She Built a 17-Year Hospitality Marketing Empire. Here's How
The person approving your hotel content isn't your audience
Susan Barry has been in the hotel business for 30 years. She spent about a decade as a director of sales and marketing for Starwood, mostly opening new-build hotels in Denver, Washington DC and Atlanta. In the spring of 2009 she started Hive Marketing. Today it does B2B marketing and communications for hospitality companies, and for four and a half years she's hosted Top Floor, a podcast about the business of hospitality.
The reel that worked too well
One story from the episode was about a luxury hotel that ran some fun reels with a creator, including one where she did a dance in the room. The numbers were huge: 300 new followers in about a week and 50,000 views. The hotel didn't like it. They said it was too juvenile and not on brand. The question is who decides what's on brand.
The fair follow-up is how many of those 300 followers booked. Probably not many, because the hotel stopped the reels. A young woman in the city sees that reel and thinks, this is what I'll be doing on a Friday night. Kept up every week, that content would have given those followers what they came for. Instead the feed went back to posts about thread count.
Nobody books on thread count
Luxury brands talk a lot about amenities. You have 300 thread count, the place down the road has 350. The line from this episode I'd put on a poster is "there is no traveler making a decision based on the thread count of the pillow." People choose on their loyalty program, the location and how they expect the hotel to make them feel. Plenty of people book a luxury hotel when they're not rich "because they want to feel rich", and that fancy, excited feeling of getting ready to go out is what they're buying.
A moody picture of the beach doesn't get that across, and neither does a coffee table shot. Artwork on its own does nothing either, unless it tells the bigger story of the hotel. Do an art tour in a reel and explain that the pieces are by a local artist because the hotel cares about the local experience.
Afraid to stand out
Calvin Stovall said on a recent episode that people are afraid to stand out, and it landed like a ton of bricks. A luxury hotel in New York or LA is up against thousands of hotels. If it posts the same stuff as every hotel in its comp set and every hotel in the city, nobody has a reason to stop.
As it was put on the episode, "your personal taste and a strategic objective are not the same things." Flashy, bright designs on LinkedIn are a deliberate choice, because the job is to stop the scroll so someone reads the message. You might not like teal, but "everything on LinkedIn is cornflower blue," so a bright green gets noticed.
A woman who teaches hospitality marketing at Boston University reminds her students that they aren't the target market, and hotels need the same reminder. "The person who is approving content is not the target audience."
Find somewhere to test it
One story from the conversation was about a fake client called The Frugal Hostess. Real clients wouldn't allow the crazier ideas, so The Frugal Hostess, a lifestyle and entertaining blog written incognito, became the place to test them. The results could then go back to the real clients as proof of what the other client liked.
The flip side came up too: people ask for content in a creator's own voice, then worry it might offend somebody. The rule from the episode is "I joke on situations, not on people." A joke about guests showing up at 6 a.m. is fair game, and if you read that as guests are idiots, that's on you.
Say who you're not for
The Caribbean hotel conference came up too, and a hotel in Aruba whose marketing spells out what it is and what it isn't. If you're looking for loud music on the beach or conga lines around the pool, they're not for you. That takes nerve in an industry where everyone wants to be nice and hospitable to everybody.
We also got onto AI. If a large language model writes everything you publish, it reads fine and sounds the same as everything else. People who lean into their own point of view will be easy to pick out from the AI-written mashed potatoes.
We go through all of this in the full episode. Watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Calvin and the Revpar Media team build hotel marketing that drives bookings, from social media management to influencer campaigns.
Book a 30-minute callFull transcript
Your audience will dictate what they want to see. Your social media pages aren't for you. It's not your taste. It's for your audience. But then I would say the question is those 300 new followers, how many of them book? Because the strategy is to stop the scroll so that someone will read your message, your personal taste test and a strategic objective are not the same things like if you don't like the color teal. That's okay because everything on LinkedIn is cornflower blue. So if I have a bright, crazy looking green, that's going to stop the scroll and get somebody to read your message. Hello and welcome to the socially awkward podcast. I'm your host, Calvin Tilokee and I am here with Susan Barry. That's right. I'm Susan Barry. Ladies and gentlemen. I'm very, very busy here.
