Tony Cotrupe, founder and managing director of Meliora Advisors, started his career at Arthur Young in 1989 working alongside a deal-oriented mentor who taught him to put himself inside a business and follow how value flows — not how it looks on paper. That foundation took him through Chemical Bank, Chase, JP Morgan’s Global Private Bank where he founded the private equity group, Huron Consulting, and eventually to Rochester, New York in 2009, where he launched a firm named after the Latin phrase for always toward better things and built it around a single conviction: business owners deserve an advisor who thinks like a buyer, not just an accountant.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• Growing up with an entrepreneurial father who never went to college and always bet on himself

• Getting recruited to play football at the University of Rochester and staying for his MBA

• What Arthur Young’s deal-oriented practice taught him about cash flow, risk, and the limits of looking backward

• Founding the private equity group inside JP Morgan’s Global Private Bank in 1996 — before private equity was accessible to individual investors

• Why working inside a large institution means making money for other people and hoping they return the favor

• How Meliora’s More Value Program helps owners build company value whether or not they plan to sell

• The husband and wife he told to stop trying to sell and start trying to acquire — and why they thanked him for it

• Business divorce: meeting Cain and Abel brothers on separate days because they couldn’t be in the same room

• The open architecture model: no overhead pushed onto clients, and the right expert for every situation

• Why he tries to keep clients out of the courtroom and what it costs when he can’t

🌟 Tony’s Key Mentors:

• His Father: An entrepreneurial thinker who never went to college, always found a way to provide, and taught Tony to say yes first and figure out the rest second

• His First Mentor at Arthur Young (1989): The non-accountant deal guy who taught Tony how to put himself inside a business and follow how value flows — lessons Tony still applies daily

• His Quasi-Brother (Family Friend, Lawyer): The person who talked Tony out of law school by being honest about what lawyering actually involves

• The Woman Who Ran His Emerging Markets Group at Chemical Bank: Gave Tony full deal responsibility from day one and created the sink-or-swim environment where he learned to thrive

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what it actually means to see a business through a buyer’s eyes rather than an owner’s, why two brothers who couldn’t be in the same room still ended up with a fair deal, and the rear view mirror analogy that has been Tony’s best tool for explaining valuation to business owners for thirty-five years.

🔗 Connect with Tony Cotrupe:

Email: [email protected]

Website: melioraadvisors.com

📤 Transcript Available: Tony Cotrupe on Why a Rear View Mirror Is a Great Thing to Have in a Car and a Terrible Way to Value a Business

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📤 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency — Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

🎙️ From a Wrong Turn to COO: Jarred Mason's Journey Building Standard Market

In this episode, Jarred Mason, Chief Operating Officer of Standard Market, shares how a frustrating commute led him to a hiring sign that changed the next fourteen years of his career. Jarred opens up about learning to lead people who didn't report to him, cutting corporate expenses without slowing growth, and stepping into the COO seat as the company's founders began stepping back.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Started in grocery retail at an independent store in the Missouri Ozarks

• Moved to Chicago at his brothers' urging and spent years at Dominick's

• Found Standard Market by taking an unfamiliar detour home from work

• Joined as customer service manager the year the store opened

• Cut corporate expenses by thirty percent while growing sales and operating income

• Earned an MBA from Northern Illinois University while running daily operations

• Helped expand to a second location, then helped wind it down

• Uses AI tools daily for category management and pricing across thousands of SKUs

• Stepped into the COO role as the founding partners began stepping back

• Now focused on delegating instead of controlling every operational detail

🌟 Jarred's Key Mentors:

• Dean (Early Grocery Manager): Taught him to prioritize customers over tasks, a lesson that never left him

• His Two Brothers: Encouraged him to leave Missouri for Chicago and shaped his no-excuses mindset

• Standard Market's Founding Partners: Gave him the freedom to make decisions and learn from mistakes

• An Outside Hire Boss: Instilled the confidence that helped him become store director

👉 Hear how a wrong turn off the highway led to fourteen years at one company — and a promotion path built on relentless curiosity rather than credentials.

🔗 Connect with Jarred Mason:

LinkedIn: Jarred Mason, Standard Market

📄 Transcript Available: Refusing to Leave His Mentor’s Side Is How Jarred Mason Learned the Business

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📄 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: AddBack Benefits Agency - Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line

Website: addbackbenefits.com

Ashli Johnson, founder and CEO of Hospitality Hued, grew up as a military brat who loved every move, studied at a school that launched its hospitality program mid-semester of her freshman year, and built her early career by reverse-engineering the resumes of executives she’d never met. She spent a decade advising Disney, Marriott, and Hilton on service strategy, built an academic center at Howard University from the ground up, was fired after raising equity concerns at a hospitality college the week after George Floyd was murdered, and then turned a single Manhattan happy hour with 80 strangers into one of the most energizing annual gatherings in the industry.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• What Department of Defense schools are and why they created one of the most diverse childhoods possible

