W. Chris Green, President, Humanitarian Hotels interviewed by Lan Elliott

Chris shares how he evolved from a hard charging, P&L-focused manager into an inspiring leader, whose staff would “follow him into battle.”  He shares his discovery that when he stopped looking at the numbers and started looking at the people, the numbers came – and were actually better than expected.  Chris tells a compelling story that taught him to listen with genuine interest, and why he leads his team from behind – not from out front.

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Lan Elliott 0:03

Hello and welcome to D E I advisors. My name is Lan Elliot. On behalf of d e I advisors, an Arizona nonprofit, and with me today is Chris Green, who is the newly appointed president of Remington Hotels. For those of you who don't know, Remington Hotels. It is a third party management company that encompasses 127 hotels right now. 30 brands across 27 states, along with a couple dozen I think independent boutique hotels. So a lot to do. Welcome

W. Chris Green 0:38

Chris. Yes. Thanks Lance. Good to see you.

Lan Elliott 0:41

That's nice to see you too. One of the things that we like to do is to share how we got to know our guests on this show. And Chris, I met you. I wanna say it was when I was working at I h g I met you. When I was working for the brand and you were working for Chesapeake at the time, and what really struck me is we, and we met with a lot of third party owners, third party operators, is that you took over a hotel that had been owner operated and before even the PIP had started, you increased their revenues by about 20%, which we had never seen before just by coming on board. So for me, that really struck me about. Great, you and your team are, but then when I got to know you and to get to know how important your team and culture is to you, that really impressed me. And so that was one of the main reasons that I wanted to ask you on

W. Chris Green 1:30

today. Thank you. I remember the hotel very well. We still operate that hotel today. As you can imagine, the ownership group loves us. Since that time, we've more than doubled the revenue in the hotels and tripled the bottom line. Very happy owner at that location.

Lan Elliott 1:46

So yes. Yes. And that really made me sit up and notice and and want to get to know you a bit better. So for our viewers to get to know you a bit better, let's talk a little bit about your career journey, because you've really done some incredible things. Can you share some of the inflection points in your career and maybe the skills or things that you think were important in you achieving your.

W. Chris Green 2:11

Sure. And I'm glad to do it. And thanks for having me. It's important to get a platform where you can share some of these things and encourage people for their futures because I could use encouragement back when I started I started actually in the restaurant side of the business and I can remember learning what I would say are the real basics of hospitality management in re. It's cost controls, it's variable staffing. It's variable guest patterns in a an environment that has low margins. So you've really gotta be on your game. So as a young man, I learned a lot of that, but I also. realized that I felt like there was something more. And so I had some friends that were working in the hotel business and they said, Chris, you gotta give this a try. We're over here and you don't just have to run the restaurant. So I was able to talk my way into an opportunity at a hotel. I started as a human resource director. And and it was great. I knew immediately that I loved it. I remember saying about two weeks into the general manager of the hotel, I'm gonna be a GM someday. And he said, ho, hold on young man. You got a long way to go. But he didn't know me that well and so he remains one of my mentors today. But you know that, that point when he told me if this is, if you wanna be a general manager of a hotel, then you've gotta learn all the business units and you've gotta not just be tied to food or tied to the rooms operation. You've gotta understand sales and marketing and finance. And this is more than just running a one unit location. This is a big business in one. and that guy leaned into me and trained me and was a tough mentor, but a great mentor and that really set the path forward for my career. He told me something Lan that I'll share that, that has stuck with me forever. He said, I had disagreed with him on some things. I was a very hard driving guy, as you can imagine, and I disagreed. And he said to me one day, he said, Chris, I'm the general manager. He said, what you need to do is get yourself a file folder and put it in your desk and label. when I'm the general manager and he said all these ideas, you need to write 'em down and put 'em in there. And he said, put the things that you like that I do, and put the things that you don't like that I do. But when it's your show, get that folder out and do it. And I actually did that and I, I love that vision because you need to learn from who you're working with. They're there for a reason.

