Andrew Gantt - Salt, Light, and Hospitality Transcript

Royce Hall

Hey, this is Royce Hall, your host of the Coffee Dreaming Podcast, your online network for sales leaders, operations leaders, marketing leaders connected to the Salesforce ecosystem. Thank you for listening and be sure to like, subscribe, and share. I'm joined by Andrew Gantt today.

Andrew is the founder and CEO of Salt, Light, and Hospitality. Great to have you today,

Andrew Gantt

Thank you for having me.

Pleasure to be here. So one thing that, you know, as I'm introducing you, Salt, Light, and Hospitality, I think the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people when we say hospitality is, oh, like you're a caterer, but you're so much more than that. And that's probably not even what you're doing.

Royce Hall

So give us a brief intro of like what you're doing with Salt, Light, and Hospitality and the why behind that. What has gotten you here?

Andrew Gantt

So I was a chef for 25 plus years. And one of my favorite parts of being a chef was that moment after I sweated and bled into a dish all day long was watching it go out the window and being able to peek out and see that first bite.

And just the bliss that would come over your face when you get that perfect bite of steak or whatever the ditch is. And I realized that that feeling could be put into a lot of other places. So after I left the kitchen world and started Salt, Light, and Hospitality, it's my goal to teach other businesses, nonprofits, anyone really who will listen what hospitality really means.

And no, it is not only about food. Food makes it easy. Food makes hospitality easy.

If you want someone to listen to you, put a hot meal or a cup of coffee in front of them. They're going to listen for a lot longer than they would without it. But it's a lot more than food.

It's giving a welcoming and safe place to be able to converse, to rest, to heal. And I'm trying to teach businesses and nonprofits how to use hospitality for employee retention, volunteer retention, customer retention. Bring up your GSS score.

Try to get people to come back to be a repeat customer. Everyone jokes about how Chick-fil-A is one of the best fast food restaurants out there. And it's one of the reasons is because they make you feel at home.

They make you feel important. They really suck you in on it and make you feel like you belong there. And if we do that to our employees or our customers, we're going to retain them a lot longer and get a lot more from them.

Royce Hall

I love that. As you're talking, hospitality is so much more than just that food. It's a lot more than just a pizza party on Friday or some donuts on Wednesday morning.

It is about how you make people feel. It's about that appreciation. Let's dig into that a little bit more because you were talking earlier before the show about how that ties into sales and how that ties into marketing.

What's the business impact of that hospitality?

Andrew Gantt

The business impact, really the sky's the limit. We touched on Disney earlier. Disney does everything they can to make sure you're having a magical moment.

All of their employees have been given the green light by the overheads to if they have a chance to make sure someone can have a magical day. They are allowed to do it. I believe it's also the Ritz Carlton.

They give every employee, every employee, the busboy, the linen people, straight up to the hotel manager. They can spend up to $2,000, no questions asked, to give someone a memorable moment. Wow.

I worked at a hotel at one point where we had a guest that would stay with us regularly and he was a Cubs fan, born and raised in Chicago. When we knew he was coming, we would make sure we had his local paper flown in and dropped at his doorstep. Granted, we couldn't get in for the morning, but we had it there every afternoon so that way he could read about how the Cubs did when he had his afternoon coffee.

We made him feel like he was important. We gave him a chance to rest, to not have to worry about. We gave him that little bit of comfort, but most of all, we showed him we cared.

I'm no longer at that hotel, but he is still going. That hotel closed down and opened back up and he is still going because we made him feel like part of the institution. If we would learn to do that with more of our customers and really build that relationship with them, if we buy into them, they will buy into us.

Royce Hall

Let me ask you, do you have maybe one or two really pivotal thoughts for people that are wrestling with this idea of hospitality? What are one or two revelations that are really eye-opening for you that you can share with our audience?

Andrew Gantt

I had a boss a couple of years ago now. I have had a long string of terrible bosses, as we all have. I had one boss a couple of years ago, a younger guy.

He walks in the kitchen, looks at me dead in the eye and goes, Chef, we need to talk. He walks to his office. Now, of course, I'm immediately rattling through my brain, like, okay, what did I do? Where did I stop? What's this coming from? I sit down and he looks at me and goes, so, how's your family? Good.

How old are your kids now? I start going through the list. He keeps asking questions and just poking in a little bit. It took me a solid 10, 15 minutes to realize that there was no shoe to drop.

He was legitimately curious about how my life was going outside of work. It was at that moment, I realized, like, oh, well, A, not all bosses are terrible, and B, wow, he really cares. Fast forward probably a month or two, we had a big wedding coming in that was going to be terrible to do.

But he came in. He talked to me like a person. He didn't just order me it.

