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Each episode of GAIN Momentum focuses on timeless lessons to help grow and scale a business in hospitality, travel, and technology. Whether you’re a veteran industry leader looking for some inspiration to guide the next phase of growth or an aspiring executive looking to fast-track the learning process, this podcast is here with key lessons centered around four questions we ask each guest.
GAIN Momentum episode #26 - Adapting a Global Product to Local Territories | with Ryan King
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Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the Gain Momentum podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in hospitality, food service, travel, and technology. We are joined today by Ryan King, Senior Vice President of the Americas for Shiji. Ryan, how are you?
Ryan King: Great. Thanks. Good to see you, Adam.
Adam Mogelonsky: Great to have you. And also our special co host today, Michael Goldrich. How are you?
Michael Goldrich: I'm doing quite well. Thank you for having me on board today, Adam
Michael Goldrich: and Ryan.
Adam Mogelonsky: So, listeners, we structured this podcast around four key questions focusing on timeless lessons. Ryan, our first question, when it comes to scaling a business, what is the single piece of advice you would give entrepreneurs from your perspective [00:01:00] as a professional in hospitality
Ryan King: Yeah, it's an interesting question, Adam, in the way that you say it, because when you say single piece of advice, it comes down to one thing, but I'm going to have to probably break that down a little bit. You know, I, I've been in very large corporations. I've been in startups and, and Shiji and in some respect, while it's a very mature company, when we came to the Americas, we came in like a massive startup. So when I look at that and I think about one of the things that I would say to anybody, it's, it comes down to balancing your growth. And what I mean by that is you need to understand What you're going to need in the various phases that you're projecting to be in, because what you need in the very beginning is going to be very different than what you need as you progress through the years. And I break that into [00:02:00] maybe a couple of buckets. Cause I, when you say something like that to me, I think of multiple things. And the first one is always about, you know, know where your revenue is going to come from. And how are you going to grow it? So, as you put together your company and you're going to land business, what are you putting in place to say, I need to be able to expand that customer's wallet with me later on? So that comes into this idea of sales. In the very beginning, you're, As an entrepreneur, you're going to go out and you're going to basically tap your network and you're going to land your first kind of pieces of business and you're going to grow off of that. But as you, as you scale up, you need to understand about the talent needed to land other customers that are going to accelerate the growth path that you've outlined for yourself. And that goes back into the same thing as when you start thinking about your development and support. When you begin,
Ryan King: you have a, let's call it minimum viable product. But what is it that you're solving for [00:03:00] and where do you need to go? So how are you scaling the resources that you need in your development team, in your support teams, in the implementation teams at the right point in time? How do you strike that balance based on saying, okay, well, first year, expect to be here second year, third year, fourth year, and then gate checking those points and saying, am I third year? I need to plan to be here, which means I'm going to plan to be looking for talent somewhere in my second and a half year for advanced developers. I'm going to be scaling my support department up for that. I'm going to be looking for sales that are going to go over an enterprise now instead of over these individual customers. So all of those things kind of come down as balance in my mind. And having what that growth plan looks like and then checking that.
Ryan King: Making sure that you've built that plan with checks to sit there and say, Am I at where I'm going to be? And if I'm not, [00:04:00] am I adjusting my plan to address what I'm facing today?
Michael Goldrich: You know, I like that term balanced growth and sort of getting what you need when you need it. But then how do you know if you're in balance? Like, I know that you said like, you know, checkpoint one, year one, year two, year three, are we where we need to be, but is there any sort of like, almost like real time. balance that you have that you kind of look at?
Ryan King: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good question because how do we know if we're in balance or not? I would say that, you know, through my time when I was at, and instead of Amadeus, it was called TravelClick, it was a company that Amadeus bought, but during that time there was As a medium sized organization, there's so much coming at you every day that you never even know if you're in balance, because you're like, I just, I'm just working, you know, the sun comes up, and I work, and the sun goes down, I get some [00:05:00] nutrients, and I go to bed, and I repeat. So how do you know if you're in balance? you've got to stop for a moment, and you've got to look at things. And if you don't take the time to stop the rat race, You won't even know if you're out of balance. And then when you're really going to know it is when you look around and for any entrepreneur that looks like this, you go, oh shit, my cash burns bigger than I thought it was going to be.