Lan Elliott 4:20

That's wonderful. And I love the part where you decided what you were going to do. Your goal was to be a general manager, and you went and told your general manager, this is my goal, and that allowed him to help you and to groom you, because if you had never said that, how would he have known to have done that? I think that's an amazing thing to have done. Were there certain skills you thought that you needed to hone to increase your opportunities for advancement? Either at that, in that role or at a different

W. Chris Green 4:47

role? I learned very quickly that it was important to be well-rounded, right? A lot of hotel management opportunities come through certain verticals. In the hotel business, we see a lot of people rising to leadership. either rooms operation or sales operations. But we don't see everybody digging in their hands. And really, until recently, the past maybe 15 years as an industry, we didn't do a good job of getting people into every department. So they understood like the old days of restaurant management training where you were a dishwasher and then you were. we just would take people that, that looked like they could excel and or they were excelling in their current role and pulled them up. I realized early on that if I was gonna win, it was more about how do you lead a varied team of professionals than just learning one vertical really well and being a superstar at it. So that's what I did. I, when I wasn't the f and b director, I would be asking the chief engineer, how do boilers work or spending time doing that? And I think that's something we've gotta generate in today. Employment base is that interest in understanding that it's not just a job where you work at the front desk or you work in banquets. It's a, it's an opportunity to have a career where you run a very complex business.

Lan Elliott 6:03

Absolutely. And we don't see a lot of people rising from human resources to where you are today. But it makes, knowing you, and we'll talk about it a little more, it makes total sense that you started in a hotel in human resources. To me

W. Chris Green 6:16

there's more to that story Lan, there's more to that story. The general manager knew he was gonna be making a change at food and beverage director and he said, oh, I'll hire this guy as HR director because I know in 90 days I'm gonna make him f and b director. And that's what happened. I became the f and b director.

Lan Elliott 6:32

We, we do see some food and beverage directors rising to to general manager and then beyond. So that is a great path. One of the things I wanted to talk about, because you are so particularly good at this, is culture and. Team culture, company culture, and I know what Remington, the motto is, where passionate people thrive. And that is so very Sloan, right? We've had Sloan on this show. David Kong interviewed him earlier and I thought it's, it was very representative. But I also think it also applies to you in a way when I think about it. So can you share a little bit about how. How you approach learning and getting to be a better leader, a better mentor for your team? Because I know that's something you focus and spend a lot of time on. How? How do you continue to grow in

W. Chris Green 7:26

that way? If you're not growing, you're dying. And so I remember the inflection point in my career is something you said earlier of when I realized that to get the most out of what I was doing every day, I needed to. at the back of the pack. I needed to be at the bottom because I knew the business and so I needed to raise everybody up on my shoulders and lead them, help from behind, help them coach them instead of being the guy out front, pulling 'em along because you knew everything. And it really changed the way that I operated. And it really changed the way I think about leading people and then about culture, because really as you rise through the rank, I've been very fortunate to have opportunities to lead Chesapeake Hospitality and now be assisting Sloan and running Remington Hotels. I, it's a great honor. But here's the thing. I don't really affect what's going on at the hotels every day. The leaders in the field do, and honestly, the leaders in the field only do so much. Then it's the teams at the desk, and it's the team that are greeting the guests at ballet. And so what I've realized is if you don't have a culture that's woven through your company at such a level and that you're committed to it, that reaches all the way through your organization, then it's not really a culture. So I've spent a lot of time in my career finding out if we're gonna say passionate people thrive at Remington, we need to be certain that it's not lip service. We need to be certain that the associates that work in the valet at the Hilton, Boston back. Believe there's there they are thriving and there's opportunity to thrive and that's our job. So I say all of that. To say this, I think I told you I started in restaurants and I learned to be very financially focused and I could run as good a p and l as anybody, as a general manager, I would make my numbers. But what I learned was when I stopped looking at the numbers and started looking at the people, the numbers just. and actually they were better than what I had expected. A lot of times people will ask me technical financial questions, which I'm fine with, but it really starts with relationships with your people and being a leader that understands the business and understands what makes them tick. It's not what Chris Green thinks culture is. it's what the associates in North Carolina think culture is, or in South Florida, and it's different everywhere, which makes our business so fun because you can adapt your, if you have a phrase like where passionate people thrive. Passion in New Orleans can be different than passion in Key West and passion in Boston, but it's still passion and it's really about ensuring from our level as leaders that we are. Committed because you can't say you cannot. You can't, honestly, if there's any space at all land between what you say and what you do as a leader in a culture-based organization, you, your people will smell it out and they won't believe it. And once they don't believe it, it's dead. That's the biggest challenge really.

