Transcript: Episode 264: Toddler Fight Club

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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor with Susan Barry, episode 264. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/264.

[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. Adam Robinson planned to teach high school history until a friend pulled him into recruiting during the Y2K frenzy. He was hooked. That unexpected turn eventually led to him founding Hierology, where he spent the past two decades focused on one of hospitality's most persistent challenges, finding and keeping frontline workers. Today, we are going to talk about what he's learned, what AI changes about recruiting and retention, and what hospitality should be paying attention to next. 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 Alberto. Here is what Alberto says, "I see so many stories of candidates being ghosted by recruiters or hiring managers. Is that real? What is going on there?" Adam, what do you think? I know that you are not ghosting anyone, but have you seen those same kind of just, like, stories on LinkedIn and stuff?

[00:01:55] Adam Robinson: Unfortunately, Susan, yes, it happens all the time. And I think your listeners will understand why that happens. It's because life in a hotel is busy, and things happen that we don't plan for in our day. And it is more often than you think that an applicant will show up for their interview and the manager who's supposed to be interviewing them is off, managing some crisis, or something happened, or they forgot, or whatever. But it happens a lot, and it's not a great look for the employment brand of the property to no-show an interview. And Alberto, it happens probably 8 to 10% of the time. The interview either starts late, gets rescheduled, or doesn't happen at all, unfortunately.

[00:02:46] Susan Barry: I wonder, there's something that I always remember about when I worked on property, and it was that I would have the best possible intentions that we were gonna quickly move forward on a candidate, quickly make a hiring decision, and for reasons that I could not recount for you now, everything took three to four times longer than I ever thought it did, despite having done this over and over and over again. Like, you'd think I would learn my lesson. 

[00:03:18] Adam Robinson: And then life gets in the way. That's the way it works. Things happen in your day. It throws you off schedule, and you file those best intentions for tomorrow. But that's why our industry is struggling to fill open roles, because the average time between talking to somebody and indicating interest and actually getting them in for the first interview averages 10 calendar days. And most candidates, I'd say it's around 65% of candidates if offered a job that meets their needs, they take it, and that 65% of the time, that's within 72 hours of the first contact. 

[00:04:04] Susan Barry: Interesting. 

[00:04:05] Adam Robinson: So if you're waiting for 10 days and then you're wondering why you have a recruiting problem, you don't actually have a recruiting problem. What you have is a process and follow-through problem. And that is so much of the solve here. It's really not harder than it needs to be. It's just intention and a little organization. 

[00:04:25] Susan Barry: Well, let's back up a little bit. Tell me, what was your first exposure to the hospitality industry? 

[00:04:31] Adam Robinson: I was after two years in the staffing industry in technology, which I loved. One of my customers recruited me to work for what was then a startup software company in Chicago. If you think back to the late '90s, if you were a franchise flag location, Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, whatever, you would transmit information to the brand about receipts, etc., your royalty reports, all of that happened over a fax machine.

[00:05:08] Susan Barry: With thermal paper that just curled and curled and curled. 

[00:05:10] Adam Robinson: And it just curled. You have to, like, hear ye, hear ye type. Like, expanded the scroll, and we all love that and don't miss it. So I spent four years traveling around the world installing internet software and servers in businesses like hotels that moved them from the fax machine to digital communication with the brand. And I saw firsthand that the biggest issue in getting that software implemented was not the technology, it was the turnover at the property level, which made it nearly impossible for us to train anyone because the staff turned over twice a year. And I started asking the question, why is this happening? I've been in a high-volume recruiting role. I know what that success looks like, how you do it well, and here we are in an industry where the turnover rates are solvable, in my opinion, still today solvable problems.  And it looked like an opportunity to do some good and change things, and that's how I got into the business.

[00:06:20] Susan Barry: So when you were doing those initial, like, installs and sort of observing the way that hotels worked, I'm not exactly sure how to ask this question, but was your sense that, oh, this is a horrible place to work, that's why they're really struggling? Like, oh, God, they're running around like chickens with their head cut off, or was your sense that there was something deeper under the surface there?

