Transcript: Episode 263: 3AM Coffee Thief

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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor, episode 263. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/263.

[00:00:13] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now, your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.

[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Before Adam Arnold ever thought about running a hotel, he spent his career as a small business technology consultant, helping other people's businesses run better. Then a pandemic, four kids, and a long-standing, slightly weird fascination with the abandoned-looking motels of the American West sent Adam and his oldest son on a research road trip from Denver to Phoenix, scouting properties the old-fashioned way. That trip ended with a roadside motel near Colorado's Royal Gorge, which Adam and his wife, Cara, have turned into an intentionally small, wildly distinctive property built around mountain views, patio doors, zero TVs, and a whole lot of decisions other operators probably wouldn't make. Along the way, he has weathered a supply chain nightmare, a building-destroying accident, and a very memorable Google review. Today, we are going to talk about building a boutique motel on your own terms, but before we jump in, we need to answer the call button.

Call button rings…

The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals who have burning questions. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at 850-404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Rory. Rory asks, oh, this is such a good question because I think people used to know the answer, but I don't think people know the answer anymore. What is the difference between a hotel and a motel? Adam, what's the difference? 

[00:02:29] Adam Arnold: Oh, okay. Great question. This will be a theme for answers from me in that I will tell you I'm not qualified to answer that question, but I'll go ahead and answer it anyways. 

[00:02:41] Susan Barry: Well, that's why you're here, because of your lack of qualifications. 

[00:02:44] Adam Arnold: That's right. That's right. So, I think traditionally a motel has doors that open out into the road. So, like the traditional roadside motel was built alongside the road, so it would be accessible from a door that opens to the outdoors. And so,  that's kind of the big difference. I think hotels essentially have corridors or have lobbies you go into, and that's how you access your rooms. That's probably the big distinction I would lay out between the two.  For us, we kind of took that idea and then said, "All right, let's go out back too." So now we have two doors, almost like a Florida condo. 

[00:03:20] Susan Barry: Interesting. I think there's something about the motor hotel part of it too. Motels were made so that you could drive to them. They were sort of like the advent of the great American road trip or whatever. So people would drive on vacation and then pull their car up to the front door of their guest room, walk on in, something like that. I don't know if that's still true. Do most people drive to your motel, or do they get picked up by a shuttle or, I don't know, kayak in? 

[00:03:52] Adam Arnold: No, definitely drive. I think,  just based on our location, we're pretty rural and remote even though we're on the highway. The only way you're gonna get to us is via a car or, well, actually, that's not true. We do have people who bike. We've had several people who bike here.  There's a pretty common bike route. I think that US 50 runs east to west, and we're on US Highway 50, so we have had people on that bike race, bike trek from west to east. 

[00:04:22] Susan Barry: Oh, wow. That is not something that I am ever planning to do. 

[00:04:26] Adam Arnold: They're definitely tired when they show up. 

[00:04:29] Susan Barry: And probably mad and hungry. Well, long before consulting, motels ever entered the picture for you, you spent some time working in restaurants. What did that experience teach you about the difference between doing a job well and actually making someone feel welcome?

[00:04:51] Adam Arnold: Yeah, I think, for me, those restaurant jobs were some of my early first jobs even before adulthood and into adulthood. And so, things like I worked as a busboy in a pizza restaurant, and I worked as a busboy in a seafood restaurant, and I worked as a host for Outback Steakhouse for a very short amount of time, and I got in a lot of trouble for answering the phone, "G'day, mate," with an Australian accent.

[00:05:16] Susan Barry: You got in trouble? They didn't encourage that? 

[00:05:18] Adam Arnold: It wasn't good. Oh. It was a bad accent. It was bad. As my kids will tell you, many of my accents are. So, one of the things I think I learned during that time period that's most important is essentially providing that sort of hospitality. Folks are gonna come in with their own baggage into a restaurant, into any environment, and what I learned is how impactful you could be in somebody's day by providing genuine hospitality. And let them come in with their baggage, let them set their baggage down and enjoy themselves, but be real careful not to pick up their baggage. Make sure they take it with them when they go. 

[00:05:58] Susan Barry: Well, you're in hospitality now, but you also remain a small business technology consultant. What is that job? What do you do on a day-to-day basis? 

