On today’s episode we interview someone who has seen it all, Larry Broughton. Larry is a former member of the U.S. Special Forces, a Hotelier and TV personality. We discuss how he overcame his battle with generational trauma to go on to lead a successful life and establish himself as one of the top voices in the hotel industry. We thoroughly enjoyed our talk with Larry and we’re positive that you will too.
Date: September 15, 2020
Episode: 23
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Larry Broughton, a Former Member of the US Special Forces, a Hotelier, a TV Personality and Best Selling Author
Subtitle: “Choose the hard right over the easy wrong”
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/ep-23-larry-broughton-it-takes-grit/
In this episode of I Know this Guy..Norman Farrar introduces Larry Broughton, a former member of the US Special Forces, a hotelier, a TV personality and Best Selling Author.
He overcame his battle with generational trauma that led him to a successful life, and he established himself as one of the top voices in the hotel industry.
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Larry 0:00
Even at my deepest, darkest moment, there weren’t loved ones in my life. Who were saying, Larry, you got this. You’ve got the good, you can do this. Go get em champ. What they’re saying is, why are you doing this? Why are you putting us through this? Don’t you think you need to go get a job kind of thing, right? So be careful who you surround yourself with, I guess is my message.
Norman 0:33
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of I Know This Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know This Guy wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, like kids want me to say something about ringing a bell? What the hell’s a bell?
Hayden 1:03
So dad, who do we have for the podcast today?
Norman 1:06
Well, before we get into that Hayd, I wanted to give a quick shout out to Matt Shed. Matt’s been a previous guest and he’s also just sent over a couple of great guests. So just wanted to say thank you, Matt.
Hayden 1:22
Yeah, make sure if you haven’t heard his episode yet, you have to go back and listen to it, it’s definitely one of my favorites.
Norman 1:29
It’s also one of the top viewed.
Hayden 1:31
So who did Matt recommend?
Norman 1:35
Yeah, so today, we’re gonna be talking to Larry Broughton. He’s a hotelier and he’s a CEO. He’s an incredible entrepreneur. He’s a public speaker and he was a former Green Berets. So I’m sure we’re gonna get a ton of interesting stories out of them.
Hayden 1:52
Wow. That’s a whole lot to handle. Can’t wait to hear what he has to say.
Norman 1:57
So welcome, Larry to the podcast. But before we get started, I gotta tell you, I’m a little bit intimidated. You’ve been everywhere. You’ve done a ton of TV shows. You’ve done a ton of podcasts and, not only that, you’re a top entrepreneur, you’re a hotelier or hotelier in the US, CEO, best selling author, keynote speaker, and a US Army Green Berets. So yeah, I’m a little intimidated.
Larry 2:29
Well, I’m intimidated by your darn beard Norm.
Norman 2:33
Well, that’s all it takes.
Larry 2:35
I aspire to be you one day.
Norman 2:38
Oh, you know what? This is great. This is really great to have you on the podcast. The whole reason why we put out this podcast is to reach out to interesting people and we did it basically over a cigar, and three phone calls came in and we were trying to just basically I was saying, Oh yeah, I Know This Guy. Oh, yeah, I Know This Guy and anyways, two of our guests. So it started out with Melissa Simonsson went to Isabella Hamilton. She introduced me to Matt shedand Matt introduced me to you and so Matt blew me away. But he says, you want to talk to somebody interesting. You got to talk to you, so.
Larry 3:20
Oh Matt is an interesting guy. Yeah. Well, I love the concept of the show. Because haven’t had all that, we’re sitting around, whether it’s smoking a cigar, having a glass of wine, or drinking a beer. Right? We’ve all got that experience. I Know This Guy was the guy or girl and so I love the concept. When Matt shared that with me, Wow, that’s awesome. I want to be there.
Larry 3:44
They’re gonna be reaching out to you.
Norman 3:47
Perfect and it’s interesting because like, for me, I have a, I don’t know, probably a 30 year network and that’s probably my best asset. It takes time, you go out there, you meet people and you share that, if you can, if that happens almost once a day. I don’t know about you. But, the network is my asset. Anyways, I like to get right into your backstory, and just find out exactly Larry, what makes Larry you?
Larry 4:23
Gosh, what makes me me? That’s a great question. I don’t know if I’ve ever been asked that. But I think what it is, is I have a way of digging deep and fighting when it seems like I had to be given up. I look over and over at my life. I’ve had plenty of failures. In fact, I’ve had a whole lot more failures in my life than I’ve had successes. When, most normal people I guess you’d say, say why did you quit? Why don’t you give up when you try something else? For some reason that fuels me and I dig a little bit deeper and I tend to figure out a way to get through it. I’m an eternal optimist. I tend to be able to see the good in people and in situations, don’t get me wrong, there’s evil in the world, for sure. But I tended to recommend maybe to my martial arts days, way back when, in my late teens and early 20s there’s, the Yin and Yang, there’s a little bit of evil and all good and a little bit of good and all evil and I’m constantly looking for the good. I’m constantly looking for the potential in situations and people. So that’s probably me in a nutshell. That’s what makes Larry uniquely Larry.
Norman 5:30
Right. So was there something in your childhood or going through high school that made you this way?
Larry 5:41
Boy, you want to get right into a fast, don’t you dude.
Larry 5:45
So I think on the outside looking into Larry’s life, I grew up in this what appeared to be kinda like Mayberry Rfd this cute little town. But there’s a lot of pain in my family and in my upbringing, and I learned to cover a lot of the pain by being a peacekeeper and having a smile on my face and pretending everything was sunshine, lollipops and rainbows when behind the scenes. There was some ugliness in my life and I was joking around with Matt about Matt and I had dinner Matt Shed, we mentioned earlier, had dinner together a year and a half ago, when he was here in town, I was having this conversation with another buddy of mine, who’s also in Special Forces and we all agree that I don’t know anyone who’s been successful in the Special Operations community, who has probably not got some emotional brokenness before they go, and some stuff to prove and so don’t we all carry a lot of baggage with us from our upbringings from high school? I don’t know anyone, not, that’s not true. Most people I know struggled through their high school and young adult life. Because nobody really teaches us how to do that, right? I mean, I’ve got two teenage children, I’ve got a 19 year old daughter and a 16 year old son, I’ve watched the struggles that they’ve had and I like to think that their mom and I have worked through a lot of our own issues and passed on the tools to help them become great young adults. But we’ve all got struggles, right? So because I didn’t have people who were cheerleaders in my life, and I recognize that words have meaning and there’s power in words and I promised myself when I was a young age that when I was able to have some kind of influence, that I was going to do things a little bit differently and I was going and I part of it, I think, a gifting, I have a way of recognizing potential in people. But I’ll share with you just a really quick little story that might give you insight into this. I barely graduated high school, like literally barely graduated high school. Now, as it turns out, I’m Dyslexic. I didn’t know that until I got into the military. But, here in the States, it’s like grade eight or something like that. Or when you get into high school, you go meet with a guidance counselor and they say, Well, what do you want to do? When you grow up? What do you want to be when you grow up? So that they can start scheduling the classes for you, right? I went and sat down with his guidance counselor, and she asked me that question and I said, Well, I want to be a veterinarian and she chuckled, literally, like right in my face and laughed and said, Honey, you’re not smart enough to be a veterinarian. No, but if you want to work with animals, we can get you into Future Farmers of America and you can work with animals that way.
Larry 8:38
When somebody who is in authority, and you’re just a young kid, at that point, that says you’re not good enough, you’re not smart enough, you don’t have what it takes. You kind of believe them and I didn’t have other people in my life, either, with the exception of a wrestling coach got Sturdivant, who kind of saw potential in me and when he was encouraging, I really and I had a Scout masters and Boy Scouts as well, who would speak words of encouragement as well, but they weren’t like close family members. They weren’t teachers who are speaking positivity into my life. So I understood the power of it and so that’s how I try to live my life with our team members in our companies that I’m involved with, and with anybody that my children, I try to be a positive voice. Now, don’t get me wrong, I speak the truth as well. If somebody is falling short, I speak the truth in love and the way I coach it is, Hey, I’m invested. I’m interested in you reaching your fullest potential in this area, or this action is not going to get you there. But I don’t I try not to beat the snot out of people. I try to be encouraging.