Lan Elliott 10:24

How do, how did you learn all of this? I'm really curious because you could read books, but there's lots of books. What's, what was the tool that really helped you to understand culture and leading people?

W. Chris Green 10:36

It was re, I talk about it in our team all the time. I talk about curiosity. I think it's one of the biggest leadership traits that people need is you can read books. I've got books over here, I've got magazines, and I do read. But I read them for context. I don't read them for instruction. And so if you know what your outcome you want it to be, then instead of saying, let me find a book, which is not wrong, I'm not gonna say it's wrong to learn how to do a, a cost analysis or whatever. But if you want to get a business from here to over there on top of the hill, you need to ask yourself questions. And people say you can't. So let's take, for example, A corner in any city in America, and it has a hotel B, hotel C, and hotel D. And hotel A is beautiful and brand new. And then hotel D has been around a while. Okay, so people might say that Hotel D has no shot. I don't believe that. every hotel has a shot because hotels are one about people and the relationships people have with 'em. And two, they're about effort and honestly then about some of the technical things you can do to win. I think it's about being curiously, and I've always been in, you've got to be engaged in the situation. You need to be basically testing your theory at all times. I did X and y. and I did a lot of the wrong X when I was a younger leader, and so I learned quickly that X equaled bad, right? So I started, I don't want to, I don't wanna live like that. Nobody wants to work in that environment. So I finally hit on something, I don't, I wanna say maybe 34, 35 years old, when it really came clear to me and it was like my eyes opened up and then I said, okay, now I've gotta understand a couple things. I gotta understand emotional intelligence. I heard a talk about that at one. and I realized that's what matters. I need to be able to sit and talk to land and understand what makes her tick, not about what makes me tick, and then add in the context of what I know about land and her goals in her life, because that's how I'll help her to get the most out of her career. And also as she's getting the most out of her career, guess what? Remington Hotels is winning because land is crushing it. And I enjoy my job so much more now than when I used to. Pounding out p and ls all day because it's more fun to watch people thrive and then they go look at my p and l because it's just coming because they're thriving and they're excited. I don't know don't know how I learned it all. Just be curious. Listen to people that are smart. I love listening to smart people.

Lan Elliott 13:14

I love that. And actually curiosity as a leadership trait as something that has come up again and again. So you've definitely hit something that, that that seems to resonate with a lot of people. I. Now, you talked a little bit about it, but I wanted to talk more about developing a network because we met and through work, but then we became friends based on, I think just because I just admired what you did and how you approach things and how you treat your team. How do you develop your network? I think you've alluded to it, but I'd love to hear more about how you develop your network in a way that's authentic to you.