[00:06:11] Adam Arnold: We're essentially helping them guide their businesses through technology solutions. So we're evaluating how they're working today. We're evaluating how they can work tomorrow. We're trying to help them change their processes from what they do today, 'cause, in short, a lot of processes for the way you work today are built around technology that existed yesterday. And so what we are essentially saying is, "Hey, you do this today, but you don't have to do it this way. There are technologies that exist that can help you do that better." And so some of those conversations or phone calls I'm having with clients, sometimes I'm heading back to Tennessee, and Kara and the boys are manning the motel. And sometimes they're just strategy meetings with our clients to talk about what we can do better for them. We have a managed services division, we have a consulting division, and we have a team that does cybersecurity, so all of those components are kind of blended into what we're doing. 

[00:07:06] Susan Barry: So does that work influence your motel and sort of hospitality efforts, or is the motel an escape from that work, or vice versa maybe?

[00:07:19] Adam Arnold: That's really interesting. So I love helping people. That is just something that hits to my core. I think that one of the things I've learned from my existing job is that hospitality is not just a business vertical.  Hospitality is an aspect of life. What we're doing at Keystone is essentially building relationships and working with clients. One of the things I often say is, "Let's be real people together first, and then we can solve real problems together." And I think, going back to your question of is one an escape or for the other, yes. So the answer is yes to both at times. So, sometimes it's really nice to go hang out with a guest and share a drink on the patio, and sometimes it's nice to just dive into some data for the day job. And sometimes it's nice to dive into some data for the motel, too. It just kind of depends. And so there's enough flavor difference between the two that I can kind of put one hat on and put another hat on, and it doesn't feel like too much of a stretch in terms of what I'm doing between the two because, for me, at the core, it's essentially providing hospitality. And then also, essentially helping people, which are two things that I like to do in general. I've seen the businesses that take that concept of hospitality from the top down be the most successful. They have the most rewarding and engaging relationships with their clients and their employees, which just factors into more happiness. 

[00:09:00] Susan Barry: Something that I know makes you happy, old motels. What do you like about them? What was the sort of thing that, I don't know, got you searching for one to buy? 

[00:09:12] Adam Arnold: Yeah, so we had been traveling out west as a family,  several summers prior to this, where I would work remotely, and we would take the boys hiking. 

[00:09:21] Susan Barry: Wait, are all four of your children boys?

[00:09:24] Adam Arnold: Yes, yes. Four boys. 

[00:09:25] Susan Barry: Whoa. So not just four kids, but four boy kids. That's 1,000 boys. 

[00:09:32] Adam Arnold: It's a lot of boys. Yeah, it's wild. And they're pretty rowdy. So, we would take them out west. We would go hiking, and I think one of the things we would see as we were kind of going, I would be like, "Hey, look at that." Of course, everybody's doing their own thing, but, "Look at that building. Like, what is that doing there?" Yeah. "That's a weird motel in the middle of nowhere." And I think a lot of these, especially Western motels, are kind of in these distinct locations that are super unique. The architecture is almost always unique in some aspect to that building. And you can tell there's passion that's been poured into this at one point, but they're also part of the community. So, not all of them, but many of them are essentially kind of intertwined into their community, so they're named in some way based on the community, or they're designed some way based on the geography of where they are. And so, we've actually stayed at lots of our friends' places, and there's always something unique about each one of them that they've kind of captured, and then also have engaged deeply in their communities. So if I can name a couple here real quick, for instance, Kendra, who owns the Reclaimed Motel in Red Hook, she's kind of created this unique blend between outdoor and reclaimed space in this super kind of forgotten spot in Red Hook. And then Mira and Brian, who own The Blue Ridge in Boone, they're actually on the National Historic Register, and they've done, like, a complete period restoration, and it's amazing. And when all the floods happened in North Carolina, they were, like, open their place up for the community. They're, like, such great people. And Sally at the Mesa Verde, she's built, like, this super funky, cool place that kind of captures the vibe of Mesa Verde, and they're tightly ingrained in their community. And for us, just speaking about our property, we have this motel that looks like it's in the middle of nowhere when you drive up to it, and some days we feel like we are. And we have mountain views all around us. And we've been really tightly integrated in our community. I mean, when something happened to our niece, Haley, when she was killed in the school shooting, everybody showed up. And when somebody drove into the side of our building, back in October, the community showed up to help us paint a mural on the side so it doesn't look so atrocious. And so these are things, like, we give to the community, and they give to us. So to kind of bring this back full circle, it's this distinctiveness about the motel, the distinctiveness about the property, but then, like, almost all of them have some tight integration into the community. 

