It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast

Matt Hostetler, Chief Development Officer, Red Roof Interviewed by Rachel Humphrey

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Matt discusses the leadership lessons he learned through youth sports and fraternity involvement as a precursor to his executive roles.  He shares the role mentors and champions have played on his path and his strategy for building genuine relationships. Matt also talks about public speaking as an important element in your leadership toolbox.

Rachel Humphrey:

I am Rachel Humphrey with d e I advisors. We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering personal success in the hospitality industry, and I am delighted to welcome to the show today, a longtime friend of mine, someone who's taught me a lot about this business. Matt Hostetler. Matt, welcome to

Matt Hosttetler:

the show. Thank you, Rachel. I'm very excited to be here with you this afternoon.

Rachel Humphrey:

For those who do not know, Matt, I suggest you head on over to LinkedIn or the d e i advisor's website and lead. Read a little bit about his background. But for now we're gonna jump right into it. Matt, one of the things that I love about the hospitality industry is that no two paths to leadership are ever the same. Tell us a little bit about your journey to where you are today and some of the steps along the way that helped you get

Matt Hosttetler:

there. That's a, that's an awesome opportunity just to share a little bit about who I am and, where I've journeyed from and where I am today. So thank you for that. As a young man I was very sports minded and my whole family played sports. I was a football player, a basketball player, and played some baseball, but. The majority of my sporting career was spent in high school, but I had some great coaches, leaders as a young man, I. And these particular coaches instill leadership skills into US players male and female. And they're obviously their, the goal is to win the game. And in, in the process of playing sports, you. You tend to evolve and grow within a team and be the then outspoken person in the group in order to get people fired up or whatever it may be to ultimately get your job done, whether it be a defensive play or, a defensive stance of, or win. And I think just being, competitive, having that competitive nature. Being successful in the sporting area and staying competitive even through college. And being a captain of the football team or the defense and, a leader on a basketball team where, we were very successful in our high school playing days. So we all like to live some of these things in the past and then talk about glory days with our friends when we have high school reunions. But it all does really truth, truthfully, carry through what you do as a young person, and I think it was important. Also to add that when I did get into college, obviously a sport can pass you by very quickly and somehow leadership and growth take form in different ways. And I was. I was very excited to go to a small school near my home and had the opportunity to not only play intramural sports, but join a fraternity. And the fraternity had taught me a lot as well too, to, to not only. Learn how to deal with and be friends with, and grow with all sorts of people from, frankly, in my case, were around the world because I had one fraternity brother that was actually from Saudi Arabia. So as a young person, I was in touch with various communities, various ethnicities and that sort of thing. And grew a small fraternity of 23 members to 75 upon graduation. So I was very excited to, take on various different roles in school, being the, the treasurer, the. Vice president and in charge of committees. And then before you know it, I was the president of the of the fraternity for two years. With the ability to change a lot of things that we did in school and at that, in those places. So I think as a young person the things that we involve ourself with while we're getting educated is Very important to not only how we're looked upon hire when somebody's looking to say what makes Matt different from the other applicants that were out there. I think a lot of that had to do with my young, my journey as a young man. So I was very excited about that. And my college job was interestingly enough, In the moving and storage business. So then, we always we always made the joke. We had strong backs, but we weren't sure about our minds. So it was strong backs, weak minds, but we all ended up to float to the top the folks that I worked with in the moving and storage business. Before, you're in charge of crews and that sort of thing, and you're leading men, in some case, women. That are packing and loading people's cherished goods of household goods, moving from point A to point B. And I found myself communicating to CEOs and CEOs, spouses that are moving. And so my language and the way I spoke to those customers on behalf of. Our organization the Moving and Storage Company was very important. And, I speak highly of the van line and the family that gave me a lot of opportunity. The Williams family with United Van Lines out of Pittsburgh, I. Everyone knows I'm a Pittsburgh guy. If you don't, you do. Now I always talk Pittsburgh, Bart Williams and his family and his, frankly his grandfather who gave me his father, rather, they gave me the opportunity as a summer job to work hard and become a. A stronger man, if you will in leadership for four years. Then gave me my first full-time gig from the uni, from school. Sales and then sales management through the moving and storage company and, being able to be involved with. Multiple conferences and leadership events and being known within the moving and storage business. Then totally different rate and occupancy of where I am today. But it's all relevant. People dealing with people, growing people and moving things forward in an organization we're ve ver something that I was extremely proud of. Long journey but a committed journey to, and being loyal to a lot of different organizations over the past 20, how old am I? 25 some years. Out there in the full-time workspace, full then, coming from the moving and storage business was, it was a big change, and I was recruited a few different times by my predecessor and longtime friend Phil Hugh. And he is currently with Sessa Hotels. He was with me at then Sendent Wyndham Worldwide. These are great companies that I spent a lot of time with. That I'm proud to say that I spent a lot of time with and helped me in my journey. There's a lot of things in the moving and or that the moving and storage business carried over. But after the third time of Phil asking me to come work in franchising, I finally said yes. And started my journey in sales in a different industry in 2002, going into 2003. The evolution has it. In any business that if you want to grow, you have to listen and learn and take note of what people are doing, and wow, is that a path that I want to go? Or would I rather go down this path? Being in operations, being in sales development. Being human resources, whatever it may be. But I chose to be a little bit of each to understand our business hospitality, first of all. Second of all, the main core franchising, which is extremely important business model that a lot of entrepreneurs listen and take part into. To grow their businesses. There's a short journey into where I am today. Sales, leadership and, for the most part, three different industries moving in storage. I. Real estate with Coldwell Banker. Coldwell Banker, north America, where I was the senior Vice president of franchise sales and development for the U s A and Canada. And then my move to red Roof. So I'm very excited about the time that I've spent here as well listening, learning understanding and working side by side with some great people at our organization.