W. Chris Green 13:51

It, that's an interesting question because I can tell you if I go back to Chesapeake Hospitality Days, we were a small firm, 15 hotels eventually growing to 45 hotels over, several years. But we were not well known. We know we, we had a s. Small reputation, but I, you have to get out there. I had to get on a plane and go to, I think the first place I went was to Hunter. And then you have to volunteer. That's the other thing I did is the brands have comp, owner advisory boards, they have general manager advisory boards. The, you gotta go to your local hotel Motel Association and be the president of the local small hotel Motel Associa. get out there and show people you care about what you're doing, whether it's hotels or whatever you do for a living, but get out there and then when you talk to people, listen with genuine interest, right? That's something that's really missed. I've talked to so many people that are on their way to something else, and I think it's just, it borders on rude, right? I don't know else to put it. And so if you're gonna meet someone and you're gonna listen to. Follow up and then offer to be available. That's really how I built my network, whatever, because I was a young man coming up, and our company was young coming up, and so I had to get out there and fight, I, I personally sought out the The editors and the writers for the hotel magazines, and I befriended them and I said, Hey, I'm I really understand food and beverage concepts, and if you ever need to write an article, my name's Chris and I'd give 'em my card. And, and we, and I would email 'em. And so over the years I've formed relationships. And now of course, they're all senior editors or managing directors of magazines. So it's easier to get press for Remington than it was when I was first starting out. You just gotta be intentional, and be honest. I think what you said, and I appreciate it land, is if you're somebody somewhat, that people genuinely trust and you're good for your word, you're much more likely to develop a network than if you are always selling. I never made an introduction with the primary goal of that to be selling. I made an introduction with you at I H G. Yes. Did you lead a team that ultimately could benefit our organization? Yeah, but that was not my primary goal. It was for you to learn that we were good people, because ultimately, what are you gonna do? You're gonna wanna hire good people, or you're gonna recommend good people. I hope so.

Lan Elliott 16:17

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you. I love that. Let me ask you, that was a lot of work that you did to build your network as you were coming up, does that come naturally to you? Are you an extrovert that you can walk into a room and walk up to strangers?

W. Chris Green 16:31

Yeah. I it's no problem. I talk to anybody and everybody and I love I lo I have a friend who owned the car dealership and. car sales is, car sales. But there are some people that are excellent at it, and I remember learning from him you've gotta notice if they have a, like this hat in the background here. What's, oh, look at that. What's that logo from you just get people to talk. And honestly, it's not just a tactic it's a way to get to know someone. And I can't tell you how many amazing conversations I've had with people. I saw somebody wearing a Hawaii pin, a, a flight attendant the other day. He had a pin. I was born in Hawaii, so we struck up this conversation. We have all these people that we know, just weird. But this guy's oh, I'll email you someday. my network is bigger just because I took a minute to ask him about his Hawaii pin. Taking a genuine interest in other people. It's just a good human trait I think. I hope. Yes and. We're all so busy nowadays that it's easy to walk by and you, let me tell you how I learned that lesson for all the viewers. Here's how I learned that lesson. I was maybe 32 years old. I was the food and beverage director at that hotel I was telling you about here in Florida. And I was really gungho and I was going through the lobby one day and I passed one of our housekeepers. And she said, how are you? Oh, she said, good morning, how are you? And I said, fine, how are you? And I kept walking, and she said, I hear this, and it haunts me to this day. She said, do you even care? I was like, oh my gosh. I was just crushed. And I turned around and I said, you know what, that was all wrong. And I said, you've taught me an important lesson today. And I, I'll never forget that lesson. So I try very hard to make time if I'm gonna say hello to see how you're doing because it's the only, the right thing to do. You. I

Lan Elliott 18:21

love that. That's such a great story. I think I'm going to, I think that story's gonna stick with me as well, so it sticks with me, believe me. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Sure. Along those lines, I wanted to talk about building teams because as I've mentioned, this is something that I really admire about you, how you deliver for your owners from the financial standpoint, which we've talked about, but also with a very steady eye on taking care of your team over the long run. And I remember talking to you during the pandemic, and one of the things you were really proud of is that you made it a point not to let go of staff, that you kept staff. When things return, you would be ready to power forward, but it is just so you to be taking care of your team. Can you talk about how you build teams and how you approach it?