Norman 9:47
So you’re the head coach and cheerleader.
Larry 9:50
I try to be. Yeah, I was doing a podcast recently and they introduced me this like this amazing thought leader. In my head is like, I’m not a thought leader. I’m a cheerleader. The things that I share with people. I mean, some of it’s my own, but usually I’m just regurgitating what I’ve learned along the way from other people. I’m a big believer in having mentors and mentoring people and so after that podcast, I really put some thought into and said, No, I’m not a thought leader. I’m a cheerleader, and I’m a cheerleader for the planet. I’m a cheerleader for entrepreneurs. I’m a cheerleader for capitalism. I’m a cheerleader for leaders, but cheerleader for lovers and definitely a cheerleader for the truth. So kind of my religion is the truth right now.
Norman 10:36
Are there any books that you could recommend on, learning more about cheerleading?
Larry 10:46
Let’s see Henry Cloud and John Townsend wrote a couple of books. I’ll have to think about that. Maybe it’ll come to me. But in cheerleading, I think that if we just do some of the hard work ourselves, there’s a good book called Man’s quest for me, or is that a man’s quest for No, no, no.
Hayden 11:07
It’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Larry 11:09
There you go. Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl right? Yeah. When we read more books like that, that talks about the human struggle and the triumph that we have over our struggles, and it opens our eyes a little bit. Right? So I’m working on a book right now. It’s a book of parables that I think is going to help this because oftentimes, we want to speak positivity into other people’s lives that think, mostly we do. I don’t think most people want to speak negativity into people’s lives, but we don’t know how to do it and I am a big believer that transformational leaders have to be master storytellers and so to do that, we have to know what stories to tell and when and how to do it and so it’s a book of parables. Well, why parables? Well, because parables have been used for centuries to pass on wisdom and learning and knowledge. Before the written word ever happened. We were telling stories, right and you probably heard this what facts tell stories sell and if you’re a leader, really, you’re selling constantly, you’re selling a vision, right? You’re selling, how things could be and so some of them are my parables and stories that I’ve come up with along the way and others are brief little stories in parables that you’ve heard like Aesop’s Fables and those kinds of things and then I actually will give a little take on what that parable means. I think we’ll get sidetracked there a little bit. But I do think that there are plenty of books. Because I am an avid reader and I’ve learned that in most books, they’re filled with fluff, not mine of course not, not my book of course. But what I try to do, like I’ve learned that maybe 20% of a book that I read is really valuable and the rest is just filling, filling in spaces, right. But if we look at books in any interaction that we have with someone like if I can take away one Golden Nugget from this interaction, then have any with a barista at Starbucks or one Golden Nugget from the gate agent at the airport when boarding a plane. We learn a lot more from that than we do from any semester sitting through a college course that I’ve ever been to, right. But we have to be intentional about it Norm and we have to say I’m looking for the good. This is a message I’ve been sharing with my children for years, you find what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for the negativity in life, you’re looking for the bad, you’re going to see the negativity and the bad stuff. But if you’re looking for the positivity in life, you’re looking for the little miracles that happen each and every day. That’s what you’re going to see.
Norman 13:56
I can’t agree more.
Larry 13:58
So when you do that, then I think there’s lessons everywhere, lessons everywhere all around us.
Norman 14:03
Well, you got to send us a link to that book when it gets published.
Larry 14:06
Oh, I will.
Norman 14:09
Great. So let’s go back to so you’re out of high school and you went right into the army right after high school?
Larry 14:17
No. I took a little bit of Judo when I was in junior high school secretly. My parents didn’t even though and then I wrestled in high school and then I started working at my twin brother and I and our friend Jack got an apartment when we were 17 years old. We all want to get out of our houses and while I was still in I think I’m even a senior in high school. I got a job at McDonald’s and flipped burgers for a living and that afforded me the ability to get an apartment with my brother and or the roommate and so I did that for a couple of years. I went into the military when I was 19 and a half. I think I went when I was almost 20. I think I turned 20 that summer. So it was really an interesting way I got into the military, my brother and I went, we lived in New York at the time came out to California to a national martial arts tournament and it was there, they had heard that the army was going to be sponsoring the first US Taekwondo team for the Olympics in 1984. I thought, Ah, hey, Norm, that’s my ticket out of Podunk New York at a small time when you USA, I’m going to get on the army Taekwondo team and so when I got back, I went down to talk to the army recruiter and I told them, I want to be on the army Taekwondo team, and this is why I need to be on the army Taekwondo team and by the way, I didn’t even study Taekwondo. I studied a style called Boolean yangjiang. It’s similar to Taekwondo. It looked like Taekwondo but, but it wasn’t. But that tells you how my brain works, right? If somebody else can do it, I can do it. How hard can it be? Right and so after a few minutes of me doing this full on full court press, this army recruiter put his hand up and said, Son, you know that if you want to be on the army Taekwondo team, you have to be in the army. For some reason, it didn’t register. Have I mentioned yet that I barely graduated high school. It just didn’t register. I thought that they sponsored that right. Yeah. But he did talk me into taking the ASVAB, which is the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, which is basically an aptitude and IQ test. The apartment that we are in was a couple blocks away from the recruiter’s office and a couple days later, he called and said, Hey, Larry, when you come down, I want to talk to you about your ASVAB scores and I really thought that I felt like I was walking to the principal’s office that was like the longest two blocks in my life. Well, here’s one more thing I tried to get to, I couldn’t, couldn’t do it. But I walked in and sat down and he said, your score in the top one 10th of one percentile in the country, you can basically do whatever you want in the army. In fact, son, they like calling your son, I think,. Well, okay, I had dad issues, right? They were looking for a sense of they knew that this could be my new family, right? He said, Son, you could even try out for Special Forces and just the way he said it, I thought, yeah, that sounds awesome. What Special Forces? I didn’t even know. I don’t even know what Special Forces was, but he had me, hooked and he said, the Green Berets and I still didn’t know what he’s talking about and he said, John Wayne, the Green Berets and I kind of heard that, like, there’s a piece of artwork in my office with John Wayne, the Green Berets and then he said, like Billy Jack, the Green Berets and then I okay, I know Billy Jack and that summer, a movie was coming out called Rambo and come out yet and I did a delayed entry program. So this must have been 1983 and so that movie came out, and he said Rambo. So you might want to watch that when it comes out and so I said, Yeah, okay, sign me up. So I signed up for that. Went through basic training and jumps, airborne school, and went and try it out and did really well and I was assigned to count Special Forces Group, the original, the first Special Forces Group that were that were developed here in the US and from there, I spent between active duty and reserve, I spent about eight and a half years on special forces a teams and it was the most phenomenal experience in my life and it was there they learned the power of small elite teams, who believe in the same vision, the power of camaraderie and, those bonds that run very deep, and it’s been 30 some years since I was ever in, but it’s still the most amazing experience I’ve ever had in my life.
Norman 18:58
So that’s where you got your grip from?
