Transcript: Episode 211: Martini Mayhem

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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 211. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/211. 

[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. Mike Messeroff has spent 30 years in the hospitality industry working in restaurants, airlines, and bars across the globe. He was JetBlue's first intern and later managed partnerships before leaving corporate life to travel bartend in the Caribbean, Australia, and New Zealand, and settle in Breckenridge, Colorado. After hitting a surprising low point in paradise, Mike turned inward, discovering mindfulness and daily meditation, then became a leadership coach for hospitality executives. He is now launching the Self Hospitality Collective, a free community offering bite-sized audio guidance, practical exercises, and a supportive space for leaders. Today, we are going to talk about what exactly self-hospitality means, 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 Trina. It's the perfect question for you, Mike. Trina says, “I daydream about quitting my nine-to-five and living on a beach somewhere. Aside from making less money, what are the pros and cons?” Obviously, you are perfectly set up to answer this question. What do you have to tell Trina?

[00:02:07] Mike Messeroff: Oh, well, first off, it's so great to be here. I really appreciate you having me, Susan. And let me get to Trina's question — so this is why I'm a coach, because I did that. I quit my corporate job and moved to the Caribbean. I moved to a beach, and I'm not gonna say it wasn't fun. It was really fun. Of course, to her question around logistics and financials, I was making less as a bartender than corporate, but my wife and I still managed to save money. It was actually a really incredible experience. I would just jump forward a few years, and I'm sure we'll talk more about this, but when I hit the lowest point in my life, as you've already mentioned in Breckenridge, Colorado, that was my wake-up call that it didn't matter where I was in the world. It didn't matter if it was a beautiful beach or a beautiful ski town. It didn't matter how much fun I was having; I was at the lowest point in my life. I was skiing every single day of the season, and it's my favorite thing to do. And I was utterly depressed and desperate and really kind of experiencing anxiety.

So I would just say to Trina and whoever else is out there daydreaming about quitting their job, just realize that not working is not really the answer. It's finding joy in your work, so that wherever you are, you go. You're gonna bring all your baggage, pun intended, and you're going to bring all of the stress and the programming and the negative self-talk, and maybe even some self-loathing — that doesn't just go away. So you can mask it with beaches, and you could cover it up with skiing or having fun or just planning fun trips. But ultimately, if you're feeling kind of empty or lack full or like there's more to life, it's worth doing the inner work first before you do the external change of changing jobs or changing the scenery, because I think everyone kind of has tried that, even if it's just a vacation.

[00:04:18] Susan Barry: I feel like we could just end the episode now with those pearls of wisdom, but I'm far too nosy to do that. So I'm gonna start with some questions about your background. You were JetBlue's first intern. How did that happen?

[00:04:34] Mike Messeroff: I was going to the University of Buffalo. It was 2000-ish - 2001, and I was on a flight from JFK to Buffalo, and they announced that the CEO, David Neeleman, is on the flight serving snacks. So he comes over to me, and I start chatting him up, and he was like. “All right, kid.” I was a freshman in college. He's like, “All right, you know, I gotta go serve the rest of these snacks.” He was very polite, but he kind of cut it off. And then we land in Buffalo, and my sister is kind of getting ready to get off the plane. I say, I'll meet you at the end of the jet bridge. I want to stay and walk David Neeleman down the jet bridge. I want to be the last one on the plane. And I did. And I waited. I let everyone get off the plane. And I walked with David Neeleman. I told him I'm studying business. I'm really fascinated by what he's done, starting this low-cost carrier.

And JetBlue was the darling of the industry. First with live TVs and individual TV screens and amazing snacks and all that stuff that JetBlue was known for. And he said, “You know, this sounds great. We don't have an internship program, but here's my card. Shoot me an email.” It's David Neeleman’s business card, and I wrote him an email. He passed me along to someone named Tom Anderson, who I still keep in touch with. Who was the, at the time, I think he was SVP of operations, who passed me along to his manager of operations or business development, who became my boss for the next several years. And that's how I started working for JetBlue. And I actually ended up starting their first intern program because I wanted it to be a little more structured and to have some mentoring and just different aspects that I didn't get. So it was a wild experience.

