Heather Turner, CEO & Co-founder, Tamarack Capital Partners, interviewed by Lan Elliott

Heather shares her fascinating career journey that began in Japan and led to her co-founding and leading a hospitality investment firm.  She shares how skydiving as a senior in college helped reset her sense of risk and a time when she successfully advocated for herself.  She explains why self doubt can be a good thing and her strategy for networking, and how her win-win approach to negotiations has helped her win deals.

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Lan Elliott 0:00

Hello and welcome to D E I Advisors. My name is Lan Elliot on behalf of d e i Advisors, which is an Arizona nonprofit dedicated to empowering personal success. And today I'm delighted to have Heather Turner as our guest advisor. And Heather is the c e o and Co-founder of Tamarac Capital Partners, which is a privately held hospitality real estate investment firm that currently owns and manages 11. Full service hotels and resorts. So welcome,

Heather Turner 0:29

Heather. Thank you, Lynn. Thanks so much for inviting

Lan Elliott 0:32

me to join. Absolutely. I've been really looking forward to this interview for a while now so happy to be here today. Now, I know you, you have a very interesting career journey. When I looked at it, I realized you started working in Kyoto. You've worked at Disney twice. You've worked at private equity firms before you co-founded Tamarack, and what I love about your career journey is how intentional you are about learning specific things from each role. But could you share with us some of the inflection points in your career and what were there particular factors that contributed to your success?

Heather Turner 1:10

Sure. My first job out of college was with the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kyoto, Japan. And I think. One of the great things about that was it was incredibly scary to go do and set me up to feel like just about any other challenge is much more achievable and reasonable than taking a job in a foreign language. When I was, I was, Decent at Japanese, but I certainly wasn't at a place where I should have been negotiating government contracts in Japanese. And that's what a big part of my job was. And so I think starting out that way set me up to feel like, ah, you can do that. You can run with anything. And they say that applying for a job that you're not qualified for is something that men are much, much more likely to do than women. But I think having applied for and gotten that as my very first job, I that's a little bit a part of my approach to things. Don't wait until you feel a hundred percent confident that you can do the job. Kind of jump in and give it a try. And if someone would give you a shot, then I think that's a really positive thing. After that I went to work for the Walt Disney Company for the first time, as you mentioned, and then off to business school and back to Disney. And similarly when I got into hotel real estate investing, it was with a firm called Merricks. And when I was being interviewed there, one of the founders said, are you a good negotiator? Because that's what we do a lot of. And I was like, oh, I don't think so. And he said, I'm not. And I was like, because I really only negotiate for the Walt Disney Company and we have something nobody else has. So our leverage is out of balance. And that makes my job really easy. So if I had a fair playing field, I'm not sure how good I would be. So once again, I knew I didn't necessarily have all the skills I needed for that job, but applied for it and was given the opportunity and haven't really looked back. So I've been doing hotel, real estate investing for the last 22 years or so, and

Lan Elliott 3:00

really. That's fantastic. And I love what you talked about, which was that you jumped into something even when you didn't know if you could do it. And so I love your approach to challenges, which is what I wanted to talk about next. How do you approach challenges when you come upon them? How, what's your mindset? What. What do you do first? How do you think about it?

Heather Turner 3:23

Yeah, I think and we've had lots of challenges in the hotel space in the last few years, right? Having gone I think first and foremost, I think about who else in the, in my organization, in the kind of in the deal at large can be of value in overcoming the challenge. And so how do we all put our heads together and figure something. Together. And I think that kind of teamwork approach, whether it is tapping into a resource at one of the brands or at one of our capital partners, we have the benefit of being surrounded by a lot of very intelligent, professional people who are pretty exceptional. And so we have the opportunity to think, punch a little bit above our own weight in terms of pulling together group think, and coming out with good outcomes

Lan Elliott 4:13

by doing. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for that. Along those lines, taking risks, you don't get to where you are today without taking risks, and you've talked about some of them. Can you share a little bit about an example of success in taking a risk and how you prepare yourself mentally to take a chance on something?