Larry 19:00
That was well, I think I had grit before that. I really do it I kind of equated to, right now people are talking about, you’ve heard this, right? I mean, Canadians have the same kind of way that they describe the World War Two generation. The men and women that went off to World War Two from Canada in the US and the Allied forces, they call them the greatest generations, right? Because they came back and rebuilt America and they rebuilt Canada. Because many people were gone after the war. Well, if you think about it here in the US, I don’t think it was that they went off to war to World War Two to fight the access. I think it was, they just finished up with the Great Depression. The men that went off to fight World War Two grew up during a very difficult time. They were already tough before they went off to World War Two. One of the first mantras that I had heard in Special Forces my team Daddy, it said this that he said, tough times create tough men. Tough men create easy times, easy times create weak men, weak men create tough times. So it’s kind of the cycle, right? Tough times create tough people, right and so I grew up in a tough environment. Again, this is the conversation I’m having with my children right now, because we are in a tough time, economically, politically, socially and although it feels like we’re getting beat up right now, though, it’s like when you go to the gym, you don’t get strong. If you don’t push yourself, if you don’t get bloodied, you don’t get bruised, you don’t stretch yourself and right now, that’s what’s happening to across most of the world and I believe that this tough time that we’re going through right now is going to make for a very beautiful result. I think, on the other side, I really, really do. If we play our cards, right, we don’t do some pretty stupid stuff and we can get into that if you want. But, I believe that we’re going to head into a new roaring 20s. Like, like we saw 100 years ago, after the Spanish Flu, I do.
Norman 21:15
So let’s get into that a little bit. So, I agree, we’re in a tough time, I’m seeing people that are crawling up in the fetal position and crying and I’m seeing people rise up and just going forward. So I am interested to hear what you have to say about what’s going on right now and where we’re going?
Larry 21:35
Well I am fearful, less I’ve traveled to not as much as some probably not as much as Matt Shedd, who is one of the most amazing travelers I’ve ever met and you probably experienced that. But I’ve been about 42 different, at least 42 different countries, many socialist countries, many communist countries and I am a firm believer in capitalism. I’m a firm believer in democracies, whether it’s a Representative Democracy or not, or Republic, I believe, well, it’s because I believe in human potential. I believe in the human condition. I know that there’s good and bad in all of us and so I think if we play our cards, right, that those people that are rising up, who have been kind of the silent, strong types, and if they win, then I think it could be good for all of us across North America. The problem, I think, is that there are a lot of people who don’t understand history, or geography and so that blanket answers for a lot of things. But I don’t know. We could talk about this as opposed. I don’t know a socialist country that has been successful. I think that Marxism and Socialism, there’s a lot of death and suffering there and with all the flaws that we have here in the States, I don’t know a country that aspires to do more great things than the US and I mean, we’ve got we’re the only country in the world that has a First Amendment, right? Freedom of speech. It’s in our Constitution. We’re allowed to speak up. Canada didn’t have a First Amendment. I mean, that’s freedom of speech. Right? That’s part of their constitution and I think that we’re very unique. But I don’t, we don’t have a right to destroy other people’s property. We don’t have a right to prevent people from making a living and so I think that’s where the struggle is coming in here in the US. But I think there’s a massive awakening across the globe. Right now, whether we’re talking about Taiwan, or here in the US. There are people who want liberty, they want freedom, but with both liberty and freedom comes responsibility. That’s the scary part. There’s a lot. It’s been easy for so long, here in the US in particular. What do easy times create? Weak people, right? This is why we’ve got to be bubble wrapped. We were too shocked and it’s become so easy that by a word, we become offended by a silly word, that there’s really no meaning, right? That scares me. But I do believe again, I believe that there are more people out there who understand this and are willing to stand up against it than the small minority of people who are willing to burn the shit down. Excuse me for swearing but burn it all down and start over. I’ve been to countries where they’ve tried to burn it all down and start over. I don’t want that. I don’t. I’ve been to South America, I’ve been to Central America. I’ve been through almost 20 countries on the African continent or at least a dozen countries across the African continent. Burning it down and starting over is an ugly way to do it. We’re neither Canada nor the US nor most of the Western world deserves to be burned down to start over. I think we can do great things right where we are.
Larry 25:00
Did I offend you, Norm?
Norman 25:03
It takes a lot to offend me.
Norman 25:07
Hey, I’m an old guy.
Norman 25:10
Yeah, it’s funny cuz I used to hear this all the time. It was from blue collar to white collar to blue collar and it was, yeah, you had the dad that worked hard and you built up something to pass it on to their son or daughter, and they just let it fall and then their kids, sorry Hayden, had to pick it up and build it all over again and it’s really true. Like what you said, Yeah, I mean, it is a full circle.
Larry 25:43
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that our education system here in the US has failed us. I can’t speak for Canada, because I don’t know. But I do think in the US, it has failed us. If we were teaching., I’m gonna use this word intentionally because this is what I’ve seen. I can only base on my experience, and my education and reading and talking to people who’ve been there. I don’t think we speak enough to the evils of Socialism and Marxism. I just don’t think we do. For somehow we romanticize this thing, that everything’s gonna be sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. But they don’t talk about the grayness of mediocrity and they don’t talk about, there’s a great meme that goes around that is floating around the internet that showed this, it was two contrasts. One is the joys of being a socialist in a capitalist country, and how it really has been a socialist in a socialist country. It’s completely different, right? I want us to change our education system, it scares the living Jesus out of me, that people are talking about, let’s stop teaching history. Until we get it right, until we figure out how we’re really going to teach history. Hello, that is not the answer. Literally. We have legislators here in the US, in Chicago, who are saying, we need to stop teaching history in schools. What do they say about history when you stop teaching history? It’s bound to repeat itself. Right? It’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable. But again, I’m the optimist, I do believe that it’s gonna get better. I do. I think there’s people like you and me. I don’t know about your political stuff or anything like that. But you’re offering people a platform to speak up. Right? This is what I love about your show and I love about podcasting right now. There is a new media, there’s so many ways to get the word out, get your message out nowadays and it’s not just through I mean, when I was growing up, we had ABC, NBC and CBS. Where I lived, we got two, we didn’t get three, we got two because we were very rural. Right and it was black and white TV. Right? It just seems like there’s it’s so one sided. Whether it’s Fox News, or MSNBC, you don’t get anything in between. I’m a big believer in diversity of thought and I hate toxic tribalism and I think that’s what’s plaguing us right now. Is that it’s not my tribe, good, your tribe bad. Again, I go back to Yin and Yang, there’s good and bad and all of us there’s not, capitalism is not pure. There’s evil people everywhere, right. But we can share ideas and that’s what I just love about the whole podcasting medium is that we can get out there and just share ideas and we don’t need to get into battle, we can have conversations and just, and see what we need me to say. I mean, I can’t think of the very few things I would not let somebody say out loud. But I better have a good enough argument to talk about and give another counter point of view. Right. But I don’t think it’s right to shut somebody down just because they don’t say what you think they ought to be saying that was bad. That’s evil. I think
Hayden 28:57
I’ve been thinking about this recently, just given the COVID situation. Like, where’s the line for you between, like the government helping in a time like this and providing checks for people to get by and then where Socialism tips too far?
Larry 29:13
Yeah, boy, that’s a great question.