[00:06:17] Susan Barry: That's a cool full circle. But I have to know… okay, how did you have this sort of chutzpah and confidence to just be like, I'm just gonna hang out and wait for the CEO? I mean, I can't picture myself as a college student doing something like that.

[00:06:34] Mike Messeroff: I guess that's something that I don't know. I maybe it's innate, or maybe it's just like a realization that what have I got to lose? Like, I don't know him. He doesn't know me. I was never an airline geek where it was like, I have to work for an airline, or I have to work for this airline. So I didn't feel like I was jeopardizing anything there. It was just kind of like served up for me. I had to spike it.

[00:07:01] Susan Barry: Do you think that approach would work today? Like, would it work again, or are people to like get outta my DMs? You know what I mean?

[00:07:08] Mike Messeroff: Well, yeah, that's exactly why it would work because it was not a DM.

[00:07:12] Susan Barry: Ah, got it.

[00:07:12] Mike Messeroff: It was in person, it was face-to-face, it was kismet, coincidence, serendipity, whatever you wanna call it, which I don't believe in. I believe those are, you know, God winks or universe winks, and when it all comes together like that, it's kind of like asking a pretty girl out on a date. You know? It's like well, if I don't, or if I don't start this conversation, I'm never gonna see this person again. What, what do I have to lose? It's not not having fear, it's being willing to walk through it. I think that's what makes all the difference in the world.

[00:07:47] Susan Barry: Very interesting. Well, you had a great career at JetBlue, but you were finally sort of tipped over to leave those perks and the security of that job to bartend your way around the world. What made that happen?

[00:08:02] Mike Messeroff: You know. When I was at the lowest point in my life, I was getting shaken by the universe. I mean, that was anxiety attacks, bad depression. When I was at JetBlue, I would say it was more of like a gentle nudge. Like, kind of like a tap from the universe. And that first came about, I was there for about 10 years, so right in the middle, my mid twenties, I just started realizing the best part of my workday was my walk at lunch. I would take a really long lunch. I would take a really long walk, and I just remember thinking, you know, that's not okay. There's something wrong with this equation where all morning I'm dreaming about my lunch break and all afternoon I'm dreaming about going home. I didn't wanna live like that, where I was trying to get through the day or get through the week. And I didn't do anything about it for years because it wasn't bad enough. I was treated really well at JetBlue. It was a great company, great perks, like you mentioned.

And I'd say thankfully my wife, who's amazing and kind of a badass trailblazer herself, she was working corporate as well, but publishing. It was kind of a dying off industry. She was working for Time Inc., doing some international publishing syndication type stuff, and she had been promised her third promotion. And her boss told her, Hey, just like all the other ones, you've deserved it. You did all the work, but we just don't have the budget. I'm really sorry. We'll get you next time, kind of thing. So the third time that happened, she came home, she said, “I'm done. Let's sell all our shit. Let's get rid of this beautiful apartment on the west side overlooking the Hudson River, and let's move to the Caribbean.” And I said. Sounds really awesome! Let me think about it. And I did for like 20 minutes, and I'm like, I’m in. One of those other things in my life where it's like, if I don't do this, I'll always wonder, “What if?” And I think, and this could be for Trina or for anyone else out there who wants to quit their job too. And if you really feel that, like you're just miserable and it's something that you just want to do. It's like you could always go back, you know? It might not be at that job. I knew I could get a job at an airline or in hospitality if I wanted to, and I think in the back of my mind, that allowed me to kind of take that scary leap into leaving the security and the safety, even though I say security lightly, too. It's kind of all a false sense of security, and I have a story behind that, which I'm happy to share if you'd like. How like I really learned that there is no job security. It's just a myth, it's an illusion. So all of that led me to kind of take this seemingly scary leap, which catapulted me into the next phase of life!