Ryan King: Crap. What am I doing?
Michael Goldrich: Is there a concern about stopping versus speed of innovation? So are those two kind of, tension points with each other?
Ryan King: Uh, yeah, absolutely. Because there's this idea that you're going through a process and you're going through a little bit of a race. So if you're missing an opportunity, because you're not being quick enough to bring something forward of an idea or of a demand that a customer was showing you something that you were going to solve. [00:06:00] If you aren't doing that fasting, if you lose the opportunity. And yet, if you go too fast, you end up with technical debt. And I, I can say in different times, I don't want to name the companies because you guys heard some of the companies I've worked with, but we, we sat there with a fair amount of technical debt and. You have so many hiccups with the current customers because you're trying to roll out updates and trying to do new development in the product, but that's causing pain points in the customers using it because you're shaping the product differently and you're doing things that are affecting their daily life. So you've gotta really be able to sit there and, weigh the pros and cons of what you're doing.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, I want to dive in. You mentioned about scaling a product within a given territory, and of course, your title is SVP of Americas,
Ryan King: Yes.
Adam Mogelonsky: and Shiji has a global footprint. So you're talking about scaling. Uh, customer service, and also [00:07:00] the product for a given market. And how do you find that balance and get your points across when you're dealing with a global company where it's not just about the Americas, it's EMEA and APAC?
Adam Mogelonsky: Mm
Ryan King: So one of the, and you're probably hearing a little bit of my speech as I go through, you'll, you'll hear I'm a little bit of a planner.
Ryan King: I took over the Americas regions earlier this year, but prior to that, I was the senior director of global strategy for
Ryan King: Shiji. So I sat on our global team and I looked across all of our markets and I was in charge of Commercialization area of how we were using our solutions and making money and what were we solving, what we were doing. And when you do that, you look across, you really do have to understand the needs of various regions. I think one of the mistakes that I've seen in the past is when you're growing as a startup or an entrepreneur, and you're looking at potential markets, what we build here in [00:08:00] America. For our American customers is different than what we build in Europe for the Europe customers and what we build in APAC for the APAC customers and therefore, and there on there.
Ryan King: But the thing you have to think about is how can I tropicalize my product to answer the needs of a different market? If I sit here and I've, I've got an opportunity. And I'll just use Mexico, because that's a great one to say, right south of the U.S right? I've got an opportunity in Mexico. Well, they don't do the same thing in the hotels down there that we do in the hotels here in the U.S They operate slightly different. Their staff interacts with technology slightly different. You can't expect that whatever you just hand them is going to be exactly what they want. There's workflows that happen whether it's in the housekeeping departments of the hotel or if it's in the front desk. So, these type [00:09:00] of things have to factor into play on what you think about when you take another market and you open it up and you say, Okay, I'm going to go down there now. Are you ready for that? Is that this the right time in your journey and can you support that?
Adam Mogelonsky: you mentioned Mexico, and of course your job title is Americas. Not America. So, boots on the ground, what's the best way for a technology company to understand a given market? Whether it's Mexico, United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and all the unique challenges there, or getting into Latin America.
Ryan King: Yeah, I um, so I'll give my my first hand experience this year on a lot of this or the past several years I've kind of as I sat on our global team and we looked at the different things and I noticed that we weren't growing in Mexico and we were focusing a lot on [00:10:00] markets where we had some headwinds And when I came in here, I gotta tell you, I was, I was probably on a plane almost every month throughout the course of the spring and early summer down to Mexico. And through that, it was meeting with potential partners and listening to them, listening to their challenges, what they were asking of new technology, and how their business was operating. And then understanding, as, you know, the leader that has to go back and say, can we do this? Like understanding from our products, what we had, what we would need to do to tropicalize.
Ryan King: And when I say tropicalize, it's, it's essentially not reworking the whole entire product, but how do we be able to put it into a flavor that the Mexico customer will adapt and say, yes, I like this and I'm going to buy it and it's going to work for me.
