Steve Palmer, Founder, The Indigo Road Hospitality Group Interviewed by Rachel Humphrey

Steve shares how communication and trust are the cornerstones to creating a corporate culture where people come first and can advocate for themselves. He discusses the importance of self-care and wellness and why he advocates for mental health and co-founded Ben's Friends. He talks about why passion and grit can take you far and how you tackle obstacles can propel your career forward.

Transcript

Copy

Rachel Humphrey 0:01

I am Rachel Humphrey with DEI Advisors and I am excited to be joined today by Steve Palmer, the founder of the Indigo Road Hospitality Group. Steve, welcome to the show.

Steve Palmer 0:11

Hi there. Thanks for having me.

Rachel Humphrey 0:13

I am very excited because as our audience knows, I spend a lot of time talking to hotel people, but the hospitality industry is much broader than that. And I'm excited today to sit and talk restaurants and the other side of hospitality a little bit with you, but that segues perfectly into your journey to leadership for all leaders in the hospitality industry. There is not one path of getting from point A to point B. Tell us a little bit about your journey, how you started out and got to where you are today.

Steve Palmer 0:43

Sure. I am. I am the school of hard knocks guy for sure. Started washing dishes in Atlanta when I was 13. Was a line cook a bartender, a waiter, a manager, a sommelier. Worked for Ritz Carlton Hotels in the 90s for a while always in food and beverage. I think, the one thing that, and it's one of the things I love about hospitality is I've done a lot of different types of food and beverage. I've done resorts, city hotels, independent freestanding. And there's always a new opportunity in hospitality, right? There's always a different way. But the thing that I think that I did well early in my career is I always chose what I thought at the time to be great companies, great restaurants, great hotels. I always chose what I perceived as the next step, even if it wasn't always a next step in compensation. If it was the next step in learning and opportunity, then I always have chosen that. I feel like I've always chosen good leaders because I wanted to learn about leadership at a very early age. The idea of inspiring other people and, really fundamentally, I think. Which is true in all hospitality is the idea of taking care of people. And I'm a people pleaser by nature. I derive an enormous amount of satisfaction by knowing I made someone happy. And to find hospitality and to realize that. Wow. I can make someone happy and I'll get paid proportional to their happiness. It's pretty, pretty good life. I never, this was before the food network and top chef and foodies and Instagram, I never saw serving other people. As a second class job I always felt like it was a noble job. I was proud of it. Still am. But the idea that I could share that, I think it's fun to, I think it's mostly true with all of us. If you have something that you love and you're passionate about it. I think a natural extension of that is sharing that with other people. And that to me is what leadership is. It's about sharing my love of hospitality. I always say that leadership is an act of service and that, my role is to make sure that the team around me feels empowered, supported, inspired. And then largely, there's also a moment as a leader to get out of their way so they can flourish, but any time I see leaders where you can tell for them leadership is an act of authority that's disheartening because it's uninspiring. autocratic or dictatorial leaders that are coming from a place of ego. Look at how great I am instead of what can I do to make my team's life better. And yeah, for me, my journey to leadership is about understanding that leadership is an act of service at the very deepest level.

Rachel Humphrey 3:43

I love that. So many nuggets in there. I love the idea of not every step forward looks like a step forward from compensation from title from opportunity, but in some way advances your career. I think a lot of people get held up on title or compensation as the only way to advance. So that's a great one. Of course. Also the Thought of being in service to others as an industry. The hospitality industry is here to serve and also looking at the team approach and the way that you do lead. And that's actually a perfect segue because when I talk to people about you, the number one thing that everybody tells me is he is really known for corporate culture, for building a great team, for developing talent, for identifying talent and being a place that people want to work. And to me, that is an. I want to turn it to the other side that if somebody came to you from that team and felt like they were really having a hard time advocating for themselves at their role, what would you tell them to do as far as how to approach leadership, whether it's a coworker, a manager, even someone higher up than that in terms of advocating for themselves?