Yes, we are very happy to have you. She is the queen bee at Hive Marketing as I believe your LinkedIn refers to my very official title. Yes, yes. Yes. Is that actually on your business cards? It is, although I will tell you that I ordered business cards the first year I was in business 17 years ago, and I still have several of the ones that I ordered then and I will not ever be ordering anymore. I love my business cards. They're very beautiful, but I find that people don't want them anymore. Do you have a lot of business cards? You know, not to mention that that's a good point. I have. I do have some, but people are more like, oh, does match me on LinkedIn or Yeah, on LinkedIn or something. So what I've done with my most recent ones is like a little QR scanner, so it's a card, but also they scan this and it gives you all my info that makes a lot of sense.
I just feel like people ask for business cards and then never follow up. And if they're really serious, if I am not hard to find so they'll find me like it's going to work out. It'll be okay. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, in this day and age, it's it's harder to it's harder to stay hidden. Yeah, I totally through. That is so true. Well, obviously, I know you, but perhaps the audience doesn't as well as I do. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you've become such a beacon in the hospitality industry. Oh, a beacon. How very dare you. Well, my story is I was a hotel director of sales and marketing for about a decade for Starwood in the pre Marriott acquisition days.
And before that I worked in food and beverage, I was in restaurants and then ran an off premise catering company for a few years after I graduated from college, which, if you have ever done off premise catering, it is the craziest, like most intense kind of job you could ever possibly have. And so, to be perfectly honest, I got in the hotel business to like take a break and I was like, I mean, to, like, get a full night's sleep and, you know, get whatever I use. I would do these events. And I swear to God, during our busy season, I was taking naps in my car. In between events like that, how intense and how much work it was. And of course I was in my twenties, so I wasn't like living the healthiest lifestyle in the whole wide world. So I started in hotels as a director of catering, and I did it because I was like, Well, I'll do this for a little while until I figure out what I really want to do.
And then, of course, here we are 30 years later and I'm still in the business. So after I was ad director says I'm marketing, most of what I did was open newbuild hotels. I worked for Starwood in Denver, Washington DC and then here in Atlanta where I still live. And I opened a western in the D.C. market in a W here in Atlanta, like one right after another in rapid succession. That is a perfect job for me. Very high adrenaline, like intense, a lot of autonomy, which I really value. And the great financial crisis sort of put an end to people developing ground up, full service hotels. And so I needed to chase that adrenalin rush however I could. So I left and started my company in the spring of 2009.
Hive Marketing. It still is 17 years later, but we originally started out to do it. So do what you do, which is to do social for hotels. I think I was a little early because people were like Facebook who, Twitter or what, and so I worked for hotels and hotel companies, but I also worked for a lot of companies outside the industry. And over time, the business has evolved to what we do now, which is strictly B2B marketing and communications for hospitality companies. What that means in plain English is that rather than helping like an individual hotel come up with ideas to attract new guests, we help hospitality companies like brands, management companies, ownership groups, vendors do marketing strategy that sort of attracts each other versus attracting traveling consumers.
And then for four and a half years, I've been doing the love of my life, which is top floor, a podcast about the business of hospitality, all things hospitality, certainly including hotels, but also restaurants and planes, trains, automobiles. We recently had a company that makes the music that plays and public spaces. Talk about how that impacts hospitality so truly. Like, Wow, every corner of the industry is so fun. It's the love of my life. And I, we were talking about retirement recently and I'm like, I cannot imagine a world in which I retire. Like, that sounds like a punishment to me, not a reward, you know? So we'll see. We'll keep evolving, right? Right. Well, I mean, it's not often that a woman retires in a thirties.
