How To Build And Coach Your Fantasy Office Team: Fill & Download for Free

I was a poor high school student with mediocre grades. I didn’t play any sports. I had few friends.I’d go home and read and watch TV all day and night. I love TV.I was a mediocre college student. But I didn’t want to get into too much debt. I took lots of extra college courses so I could skip a year.But my grades were so bad that the week before I graduated I had to beg a professor to give me a D+ instead of a D- so I would have high enough GPA so they would give me a degree.I was a mediocre employee. I got fired from my first two jobs. My third job was very easy but still they would yell at me if I ever disappeared from my desk for too long.I was unhappy. But I wanted to break out of prison. To escape. To be free.I used to play chess all day and night online. One time my boss knocked on my locked door because my software was broken and he couldn’t get work done.I didn’t answer because I was in the middle of a one minute blitz chess match.Later that day my girlfriend showed up at my office near midnight banging on the door and saying, “I know you’re in there!”I didn’t answer because 14 hours after my boss banged on my door I was still in the same match. Seggev from Israel. I couldn’t stand him! So we played all day.One guy a few offices down started a company (Lycos) that was worth billions. Another guy on my floor sold his company a few years later for $40,000,000.I played chess all day and avoided work and tried to write, unsuccessfully, a good novel. I also read comic books a lot: Eightball, Optic Nerve, Yummy Fur, Palookaville, were some of my favorites. Autobiographical comics in black and white about people who seemed to be losers like me.The comic store wouldn’t hire me when I asked about a job. I would rather work for no pay around comics than program computers.I started work at HBO. They asked me what my salary was at my old job. I said $38,000 so they offered me $40,000. But I had lied. I was making $27,600 at my old job. I was 26 years old.I moved to NYC and I couldn’t do anything at the job. I crashed everything. They had to send me to remedial classes and considered firing me.I lived in one room in NYC with Elias, a chess player I met at Washington Square Park. We had one room. He slept on the couch and I slept on the futon. I had a garbage bag for my clothes.I took my suit out of the garbage bag each day and wore it to work and never washed it.One day Elias came in at three in the morning and said, “Hurry! We have to move. I haven’t been paying the rent.”And even though I had been paying him rent, I moved the next day to a roach-infested apartment in Queens with one piece of furniture. A foam mattress that would get permanently soaked by my sweat each night.In Queens, I’d tip the waitresses with $2 bills and would write creepy notes on the bills like, “I’d like to take you to dinner. Here’s my number: …”Then I became a millionaire.—My sister asked me, can you help my husband. So I visited his office. He was in the business of making CD-ROMs.I showed him this new thing, the World Wide Web. We started playing around making websites.He’d do the design, I did the software. Adrian, his partner, figured out all the hosting.Then a wholesale diamond dealer, Shlomo, asked us to do a website so he could sell direct to consumers.He gave us $35,000 cash. I had $0 in my bank account and all of a sudden, I was rich! I had $17,500 in the bank. More money than ever ever.I went to the Chelsea Hotel, where I always wanted to live. All my favorite artists, poets, writers, had lived there at some point.I had a paper bag of cash. Stanley Bard, the owner, said to me, “What are you, a drug dealer?” Still, he let me live there.(my first real home on my own)We did another website: AmericanExpress.com. Now I had more money in the bank. Nobody knew how to make websites then except me and a handful of other people in NYC. Our frenemies for the next five years.Then we did HBO.com, TimeWarner.com, ConEdison, etc etc. We hired people. I quit my job . We did more websites. We sold the business.I was rich.For a brief moment, everyone wanted to be my friend. But then a few years later I was broke, and had no friends.—A business is these three parts:A) You have excess of X (e.g. empty car seats).B) Someone else wants X (e.g. someone who can’t catch a cab on a rainy day)C) The business is the platform in the middle that helps “B” meet “A”, handles the money transaction, handles disputes. (e.g. Uber).Think of this with Airbnb, Grubhub, Amazon, even a clothing store (which can only grow to the size of it’s physical space, as opposed to an online platform).