Adam Mogelonsky: So, uh, in short, a lot of air miles
Ryan King: Oh, well, [00:11:00] yeah, I mean, it's definitely, it's definitely one of those things that I'd say, you can't enter a market without having had boots on the ground in that market.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, true
Michael Goldrich: I have one quick question on this because. Economy is a scale for your products, right? So you have maybe like 80 percent of it is reusable, then you just kind of customize like the 20, 10, 5 percent or is it not like that? Each market has its own specific item.
Ryan King: Yeah, I mean, there's, there's little things that, um, need to happen in different markets. The first thing I'll say is the UI. If you're building, a technology solution, and you're here in America, you build it, and it's all in English. And you're like, great, got everything handled. But if I'm taking that to Mexico, well, unlike Spain, a lot of the Mexican hospitality teams don't [00:12:00] speak English.
Ryan King: So you have to be able to translate your UI. There's one little thing, yet it sounds easy, but when you start getting into hotel lingo, you can't just throw this thing through Google Translate and say, great. Well done. You know, we may, we may talk about, you know, stay through rooms here in America, but they call it overnight rooms. So if we translated stay through to be stay through, the housekeepers would be like, I have no idea what this means. So
Ryan King: it's, it's little nuances that come into how you tropicalize the product.
Adam Mogelonsky: of course, Ryan, moving on to our second question here. What are some of the common pitfalls or failures you have witnessed that business owners should look to avoid when scaling their business?
Ryan King: yeah, I'm, I, I would say this is a double edged sword, but it's It's growing your teams too fast
Ryan King: because if you, and I go [00:13:00] back to this balance that I said earlier, if you're running forward and you're thinking, okay, I need to scale up my teams, I need to get more support people, I need more developers, I need to get more, sales people. But then what happens if you hit a snag and your sales? Slough off. And now you've got this drag.
Ryan King: And the drag affects every part of the business. It's not just economic, it's mental for people that are there because suddenly their work lessens and they're like, well, what's going on? And then that affects the culture about how people are doing things and are they getting into there? And it just creates this unnecessary drag. The same can be said as if you don't have a plan and you don't know. What the signals are as you need to grow, then you run into the opposite plan, because you're going to lose opportunity, because you've got demand coming at you, but you can't scale it fast enough, and now you're delivering bad service, the product isn't maturing fast enough, you're, you're coming to A critical [00:14:00] point of failure.
Ryan King: This is where startups go under. They didn't prepare for the scale that comes at them and they can't handle it, and they buckle under their own weight. it goes back to what I said earlier, it's, it's all about balance.
Ryan King: So,
Michael Goldrich: So then, what would be your advice to a startup, so say a startup founder is watching this right now. It's like, I don't want to be that, I don't want to buckle, so how, how should they prepare for buckling? Is it go attending masterclasses, is it mentors, is it talking to the community, or is it just ramping up and just hoping that the, you know, no snacks.
Ryan King: early on in my career when I was working in hotels, I was in hotels for almost 20 years. I had a, um. I was a regional leader as I was preparing my first sales and marketing plan when I became a director of sales. And the regional person came to me and they said, Ryan, hope and prayers are not strategy. [00:15:00] And I've always thought about that in the back of my head. And you heard me say it earlier, I'm a planner. You have to think, if you're sitting there and you're doing your startup, What does this plan look like? And not this fantastical, I'm going to tell my investors this is what the plan is. This is a, you look at yourself in the mirror and say, what could happen. What would I expect to do at this point in time? How would I know that it's the right time to pull this lever? How do I know when to do this? You have to have those, like, thoughts in your head. Otherwise, you end up on the hope and prayer method. You hope you get enough business coming in. You pray that you're able to deliver it all as it comes through. Or, you hope that the business keeps coming, and you just pray that you have enough to keep all of these people busy.