Now, how dare you? It's absolutely true. Early retirement is not for me. I'll wait till I'm at least in my forties to do it. Good, good. Well, as I was getting to obviously you being a a founder of your own company, you were in New York City for the inaugural Female Founders and Hospitality Conference. Yes. Tell us all about that. Oh, my gosh. It was so exciting. And you got me on a great day because I'm still on a high from this event. So three and a half years ago, our founder, Nina Cleveland, was starting her company lanyard and like kind of looking around for groups of women to talk to about like what the experience is like of being a founder and nothing to interrupt.
I mean, you're like the lanyards we wear. Yes. It's affordable corporate housing. And the idea behind the name Lanyard is that when you wear a lanyard, it's a symbol of belonging. And so the idea is that they provide housing that makes workers who are temporary or seasonal or H-2B coming from other countries feel like they belong in the workplace where they live. Yeah. So anyway, she was looking around for groups to join and didn't find anything that made sense for her. And so she was like, Well, I guess I better go ahead and start it. So I was part of the founding, you know, cohort of female founders in hospitality, and we started out meeting once a month over Zoom and just talking about different things that we face as founders, like how do you price and when do you hire employees?
And you know, all of those kinds of things we are now. So that went on very like low key casual for a while. So many people wanted to join us that we are now I want to say around 250 members from 45 states, 25 countries. We have something like 17 or 18 cohorts, maybe 17 and 18. Have it kicked off yet? We added a steering committee, which I'm part of and all this stuff. So it's just like grown and blossomed. And so we finally were like, All right, well, I guess we better do an in-person event. So the steering committee, which includes Nina, me and then three other women, Melissa mayer, who I think, you know, we Gonzalez and Sara murray have been working for the last few months putting this in-person event together.
And we were like, okay, if we have it in New York, eight of our members live in New York. So at least eight people will show up and it turned out we had about 50 members from all over the place and it was an absolutely magical event, was a combination of panels and then sort of peer to peer roundtable discussions. We had a wine tasting, we had a beautiful opening reception at four, a travel. It was a I just I sound crazy probably describing it because I'm like, oh, so great. But it was so great. It was so amazing. It was amazing because so many of these women like, for instance, I'm on the steering committee, I talk to these people like every week I had only met one of them in person until last week.
So like these people that you feel this sort of closeness to and you know, you've become friends over all this time. All of a sudden we're face to face that was electric. It was magical. I love yeah, I love it. And you don't sound crazy. I did go to a women's conference for a client last year doing their social media. And obviously I am not female, but I felt the energy in the room and I was I'm actually jealous because I don't think guys have that. You know, the closest thing we've got is like fantasy football. Yeah, I think that's a close thing. We got like, oh yeah, let's all get in a room and bond, do something, but outside of that doesn't really happen.
Yeah, well, in so many of the industry conferences, women are such a small percentage of the attendees that to be in a room of almost all women is such an unusual situation like it hardly ever happens. So that, I think, adds to it a little bit. It was really exciting and you know, similar experiences and all that. So yeah, so it was very cool. And we have so many unbelievable founders like the companies that are being developed by these members. You know, here I am just offering a little professional services and yapping on my podcast. These people are doing real stuff like building technology and creating, you know, huge companies and magical, amazing products. And you're just like, Whoa, I can't believe it now.
Well, don't don't sell yourself short. You're a dynamo. But all right, that's fantastic. I'm so, so excited for you. I love the idea that how did you develop such a strong, confident voice? Oh, my gosh. Do you think I have a strong confidence? Yes, I do. Do I'm actually a bit jealous. It's why I think it's why I. I gravitate to you so much because I'm like, how do you. I'm very flattered to hear that, because I would say right back atcha and and especially you not only have a confident ways, but you have a Hillary as voice that I try to emulate. I want to be as funny as you are so we can learn years and years of trauma.