[00:12:23] Susan Barry: What's the name of your motel?

[00:12:25] Adam Arnold: The Little Canyon Inn. 

[00:12:26] Susan Barry: You went on a basically road trip with your eldest son to try to find a motel to buy. Now, was this you were seriously gonna like, looking for the one to buy, or was that just an excuse to go on a trip? 

[00:12:46] Adam Arnold: Man, that would've been a great excuse to go on a trip. I wish I could go back in time and do it again. I will say this, my oldest slept, and I drove. That was pretty much the road trip. No, we were basically full in on this. We've decided we wanted to make this transition to the American West. We wanted to get the boys involved in running a small business, and we wanted to really live a different lifestyle. And so, kind of where we started essentially was looking for old listings. We focused a lot on expired listings. A lot of investors will tell you that the best deals and best properties aren't gonna be on the market, they're gonna be off the market. And so that's kind of where we leaned into. We had a checklist of what properties we would get and what we'd be looking for, and a lot of them would mark themselves off our spreadsheet just the second we pulled up. We'd say, "Oh, no. This doesn't work at all."

[00:13:46] Susan Barry: Like, what were some of the deal breakers? 

[00:13:48] Adam Arnold: Locations were weird. Disrepair of the buildings. The buildings were in worse shape than we understood. The vibes of the community were off. You could just kind of tell when you come up to some places. 

[00:14:01] Susan Barry: Someone's chasing you with an ax, like that kind of.

[00:14:02] Adam Arnold: Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not as big as you thought it would be. So some of these communities we hadn't been to before.  And we were totally okay with a smaller community, but there were some, like, "How far away is the grocery store? Oh, two and a half hours is a bit far.” So, some of them were very remote locations, and we were trying to figure out that right mix. So this property actually wasn't our first choice. We had originally tried to get some property in southern Utah, in Bryce Canyon National Park.  And we actually offered, and it was a weird time during COVID when you would offer on a property, and they would be like, "Well, actually, I decided I want 20% more." So, that didn't work out, and then this was kind of our fallback on the property. And Cara, my oldest, was like, "Dad, this place needs a ton of work," and we almost didn't choose it. It almost went off the list because the property needed so much work out of the gate.  And as a lot of these properties do. They need work. 

[00:15:03] Susan Barry: What were some of the things that you did like about it? Like, what got it on your list in the first place? 

[00:15:09] Adam Arnold: Yeah, absolutely. So, the view actually captured us immediately. I mean, when you come up to our property, the view is essentially, that's everything. And so for me, when I saw it, Jack, of course, was like, "Dad, Mom's not gonna like this place." And I was like, "Mom's gonna love it." And he's like, "No, she's not." And he was right. Yeah. No, he was right. She didn't. We're still married. And the one thing I'll say about my wife, Cara, is that she's not on this podcast right now, but she is like the glitz and glam of the property, so all the tiny details that are executed really, really well. Like, she kind of said, "Oh, these tiny brass spoons would be amazing," and people love the brass spoons. And so all these, like, delicate touches Cara kind of interwove. But, looking at it, the view is incredible. It had the ability to house our family. I don't know how much you know about some of these owner's quarters for hospitality properties in these sort of remote places are atrociously bad.

[00:16:15] Susan Barry: Yeah, it's usually like just barely bigger than a guest room, right? 

[00:16:19] Adam Arnold: Right. It's generally like a one-bedroom apartment.  And it's a little like a two/three-bedroom house. And it was enough space for us. It had a big room overlooking the mountains. It all needed work, but there was potential there. And so what we liked about it is we had these expansive views, and I immediately said, "I mean, this would be incredible if we put back patios on all the rooms." The back wasn't being used. It kind of had some debris and some old tires out on the back of the property. So, a lot of cleaning up on the grounds of the property. But ultimately, that's kind of what captured our eye about this property, is that it can house us. It's not too big. We didn't want anything over eight units, and this was about four, so it worked really well for what we were looking for. 

[00:17:05] Susan Barry: One for each son to clean. 