Steve Palmer 4:57

Sure. One of our core values is transparency and humility. And, I often tell folks, listen, if I say, how are you today and you say, fine, I believe you. I think you have to, in order for people to feel safe advocating for themselves, there has to be trust. Trust without trust on a team you have nothing because, if somebody doesn't feel like they can find their own voice and say look I'm not getting what I need to grow, or I feel like I would be better served in a different role. Then ultimately they're going to leave, right? And I always talk about like the thing I hate the most is when someone lets us know they're unhappy by giving their notice, right? But it's incumbent on us to create. A culture of communication. One-on-ones we do an anonymous employee satisfaction survey every year where our employees review us and they can do it anonymously so they can feel safe, to be honest. But it's a daily practice. And I, we, early on in the company's history, I do leadership retreats every year and a lot of those retreats are collaborative in nature and I'm allowing everyone in the room to decide how we're going to grow or what changes to make in our first conference, there was five people this year. Next 200. And really what we got down to was, why are we successful? It's our people. Okay. A lot of people would say that, right? What is it about our people? And we identified the things that we thought somebody needed to possess to work with us. And 100 percent of what we came to was not technical skill. It was not resume. It was not. It was emotional qualities, collaborative spirit, passion, drive and work ethic, curious intelligence. And so then we started interviewing for those qualities. So oftentimes, not often, hopefully, but sometimes you'll have a great person in the wrong role, right? And so many companies are, you're just not, they're just not doing the job. They're not hitting these marks. We've coached and counseled them. It's time to let them go or they get discouraged and they get disenchanted and they leave. But if you've hired right oftentimes I think developing people requires having a broader view than the role that they're doing today. Sometimes it's not, but I think that it's two things. It's creating a trusting environment where employees feel like they can advocate for themselves. And then it's also being able to see the person for who they are as a person and realize that sometimes it's about developing them into a different role.

Rachel Humphrey 7:52

I love the combination of communication and trust too. So important in any type of leadership. 100%. As we come out of the pandemic, especially there has been a renewed focus on self care and wellness, but that is not a renewed focus for you. That's actually somewhere that you have devoted a tremendous portion of your career. You're a strong advocate publicly for mental health awareness, and you have talked about a lot of your addiction struggles publicly in a lot of different forums. What advice would you give to someone who is struggling to take care of themselves from whatever aspect? That looks like.

Steve Palmer 8:30

Sure. I think that first off, hopefully you're in an organization that values mental health and wellness. We are and all of the ways that we demonstrate that on a daily basis you know, happy and whole employees are good for everybody. It's good for the human, it's good for our hotels and restaurants. It's good for our guests. I think that too often. And I say this in the hopes that we're moving towards a different environment. But you meet hospitality employees that worked in toxic environments. And so mental health equals getting out of the industry. And, we need more people to want to work in hospitality, not last. So I think that first and foremost, you need to be in an environment where if taking care of yourself is not something that is well received by your leaders than perhaps a different organization. But it doesn't mean that all hospitality lacks that empathy and compassion. I think that realizing that you can do both, you can work hard. Be in a fast paced environment and take care of yourself. I think that any leaders that are, we regularly in our hotels and restaurants are talking about mental health. You can't just say we're mental health advocates. It's a daily practice. Of course, we have our nonprofit Ben's friends that's in 25 cities in America. But and that specifically. Addresses addiction. We also have fitness programs, gym memberships we have alcohol free environments. So the age old shot, shift, drink shot at the end of the bar. We just don't do any of that because we're trying to create a more whole healthy environment. But I always tell people, you have to take care of yourself. first, especially if you're in the business of taking care of other people. If you're not filling your own tank, there's no way that you can fill somebody else's.

Rachel Humphrey 10:26

I say a lot that a lantern needs fuel to shine brightly. And if your lantern has run empty, you are not going to be your best. Collaborate or your best employee, your best parent, whatever it is. You mentioned Ben's friends and I wanna talk about that for a minute. You're the co-founder of an organization that does incredible work within your restaurant communities. Tell us a little bit about the organization, but also as a leader, how did you know that you were the right. Person for this initiative?