Heather Turner 4:33

Sure. Let me think of some it's no one from a, just a personal story and then one that's a little bit more business oriented. When I was a senior in college, my roommate and I decided to go skydiving, and I think it was, I think we were actually probably invited by some other people, but the two of us said, we're about to go apply for our first jobs. Why don't we do this to reset our our sense of risk. I, was fortunate I didn't face a lot of adversity growing up, and so this was something that I felt like was a way for me to say, okay, even in a really risky circumstance, I can, I'm gonna be fun. And so right before job interviews, we went skydiving, which was a ton of fun. I think also helps put things in perspective, right? You're jumping out of a moving aircraft. Somebody else and a parachute on your back and landing it fine. And if you think about that and you're about to jump into a new risk, I think that kind of mindset is helpful.

Lan Elliott 5:30

Yeah, I've had someone describe that kind of thing as level two, fun. It's the thing that's fun when you look back on it, not while you're doing it in the moment.

Heather Turner 5:38

That's a great way to describe it. Level two, fun. And I think in terms of taking risks professionally, Striking out on our own and starting Tamarack Capital Partners certainly felt like a big risk at the time. I think, we had no idea the pandemic was coming, so we didn't know how big of a risk it was. But it was the type of thing that I spent a lot of time thinking about. It was probably a year or so of bang and preparation and probably six to nine months of negotiating my exit with my prior firm because we did it in a very friendly. And one of the ways that we try to mitigate risk, in our company we raise capital on a deal by deal basis, so we're what most people would call an operating partner. And we come in with a small portion of the capital and we're looking for somebody else to put in majority of the capital. And in exchange we'll do, the vast majority of the hard work. And we, I think our biggest risk in spinning out of an old firm and starting a new one. How do you do that and not alienate your capital partners who've gotten you to where you are today? And what we didn't want to do was leave those folks behind, say, we're gonna go start a new firm and you're gonna be left with whoever's left at the old firm while we take off on our new adventure. So good luck on those deals that you did with us for the last five or 10 years. So we were able to structure something that was really, I think, fairly unique in the industry and quite productive for both sides and. We brought along all of our responsibility for the deals that we've done for the last five or 10 years that we still owned. So we kept those capital partners best interests at heart and made sure that we were continuing to asset manage and portfolio manage and execute on the dispositions of those deals. While looking at new deals under our new banner and our first three deals that we did at Samak were with repeat capital partners that we had done work with before at,

Lan Elliott 7:35

I love that you, the way you looked at it and the way you set up your company. You're always looking for the win-win and you were able to not only preserve those old relationships, but carry them. Into your new company and it flows right into the next thing I wanted to talk about, which is about developing your network. And we actually met negotiating across the table from one another, and I definitely found you to be always looking for the win-win. Always really calm, always really. Thoughtful about your approach and how to find a way forward for both parties. And I know in terms of networking, a lot of people find that intimidating and scary and uncomfortable. How have you developed your network in a way that works for you and suits your personality?

Heather Turner 8:24

Yeah, I I don't play golf, so I don't do some of the more traditional real estate networking events and, I recognize. But I do really like some of the smaller forum type things like the, a HLA round table hotel Asset Managers Association. I was very involved in that organization for many years, less so now, but uli those types of groups where you can get to know people when you're not in the middle of a deal so that when you are in the middle of a deal, you have a little bit of foundation to work with them on. I actually find, and this kind of goes to we're spending a lot of time analyzing. Whether large conferences and conventions and things like that are going to come back and be quite as robust as they always used to be. And personally, I find them to be very effective. So NYU and Alice and those types of things I find those to be great uses of time because you get the opportunity to see lots of people in a short period of time. But frankly, it's not always fun. Like networking is not always fabulous. I went to a, I went to an industry dinner one. And I walked in a room with two or 300 people and there were three women there. And that was really uncomfortable, but I felt oh, I gotta stay because if I don't stay nobody's, they're not gonna invite the next, dozen or so women. And it's not gonna help if I turn around and leave the building when I see that kind of thing. Thankfully I found, a handful of people who were fun and we sat down and had a chat. And if you I find if you make it a little bit smaller, if you're not trying to be out there meeting everybody every five minutes or trying to boil the whole ocean in terms of building your network, break it down to a little bit of a smaller group and you'll, I think, generate more meaningful relationships. And hopefully those relationships then beget more business. Yeah, that's the whole purpose of the networking. It's fun to meet people that you enjoy and create friendships, and it's also really productive to meet people who can be a part of your business going