[00:17:07] Adam Arnold: That's right. Yep, that's right. Get after it. So, that was ultimately one of the deciding factors for us. Among other things, but we kind of went with the idea that it was close enough to back home should we need to get back home, but still accessible to cities and airports, and really hiking, mountain biking, and rafting are some of the biggest draws in our area. I mean, I think I saw the Arkansas as one of the most rafted rivers in America, and the put-in is about a two-minute drive from our place. So, there are a lot of outdoor rec things that check boxes for us there. 

[00:17:46] Susan Barry: I have a sense that you made a lot of decisions based on your sort of gut or what felt right for you versus like, I don't know, doing a big market study of how does the hospitality industry work in this neck of the woods, like that kind of thing. Am I right about that? 

[00:18:05] Adam Arnold: Yes. I feel personally attacked. 

[00:18:12] Susan Barry: You should. I mean, listen, I absolutely don't intend it to be that way, but I'm curious about what are some of the things that you maybe look back and think, "Had I gotten some advice, I might not have made that mistake." Or on the flip side, what are some things that you're like, "Look, it doesn't matter if 85 people told me to do X, I'm always doing Y."

[00:18:39] Adam Arnold: So I can kind of answer those questions all together here. One is, I think, for us it was easy to do things differently because we didn't know what we were doing. So, we're essentially I'm unqualified to be on this podcast. I'm unqualified to own a hospitality property. And I think that owning that, and to be honest, we even have a placard in our room that we put out in the initial setting that said, "Hey, listen, we have no idea what we're doing. If you think we're doing a bad job, let us know and we'll, we'll make it right." I mean, we just owned it. 

[00:19:21] Susan Barry: Which I bet made your guests fall in love, right?

[00:19:24] Adam Arnold: I think for some people, yes. But then you have some people who are like, "I do have some ideas." Oh, God. "Here's your long list." But I will say this. One thing that we knew, and Kara and I both agreed on, was that traditional lodging was already a captured market. So, corporations,  venture capital firms, investment firms that are doing hospitality, they have systemized it in a way that can create a very consistent experience. So we just basically said, we can't compete there anyways, even if we wanted to, we're not gonna be able to deliver that. But what we can deliver is what we know is a unique experience, and we can do that really well. And so we kind of leaned into our authenticity, we leaned into our properties that weird blend between short-term rental and traditional lodging. I'm sitting here in the office. If you need something, you wanna chat about something, generally I can come out and say hello. I say hi to guests. "How was your stay? That's great. Good to see you." From that perspective, we felt pretty true to ourselves diving into that, so one of the things for us too is kind of going back to things that we did differently that feel true is you've mentioned the no TVs. That was a hard thing to do.

[00:20:46] Susan Barry: Especially you probably have a TV in your house, don't you? Well, are your guests, like, banging on the door, "I need to see what's happening on The Real Housewives"? 

[00:20:53] Adam Arnold: We didn't have one for years. We have one now. And so for people in traditional hospitality, they're like, "What, what is going on? Why are you doing that?" So part of the reason why we did this is a couplefold. One is, you can get a TV anywhere. Most hotel rooms provide a TV. They don't provide what we offer. And that is an expansive patio view out of a weirdly unique boutique motel. And we kind of say, at one point I used to call it the motel mullet. So you kind of pull up, and our place is intentionally very kind of basic on the front, and then it blows up out the back. So, basic in the party. What is it? Business in the front, party in the back. 

[00:21:38] Susan Barry: Yes. That's awesome.

[00:21:40] Adam Arnold: So anyways, so we kind of said, "Listen, you can get that wherever. Why are we gonna try to compete in this landscape again? We're not doing it." And I think, too, if I provide you a TV, you're gonna want a particular channel. You're gonna want to be able to view a particular show, and it's gonna be hard for us to manage that constantly. 

[00:22:05] Susan Barry: It sort of increases the surface area for defects, right? 

[00:22:08] Adam Arnold: I think the surface, that's a really, really important thing you just touched on, and I think you phrased that really well. The surface area, for me, I like to reduce that. So, in my day job, we call that attack surface for our clients. But essentially, in hospitality, I wanna reduce that surface,  surface area for problems. And so TVs are one of them. And we just kind of try to manage those expectations, but we have lost guests because of the TV. They've come up and said, "No TV,  I cannot stay here." And I'm like, "Hey, totally get that. And you know what the weird part is? I totally understand where you're coming from." "And I totally get it, and this is not the place for you, and that's totally fine. I know three places that are run by really good people down in town. You should go stay there. They've got great TVs, and you'll love it."