W. Chris Green 19:11

It's a lot like it's, thank you for recognizing that, but it's a lot like what I talked to you about forming a network is your team needs to know that you're good for your word. and that you care about their outcome. And that it's not just words and lip service and, I spent a lot of time building that team and to think about it coming apart during the pandemic and then having to rebuild. That's like putting the Patriots together and then just disbanding 'em for a couple years and hoping they come back. It's not something I wanted to do. So we made that conscious decision to keep our team. I use the word integrity as a filter. I give a talk to our teams once in a while about a coffee filter, and if you imagine a coffee filter with the words integrity printed all around it, and you basically, the way you have to live your life in my organizations is that cough, that filter is for things. And when I say integrity, not just what you're doing when nobody watches just about being whole and being committed to a purpose. If it doesn't pass through the filter of, okay, we're a professional hotel management company. Is it okay for a professional hotel man, professional hotel management company to have dirty hotels? Nope. Can't pass through the filter. Is it? Is it, does it pass through the filter to be rude to your associates? Nope. Can't pass through. So if you can't pass it through a filter that says this is the right thing to do and you can't honor your word, we don't do. And then as the leader, you've gotta be ruthless about that for yourself. You've gotta make sure that people see that your filter is intact at all times and it doesn't break down because you might lose a contract or you might not win a deal. You don't win the deal. You don't, if I don't win a deal because I'm being of integrity, I sure didn't want that deal. So it's just a better way to be the story I share around this. If you're the general manager of a hotel and you're walking around the outside of perimeter of your hotel every day, which you should be, and you're with your team and there's a cigarette butt on the ground, and you walk past that cigarette butt, you've basically given tacit approval to your staff to walk by cigarette butts. You've got to be, and it's hard because you're at a very high standard and you've gotta hold yourself to a high standard. But once you do that, your team will with a one a, Follow you anywhere. That's what my SVP of operations Lisa said. She said I'll follow you into battle. I don't care. Whatever you say we're going, it's because we've built the trust. And that's how you build teams. You recognize 'em, you pour into 'em, you get 'em training they need. Here's the other way you build teams land. And this is the hard one. This is the hard one for you. Hey, that's the world we live in today. You hold 'em account. That's the one missing trait in leadership today that I think we've really gotta focus on is, I talk about river banks and I'm the river banks, and in this river, there's plenty of room to swim as long as you're going the direction that we're going, which is the way the river's going. But if you do bump up against the bank, I am going to direct you back to the middle. And that's our job as leaders. Because if you don't, what happens? You get a flood. and nobody wants a flood. So it's just those little tricks. It's nothing. I always joke, we don't do, I don't do anything that's like super fancy. It's just working really hard on being a good person, being authentic, being of integrity, and having a good framework of how we do things.

Lan Elliott 22:39

Those are all really important. They really are, and you were right. People know that the moment that it's only lip service, right? You really do have to live. Live those values. So one of the things that I love about you is how positive you are always. But the other thing I've learned in doing these interviews is this idea of having self-doubt never seems to go away. So my question for you is, what do you do when you are feeling down or maybe things aren't going? How do you stay positive? What strategies

