Transcript: Episode 192: Fluff and Fold

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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 192. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/192. 

[00:00:14] 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. Shelly Brown began her hospitality journey with a side of SaaS as a cocktail waitress with a communications degree, and zero clue what came next. That path led her to the front desk of the Westin Michigan Avenue where she discovered a talent for connection that ultimately earned her the distinction of becoming Indiana's first Clay Door Concierge. From Four Seasons pre-opening to sales roles at tech giants like CVent, Shelly's career has been a masterclass in showing up authentically, even when the industry asked her to tone it down. Now known as the Rebel in a Gown, she helps companies ditch the outdated playbook and build leadership that's bold, human, and built to last. Her talks cut through the fluff, call out the performative, affirmative, and empower leaders to show up with guts, grace and grit. Today we are going to talk about the business value of belonging and what it means to be best in row. But before we get started, we need to answer the call button.

Call button rings 

The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals and basically anybody else with a burning question. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at (850) 404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Spencer. Spencer has a great question for you, Shelly. I want to become a professional speaker. What is my first step? If anyone can answer this, you can. What is Spencer's first step? 

[00:02:25] Shelley Brown: Hi, Spencer, and by the way, thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. I love your podcast so much.

[00:02:30] Susan Barry: Thank you.

[00:02:31] Shelley Brown: When you look at speaking as a gift, what is the gift that you wanna share with people? I think that's the first step, and then it's really what is it that you want to give them with, who is it that you wanna serve? Because I think getting really, really niche, knowing who you want to speak to, why it matters to them, and what is the value that you can bring to that audience. That's the best place to start is kind of really defining your, your brand and your what you wanna bring. 

[00:03:06] Susan Barry: I love the idea of thinking about it as what kind of gift you wanna give to someone. If I was gonna add something, I would say - and I heard this from a speaking coach, I didn't make it up myself - to emphasize connection over perfection. It is such a hard thing to do. I am terrible at it. I'm very focused on perfection and connection means so much more. You started out as a cocktail waitress with a communications degree. How did that morph into a giant career at luxury hotels and tech companies? 

[00:03:44] Shelley Brown: Yeah. So after I graduated college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. That much is true, and a group of people came to my bar for happy hour. They loved me, I loved them. They said, come work with us. So the next thing you know, I'm no longer a cocktail waitress. I am a front desk agent at a big fancy Chicago hotel, and I knew I had arrived because I was wearing a suit.

Back in the day, this 700 room hotel, I spent hours filing actual metal keys and I was like, there's gotta be more than this. So I was the only person who wanted to be a lobby greeter. And I stood in the doorway and welcomed everybody to the hotel, direct them to the cat bar mitzvah in the restaurant, in the parking garage. And I loved it because I love people. And then I saw what a concierge did, and the concierge endorsed me to become a concierge. I started my path there. Then I decided I didn't wanna work every weekend, and I found the incredible world of meeting planning. That was after I'd become a Clay Door and I found meeting planning and I did hotel sourcing and I loved that. And then I totally caught the bug early of technology because I saw the value of how it could make people's lives easier. 

[00:05:06] Narrator: Mm-hmm. After the metal keys?

[00:05:07] Shelley Brown: Yeah, after the metal keys. And I did love being a concierge. I really did. But helping people and I found that I was able to really sort of help people understand complex things and make it really accessible and approachable. So that's how I ended up going into technology. 

[00:05:31] Susan Barry: You worked in tech, you worked in hospitality, and you worked in mindfulness. How have you used the lessons from those sort of disparate industries in what you're doing now? What have you taken with you from each of those chapters? 

[00:05:51] Shelley Brown: Oh my gosh. There is definitely a through line. I mean, people say hospitality in our blood, it's in our heart. I think it's in our bones. Our bones are our foundation. And so the foundation of who I am is my values, right? People can say I climbed the corporate ladder. I think I fell off the corporate ladder. Kind of nervous, really. I had like a nervous breakthrough, honestly, and that's what brought me to mindfulness. But I knew that if I wanted to bring mindfulness to the corporate world, which is what I wanted to do, I became certified to teach it. I had to do it differently again, so that it would be approachable and not icky and not weird and not, you know, eye rollers. 'Cause I had to appeal to the naysayers, the namaste-ers, and the eye rollers. So I developed a program using rock music to help people understand that it truly is about how we show up for other people. It is the foundation of self-awareness. If you know how you're being, you have the opportunity to be accountable, you have the opportunity to course correct. So the through line really is about presence and how we show up for each other, even though they're kind of disparate types of things, there's really that through line. 