Rachel Humphrey:

Matt, you mentioned some incredible themes in there and I love the topic always of talking about the impact of youth sports on future leaders and there's some incredible statistics around that. The idea of using the fraternity opportunity to grow skills and to grow a business, so to speak. So a lot of great lessons in there. You mentioned Phil Hugh that we all know in the industry and the repeated times that not only him asking you to join him, but then to move. To different places with him. Talk about the importance, obviously we can see the importance of that relationship in your career path. Talk about how people out there can look for mentors, allies, champions in helping them to spur their own career

Matt Hosttetler:

growth. Yeah. And that's, it's very important to the the young people out there to really consider and make sure that. They're staying in touch with leaders, in all industries because you. You never know really what path you're gonna take until there's an opportunity put in front of you and you say, you know what? This might be a really good time for me to make a change, or, shift. And you use the word pivot into something different in, in, in your life. And then you find out. What you're really, truly passionate about and mentors have always been very important to me. I've kept many of my childhood friends that do different things. Some of them are entrepreneurs. They have, they own their own businesses that are multi-millionaires. I've been introduced. By those types of people. In, in the process of growing as a leader, in some cases, some of my mentors and people that I stay in touch with and ask advice were either former, Teammates or counterparts that may have went in a different direction where I think about, okay, what are the, what do they deal with in the industry that they're in today? And how is it relevant to me where I am in my space, whether it be in the closing clothing business, the moving and storage business, real estate. I have a great friend that is retired from The real estate side, and we still talk once a quarter, Hey, it's the end of the quarter. What are you thinking about sales? Is it crunch time? And bringing me back to that mind space of where I was as a young man or not so young and not that long ago. Selling franchises as an individual contributor to an organization. And it's okay, do I have everything that I need to be doing in place? And I am I being challenged to be creative? To be able to be different and to stand out and make people look at me and say, wow, what if I thought about doing that? So having different people and different and different industries to be involved together with you, not only from a personal perspective, you have a mentor personally and you have a mentor business-wise, just people to, to talk with. If anyone follows me on LinkedIn, they know that. My mindset is servant leadership, so I respect the team that works with me. Not for me, with me and driving the result. Albeit that I may be the ultimate accountability person, being responsible for the growth and development of not only our brand brands but the people themselves and where they wanna be and where they wanna go, and how they wanna be mentored and championed and moved forward in their career. Because not everyone wants to sit and just be. Stagnant in one role their whole life. But there are some people that do, and that's not a bad thing. I always talk about a friend that I, that is a great friend of mine today, that in my mind was one of the best counter salespeople at a major industrial organization. This particular individual never left his spot. He never promo, wanted, promoted. He just wanted to do his thing and come home. And that's a beautiful thing in a lot of cases for people that manage businesses.'cause you don't have to train retrain and recruit and train, repeat once, repeat twice over and over again. So that's a good thing. But at the end of the day, I love the opportunity to challenge minds. Whether they be young or more experienced to think differently and to be able to grow and who they want to be. And if there's anything I want to be remembered for specifically would be that I. He was a mentor of mine or, and helped me get from point A to Z, not just from point A to point B and then left. I really enjoy talking with people about their goals and their life challenges, so I can share the ones that I've went through as well. I.