• The classified ad in an industry magazine that Ashli called as a sophomore — and why she didn’t know what black hotel owners were

• How Leo Campbell at Lowe’s Hotels taught her why the Saturday golf outing matters as much as the early morning

• Valerie Ferguson’s impact on Ashli’s career before they ever met — and what happened when they finally did

• HLT 100: the program she created in 2015 to put top minority hospitality students in rooms with executives who looked like them

• Honor Hour: why she planned it, what it was supposed to be, and how people showed up without knowing exactly why

• The pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Black and brown hospitality workers — and why tech got the talent that hospitality lost

• What happened when she raised equity concerns at the University of Houston the week after George Floyd was murdered

• What Hospitality Hued does now: the annual summit, Hued Honors awards, co-located events, brand ERG partnerships, and the whiskey education trip to Uncle Nearest

• Why nobody loses their voice at a Hospitality Hued summit — and why they usually don’t want to leave

🌟 Ashli’s Key Mentors:

• Her Father (Marine Corps, Food Service): Took her to culinary competitions at CIA and Johnson & Wales, opening her eyes to what a hospitality career could look like

• Her Mother (Career Social Worker): Planted the seed of being of service and pouring into community that still runs through everything Ashli does

• Leo Campbell (Lowe’s Hotels): First industry mentor who explained the game — and why the after-hours dinner matters as much as the early morning work

• Valerie Ferguson (First Black Woman to Chair AHLA): A career Ashli studied from afar for years before they met — the proof that the role was possible

• Sheila Johnson (Co-Founder, BET; Salamander Collection): The person Ashli learned how to make outsized business decisions by watching up close

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what it means to see someone who looks like you doing something you didn’t know was possible, why the pandemic hit Black and brown hospitality workers harder than anyone wants to admit, and how a fired academic built the most joyful gathering in the industry from a single happy hour with 80 strangers.

🔗 Connect with Ashli Johnson:

Website: HospitalityHued.com

Social Media: Linkedin/in/ItsAshliJohnson 

IG: @HospitalityHued 

📤 Transcript Available: When America Gets a Cold, Black America Gets the Flu: Ashli Johnson on Hospitality, Equity, and What the Pandemic Revealed

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📤 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency — Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Tim Carley, managing partner of Chapman Insurance Group’s North Palm Beach office, spent twenty-two years with Young Life — earning the right to be heard with teenagers who were hosting keg parties on weekends — before stepping away in 2022 with no plan, a few months of runway, and an identity crisis he did not see coming. Within three years, he moved from entry-level business development to managing partner at one of Florida’s most respected independent insurance agencies, using the exact same relational playbook he had built over two decades of ministry.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• What Young Life is, who it targets, and why the too-cool strategy works on the kids who are hardest to reach

• The lacrosse team that won one game all season and declared themselves JV State Champions at the final buzzer

• How Tim stepped away from Young Life cleanly after twenty-two years and what the identity crisis that followed actually looked like

• A year of not opening his Bible and the two years of counseling that followed

• Joining Harvest Insurance in 2022 as a business development rep with no insurance background

• What happened when he walked into a billion-dollar carrier’s boardroom for the first time not knowing what he was walking into

• Why vulnerability and curiosity disarmed executives more than any expertise could have

• The friendship with Brian Chapman that started in group carrier meetings and became a partnership to open the East Coast

• How web leads and organic leads produce fundamentally different retention rates and why that matters

• Hiring a twenty-eight-year-old former Young Life kid as his first salesperson and what that means for the legacy he is building

🌟 Tim’s Key Mentors:

• Ryan (Young Life Kid, Now Ordained Presbyterian Minister): The fourteen-year-old from a broken home who Tim mentored for years, whose family relationship was repaired, whose wedding Tim performed, and who is now planting a church in town

• Taylor (Harvest Insurance Founder): The construction entrepreneur who gave Tim his first insurance role and enough autonomy to run the relational playbook his way

• Brian Chapman (Managing Partner, Chapman Insurance Group): The twenty-year veteran who took a chance on Tim, gave him a three-to-five year runway, and opened the East Coast with him as a partner

• The Counselor He Saw Every Other Week: The professional Tim credits with helping him work through the identity crisis that hit when his work and his faith collided

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what happens when your identity is so wrapped up in your work that losing the work means losing yourself, why the relational skills that make a great youth mentor also make a great insurance managing partner, and the boardroom lesson that took two decades of ministry to learn: everyone is just figuring it out.