[00:07:09] Susan Barry: I think you and I came up in the hotel business around the same time, and the idea of bringing your whole self to work was not even remotely a thing. Like there was no such thing as that. You should absolutely lock your real self in a cabinet and not speak to her again until you got home. When did you realize that your authentic self was your professional superpower? 

[00:07:39] Shelley Brown: That's a great question. I don't believe in bringing your whole self to work.

[00:07:43] Susan Barry: Oh, interesting!

[00:07:44] Shelley Brown: I don’t believe that, one, everybody wants to. I don't believe that it's a requirement. I don't believe that there are things that - you know, there's a difference between authentic and unfiltered. And when we're talking about bringing, you know, yourself or your authentic self to work, I think it's about choice. What parts of myself do I wanna reveal that are gonna help me do my job better, connect better with relationships at work? You know, are there things that I want people to know about me? So it's very much about safety and choice. And back to the question of how I knew it was my superpower. I broke my back. I was an ultra runner - that was Peloton, before Peloton. I taught like six, I taught like six spin classes a week, and a lot of it was kind of this armor of badass, like, “Oh yeah, I'm a sales, you know, I'm selling technology, I'm running marathons. I am doing all this stuff.”

And it was me like making my, my identity out of my accomplishments and accolades and look at me and my ego driven self. And then I broke my, my vertebrae literally collapsed and it crushed the nerves going down my leg. And I couldn't walk for a while, couldn't work. I was in so much grief 'cause I was like, oh my gosh, who am I now without that? A lot of people went through similar during the pandemic, not because of their back, but because of job loss and because of this sense of identity that we get from what we're doing in achieving. And so it was a really pivotal moment for me to be like, who am I without that? And so much came out of that time where I couldn't use those things that I was using to identify and a lot of cool stuff happened. I became an artist. I wrote a book. I, you know, found mindfulness. I started speaking. I realized my highest value is really about connection and belonging and it is a superpower, that sense of belonging, and it starts with our own sense of belonging to ourselves.

[00:09:58] Susan Barry: One of the big reasons that I wanted to have you on the podcast is because I love these semi-regular posts that you do on LinkedIn called Best in Row. Tell everyone what is Best in Row and what inspired it. 

[00:10:14] Shelley Brown: I have always woken up every morning since I was a little girl thinking, who can I make friends with today? Which is obviously, you know why we go into hospitality, right. I travel a lot as a speaker and I make it my mission that every time I'm gonna fly, that the person sitting next to me is going to be my new friend. And I don't mean just friend for the flight, I mean after the flight, and it almost always happens. So I'm a story collector and I'm so curious and I love to learn the stories of other people. And so when the flight's about to end, I ask if we can take a selfie. I take notes. I've met a young woman from Wales who was trying to go to Nashville to become a country star, and she's doing really well.

[00:10:59] Susan Barry: Are you serious?

[00:11:00] Shelley Brown: Yeah. She's like cool little Taylor, a Welsh Taylor Swift. She's amazing. I met an ESPN cinematographer photographer, producer who just won a bunch of awards for his work on E60, which is the deeper humanitarian type of documentaries that ESPN does. I met a guy who like gave me one of his AirPods and played the song he wrote for his daughter's wedding. And I'm like crying within 10 minutes of sitting there. And we stay in touch. And then I met the most incredible people because I think if you’re open and they're open, they want to share about themselves. And it’s the most beautiful fun thing and I'm not gonna stop doing it, and I won't pull somebody's AirPods out. I'm a good reader of people. 

[00:11:49] Susan Barry: So if you don't want to be Shelly's new best friend, just keep your headphones in and you'll be fine.

[00:11:57] Shelley Brown: Or just say no, it's a complete sentence!