Rachel Humphrey:

I really love the aspect too, of you can have great mentors that aren't even in your industry. And I think that's such an important thing to think about. We talk about this personal board of directors, of having people from different facets of your life, different ways that they can help you and impact you along the way. So that is great advice. I wanna turn to another topic public speaking, and we hear very often that for some people self-inflicted. This is the greatest impetus they feel to their personal growth, their professional growth. And obviously I have seen you speak to boards. I've been in meetings with you one-on-one. You speak at small conferences, large conferences. There's a lot of different ways when we think about, a staff meeting, a team meeting, and f a c meeting, that type of thing. How do you prepare for public speaking? Have you always been comfortable at it? Are you comfortable at it today? What would you say out there to people who are like, Ugh, I don't know that I can really grow my career because I have this fear, or I'm not good at public speaking?

Matt Hosttetler:

If you don't try it, you won't know whether you're good or bad, first of all. So what I recommend is for your growth and where you want to be is the opportunity to be seen and to be heard, and, Making sure that you're heard in all the positive and all the right ways. And as a young man, having the opportunity to address a team that needed to go into the last two minutes of the fourth quarter of a football game and say, listen, we're up five points and we know in the game of football that six is gonna need to be scored to win. So what are we gonna do? We need to. We need to put some motivation and some fire into the team. So having those small venue opportunities built into the bigger opportunities to speak to the team, and then when you have the opportunity and have success, and you were able to receive something for what you have done. From a success perspective sometimes gives you the opportunity to say thank you and you're all of a sudden in front of the boosters and all of your teammates, and to say, thank you for awarding me the best defensive player of the year award, or whatever it may be. And you, that nervousness begins to go away the more you have the opportunity. But the key to it all is, Making sure that you're very knowledgeable about the content, that you're gonna stand in front of your team, your company, or your industry, and what you're gonna talk about, because if you're not knowledgeable, About it. You are gonna be nervous. So it, most of the time people want to prepare for the topic. So hey, you send me the list of questions, the list of questions you read them, and at the end of it you think these are all things that I talk about day in and day out anyways, so why should I be nervous? Everyone wants to hear from you. They're not expecting you to say anything wrong. Their expectation is that you're gonna give them great information and they'll write down to take with them when they leave. Whether it be a servant leadership opportunity, another mentor there, Greg Aiden, he's a great friend as well. Durra Lei, who's still a great mentor of mine, have all helped me along the way in addressing crowds in public speaking. And I'm the first person to come up. To these leaders and my counterparts to say, how did I do and what can I work on? I love that.'cause the minute you think you're really good at it, say, you know what? You probably should have said, Hey, what about this? And you think, ah, I should have added that in. But if you're going from your heart, And you're being completely transparent and open and being accountable. Anything that you do and say will come out the right way and be delivered in a more meaningful way as well as opposed to being rehearsed. Again, rehearsed. You can look at it a couple different ways. Knowing your topic is one thing. Rehearsing and rehearsing answers is co completely different. So I think it's become, Natural for me over the years to be put in front of a crowd and have that command, that opportunity to be heard, if you will. And I appreciate everyone that has given me that. Opportunity to be heard from my space, whether it be at all the various different conferences out there, our f a c board meetings, or just on, LinkedIn and, my great friend Glen Hausman having us on. We do a lot of fun things just to keep people engaged in our industry. I think the energy and the passion needs to exude as well because you need to keep people engaged and wanna listen and wanna. Want to hear what you have to say so they can either implement something that maybe has not been implemented. Recently spoke with an industry professional at a conference. And people actually emailed me after the conference to say, I just wanted to say great job, what you were talking about going from To love and how you get your customers to go from liking you to loving you was so important. And I implemented things that you said on my Monday morning call. That's a win for me.