[00:11:00] Susan Barry: It strikes me that this is another thing about the hospitality industry that's like an unstated benefit, which is the skills don't go away, so you always have that to fall back on. I'm thinking about the dreams that I continue to this day to have about waiting tables, and I have to water the entire restaurant, and I just can't do it. So I'm like frozen standing there. But it's that knowing that, you know what, worst case scenario, if I had to, I could go wait tables maybe not tomorrow, but like after a couple of weeks of training and practice.

[00:11:38] Mike Messeroff: Yes.

[00:11:39] Susan Barry: You have called Breckenridge both heaven and the lowest point in your life. What was that contrast about, and what did it teach you about chasing happiness?

[00:11:52] Mike Messeroff: I traveled all over the world, worked and lived in Australia, New Zealand. We spent time in Indonesia and Fiji, Hawaii. And we spent a summer back in New York, and it was amazing. And Breckenridge was supposed to be one ski season and we fell in love with it. So we stayed, we stayed, we kept staying. Three years in, I found myself as the manager of the bar that I was working at in this beautiful steakhouse. And I had a bunch of keys, I was the first one in the last one to leave, I had a lot of people working for me, and it started to feel like a job again. Like a grind where I wasn't…. Bartending for me was always a way to travel and see the world and enjoy it, and then it became another job. And I wasn't in tune with my emotions or my vibrations to know that my negativity, my depression, my anxiety was telling me something. It had to get so bad to the point where when I would walk into the restaurant before my shift and start setting up the bar, my palms would start sweating, my heart would start racing. I didn't realize I was having panic attacks, but that's what it was.

And then I'd go to the bar, take a shot of Jameson, maybe go out back, hit my vape pen, do whatever I could to numb myself so that I could just get through that shift. And it didn't really kind of hit me until I almost destroyed my marriage. I was really… I was absent, I wasn't very present, I wasn't very kind or caring. I didn't know that I was lacking purpose. I didn't know that I had no sort of emotional intelligence or regulation. I had no balance in my life. I was numbing myself, self-medicating, all these things that, it just, we need to be shaken to awaken. And that was my shake. I think it's just a great lesson for anyone out there. Like, don't think that just a move or quitting or having a lot of fun is gonna make you a joyful person because joy and happiness are uncaused. They really are. We look at babies.

[00:14:09] Susan Barry: Whoa. Say that again.

[00:14:11] Mike Messeroff: Happiness is uncaused.

[00:14:12] Susan Barry: That's, I've never heard that before. And that just like shook me to my core. Holy mackerel.

[00:14:19] Mike Messeroff: It's true. There's a reason why children laugh 400 times a day and adults laugh — want to guess?

[00:14:24] Susan Barry: Uh, well, it depends on if you're talking about me or normal people.

[00:14:28] Mike Messeroff: Normal people, not you. 

[00:14:28] Susan Barry: Okay. Four?

[00:14:30] Mike Messeroff: It's actually 15. 

[00:14:32] Susan Barry: Uh-huh, good.

[00:14:33] Mike Messeroff: But at some point from being a child to being an adult, we go from 400 to 15, which shows you that we are joyful beings. I mean, look at a 2-year-old, they don't care what you think. They're not trying to impress anyone. Maybe a three or four, they start to kind of learn that. But the younger they are, the more joyful they are because they haven't learned how to be stressful, how to feel that fear that's taught. Not danger, they know danger, but they don't know the fear that is instilled in us. So happiness is our natural state of being when we're not blocking it, when we're not thinking our way out of it.