[00:23:01] Susan Barry: Can you imagine making that kind of a decision based on a television? That is so weird. 

[00:23:08] Adam Arnold: We've had so, so many, so many. 

[00:23:10] Susan Barry: Don't they have a phone? Like, what, can't they just watch some TikTok videos? 

[00:23:13] Adam Arnold: We do provide internet, so, we're not heathens. And I think one of the other things we've done, too, is we've leaned into local partnerships. So, for all of our coffee, we provide an actual coffee maker. And all of our coffee is roasted locally from Cafe Belay which is down in town. We don't provide shampoo. We provide locally made soap bars. So all of our soap bars in our room are made locally by Little Tree Soap Company. We decided to do, so all our artwork in our room is painted by Marley Siefert from Leadville, and she actually came here and stayed for two days and painted views. So, like, each room has a view from, so we're circular. So each room you stay in has a little piece of art from Marley that is essentially a view captured from the property. Except for the one in our cottage, which got destroyed in the accident. And then all our rooms have board games provided by The Stellar Factory, which is in Boulder, Colorado. So everything we're trying to do is add a local touch. And again, it's because that's really important to us. We wanna support other people's small businesses. We don't ask for, we don't ask anything. We pay for all the things that go in our rooms. All we wanna do is uplift. And I think that's, if we can do it that way, that's when we would do it. 

[00:24:33] Susan Barry: But also, what an amazing experience and sort of adventure and discovery for your guests. Like, "Oh, we had this coffee, and we had this board game," and I mean, that's the stuff that people talk about. That's what helps them make their memories, you know? 

[00:24:51] Adam Arnold: Yeah, for sure. And I think really the one thing too, I would say, looking back, what piece of advice, you kinda mentioned that. I would say the one thing that I've learned most, and it's really not traditional hospitality, it's more business stuff, it's just money. Use as little of your own cash as possible. And the main reason why is banks love to loan money to people who already have money. So if you hold onto your cash, it gives you the ability to get more. But if you use your own cash, you have full autonomy. So, I mean, it's double-edged. But that was just one of the things that I've kind of learned more and more, like, if I'd had even more capital, it would've been easier to do X, Y, Z. Anyways. 

[00:25:33] Susan Barry: I mean, we could do an entire episode on the notion that rich people don't spend money and poor, it's really expensive to be poor. But we're a fun-loving group, so we're gonna move right along from that. This episode of Top Floor with Susan Barry is brought to you by Lodgify. Here's one that will resonate with anyone who has ever managed guests in any capacity. Your phone does not care that it's 11:00 PM. Someone always has a question, a request, a check-in issue, and if you're the one running the property, it lands with you. Lodgify has an AI tool that handles guest messages automatically, so the routine stuff gets answered right away around the clock without you having to be the one doing it. You stay in control, but you don't have to be on call for every little thing. Top Floor listeners get 20% off on all one or two-year plans with the code TOPFLOOR20. Go to lodgify.com or the link in the show notes and use code TOPFLOOR20. Adam, we like to make sure that our listeners come away from every episode of Top Floor with practical, tangible things to try, either in their businesses or in their travels. For someone who is hearing your story and thinking like, "Absolutely, I should totally do this," they wanna buy and renovate an older property, what is a hidden cost or challenge that they probably aren't expecting but will definitely encounter? 

[00:27:18] Adam Arnold: I would say manage your time when you design the systems for the property. So, there are a couple, two answers, really to this. One is manage your time. So you talked about that surface area, and to tie back to that, as you're building systems, be mindful of your time. I say this a lot, it's the currency of life, essentially, and most people who have money would trade all of it for time. And you have to be really careful how you build your systems so that they don't constantly require you. So we built a lot of systems that essentially don't require us. We have our linens actually hauled out, cleaned, folded, and brought back in bags, and that saves us so much time. These sort of decisions we made cost us more money, but save us time. In terms of renovating an old property, I would say, one of the things that's really important is don't plan on restoring it as new, but plan on restoring it with new features and amenities. Part of what makes those motels unique is their architecture and their distinction. And so I would just say lean into the idea of restoring it for sure, but make sure you restore it with those same sort of unique elements that make it so special. If you try to restore it and make it look like a greige house or make it look like everything else that exists there in that landscape of hospitality, what are you really providing that's unique anymore? 