Rachel Humphrey:

That's. I think Matt, you again you've raised so many good points. First of all, Greg and Ra and Glen, all exceptional mentors for and industry leaders in public speaking and coaching in other ways. But I think you're right. I think knowing your content is critically important. So selecting the right speaking opportunities and when you have them to make sure that you are prepared if you're presenting to your team or conferences or other things. But again, I like how it comes back to. The opportunities in youth sports or other places to be able to hone those skills when maybe you didn't even realize that's the skill you were learning. So the side effect there of having that and then again paying it forward to make sure that people on your team are also having opportunities to continue to practice and hone in on theirs.

Matt Hosttetler:

You say something very important there, and I can't skip over that. There's this great thing out there we call succession planning. And if you don't involve your team members in that you're doing them and your organization a disservice in my mind. So I try to provide the best opportunities for the people on in my organization, specifically my team to have those to say, because I can't be. Everywhere. Although in 2015 I did a pretty good job of being there everywhere. At the end of the, at the end of the day not my job is not gonna stay the same and forever go on. Red Roof. Our organization's been around for 50 years. Quite frankly, I haven't been there all 50 years there have been people ahead of me and there will be people after me. That's the key is to make sure that you set your organization up for continued success.

Rachel Humphrey:

No, that's such a great point. I always love to share with our audience why I have asked someone to join us as a guest advisor because it's somebody who has impacted. My career or provided advice or in some way an action that was very memorable to me. And I mentioned when we started, I introduced you as a longtime friend, and that's because that is how I think of you. Although we've been industry colleagues for a long time now. When I first met you, I. You instantly made me feel like we had known each other forever, and we continued every time we saw each other in between. Then to develop that relationship. So if you had a question or you needed something, you knew I was a phone call away. No scheduling appointments or anything else, just. Texting or picking up the phone during the pandemic when things were haywire. I knew I could call you every single day if I needed to talk about what was going on. And so that ability to connect with people to me is one of your great superpowers. And I wanna elaborate on that a little bit and talk about relationship building and networking, because we each do it differently. You and I, again, might have very different strategies, but at the end of the day, we've built very similar networks of people. What are some of the ways you tailor your relationship building to your personality or your character? Yeah,