Steve Palmer 10:55

Sure. Ben Murray was a chef of ours that sadly during an opening of a restaurant, he committed suicide in his hotel room and none of us knew he was struggling. Ben was not. You would not have attached the word depressed to Ben. Ben was happy and outgoing and kind and lovely. And when I'll never forget as I called his 80 year old mother to have that conversation. She shared with me that Ben had been in and out of detox six times and we had no idea. And so my co founder, Mickey Baxter and I were both sober. I'm in recovery. We had been saying over and over again, we need to do something for the industry. And then it was always we're too busy. We've got this going on. So obviously when Ben committed suicide, we said we're not too busy. But I'll tell you that And I hope this encourages others to find ways to help. We believe that Ben's Friends would be a local Charleston support group. It's run by people who are sober in hospitality for people who want to get sober in hospitality. We are in 25 cities across the nation. We have 21 Zoom meetings a week. We had no idea that it would become all that it has become. And I say that to your question about knowing I was the person. Anybody is the person if they want to help and they're coming from a good place, we are very focused on addiction substance abuse because that's, I say I'm not a addiction expert or a recovery expert, but that's my story. So I have my story to share with other people. We absolutely couldn't have predicted the response. The and Ben's friends is now so much bigger than Mickey or there are, okay. We have leaders in every city. It's a national organization. And it's only six, six and a half years old. I believe if you have a heart for helping, then find a way to help. And for us, I love our industry. I can't say it enough. I love what I do. I love the people in our industry that do what they do. So what could be better than helping those people be productive members of the hospitality industry?

Rachel Humphrey 13:19

What a powerful message that such a heartbreaking loss has resulted in such an incredible community activation across the country. And so thank you both for sharing that story, but also in sharing your time and your addiction story that then empowers others to do the same. We've talked a little bit about Advocating for yourself, self care and wellness, things like that. But every time I'm getting ready for an interview or to moderate an industry panel, people come up to me and say, what I really want to know is how leaders are leading today. I want to know if they answer their own email. Do they calendar or use their EA for things? Are they taking vacation? Do they work 24 seven? I want to hear from the inside and whether when you talk about work life harmony, you are talking about parenting or a spouse or gardening or reading or whatever it is. It can be lots of things to lots of people. How do you think you do managing some sort of harmony between your career and having things outside of that career?

Steve Palmer 14:22

Sure. I have obviously 30 plus years in, have worked hours, I've worked a lot of seven day weeks. I've also traveled a lot. I've also been to great restaurants all over the world. I believe strongly that if you are in the business of serving others, if you're not allowing yourself to be served, your tank is going to run out eventually. Whether I was an assistant manager or a food and beverage director or the founder of a company, I have always traveled to eat and to stay in hotels and to feel inspired. I demand that from my team. I literally, I have a couple of senior leaders that I'm going to write you up if you don't take a week off. You have to do it. And anybody that doesn't. Understand that you're not your best self when you're burned out. Our company is, has grown. We've grown aggressively this year. It will be one of our biggest years ever. There's no doubt. People are going to feel burned out and frustrated and tired if you're not as a leader advocating for that for others but you also have to demonstrate that and my team sees me take time off and I'm a dad to a 13 year old girl who has horse shows all over the south and they see me going to the horse shows and they see me doing, so I think, first you have to model it for your teams. But no one should feel guilty about taking. That's just silly. I just the week before Christmas and New Year's, I turned my email off. First time in 30 years, I turned it off. I just, you know what? It'll be there when I get back. I had 2, 700 emails when I got home and some people would say that would be more stressful for me. But can you unplug and you have to unplug because I think travel gives you perspective. I think time off gives you a different view. Maybe you've been stuck on an issue. You don't know how to solve. gRinding another day instead of taking a day off may not be the answer you're looking for, but taking time, I'm always reading books about our industry. You just have to commit to it. I don't have a, it's everybody will shake their head and then they'll go back to not taking time, but you have to have balance. All I was going to say is, what are you doing it for if you're not, so if you can enjoy your time, just that I

Rachel Humphrey 17:00

love traveling to be inspired. That's such a great way of putting that also modeling. You're absolutely right. It's very easy to tell others to do it, but if they don't see you doing it, whether, and one of the things we hear too is announced loudly what you're doing. Oh, I'm going to a horse show. Oh, I'm going on vacation. Don't sneak out the back door so that people can see. See that it is accepted and encouraged and everything else. So that's a great piece of advice too. As we look to today sitting on an interview like this, you do a lot of public speaking, whether it's community activities, conferences. Webinars and other types of things. Have you always been comfortable with it? You're incredibly talented at it. Are you comfortable with it? Is it something you had to teach yourself? We hear all the time that public speaking can often be one of the biggest hurdles that people find in their path as they're trying to advance their careers.