[00:06:44] Adam Robinson: More the second, Susan. My experience was most management teams wanted to do their best every day, and they show up with the expectation we're gonna do our best every single day, and then the plumbing system fails, or then the internet goes out, or then any number of things happen on property. There's an E. coli outbreak or whatever. Like, things happen. And it's a function of the reality of the business that these problems exist, in my opinion. And I thought, then, this is addressable. Like I said, like, this is a solvable problem. It just needs to be thought about a little bit differently. And that, to me, was exciting because there's the opportunity to teach and help. I couldn't teach high school history, but I can teach hoteliers how to get the hiring process right. And so at the end of the day, it is about teaching and showing, which I love to do.

[00:07:43] Susan Barry: You ultimately founded Hierology. For our listeners, can you level-set what your company is and how it came about? 

[00:07:51] Adam Robinson: Yeah. Hierology is broadly referred to as an applicant tracking system, which is a category that's changing pretty rapidly, but essentially we're a technology solution that gives management teams everything they need to hire their best team. So from employment branding, the hosted career site, connection to job boards, the ability to campaign, their own resume database, automate the process, and do this well through to drug and background screening, onboarding, and connection to their payroll system, we do all of that. 

[00:08:23] Susan Barry: Say a little bit more about campaigning your resume database. I don't think I've ever heard it phrased that way before. 

[00:08:29] Adam Robinson: What most managers do when they have turnover or an open role is their first instinct is, "Oh my gosh, let's open a job and post it to a job board." That's, like, the first thing they do, and that's been the way it's been for 30 years. Going back to Monster.com and CareerBuilder, you'd open it, you'd go post and pray. And today that's not the ideal path. The cost of sourcing applicants through job boards has more than doubled in the last five years, and there's some changes going on in that market that many of your listeners will have been experiencing, like, this is getting more expensive for less return. And most hoteliers have a database of tens of thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands of folks that they've got from prior work. Step one should be, let's reach into our database and find our silver medalist from the last time we were looking for an F&B manager. And let's see if they're interested, or let's keep them warm. They might not have been available, the timing may have been off. It might not have been the right time, or we picked someone else, but that doesn't mean I need to start from scratch tomorrow. I can build that asset for myself, just like I work in any sales database. And so that is really the focus,  for us in the industry, is showing hotel management teams that the solve for recruitment comes through owning and cultivating your own candidate database as an asset that has value, because those applicants are worth $30 to $40 apiece. So if you've got 10,000 applicants in your database, multiply that by 40, you've got a real asset. That has value. Like, if you wanted to replace that, it would be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. 

[00:10:25] Susan Barry: So interesting to think about it that way. 

[00:10:28] Adam Robinson: So why not jump in and do it? Well, the reason is that they're barely able to make the interview on time. So, like, to ask your director of housekeeping, "Well, what you wanna do is log into the system, and then you're gonna build a campaign," and they're just like, "You lost me at, like, I have to do something extra." What most managers want is, I tell my team every day, if we're successful, we help them end their shift on time and get to their kid's soccer game. Like, that's what software should do. It should help you save time and get your outcome for less work. It should help you get out of there on time. 

[00:11:07] Susan Barry: I feel like in the entirety of the 30 years that I've been in hospitality, talking about the hospitality labor market turnover and all of the challenges that come with that has always been a topic. How has that changed for you over those 30 years? Have you seen changes, or is it basically the same as it ever was? 

[00:11:31] Adam Robinson: Two structural changes really matter here. Number one, the size of the available labor pool in the United States is shrinking. And of course, we have what's going on now with immigration and visa restrictions, which makes it harder, but the size of the US workforce is shrinking. And as it's been said, demography is destiny. And the biggest example of that impacting our industry is the fact that, like, last year, we had more high school seniors in the United States than we will ever have ever again. Every year from this year onward, we will be graduating fewer high school seniors every year because Millennials started family formation later, and we're having fewer children per partnership in the United States, so the birth rate's declining. We have 73 million Americans of the Boomer generation in the retirement window walking off the field, as it were, in the workforce. And so another way to look at it, over the last 10 years, the US added 13 and a half million new entry-level workers to the workforce. Over the next 10 years, we will add five and a half million.