He said, hey, this is going to be hard. Do you think we can do it? And I was honest with him. I said, it's not impossible, but it's going to be difficult.

And he, the words will stick with me forever. Whatever you need, I'm here. If you need me to cut onions and peel potatoes to make this happen, I'll be here to do it.

But we need to make sure it happens. And sure enough, we got to the day of the wedding. And I remember standing outside in the freezing cold, serving wedding cake with him.

And I looked over at him, and I kind of gave him this look like, you're my boss. You are doing the job that I would have given to my dishwasher. What are you doing here? And so I asked him afterwards, I was like, Spence, why were you out here serving cake with me? It's like, I told you whatever you needed.

And you said you needed someone to serve cake. I said, yeah, but I told you so you could go find me someone. And he said, yeah, but it was a need I could meet.

And why wouldn't I want to help you? From that day forward, that man could have asked me to set the sky on fire, and I would have found a way to do it. Because he actually cared. He didn't only care about the business.

But he cared about the quality that we did. And he cared about the quality of life that his employees had. He showed us that hospitality, he showed us that kindness.

I have never seen anyone sell rooms like this guy. Customary service, Chick-fil-A and Disney have nothing on him. Because he got it.

And the only reason he got it, and it was so simple, is he cared. That was it. He cared.

He actually cared. And it wasn't about the bottom line. And that's what I think I find so amusing about it.

Is it wasn't about the bottom line. But the time that we were there, our bottom line was bigger than it ever been. Because he poured into his people.

And they gave him the return back. He cared about us, we cared about him. And therefore we cared about his place.

He cared about the customer, so we cared about the customer. He cared about the product, so we cared about the product, and he actually cared. Once again, and he made it clear that he wasn't caring because of the bottom line.

He was caring because of us. And that did wonders for my perspective on hospitality. And what it looked like.

The fact that it wasn't just, yeah, I work in the hospitality industry, I feed people dinner. No, I work in the hospitality industry. I'm giving people moments.

I'm giving people memories. I am putting foundational pieces into their life. It was that same innkeeper that I watched a bride and groom thank us for, you know, doing a great job on their wedding.

And really going above and beyond. And he looked at them with a tear in his eye and said, No, thank you for letting me be part of your day. When most owners would have just been running back to count the check and make sure that it was going to clear.

But he genuinely was excited to be part of their special day. Even though we were there from 5am to 3am working like dogs. And that that really impressed upon me.

So when I started looking into hospitality, deeper and looking at it from not so much a business end, but more of a social, psychology, from the sociology of the psychology end, and what that can do, when applied appropriately to the business model, the return that you get on productivity, on sales, on customer retention, return customer, your customer satisfaction goes through the roots. And all it takes is caring and putting in a little bit of time. What is so easy for us to do, if we can slow down long enough and allow us to do it.

Royce Hall

That's, that's so powerful. You know, I think of, of, you know, in business, we talk about the importance of culture, right? And we talked about the importance of listening. But, you know, behind behind both of those things, like, you know, you've seen people that are like, you know, fake culture, right? Like, you know, you've seen, you know, you know, giant businesses that go up, and then times get hard, and there is just becomes vicious, you know, like, oh, that culture, like, that never existed, did it? Or you think of kind of listening just to like, okay, I want to hear enough to plug my product effectively.

But what you're talking about kind of goes beyond and like, how do you truly build culture? How do you truly build business? How do you truly sell? Or even, you know, how do you truly market it is by actually caring for the other person, I feel like, you know, once you have that hospitality mentality of, I actually care for this person care for their own good. That's the point at which you're able to actually give them what they need. You don't truly understand what they what they need from you or from anybody else until you truly understand what they're going through and what what is essential for them.

Andrew Gantt

You know, it's the it's the difference in between listening to someone's words and listening to their heart. What are they actually saying to you? Because we only communicate, I think it's 20% of what we're saying with our words. The rest is mannerism, body language, behavior, context.

And if you can really listen to what someone needs, prime example, I've had cook after cook after cook, you know, I'll ask him what's going on. I'm tired, chef. Now, could I hear I'm tired? And go, okay, they're tired.

And move on? Yes, I would technically be correct. Okay. Well, I know this person.

I know they you know, they've been dealing with their mom who's sick. So yeah, they may be physically tired. They might be a little emotionally tired, too.

They might be mentally tired. So I could tell them, hey, go take five, go out back, have a smoke. Or I could make up a small dish, grab a burger off the line, something easy, hand it to them and say, hey, go sit down for a minute, grab a bite to eat, get a breather.

Come back when you're ready to come back. Now, any cook, any chef will tell you, a cook whose mind isn't on the line might as well not be on the line. So what am I really losing? By giving them a bite to eat and telling them, go sit down, get your head right, then come back.

