Is Anything Real?

[00:05.8]
Here's a myth that's everywhere in business, and hospitality just makes it obvious. If we perfect the product, the people part will take care of itself. Well, that's actually not it. The product is the output. The people are the operating system.

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Today we're going to talk about what's real in leadership when your business is literally humans taking care of humans. Welcome back to "Is Anything Real?", the reality-first leadership show, where we test advice, publish the receipts, and ship what works under constraint.

[00:39.1]
I'm Adam W. Barney, transition leadership coach, author, and the host here today. Today's guest is Noah Ellis, CEO of Ofland Escalante, a hospitality brand reimagining what vacation can be when it's built on human connection, not just aesthetics.

[00:58.4]
Noah's path is way wider than most people expect, also: chef world Bellagio, Michael Mina, consulting, building something new in a category that's basically leadership with the volume turned to 11.

[01:13.4]
Noah, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. You got it. All right, first question. You said something I can't stop thinking about. Everything matters, but nothing matters. What does that mean, without sounding like a fortune cookie?

[01:29.5]
Well said. You know, I think in hospitality especially, when you're thinking about product, which, to your point, you know, the physical product, the guest experience, is the output, is people tend to fixate on all of the little details.

[01:46.7]
You know, is there a comma here? Is the toilet paper folded in this way? What does this bathroom smell like? And the reality is that individually, each of those details doesn't really matter. You know, it's sort of. You get that Pareto Principle, which is 80% of the people use 20% of the product.

[02:04.6]
Counterargument to that is, each person's 20% tends to be a different 20%, but any one of those things tends not to matter. So fixating on the one that is, you know, your golden cow or, you know, the thing that matters most to you, I think can, be a little bit of an errant strategy.

[02:24.3]
That said, if you have no details, no nice touches, and everything is just very function over form, you're basically running a hospital, but, you know, even somehow even less interesting. So I think there's this real dichotomy between worrying about all the details and all the little things because they do matter.

[02:42.3]
But at any given moment, one of them likely isn't the difference between a great and a terrible experience. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, what would you say in that is the lie that leaders believe in hospitality, and honestly, in most businesses, is sort of the myth here today?

[03:01.8]
Is that the question? Yeah, yeah. Is it like, product is everything? You know, details more than fundamentals, great services, personality, not training, you know, where might you want to go there? Yeah. I think at a high level, it is definitely a myth, right?

[03:19.3]
I mean, I, you know, I think people kind of miss fundamentals and foundationals, right? You had all the Steve Jobs wannabes who are wearing the black turtleneck and obsessed with like, the color palette on the website, but forgetting that, you know, this guy looked at absolutely everything and was a genius strategist and, you know, was thinking decades ahead of what would be used.

[03:41.7]
Right. It's very easy to look at the soft stuff. You know, I had a lot of restaurant consulting clients and I always called it like, picking out the teaspoons. Right. Like, you'd be sitting with someone who's not a restaurant person, and I would help them be working on their concept and they would be obsessing over the spoon or the color, the napkin or the one thing.

[04:00.0]
And it's like, that's the fun stuff, and it matters, but, you know, big but, right? That's not why people are going to eat here or not eat here. You know, hospitality, I think, is especially problematic because it's, it's fun, right? You get to host, and everyone has stayed in hotels, and everyone has eaten in restaurants.

[04:18.7]
You know, I don't think a lot of people are talking to like, a software designer and really looking at, like, how they write code. Right? That's not as interesting, but like, everyone has a thought on, like, what, you know, how the new iPhone should be designed or feel. Yep, yep.

[04:34.0]
So, I mean, I guess back in the hospitality lens, so people worship the spoons while the toilets, let's say, are losing the war. Yeah, exactly, right? I mean, someone's got to clean toilet, in a hotel, someone has to clean toilets, someone has to make beds, someone's got to cut onions for the burgers.

[04:52.1]
You know, I mean, it's a lot of physical nitty-gritty work that often has a larger impact on the guest. Or, you know, a better version of it might be you obsess and maybe script the check-in language at the front desk.

[05:10.6]
And, you know, there's still a human delivering that and the human still needs to be smiling. So even if contextually the language is perfect, if the human's not smiling or they feel very robotic, you know, you might be winning the battle, but you're losing the war.

[05:26.3]
Or maybe a guest comes in, and they're just exhausted, and they want to get to their room, and you start giving them, you know, the war and peace version of, like, how the hotel works. It's a little tone deaf. You're missing the game, right? Like, we're here to take care of people.