[00:13:03] Susan Barry: But isn't that what AI is for? 

[00:13:05] Adam Robinson: AI can help you find folks more effectively, more efficiently, and will do a lot of that work for you, which I know we'll cover. But we're fishing from a pond that's gonna be half the size. We're gonna create 8 million fewer entrants to the workforce over the next 10 years than we created the last. So that's a big deal. The pond is shrinking. So then by 2032, the US population itself starts to decline. So there are big implications in that demographic track. 

[00:13:40] Susan Barry: I don't wanna belabor this because you know so much more about this than I do. I am curious, though, if that number takes into account the idea that, like, 60 is the new 40. Do you know what I mean? That people are less likely to retire at a traditional retirement age. 

[00:13:58] Adam Robinson: It is looking at the 18 to 65-year-old traditional demographic. 'Cause that's the apples-to-apples comparison. But it is true. You see folks working into their 70s today pretty regularly, and I'll probably be one of them. And so that is what it is, but for bringing new blood into the industry. 'Cause every hospitality program in the United States is down 40% in enrollment right now. So, like, fewer people are going into the business, and many ask, "Is there an existential crisis? Why are hospitality management programs, like even one at USF, down 30, 40%?" In part, it's because I think we're doing a poor job selling the industry as the beautiful economic opportunity that it is, but it will be because there are just fewer students that are gonna go to college. 

[00:15:01] Susan Barry: I also wonder, though, if it doesn't have something to do with the notion. I mean, this is something that I talk about constantly, so forgive me for getting on a soapbox, but within this industry, there is an apprenticeship mindset. It's an apprenticeship business, and so if people get degrees, they still have to do the apprenticeship of working on the line and working their way up and doing frontline positions. And if you're taking out $60,000 worth of loans to get a degree, you're not willing to start at the bottom making a minimum wage that hasn't increased in 20 years. It's not tenable. You know what I mean? 

[00:15:44] Adam Robinson: I couldn't agree more. And the way I would say it is like the post-secondary education model is broken. It's completely broken. The economic model is broken. And I'd say higher education is in an existential moment right now with AI and what will be 8 million fewer high school seniors in the market for college over the next 10 years. We have too many colleges, and they charge too much money, and that's a different episode for sure. But that's part of it. It makes no sense to take 60, $80,000 in loans and go work for $30 an hour as a night auditor for your first job on your management tour. Like, it's just not gonna work. The second thing, and I know you talk about this a lot, is the fact that, like, the labor arbitrage business model of this industry is gone. So, you used to be able to drive margin through wage arbitrage, sell opportunity if you stick with it, but I'll pay you a little now, and 10% will make it through that gauntlet into management. But I can always replace that lowest rung on the ladder with inexpensive labor. That labor is no longer inexpensive. I was at an AHLA conference last week, and just polling the crowd, "What do you pay in your dishwashers? What do you pay in your valets?" San Diego dishwashing rate's $38 an hour. Now, that's not even enough to afford to live in San Diego, which is a whole other issue, but you're not gonna drive margin through labor rates by paying dishwashers $38 an hour. That's hit every role everywhere, and so the whole labor model's broken. The wage inflation, mostly through municipal regulations and minimum wage laws, is artificially raising the value of entry-level labor in our business while immigration restrictions are driving down the availability of low-wage, supplemental labor, J-1s, H-2Bs, etc. And it's like a perfect storm hitting us at the same time. 

[00:18:07] Susan Barry: All at the same time. That's the thing. I wonder, though, about your use of the phrase artificial inflation because it almost feels to me like we're catching up. Like, this all could have happened incrementally over the last 15, 20 years in terms of paying people a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. We didn't. The pandemic came. Everybody could just work for DoorDash or deliver Amazon packages. And so all of a sudden we had to make up for all of that time. Does that make sense? 