[00:15:14] Susan Barry: I know that you did a lot of work to get to this point, and I think we're gonna touch on a bunch of that, but I want to understand the concept of self-hospitality because I think that's where you arrived after doing all of this personal work. If I'm a general manager or vice president of something, and I'm listening to this. What does self-hospitality mean? What does it mean to treat myself like an honored guest on any given Tuesday?

[00:15:46] Mike Messeroff: Imagine you have an honored guest coming, like maybe it's a VIP, or maybe it's just family who's staying at your hotel or coming to eat at your restaurant. You know, you're gonna give the staff a heads up, you're gonna make sure their table's ready for them, or their room is perfectly appointed. You're going to make sure that they just have a good time, like have a good experience. Everyone in hospitality is in this business of service, of serving others, and so often we serve everyone else and we forget to serve the one person that is actually the most important person in each of our lives, which is who you look at when you look in the mirror. So, it truly is, self-hospitality is the easiest, most effective, direct way to change everything in your life because you're changing yourself. You're taking care of yourself. You're learning how to give from a place of overflow instead of depletion and emptiness. And I think almost everyone listening to this could relate to that feeling of like, I give to everyone else, and then there's no time left for me. It's such a busy, noisy world. I think everyone can agree on that now more than ever, but it's also really, really busy and noisy in between our ears, in our minds. It's really noisy. It's really negative usually, and if you don't learn how to, just get a break from that, three minutes a day is all it takes to just train your body to know what it feels like to be at peace, to not be bombarded, to not be constantly thinking about things. It doesn't mean you need to stop thinking, but you're learning how to notice the thinking, you're practicing focus. You're practicing awareness.

So meditation is non-negotiable. I would say practicing gratitude is also one of those things that it will absolutely change your life, as Cliché as it might sound. You can't be stressed out or anxious and full of appreciation. You can't feel gratitude and stress. It's one or the other. So the more you practice feeling gratitude, the more you're gonna feel it. That's why what you appreciate appreciates — it's literally the meaning of the word. The more you practice gratitude, the more you're gonna be feeling grateful for things, and you're gonna be looking for the silver lining. Something wrong happens, or someone's screaming like, “Hey, we have a huge problem!” You're gonna say, well. What's the, what's the lesson here? How could we learn from this? Or how could we grow from this?

So those are some universal things. And then aside from that, it's just knowing yourself. Do you need to take a lunch? Do you need time in nature? Do you need time with your dog, or your wife, or your kids? What lights you up? Is it playing the guitar? For me, it's writing poetry. And if I don't, if I go a few days without writing, I feel it. I feel repressed. I feel bottled up. Because when you're repressed you're not expressing, you're repressing. And when you repress for too long, you get depressed. It's just a formula. It's just the way that it works. So that is self-hospitality in a nutshell. It is treating yourself like your best guest because you can't give away what you don't have. You want to give away joy. You want to give away peace, you want to give away a beautiful experience to your guests or even to your family and your friends. If you're not feeling that way, you can't fake it. I think everyone in hospitality is really good at slapping on a smile or a mask. But you can't, people know, they really do. We're all very intuitive beings. So self-hospitality is just really thinking about yourself as you're making decisions.

[00:19:29] Susan Barry: Let's zoom in on meditation because you say meditation is non-negotiable. Like that's just a universal law of the world, which maybe it is, but only three minutes. So why is that? Why is it better to do this sort of short and consistent meditation versus like long, but only every once in a while or pick it up, put it back down again? That kind of thing.