—How to have EXCESS:I messed this up a lot. Peter Thiel, in his book, makes the fascinating point that in capitalism, competition is bad. You don’t really want to compete with anyone. You want to be the best BY FAR.Not 10% better. Ten TIMES better.With that first business I had EXCESS as defined by these four parts:A) I was the ONLY person who could do websites as fast as I could. Maybe my competitors could be as fast but rarely (back then).B) Websites were new, nobody had them, and everyone needed them.C) It was easy for them. Just pay me and I’d deliver a complete website with no hassles and even host it for them.D) I was cheap. Because my competitors were building big businesses and I was just trying to get cash in the bank. We’d only hire anyone when we were all overwhelmed.E) I always delivered more than I promised. Your best new clients are your old clients. If you always OVERpromise and OVERdeliver, you never lose your old clients.F) I’m the shyest, most introverted person in the world. But because we delivered on our “excess knowledge of the Internet”, good word-of-mouth spread.G) I had passion. Everyone I spoke to, I preached how the Web was going to be everywhere. Someone with sincere passion (backed with expertise), could always beat the person just trying to make money.I’m bad with followup. My main problem was that I was great at selling people, and then they (JP Morgan, for instance) would burn up my phone and I’d never return their calls.I was very mediocre, even bad, at follow up. And still am. I never return calls and I always regret it.Plus, I had a full-time job. My “side hustle” was my full time job at HBO. My full time job was my new business.Then I sold the company. At age 30 I was a millionaire. At age 34 I was dead broke.—Using the ideas above, there are many ways to make a million dollars.You don’t need to be a super genius. You don’t need to build a space ship. Or a new way for robots to detect faces. Or a billion user social network.You can be mediocre. You can procrastinate. You can just do nothing some days. But you have to follow some basic points.First, here are a few ideas of the model of business described above. Don’t do these if you don’t want. This is just to get your mind thinking.BOOKS: find categories on Amazon with few books but high sales numbers. This means there is demand. Write five books a month (20–50 page books. Do a lot of research). In a year you’ll have written 60 books. If each book is bringing in, on average, $1,000 per month that’s $720,000 a year. You are worth well over a million at that point.(Steve Scott has around 100 books for sale on Amazon with various pseudonyms)BUY LOW, SELL HIGH. Many websites out there sell things cheap: AliBaba, WaystoCap, diamond wholesalers. Set up an Amazon Sellers page. Mark up prices. Dropship from the cheaper sites directly to your buyers. There’s more nuances here but passion will help you find them.INFORMATION: What are you passionate about? List ten things you are passionate about that you think people would want to know about. Now put up 10 ads on Facebook, “buy this information”. See where people click. This shows you demand. Now create the newsletter to meet that demand. Do one free giveaway in exchange for an email address and start selling your excess knowledge to the people who are on your email list.EXAMPLE: You love the Bible and you love dieting. Now sell the “What Would Jesus Eat” diet newsletter. Filled with inspirational Bible quotes, diet info from that period of history and anecdotes from the Bible, and recipes.Trust me, this will sell.(figure out how to make yours unique! And why YOU are the expert.)GETTING INTO COLLEGE COACHING: It’s harder than ever to get into college. But there are always back doors.For example: Columbia University has a 6.6% acceptance rate. But Barnard College (which is basically apart of Columbia) has a 20% acceptance rate. If you get a Barnard degree you can say you have a Columbia degree.For EVERY college there is a backdoor. Become the expert, do a few for free to get testimonials, interview 50 admissions officers and write a book to become an “expert”, charge $1,000 and coach via Skype. This becomes a business. Sell it.