[00:18:42] Adam Robinson: I think you're exactly right. That is exactly right. It incrementally takes costs up, and pays higher wages pre-COVID. And so now with a smaller talent pool, it's just a simple supply-demand curve. I, as a candidate, can go work anywhere I want for $30 an hour. I have lots of options. We've studied very closely what's happened in California with the fast food minimum wage laws that passed out there. So, a $ 28-an-hour minimum wage in fast food restaurants has destroyed tens of thousands of jobs in that market because you can afford to staff two-thirds of what you used to. And it creates less opportunity, and it incentivizes employers to create fewer jobs and to absolutely minimize the amount of labor needed. And so I didn't think, like, it's not broken if there's a transaction where someone says, "Yes, I'm willing to take that rate. I'm gonna come work for you, and if it doesn't work for me, I can go find something else." That on the margin, there's work to do there, but just blanket ratcheting minimum wage rates up hurts the labor market, and it disincentivizes management to grow opportunity and add jobs. And so again, it's like it's just piling bricks in the bag right now we don't need to be carrying around. It's just not helpful. 

[00:20:21] Susan Barry: I'd started this line of questioning by saying, "Wait, isn't AI supposed to take care of this?" And I'm guessing that people are on the other end of this conversation right now like, "Okay, well, can't we make up the difference in, you said, two-thirds, let's say, a rough estimate? Can't that other third of labor come from AI doing tasks for us?" I don't know that either of us is probably willing to make a guess about how that's gonna play out, but what do you think AI can do, at least in your world, in the recruiting world? Is there a misconception that people have? How is AI playing a role in sort of fishing in a smaller pond?

[00:21:09] Adam Robinson: Yeah, I mean, so here's the reality of recruiting in hospitality is that employers have the best of intentions. And so our industry, 'cause we track this across nearly twenty thousand individual locations across the United States. So what we see is that if a qualified applicant submits a resume to Susan's hotel, in general, our industry is really good at responding quickly. So the average response time to a qualified applicant is about eleven hours. But as I said earlier, it takes ten days on average to get them in for an interview, and we have massive drop-off along the way. The role of AI is not to dehumanize the process. The role of AI is to say, “Here are the bottlenecks. Maybe we can use AI to help automate scheduling, confirmations, feedback, and follow-ups. We can identify the bottlenecks where humans aren't spending the time because they don't have it. AI can step in and speed this process up, and we can all get a better result. Like, the alternative used to be, well, let's just add a recruiting coordinator or two recruiting coordinators. That's the role AI can play. Like, it can make the existing HR or talent acquisition team and their hiring manager partners way more efficient. The other part that may be interesting to listeners is that we find that hoteliers fail to look at about 55% of all job applicants. 

[00:22:50] Susan Barry: Wait, say that again. 

[00:22:52] Adam Robinson: Half of all applicants never get opened.

[00:22:55] Susan Barry: What? How? What? 

[00:22:57] Adam Robinson: Time. Time. So it's time. So the other thing that's happening right now is candidates, if you were looking for a job tomorrow, you could go for $20 a month, $10 a month, $30 a month, find a service that says, "Susan, we can apply you to ten thousand jobs tomorrow." And so candidates are using AI to get their resume out all over the place, and job boards are giving them the tools to do that. So the number of applicants has exploded because people would say, "Yeah, apply me everywhere." And that just creates work for a manager. 

[00:23:33] Susan Barry: It's like applicant spam, right? 