Michael Goldrich: But, you know, I would imagine that if you're a founder and you have all these big [00:16:00] ideas and you have all these expectations and if perception is reality, right, and they're saying, everything is going my way, which may or may not be the truth, it just may be what they're thinking, like, how, what is the check for that? I look to others that are either on my team or are colleagues or people I know to kind of get that pulse point. Because if everybody has my same thought process and my same vision, then we're on the Titanic heading towards that iceberg going, Oh, it seems okay, it'll be fine. You need others to give their input and you need to be asking, how does this work? What do you think's happening there? How is this, because it's that type of input that'll allow you to see and say, you know, yeah, no, that iceberg is gonna cut into us. We need to make a left turn now, or we're not gonna get where we need to go.
Adam Mogelonsky: I think that's a good point, talking [00:17:00] about icebergs, titanics, moving forward, moving across the Atlantic. A good point to move into our third question, Ryan, what do you see as the key opportunities and challenges for hospitality technology companies in 2024 and beyond, which I believe is 102 years after the Titanic sunk, if I'm not correct,
Michael Goldrich: What year was that?
Adam Mogelonsky: 1912, I
Ryan King: Yeah.
Adam Mogelonsky: believe, right? Yeah.
Ryan King: Well if you're, if you sit there and you ask me, you know, what do, what do I really need to do to, you know, be successful as the opportunities and the challenges and the. What come up to me, I'd say, stay true to what your original mission was. And when you go through these journeys, and I've seen it with, you know, many companies that I've been with, whether it was in Stay In Touch, you know, a new budding PMS when I [00:18:00] came into it, whether it's here at Shiji, you know, where we have a plethora of products, whether it was a mature company like TravelClick, where we were No longer the innovators and instead we were the scalers like you went to us when you need to scale on something. You have to stay true to what you're providing, what you're delivering to someone. If you end up getting caught off track and you're listening to a customer and you're saying, Oh, I think I can go chase that opportunity and I can be everything to everyone all the time. It ends up being like that movie What was it?
Ryan King: Everywhere, everything, all at once? Where you're just kind of, you're scattered and everything starts fracturing and the, the, entire thing falls apart. I'd say that you must partner in order to really have valuable ways to solve a customer's problem. There are so many different needs that hoteliers are facing [00:19:00] nowadays. And the biggest. The biggest problem they've had in the past was partners not collaborating. I can't get a piece of information here that will collaborate with the other piece of solution that I just bought there. If you sit there and start partnering with people and other technology companies to answer the customer's need, that customer is going to start looking at you and the partner and everybody else that you've collaborated with and say, I really trust in this, I really trust that. You're helping me to get there. So you're investing in the relationship with a customer, showing that you can solve them what you said you're gonna solve. You're bringing somebody else along saying, I know you have that problem. You asked me if I can solve it, but actually these people could do it. And we collaborate really well, because if you're asking us to do that, then the two of us are going to make sure we work well together. And so there's no finger pointing about what goes on. And at the same point in time, you're building this channel [00:20:00] growth opportunity with these partners that you know that are going to. Help you get in front of the next opportunity. We're all out there as these tech companies trying to get in front of all these different hotels. And I had a customer the other day, he says, Oh yeah, you know, I get, he's an IT leader for a group down in Mexico and he says, Yeah, I probably get five emails a day from just different tech companies trying to sell me something. You know, whether it's something about how my housekeepers should work or how I can communicate better on text message or how they can check in better or how I should send email messages or how I can distribute better.
Ryan King: He says, every day I get this and he says, I never know who to really talk to because we've had problems when we call and so he says, well, that's not as you have to call that company. That's why it's not working. I can say here at Shiji, one of the things that we've done a lot is we've reached across the aisle.
Ryan King: Customer calls us. And I'll give an [00:21:00] example of something that happened earlier this week. We had a problem with a payments issue, and we saw clearly it wasn't us. We were the POS. There was a problem that was happening within the context of how the payment was getting across and coming back. Well, in that whole workflow, there's a person that's carrying it. There's a person that's acquiring it, and then there's the people depositing it. So we had to kind of go through that whole thing with those other partners, brought them together with the customer, got it solved. Could we have just sat there and pointed our finger and said, oh, that's not us? Sure, we could have, but that wouldn't have helped the customer.