Matt Hosttetler:

character's probably an important word in that part. As you know how it's

Rachel Humphrey:

used, if I'm calling you a character or talking about your character

Matt Hosttetler:

if you know me close enough, you know that I have a good sense of humor. I'm always trying to. Bring humor into a relationship or a conversation. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So it can be a tough way to, to build a relationship but also very important way to, to bring people closer together and to have them relax more and understand that we are really just human beings, first of all. And that getting along together, whether it be work or personal, Should be important to each and everyone and the world would be a much better place. And I'm sure that's be been said time and time again, but we all need to continue to evolve that, making sure that each generation hears it, that people are important to each other. As a relationship builder, whether it had b it was in high school, college, or work. You get to a certain point in your life where there's a group of people that was. The type of people that you hung out with. But now that you're not an athlete anymore in college, there's a different group of people that you might be clinging to that still have that athletic mindset, but they're not actually on the team. You still have these groups of people that you bring together, and it's important that to say that since I graduated from my university in 1989, I have great. Great close friends that are from all spectrums of the world, all spectrums of industries. People that have played four years of college sports. Some actually went to the next level and played in the N F L. So I'm happy to be able to say that I can continue to keep relationships on what's important between that relationship. It's not about what they have and you want a piece of it. It's about what their relationship and friendship. Allows you to ke keep as you grow yourself individually, knowing what their mentality is and how they feel about certain things and how they may speak to them when they're in public. And is whether how you keep that relationship moving forward. Relationships are key specifically in a service industry. We're a franchisor for the franchisee and. Our owner said that to me at N Y U conference in 2022. Mag Al said very clearly, Matt, he goes, I wanna know everything that's going on. I just wanna make sure that our franchisee base is happy and that we're the franchisor for the franchisee. And I'm like, I know we do that, but I've never heard it put that way. And it's such a strong co strong statement. To make and to hear that from the owner of your organization to say that. Then, at the time we, George and I we all started saying it, we're the franchisor for the franchisee. But if you notice our marketing slogan is genuine relationships in real results. And it's true no matter what you do in life, Rachel, we have a genuine relationship. I know you start to meet. People's spouses and they know who you are. Oh, yes. Finally to meet you. I have a lot of great things about you. My wife knows you. How's Rachel doing? I, it's one of those things where it's just in life. Whenever you think, you know what, maybe I should just call Rachel and ask her thoughts. Obviously understanding your background where you've been, what you've done. You say, let me get a third party thought. Call Rachel and that can go with anybody along the way and staying networked and. Being very strong in relationship building. I like to say that there might be a small percentage of people on LinkedIn that I don't actually have, I should say that I've actually not ran into personally and shook hands, but I've also probably communicated with them directly and either helping them get to where they needed to be connected. Really, ultimately because they're using LinkedIn as a business connection resource, or do they really wanna be connected with me to stay connected, build relationships, and continue to network. And the majority, I would say, of my group just does just that. And I'm very proud of what we, what I've put together from a friendship. Relationship, business relationship and networking program in my mind that I've done, that I've, been working on and still work on through the majority of my professional career, it's very important because that one day you're gonna wake up and you're gonna say, you know what? All this networking paid off because there may be a shift, something changes and Matt may need to reach out to some of those networks. Or somebody may be reaching out to me in that same situation and say, how, what do you think? Who do you think I should be talking to? Because I am in a situation where I need to make a change or I have to make a change, or I've been. I may been laid off. So here's my group of people. Please tell this one that I sent you and I recommend you to give me a call. So please, understanding that relationships are very important. Personal mentorship and business mentorship all along, including, any of your boards out there of your companies. Anything that you may volunteer with any hospital board members, that sort of thing, anybody that you possibly can, your university. I think all of the relationship building and networking are extremely important. I.

Rachel Humphrey:

Having been on the receiving end of your strategy of relationship building, I can tell you that how you perceive yourself is how I perceive you as well. And I know a lot of us have benefited from that relationship with you. As I expected. We're, we are gonna run short on time, you and I could talk all day long. So I'm gonna do a couple of rapid fire questions with you. One of the things that you are known for is getting involved, as you mentioned, with boards. With industry associations with nonprofits, tell me one thing that you've learned through your involvement with those organizations that's developed a leadership skill for you, different from what you've learned in your corporate

Matt Hosttetler:

world. Just. Generally when you're on a board or in front of an association or part of an association, whether it be profit or nonprofit you have a tremendous amount of diversity and thinking which is important to any organization. And you find that out as you grow as a human being that, we're not all alike. We don't all think of we're not robots. So whenever we're part, whether we're presenting or with a board or part of a board that we hear everyone else's line of thinking and try to take a step back and not necessarily be. Reactive in a way and not say something because just of your thinking, allow people to think, respond, and then take it into perspective and see how you might grow from that as a leader, as a person going forward. And I think that's, it's extremely important to do things outside of. Outside of what you do day in and day out. And you also get a sense of giving back as well. So I think that's really important and and your growth.