[00:23:35] Adam Robinson: How am I gonna get through eight hundred of these people? And, like, I'm just gonna start going through the list, and the second I find someone, I'm gonna bring them in for the interview. And then the rest never get reviewed, but there's gold in that mine. So AI can serve that function for you. Like, you think about it from a candidate's perspective, there's nothing more frustrating than looking for a job, putting a lot of time and intention into applying somewhere you're really excited about, and you never hear anything. And it's a black hole. You never hear anything. AI can serve the function of saying, "Hey, listen, we'd really like to talk to you about this role. We think you're qualified for it. As a next step, we have some more questions for you. If you have a moment, we can do this right now. Like, confirm you've done A, B, or C, it looks like in your application, A, B, and C. And actually, if you'd like to take an interview with us now, you can do it through our recruiting agent right now. Would you like to do that, or would you like to wait for a human, which could take another couple of weeks?" Overwhelmingly, candidates, 80% of them when presented with that question say, "Give me the AI interview." Like, "I'll take it now." 'Cause getting a chance is better than never hearing anything. And we have watched this cut cycle times by 30-40% in the last few months since we've had this product live in the market. And it's fun to watch our hotel customers that did it before adopt this technology, and suddenly they're moving, and it's working. And there's a mental barrier to get over. People think, "Well, I don't want AI talking to candidates. That's gonna be a horrible experience." Well, it's not, and it's better than hearing nothing. 

[00:25:20] Susan Barry: This episode of Top Floor with Susan Barry is brought to you by Lodgify. If you run any kind of hospitality property and you're relying entirely on third-party platforms to fill it, you're giving away a cut of every single booking, and you don't own the guest relationship. Lodgify gives you your own direct booking website so guests can find and book your property. It's not complicated to set up, it looks professional, and every booking that comes through it is yours, with no commission going out the door to somebody else. They also have tools to manage your calendar, your guest messages, and your listings all in one place, which saves a ton of time. 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. We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every single episode of Top Floor with some practical and tangible things to try either in their businesses, in their hotels, or in their day-to-day lives. What is something a hotel could change tomorrow that would make the hiring process faster or more effective? And you can't say buy Hireology. 

[00:26:48] Adam Robinson: Yes, no. Yeah, don't do that first. Do that second. The first thing you wanna do is get out your phone and attempt to apply to a job at your own property 

[00:27:00] Susan Barry: Oh, that's such a good idea. 

[00:27:02] Adam Robinson: Because 80% of job seekers apply to jobs in our industry on a mobile device, and no one secret shops themselves. And so I guess you might find, and you might be surprised, that your lead capture process, if you will, for job seekers is terrible. I mean, most online job applications require someone on their phone to retype their entire life history with their thumbs. 

[00:27:35] Susan Barry: That they have already uploaded in a resume

[00:27:37] Adam Robinson: Or better yet, Susan, who has their resume on their phone? So if I got a 15-minute break and I'm out in the parking lot behind the property or whatever, I'm in the break room…

[00:27:53] Susan Barry: You're on the loading dock. 

[00:27:54] Adam Robinson: Yeah, on the loading dock, if you will. And I'm looking for jobs, and it says, "Upload resume." I'm on my phone, I don't have a resume. Like, you just lost me. So, apply to a job at your own property and just go, "If this was me applying for a kitchen job, or a valet position, or night auditor role, or a front desk supervisor, like, what, am I gonna complete this process, or am I abandoning it because it's just so egregiously bad? Are you asking me to create a profile with a username and password to be able to look or apply at jobs?" It's just a mess. So step one is just walk the floor. Like, do what you do every day. Observe. Observe your standards. Ask the question, "Are we up to standard here?" You'll be surprised to find what your experience is, and from there, we can have a conversation. There's some really low-hanging fruit.

[00:28:47] Susan Barry: That's really good advice. Where do you think hospitality employers are most likely to lose new employees? What part of the process? Why do they lose them when they're new? 

[00:29:01] Adam Robinson: Half of the turnover in our industry happens in the first 90 days of employment. 

[00:29:06] Susan Barry: Are you for real? That's crazy. 

[00:29:08] Adam Robinson: Half in the first 90 days, and somewhere 25, 30% happen in the first 30 days.

[00:29:13] Susan Barry: And do you have an idea of how much of that is voluntary and involuntary? 