Ryan King: The customer wouldn't have had that faith to know that. So this is how I can tell you, like Shiji's methodology, this is really how we've gained more confidence with our customers, because they've said, The opportunity that I'm giving you is because I trust you.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, and trust is everything. It's takes a decade to build and 10 [00:22:00] seconds to break down,
Ryan King: Yes, it
Ryan King: does.
Adam Mogelonsky: the famous expression is. And you, you mentioned customer service, it is a podcast, the importance of customer service. I want to go back to the first point you said about that, that IT person who's getting five emails a day from various.
Adam Mogelonsky: Tech companies and about how that creates as, as I call it, a tech blur where there's so many different marketing messages and. Different newsletters coming out. A person they don't know which companies to decide to trust or to believe that their, their messaging and their product says they can do what they can do.
Adam Mogelonsky: And I'm wondering, we know that customer service helps break through that noise by being a trusted partner. How do you measure that? How do you know and see that happening either from your experience at Stay in Touch and really scaling up a, [00:23:00] a unique product in the space or right now at Shiji.
Adam Mogelonsky: How do you see that happening?
Ryan King: think when you want to understand the impact of customer service, the easiest way that you can see that is when you look for reference.
Ryan King: How easy is it for you to say, oh, I have somebody you can call? Or do you scramble and you say, Ooh, no, don't send them to that person. Cause just, you know, last month they got irritated because of something else or that happened. So if you sit there and say, look, we have enough deposits in the positive emotional bank that if there's a negative things happen, the customer still is going to go and say to people, it goes well.
Ryan King: I like them. There is no tech company out there. That is perfect all the time. And if they say they run perfectly all the time, then they're lying to you.
Ryan King: I mean, I will tell you like one of the biggest SaaS players in the market and the CRM place, [00:24:00] um, Salesforce, you know, while Salesforce gets things right 90 plus percent of the time. They still have hiccups that affect their customers and there's still issues and things don't work right or whatever else happens. And yet there's enough positive deposits in the emotional vault that when something goes wrong and they need you to make a reference on something, then you sit there and go, yeah, actually this is what happened and I feel pretty good and yeah, that didn't go well, but you know, sometimes those happen. We've had customers that we've sent a reference to, that the customer actually came back to me and said, actually the reason I think I'm going to go to you is because they gave an example of when something went wrong, what you guys did.
Ryan King: So to me, that was where we can sit there and go, well we must be doing something right with customer service then. Because the service recovery was good.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. Moving on to our fourth question, which I think builds on the whole idea of service recovery. What are the key things innovative [00:25:00] leaders and entrepreneurs should prioritize and focus on to gain traction for their business?
Ryan King: I may say something slightly controversial to any other entrepreneurs that are out here that think this, um, while I have worked in companies with brilliant and maybe eccentric leadership and visionaries, the most successful I've seen in some of these places is when you realize that your best asset is the people. It's hiring the right talent, empowering that talent, entrusting them to do what you set out to do. But quietly verifying. Are they doing it? I don't want to go question you, I don't want you to know that I'm questioning, but
Ryan King: I'm also not stupid, and I'm not gonna just sit there blindly listening to everything you tell me that it's right. [00:26:00] So, it's this idea that you need to be aware of what's going on in the organization, but you need to trust that the people you put in place are delivering because you can't do it on your own. And when you start to scale and you start to grow, you can be a one man band in the very beginning, and it can be really your personality.
