And we were like, Hey, we can't like, we are not even getting paid for this. Like but when we can be generous with our money, like we're gonna be generous with our money. Um, so there's so much of like us being in the trenches and showing up and doing the job with them and not, there's nothing that they were doing or needed to do that we hadn't done in the past. And we hadn't done in the, in the recent past, right?
And so it made, think in those situations, you don't really need to explain the why as much because they're like, well they're doing it. So this must be how the business goes. This must be what we need to be doing. But when you start taking that step back and you start putting more responsibility on your team and you start like, for instance, like I stopped going to events. Like I was the relief here and there, but like for the most part, I didn't really show up on event day. ⁓ There was a lot of, a lot of times pushback on like policy or procedure we should be doing because
there wasn't this understood why. And I think what got really tainted at the Bradford, like truly
I don't want to say it was too much transparency, but almost was too much transparency, but there was this culture that was set that money was king. I guess I should say this, let me just make this caveat. This is how I felt. I don't know if this is actually the truth of it. ⁓ But at the end of the day, it felt like
the reasoning why we were doing something was to make a better bottom line. Like that ultimately the conversations circulated around, are doing this to make a bigger profit. We are doing this to make more money. We are doing this to have, you know, a better year. And, and it's not like they weren't a part of those conversations. And it's not like they weren't a part of their reward of those convert of those things, right? Like they, their bonuses were built on how well the business did.
But when you put everything in the lens of we're only doing this so you can get a bonus. We're only doing this so that we can make more money. We're only doing this so we can have this profit. We're only doing this so we can do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It started just to feel transactional and icky and every dollar was counted. Every dollar was counted. when you get into that space, it's so hard to maintain appreciation.
And so I feel like that's where our culture really started to erode was this constant, like we're not making enough money. And at the same time, what they're seeing is we have new cars and we're going on vacations. And in their mind, they're probably like, you're making plenty of fucking money. And they will all tell you that we 100 % deserved it. No one thought we didn't deserve it, but it was just a disconnect in the conversation. There was no one saying,
you shouldn't be making that money. You shouldn't have those things. Let me be very clear at that. I think everyone was grateful and happy that we could live a life that we wanted, but there was this disconnect with what we were doing and what we were saying and then how we were living our life. And so I think there was a lot of like purpose lost in that. And I have to like really give kudos to the team here that they persevered through that and
ultimately, you know, bringing on our CEO at the time, like her why was very much about unreasonable hospitality. That was it. That was the end. That was the purpose. And so she really started transforming the conversation into this isn't about a dollar. This isn't about money. This is about us serving our clients in the best way that we can. And you could kind of see that shift in that transition happen. And ⁓ some people got on board and some people didn't. But for the most part, I think that is and I've definitely like
believed that myself. I've never been like a money motivated person in general. For me being able to like be a good person and sleep at night and all that is what's paramount to my success and what makes me happy. ⁓ And so, you know, I believed in that.
with her so much. And I think for a while that last year we really tried to change that. I do think it was small steps. I think that if I ever go back and I think that will be evidently changed. That that culture of like people really understand the purpose, understand the why, there's that drive behind it. There's that value that,
was so desperately needed that I think everyone really wanted that it just wasn't communicated well or even talked about well. I talk a lot about the fact that like, I'm not afraid to take ownership of failures that I've made in general. ⁓ But, and I said this in the first episode of the season that the black cloud was our partnership and that's what eroded our company culture, like truly. Like I can blame it on...
you say you're blaming on anybody and anything, but at end of the day, that was, that's what was responsible for. And that's what caused it. Um, and we really lost sight of allowing people to feel like their work is bigger than ourselves. And I think we tried, like we tried some, like we were like, Hey, we're going to take on this philanthropy project. We're going to like donate, um, you know, the space for this, but then even those really altruistic, truly, truly like,
I could say altruistic moves became about money. It became about like, we're doing this for this person and they're costing us X amount of dollars and therefore we have to do this. Right? Like are we committed to this charity that we're doing or are we committed or what did we think we were going to come out ahead? Like do we take this charity because we thought we were going to save money. Like
it really unveiled a little bit of an ugly side of intention ⁓ that I think the team maybe tried to warn about ⁓ that I honestly didn't see. like, you know, and I believe in business for good, you could, you know, donate something and still have a business motive behind it.