(Columbia University. But there’s always a backdoor).TRENDS: Become an expert in a fast growing trend that you love. For instance, I loved the Internet when nobody knew about it. I loved stocks and many people were excited about stocks, etc.Learn everything about the trend, write down ten ideas a day how to make money off of the trend. Offer to consult people are companies trying to get involve in the trend, eventually start charging for consulting, speaking, etc or build a company.Examples of trends that are hot or becoming hot: crypto/blockchain, marijuana, e-sports, big data, AI, cyber security, social media consulting, easier niche medical care for older people (e.g. erectile dysfunction, Alzheimers, longevity, etc).Start with a manual service (like consulting or speaking) and then figure out how to automate (I failed at this side in my first business but would not make that mistake again).What are ways trends can be monetized: be the business (e.g. grow marijuana), be the news source for the business (many crypto websites have millions of users a month), be a consultant about the trend, gamble on the trend (for instance, use statistics to figure out what fantasy teams to bet on in e-sports), take ideas from other industries and apply them to your business (for instance, a legal exchange for marijuana products, ancillary products, etc).STEAL: Take an old-school brand that has never been touched in 100 years. Make the same product, use social media and Amazon advertising to defeat the product. I know someone who did this to Igloo Iceboxes and overtook this 100 year old brand on Amazon in just 48 hours.(which came first? Which used social media first to DOMINATE?)I don’t present these as ideas you should do.If I were parachuted, dead broke, into a country I had no connections, I’d study the ideas above to learn how to think about creating a side hustle that could make me a millionaire.I’d try more than one idea until I found what worked for me.And then I’d hit the gas pedal. I’d CRUSH THAT GAS PEDAL.—One time I was in the hedge fund business. I raised money from wealthy people, invest it, and take a share of the profits.A friend of mine said, “I want you to meet my boss. He runs a big hedge fund. Maybe he’d invest in you.”So I went with him to his work. His boss gave me a tour. Then we sat down and he asked what I wanted to do with him.I said,”I think you should invest with me,” and I gave my pitch, But I wasn’t unique. I wasn’t the ONLY one who could do this (remember above about competition).He said, “I like you. You could work here if you want. But we already have good returns. And I don’t know where you invest your money. Maybe you do things I don’t like.”I felt my heart getting crushed.“And the last thing we need is to see the name ‘Bernard Madoff Securities’ end up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal,” Bernie Madoff said to me.You can’t compete against scammers because until they are caught, they seem great.You have to go into areas where scammers are not infested. They infest quickly.(don’t compete where you can’t).—The most important thing: love.A friend of mine said to me, “Can you make me a million dollars?” And I said, “Yes” because I had a crush on her, plus I knew I could help her.She said, “I will follow exactly everything you say.”So I started to tell her what to do and she was doing it. Then she said, “But I want to help people who are trying to get rid of drug addictions.”I said, “those aren’t the sort of people who have enough money to make you millions.”“Let me just try,” she said and she stopped following my advice exactly. Only partially.She built a good career. But not millions. But still, she loves it. She has a better life than making a million and not doing what she loves.Love will let you put in the extra hour each day to learn more than everyone else.Love will give you that slightly more passionate tilt in your voice when you are selling.Love will mean your work-life balance is not an issue. It’s all LIFE. There’s no work when you love.And if what you love can make you millions, even better.But if you just spend the rest of your life in love, it’s a life worth living.

Build a job pipeline. We tell all students they need at least 30–40 companies in their pipeline and that getting hired usually takes someone 2–3 months minimum.Start looking for opportunities to get real-world experience. We have a free online bootcamp that gives access to anyone, but is specifically designed to help upcoming graduates and people with little work experience. Our paid fellowship, 1:1 coaching, and office hours helps students get through the job search process while making money and getting great mentorship.Go to meetups and events. Even though it is fun watching netflix and updating your fantasy sports teams, make sure you are going to events 2–3 times a week to meet people in the community.Ask for referrals. Don’t apply directly on job sites. If you want to land a job, look for someone that can introduce you directly to the company or hiring manager.