They're not being productive on the line as is, I'm already needing to fill in for it. So why do I want the warm body there? But if I take the time to make sure that they're going to get the care that they need, so that way they can come back. Now, what have we seen from that? My productivity is going to stay the same at the moment, because right now we've got two guys doing one person's job instead of one guy doing it.

When he comes back, he should be in a good enough headspace that he's able to effectively do his job. What now has allowed me to step off the line and do my job and hence, bringing my productivity up, because I cared enough to know why he's tired. And obviously, that is a snapshot of an example, but that can be applied to so many different places.

You're working as a car salesman, we need a new car, you're going to spend all day showing them every car on the lot. Okay, you need a new car, what kind of car do you need? I see you brought kids, do you have a large family? Are you looking to expand? Let's look at these vans over here. We just had a great eight passenger come in.

Now you have gotten rid of 90% of the stock on the line because you're not going to sell it anyways. And now you're able to hone in. Okay, well, what kind of budget are you guys looking at? Don't bother trying to sell them the upper end.

If they don't have the budget, they can't afford it. Let's find out what kind of budget they're actually looking in and then find them cars in that range. Because I guarantee you, if you focus on selling them a car out of their range, they're either A, going to be responsible and not able to, they're going to be responsible, not be able to buy and walk away and you've lost a sale.

Or they're going to be irresponsible and you're going to spend the rest of your day trying to find financing for them and try to figure out where they're going to get their down payment for it. But if you sell them what they want and what they need, because you took the time to find out exactly what they need, that's going to be a quick in and out sale. And then you might have time to sell two cars that day instead of spending all day trying to oversell a van that these people don't actually want.

Because you took the time to find out what the need actually is, bringing up your productivity, bringing up your retention, because I know for myself as a customer, the salesman takes time to find out actually what I need. And they give me what I need and what I want. That guy's my salesman for the rest of my life.

It doesn't matter what I would rather follow a salesman I trust to a different company than stick with the company. Because my loyalty is not to the company, my loyalty is to the person. And I almost guarantee you 99% of your listeners have the same opinion.

As a chef, I have switched food vendors because my salesman went to another vendor. They may have had a slightly lower quality product. But they now have the best salesman I've ever used.

And he's going to find me good product because he's a good salesman. I'm going with him. Because he took the time to get to know me.

And he took the time to find out what I need. Took a little bit of extra legwork, took actually listening to someone instead of I say to my kids all the time, you're not listening to me, you're just hearing the words come out of my mouth. But you're not listening to me.

And there is a big difference that sadly, most of the corporate world has lost because they are so focused on the bottom line of the productivity. And we got to move and we got to move to the next project and we got to go, you know, stop, slow down, take a step back. If you give a quality product, you're going to sell a lot more.

And let's be honest, when you're in sales, you are not selling your product. You are selling yourself. Give them a good product to buy.

Because you will be able to sell them no matter where you go or what you're selling, be it food, cars, vacuums, or stock paper for Dunder Mifflin. You're going to be able to sell them.

Royce Hall

Well, Andrew, thank you so much for for spending some time with me today.

Thank you for your hospitality. Thank you. I appreciate it.

As people are listening to this and saying that that's what I've been missing. Like I don't truly understand hospitality and I want somebody to teach me about that. How do how do people find you and like what are the sorts of clients that you're looking for?

Andrew Gantt

So you can go to my website, saltlightandhospitality.com. I've got a about me page.

My resume is up there so you can look and see where I've been and what I've done. So you know I'm not just talking crazy talk. And I have a contact page on there that has my cell phone, my email, my social media.

As far as who? Anyone. If you are a small business and you want your employees to know and you really want build up, give me a call. If you're a big business and you want me to train your manager so they can train it down or if you want to have a big session, I'm willing to do it.

If you are a non-profit that is dealing with the community or dealing with people that it may be difficult to show hospitality to because Lord knows there are a lot of people that is hard to show them hospitality but we still need to. Give me a call. If you have a church, I also talk to churches.

I am willing to come out and talk to anyone because I firmly believe that this is what our country, society, world needs is a little bit more hospitality and it's a lesson that everyone can learn from. So if you're in any of those facets be it corporate world, small mom and pop, non-profit, church, small group, contact me. We can work something out.

I have training programs for all those settings and I'm willing to do in person and virtual.

Royce Hall

Very good. Well reach out to Andrew.

You know how to get a hold of him. We'll put some information on the bottom of this video as well so you can find Andrew's website and thank you again for joining us. Andrew with Salt Light and Hospitality and this is Coffee Dreamin.