W. Chris Green 23:18

do you use? That's a great question, and I think as you get older, which I'm getting older now after 25 plus years in the business you can call on past experiences to help you. When you start feeling that self-doubt well up, you're like wait a minute. I didn't think I was capable of doing this and I did it, so let me pull from past experience. But as you're coming. you have to believe that a effort is one of the biggest help, big, biggest assistance to achieving something. If you're a high achiever, you've gotta re remember that about yourself. Say, okay, I know I don't understand how to do a cash flow model for this 10 year projection. However, I'm an achiever, so I'm not gonna doubt myself. I'm gonna do whatever it takes. It's like that curiosity thing, right? So you may have to spend a little extra time, you have to go onto the magic Google and look it up and understand it and spend a little time. But if you're gonna, you can overcome that. The biggest one I see though, is in public speaking people just have such a fear of speaking in public. It comes natural to me, so I can't say that, but I can say that as I've gotten on bigger and bigger stages, when you go on main stage at the big conferences, there's a lot of people there, several thousand people. And it can be a bit intimidating and you have to you can't help but go, gosh, I'm just Chris Green, that was the HR director. How did I get on this stage? But the thing is you've got to, you've gotta honor everything you've put into your career and you've really gotta think about it. That's what I do. Cause I go, okay, I know that. I don't know as much as that guy over there with the Harvard MBA or about this, and I don't know much about that. And oh my gosh, that's, Tony Capano from Marriott. He's the head of the biggest hotel company. Oh, there's Christmas, but I've still had a measure of success and it's because I've learned and I've studied, and so you've just, You gotta dig deep and you gotta overcome it. Don't get, what I will tell you is don't back away. Push through it. And the funny thing is, you'll be surprised how much you know I'm, I've got a young lady on my team who runs one of our, she's a VP of revenue strategy, who technically a lot of times revenue strategy people are in the background doing the numbers, but she's just got a great personality and she's uber smart. So I remember the first time I got her. Interview, and she was nervous calling me. What do I do? What do I say? I said, be yourself, be authentic, and you're talking about a subject you know super well. And so I was watching the interview and they asked her one question, your background, and then they said what do you think about pricing in this kind of market? And it was like, boom, because she knew the answer. And then she just went, she went off. And ever since that, she's like, when can I do another interview? When can I be on a panel? So I would say push through it. Self-doubt is can be crippling, but you gotta push through it, otherwise you'll be stuck and nobody wants to be stuck. That's so

Lan Elliott 26:10

true. And I do find that difficult things get easier if you keep doing them. If you keep pushing yourself through them it gets easier over time and it might even become a skill that you get good at after a while.

W. Chris Green 26:21

So does.

Lan Elliott 26:26

you've talked about your team and how you've built your team. What do you look for in your senior leaders? What are you looking for when you look across your team and you think, oh, that person really has potential to take my spot one day or be groomed for some really big role. What are you looking for? What? What are the things that make you think that person has huge.

W. Chris Green 26:52

So I always look for energy. Energy to me is huge, right? What energy do you bring to the room? What energy do you bring to the table? Do you bring to meetings? How confident do you speak? And not in an arrogant confidence, just a confident. I know I'm, I feel good about what I'm saying. I present I'm ready to go. But I also look for a high emotional quotient, right? Like emotional intelligence. The greatest leaders that I've ever met are really super high EQ p EQ people. They can sense what's happening. They can understand where a conversation wants you. Just pause and listen instead of talk. And that's how you connect with people. So you need a high eq, you need a high energy, you need a passion to succeed. And then I've said it before, curiosity. I love love leaders. I don't know how this is gonna work, but we're gonna figure it out, right? We, there's a wall in front of me and we should not be able to go through it, but we're going to instead of people who say, remember that scenario I gave you about hotel A, B, C, D, who I, when they say D, you might as well close D it's not gonna work. That, that, that's like the opposite of what I think of. how do we make the people at a feel really bad because we're beating 'em at D? That's like a, that's a whole nother way to think about business. And part of that is because I've spent my life doing turnaround hotels like the one you referenced in the open. That hotel by all rights was severely underperforming and but there was a belief that it was perform. where it should, and I never believed that. I just never believed it. And so when you don't believe that and you're fired up, your team gets fired up and they're all like, yeah, we can do this. And it's funny what believing something can get out of people.