[00:29:17] Adam Robinson: That's 80-plus percent voluntary. And it comes from two reasons. If somebody voluntarily turns in the first 90 days, it's for one of two reasons. They get in there, and they go, "This ain't for me. I can't do this." Or they say, "This isn't what you promised." So that speaks to you selling a bad deal on the front end. Like, your job in the recruiting process, once you're done obtaining interest and you've got their interest, you've gotta position your opportunity realistically and say, "Well, let me set your expectations about what this role is, and it's a path to something more, perhaps, if that's what you want. Let's talk about how we support our folks in their career path. It's very important. But here's a day in the life. This is what this role is, and what you can expect on your first day, and over your first 90 days, this is what it looks like. You don't want someone to come in and be surprised. 

[00:30:23] Susan Barry: Well, we have reached the fortune-telling portion of the show, Adam, so now you have to predict the future, and we will see if you were right. What is a prediction that you have about the future of AI-driven recruiting and retention in hospitality? 

[00:30:38] Adam Robinson: I believe more than 50% of initial interviews will be conducted by AI-driven technology, and I think that is maybe a low guess. 

[00:30:50] Susan Barry: Okay. I agree with you. I think you're right. What happens when a candidate builds an agent to do her interviews for her?

[00:31:01] Adam Robinson: That's a great question, and I literally had this conversation a couple of days ago. There will be agent versus agent combat in recruitment. And I mean, everywhere we have nefarious actors trying to use AI to hack and do bad things. That's kind of the conversation in our country right now. There will be agents for good that battle the bad agents, and there’s some kind of daytime or parity. It's gonna happen on the recruiting side. The candidate AI tech is way ahead of employer AI tech, which is why you're getting spammed with AI cannons or, like, it needs to catch up. The employers move a little slower. It will be agent, agent v agent, for sure. 

[00:31:47] Susan Barry: So what does that mean? Who are you hiring in that case? 

[00:31:51] Adam Robinson: It's the same person you're trying to recruit today. It will mean that for a job seeker that wants to stand out, putting in a little extra effort and a human touch is gonna put you on top of the pile. And for the hotelier, the same is true. A little bit of humanity in the process is gonna differentiate you as an employer, and at the high end of the market, your four- or five-diamond properties, that's always been true, and it always generally will be true. I'm talking like, your core middle-of-the-bell curve select service operator that, like, has every incentive in the world to dehumanize this process and automate it. A little bit of humanity is gonna go a long way. It's just gonna stand out. Like, we can see it happening already. Oh, wow. "Wow, you're a real person." In fact, we now, like, in our own business, we're about a 150-employee company here in Chicago. We'll reach out to candidates, and they'll ask, “Am I talking to AI?" No, it's a person. You wanna hear me cough or what? You're like, I'll sneeze in real time here. It's crazy. People already expect it, and they're not opposed to it, but a little, like I said, a little bit of humanity is actually refreshing and surprising. And so there's a nice balance that I think we'll strike. I think it will get way out of whack before that balance gets struck.

[00:33:22] Susan Barry: I think you're absolutely right. I have seen the Instagram reels to prove it. If you had a magic wand and you could change one thing about how hospitality thinks about staffing today, what would that be? 

[00:33:38] Adam Robinson: Well, here's my headline: Recruiting can be a profit center. Stop treating it like a cost center.

[00:33:46] Susan Barry: Say more. 

[00:33:48] Adam Robinson: I had a question. I was in a room full of CEOs and GMs last week, and someone asked the question: How does hospitality stack up against the healthcare industry? And the question was, like, a very specific discussion about the difference between recruiting in a senior living community and recruiting in a hotel. The difference is the age demographic, and there's a healthcare component to it. What's the difference? The difference is that if the senior living facility does not have staffing, they literally can't sell beds or rent rooms. They can't do it because you gotta have three nurses for every bed and this much coverage for that, and a dietician for every X number of patients. So headcount is literally revenue. You can't bill service if you don't have the staff. So they have every incentive in the world to be great at it. And so in a senior living community, we also serve those. What we can see in the difference in data is they get back to applicants within two hours of a submission, and that first interview is within 48 to 72 hours, and they show up to the interview with a conditional offer. That candidate walks out of that interview with an offer,  conditional on drug and background screening. We need to think about it that way in this industry. Because if you are closing the restaurant on Tuesday, or you've got to take rooms out of inventory because they're not clean or what, or you're not fo- you're following up on sales leads fast enough.