but you have to be able to donate something, to do something, to give 100 % at something, not with the expectation you're getting something back. You can attempt to, you can try to, you can capitalize on things, but if it doesn't pan out, it doesn't mean it wasn't worth it. It doesn't mean there wasn't success. And I think, and that was a really hard conversation to have. That was where a lot of like where we differed, me and my partner differed in that.
and that desire, you like, was, if it doesn't make business sense, then we're not doing it. And like, well, I mean, I agree to an extent, like I don't want to bankrupt us, but at the same time, like I feel very passionately about using the space for good and like using it for philanthropy. And, um, it was like a really hard two years truly. And I don't think I really recognize
why we saw so much failure. I think hearing him say like, they just didn't feel like their work was bigger than themselves. They didn't feel like their work mattered. Cause we didn't make it feel like it mattered, you know? So it was kind of eye opening.
Dana Kadwell (19:16)
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Dana Kadwell (20:13)
And the last one is the relationships to be loved, trust and respect. And I can honestly tell you that I think that ⁓ what kept the Bradford going for so long and truly what made it successful was the fact that
the inside team love, trusted and respected each other, but they loved each other so much and they respected one another. They respected what they were doing. They kind of were like, look, y'all have this shit going on. We're going to like quiet out the noise and we're going to just buckle down and do our job and we're going to show up and we're going to help each other and we're going to do all things we need to do. And it's the thing that like, I'm so incredibly grateful for that they were able to do that because it's the only reason why
we could sell it to be honest with you. The only reason I get out is partnerships, you know, and still have a future in front of me. ⁓ but that was a conscious decision on their part, but I think a lot of it was that they built that culture within themselves of love, respect and trust. And I think that, you know, one of the best things that we did in these past two years was hire a COO that kind of was that buffer between us and the team and
they for them. I mean, I can say they love respect and trust the CEO and her leadership and her guidance. And and I think that was imperative. And so when I look back on it, it's really easy for me. And I think I alluded to it. It was the way if I was to like look at it from like a bird's eye view, right? Like, OK, going through this transition so freaking hard, right? Really, what was lost was their trust and respect.
for our leadership. And I'm not going to sit here and say it was unfounded and they shouldn't have. No, I don't think that I think that there was a lot of reasons why I recognize why that was the case. And I have taken so much time of like debriefing and thinking through it and understanding like, like just self evaluating, like, okay, this is where the failure happened. This is where I put my head in the sand for so long. and we just refused to deal with shit and
And I'm not going to go back and say I should have should have because should is like the enemy of all progress. It's what happened. And all I can do is move forward, learn from it and not make those same mistakes again. And at the end of the day, my goal in all of this was to end in a way that
honored what they have built and honored what they have put forward and honored the story that we created and that, you know, the Bradford is magical and wonderful because of the team, right? At one point it was magical, wonderful because of the leadership that we had. And, and I can say that the leadership that we had that put this team in place
take some credit for that for sure, but ultimately it was their decision every day to fight through the noise. And it was their decision every day to say, we want this to be a great place to work in spite of everything that is happening. ⁓ And so for me, like moving forward as I'm like building these teams and like even when you're in this multi venue space, you're building, you know, on location teams, when you're building an overarching team.
what's my role in it? Like, what, like, where, where do I, how do I contribute to the company culture? How do I make sure that I'm not making these same mistakes that I did in the past? And, ⁓ and so it was really helpful, I think, for me, just to kind of have it laid out that simply. And it sounds, I say simply, and it sounds simple, but
It really got me thinking about like, as I'm building out these teams, making sure these three things are true, that people are doing jobs they're good at, that they understand that work matters and it's bigger than themselves. And that the relationship we have with one another is with love, trust and respect.
I thought it was a great episode. I love Anthony so much. Like I think he is just such an inspiration. I think he does an amazing job. he's so easy to talk to and he's like not a gatekeeper. Like any, like I know I could call him tomorrow and be like, okay, what would you do here? And he'd be like, let me help you get through this, you know, like just such a good, good, good human. And he's doing some incredible work. I think he's really changing the way the hospitality industry views employees and I'm here for it. So
Make sure you check out my, I know I'm going to be going next year. Super stoked. I'm going to try to bring my C level team with me. And I am
anxiously awaiting for when he releases a MyBrewtreat because I will also be for sure hanging out in Mexico with some CEOs and learning from some of the best. check him out. He has amazing resources, amazing person. And I will chat with you guys next week on our next quick chat.