Lan Elliott 10:19

forward. Yeah. No, I think that's really smart to, to look at it on a smaller basis to say, okay. Not boil ocean, like you said, try and look at it, find a small group and then develop a relationships from that from there. I think that is really a great way to start, but I also think the way that you handle yourself throughout the business piece of it, having worked on a deal with you, I think that just speaks volumes and how you treat people and how you handle yourself. I think that provides a lot of credibility and that people wanna work with you again.

Heather Turner 10:54

Thank you. I appreciate that. One other thing before I move off this topic that I think is important for people who might be starting out earlier in their career and looking for how do they get started on the networking. If there's an organization or an association that speaks to you or your role in business, try to volunteer to be more than just a member of it. Volunteer to organize one of the events, volunteer to be an officer in the organization, or do whatever you can, because I think once you start to give a little extra, rather than just being an attendee, you tend to get a lot more out of it and make more meaningful

Lan Elliott 11:30

relationships that. Yeah, that's a really thoughtful way to approach it. I love that the more you put into it is you'll get more out of it. And I think that's reflective of a lot of situations, but I think it's a great way to think about networking, especially if you're new into a city or you're new to a group of people. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about overcoming self-doubt, because sometimes we're our own biggest critics. How do you handle that noise in your head? If you get negative thoughts how do you push that down and move forward?

Heather Turner 12:08

That's an interesting question because I think. Yeah, to some extent, self-doubt is a good thing, right? We need to be somewhat measured. There are, we all know those people are out there and they're often wrong, but never in doubt. And I think some of those folks run headstrong into mistakes. And so a little bit of self-doubt is a very positive thing, and trying to find that balance, I think is really the key. I think, one thing that when I was applying to business school, I had gone to public schools my whole life and I felt like everybody else applying had been at, boarding school and prep school and the Ivy League before they got there. And so I found that to be a period of a lot of self-doubt, walking into that classroom for the first time in a well known business school and I thought, oh my gosh, I'm never gonna be able to keep up. But it works out. Sometimes you have to try a little harder and sometimes you have to put in a little bit more work than people who might have had a different path than you. But certainly I think it goes back in some ways to being willing to take a chance on yourself and giving it a try. I do think having some self-doubt is a positive thing. Now, if it gets to the point where it is incapacitating and it makes you unable to make decisions and make, choices and move forward, then that would be a big challenge. And I think, the self-doubt definitely comes around in times like we've had for the last few years where we think my, honestly I thought we'd see a huge exodus of capital from the hotel space because there had always been this theoretical risk that revenue would go to zero. And that theory was proven out in many hotels in 2020. And I. That creates a lot of doubt. But then when you look at it in a bigger picture of the dynamics of what was going on with return and yield and the fact that at that time we were in very low interest rate environment and there was not much yield from other types of asset classes, we actually saw pretty big inflow of capital into the hotel space immediately after things started opening back up. And I think that also helps because sometimes in our business we tend to get very myop. And we might get really down into the details of whether it's an individual deal or an individual challenge. And taking a step back and saying, okay, if I think about it more from a global flow of capital perspective, how appealing is this? Relative to other opportunities, instead of looking at it just from a holy sugar, this thing just went to zero,

Lan Elliott 14:36

yeah. And I think it was definitely a period of time that a lot of hospitality leaders leaned on one another because none of us had been through. That experience of revenues going to zero. And one of the great things about the industry is that although we are competitive, I think it is an industry where people can also be collaborative in at the same time and Cool. Had a lot

Heather Turner 15:00

of very interesting conversations. I remember because I was working from home as many of. So I'm in my home office and I was talking to people who had one hotel and two chief investment officers of the biggest REITs and, everybody in between. Everybody just commiserating and checking in and how are you handling this and what do you think about that? And that was that part of it felt good and felt.