[00:12:00] Susan Barry: So your earlier work focused on sort of embracing our weirdness to foster belonging. You had a W.E.I.R.D. framework. That was an acronym. Can you tell us about that? Tell us about W.E.I.R.D. and how the sort of newest iteration Rebel Leadership goes even deeper. 

[00:12:23] Shelley Brown: I had an afterschool special story happen when I was a kid, where my journal was found at school and Amy, the most popular girl in school and her, you know, she-devil mean girls like ganged up on me and they're like, “You're so weird. You're so weird. You're so weird.” I think most of us have felt weird, but then I realized, you know what? We're all weird, just kind of different, weird. And so I broke it down into a framework. It's Welcoming. And it's not so much, “hi, how are you” hospitality, it's really what's happening between my head, between my ears, what are the thoughts? Because if I don't welcome them, I'm gonna shove them away, push them away, and not be aware of them. So it's welcoming what's happening between our ears. It's really mindfulness and E is Engaging - curiosity, listening, things like that. And then Integrating is integrating not the whole self, but integrating mistakes, integrating the parts that people wanna share with us about themselves and taking a look at at the whole person that they reveal to us. And then R is Risk taking. Making it safe for people to speak up and take those risks and going first so that people can follow. And then the D is delivering. So that was the framework of W.E.I.R.D., which I used in my talk, The Belonging Equation. Why I've gone further is because belonging is not enough. Belonging is incredibly important, but the whole Rebel Leadership brand is really about legacy and how incredibly important it is to lead with legacy.

And I thought about the values that I wanted to go into this brand with and it's generosity - give more than than you take. Responsibility - we have a responsibility to our stakeholders, to the people that we work with, to our customers, and the responsibility to ownership behaviors, thoughts, actions - things like that. And then trust - obviously, that's a big one. Establishing safety, establishing trust. Belonging is in there. And love - love is a value that I truly stand behind. It's not you have to be loving on everybody, but love and care is really important. And then results - we're in business for the bottom line, so everything has to thread back to that. And so those are some of the core values. And again, this really thinking about how we lead the ways we're not leading like we're meant to, we have to take a look at that. Because if we wanna lead with legacy in mind, we don't want the next generation to have to undo the ways that we've led all over again.

[00:15:10] Susan Barry: It's interesting that belonging remains a sort of core value in this next iteration. In your work with companies, what do you think are some red flags that show belonging is missing? 

[00:15:27] Shelley Brown: I think the number one thing is when I speak after I'm done, people run up to me and they'll say, “I hope so and so heard what you said.” Then it's funny 'cause most of the companies that do hire me really do have a vested interest in cultivating and fostering belonging within their cultures. But again, it has to be embodied. It can't just be a poster on the wall. It can't be performative. It has to be embodied. And when it's not, it's obvious. Engagement scores, people leaving, people becoming apathetic, people being stressed out, and things like that. So it shows up in every way and it trickles down to our guests in the hospitality industry, in any industry, it trickles down to the customer experience. 

[00:16:18] Susan Barry: 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 or in their personal lives. How can leaders foster belonging without making it feel like a poster on the wall, you know, like a corporate initiative that's gonna be forgotten in six months or whatever? 

[00:16:44] Shelley Brown: I think it's so important that we embody it ourselves. It starts with noticing our own narratives, our own stories. You know, there's a lot of times where we are wearing different masks ourselves, and if we don't notice those people that we lead notice that. They notice if we're trying to, if we're not authentic, if we're not being vulnerable, if we're not sharing about our own selves, and certainly people wanna be seen, heard, and known. They wanna feel welcomed and that means actually listening, being curious and establishing that trust, that helps people know that they're safe. Because when they know that they're safe, then they can make choices about what they wanna share about themselves.

I think it's also critical that we integrate a person's sense of purpose and how a person's sense of purpose is part of the bigger purpose of the organization, because people are really purpose-driven. I think especially younger people, that is one of the key drivers of their workplace satisfaction, their work life satisfaction, is that sense of purpose. But if we don't know what it is, how can we make sure we're integrating that? How can we make sure we're integrating their gifts and talents in the unique ways that they can add to the overall success of our organizations? 