Steve Palmer 17:54

That's interesting. So what's. Funny to me is right before I talk, I'll say, man, I'm so nervous. And whether it's my wife sitting next to me, people are genuinely surprised that I'm nervous. Because I do a lot of public speaking. And so they assume, oh this must just be fallen. When I did my Ted talk, I, when I was done and I will say that the organizers of Ted, it's very structured. It's we rehearsed, I was filmed, they gave feedback. I felt a little bit like I was, auditioning for a beauty pageant because it turned this way and they were all great, and. When I got done with my Ted Talk, I walked immediately off the stage out the side door and started crying because it was such an emotional thing. And there had been so much build up to it that I literally sat down on the ground outside and was just, I say all of that to say that I love speaking. I'm always talking about something I'm passionate about. So comes from the heart. I'm not giving a sales pitch or data on, and I know that they're that kind of public speaking is valuable as well. So I'm mostly talking about hospitality, people and mental health, which are things. But It's funny you mentioned that because some of my teammates, I'm now, Hey, I'd like for you to go speak at this thing. I'd like for you to go. And my director of financial operations is a little is more introverted than I am. And so he was on PBS a couple of weeks ago and he was so nervous. And what do I say? And this and that? And I just kept saying. The only questions they're going to ask you is about what you do every day of your life. There's not, there's no trick question coming. And afterwards he came back and was like, it was like, that was really cool. Can I do some more of that? I Would say to those that like, aren't as comfortable with it. It's muscle memory. You just have to do it a lot. Being on a panel where you're just getting asked questions from a moderator, that's a great way to dip your toe in because then you're not having to prepare a speech. You're not, you're just, it's just Q and a, but if you can do that a few times before you're the lone person on the stage I think it's pretty helpful, but my Ted talk was the most nervous. There were a thousand people in the theater, it was a lot.

Rachel Humphrey 20:34

Yeah, a lot for even a seasoned speaker. And I think that you raised some great points speaking about things that, you know, and that you're passionate about. So choosing the right speaking opportunities is really important. But also your first time speaking does not have to be in front of a. crowd of 6, 000 at a conference, you can make a toast at a family dinner, you can have a meeting, a staff meeting where you raise your hand and say something. I think people don't realize that there's a lot of points between A and Z of opportunities to practice because you're right. I still get nervous and I do it all the time and I love it, but it doesn't mean that I'm not nervous before I do it. At

Steve Palmer 21:12

our leadership conference where I'm just speaking to our teammates, I'll be nervous.

Rachel Humphrey 21:17

Yeah, I think it's good. I like nerves. I think nerves are very motivating. We hear a lot nowadays, which you and I did not when we were first coming up about personal brands. I know I have some personal mantras that guide me. Do you think that you have a mantra that is your guiding star or something about you that you would say? This is my personal brand.

Steve Palmer 21:41

Yeah, I, yes. And I, even I struggled with the word brand for a long time because that felt corporate. And I don't struggle with that anymore because it is my brand. I'm the founder of the company. Yeah. I, if you said distill it all down to one sentence or a quote, maybe that's a bet. People will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. We define hospitality as how we make people feel. When I'm doing orientations, I'll say, I just had done one at 10 o'clock. If you don't remember anything else I said, remember that the way we make each other feel is the most important thing. I'm always, surprised, discouraged when I, when you hear about a hospitality operation, where the employees are not having a hospitable experience. I'm so okay, so I'm going to yell and scream at you now go make everybody happy it's just so unfortunate, but yeah, my mantra, my brand, the thing that is the foundation of my success in our success at the Indigo road is the way we make each other feel is the most important thing.

Rachel Humphrey 22:55

It sounds very consistent to corporate culture and mental health advocacy and leading by example and modeling all of those things. So that's great to hear that. That's what it comes down to. I know we're going to run short on time and I'm going to want to rapid fire through some other ones because such great advice here, but No leader gets to where they are without overcoming setbacks, obstacles, challenges and learning from them. Do you have a strategy when you are faced either with something that didn't go as you hoped that it would or an unexpected challenge on the path that you're looking to accomplish? That is really how you process and overcome challenges.