[00:19:56] Mike Messeroff: I will just say, if you're gonna meditate once a week versus none, great. It's way better than none. However I love to just use the analogy of going to the gym, for a few reasons. One, meditation is literally like training your mind to be calm, training yourself to be more responsive, less reactive. It gives you like a little bit of a, I call it the magic gap between something happening. It could be someone yelling at you. It could be you stub your toe. It could be you break something, and how you decide consciously to respond. So that's why you're taking your brain to the gym. But the other reason I mentioned this gym analogy is because when you exercise, you're burning more calories while you exercise, but also for hours afterwards. So if you meditate every morning, even just for a few minutes, it's gonna raise your vibrations, it's going to raise your mood, and that will actually carry over into your day, and that just makes everything easier. It reduces resistance, it helps you get out of your own way. It helps you feel more joy. It helps you stop blocking that joy that we talked about, because joy is our natural state of being when we're not getting in our own way. So it's really just a momentum. It is. It's just like you're pushing a ball down a hill and it's going to pick up speed. If it's a snowball, it's gonna get bigger. And that's what you do every day. Just a little bit of, “Hey, I gotta take my brain to the gym.” It's that important.

[00:21:31] Susan Barry: I'm guessing that someone listening heard the word vibration and went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute.” So for leaders who sort of see themselves as being allergic to like the “woo” of it all, what is your most practical sort of proof of life explanation for why this works? Like forget the, even the self hospitality and the feeling joy. What's a basic ROI kind of explanation you would give them?

[00:22:05] Mike Messeroff: Experience. Not just my own personal experience, but so many, I mean, every client I've worked with, I love sharing their words and their testimonials, but most of them experience profound transformation in the first two weeks, and that's because they're starting to meditate every day, and they're starting to practice appreciation. This isn't rocket science. Like, it's not that hard. It's just scientifically proven, and there are plenty of studies that prove it, that just say you are going to be more present, more focused, more joyful. Your cortisol levels will be lower. You're not gonna be in constant fight, flight or freeze and on and on and on. Like, there's so many like tangible, scientifically proven methods. But I would just tell anyone out there, I could speak till I'm blue in the face, and I love words, but words don't teach. They don't. They don't! And I say, just give it a shot. That's why I always recommend the Headspace app.

Headspace gives, I think they're giving 10 days free, which is a perfect amount of time to take their, it's called learning the basics of meditation. And like I said, three minutes, maybe five minutes a day. And just see. After five days, maybe seven, or maybe it's the full 10, something is going to change in your life. For me, it was taking dishes out of the dishwasher. The dishwasher stopped running. I was emptying dishes. This was right after I started meditating, like a few days after, back in 2017, and one of the glass Tupperware slipped because it was wet and cracked and fell on the floor. And I just remember like vividly just looking at it and even just looking at it was so different from how I would've reacted a week ago when I wasn't meditating. I would've immediately lost my ***. I would’ve lost my mind. Who packed this in here too tight? How come this dishwashers, I think this dishwasher's broke. I would've blamed it on the dishwasher. I would've blamed it on someone else. I would've bitched and moan, and I would've ruined the day and I would've ruined everyone else's mood that was around me. But then, because I was meditating literally for three minutes a day, for a couple of days, I just noticed, like, I was like, Oh, I guess I'll clean it up. It saved me an entire day of being pissed off, an argument with my wife, and it was like, powerful. It felt so good to just have that power of like, Oh, I get to choose how to respond to things. Even if I've reacted a million ways the same way for my entire lifetime. It doesn't mean I have to do it the same today.

[00:25:00] Susan Barry: Speaking of reactions and sort of lifelong patterns, what patterns do you see in hospitality executives? Their stress, their self-talk, before they make a change.

[00:25:15] Mike Messeroff: Susan, I love this question. No, it's really-really powerful because I work with top leaders like CEOs, entrepreneurs, presidents, plenty of VPs, managers, directors as well. But I find that with the people who are at the top, they're usually really ready for this work because they've made it to the top rung of the ladder, and they're still not happy.

[00:25:44] Susan Barry: Wow. 

[00:25:46] Mike Messeroff: It's like me. It's like I wasn't at the top of my corporate career, but I was at the top in terms of I quit my corporate job. I was traveling the world. I was having all this fun.

[00:25:56] Susan Barry: Like your dream life. The thought of a dream life. 