I mean, you make me laugh every single day and that is an absolute gift. So thank you. But I would say that there's a few things at play here. I have been doing this for a real, real long time. And so there's certainly just an underlying current of like been there, done that. I'm not scared anymore. But also I don't know if this is going to resonate with you, Calvin, because I don't know if that will make sense. But I think women listening to me may understand what I'm saying throughout your career. You get this like feedback or you read books and it tells you Do this and don't do that and do this and don't do that. And when you do those things or when you don't do those things, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I like okay, here's a great example of this.
I think you and I talked about this on my show. I think men keep people give women the advice all the time. Don't say sorry, don't say the word sorry. Never say sorry like sorry for being late. Instead say thank you for your patience, which is something that I do because I read it in a book. It doesn't matter. People are going to take you for who you are, whether you behave perfectly up to the expectation written in a book or not. So you might as well do the thing that feels comfortable. And but you have to be old, I think, to feel that level of, you know, it definitely does come with age and experience. I will say that and I think I can relate on a level because we have a running joke at my company.
I am currently the only male in my career and I've hired a couple other guys over the years and none of them have worked out. So I, I currently I have a no DTI status in my company when not hiring any other men or any other females. I'm trying to help others. I've tried to be inclusive. I've tried to have diversity. No more devastating. But that's so funny. But I will be honest. I feel like it would be difficult because of what you just said is I realize why women gravitate to me and my company and why they're successful is is my leadership style is one of collaboration. Mm hmm. Every call that we do is. Hey, I want. I want your opinions talk.
I want to hear, because everybody has different experiences. And what we do is creative, where we're trying to reach a bunch of different demographics of people. I don't know them all. Many of our clients and many of our hotel accounts are primarily women on the accounts. It's 60, 70% female. What do I know? Right. I think that's let me ask the ladies, what do you guys I think women appreciate that because that's not that's not typical out there in in our industry and probably in the world in general where, hey, what do you think?
Because and I've seen it with my own eyes in hotels where I'm walking with my VP who's female, and they start asking me questions and I'm like, You need to be talking to her. That you're saying, Yeah, like what? Your assumption that she was just here to take notes or something. You know, if you think about the traveling public, like if we're just talking about sort of the hotel business, the traveling public is made up of all different kinds of people. And so the more types of representation you have when you're creating messaging for the traveling public, the more likely it is that it's going to hit with someone. I have this thing that I am thinking about and I actually think I'm going to do an episode, a solo episode of my show about this. But I don't know, maybe I can test it out on you and you can tell me what you think.
Okay, here's that. Here's my thought process. It may not be super articulate, so be cool, but it is best that when we demand equality for women in the workplace based on women being a certain type of way more collaborative or more nurturing are more this or that or whatever. That's denying the humanity of women and men. Like you said, you're collaborative and you're a man. So collaboration is not the sole purview of women, right? I am not super collaborative. I I'm not what you refer to as a team player. I like to do things by myself, which is why I have my own company. So there is this idea out there that that pops up a lot. You know, you see it on LinkedIn post or whatever, like International Women's Day.
Everybody should promote women because women are nicer. I mean, that's not true. That's not true. Some women are nicer. So in our nicer, everyone is everything. And when you deny the full range of humanity to someone based on their gender or based on their sex, that's where the problem comes in. It's not that we're cutting women out because they're more nurturing. It's that we're not giving everyone the opportunity to fully express their humanity, whether it's as a nurturer or as a stone cold bitch or whatever the case may be. You know what I mean? 100%. And does that sound right to you? Yes. Yes. And I think it ties back to what I was saying, because, you know, that is I've realized, again, with the age and reason and experience, this is just my style, right?
I'm not going to change it because a guy because the couple guys that I have hired, they look at that as they look at that as weak because for some reason we have this toxic masculinity thing where it's like if a guy isn't acting like a complete right, I must be tough all the time. It lets you know who's in charge. You know why I don't have to do that. My name's on the company, right? I don't need to behave like that every single day for you to know that I'm in charge. And if I have to do that just for you to do your job, you're the wrong person. Exac. That's a you problem, not a Calvin problem. So I'm not changing who I am because.