When you (maybe not you yourself, but most people) look at a hotel, you see a building with rooms that you can check in and rent for a night. It may be in a resort area, it may be a resort in itself, it may be a roadside property that exists to catch off-ramp traffic looking for a place to rest for the night, or it could be anything in between.It could be plush, or it could be very stark. Amenity levels, and demands, vary.It could be very service-intensive - Fantasy Island, or as close as you could get - or you could pick up a key at the desk and leave it on the dresser when you leave the next morning without checking out: service levels, and customer demands for service, vary. (I did get a kick out of that one where some famous singer checked into a W Hotel and had the staff fix her up with a bath in chocolate milk. Now it a commonplace service: several spa-type and resort hotels offer it.)Whatever it is, I look at it a little differently. Not to get into self-promotion, here, but I subscribe to the definition of a professional as someone who's always in the game. When Tiger Woods won the Masters, you'd think he'd take a few days off from golf and celebrate, right? No - he's out on the course the next day, practicing. A pair of examples from the military that make amusing stories: Marine General James Mattis, somewhat notorious as one of the most outspoken, blunt, and candid senior American military officers since Patton, has a famous quote: 'Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet'. (A guy like him . . . I truly believe he does.) Retired Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko, who designed and founded the SEAL unit that went into Abbottabad and took out Osama bin Laden, said in one of his 'Rogue Warrior' books that every time he walks into any building, the first thing he thinks of is, how would he go about blowing it up?Me, I look at a hotel (together with whatever comes with it when you check in as a guest) and wonder, 'what goes into making this thing work, what goes into how it makes its money, how does it provide whatever experience to the guest that it promises?'It takes three or four things to make it goThe facility:The bricks and mortar, the rooms and their furnishings, the pool, the breakfast area and/or restaurants. This is the beginning point, all else is determined by what the facility can support. You can open a mom-and-pop motel or a bed and breakfast - or even a small hotel or motel - and run it yourself: a simple operation isn't that hard, and most limited service and economy properties run themselves better than the people who run them try to run them. Or you can hire someone to do it, if you have a pretty good idea what you want from it (the tricky part is, knowing what you should want from it, what's doable and what isn't).Larger properties are frequently owned by real estate developers and/or local investment groups. A hotel is not a passive real estate investment, it is a business, and a developer might not want to set up and maintain an organization and structure for managing such a business. Doctors and dentists who make up investment groups aren't going to want to be bothered with the management of a hotel, either. So, many companies contract a third-party for the management of such properties. Institutional investors - banks, insurance companies - nearly always contract management, especially if they acquired the property through foreclosure.Needless to say, I like for people like that to know where to get in touch with me . . .Management:Your facility can be as big and as opulent and as plush as you want, but it's got to make money.Or, if you aren't out to make money, it can't lose money. You'd be surprised at the number of properties that were developed simply to have that type of hotel in that location, perhaps as part of a larger development. Or, a property was built with a vision in mind of a profitable property, but someone miscalculated, it was overdeveloped, or it encountered cost overruns in its construction; and its owners have learned to live with it that they built a lemon, it can't make money after all (or at least not nearly as much as they thought): it's not going to be much more than a marginal operation.Or, if you're in it for the tax write-off (some people are, and there are as many stories about how it came to be that way as there are people who tell them), it can't lose too much money.And in any case -- most importantly of all -- the property can't lose value if there's any way to avoid that. For example, 'downscaling' a Hampton Inn located next to a major mall, on some of the most costly real estate in the city, and running it as a Quality Inn, isn't always an option, even though doing that in any other location might reduce your costs and allow you to be profitable even if you charge a lower rate that will allow you to reach more people and fill more rooms.If you own a hotel, you can manage it yourself. Or if you're part of an investment group, it might include someone with some management experience to run it. Or you can contract the management of it to a third party, who'll take off some fees based upon its revenue and profits. Whichever way you go, management has to be in place, someone has to run the hotel.Our job is to ascertain your needs, get together on a direction for your property (we'll already have one in mind if it's a new property that we develop), and make that happen.I'd guess that half the hotels in the USA are owner-managed (I don't have exact figures.) Many are owned by sole proprietorships, or partnerships, that own just one hotel. Many of those are owned by what you'd think would be a 'chain'-type operations (entities