[00:35:13] Susan Barry: Or that two-thirds thing that you talked about earlier, if now, because of the pressure from wage growth, you are only staffing to two-thirds where you used to staff to 100%, there's no room for an opening

[00:35:30] Adam Robinson: The cost of your turnover is tens of thousands of dollars at a management level and thousands of dollars, front, back of the house, the line level. You have to stop thinking about this. How can I spend the least amount of money possible in an office in the basement, and they're gonna run the whole thing. That's just like, we're not running an accounting team. Like, we are retailing opportunity to people who are gonna be serving our guests, and these heads drive revenue. That's my wind. The recruiting is a profit center. When you start to think of it that way, it elevates the conversation at your Monday meetings when you get together, and you do the readout, and as you ask about recruiting results from the last week. That's at no meeting I've ever been a part of. 

[00:36:21] Susan Barry: Interesting. Oh, that's such a stark comparison to the senior living stats, too. Okay, folks, before we tell Adam goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.

[00:36:41] Susan Barry: Adam, what is a story you would only tell us on the loading dock? 

[00:36:45] Adam Robinson: Oh, boy. So Susan, I know every hotelier's worst nightmare is to have their property on the news because something happened at the property. You just don't want the news helicopter flying over the golf course or the pool. So we had our version of that. So as you know, we have a platform for hiring, and early in our history, a number of customers that were in the early childhood education and daycare space used our platform for recruiting. And one day on the news, 'cause I've got my Google alerts set, any customer news, I saw it. One of the brands we work with was on the news because, at one of their daycare centers, and you're not gonna believe this when I say it, the center director was arrested because she was running toddler fight club at the facility. 

[00:37:47] Susan Barry: That's a lie right there. 

[00:37:48] Adam Robinson: Literally, these kids were putting on the big green Hulk hands and going Thunderdome at circle time to get their stress out, and I went, "Oh my God." "Please let this not be a Hireology customer that went through our process." It was a location that did not use us in a brand that did, and so we went, "Oh my God. Thank God. What a relief.” It's like, "You've got to be kidding me," but this actually happened. And so, in preparation for telling you this story, I just wanna make sure, 'cause this happened around 2018, get my facts right, so I went out and Googled toddler fight club. It's happened like four times in the news at four different locations. 

[00:38:49] Susan Barry: No. Is it the same person? 

[00:38:52] Adam Robinson: No, different people and different brands, and none of the other ones we ever worked with. 

[00:38:57] Susan Barry: But did she train all of those other- Like, did they work for her before? 

[00:39:02] Adam Robinson: I don't know. Like, as a parent of four young children, like it's toddler fight club every day. But like, that's our family. Google toddler fight club, and you will be amazed at how often this has happened at daycare centers in the United States. We still talk about it eight years later, like, toddler fight club is like, I can't believe this actually happened. But it did. The kids were all fine, like, but it was a whole thing.  

[00:39:32] Susan Barry: I mean they were fine, but were they? Like, you really aren't gonna know that for 20 more years to find out if they're okay.

[00:39:42] Adam Robinson: Folks did jail time, and it's a whole thing.

[00:39:47] Susan Barry: Holy guacamole. Well, Adam Robinson, you have given me quite the thing to Google now. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. I really enjoyed our conversation, and I learned a lot. I appreciate you riding with us to the Top Floor. 

[00:40:04] Adam Robinson: Thanks, Susan. 

[00:40:06] Susan Barry: Thanks so much for listening. Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/264. 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.

[00:40:41] 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.