[00:26:01] Mike Messeroff: Yeah. And it still wasn't it. I've had clients that either assumed the CEO role or they bought their company, and they thought all their problems would melt away, and they became suicidal after. I mean, really. I've had clients who sold their companies and said, “Oh, this is what I've been working for. Wipe my hands clean, sold it. Now I'm sitting on this pile of money.” And they're just as unhappy as they were the day before. In fact, they're worse because they realize that, I've been spending all this time making money, but I never figured out who I was. I never really figured out what brought me joy. I was just trying to make this pile as big as it could possibly be. And now, at 50-60 years old, I have to start maybe doing a little bit of that inner journey, that inner work. And I really think that's a lesson for anyone who's not at the top or thinks that, “Well, when I get to the top,” even if it's the next level up. If you're a manager and you think, “Oh, when I get to be director of man, everything's gonna be great.” And then, you know, there's the directors out there that are like, “Man, when I get to be VP, smooth sailing”, then the VP is like, “Man, I'm doing all this work. There is no tomorrow.” There is no tomorrow! If you don't know how to enjoy today, you'll never be happy.

[00:27:22] Susan Barry: We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every single episode of Top Floor with really specific, practical things that they can try either in their businesses or in their personal lives. We've already made a really good list, so be cool and gimme some more answers. A leader has layoffs looming. A 12-hour day ahead. What are three micro practices that she can employ to stay present, compassionate, and clear? Or maybe I should say grateful, meditative.. and there's probably a third one that I'm not coming up with.

[00:27:59] Mike Messeroff: Joyful, maybe. 

[00:28:00] Susan Barry: Joyful. Yes, yes, perfect! 

[00:28:02] Mike Messeroff: But so many people are just like, joy is like, so beyond that, it's sometimes not even the most relatable word to use. First thing I would say to that is something I was just kind of talking about, which is just in a different way of saying it, we get what we practice. So if you're 40, 50, 60, you've been practicing a way of living for a really long time, and usually you're practicing distraction instead of focus. You're practicing deferring joy instead of experiencing joy. So all of this work is easier as you do it consistently. So I just wanted to kinda lay the groundwork with that. So if this person has been meditating and practicing gratitude, it'll naturally be easier than just saying like, I'm stressed out. I have 12 hours, I have layoffs. Like, what do I do? But that being said, I still say meditate, which is, you know, you don't have to even say meditate. You could just say, do a three minute breath work routine, which is, there's some kind of nuances between breath work and meditation. But you want to drop into the present moment. You wanna center yourself, you want to ground yourself. It could really be one deep breath.

I was speaking at a food service conference a few months ago, and I had everyone there just take one - I didn't have time to lead a full meditation, but I had them do one conscious breath and even one conscious breath. If you're really kind of doing it and it taking the time, it's about 30 seconds. But you take a nice, big, deep breath, hold it at the top. Sip in a little bit more. Just feel your body, feel your your lungs expanded, and then let it all go. When I say let it all go, let it all go. We have so much stuck stale air down at the bottom. So you blow all that out and then just sit there and notice, and it's like, Okay, now I'm ready. So that's one is either a meditation, a breath work, or one conscious breath. Something to center you.

I'm gonna say it again because it's just that important. Find something to be grateful for, and in that moment of like, well, there's nothing. I'm so stressed out. There's nothing, I'll be grateful after these 12 hours are done. Well, you're breathing. That's one. You're alive. You have a job. You have people that depend on you. You work in a cool industry. You know, you start doing that, it's like a rampage gets going, and you start to, all of a sudden you start to feel a little more grateful. And when you're grateful, you're not feeling all that stress. The other thing that's really, really practical is something I call a mindful reminder, and this could be in the form of a post-it note. It could be an alarm on your phone. It's a really great way to use technology for your benefit instead of doomscrolling. It could be an affirmation that you tell yourself, which is like, “This is what I signed up for,” or “This is the job,” or “I love this job,” or “I'm here to solve problems.” Like you remind yourself—

[00:31:17] Susan Barry: Wait, I like that one, I'm here to solve problems. That's a really good one. In a stressful time.