that own more than one hotel in more than one location), but these do not necessarily operate under a single brand, or even work together as a 'chain'. You can own a Comfort Inn in one location, and a Days Inn in another: you'll negotiate a franchise for each of your properties based upon what will best support your individual property.Likewise, as you'll see, brands aren't necessarily chains, even though most people think of them as such. One of the biggest franchise organizations, Choice Hotels International, which owns the Cambria Suites, Comfort Inns, Quality Inns and Econo Lodge 'chains', owns very few hotels, if any at all. They own those brands, and sell and support franchises for them.Brand/Marketing (the 'brand' part):The brand is the primary determinant of your property's market position. It is a (hopefully known) name that packages the promise of your hotel to a potential guest, moves him to rely upon your hotel for a certain set of amenities, services and standards if he or she checks in, and gives him or her some idea of what he or she should be expected to pay.If you affiliate your hotel with a franchise organization, they supply the brand. You'll choose one that best matches your facility and the level of standards and service your hotel can support, you'll contract your hotel with the appropriate franchise organization, you'll pay a royalty of 8-12%, plus other fees that'll add 4-5% to that, and you agree to keep your property furnished and to operate it in accordance with their brand standards. What you get is the right to use the brand as that of your own hotel and to do business under that brand name, and access to that brand's national marketing - the website, the 800 number, the brand's advertising, etc. - and presumably, a lot of guest referrals to your hotel.The reality does not live up to the promise consistently, and will continue to do so less and less consistently in the coming years. Just under half of your potential guests now book through online travel agencies rather than the 'chain's' 800 number or website, and this proportion is going to continue increasing. Fewer and fewer franchise brands are worth having: there are too many of them. Some, like Clarion, and Quality Inn, and Ramada, and Howard Johnson's, and Travelodge hang in there because 1) they are venerable old names, 2) their ongoing presence helps the franchise organization sell more franchises: you can only have so many Super 8's, and Comfort Inns, and Days Inns in a single market, and 3) it's hard to get banks to give favorable mortgage terms on unfranchised hotels.But eventually, the banks are going to wise up and notice, with most of these franchises, the owner is paying 12-16% of his revenue and getting less than 6% of his customer referrals in return. Then, some venerable old names will not only be no longer worth having, they'll no longer be worth supporting, and they, too, will disappear; just as venerable old names such as Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Mercury and Plymouth began to disappear when it became apparent that US automakers had too many brands and could not supply enough unique product at a doable price to support each one.Still, you might want to take a look at why banks feel that way for now. In 2007, 32 hotels were foreclosed across California, only one had an active franchise. (That proportion has surely, in subsequent years, increased.) If you want to run your property as an independent, or create your own brand, you need to be prepared to do - at least on a regional level - what a national brand is there to do. You've got to have the name and reputation (fortunately, in the internet and TripAdvisor age, this can be done quickly), you've got to have the 800 number, you've got to have the website, you've got to have the referral capability, you've got to have the loyalty programs, and you've got to have the tie-ins to the online travel agencies and GDS. And you've got to do it all as well as the best franchise brand you can get.I'm working on developing our own brand, and I'll freely admit, ours can't, and it'll be a few years before it can. (Think of those years as part of the investment in the brand.) But it can and will be able to support one of our hotels as well as many of the lesser national brands, and those hotels won't be paying 10% of their revenue, give or take, for the privilege. (Think of that savings as part of the return on that investment.) As the brand grows, and we acquire or take under management more locations, and the brand's capabilities increase, we'll do better and it'll be worth more.Brand/Marketing (the 'marketing' part):This, and your brand, should go together, but they don't always, which is why I say 'three or four things', instead of just three, as it would be in a perfect world. Your franchise organization should give you lots and lots of support with this. But they'll only do what they do, and even with one of the better ones, you're pretty much on your own at the local level, where it really counts.If your property is in near an interstate highway, or right next to some other demand generator (an office park, an airport, a coliseum), you have a credible if not recognized brand in place, and you're okay with charging not too much money for your rooms, you can maybe get by on 'walk-in business', the guests that find their way to you and walk through the door, in addition to the half dozen or so per night - give or take - that you can get out of your brand if you have a franchise.On the other hand, if you want your property to be more than a $65.00 per night 'road whore', or, if you have a franchise, you want to get a higher rate than other nearby properties