Lan Elliott 15:24

Yeah I think leaning on each other really helped in that moment of time when we all had self-doubt of what was going to happen in the industry. Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit about a common generalization, which is that women don't do a good job of advocating for ourselves, and that impacts women's ability to get promotions and to advance in areas that they would like to. Can you share perhaps a story about a time when you succeeded in advocating for yourself, how you approached it, what steps you took?

Heather Turner 16:01

Sure. A long time ago when I was very early in hotel investing there was a situation where I came into a deal a little bit late, so I didn't have any built in promote in the. But I worked on it from like the day after it was acquired to the day we sold it many years later and lots of ups and downs and I think humbly lots of value added in that time. And when we were looking to sell it, I basically went to the head of my firm and I said, I know it doesn't say some of the contract, but I really think the right thing to do here is to give me some piece of the promote and That did not go well. My conversation did not go well initially, and I was very disappointed. And I went back again and I said, no, I really disagree with your conclusion. I think that's wrong. And I didn't threaten to quit cuz frankly I didn't have a plan and I didn't want to quit. I wasn't, I didn't wanna quit my job, so I didn't have that big club in terms of leverage, but, I went back after the initial conversation was really hard and I was quite hurt by it, and I said, I just, I really disagree with you and I think that's wrong, and I would like you to reconsider, and I'm happy to talk to our capital partners. I'm happy to bring anybody to the table to share with you. My value add, what I did across this, just in case maybe you're one step too far removed to really see how this all went down. Maybe I haven't made my case very well for myself, but I will bring you others who will support my argument and I ended up doing that. He's like, all right, let me see what they have to say. And it was, I. I remember it probably took me a week to make the phone call, to ask somebody to call my boss to advocate on my behalf because I was so uncomfortable with that ask. But I just could not sleep at night thinking that deal was gonna go down and I was, it was gonna be of no benefit to me personally at all, and everybody else was gonna have this very nice outcome. So it was it was an uncomfortable situation, but I think the thing that I learned from it was going back the second time. Felt better than taking the no the first time and letting it roll that way.

Lan Elliott 18:26

That's so interesting. I think a lot of people, once they got the courage to go up and ask the first time, if the answer was no, they probably would not have thought to go back or go back and sit and think about what more can I bring to the table to bolster my position that I should be compensated. Additionally, so I love that you did that and that you went back in and that you came up with a plan of how to support, further support your position, that you deserved a piece of that deal when it was sold. Yep. Yeah. One of the challenges that women leaders tend to face is this perception that you can't be both competent and kind. For example, if you're too nice, you're not strong enough to be a leader. If you're a bit too strong as a woman, you can come off as. N as not being friendly enough to be suc to be successful in developing networks. And so there is this idea of an assertiveness, double bind. You need to be just assertive enough, but not too much. And as I'd mentioned, we've negotiated on deals together. How do you find that balance? How do you walk that tightrope? Cause you do a really good job with it.

Heather Turner 19:44

That's nice of you to say. I've had people tell me that I'm very diploma. And when I hear that, I think maybe I'm on the too nice end of that scale of, too nice. You're

Lan Elliott 19:54

very firm, Heather, I can tell you that. You're not too nice.

Heather Turner 20:00

So I, I'm not sure that I have any secret sauce to be honest with you on this. I know that it is something that a lot of people struggle with, particularly a lot of women because of that kind of stereotype, if you will. I'm not a particularly emotional person about work, quite emotional about my family and my daughter and my husband, those types of things. But I'm I don't get really emotional about work. I get disappointed or excited or happy, but I'm not one to jump on a phone scream and yell at people or cry or those types of things. So I think naturally my range when it comes to work things is somewhere in the middle and hopefully that has helped me. Not be perceived as too much of a limp or far too assertive. But I do worry a little bit when I hear that diplomacy word that I'm leaning too soft. So maybe what happens is I hear that and I push a little harder. Make sure I don't get pigeonholed down at the soft

Lan Elliott 21:02

end of the spectrum. Yeah. There, there is always that balance. Am I being too nice? Am I being too much? And I think you do such a good job and I love the idea actually of being diplomatic and thinking about it in that way. And I also love the way you often approach things with a win. Point of view and always very willing to listen to the other person's point of view and take that on in a really thoughtful way. So thank you.