Okay, well, I need to hire a guy, but if I hire a guy, I need to behave and I can behave differently, but I don't want to. Right. And I think that maybe that's where some of this underlying confidence that we were talking about comes from. It's like the realization that people are all different things. And the more you try to force yourself to behave counter to who you really are, the more that comes across as insecure or lack of confidence or something like that, or insincere at a minimum, very much insincere. There's something else to this, too, that's pathetic. I think that's particular, Leigh, pertinent to these times we're living in with I because I like if you're using a large language model to write everything that you write, it's taking the cumulative writing of every person who's ever written something and then given giving you sort of like the mush that that creates.
Not that it's necessarily bad. Plenty of writing is fine, but but it's very like same. And the more that I think, the more that people lean in to their points of view and personalities. Now more than ever, the better off they will be in their careers, because it will be easy to distinguish them from the sort of mashed potatoes that are AI driven like thought leadership articles or posts or whatever the case may be. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you're in marketing. You know, you've got to stand out. You've got to have your own voice in order to, you know, kind of make it and be noticed. It's scary, though. That's a scary thing to do, I think, especially in a industry that's pretty conservative, like hospital quality, like everyone's just nice and hospitable, you know, it's kind of hard to draw a line in the sand and be like, We are for you.
We are not for you. Yeah, yeah. That reminds me very much of a I was at the, the Caribbean hotel conference a year and a half ago. Oh, what was that like? That was cool. That was down in Fort Lauderdale slash Miami. And yeah, there was her name is Christie. She goes by Christie. But that's a very Dutch long name. But but yeah, she runs she runs a hotel in Aruba and she was discussing that exact point where she said they actually in their marketing, they will they say what we are what we are not. And I thought that was so cool and very brave, you know, to your point, because it's like we're not for everybody. If you're looking for, you know, loud music on the beach, we're not for you.
If you're looking for, you know, conga lines around the pool, we're not bringing it, you know, to me. And I was like, this is not the place. This is not the place for you. And I think it's it's but it's such a it's such an important thing to do because we tend to go into this bucket where, oh, we're for everybody. Every hotel is not everybody. And I want everybody. Exactly. But I wonder now with the number of indistinguishable brands there are in the marketplace, what's going to happen with that? Because, you know, I know that the people who create those brands work really hard to try to find the sliver of traveler that they they officially appeal to. But really, the loyalty programs are what appeal to travelers.
I've got more this points. I've got fewer that points. I'm going to always go to this one or whatever. I wonder if we're getting we the industry writ large is getting ourselves into trouble by having these like minuscule slivers of travelers that are meaning less. The things that are working are like glamping RV homestay versus hotel stay like those are those make sense because it's at least related to someone's like purpose of visit why they're doing their thing. But you know there are so many brands that I, I mean, I consider myself an expert and I couldn't tell you what the trends are. It's clean, abundant. These brands are I can tell you, I did some content at Hola early last year and that was one of our we just giving out prizes for trivia questions. Oh, nice.
That's a good idea. One of the one of the questions was how many brands does Hilton have? And I won't name the people, but we asked Hilton and they couldn't answer correctly. Are you serious? Amazing. There were Hilton reps there that didn't know to. How could they that it's impossible to keep them straight, like truly. And also the brands that are like the softer brands, I can't ever remember which ones belong to which parent company, which I think is a little bit problematic because travelers are making their booking decisions based on a loyalty program so much that if you don't know if tribute is Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt or IHG, you're in big trouble.
Yeah, yeah. Which ones do you know to review in the sales? And I think so too. I don't know. Well, we'll have to fact check. Let us know in the comments. Comments? No, I think it raises such a good point, because you can do too much, you know, slithering and breaking it up into markets. And I had had Calvin Stovall on the show recently, and that was something that that we discussed where it kind of it was a light bulb moment for me because I struggled with some of our clients of trying to do unique content things outside of the box.