Larry 29:17
So my company went from having a record year last year and heading for another record year, this year, it could been shut down by the government and within COVID, it wasn’t entrepreneurs who said, Hey, we need to shut it down. So the government particular here in California, we’re shutting it down and so by no fault of my own, my revenue for my company, went to 10% of what it was the year before, but I still have the obligations to pay team members, I still have the obligations to pay mortgages, pay insurance, pay for vendors. So I do think that the government needed to step in a temporary fashion to do that, when the problem comes in is that there’s so much conflicting information right now about the whole COVID crisis, particularly here in the US and sadly, it is spread out across the globe. With the way the whole George Floyd thing has been handled, I mean, crying out loud what they’re doing. Protest in Germany, with George Floyd signs, right? That tells you the impact of this whole situation, right? So there is an obligation that the government must have, but we’re really, I’m a free market, for the most part kind of guy. What we should have done is educate the people and say, hey, we’ve known all along about COVID. Right? Early on, we knew that it’s really the infirm, the elderly, that are most impacted by this and if those people want to, or they should stay home, and let the healthy people get out and work and keep the economy going. There’s a debate right now, Hayden in the US about what do we do about wearing a mask? Right? Because there are a lot of municipalities who are “requiring everyone to wear a mask in public spaces”. But this is a country that was built on freedom and liberty. Right, and you educate people, and they make the decision. What is that? Because not a law, but their executive order is not a law. It’s a record they’re requiring. Where does that requirement impinge on someone’s civil liberty? Right and so there are a lot of big organizations like Walmart and Home Depot and Lowe’s, and I could list half dozen pretty quickly here, who first come out and say, we are requiring, if you’re gonna come into our store, you have to wear a mask. Well, then you got civil libertarians, who are saying, you’re not going to force me to wear a mask. So then what ended up happening? conflict, fistfights, people were getting shot, right and so then these companies said, Well, listen, we need to keep our people safe as well, that they’re not getting beat up. We’re saying, Hey, we want you to wear one, we’re not going to force you to wear one when you’re in our store and so we’re in a hotel industry, and one of our hotels is a brand and so we have and the brand is saying Hey, everyone must wear a mask. So we’re doing this, we are requiring, if you are a worker, if you’re a team member in our company while you’re at work, while you’re working, you have to wear protective gear, right? The PPE kind of stuff. But I am not going to under any circumstance, if I have one of my team members get into a battle with someone who does not want to wear a mask because just like I want, I have to protect them from the virus. I have to protect them from getting the gun pulled on them as well. Or getting into a fight. It’s a tough time right now. This is the stuff that real leaders are made of. You got to make the tough decisions. Right now. It’s not all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. Right? Life is about nuance, life is about living in the gray areas. Sometimes it’s not all black and white all the time. People want to make it black and white, but it’s not. It’s just not.
Norman 33:14
I just thought of a great new podcast, the rise of the Karens.
Larry 33:20
Karen’s oh my gosh, that would be funny. There’ll be a lot. It’d be sad in some ways. But boy, it could be funny too.
Norman 33:29
The rise of the Karens. That’s good.
Norman 33:31
Yeah, you’re in a tough position. Being in the hospitality industry. I mean, first of all, is it coming back? Are you starting to see people come back?
Larry 33:42
Well, it was, until the George Floyd situation. We were thinking it was gonna be a V recovery. Because Americans are known to be travelers, right? Now, it’s a huge country like Canada, a lot of people travel inside our own borders. But a lot of people come here as well. So we’ve got some of our hotels that are still closed, because there’s not the demand for them. Leisure hotels and markets like Santa Barbara, or Santa Monica, or , if it’s where there are leisure travelers, and there’s an easy drive market to get there. Yeah, we’re seeing some recovery. In fact, we had some hotels, and in July, they did about, mid 60% occupancy. Now, it’s not the mid 80% than it was last year. The rate is down. People aren’t paying the same amount, but people are traveling where they can. But you’ve got some cities like Chicago that won’t even allow if you’re from California, you can’t even fly into Chicago without going into quarantine for two weeks. So again, it really depends on the market. Right? But if you live within a couple hour radius of Chicago, you can drive to Chicago, but there are some states where you just can’t so it is coming back. But again, we’ve got a handful hotels that aren’t even open right now. What I don’t think is gonna come back very quickly, certainly not the convention business, that’s not going to come back for a while, you have thousands of people come to a convention center, and they stay at area hotels. I think we’ll see a little bit of corporate business come back maybe after the first of the year and that’s just kind of the individual traveler who’s traveling on business. Right? But I don’t think convention businesses are gonna come back for a while.
Norman 35:22
So Hayden is a professional musician and then we talk about it and what happens, no bars, you can’t get together and gig. It’s just crumbled and you don’t realize how much all of this has affected everybody. I think everybody does realize it, but it’s crazy.
Larry 35:44
It is crazy. I’ve got a lot of friends who are musicians and comedians, and it’s the conversation constantly, like, what do you do? Like, this is me personally, I think that music and comedy are essential. You turn to comedy, you turn to music, and gyms and workout facilities as well, right? This is where I think we’re just missing it as leaders. What’s our answer? I’ll put a mask on. Really? Is anyone talking about boosting your immune system? Is anyone talking about remaining positive? Is anybody talking about that about spirituality? That’s an important element, too, but no, what do we what are they saying put a mask on, they’re not talking about supplements or exercise or, having a spirit of gratitude. It’s gonna be scary another side of this when they measure them by the suicides that have been caused by this.
Norman 36:40
That’s a fantastic point and another one and Hayden’s gonna cringe because I know, he always cringes when I say this, but how about a 30-second video to show you how to wear a mask?
Larry 36:53
So we had to do that?
Norman 36:55
Yeah. Okay.
Larry 36:57
Well, in our company, because we see so many people wearing it down here, or, on their chin, or whatever it is, it does you no good if it’s not here and so we did we have signs in our hotels for all of our team members and by that said, there’s a couple of times we call our people, team members and not employees for a reason. We can talk about that later, if you want. But we did, we want to make sure that people for their own frickin health, to properly wear the darn thing. So, I haven’t seen those. It’s just so important. Why aren’t there public service announcements about how to wear it?
Norman 37:32
That’s what I’ve been saying. So Hayden, you might roll your eyes. But Larry everies.
Hayden 37:40
Just walking around Montreal, I mean, it’s scary how some people think here is not doing anything.
Larry 37:48
Yeah. Well, I’m glad to hear that. It’s not just simple Americans who are wearing them on their chin. They’re seeing it in sophisticated Montreal too.
Norman 38:01
So I got to ask you, so you’ve got these hotels that were running, 100%, this happens. You always hear about, oh, smart entrepreneurs always have a slush fund for the bad data and the good times, but in the bank in the bad times, spend it. How do you survive something like this? Especially in the hotel business?
Larry 38:26
Yeah, it’s a great question. Of course we did. We’ve got what we call, working capital reserves, right? The average company in the US has 27 days worth of capital reserve. 27 days. That’s the average. So some have more, many have less, right. But when you develop your working capital reserve, you never I don’t know, anybody who predicts Okay, I’m going to go into three months of zero revenue. Even when you have your working capital reserve, you assume Okay, we generally run 80% this time of year. What’s the worst? Let’s say that a cut you have? So you got 40%? That’s the worst case scenario, right? But nobody predicted you’re gonna go to zero revenue for an extended period of time. Right. So unless you’re in the medical device industry or your head online, you’re an online retailer or grocery store. Here in the US, they were saying that no industry has been hurt as bad as the hospitality industry and when you add in airlines, hotels, the related service industries that serve the traveler, no one’s been hurt as bad as the hotel industry. Because of this, and when you consider that the hotel industry is not just a service industry, it’s a real estate business too, right? Where these big buildings that we have to pay mortgages on and guess what, the banks are still knocking at the door because they want to be paid and yeah, some no we’re still negotiating with some of the banks are still trying to get forbearance on a couple of hotels. Some are easier to work with than others and some weren’t willing to work with at all others, we were blessed that we’ve got very little debt on them and so we’ve continued on as if nothing happened, except that we aren’t distributing cash flow or distributions to those assets. But it really is kind of a really wide range of challenges that have been presented here. So that’s a really great question Norm, about cash flow, about working capital reserve, because most people don’t have it. So what have I learned? I can tell you that we’ve got some hotels that we’re trying to acquire now, and one that’s actually under construction and one scenario, I have planned for 12 months of working capital reserve 12 months, that’s a lot of money, you got to the planning, we’re just going to put it aside and we tap into it in case we need it. In the old days, it might be three months worth right. But right now, I’m planning on worst case scenarios. If it works great, and if the deal doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work.
Hayden 41:01
Hey there guys and gals. That concludes part one of our interview with Larry Broughton. Make sure to tune in next time for the rest of the interview and as always make sure to subscribe to the podcast keeps you up to date with every new episode and helps us grow our show. So see you next time.
Hayden 0:01
Hey there, guys and gals, welcome to part two of our interview with Larry Broughton. If you haven’t heard part one yet, make sure you go back and give that a listen. As always make sure to subscribe to the show. I’ll keep you up to date with each new episode and help us grow our audience and other news, make sure to keep your eyes peeled and ears open. We have a special Halloween contest coming up. So make sure to look out for that. Halloween is the official holiday of I Know This Guy. Anyway, that’s enough for me, enjoy the rest of the episode.