[05:42.2]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you know, let's debunk it then. If the myth is product over people, what's the actual truth there? I think, you know, you've got to take care. And I used to be very much a product guy, or product was the engine.

[05:59.1]
So I, you know, I'll call myself a slightly reformed sinner in this case. But I think you just have to look at it, and it's, you know, it's an interesting business in which most businesses, right.

[06:16.0]
It's sort of people managing or doing a task or doing a thing, right? Like, you're fixing a car, or you're stocking groceries or, you know, writing software code. And the interesting thing with us is, like, there's people on both sides of the ball, so we've got these two contingents of people.

[06:32.7]
And really what we're doing is we're just trying to make our guests and our staff happy, right? And the staff makes the team, makes the guests happy. And I think, like, if you solve for that, everything becomes a lot simpler. You know, I think a lot of people are worried about theft or overspending or, you know, I think, like, famously, Ritz Carlton, I want to say, had the $2,000 rule where, you know, any staff, any team member could make any decision to take care of a guest if it cost $2,000 or less, right?

[07:03.7]
I don't know if that's real or apocryphal, but it's a great rule, right? Or there's, like, the Nordstrom's tire story. I don't know if you ever heard that. My dad used to tell it to me. I don't think it's real, but someone showed up with a bunch of tires to Nordstrom's, which, back in the day, didn't sell tires, and Nordstrom's accepted the return and, you know, paid the person.

[07:22.4]
You know, but get guest happiness, guest satisfaction, making humans happy at all sort of costs, I think, is the thing, right? Like, sure, you comp a room, you comp a stay. Maybe it's a thousand, a couple thousand dollars, but, like, you make that person happy, and you probably have a guest for life.

[07:40.8]
They're probably going to tell their friends, but kind of more importantly, like, it feels really good. You just took care of a human. You don't know where anyone is at any point in their day or their trip or their life. And the small little gestures you can do, you know, especially when someone's, like, gearing up for the fight or they didn't want to ask or complain or tell you that something's wrong.

[08:01.1]
So, you know, the more proactive you can be and the easier you can make it for people to be happy. I think you win. And I think that matters a lot more than a nicer uniform, branded merchandise, cooler website, a better logo, all the fun stuff that, like, we love to do.

[08:17.3]
But sometimes, like, the hard thing is swallow your ego, apologize, and just make things right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, this, I think, gets into a broader leadership understanding where most leaders don't have a taste problem, they actually have a fundamentals problem. Right.

[08:33.9]
You also said something critical. You know, your teams are younger, 22, 23, and many haven't lived luxury hospitality as guests. So I think that's a great example, though, of where you can't teach standards by just saying you do it.

[08:49.5]
You have to bring the mountain to them. Yeah. And storytelling is a really great way to do it. You know, we use the what if your partner, what if your mom, what if your grandmother stayed? Like, how would this make you feel if, you know, they stepped in the shower, and the knob fell off, or there was a hair on the bed, or fill in the blank.

[09:07.3]
Right. I mean, and you sort of can do it to, you know, you can sort of do it on the negative side, so we kind of miss those. Or you can do it on the positive side. Like, if your mom were coming and you could have anything in the room for her, waiting for her, what would it be? Right. Is it the T-shirt that matters more or is it the really nice, handwritten, thoughtful card?

[09:26.2]
Right. You're right. Like, they, you know, if you haven't experienced what it's like to stay at the Mandarin Oriental in Hyde Park in London, you're not going to understand that touch. And there's nothing we can do about that. We're also not trying to put out that product.

[09:42.3]
We're trying to make people happy. And like, every day, though, we have people in our lives, our, you know, boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, coworkers, mom, dad, sister, brother, kids, whatever it is, that we have to make happy. Or we don't have to, but we get to.

[09:58.8]
And we know what it feels like. And we know what it feels like when someone does something nice for us. So it's a little bit of sort of storytelling and putting together analogies and just making them, like, take a beat. And it's like, you know, you're not just putting sheets on a bed to make it right. Like, someone drove, in our case, five hours at least, and now they're here, and they're tired, and they're going to sit down on the bed, and the last thing you want is that, like, profound disappointment where there's like, a hair in it and now they're thinking about everyone else who slept there in the past.

