On The Road to the Yellowstone County Lodging Association

With my travel schedule having been exceptionally busy for the last four months, it was great to have only three trips in March.  Two of those trips were one-nighter’s to work with a private consulting client, a luxury hotel in New York City, so was easy traveling.  My third trip for March was a lot longer, but I didn’t mind as it was exciting to be going back to Montana for only my second visit.  The first time had been just a few month’s earlier, and when I had spoken then at the Montana Innkeeper’s Association I’d met Steve Warlich.  Steve had mentioned then that he was President of the Yellowstone County Lodging Association, and that he wanted to organize an area-wide training for their association, and here I was going to actually deliver it.

Thanks to Northwest Airlines, getting to Montana from Florida is a lot easier than enduring the triple-connection flights I’d sent many a HSA trainer on over the years.  So it wasn’t much after lunchtime that I arrived and to my pleasant surprise was greeted by one of our industry’s newest and future hospitality superstars, who was Zack, the courtesy van driver for Steve’s, the Best Western Billings.  It was great to have this personal welcome, and even better to find that Zack was well-versed in my recent articles and actually showed me a stack of them he’d been studying recently. 

Now I’d heard that Billings has an unemployment rate of under 2 percent, yet in hearing Zack talking about how much he’d learned working for a guy like Steve, it reminded me of my current column (Mentoring to the Max) where I talk about the great mentors I had starting out in the business myself driving a similar van.  This also once again confirmed for me that great manager-mentors are always able to find (and retain) great employees, regardless of the local labor market. 

Steve didn’t waste any time putting me to work, as within an hour of landing I standing before his monthly meeting for his association to provide a “teaser” of my upcoming workshops.  Afterwards, Steve gave me an extensive tour of the destination and pointed out the hotels expected the next day.  Here’s a picture of me with the groups:

     


I have to also ad that Steve was a great host, and I enjoyed two of the best fine dining experiences (and dinner conversations) I’ve had in quite a while.  It was great to hear of the career adventures of a fellow entrepreneur, and the second night we were joined by Alaina Henry, Steve’s Travelocity representative, who captivated our attention by sharing the latest innovations such as dynamic packing.  Here’s a picture of us at dinner that evening:

                               

Of all of the weeks to be not traveling, I was very happy to been home the last week in March since it was a very busy week at the kid’s school.  First, I was able to attend my fourth annual Field Day and see my Julia and Adam compete in the whacky games with their classmates.  The next day I’d once again been called upon to be the required male chaperone for my son’s second field trip. Here’s a picture of Julia and I on Field Day and one of Adam and I with his class after the field trip.