Ryan King: It can be your stamp on how that company grows. But as it gets larger, how do you make sure your brand is echoed by those around you? How do you make sure the interactions that people get everywhere else are correct? So I'd say that You really need to be aware of people. Um, I I'd go further to say, you need to be aware of what your effect on people is because as the leader, and especially in growing companies, I will say, you know, and a shout out to [00:27:00] Yash Shopp, when I was at Stay In Touch, he could be very inspirational. He was an inspirational person at many times, but when someone has a bad day and you're the inspirational leader. I'll tell you, everybody in the company has a bad day that day, because you need to remember that just because you're having a bad day, well, they're all looking at you. And I know it's a very hard thing to do. We all have bad days. I mean, I, I can tell you, I have bad days that aren't so great, but I just sit there and I'm like, Oh, as long as nobody sees it and feels it, it's okay. Because my job is to make sure. I
Michael Goldrich: So I've got a question for you about, you know, talking about these people, you know, you're hiring, you're empowering, you're trusting, and then you're verifying. Essentially you, you trust, but verify, how do you do that? And do the employees know that you're doing this?[00:28:00]
Ryan King: think everybody that has worked with me in various ways, find out that, I'm asking questions about stuff in other ways, but it's done in a positive manner. It's not like, what is that person doing wrong? It's, it's getting feedback and then giving that same feedback back to that person. Oh, I, I spoke to XYZ client and actually they told me the other day that you guys had that meeting and they were really, really happy the way you ran things. And so all of a sudden they know that I was asking about them and what's going on, but then I'm giving them. You know reinforcements or vice versa. I'm finding something out and I'm giving them direct feedback on Something that I didn't necessarily agree with When I worked for Sofitel when it was under Accor, or I still is under Accor, the, uh, general manager at the time gave me this whole little speech and I've so embraced this, [00:29:00] Denis Dupar, he said, look at Accor, we have a culture of feedback, and I'm going to give you things and give you information and help you be better at who you are, and I said, okay, so the first time he gives me some feedback, I start to Tell him and defend why I did what I did and he says no No, my job is to give you the feedback your job right now is to accept the feedback just say Thank you for the feedback.
Ryan King: You can think about it later And I looked at him and I'm like well a little offended and then I during the course of my years there though I have to tell you I really embrace that and I I believe in giving feedback even if it's not Maybe the positive feedback that somebody wants to hear, but it's constructive. Never be mean,
Ryan King: you don't have to be mean. But if you can give someone constructive feedback [00:30:00] on something that's happened in their performance, I believe that most people want to be better. They want to understand how to be better. And when you give them ideas on how to be better, then they really respect that.
Michael Goldrich: And it makes sense, but I think that feedback, it's, tricky by generation, right? So you have different generations that have been told different things. Like, uh, you know, I'm a Gen Xer. So, you know, we're like, you know, we're very highly independent and we're like, you know, we get by, but, you know, Millennials or Gen Zs, like, you give, you know, constructive feedback like that, you might be talking to their mom. Their mom will call you. It's like, how do you handle that? Or do you, is that?
Michael Goldrich: part of the training process when they come on?
Ryan King: Any way to inspire people, you also have to understand that people look for different things. And a good leader is able to stay [00:31:00] true to who they are, but moderate their messaging. I probably don't have the same conversations with people in my organization because of I know how they like to communicate. And so I sometimes, I may have a softer message to someone of something that they did, because I know they're more sensitive. But I know they're going to take that to heart, and they're going to listen, and then I know they'll come back and ask me again about it. Whereas somebody else I know, like they're, they're much more just, give it to me, take it to me straight.
Ryan King: Okay, thanks. Got it. Move on. So yeah, you're absolutely right, Michael. It's a, I would say that's probably one of the hardest things to master as a leader.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, and that's just a incredible way to finish off here talking about the feedback across different generations and everyone always. Uh, seems to harp on those Gen Zers [00:32:00] for, you know, they're, they're calling them entitled and, uh, everything of that nature, but I find that to, to not be true. I find that as you said, that becoming constructive and really learning who that person is to frame that constructive feedback in the best possible way, that's, that, that advice will stand true for the next hundred years.
Ryan King: Well, I'm glad I was able to give some nuggets of knowledge today. Hopefully
Ryan King: somebody finds this somewhat, uh, helpful.
Adam Mogelonsky: I did.
Michael Goldrich: Yeah, very illuminating.
Ryan King: Oh, great. Thank you.
Adam Mogelonsky: Ryan, thank you so much for coming on for the Power Half Hour.
Ryan King: Thanks, Adam. Thanks, Michael.
[00:33:00]