[10:27.4]
Right. How would it make you feel? Or how would it make your mom feel? Is like a good lens that I like to use, you know, for myself. It also lets you abandon a lot of things. Like, oh, my mom probably wouldn't care about, you know, if someone's wearing a tie, if it's a full Windsor or half Windsor.

[10:45.2]
Right. I mean, we don't wear ties. I haven't in decades, but the example stands. Wow. And I think that that actually gets to this idea that empathy isn't softness. Right. It's accuracy. And if you don't understand someone's reality, you really can't lead them out of it.

[11:02.7]
You know, you also had one of my favorite lines I've heard in the last few months. The fool repeats his mistakes. The smart man learns from his own. The wise man learns from others. And I'm closer to the fool end sometimes. Give us one mistake he made that now makes you laugh, but at the time was actually truly painful.

[11:25.0]
Yeah, I'm definitely. If there's something further left than the fool end on that spectrum, I think that's kind of where. That's kind of where I am.

[11:36.5]
A concrete one is probably hard and embarrassing. It tends to be on guest satisfaction issues. Right. Like. Or, you know, service recovery, I guess you'd say, where someone makes a mistake. And it took me a long time to figure out the difference between being right and winning, you know, and like winning the war, not the battle.

[11:56.2]
Right. I mean, I think, you know, there were so many times where in the beginning, I would just argue with the guest and try to be right and justify myself. And then eventually I would sort of apologize, comma, all caps. But, here's why I was right and you were wrong.

[12:11.7]
And, you know, now at this point, I've really learned, like, they feel a certain way. Our job is to make happy. That's it. Full stop. Like, we just need to apologize and say, you know, I'm so sorry. Not, I'm sorry you feel this way.

[12:27.9]
Not I'm sorry I made you right. No, hedging. I'm so sorry. Let me make this right for you. Let me fix this. You know, and over the, from, let's say, 20 to dating myself, 42 now, like, it's been a, a lot of that evolution's happened in the last few years, let's just say that, right.

[12:46.8]
A lot more. It has not been like a linear progression. That Noah gets into how I think, you know, I think you'd probably share the perspective here that hospitality will humble you faster than any MBA. Right. And, you know, I love how you're talking about what actually changes when you prioritize the human operating system first.

[13:08.7]
Right. I think that leads to, you know, not just fewer guest complaints, faster resolution time, less attrition, pain, more proactive service moments, repeat visitors, strong reviews, and, you know, maybe even that advantage of cleaner rooms, tighter turnover and, you know, building that team confidence and ownership.

[13:31.5]
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and the team is the same way. Right? I mean, to your point, it's empathy is not softness. Right. It's accuracy. I love that. I'm definitely going to steal that. But, just understand, you know, where your guests come from. Understand where your team is coming from.

[13:48.4]
You know, it doesn't mean, like, not every.

[13:54.5]
A lot of people don't wake up and necessarily look forward to the hardest part of their jobs. It doesn't mean they don't love their work, and their job, and the people they're with, but they don't look forward to the hardest parts of their job. And I think you've got to understand that. You have to give them the tools, make sure the tools are always working, understand who needs to be pushed, how hard you can push them, when you're pushing too hard and you need to give people a step back.

[14:17.7]
I think that's why understanding what matters, which details do and don't matter in the moment is so important because you can't have 10 first priorities. You get exactly one. And then one second priority. One third priority. And I think being able to go to your team and say, look, this is really hard.

[14:34.2]
We work hard here. This is going to be a tough job. Today is going to be a hard day. Here's the first priority. We're going to make humans happy. Here's the second priority. Right. Here's the third. Here's the fourth. Like, let's get after it. I think that really helps. I think we all feel when people are being genuinely empathetic with us and making the effort and expending the energy to be empathetic, and I think that makes a huge difference in how we perform.

[15:02.2]
Right, right, Right. You know, I would also say add here that brand isn't what you say online. Brand is what your team actually does when no one is watching. Right. Oh, a thousand percent. You know, I think brand is one of those, like, really dangerous things where every, you know, it's fun.

[15:19.7]
You sit there, and you pick the font and the color and, you know, the tagline, and you're, you know, a bunch of people in black turtlenecks around a room, you know, and like, they get to, like, be the very creative, slick people, and it's like, nobody cares. Right? I mean, like, it doesn't matter if you can have what could be perceived as, like, an idiotic name or website or whatever, and if the product and experience is great, it catches, and you could have the most brilliant story in the world.