Heather Turner 21:29

I appreciate that. One of my favorite stories when you mentioned win-win, I thought of we owned a hotel that was on the ground lease with the city and we had a right under the lease to buy out, and there was a prescribed approach to how that. Valued, right? So we go through that valuation process. We had our appraiser, they had theirs, and then we had to get a third because they didn't agree. And the number came out very favorable to us in the end. So we had our attorneys drop the documents, we sent it to the city, and I got a call from the mayor's office and they said, she's not gonna sign it. I was like, what are you talking about? She's not gonna sign it. And I was like, okay, can I talk to her? And they're like, you can't talk to her unless you come in person in two weeks. And I was like, okay. I'll come in person in two weeks. So I go and she says there was a blank lot that sold nearby for X, so there's no way I can sell you this land for what this appraisal came back at because it's political suicide. I cannot have that in the press. And I was like but do you disagree with the methodology? Cuz the issue was our land was valued as if you. A Highrise hotel on it. So what's the residual land value, which is completely different than you have a blank slate piece of land over here. And she's yeah, but I can't explain that in a newspaper article. I'm like, okay, I get that. So I was like, all so we go away and we think about it. And this was one where we called in our capital partners and we all had a big brainstorm about it. And that particular property was also attached to a convention center that the city owned, but the property that we owned managed for them for. So we came up with this idea, we went back to it and we said, Hey, we can pay you a lot more for the land so that your headline number works for you. If you pay us a lot more for the annual service of managing the convention center, because that's gonna go into our p and l and we're gonna cap that when we exit. So we're gonna make back what we pay you. I didn't tell her that whole part, but we're gonna make, I'll tell you guys, we're gonna make back what they pay us times a nice multi. That was how we found the win-win in that situation. So the hotel ended up getting a much nicer fee stream on a long-term basis for the city, and in exchange we could afford to pay the city more for the ground. And we got, what we really wanted was to have a fee simple hotel, which is obviously great for the cap rate, compresses your, Significantly and a little bit better fee stream on the side that we could cap at that lower rate and made the whole thing make economic sense. And she was happy with it. We rewrote the agreement, she signed it, and off we went.

Lan Elliott 23:57

There are so many good things in what you, in that one story that you just shared in terms of being persistent. Asking to speak with her, going in to meet with her, hearing her side of the story, and then bringing in other people to brainstorm and get ideas to find the win-win and looking at how they perceive value and ways that you could create value in a way that you could both come away with a great result for what you needed. So many great lessons in that one story. So thank you for sharing that. Sure. I wanted to spend a little bit of time on leadership. One of the things I've noticed is that women tend to have a bit of a different style than men. And a couple things that you did when you set up Tamarack, I thought were really interesting. One of them was that you invited the team members who were working with you to join US partners and. Another thing I've heard you speak about is trying to ensure that you're more junior. People who are doing a lot of hard work they're usually the ones there burning the midnight oil. When a deal has to get done, you're really intentional, but intentional about making sure that they're appropriately compensated. And I just find this really highly collaborative, team oriented. Focus is a strength that I see a lot in women leaders. What character or leadership style do you look for on your team, for your leaders in your company?