[00:31:21] Mike Messeroff: Absolutely. Because we're supposed to have problems. Like we are, if not, robots are gonna be running everything. We're using our brains, that's why you're a leader. So, reminding yourself of like, this is all good. This is what I've trained for. It's almost like that. Like I've been training for a day like today. Let's go. Bring it on. Hope that helps.

[00:31:47] Susan Barry: That's really good. Well, we have reached the fortune-telling portion of our show, so you now have to predict the future, and then we will come back later and see if you got it right. What is a prediction you have about the future of leadership, wellbeing, and hospitality? How will something like self-hospitality show up on teams and on P&Ls?

[00:32:10] Mike Messeroff: Going back to meditation's non-negotiable. I truly feel like this is why I'm alive. I'm alive to help people learn how to meditate and learn how to cultivate that sense of inner peace, and not looking for it anywhere else in other people in the next job, in the next car. So I do think that meditation's going to be more normal. You know, it's not just gonna be like, Oh, you're the weird one who meditates. It's gonna be like, Oh, of course. Who doesn't meditate? But I think specifically a little more short-term, you're just gonna start to see this. Whether it's self-hospitality workshops or more speakers. I mean, I'm speaking at a lot more conferences these days, and I find that to be so refreshing to know that these leaders who are putting on these conferences, running these massive organizations in the industry, see the value of taking… I'm actually delivering a keynote in a couple months, so like to say like. Hey, we're gonna take an hour out of our conference to talk about mental health and wellness and self-hospitality, and I think a lot of that is leaders being vulnerable first. That's something else we're gonna see. Because if not now, when? And if not you, who? Like you are the leader.

[00:33:29] Susan Barry: This is such an important point, Mike, because when you were talking about the thing of you can't have a happy guest if you don't have a happy employee. That is something that has given tremendous attention in the hotel business, specifically. “We take care of our associates, so the associates take care of our guests.” But who they leave out are the leaders. The leaders think that the rules don't apply to them. That they don't have to, “Oh, well, you know, I can work 18 hours and I can schedule back to back overlapping meetings and I can run late to every single thing I do, as long as we're nice to the line level stuff. That's cool.” And it's not! 

[00:34:13] Mike Messeroff: Words don't teach. The only way to really teach effectively is by the power of your example. That's it. What example are you setting? You are showing everyone else that the way to get to the top or the way to stay at the top is to sacrifice your sanity, your family, your joy. It's completely unsustainable. That's why we have all this burnout. We have one of the highest suicide rates of any industry in the world. That's. Crazy. That's not okay.

[00:34:43] Susan Barry: Also, not for nothing. The people who say like, “I only sleep three to four hours a night. I work seven days a week,” are lying. They are lying. They're not working. 12-hour days,

[00:34:55] Mike Messeroff: No.

[00:34:56] Susan Barry: They may be sitting at their desk for 12 hours, but they're not doing anything useful.

[00:35:01] Mike Messeroff: Yeah, and again, this comes down to just one, obviously, words don't teach. You have to teach by the power of your example, but you also have to try it for yourself. Maybe I show up at nine instead of 8:30, or 8:30 instead of 8. Whatever it is, you know, like I'm just gonna take a little more time. I'm actually gonna take a lunch every day. And I'm gonna leave at 5 o'clock or maybe at 6 o'clock or whatever.

[00:35:22] Susan Barry: Set some boundaries.

[00:35:24] Mike Messeroff: But just set some boundaries.

[00:35:26] Susan Barry: Okay, folks, before we tell Mike goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock, where all of the best stories get told.

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”

[00:35:39] Susan Barry: Mike, what is a story you would only tell on the loading dock?