[00:28:54] Susan Barry:. Well, it's just like a raggedy set of bones with fresh paint. Like, what's the point? Just build something new in that case.

[00:29:02] Adam Arnold: Right. Exactly. And so I think the thing is to lean into the character of the property and leverage that to your benefit. 

[00:29:10] Susan Barry: I know you mentioned the brass spoons, but what is something that you built into the design of the property that ended up mattering a lot more to your guests than you would have anticipated?

[00:29:24] Adam Arnold: So I would say dog-friendly aspects of the property. So we leaned heavily into that. So early on, I mean, we had traveled with kids, we travel with dogs. Oddly enough, they're not dissimilar in terms of traveling.  Your kids might bark at somebody, your dogs might bark at somebody. So we kind of leaned into that concept, that you can go out the back door, take your dog out for a walk, take your kids out to hang out. We had Gina, the Denver Dog Guide, come, and she kind of loved our place. She's actually a great person. And she showcased our place, and then we just kind of hadn't realized up until that point how much of a special place we created for pets. And so after that, we leaned into it. We have branded dog biscuits. We have a little bowl that says Little Canyon Pup that we give to folks that have dogs. And that was just a surprise to us, not because we weren't creating it, it's just we hadn't leaned into that as intentionally as we thought we had until after we had, and we were like, "Oh, this actually, this actually works extremely well for people with pets." And we had an idea, but not the reception was way better than we had anticipated. 

[00:30:40] Susan Barry: Got it. Early in our conversation, you referred to some other sort of your cohort of other boutique motel owners. What is your advice for building that kind of real support network with other independent operators instead of, like, I don't know, just trying to figure it all out by yourself? Did you go about that deliberately, or did it just happen? 

[00:31:05] Adam Arnold: That's a really interesting question about how I kind of connect with people in general. Is it deliberate, or is it just happening? That's a fair question to ask. I just don't know the answer to that. I will say this. I have, I have a lot of disdain for social media, but it's also a tremendous tool for intentional connection,  and for marketing a business. 

[00:31:27] Susan Barry: Well, that's how we met, on Instagram.

[00:31:31] Adam Arnold: Yeah, the internets. And so I think that for small hospitality, one of the things you have to remember is other small hospitality outside of your geographic region is not a competitor. You know? And so there's no reason why you shouldn't swap stories, you shouldn't swap ideas, you should 100% share your secret sauce because part of what makes your property so unique is your geographic location. Can't be replicated. There's so much distinctness about your property that essentially can't be replicated, it makes sense to share. And so what you'll find is as you reach out to those people and I always say this to my kids, and I say this to other people who are trying to engage, start with what you can give, not what you can get. And if you lead into, again, from a giving aspect into the engagement, like, "Hey, I would love to connect with you. I don't really have an agenda. I just would love to talk hospitality. And if you feel like you need to lay on the couch and tell me about all your woes, I'll listen." And I think if you lean into it from that aspect, you'll be surprised how quickly people will go, "Hey, this is a great idea. I would love to connect with you. Let's just chat it out." And as a result, I've stayed at so many different hospitality properties, and I'll go and meet the owners, and I'll chat about stuff, and sometimes Kara'll like, "Can we just stay somewhere that, where we don't know somebody, and you're not talking to the owners constantly?"

[00:33:04] Susan Barry: Do you think that your guest is, like, an aficionado of a boutique motel? So if you have a guest that really loves your property, would they also love some of your friends' properties, or do you think it's much more geography-driven? 

[00:33:20] Adam Arnold: No, I think you're right. I think there's a shared crossover in who the guests are, and we all are aware of that, and we try to promote each other pretty consistently. So, I've had people stay here that have stayed with our friend Marta, who owns Motel Bear Lake up in Michigan, and they didn't even know we knew each other or they didn't find us from them. They just stayed because we're the same kinda place. And lots of times we'll send people to Sally at Mesa Verde Motel or Lauren at Mellow Moon. I mean, again, there's so much crossover, it naturally comes up in conversations because a lot of our guests are like, "I'm driving to the Northeast." And I was like, "Hey, I've stayed, like, three places. You should totally stay here. If you're going to the Berkshires, go stay with Pamela at the Berkshire Valley Inn or whatever." Like, we have this connection now, and so we're always supporting each other whenever we can. 