Heather Turner 25:28

Yeah, I think I think one of the things that drove me to co-found Tamarack was the idea that it was gonna be hard to keep a team of highly motivat. Excellent professionals together for an extended period of time, unless we could figure out a structure that worked for them financially. And so that was one of the motivating factors, honestly, was how we keep the team together and keep people motivated and excited because that's hard to do over a long period of time. And I think it may be a female quality. I'm not entirely sure, but I can tell you. Very uncomfortable with the idea of naming the company Turner Capital or H c T Capital or something like that. And I look around and honestly, most of my, or many of my colleagues and friends who are men have companies that they name after themselves. And I don't know, I couldn't do it. And I think that is somewhat of a symptom of a leadership style, if you will, in that. I am much more comfortable in a team environment than I am in a pyramid type shape. We have a very flat organization. We all talk with each other all the time. It's not, you don't have to go up any particular channel of communication in a lot of ways. I learned the opposite lesson when I was at Disney because it was such a huge organiz. And if you got a certain title, you got a different type of stationary and if you got the next title, you got a different chair in your office. Like it was really so big and so structured that it's laughable now. But it was true and people were like, and you knew this was the way, it was like a little bit of subliminal messaging. This was also before email was as prevalent as it is now. If you got a memo from somebody, you knew what their title was based on their. You didn't even have to try to dig or figure it out, what, how senior is this person. As soon as the memo came into your, we have paper inboxes, and as soon as your memo came into the inbox, you knew what their stationary was. It was very hierarchical and very strict in that way. And I recall when I first went to Merits Wolf, when I was, the first time I was doing hotel private equity, I said to The assistant in the office. I was like, so who does this? And she's I think you do. I was like, do I make a presentation to anyone to do this? She's no, I think you just decide. I was like, okay, good. Let me work on that. And so from that time forward, I was like, this is so interesting. Everybody, every level of the organization can just make decisions and move forward. And I think that is a leadership style that I appreciate much more than the hierarchical one. And I think, giving people the opportunity to make sure that. A lot of exposure to what we really do as opposed to just their silos is important in helping people develop, as holistic real estate investors. And I think that's good for our company and I think it's good

Lan Elliott 28:22

for their careers too. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah, I love that story and I love the story about Disney and how hierarchical it was. And I don't know if that's, that was a sign of the times back then, or if that was just the size of the company. I remember there was a moment in my career where I worked at a company where I was told that the men in the company would come in and count your ceiling tiles to see how important you were and if you had more ceiling tiles than them. And that blew my mind. I didn't know. Everything was a competition at that point but I learned pretty fast. But it was a very different world in time.

Heather Turner 28:57

Yeah. That's funny. I guess that they could tell the square footage of your office. And you would That's right. Fun every time you got a promotion.

Lan Elliott 29:06

Exactly. Let's continue a little bit with inclusive cultures cause a topic that we've discuss. Is the importance of creating inclusive culture so that diverse people can thrive, and diversity can be so many different things, right? It ca it doesn't have to just be race or gender. It could be diversity of thought, di background. There's lots of different ways that teams can be diverse and similar to how you've. Approached your career in a really intentional way. You are also very intentional about giving women an underrepresented groups opportunities. All things being equal that you're going to, you're gonna give them the opportunity, and you do things such as hosting a dinner before the Alice Conference for Women. What are some of the key things that you think that leaders or even managers of teams can do to create a more inclu inclusive workplace?

Heather Turner 30:01

Yeah. I do try to, if, if we are considering, whether it's designers or lawyers or bankers or whatever it is, all things being equal. If there's, a more diverse candidate and a less diverse candidate, I would rather do business with the more diverse candidate because I honestly, I think sometimes they try harder, they work harder, and if they're as qualified and as good as the less diverse candidate, I would like to be able. Say that we help promote, women, people of color and that type of thing in our organization and do it with our dollars because, when we're spending the kind of money that we spend on legal council, for example, you wanna do it in a very thoughtful way. One place where I think we fall down, honestly, when I look across our portfolio is we don't have many women or diverse people as general managers of our hotels. And I actually think that. The brands and the third party managers actually do a pretty good job of of promoting diverse people through their ranks. Certainly better than on the investment side. On, in the private equity world and in the investment world, there are very few women or people of color making kind of the ultimate investment decisions. But. Somehow in our firm, we have it backwards. I'm not sure how that happened. We've got women on the investment side, and then at the hotel level we have a little bit less diverse representation. So it's something that caught my eye. The last time we had a slate of GM candidates be presented to us by a brand, and I was like, I have, I have a choice of three. Why do I have, why can't I get more choices? And it's hard when you're not the employer, but it is a question that I like to ask and push for. And on the investment side, I think it's very important. And whenever I meet particularly young women in their, early in their careers, I try to encourage them, stay in the investment lane. I think. Asset management is a phenomenal business, and that's where I started and then moved over to the investment side. But if you are already on the investment side, don't step out because you think you're gonna peak out early or, hit some kind of wall, stay in that space. That might be a little bit harder, a little bit less well represented. As long as you can, as long as you're comfortable because I think it is important for women who are early in their career to feel. They have an opportunity to stay in that space where they have a chance to make the real investment decisions, which is, goes back to risk taking that we were talking about earlier, goes back to a lot of the things that we talked about. You've got to be willing to stand up and say, I believe in this enough that we're going to invest, x millions of dollars to do it. And I really hope we see a lot more women on that side of the business. And in the meantime, we'll work. Other side did firm.