Norman 0:45
So this might be a crazy question. But the way that we’re situated right now, do you look for opportunities to buy hotels for a song? Because they don’t have the cash reserves?
Larry 1:00
Yeah, that’s a great question and it’s where I get, I struggle personally, right? Because there are some great opportunities out there. I used to be this person, but I’m not this person anymore, where the more I could make you hurt and if I could get a few more dollars out of you, I’m going to fight for that. But that doesn’t suit who I am today. I would rather be the white knight than the vulture or the bottom feeder. If somebody wants to hand the keys over to a bank, yes, I’m willing to sit there and work out a great deal. But I’m not going to be that person that’s going to push you over the edge. Well, why? Because I know that every business has a group or one human associated with it. During the last big downturn, I know, I was at a CEO conference up in Monterey, California and of the hundred companies that were there, I was one of the smallest companies that maybe not the smallest, but one of the smallest companies. So there’s a lot of big companies there and when the market dumped that day, six of the men that were at and they were men, six of the men that were at this conference took their life within the next 10 days. Six that were at that conference, and I knew several others. Our self worth is so intertwined with our net worth for most people that we don’t know what to do when it plummets and so I don’t want to be the one who is that vulture who takes that last vestige of humanity that they have, because as an entrepreneur, you put so much into your baby, into your business, right? I’m not going to be the one who’s responsible for that. So if I can be a white knight and come in and help somebody and relieve some of the pain and they actually say thank you on the other side, I would rather be that person. Now because of it. We’ve already missed out on some deals, because I’m not willing to hold my boot on somebody’s throat so that I can get another 5% off on the purchase price. But again, if it’s somebody who’s just willing to hand the keys over to a bank, and then it’s up to us to fight with the bank. Yeah, I’ll do that. So there are opportunities right now. There are a lot of people who are defaulting on hotel mortgages and so we developed a pool of investors to buy some notes right now. I think that there’s gonna be even more opportunities like this here in the next probably three months from now than right now. Because there are a lot of banks who gave about 90 days of forbearance, and some breathing room on some of these mortgages. But I think between now and the end of the year, I think we’ll see even more opportunities.
Norman 3:50
Yeah, I’m not sure what that’s gonna hold.
Larry 3:51
I don’t either.
Norman 3:53
It’s a little scary.
Larry 3:54
It’s a brave new world and it is scary. But you know what? The world is going to keep spinning and I can either curl up in the fetal position, like you described, a lot of people are doing, or I can lift my head up and fight. I choose to fight. I choose to fight and I’m gonna fight for my country, I will fight for my company, I’ll fight for my team members but I’m not gonna give up. I think that people would rather be on that team, where I’m out publicly fighting and publicly failing from time to time than to be on a team where the CEO isn’t even out needing to know what’s going on in the CEOs mind. That’s my sense.
Norman 4:41
So for those people who are semi curled up in the fetal position, so there’s still positivity there. What types of words of wisdom can you give them to get them up, get them going and to continue on?
Larry 4:56
Well, I’ve been there, Norm. I mean, I have.
Larry 5:00
I’ll share with you one point, maybe people will recognize this. This thing about suicide is so important cuz I’ll be honest with you, I’ve had suicidal ideations in my life, attached to personal trauma that happened to me, my business or coming close to losing my business, economic ruin. It all kind of came together at once, and I was like, I’m worth more dead than alive. Right and I was like, I was on the floor in the fetal position, bawling. Like what the hell? My best efforts got me here. So what do I tell them? Life does indeed have meaning and that would beg them to detach their self worth from whatever it is, that’s plaguing them. Because I believe that we are all created to do great things and think that we’re all masterfully beautifully created and I love that we’re all different and diverse and come in different shapes, sizes, colors, creeds, beliefs. That’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. Theodore Roosevelt has this, the former president of the US has this great quote about being in the arena and that the glory really goes to that person who’s in the arena fighting, getting bloodied, getting muddied, getting scarred, it doesn’t go. The glory doesn’t go to the person who sits in the stands, and tells the fighter in the Dewar, where they failed, it goes to the person who is in the arena actually doing the fight, fighting. So I would say that the fight continues, I would say that, there’s a great meaning and that you weren’t put here just to be in the fetal position and to give up and, and that you must reach out for help, you must reach out for help. During my darkest hours, when I was ready to end it all, I’d heard this ringing in my head about surrender, surrender, surrender and to me back then I hadn’t been out of the military for very long to hear the word surrender, surrender. I don’t even know what that word means. What are you? What are you talking about surrender? But it was talking about surrender my ego, surrender my pride. Reach out for help, and so the next day when I sat and I, it’s my daughter who was just a few months old at the time and I said, is this really the legacy I want to leave for my children and it wasn’t. That’s not how I want to be remembered. I didn’t fight all these battles up to this point, to go down like this. So the next day I just back then had a Rolodex, you might remember those things, right? I started going through my Rolodex and actually dialing for dollars and calling people and telling people Hey, it took a while, it took guts, it took courage to do this. But I said, Listen, I’m in a world of hurt. I don’t have a mentor anymore. I’m not in a mastermind any longer. I need help and after I made a few phone calls, I got in touch with this guy, saying his name. I love J. Scott, who at the time was one of the top hotel consultants in the country. He said, well, as it turns out, I’ve got a client in Puerto Vallarta, who has a couple of hotels down there and they’re looking for a management company. I said, Jay, I barely speak Spanish anymore. I don’t know anything about the hotel market in Mexico and by the way, I hadn’t paid myself in a couple of years. I just started my company, I had a young daughter, and we were like, on the edge, I’d sold my townhouse that I was living in and moved into a rental unit and we were doing everything we could to downsize because it was a bad economic time in the US. He said it was just to meet with a guy and give them a proposal and so I thought, okay, what’s the proposal going to be and I thought, well, it’s got to be enough where I can pay somebody who knows how to run a hotel in Mexico, and it’s got to be enough work to actually put some money in my pocket for once and so, after we met, we talked about it. I said, Well, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you this term sheet and so I slid across the table, the guy glanced at it, and signed it. No negotiation. No nothing. Gave me exactly what I asked for. It’s all of a sudden, and again, this is 20 years ago, at this point, I went from not making any money to actually, I think what was a promise I was gonna put in my pocket, I think was 70 -$500 a month is going to go into my pocket and all of a sudden, I had a little bit, not a little bit and it was a good amount of income. At the time, I was paying to pay my bills, get some breathing room. What I learned from that is had I not swallowed my pride, or had I ended it a couple days before, none of this would have happened. By swallowing my pride and actually reaching out for help and I was sharing this story with a mentor of mine a couple of years later. Because I still believe me, I still get to this point about not wanting to ask for help and he said, Larry, think about this. If somebody came to you in the position that you were in and said, Hey, I really need your help. Would you kick him to the curb? Would you put your boots on their throat? Or would you help him? I said, Well, of course, I’d help them. You say, Well, what makes you think that you’re so special? You’re so different? Are you so evil, that no one’s going to help you. You gotta do it, you gotta reach out for help and so I would encourage people, if you’re in the fetal position, reach out for help, there is somebody there who’s going to want to help you and you don’t know what it’s going to lead to because those two hotels led to a couple other hotels, and all of a sudden, we’re considered turnaround artists. Within a year. It was two years later, I think that we ended up winning Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Right and again, two or three years prior to that I was ready to end it all. Right and from that, I got another award, from that we got a TV spot and that, things just kept building on each other. But don’t get me wrong. It’s not like it’s been sunshine, lollipops and rainbows ever since then. There’s been ups and downs since then, there’s been thoughts like really, should I really be fighting this hard. But I just know that the impact I’ve had on my kid’s life by being here and not ending it is it’s a multi generational curse when you give up, someone’s watching you, just like someone’s watching you when you fight and you’re tenacious, and you have grit, someone’s watching you when you’re quitting, too and when you give it up.