of the same brand, or even as high as other properties in your competitive set (nearby hotels with competing brands that compete most directly with your own), you need to think about marketing your property. Your franchise organization will help, up to a point, but if you completely subcontract it out to them, your success will be limited to the best that they can do for you, that won't be much, and it'll amount to less and less year by year.Marketing 101: you hear the terms used interchangeably, but 'sales' and 'marketing' are not the same thing. Some of the most 'successful' hotel salespeople I've seen are doofuses when it comes to marketing (much of their 'success' in sales is a function of, 'how do you define success?') and as to what I think of them . . . we don't want to go there (I recall something in the Quora TOS about 'be nice', so maybe I'd better not use that kind of language . . .).I, on the other hand, am somewhat of an introvert with very little talent (and not more patience) for connecting with people and doing one-on-one sales - but learning over the years to compensate for that, and doing what works for me has played into my best marketing successes. My way involves working out your marketing and setting things up so that you have to put very little effort into going out and 'selling' it: the people you want as your customers know who you are and know to come to you. Or, if you do have to go out and 'sell' to them, it doesn't take much more than an invitation, and taking some time to answer a few questions.You start by asking the question, what kind of people do you want to have as your guests, how can you find those people, reach out to them, connect with them, and fill the hotel? Then you determine what it takes to reach them and tell them about your hotel - and do it without spooking them and scaring them off with a canned pitch. (One reason readers of my blog [WWMD: What Would Mike Do? ] might wonder if I'm quite the fan of Seth Godin [Seth's Blog ], is because I've learned more from him about how to do marketing than I have from any other one person [http://www.amazon.com/Seth-Godin/e/B000AP9EH0/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=valleylight-20&linkCode=ur2&qid=1358353700&camp=1789&sr=8-2-ent&creative=390957 and I'd start with Permission Marketing, http://www.amazon.com/Permission-Marketing-Turning-Strangers-Customers/dp/0684856360/ref=la_B000AP9EH0_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1358353714&sr=1-7 ], especially any one person in the 'hospitality industry').What way too many hotel 'directors of sales' or 'sales managers' do (to the extent they put any planning into it at all) is write up a marketing plan in which a list of the top 25 local employers obtained from the local Chamber of Commerce website figures prominently, conspicuously missing is any kind of plan to actually reach any of them, and it all ends with a lot of rah-rah stuff about getting them by providing fantabulous service (effectively, giving themselves a license to meddle into the operations end, and an entire staff to blame if the fantabulous service isn't enough to bring people in by word of mouth and they don't sell anything . . .) And that's the way it's too often done with hotel that even bother having someone on staff with the overall accountability of marketing the hotel. Way too many 'sales manager/DOS' types I've seen rely all too heavily upon personal connections, 'centers of influence', much as real estate salespeople are taught to. When they leave and go to work for a competing hotel across town, your client list goes across town with them.What I do is start with the people who are already checking into the hotel, from whatever source, and look for ways to scale that up. The largest employer in Forsyth County is Wake Forest University, and I still can't name a single contact over there upon whom I can count to send me referrals (since WFU owns two area hotels, guess where any business they have to refer is going to go, anyway?). But my biggest corporate and group accounts began with just one guest who came in on an 800-number or hotels.com | Cheap Hotels, Discounts, Hotel Deals and Offers referral. In each case, I already had their number, and several of them remembered meeting with me during their stay. Of course, I usually give them a break on the rate for future stays, and set up a contract rate for them, but the more of my rooms I tie up doing that, the fewer I have left for walk-ins, supply and demand does its power and magic, and I can raise my 'regular' rate.Example: I have a 61-room property, and I have an average of twenty walk-ins a night. I can rent most of them a room at $80. If I try to get $95, about a third of them will try to haggle, or walk away. But if I'm renting 48 rooms a night at a contract rate that covers my costs and gives me a small profit, I can raise my rate to $95, and I don't care if a third of my 20 nightly walk-ins walk away: with 48 rooms rented in a 61-room property, I can only accommodate 13 of them, anyway. So, the ones who don't walk away pay $95, and it increases the value of my product: the next time I have to give a corporate or group client a discount, it's going to be a discount from a $95 asking price, not $80, and be closer to $85 than $70.