Lan Elliott 32:51

I agree. I'd love to see more women there. There were very few when I came up on the investment side, so I'd love to see more women and as you mentioned, women attorneys. The deal that we worked on together had a lot of women on it, on the deal side, but also I think all the attorneys were women on, on that particular deal. And it was the one that I've done that was just very unique for that reason.

Heather Turner 33:12

There was one where you get on the phone and you can't. No. A lot of times you can tell who's speaking because there's only one woman across the table. If you, but before everybody did it on Zoom, when your, where your name lights up or where your face is there. When it was just a regular conference call and be like, I wonder who that is.

Lan Elliott 33:30

It's true. You had to really learn everybody's voices when it was all women on the phone call. One of our favorite questions at d e I advisors is what advice would you give to your younger self?

Heather Turner 33:42

What advice would I give to my younger self? I would probably say keep trying new things. Don't be afraid to try new things, because I think some of my more interesting turns in my career and in my life has been when I tried really challenging new, unusual things. And when I have stayed. Put or steady for too long, it starts to get a little dull and it starts to get a little bit less productive. When you get into too big of a comfort zone, it's not necessarily a good thing. So sometimes I hear people say, oh, I've been doing the same job for 30 years, and I think, oh no, I can't be good for anybody. So I would advise my younger self, keep trying new things and try more of.

Lan Elliott 34:34

I think jumping out of a plane was a, maybe a good way to set that goal for your career. Heather, I could actually talk to you for a really long time. I always learned something when I talk with you and I really enjoy it. But we're coming to the end of our time. Could you share with our audience maybe one final piece of advice, keeping in mind that d e I advisors mission is focused around empowering personal success? What advice would you offer to women and underrepresented groups who are looking to advance their careers?

Heather Turner 35:03

I think one of my favorite pieces of advice, Take as many negotiations classes as you can because you are going to be, no matter what you do in this industry, you're going to be negotiating, whether it's for yourself or a sales contract for your hotel or an acquisition contract, or buying out a piece of land from a city. Trying to think about ways that you can become a better negoti. Will help you in your personal career when you're negotiating your cut of the deal or your salary or your how many tiles are in your office and will certainly help you to navigate the world of hotel transactions or hotel operations because they are negotiations happening constantly. And I think that's one of the things that we could all tune up a little bit. And while you're negotiating, try to do it in a way that you don't cut off any relat. Don't go in for the, don't go for the kill because you might win that one slice of the negotiation, but you will not set yourself up for future business with the person across the table if you don't do it in a productive way. And so learn to negotiate well and learn to negotiate well for all parties who are at the

Lan Elliott 36:16

table. I love that. And to focus on the lawn game, cuz while you might become a really great negotiator, the lawn game is relationships and. And people keep turning up in your career, so again and again. So really wonderful advice. Thank you so much, Heather. I really appreciate your taking the time and sharing your wisdom with our viewers. Thank you, Ann. And for our audience, if you've enjoyed this conversation with Heather Turner, I hope you'll go to our website, which is d e i advisors.org for other interviews with industry. Thank you. Thanks, Heather.