Norman 11:32
I think every entrepreneur has probably been there. But, what you were just describing, being on the far other side of the pendulum, right? Total negativity, nothing you can touch can go right and then how quick things change with that one deal that you did, I’ve been there as well and then all of a sudden one thing clicks and it’s Wow, like, I’m back in the ring.
Larry 12:00
Exactly. Yeah. That’s why I’m a big believer in the underdog. I’m a big believer in like rocky movies and those kinds of things, right? We have to keep feeding that. So this is why like the whole storytelling thing, right? There’s a reason why there’s underdog stories, right? It’s time to make the tough choices. There are times when you’ve got to exorcise people from your life. If you don’t have people who are speaking positivity and growth, in greatness into your life, it’s time to start separating yourself from those people. Because even at my deepest, darkest moment, there weren’t loved ones in my life. Who were saying, Larry, you got this, you’ve got the good, you can do this. Go get em champ, what they’re saying is, why are you doing this? Why are you putting us through this? Don’t you think you need to go get a job kind of thing, right? So be careful who you surround yourself with, I guess is my message. Right and sometimes other family members. I had Darren Hardy, who’s the former publisher of Success Magazine, call me one one time to listen, Larry, you got five minute people, you got five month people and you have five year people in your life. Don’t confuse those people. So who are the five minute people? The five minute people might be that neighbor, who lives across the street from you, who says Hey, good morning to you. But when you spend any more time than five minutes with them, you get creeped out, you feel dirty, you want to go take a shower afterwards.
Norman 13:29
I know that neighbor.
Larry 13:32
Don’t invite that person to Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner and don’t invite them to your kids’ wedding. Right? So just because you know someone’s, because you’re friendly with someone doesn’t mean that they are your friend. Right and be careful who you take advice from. But those people were like five year people, people are going to go on a journey with you, keep them close, keep them really close to you and some of us, sadly, married people who want to be five minute people, or five month people, and those times those are the tough decisions we need to make and if it’s a family member, you just have to learn to set boundaries. Because you can’t divorce family members. I mean, you can like not communicate with them, I suppose. But they’re still blood. But just be careful about what you share with them. But I do not allow people to speak negativity into my life anymore. As soon as somebody starts saying you can’t do it. You don’t have the goods or they talk negatively about anything. I just, I end the conversation, switch, change the conversation. Walk away, do something but I don’t let negativity go in here because the negativity goes in there. It stays in there and so I think we got to constantly brain flush all that stuff out with positivity. So when I get when I feel negative stuff, I start putting positive stuff back in. Positive mantras, listening to great music, hearing positive, listening to positive speeches or whatever it is. I just got to get the negative stuff out because the left return device that gets inside me and rots.
Norman 15:06
Gotta hook around. Because I don’t even know, how did you go from the Special Forces and how did you get that entrepreneurial bug?
Larry 15:16
Oh, that’s a good question. I think I had the entrepreneurial bug before I knew what an entrepreneur was. I remember being in high school. Now, I’d help my brother on his paper route and but I remember being in like grade school, or like sixth grade, I guess it was, and I saw a guy named Jean Rogers do this and so I started copying them doing it and that was, he’d buy a bag of candy for a buck and sell the individual pieces off for a nickel or something like that and so I remember getting packs of gum, and selling sticks of gum, off. So I thought, Wow, that’s a cool way to make money. But I remember being like a senior in high school and knowing that wasn’t going to graduate, I mean, not go to college and I had some friends who were in the same boat we’re in, and we all weren’t smart people and it turns out, those guys all end up going on and being successful business people. None of us did well in high school. But we all went off and started our own businesses, which is kind of fascinating. There’s a book called Emotional Intelligence by Daniel, it’s called Burg, maybe. But emotional intelligence tracks what happened to the valedictorians in high school in college, whatever happened to those people? Well, it turns out that people who have high EQ, emotional intelligence, are the people who often do great things in the world, not the people with high IQs and if you can have a high IQ and a high EQ, that’s awesome. So how did I go from Special Forces into the entrepreneurial arena? Well, after being in special forces for a while, and traveling around and seeing how some of these countries were run, and thinking, these people are knuckleheads who are running this country, and again, it kind of ties into the same message, when I decided I was going to get into Special Forces and I thought, what I said about how hard it can be getting into the Olympics? Well, how hard can it be to run a country? If those knuckleheads can do it, I can do it. So I got out of special forces with the intention of going to school and getting it at this point I recognized, I’m a smart person, I just learned differently than other people. I learned how to read effectively. I mean, I could read at a very low level when I got out of high school, but I could learn to read effectively and so I said, Hey, I want to get out and study public policy. Maybe I wanted to get into the State Department, I wasn’t really sure, maybe I’d run for political office, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. But I knew I wanted to be in the political arena and so my first job off of active duty was as a night auditor, and in San Francisco and the tenderloin, which is basically one of the ghettos in San Francisco. It’s a little, no tell motel. Pay by the hour type of place, but it paid a whopping $5 an hour and went in at 11 o’clock at night, the workload was really, it might have taken 45 minutes to do the work and then the rest of the time I studied while I was going to college, during the day. They hired me because I was bigger and bulkier and more intimidating then than I am now. Because, there were pimps and prostitutes and drug deals and that kind of stuff going on in the hotel and in the neighborhood. So that’s the only reason I was hired. But after being there for a few months, an investment group came in and bought this property and all of my coworkers were the cast of characters. What I’m going to share with you Norm is like the absolute I swear to God, honest truth. No fabrication here at all. One guy, the guy who worked the morning shift with a guy named Gino and he was on parole for being a pimp. The woman who is the Executive Housekeeper at the hotel was part of his harem or his “wife”, she worked there, the guy who worked the three to 11 shift that I relieved, was a local heroin dealer. Okay, this was the cast of characters that worked at this place. Okay, the general manager who became a good friend of mine who ended up passing, dying from complications with AIDS. Years later, was a barely functioning alcoholic. I was the only “functioning person” there. So they kept me on after they bought into this investment group, bought the place and renovated it and I ended up becoming a manager at the place while I was still going to go into school. Because I’d had real world leadership experience. I knew how to build teams and so I was still going to school and during my first couple years of college, I was working on different political campaigns. Good to know, do I want to kind of be a political mercenary where I ran people’s campaigns, I just really didn’t know. So working on both sides of the aisle, and realized, I’m neither Republican nor Democrat. I think they’re all a bunch of idiots. By the way, I still believe that.
Larry 20:19
Instead, well, maybe working in the political arena is not for me and at the time that I’d fallen in love with the hotel industry, because it really was meeting my needs at real estate and finance and marketing and team building and leadership and branding, guest services, all the things that kept me excited and so I kind of fell into it. There’s an article that was written years ago, that is one of the first articles ever written about me, that said that Larry was in the right place until the right time came along. That’s kind of how life happens. Sometimes, right? Be in the right place until the right time comes along and so that’s the whole perseverance thing and so I became a partner in this hotel company and over about a 14 year period, we picked up about 14 hotels in the San Francisco area, and then got to be about the late 90s and I was realizing I was hating it. I just was not liking what I was doing. I was working outside my strengths and it was sucking my lifeblood. At this point, I had just gotten married. I’ve since divorced, by the way, but I just got married and I just realized I was working too many hours, she was working too many hours and I was working too many hours doing something I did not like and I’d realized Norm that during this kind of soul searching, and I went and hired an executive coach and we did this kind of life path and looked at where I’d done really welland what did I want to do? I’d realized what I describe it, I was a primary leader stuck in a secondary leadership role. I was never going to be the CEO of that company. I was never going to be the Senior Executive in that company. For a variety of reasons we don’t need to get into but but here I was, I was playing kind of the secondary, second fiddle and that’s not how I’m built, and so was eating me from the inside out. We came up with a game plan and how I was going to exit from the organization and so I did and then went out and started my own thing. I moved to Santa Barbara first and then ultimately here to Orange County where my former spouse lived and grew up and that’s where we started our family down here. So it’s kind of a long answer to hear your very simple question. But that’s how I went from Special Forces into the entrepreneurial arena on my own. I first became a partner in a company and then started my own thing.