Rachel Humphrey:

Such good advice as well. All right, last two things. I wanna talk a little bit actually about advice to our younger selves. That is my all time favorite question to ask and to be asked because I think that. We are all works in progress as people, whether it's in our personal lives, in our professional lives. So what does Matt today tell 21 year old Matt, about either how things will play out, something you wish you'd done differently. What's your advice to your younger self?

Matt Hosttetler:

When I was a younger man, like I went with it, if you will. Wasn't sure really. 100%. Now let's talk, let's remember there was no Google. There was, I didn't have a laptop. I didn't, certainly didn't have an iPhone and I didn't have a, an iWatch and I still don't, I certain point you have to cut some kind of notification off in your life so you can actually be present with your wife, spouse, family, whatever it may be. And. And stay in tune. But I would have been much more active in really truly understanding who I was as a human being and how I could have maybe taken what I know today and made it happen faster. Great. Yeah. Because of the, you could literally be done with me in the next five minutes, and this could be. Out there and on YouTube like that. Yeah, we know that. But years ago, it would've been me showing up at a studio, taking a video, and then, and then you splicing and dicing it, and then it would've taken two weeks. To reschedule, to imagine if we would reschedule and then it would be another two weeks. It would just be phenomenal, but just understanding how quickly you can get somewhere and understand the, how communication and today we're digital and all of the cloud-based and what we're doing today, how fast it is to be able to, and to be able to know today and to be able to react with that. The younger generation today. Is got a really great opportunity in front of them to just think and to be able to understand. But you have to be trained to be able to be proactive, but also react quicker.

Rachel Humphrey:

Such great thoughts. Last question I want you to think about for a second, the motto of d e i advisors, which is to empower personal success. And tell me one final tidbit of final advice you would have for our

Matt Hosttetler:

audience. I would just say this, understand who you are and what is extremely important to you. And when you know, just from a work perspective, what's important to you, be passionate go after it and also be passionate about something that. Is maybe outside of work that could be best and be more beneficial to mankind in general or the world itself. And I think that you start to think this way and you start to think about the people that you work with and what they may go through on a daily basis. It'll have you thinking. Much differently. As you can see, some of the things that we're doing with our organization, with specifically our team and what we're going through with our new Ride program. We just launched it Friday. It's extremely important that everyone. Everyone has an opportunity to be successful on a day in and day out basis. Just like you, Rachel. And just like I've been given the opportunity and what we make out of it, we make out of it on our own. There's gonna be people more successful. There's gonna be people not so successful, but as long as everybody gets an equal opportunity to do that I think we should do everything in our power as leaders today to make that happen.

Rachel Humphrey:

That is an excellent place for us to wrap up. Matt, thank you so much on behalf of myself, also on behalf of an industry for your leadership, for your continued commitment, as you said, to a more diverse industry at all levels. I'm very grateful for that. But thank you for supporting D e I advisors today.

Matt Hosttetler:

Absolutely all in what you do. Thank you very much.

Rachel Humphrey:

And for our audience, thank you so much for tuning in today. You can see more interviews like the one we just had with matt@deiadvisors.org, and as Matt mentioned, the pace of change. You can also find us on all of your favorite streaming channels to listen to the podcast. So thank you all very much for tuning in. Matt, thank you again for

Matt Hosttetler:

joining us. Thank you Rachel and d e i advisors.