Yes, we did something with for a luxury hotel, but we did it with a tick topper rating and this is really cool fun reels. And she did a fun dance. He kind of real in the room and the metrics were astronomical. 300 followers within like a week, 50,000 views within, wow, you know, insane. But they didn't like it because it was too juvenile. It's not on brand for them. I'm like, But who decides what's on brand? Like, What are you going to do? Then I kind of feel like I'm an old lady party. I mean, come on right now. Who wants to see that? Right? Yeah, but I kind of feel like your audience will dictate what they want to see. That's kind of a really good point.
Yes. You know, like your social media pages aren't for you. It's not your taste. It's for your audience. Right. But then I would say the question is those 300 new followers, how many of them? But I'm going to say probably not a lot, because they force us to stop doing enough. You know what I mean? I feel like if we had stayed on that trail at least every week or to put something, that's what they came for, right? They're like, oh, wow, this is a all fun hotel. When I'm a young girl in the city, this is what I'm going to be doing on a Friday night. I want to see more of this. And then we're posting about, you know, 303 account pillows and the like we have done for this, you know, and nobody is. I mean, the I you know, this is a good point about all these brands because even the sort of distinguishable luxury brands talk so much about their amenities and their sort of features.
Like we have this, we have this, we have this, the thin slicing of that, who cares? Like you have 300 thread count, we have 350. I'm promise you there is no traveler making a decision based on the thread count of the pillow. They're making a decision on their loyalty program, location and how the brand makes them feel or how they anticipate it's going to make them feel when they're staying there. And I'll tell you what, people are booking luxury hotels if they're not rich because they want to feel rich, they want to feel fancy and excited and getting ready to go out. And a luxury hotel, is that feeling? Yeah. Yeah. And that's got to come across in the in their content. And it doesn't come across because you post, you know, a moody picture of the beach.
Right. Or some face on a coffee table in the world. Is that who cares? Is that do it for me. I have never, never stayed at a hotel or worked at a hotel. Them wow that artwork. Exactly. I should stay here. Now, what would be cool is if the artwork told the greater story of the hotel. So you did an art tour in a real or whatever where you're like, this art is is local. And because we are so focused on the local experience, we picked a local artist, you know what I mean? Like that makes more sense that yeah, if it sells a lot of the people, everybody just listen to us. We should his boss these hotels around exactly this is exactly what I've been saying now you know I don't get it but you know, I think, you know, going back to the original point, it's it's like, well, what what Calvin Stovall said was people are afraid to stand out.
And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, that's that's the issue. It's like we're we're unique, a luxurious hotel, but we want to pose like everyone else. How were you going to stand out in a sea of a city like New York, L.A., any of any big city with this thousands of hotels that people are getting bombarded with content constant with gas, not just hotel content, everything else that they've, you know, curated the algorithm to show them. And we're just going to post the same crap and look, just like every other hotel on your comp set and every hotel in your city. And you think this is going to work somehow, right? It's not a magic trick. It's so funny when I'm making content. So one of the things I do for my clients is we make LinkedIn content for them and I very deliberately like to use sort of flashy, bright colors or like shocking sizes of packs, or do you know what I mean?
Things like that, because the strategy is to stop the scroll so that someone will read your message, your personal taste and a strategic objective are not the same things. Like if you don't like the color teal, that's okay because everything on LinkedIn is cornflower blue. So if I have a bright crazy looking green, that's going to stop the scroll and get somebody to read your message. Alert the food. Exactly. Exactly. I think, you know, you said like $1,000,000 point there. It's people have let their own personal esthetics drive, what, thousands, hundreds of thousands of followers and see or, you know, an audience of, you know, millions out there. I mean, there's millions of people out there that could potentially see your content and you think what you like is what matters the most.