Steve Palmer 23:37

So I have a funny saying my life has not gone the way that I planned. And I thank God for that every day. It's about, it's not about life. It's about how you handle life, right? It's about how we deal with what happens to us. Winston Churchill said something that I'm a big fan of, and he was such a controversial character, but success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It's the courage to continue that counts. And, there are in any entrepreneurial I started this company in 09 in the depths of the financial crisis and took over, a restaurant that wasn't doing well. And it's in those times that you learn who you are. I think all of us that have been in leadership for a while would say, I learned so much more from my failures than my successes. Absolutely. Doesn't mean they're not painful, but I think and you touched on it when you mentioned Ben's friends, and I say this. In Ben's Friends a lot look at this beautiful organization that you all have come to value. It was started because somebody committed suicide, right? And that's a very extreme example. But I, it, the principle of it is out of the toughest stuff can come some of the most powerful, impactful things if you allow it. And it's how you handle the setbacks, the obstacles. Because they are many we're dealing with some right now and that were unforeseen 90 days ago. And the benefit of trust and a trusting team and everybody coming together. But also really being rooted in this is here to teach me a lesson. What do I need to learn from this? I'm not being punished. Cause I think that's how, it's, how can I make the team better? And how can we move forward and learn from this? And so I think that if you're in leadership and you're not expecting obstacles, you're setting yourself up for failure. I just the people that inspire me the most are the people that sort of their, the foundation of their story was about how they overcame insurmountable odds to be successful in whatever that looks like. So those are the, somebody gets up on a stage and says, everything has gone my way my whole life and it's all been pretty easy. That's not nearly as inspiring as somebody that's I struggled and I went through this and I opened a restaurant and it didn't work. We opened a hotel and the culture was all wrong and here's how we did, here's how we came around. I think it's pushing through fear, but it really is. That's when having a trusting team matters the most when the person to the left of you and the person to the right of you has your back and you know they have your back. You're gonna get through it. I love.

Rachel Humphrey 26:30

Of course, no one goes through life without obstacles, but I love the idea of learning from it. The Churchill quote, but really saying why is this in my path. And now what am I going to do with it now that I know that it's here? One of my favorite questions to ask others and to be asked is advice to our younger selves. And the reason I love it so much is I think that we are all works in progress. But reflection is a really important part of how we continually evolve. So as you sit here today, What do you tell 21 year old Steve either about what's in store for you, something you wish you knew at the time, how things work out for you today? What do you reflect back on and tell that young man?

Steve Palmer 27:14

I would say two things. I would say, remember that at your most scariest fearful moments. That's right before things are about to get good. And it's going to go so much better than you could possibly imagine if you just hang in there.

Rachel Humphrey 27:34

Wow. That's incredibly powerful. Thank you very much for sharing that. as I expected, we are running short on time. And given the motto of DEI Advisors, which is to empower personal success, is there a final piece of advice you'd like to offer? Either something that we didn't cover, something we did that you wanted to elaborate on a little bit more, but what would you leave our audience with? today.

Steve Palmer 27:58

Sure. So there's so much conversation in our industry right now about younger generations, work ethic, attention, follow through. This is what I love about hospitality, that it doesn't matter how you grew up. It really doesn't even matter if you went to school, didn't go to school. I'm not saying those things aren't important, but if you're willing to be a part of a team and you're willing to work hard, there's a place for you in hospitality and there's a place for you to thrive. The advice I would give is don't quit the day before the miracle happens. It, this, it is a journey and I've never given up. And I see people, grit is a conversation. There's Angela Duckworth wrote an incredible book called Grit. And it's all about. The percentage of people that are successful, is it based on intelligence and education or is it based on passion and grit? 80 percent is about passion and grit. Find what you love and then do it really hard. But stick with it. And as long as you've chosen the right people to work with the right things are going

Rachel Humphrey 29:13

well. What an incredible way to wrap up. Steve, I'm incredibly appreciative for your time today for your leadership within the hospitality industry for your amazing advocacy within your community and your team. So thank you very much for joining me today and for all that you

Steve Palmer 29:29

are doing. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me. And

Rachel Humphrey 29:33

for our audience we know that you enjoyed today's interview. We hope you'll go over to DEI advisors. org and check out the more than 150 interviews from hospitality industry leaders, likewise sharing their journeys to leadership and the lessons that they've learned along the way. You can also stream us from your favorite podcast streaming service. Thank you again, Steve.

Steve Palmer 29:53

Thank you.