[15:48.4]
And if the product sucks, like, it's not going to matter. You know, you shouldn't have to explain it. It's not incumbent on your guests to listen to who you are to figure out why you chose the name, or why you chose the color, the logo, or the tagline. Right.

[16:03.7]
It's very much just like, give them a great product and everything else. If they have a great time and they're happy and they love you, everything's going to work itself out for the most part. Right, Right. All right. This is fantastic. I've sort of been thinking about one move that listeners could run this week in sort of an EnergyOS system move.

[16:24.9]
Noah, I was going to call it, Vegetables Before Dessert Audit. Right. It would start probably with pick one recurring experience in your business, whether it's a guest, customer, client, or employee, and just answer five simple questions, right?

[16:44.0]
First being, what's the core promise in one sentence? Second being, what are the vegetables that must be cooked flawlessly every time? And three at the max. Maybe asking, where are we doing luxury theater instead of the fundamentals that you were covering here?

[17:01.9]
And that's one bullet. What's one place we're confusing effort with impact? And then finally, what's one story we can tell the team that makes the standard measurable? And then, you know, maybe do a 10-minute line walk with your team and ask one question.

[17:18.1]
Where does the guest's reality break from our reality? And tell them that gap is your work. But, you know, what's the number one, let's say vegetable most leaders skip, and it ends up actually costing them everything? I mean, I think the, you know, your real question is great, which is, where does our reality break with our guests' or customers' reality?

[17:40.6]
I think that probably nails it more than anything because, you know, you could point to any number of fundamentals, and I think it's on a leader-by-leader basis. They don't schedule well, they don't give their team the tools. You know, they're fixated on administration or marketing or something that's, you know, I mean, everybody's heart is different, right?

[17:59.6]
For some people, it's like they love, like, when things get tough, they don't want to sit at a computer. They just want to immerse themselves in the physicality of the job. Or, for others, it's the opposite. Or they want to go talk to people instead of talking to the staff. Or some love dealing with the staff, but not the guests. So I think that audit is so critical because, you know, for me, right, it's like, you got to eat your vegetables before you get to dessert.

[18:21.2]
And my question is, what is the thing I want to do least right now? And that's like, that's my vegetable in the moment, right? And I think really asking that is so big. But to your point, right, the ultimate is how does this, you know, before you get to have and choose fun things and, you know, you get to pick the teaspoons or work on the playlist.

[18:39.6]
You should probably be understanding, like, where do we diverge from our guests in terms of our understanding what's happening? Right, right, right, right. You know, you know, that's incredibly impactful here.

[18:56.0]
But, Noah, after everything we just talked about in terms of hospitality and guests and making business work, is anything actually real? Is anything real? I mean, I'd answer, you know, I take it full circle. Right. Nothing is real, but simultaneously, everything is real.

[19:13.9]
Right. Nothing matters, but everything matters. I think, like, that's the reality of life and, you know, that's the reality of kind of what we do. Right. Like, you don't know in the moment what's going to matter. Right. Both to yourself and certainly not to other people.

[19:29.7]
And it's always shocking how the biggest things maybe don't. So nothing's real. And it's always shocking how maybe the smallest things really can matter. So, you know, maybe everything is real. Yeah. And, you know, from our conversation today, I would say what's real is, you know, hospitality is not a product business.

[19:48.0]
It's a human business. And actually, leadership more broadly is just the way you treat people when the pressure spikes, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, I think you nailed it. Right? I mean, hospitality is people taking care of people.

[20:05.2]
That's the game. Exactly. All right, Noah, where can people find Ofland, follow you, and book a stay at such a, I mean, talk about a beautiful place in the world to go visit, especially as we're dealing with the heat here in Boston at this time.

[20:21.5]
Yeah. So, ofland.com ofland.com or on Instagram. And everything looks good on Instagram, but I think we look pretty great on Instagram too, @oflandhotels is our handle @oflandhotels.

[20:36.9]
And we'll, of course, link to those in the show notes below. But, you know, I would say, for anyone listening, I would challenge them, you know, to say if you know a leader who's obsessing over the spoons while the fundamentals are on fire, the rest of the kitchen is on fire.

[20:53.1]
Send them this episode. And if you're leading through transition and would like a reality-first reset, there's a 20-minute foundational call with me linked in the show notes below as well. No pitch, just space to choose the next move. But until next time, proof over performance, and ship what works.

[21:11.4]
But, Noah, thank you for joining today. This was fantastic. Thanks for having me, Adam.