It's just, listen, you make sense. People experience marketing so they think they're an expert on what works. You know, somebody I was talking to, oh, my gosh, I'm not I think it was literally lands I don't know if you know her. She teaches hospitality marketing at Boston University and she has a couple of new books out. She was a guest on my show recently and she talked about the fact that when she's working with students, she frequently has to remind them that they are not the target market. The person who is approving content is not the target audience. Right? They're not your target. So why does their personal taste matter? It doesn't. Mine does. Only my know it's so it's so true. And it's it's it's an obstacle. This is huge out there. And it's like, you know, I find myself at this crossroads. It's like, do I keep trying to fight this fight?
Or you just hopefully you have one or two clients in your portfolio that that get it right. So like, you know, that's where the energy is going to go. You know, it's interesting when I first first started my company, I wanted to do these tests and like do stuff that was crazier than what my clients would let me do. And so I invented a fake client called The Frugal Hostess that was like lifestyle and entertaining blog. I wrote it. I wrote it incognito. She only referred to herself in the third person like it was utter nonsense, but it was so I could test all this stuff and be like, Well, my other client, the frugal hostess, really likes it when we do blah, blah, blah, so that I could show them.
I think that's part of the thing. You have to have case studies or test or some some way to test out which you are able to do with rest problems, don't you think in some degree, like do people see that? And they're like, we got to hire this guy and then you give them something funny and they're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. That's actually happened quite a few times because it's I've had a few people reach out to me for like to do ads or, hey, create some content in your voice and either post problems or make something for us that we can share. And then I'll make it. And they're like, Well, this might offend somebody like you called me All the People program, you called me.
You know, every post I make is probably going to offend someone, and that's how you get them talking. Well, yeah. I mean, it's listen, I've always I've always maintained when it comes to that content, I joke on situations, not on people. And to me, I think that's the difference between my content and a lot of others that have come and gone where it's like, Oh, guests are idiots. You'll never see me pull something like that, right? But what I will say yes will show up at 6 a.m. thinking everyone's ready. Now, if you read that as guests are idiots, that's on you. But that's about it. But that's not right. Right, right. Exactly. Totally. Yeah. No, it's totally true. Don't you wish we could figure out, like, find someone who will just pay us to make the our wildest dreams of content?
Like, did you? I made valentines for the hotel industry, and I mean, they were so stupid and crazy. If someone would pay me to do that, I would work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Like if I could, that is all I would do. It's the most fun thing. Yeah. No, that was amazing. I think you had one. Or maybe this is in my head something like like, hey, are you are you I guess at noon because I want to check you out. Yeah. Those are friends that I shared. At least two or three of them. Oh, that's so nice. What my one of my favorites was. Are you in early check in because you're giving me an extra charge.
That's so silly. Yes, I think I think let's collaborate on those next year. Yes, for sure. Yeah. I love it. What advice would you give to young women that are, you know, maybe getting started in their careers in this industry and others? But it being that it's Women's History Month and we're all about women's empowerment around here, let's give them some advice. I would love to. I'm going to give the advice that I wish I had gotten. There's probably two or three things. The very first one is that doing an amazing job does not equal awards and recognition. Nobody is sitting back in a room waiting to be so recognition on people that are due that are killing it at their jobs.
If you aren't doing some variety of self promotion, you are never going to get the recognition that you deserve. That is not an easy thing to do. And it's not. It was certainly wasn't something that I did early in my career. I wish that I had done more of it and I wish that I had built that muscle so that I wouldn't feel so weird about it. Now is a really important thing to do. Like a good example, are all of these like 40 under 40, 30 under 30. There's no editorial boards sitting back like let's look across the industry and find the very best. If you aren't nominating yourself or having someone nominate you, it's not going to happen. So that's the first one. The second one is for hospitality, folks, specifically.
There are so many freaking cool jobs to do. And if you're working at a hotel right now and you see your path as just one path to either a director, sales, marketing, director, revenue, general manager, just know that if you peek outside of the front doors of your hotel and look around, you will find an almost unlimited number of options that will leverage the skillset that you've built in the hotel, leverage your sort of insider knowledge about how hotels work and can be absolutely fascinating. That is the thing I've learned the most from doing my show, talking to all of these different people, all of these different career paths. It is unlimited. And someone said this on my show and it's very true. I think hotel operators like people who work on property, significantly undervalue the transferability of their skill set. And trust me when I tell you you can go work at a hospitality tech company, you can go work at a real estate company.