(Of course, that is a very crude example, with the numbers exaggerated for illustration purposes: I don't want people going away unhappy, and I'll back off a little on a slow night to get them to try our hotel, maybe warm up to coming back for subsequent stays at the regular price, maybe get a corporate or group referral out of them. My price increases will occur more frequently, be implemented more gently, and be closer to five than fifteen bucks; and hopefully not nearly as many people will be annoyed, with no one annoyed enough to go away mad. But that's still about the size of it re how it works . . . See Michael Forrest Jones's answer to What is a rack rate and why do hotels have it? and Michael Forrest Jones's answer to How do hotels change prices as time approaches the booking date? )I then have a higher rate from which I can offer any future discounts, and any subsequently negotiated contract rates will be higher as a result. It works in a spiral that I want to keep in an upward direction as much as possible.I also keep as many of my people as possible within a given hotel involved. What I look for in a person I'm looking at for a business development accountability is marketing ability. I don't want a social butterfly with a little black book full of contacts, I want a marketing genius with an intimate familiarity with what my property has to offer, who the likely takers would be, how to reach them, and who creates lots of contacts and makes the most of those who show up in the hotel on their own. I also like to see experience, or at least giftedness, as a teacher. I want everyone on my staff, even desk clerks, who can be trained to make sales calls and negotiate corporate or group bookings, to be trained to make sales calls and negotiate corporate or group bookings, and I want my business development manager to be a team player/coach who supports the involvement of everyone in the hotel, not a 'big important guy' or prima donna who 'indispensable' efforts are there to be supported.I want seamless cooperation between the sales and operations end, and I hold both sides equally accountable for that. The operations people have to make and keep a marketable product available: they can't be undermining the business development people. But they're not puppets: they also have to be okay with what the business development people are doing, and confident that they can deliver on what they promise without being overstressed or overburdened.And to the extent my business relies upon someone's personal connections, I want to have those connections myself, and I want as many others on my staff to have them as well. (We want to turn those connections into relationships, and we want each of those relationships to continually improve. Our 'fraternization' policy actually encourages personal relationships between guests and the staff, so long as those relationships occur naturally without being forced in any way, and do not stray into specifically defined forbidden areas. And one rule we have for all staff: if you're making small talk with a guest - which we encourage - and another member of the staff happens along, introduce the two . . . 'Friend' us on Facebook, and we know when your birthday is - we already have your address - and we'll send you a card, personally signed by anyone on our staff who remembers you, and a free upgrade for your next stay . . . ) If one individual leaves and takes my client list along, well, these things happen - but my clients stay put.To summarize the TLDR part, if I've bored you with all this:Have these three to four things handled well, and you should have a successful operation.Any hotel, whether it's a business or resort destination, no matter what type of clientele predominates (business travelers, family leisure travelers, couples traveling for leisure, extended-stay), and no matter what its market tier (economy, lower mid-market/limited service, upper mid-market/select service, upscale, luxury, etc.), is going to have its business structured so that those three elements are in place.The facility may be owned by one entity, the management may be controlled by another, the brand usually is controlled by yet a third one altogether, and that 'third one altogether' may provide a great deal of support with local marketing (I'm told Marriott is very helpful: most give you lots of advice and coaching, but little one-on-one assistance), or next to none (and the effectiveness of even its national marketing may be questionable: think back to the venerable old names . . .). A company-owned Hilton, Marriott or Starwood hotel will have all three elements - the facility, the management, the brand - under the control of a single entity; Hilton, Marriott or Starwood, respectively. So will an independent mom-and-pop motel: Mom and Pop control the facility, manage it themselves, have a brand in the form of a name for the place that may have a great reputation, a mediocre one, or worse; and they do whatever marketing they do in whatever way has worked for them over however long they've owned the property.Typically, however, what you'll find - at least at the mid-market tiers, where we operate - is the owner of a facility who manages it himself, in one or more locations, under a typically 20-year franchise agreement for the brand; and either leaves marketing up to the brand, or is on his own as to how it gets done at the local level. If the owner is an investment group, or if the property is bank-owned or owned by an institutional investor, management will be contracted (I'll give you my number if you know someone who owns a hotel and is looking for a management company), and marketing will be approached with a little more by way of intentionality.A more 'corporate' owner, or a third-party management company, will generally put a little more into marketing, with varying effectiveness. Corporate owners have deeper pockets, and for a management company, the ability to come up with a credible and workable marketing plan for an individual property, and to implement it successfully, is much of its stock in trade.