Lan Elliott 28:37

That's absolutely true and I love all the traits that you mentioned. You look for in leaders. When you start your career, you think you gotta be really good technically in order to get ahead. And then what you learn is that only gets you to about middle management. And then if you wanna go beyond middle management and continue to climb into the C-suite and to leadership roles, you really do need those. Skills and traits which are not technical, the eq, the curiosity, all of those things. Learning how to handle challenges Yeah. That are thrown

W. Chris Green 29:07

your way. I was on a call today with our chief accounting officer and I'm the president of the company and he was talking about something and I said, time out. I'm not sure I understand this concept. Run me through all the way through the concept. I've been doing this forever and I still didn't know exactly what he was going at with this one commentary. Now, after he explained it to me, I understood it, but I'm not embarrassed about asking. Just bec people get stuck in that, right? They think I'm the f and b director. I could never ask the server, that they say something about beverage costs. Sure you can. We're all on the same team. People ask me what I do for a living and I always hesitate to say, I just say I'm on a hotel, I work in hotels, and what do you do? And I'm, I say, I'm on the team. And it's, I just, I don't, we're all on one team. We just have different roles to play. So never ever let your positional status override your curiosity and your energy. So I

Lan Elliott 29:59

love that. I might steal that quote. One of our favorite questions at D E I advisors is what advice would you give to your younger self? And I think it goes to a bit of self-reflection. Chris, you'd mentioned a few times your younger self. What advice, if you were to pick one thing, would you give your younger self?

W. Chris Green 30:22

Don't be so cocky when you were young. I just had a high sense of self-worth that wasn't really well deserved. I think I possessed the op, the ability to be a great leader, but I certainly wasn't capturing it properly. I was abusing it, frankly, at sometimes, and I looked up to the wrong people. Now I really am. I'm very adamant about people. Looking and modeling leaders that they want to look like when they grow because, I learned from cost cutters and I learned from hard driving non-positive leaders initially in the business. And I was picking up those traits and I think it would be the same advice I give to my 24 year old son now. I say, you were made to be one way. You're a highly sensing, you're a highly. Motivated, highly energetic and kind person. And I said, as long as you are not living like that son, you're gonna be in conflict with who you are. And living in conflict is no good. So I think that ultimately what I would say to myself is be who you are intended to be, which I am a leader of people through empathy and kindness and caring and concern. That's really who.

Lan Elliott 31:34

I love that and I love that empathy and kindness and concern that those can be superpowers too. You don't always think about that but I think you

W. Chris Green 31:42

can also be really smart, right? You can be smart too but it's okay. It doesn't make you weak to be kind. So I love that.

Lan Elliott 31:53

So as we're coming to the end of our time together, and Chris, I could always talk with you cuz I always learn every time I'm with you. But keeping in mind that the motto of d e I advisors is around empowering personal success, what final piece of advice would you offer for our viewers who are trying to get ahead in their careers?

W. Chris Green 32:12

There's a bunch, I talk to people a lot. Never let someone that is in a supervisory role above you. or may in your mind, control your destiny. Control your destiny, your career, your future is really in your hands and in today's environment. As much as I love people to stay true to Remington and stay with us, and I work really hard to have a strong retention of our teams and help 'em to grow and never wanna leave in today's marketplace, you gotta, you're your own organization. You're responsible for land Elliot Incorporated. There are organizations that are poorly led, and you need to find one where you can use your talents, and those talents will be recognized. Now, if you're in the hospitality business, this is my pitch, you can come to Remington and we'll utilize your talents and give you opportunity to succeed. But but I always hear people say, And to me that is a little bit of a defeatist attitude. Ah, my boss doesn't like me. Make 'em like you make, I tell people to become an irresistible force. They're because I'm, people like that. I know people like that where you're like, wow, if we don't promote Cassie, she's gonna go somewhere else because she's an irresistible force. She is. We can't do anything to stop the way she energizes the team or leads her market. And but that's on you and that takes effort. And so you can't blame anybody else. You're only in control of this. I'm only in control of this, right? Ultimately

Lan Elliott 33:41

and you've done really well with it, Chris. thank you so much. I so enjoy talking with you, and I just love the way you approach life and the way you approach the people that you work with, and it just makes it so much better whenever I'm with you, your optimism and your outlook. So thank you very much for being on today. Speaking to our viewers and for our viewers. If you've enjoyed this interview, we hope you will go to our website, d e i advisors.org for other interviews. Thank you so much. Thank you,

W. Chris Green 34:11

Chris. Thank you.