[00:34:12] Susan Barry: Oh, that's really cool. We have reached the fortune-telling portion of the show, so now you have to predict the future, and then we will grade you on your performance down the road. What is a prediction that you have about the future of independent, character-driven hospitality properties like yours?

[00:34:32] Adam Arnold: The more distinct and unique you are, the more successful you'll be in that space. So I think data points, folks, kinda point to folks seeking experiences more than anything else. And if you can make your stay an experience in and of itself, it kind of checks two boxes for somebody who's seeking that. So, "Hey, I stayed at this place, it was super casual, it was super different." Like you're generating a memory just by being different. 

[00:35:02] Susan Barry: Well, just looking around your guest room and seeing the soap bars and the roasted coffee, I mean, that is a memory by itself. You don't even have to walk out the door.

[00:35:14] Adam Arnold: Yeah. It's a distinct experience. And I think at the core of it all, we're essentially creating this memory impression for somebody forever. And when you think about the power of that, it's kind of incredible. That you've created this space that somebody had this incredible time, and they talk about it all the time. Or we've had repeat guests that come back and, like, I have one guest that's been here, like, I don't know, 13 times. So, that means something to us, and it also, it's meaningful for us to create these memories for people. 

[00:35:49] Susan Barry: What about if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about how small hospitality businesses get support or get resources, what would it be?

[00:36:00] Adam Arnold: It would be convince guests to not use OTAs. And the reason why is that for small hospitality especially, one, it gives us visibility, which is great, but then also floods all of our markets with so many ad buys that it makes it impossible for us to ad buy for ourselves. So it creates this infinite loop where we're paying a fee, and then they're essentially placing more ad buys. They're using that money to buy more ads to make it more possible for us to buy ads for ourselves. So, there's more to that. I won't go into the weeds, but ultimately, what I would just say about that is I would wave the wand to change the behavior because that creates a gap between us. It makes it impossible for us to set expectations. It makes it really hard for distinct properties to show that they're distinct. 

[00:36:53] Susan Barry: Okay, folks, before we tell Adam goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock, or I guess we should say the back pasture in your case. That's where all of the best stories get told. 

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.

[00:37:11] Susan Barry: Adam, what is a story you would only tell me on the loading dock? 

[00:37:14] Adam Arnold: So our first year operating, again, I think we've established that, one, we're not qualified, two, we don't know what we're doing. That still exists today. But we hadn't hired cleaners, we weren't sending our linens out. We were still trying to get our feet under us. It was kind of a soft opening summer of '22. We had blocked all the rooms because we had just been cleaning rooms all summer, and we're like, "We're just not gonna do this." And we left the light on, left the doors unlocked to the rooms, and left the office door unlocked. So I'm leading up to this. Just terrible decisions. Yeah, terrible decisions to make. Anyways, this was exhaustion from a very busy summer right out of the gate. We didn't expect it. And so just once, one night that this happened, which is super weird for us to do anyways, we just kinda were like, "We're gonna go out to dinner. We're just gonna close the business for the night." Anyways, so we left the light on in the rooms, left the doors unlocked, which was super smart, and it's 3:00 a.m., the business phone rings, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, why is that ringing?" Then there's like, we heard somebody say, "Hello?" And I was like, "Uh-oh. Interesting."

[00:38:37] Susan Barry: Wait, on the phone or in the room? 

[00:38:38] Adam Arnold: No, in the office. So our office is kind of not next to us, but we can hear it from our bedroom. And at first I was like, "Maybe that's a dream," Just like, "The dog maybe needs to go out. I'll pretend like I'm still asleep, and maybe Cara will hear the dog and we'll go do it." 

[00:38:56] Susan Barry: See what will happen. 