Norman 22:49
So with the hotels that you own now, there’s, how would you describe it? Like why are they different from any other hotel that’s out there?
Larry 23:01
Back when I first fell into the industry, that hotel was considered one of the first boutique hotels in the country. Back then, they were like Bed and Breakfast that we all kind of people that are our age Norm kind of know. But that was kind of a dying and still is, I think a dying part of the industry and then you had branded hotels, you had travel lodges and Marriott and Hilton and Hyatts. Back then, those branded hotels were basically soulless hotels. You could go walk into a hotel in San Francisco or walk into a hotel in St. Louis or Toronto that was a particular brand and it was the same. Same design, same decor, it didn’t matter. I just described them as soulless and so what we tried to do as well as Ian Schrager hotel what became Ian Schrager hotels, but Ian Schrager, Bill Kimpton and our company, we kind of work, considered the vanguard, the craters in the boutique hotel industry, we provide a high level of service and a level of design and style that celebrates the location where it sits. Well, that’s really one of the keys. You have to win the hearts and minds of the locals by celebrating where the hotel is, and instead of just being this soulless hotel, so that’s kind of what separated us and now all the big brands have what they call their lifestyle brands, Marriott has their autograph collection. So I guess it’s a way of merging style with service. I think that’s really kind of important having anticipatory service at our properties and celebrating the locations where they are. We do okay, sometimes we hit it out of the park and sometimes we fail and fail miserably. But we just keep on learning from it and we really try to give our team members the freedom to be themselves. None of our hotels are cookie cutter. None of our team members are cookie cutters. Again, because I’ve recognized the power of authenticity, as long as we give them lanes, not lanes, we give them kind of boundaries to stay in, but you can do whatever you want inside those boundaries when it comes to being on our team. So the level of service and style, I think is what I would say separates us from a lot of the other hotels that are out there.
Norman 25:21
So it sounds like what you just said, you have to have buy in from the community as well as buy in from your staff.
Larry 25:30
Well, no, I think any business owner should do that there is a perception that business owners just take, take, take, take from a community, right? That there’s these capitalists that are just exploiting the workers. What people forget, again, you got to peel back the layers. Here, I’ve got a friend who’s old, not old, she’s an attorney and behind every question and comment, there’s another question or comment, right? So oftentimes, people make these comments when they don’t really know what the heck it is that they’re talking about, at least here in the US. More is given to charity from capitalist pigs like me, than anybody else, a lot of good, a lot of donations to create water wells in Africa or to end the polio epidemic around the world has been through entrepreneurs who have donated their money. I think that we have an obligation as entrepreneurs and business owners to serve our community and I’m kind of as romantic when I look at how countries are normally settled, regions of the world are normally settled, when a town was going to be settled what was built. Normally, a hotel was one of the first places that was built because people needed a place to stay in a saloon. Right? Political rallies were held at the hotel. Right? Those in churches were built all across North America. Hotels have always been a gathering place.
Larry 27:07
So I still romanticize that. So I think that when we go in and we open up a cow then we ought to be a place that celebrates the community. It’s a place where people can gather, and it’s particularly important even now, or more now than ever, I think people are realizing this, I think people have forgotten that as humans, we are built for community. Right? So the more we can serve the community, and so it does two things. One, it makes us feel good about ourselves, right? That we’re serving humanity, because I think that’s one of the best things we can do. We’re talking about that person that’s in the fetal position earlier, what do you do? Besides asking for help I think we need to serve. There’s something that happens when we are feeling really down and out. But you lend a hand to someone else. There’s power in that. All of our hotels, we have charitable or nonprofit organizations that we serve. So I’m a big believer in serving our communities. So it’s the right thing to do. But also, it raises awareness. I mean, from a capitalist pig perspective. When you serve the community, people know that you’re there. When they fall in love with you, they want to help you. Okay, so it’s really a two way street. We’re serving, we’re raising awareness for the organization, people want to help us and serve us as well.
Norman 28:27
Now, you talk about the myth of the lone wolf, we’ve touched on it in a roundabout way. Can you explain that?
Larry 28:36
Well, I think that there is this myth that America was settled by this lone, rugged, individual person, right? Stories are written about the lone wolf. Movies are created about the lone wolf, this one person, I’m gonna go out and do it on my own. Take more damage is done by that myth, and then just about anything else and oftentimes, they think about the movies that are written about the guy who served in the military, and they get out and they’re out on their own walking the road by themselves, saving the world. Even the military snipers have sniper buddies. You’re on a scuba team, you have a swim buddy. Nothing is done on your own. Nothing. There’s even like in the entrepreneurial space, people call themselves solopreneurs. There are no solopreneurs. There’s art. Everyone has got somebody in their life, or you should have someone in your life who’s helping you even if it’s a significant other or a spouse, or somebody who’s if you outsource a service. Let’s say you need a website built or you need whatever XYZ, your accounting done. You’re not alone. Well, you have somebody who’s helping you along the way and we recognize that we are built for community and if we treat everyone like they’re our team members, instead of doing it I am the solopreneur I am the lone wolf, I am the one who is going to get it all done by myself and you start realizing, hey, we’re all in this together, you start attracting the right people to your life.
Larry 30:15
But lone wolves die alone.
Larry 30:20
No, I don’t know anybody who wants to do that. The truth is wolves travel in packs. When you’re old or broken down, that’s when you could become a lone wolf. You don’t choose to be a lone wolf and so I don’t think of the lone wolf, when I say the myth of the lone wolf, it’s not just about them, because really our lone wolves, I’m talking about the myth of the lone wolf, who became successful. Lone wolves don’t become successful. They don’t, you’ve got to have people around you, you got to have teams around you, you got to have cheerleaders, masterminds, mentors. I just can’t stress that enough. You must have mentors in your life and by the way, you must be mentoring someone. That’s the critical part. I think Norm that a lot of people miss. People do have mentors. I like to split my life in thirds. A third of the people that are really critical in my life are mentors, they’re further down the path than I am. Then a third of the people in my life are peers, like we’re doing the battle together. We’re going arm and arm to battle together and then the third of the people in my life, I’m mentoring, right? Something happens when you do that, that whole thing, when you are teaching what you know, you get better at what you know and there’s something about this karmic wheel that spins. But I know that Norm, people out there like saying, “ What can I mentor someone and I’m not, I’m only whatever comes up with an excuse. I’m 22 years old, I just graduated college. What can I mentor somebody in?”. Well, here’s an interesting example. When my kids were in grade school, when they were in grade one, they’re just learning how to read, right and so they went to this private school and had a great program called reading buddies, where the fourth graders would come in and read to the first grader and I remember both my kids coming home and they loved their reading buddy. When they talk about their reading buddy, they talk about them as if they were gods, right? They can read. These fourth graders are so smart, they can read. Fourth graders look like gods, the first graders, fourth graders look like idiots to anybody that’s in high school. All you need to be as a fourth grader to a first grader in your life and that’s mentoring. We all need somebody who’s just a few steps down the path further than we are to help and so I am a big believer, split your lives in thirds. Stop being a lone wolf. I think the world and the stars and moons will align for greatness for you.
Norman 32:54
Where do you live by? I’m gonna put you on the spot right now. Do you have a quote that you live by?