There are so many things that you can do, so don't feel like it begins and ends in the lobby. Maybe you want it to, but it doesn't have to. Right, right. I got nothing to add to that. And maybe I'll say one more thing, which is this is so hard. This is hard advice to take. But at the end of the day, to coin a phrase, you will get so much further being exactly who you are, then trying to conform or turn yourself into something that you're not. That doesn't mean like trying to, you know, you should try to like polish up if you're throwing knives in the kitchen. Maybe not that shut off, but for the most part, who you are at your core, lean into that instead of leaning out of that. Yeah. That's that's your superpower. That's what makes you who you are. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely.
100% true. Absolutely. All right. Well, we always wrap up being that this is the socially awkward I love the name of this show. So funny to me. What is your most awkward hotel or travel story pal then? I didn't give a five so many that all revolve around this same scenario, which is waking up in the middle of the night, walking out the front door of your hotel room, thinking that you're going in the bathroom and then locking yourself out of your hotel. I have done this so many times in so many embarrassing scenarios, but I'll tell you the most embarrassing. This was also the first time this happened. I was on a work trip. It was like an internal incentive trip that our general manager had set up for the sales team. We blew our goals out of the water and so we got to go to this ski resort in Steamboat Springs, Colorado for like a couple of nights.
It was so much fun, just like a huge party, great time, whatever. So we had a huge party. One night I lost my glasses. I went to sleep, woke up in the middle of the night. I had to use the bathroom, lock myself out of my room. Also had no glasses on, super confused the way this resort was laid out. It wasn't like one big tower. It was like clusters of buildings that had the different hotel rooms. And so I would have had to go outside in the snow to go to the front desk to get a key to my room. That is an important point, because there was no way in hell I was doing that in my pajamas with no glasses on in the middle of the night.
So what had happened was instead I curled up on top of a coffee table in the elevator landing of that building and went to sleep and woke up the next morning to the sound of families clamping down the hallway in ski boots while my dumb ass is curled up asleep while the coffee table and I was outraged by them. I remember waking up and looking at them like giving them all this side eye dirty look like how dare you wake me up, crawling back up and going back to sleep for a while until I realized that perhaps I should get up and get out of the public area. My boss never found out that I did that. Thank God.
Maybe I'll send him this now so that he can know what the real story was behind the shenanigans of that weekend. So much bad behavior, but mine. Thanks only remains a secret until now. We're going to said this directly to him. So terrible. I can remember the feeling of like, where are these people doing? Why are they so loud? I'm trying to sleep really, really stupid. Oh, man. I would love to see the TripAdvisor reviews from that week. Yeah, I wonder if that got back to, like, the hotel gym or anything. Oh, I would I would venture to say yes. I mean, at very least, the very least, the guy in this security office had a good laugh looking at the cameras like I imagine there is like a some you know, it's scraggly, a hotel.
You're out there telling her grandchildren this story. Like one time we had a guest who thought she should sleep on the coffee table. It was me, ladies and gentlemen. It was me that made my, you see, like the old lady on the walker saying something like that. And I was like, Yeah, Grandma, let's get you to bed. It happened and it absolutely happened. I love it that that is a very, very high note for us. And thank you so much for having me. This is really fun, of course, but always a pleasure. Always a pleasure to talk to you. You know, you're one of my favorites. Yeah, lots of knowledge, lots of laughs, which is what we strive for here on the show.
So let everyone know where they can find you. Well, V, my favorite place to hang out is on LinkedIn and I'm Susan Barre on LinkedIn and then top floor can be found on any place you like to listen and top floor podcast dot com fantastic. And you can catch me on those LinkedIn streets as well. Most likely commenting on one of Susan's posts. All right, guys, we're going to wrap it up there. We'll see you on the next one.