[00:38:56] Adam Arnold: And so she kind of nudges me and she's like, "I think somebody's here." And I was like, "Of course not." Then I heard the office door close, and then the business phone rang again. And I was like, “Great. Not looking forward to this. So I get up, I go outside, and there's a woman outside, and she's like, "We hit a bear." What do you mean you hit a bear?" She said, "We hit a bear." And I was like, "Okay." She's like, "We need a room." It's like, "Well, we don't actually have any that are ready for this." And it was, it was weird. There was no damage to the vehicle that I could see, so everything was strange. And so, I kinda handled it, and I was like, I got her to calm down, and I was like, "Hey, just, the town is like, you're not far from town. There's gonna be lots of places that can accommodate you at this time of night. We're just not one of them." And then her male partner comes out of room one after he brewed himself a cup of coffee. No, this is true. Just like he's got a cup of our coffee, he comes out of room one, two dogs with him, and I was like, "What are you guys doing?" He's like, "We're good people." And I was like, "Okay. All right. This is where you guys have to leave now. This is strange." And so everything about it is odd, and so they ended up leaving the property, and that's kind of the end, it ended at that point, other than my wife and I stayed up for the next three hours. And so at that point, we kind of made the decision we're no longer gonna take walk-ups. That's just the way. We didn't wanna run a property like that, and we've made that decision and held strong to that decision that we don't take walk-ups anymore. We manage, like, the lighting at night and things of that nature, just because we're not the kinda place that can accommodate a 3:00 AM walk-up.

[00:40:47] Susan Barry: So people who hit a phantom bear? Like, was there a bear anywhere? 

[00:40:53] Adam Arnold: So I think one of the things about our property is there's a beautiful stretch of highway along the Arkansas River and called Bighorn Sheep Canyon to our west. And when you're driving through that, there's no cell service for about 40 minutes, and then you pop up to where we are, and then you have cell service. But you've just kind of gone through that gauntlet. And if you're driving it at 3:00 AM, it can feel pretty scary if something happens. So you get up, and you're like, "I need, like, this is the only place that's left in America to sleep at 3:00 AM." And so, I think a little bit of that played into the equation, but it was a weird experience, and we made a lot of adjustments, installing cameras, things like that afterwards. But anyways, that's what happened, and we made some adjustments as a result. 

[00:41:40] Susan Barry: Well, good. You learned your lesson. 

[00:41:42] Adam Arnold: And there's essentially one more story that's associated, and I will give a brief cleaned-up version of it as best I can. But we have some friends that own a motel, and their first season as well, before their rooms had been renovated, they had an issue where, they had, like the EMTs had shown up early, had called them early in the morning, and they said, "Hey, we got a call from one of your rooms, and we don't know which room it is." And again, I'm not telling the story justice, but she was like, “I don't know what you're talking about." Like, "Well, we've had a call." So then, like, she goes to look at the cameras, and somebody had been banging on their door in the middle of the night and trying to call them. And then a guy comes out of one of the rooms while the EMTs are pulling up, and there's blood. And so, yes. And so he said, quote-unquote, "My male appendage has been broken." I think they call that a frenulum tear. And so he's got a towel covered in blood. I know. Anyways, all that being said, the entire room was ruined. And there was blood everywhere. It was a terrible scenario, and they could tell the story much better than me, but this is a shortened version of it. But more or less, the room was gonna be renovated anyways. 

[00:43:23] Susan Barry: How did this happen?

[00:43:23] Adam Arnold: Yeah. That I don't have the details of. 

[00:43:27] Susan Barry: I think we're glad you don't, actually. 

[00:43:29] Adam Arnold: No, I think we all are kind of glad to not have those details. But I mean, I will say this, our friends that own other properties have much better stories than we do at ours, and I think a lot of it is because our place is so small and that we generally engage with our guests, like right out of the gate. Maybe that keeps people on their toes a little bit? 

[00:43:52] Susan Barry: I think you are jinxing yourself right now, and I think you just haven't been in business long enough because people lose their minds when they check into a motel or a hotel, and you're just now jinxing yourself and you're gonna have some crazy stories. 

[00:44:11] Adam Arnold: I'm terrified of what might happen next now. 

[00:44:14] Susan Barry: Adam Arnold, thank you so much for being here. I loved hearing about your experience, and I really appreciate you riding with us to the Top Floor. 

[00:44:22] Adam Arnold: It's been a pleasure. 

[00:44:25] Susan Barry: Thanks so much for listening. Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/263. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all-around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.

[00:45:00] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.