Larry 33:02
Well, there’s a quote that I find I’m saying more and more now than any than at any time in my life, although it’s actually in the you go into the boardroom of our office and it’s on the wall up there. It says choose the hard right over the easy wrong. Now that’s on a monument at West Point, the academy for officers to get into the US Army and a lot of folks in the Army talk about this all the time, choosing the hard right over the easy wrong. We’ve kind of alluded this throughout this conversation. How different would our lives be had we actually done what we knew was going to be hard. It was the right thing to do. But instead, we chose the easy path. Really declaring all of your revenue on your taxes or having that hard conversation with your loved one that you’re not in love anymore, or having a hard conversation with an employee and I’m using that word intentionally right now, your employees that they’re not making the grade, and they’re not just in that you’re going to have to either coach them up or coach them out of the organization. Having that hard conversation with somebody about a terminal illness, those are hard conversations to have. They really are.
Larry 34:10
But reality is our friend and I think that sooner we face reality of having those hard conversations, the sooner we can make a plan to correct them or rectify them. Right? But to do that takes courage. I think that’s kind of one of the things we’ve been talking about here all day is courage. You’ve got to have courage to do the stuff that you and I have been talking about Norm. Courage changes everything. Courage doesn’t mean that, I’m going to go through fearless in life. That’s not courage. Courage is being afraid and taking steps anyway, right? Knowing that it’s going to be a hard conversation. You have it anyway. So I was blessed to have been able to attend the Executive Program at Stanford, and we had a professor there who was the Nobel Laureate. He used to pound into our heads that in business there are, all problems in business can be boiled down into four categories, all of them. Oh, he kept saying this over and over again. I must have heard it 50 times. All problems in business fall into these four categories: people, product, process and profit. Right? Any problem you have in business is a product problem with people problem, a process problem, or profit problem and so, after months of discussing this, I became a believer, yeah, they all are. But then when I got started my own business, I was really running my own businesses and really started coaching people, what I’d realized is, if I have a process problem, I have a product problem, I have a profit problem, I probably have a people problem, right? Now we have a people problem in your life or the people problem in business, you probably really have an accountability problem. If you have an accountability problem, what you really have is a communication problem. To speak again, I’m going to go back to this, to have a real frank conversation with somebody who takes courage, how many people have struggled through life, had pain in their life, because they were just afraid to have that very difficult conversation with somebody, whether it’s an employee or a loved one. But if you would have had the guts to have it months ago, when you were younger, I mean, I could think of plenty of times when I was younger, and I was dating a woman and I wanted to break up with her, but didn’t have the guts to break up with her. But instead, I went through months of pain, I didn’t want to have a hard conversation. Right? You just got to, you got to have courage. Courage changes everything. So I think doing the hard right, choosing the hard right over the easy wrong, will be life changing for people.
Norman 36:53
I’m very interested to hear this one. Because I think there is going to be a different answer than what I expect.
Norman 37:02
What’s been your biggest success?
Larry 37:04
We can talk professionally or we can talk personally. But the thing that more than anything else, as corny as it sounds, is that I have been able to raise amazing humans and my daughter, Emily and my son, Ben. Because it’s been my dream, I’m going to get emotional, it’s been my dream, I wish to break the multi generational chains of poverty, and negative self defeating attitudes and thoughts that I was plagued with and I got very intentional about it and I feel like my most important role, once these kids were born, is to be an amazing father, to be the best father I can possibly be enough phone, in my performance with them was really important and to create the next generation of leaders. But I realize I’m in the waning years of my life, I know, I’ve still a lot to contribute. I mean, I’m in my late 50s and, if I play my cards, right, I can still be an active participant in the business arena for at least another, 25 or 30 years, the end is not that near for me. Unless it’s time for me to go across the rainbow bridge or whatever, how people describe it, but I do realize that with my daughter and son, as a force multiplier, I can make more impact on the world by making them be amazing humans than anything else. So that’s probably my biggest personal success, and probably professional as well, I suppose.
Norman 38:35
I kind of have the feeling that you’re going to go down that way, just getting to know you over these last couple hours. You’re an amazing human being.
Larry 38:43
Well, thanks. Listen, I think that, here’s what I learned in both Boy Scouts and Martial arts, we all start, I mean, success is sequential. Right? You got to build this foundation, right and once we get the foundation stuff done, then you can build on. I mean, think about Tiger Woods, for crying out loud, still has to practice the basic strokes, right? The best basketball players of all time, they still get them to stand at the free throw line, and they’re practicing, throwing hundreds of hundreds of free throws a week, right? You got to practice the basic blocking and tackling. I didn’t do that basic blocking and tackling until I got into my 30s and into my 40s that I should have done when I was younger. That’s what I’m trying to teach my kids this stuff now. So that they can be better contributors to society. One of my own mantras that I speak to oftentimes is if you want to do great things, you have to be a great person. Right? I didn’t try practicing being a great person until I really got into my late 30s and 40s and 50s. I didn’t know what that even meant, right? But if you want to do great things, you’ve got to be a great person. We’ve all worked for people who were in positions of authority over us and weren’t great people, right? They put their own agenda in front of anybody else’s right? Or they ground you down or they treated you as if you were inferior to them. Let’s not be those people. Right? So I think that being a great person is a bigger success than how much money you make, because that doesn’t mean anything. At the end of the day, it doesn’t. Yeah, can you do it? I am a capitalist. I like making money. I can do great things with money. Right? I like when somebody comes to me who I’ve got a friend who’s served in Kenya, she helps women that are in the slums and ghettos in Kenya. I liked that when she came to me and said, Hey, can you help me? I can write a check to that. That makes me feel good. I can’t do that if I’m not, I don’t have the money to do it. So you can do great things with money, too. I do not worship money. No. I mean, I like the comfort that it brings me. But I’d rather be in a great relationship with a loving partner than be alone and have a full bank account.
Norman 41:11
I’d like to have both actually.
Norman 41:14
Yeah, there you go.
Norman 41:17
Well, we’re getting down to the end of the show and at the end of every episode, I always turn to the guest and ask him if they know a guy.
Larry 41:28
I know a lot of guys and gals, for you. Tell me tell you who they are right now.
Norman 41:33
Sure.
Larry 41:34
One guy named Michael Peterson, who is one of the most amazing people that I know. He’s a country music superstar from several years ago, but he also serves the veteran community. This guy’s done more time out past the wire, and forward operating bases and then most people in the military, there was Michael Peterson, and he’s just an amazing human being. The guy Jeff Bosley was also a former Green Beret, who’s an actor as well. He’s an amazing human being. The guy, his name is Anthony Melchiorre. Who happens also, I get to hang around a lot of veterans who are a former Air Force bat, or is Air Force Veteran who’s big in the hotel industry, who had a hotel show on a travel channel for years called Hotel Impossible. But he’s got a really interesting story about growing up, around mobs, mob bosses kind of thing, and then getting into the hotel industry and traveling around the world. Those are three right off the top of my head.
Norman 42:36
Wow.
Larry 42:38
I can give you more.
Norman 42:39
We’ll look back.
Norman 42:43
No, that’s great. So I mean, those are three great names and so if you could just let them know that we’ll be touching base with them. We’d love to have them on the show.
Larry 42:54
I’d be glad to do it.
Norman 42:55
Well, that’s great. So I can’t tell you how much of a pleasure it has been over these last couple of hours getting to know you a little bit and I certainly hope I can reach out and say hi to you one of these days.
Larry 43:07
Yes, I would love that. I love that. I hope I can do the same thing when I open up in Toronto, Toronto. I love Toronto. How can Toronto be so big and so clean at the same time?
Norman 43:017
Yeah, it is amazing. Amazing.
Norman 43:20
I really appreciate you coming on the show and you have a great night.
Larry 43:25
Thanks, you too. Congratulations on the success in this thing. I really love what you’re doing.
Norman 43:30
Hey, thanks a lot.
Hayden 43:32
Thanks for listening. That concludes our interview with Larry Broughton. Make sure to tune in next time for an interview with Matt Difebo. Matt is heavily involved in sports management, and is the CEO of a fan summit. Matt’s helped change the way that ticket sales are handled, especially at the college football level, and even how teams interact with their communities. Him and his team mash up to revolutionize a whole industry, and he tells us all about it. As always, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and I’ll see you next time.