[00:18:19] Susan Barry: That purpose thing I think trips people up because I think there is a tendency to wanna believe that - or to not want to, but to believe that the purpose has to be so grand and deep and profound. And I mean, I think the purpose can be to like, make people have a nice day, right?

[00:18:48] Shelley Brown: A hundred percent. And I think a leader, can help people sort of move away from that myth that it's not about making sure that there's zero emissions in the atmosphere and that just being friendly is purpose enough? And I think it's critical that leaders help people figure out what that purpose is and make sure that they know it doesn't have to be grandiose and that they can really make a difference with something even that doesn't feel like it's huge. 

[00:19:26] Susan Barry: Well, we have reached the fortune telling portion of our show. So now our purpose is that you have to predict the future, and I will tell you if you got it right. What is a prediction that you have about the future of workplace culture in hospitality and industries beyond?

[00:19:48] Shelley Brown: I think with so many processes becoming automated that we need to double down on humanity, and especially in the hospitality industry. We’re a people business, humans are not going away, so we need to really, really double down on leading with what matters, and that is legacy. And especially in our industry, this is such an incredibly beautiful opportunity. It's the only one of the few opportunities where people actually come to work oftentimes, and where people gather and they create experiences for other people. We need to make sure that we are really focused on the human beings that make up this industry and any industry. I think that's the legacy piece that we want to make sure we gift people with. 

[00:20:43] Susan Barry: If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about how companies approach leadership, what would it be? 

[00:20:52] Shelley Brown: I feel like I'm repeating myself again, and I think that giving people tools besides just, you know, skill sets, but really the skill sets that matter to being a servant leader, to making sure you are leading not just to form and to create results. But leading in servant leadership and leading with people-first approach and making sure that performance doesn't outweigh people, because that's the biggest imbalance that continues to exist. 

[00:21:33] Susan Barry: Okay, folks, before we tell Shelly goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”

[00:21:46] Susan Barry: Shelly, what is a story you would only tell on the loading dock? 

[00:21:52] Shelley Brown: Oh my gosh. Okay, so I live in downtown Chicago, and as we talked about earlier, I was a concierge and this was after I was a concierge. But if anybody ever wants me to be a concierge for the day and you're in Chicago, I will fully stand in. I will stand on a loading dock and I will tell stories until you have to grab your people and get them back to work. But my loading dock story is I was walking down the street with my little dog one day and this man walked up to me and asked me where there was a fluff and fold - which is not a term that we use in Chicago. And I was like, what's a fluff and fold? And he said it was a, it's a laundromat. And I said, “There are no laundromats around here. Are you with a band?” And he said. “Yeah. How did you know?” And I said, “What band are you with?” He said, “The Dead.” I said, “Oh, you're staying at the -

[00:22:44] Susan Barry: No way!

[00:22:46] Shelley Brown: And I said, “You're staying at the Four Seasons, right?” And he said, “Okay, how did you know?” I said, because I was a concierge at the Four Seasons, and I got to meet Mickey and Jerry and everybody. This was a while before that. And so anyway, we became fast friends. I let him use the laundry in my building.

[00:23:05] Susan Barry: Oh my gosh.

[00:23:06] Shelley Brown: I ended up going to see The Dead backstage. And I got to, and I got to meet, um, Mickey and I got to meet Phil and I got to meet Warren Haynes, who was the singer, and I was introduced to my favorite, Chris Robinson of The Black Crows who I just love. And literally I was like the only person standing backstage for The Black Crows. So we've continued to stay friends and that is my favorite loading dock story. 

[00:23:45] Susan Barry: That's insane. If you knew how many times we went to see Phil and Friends, because it might be the last chance we would have. Like so many times. So many times when I tell my husband this story, he's gonna flip out. Shelley Brown, thank you so much for being here. I know that our listeners are going to work on making sure that they belong and that their teams belong. I really appreciate you riding to the top floor with us. 

[00:24:15] Shelley Brown: Thank you so much, Susan, and let's make sure the leaders Rebel. 

[00:24:21] Susan Barry: Thanks for listening. You can find the show notes at top floor podcast.com/episode/192. 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.

[00:24:57] 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.