[00:35:42] Mike Messeroff: When I was about to leave JetBlue, I gave them several months' notice. I just knew that I wanted to do it that way. When I knew I was leaving, I knew that I needed a new skill to take with me to the Virgin Islands, which is where we were moving, and I always wanted to bartend. I had for years, I was a Busboy, waiter, Expo. I've done so many jobs in the restaurants, but never bartended. I had a friend, his name's Kyle, who owned two dive bars in Manhattan. Back then, I was actually running a side business. I did a lot of event planning, and I hosted events around Manhattan. So I knew all these bar owners, and Kyle was great. So I said, “Kyle, I need to learn how to bartend. Can you help me out?” He said, “Sure, come down to the East Village and you're gonna work Monday nights at Billy Hurricanes. That'll be your night.” And I said, “I don't think you understand. I don't know how to bartend.” He said, “Nah, don't worry about it. We'll give you a training shift, but then it's fine.” 

And literally, they gave me one training shift, and then the next Monday, I had to open up the place, I had to count the money, I had to close it, and it was a dive bar, so I mean, I was drinking a lot. That's like my first bartending job was pouring shots and drinking shots, and it was very fun. But the part that I love about this story is that about a month or two later, I'm in St. John in the Caribbean and I meet this girl who's managing a seafood restaurant that her parents owns — really nice, high-end seafood restaurant. She actually owns it now. She bought it from her parents. And she said, “You know, I'm actually looking for a bartender.” And I said, “Well, I'm a bartender. I'm looking for a job.” She goes, “Have you bartended before?” I said, “Oh yeah, I bartended in Manhattan.” This is one of those, fake it till you make it stories. And she's like, “Wow, really? You're hired.” My very first night. I'm working the back bar, making all the drinks for the restaurant. There were a few bar seats, but my first drink ticket ever comes in, and on the drink ticket is a martini. And I see this little waitress, her name's Gariba. I remember Gariba; she had red hair, and I knew she was a bartender too. And I said, “Psst!! Gariba, come over here.” She's like, “Yeah, what's up?” I said, “How do you make a martini?” 

[00:37:57] Susan Barry: Oh my gosh. 

[00:37:59] Mike Messeroff: She looks at me, she's like, “How did you get this job?” 

[00:38:01] Susan Barry: That's crazy. 

[00:38:03] Mike Messeroff: And I said, “Gariba, I'm a quick learner. Tell me once and I'll never ask you again.” She's like, fine. Taught me how to make a martini. I never asked her again. And then I worked at that place for a year. That's when I really became a bartender. Learned all, all the cocktails, frozen drinks, and just a really, I love that story, just how things work out. 

[00:38:24] Susan Barry: That is so funny. It also reminds me of when I was hired as a bartender, I knew how to make a martini and a Manhattan and like all those classic drinks because that's what my parents and their friends drank. And so I just like learned it by osmosis. And I had worked in a restaurant before but I had never been a bartender before, but I had carried the drinks from the bar to, I was a cocktail waitress. So I got hired at this restaurant for bartending shifts and I could kind of fake it, but I'm really short, so I couldn't reach all the bottles, which was strike one against me. Strike two was that the opening side work was that I had to shuck dozens and dozens and dozens of oysters, and I could no more shuck and oyster than fly to the moon. Fortunately, I think they took pity on me and were like, okay, this isn't working little lady, but you can go and work, wait tables on the floor. So I did not get fired. I should have gotten fired because I was absolutely faking it till I did not make it.

[00:39:37] Mike Messeroff: You shucked up.

[00:39:38] Susan Barry: Yes. It was horrible. Mike Messeroff, thank you so much for being here. I am really promising that I'm about to download that meditation app, and I really appreciate you riding with us to the top floor.

[00:39:52] Mike Messeroff: It's been a pleasure, Susan. Thank you so much.

[00:39:56] Susan Barry: Thanks so much for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/211. 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.

[00:40:32] 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.