🔗 Connect with Tim Carley:

Website: cigflorida.com

Instagram: @TimJCarley

📤 Transcript Available: Tim Carley on Leading With a Limp: Why Vulnerability in a Boardroom Disarms Everyone in the Room

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📤 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency — Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

🎙️ From Homeless at 14 to Inc. 500: Alan Melton's Journey Through Business, Coaching, and the Seven Stages to Freedom

Alan Melton, founder and CEO of Small Business Coach Associates, grew up in Charlotte with significant childhood trauma, found himself without a home at 14, sat in a park at midnight when a stranger shared his faith, got taken in by two families who introduced him to Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie, had a vision on a Greyhound bus to Florida, and built that vision into an $8.5 million transportation company with 130 employees that landed on the Inc. 500 and was sold two months before 9/11 wiped out the industry. What he learned from building and selling that company became the foundation of a coaching practice that has since helped 1,100 small business owners grow their profits while working fewer hours.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Growing up without structure, finding faith through a stranger at a park, and being taken in by two families who changed everything

• The vision on a Greyhound bus to Tallahassee at 14 that became a literal ten-year plan

• Building East Coast Auto Rental from a sold car and a bank loan to the official carrier of the Jacksonville Jaguars

• Going through the Sterling Quality Award process modeled on Malcolm Baldrige — and how it transformed a mom-and-pop into a sellable company

• Selling the business two months before 9/11 — with a million-dollar employee incentive pool paid out first

• The seven stages to business freedom: startup, chaos, break-even, burnout, delegation, systems, and freedom

• Growing to 24,000 monthly organic website visits and then pivoting to LLM-focused content strategy

• The remodeling company that went from $4.4 million to $10 million in two years by fixing a free Google asset

• The private security company client who grew from $3 to $9 million in 10 months while working a full-time police job 1,200 miles away

• The scorecard: 36 coaching modules that teach mastery one bite-sized chunk at a time

🌟 Alan's Key Mentors:

• The Stranger at the Park: The man who stopped to talk to a homeless 14-year-old and shared his faith — the first pivot point in Alan's life

• First Foster Family: Took him in, gave him stability, and connected him to a church community that felt nothing like his family experience

• Second Foster Family: Introduced him to personal development, The Power of Positive Thinking, and How to Win Friends and Influence People

• The Transportation Industry Consultant: Found in an industry publication, helped Alan separate his business PLs, and modeled the very coaching approach Alan now uses with his own clients

👉 Don't miss this conversation about what it actually takes to get out of the owner's trap, why the most important lesson Alan learned as a coach was to stop feeding clients with a fire hose, and how a teenager with no home and no plan used a bus ride and a vision to build one of the most unusual second acts in small business coaching.

🔗 Connect with Alan Melton:

Website: smallbusinesscoach.org

📄 Transcript Available: Alan Melton Was Homeless at 14 and Built an $8.5 Million Transportation Company Before He Turned 40

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast 

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast 📄 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency — Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Brian Carlisle, managing partner of Carlisle Strategic Partners, was 18 years old when his throttle stuck on a jump at Buds Creek Motocross Park in Maryland, five days after 9/11, and he woke up seven days later in the ICU with a broken pelvis, lacerated spleen, bruised kidney, bruised lung, and a left side brain injury. The career he had planned in orthopedic surgery was eventually closed by four rejection letters he didn’t appeal. The career he actually built — in operating rooms, boardrooms, and eventually a CEO seat at a regenerative medicine company — took three decades to understand as a plan rather than a detour.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• Racing motocross competitively from age seven and the throttle malfunction that ended it at eighteen

• The identity crisis that follows when the thing that defined you is taken away in a single moment

• Applying to four medical schools, getting rejected by all four, and walking into an operating room three months after graduating anyway

• Eleven years at Integra Life Sciences spanning field sales, operations, and a million-dollar commercial transformation project

• The optics lesson that came with a great hotel rate nobody saw as a great hotel rate

• Moving the family to New Jersey, starting a new job, going back to grad school, and welcoming their first child in the same three-month window

• Becoming CEO of Nova Bone and learning for the first time how lonely that chair actually is

• Eighteen-week road stretches that made leaving a dream job the obvious right call

• The growth acceleration scorecard: seven pillars, weighted scoring, and two quick wins designed to generate ROI within six months

• Why most commercial problems are not market problems and not product problems — and what they actually are

🌟 Brian’s Key Mentors:

• His Parents: Gave him work ethic and values instead of things — his first car was bought with money he earned, and his dad helped him put a new motor in it

• Division President at Integra: Identified Brian at 32, told him to move his family, go back to school, and take a corporate role — then walked him through exactly why that plan was right for him

• VP of Sales at Integra: The mentor who taught him that a great result presented with bad optics is still a bad result

• His Executive Coach (Penn State, PhD in Psychology): Helped Brian develop the framework of leading with courage and faith that guided his CEO tenure

• Neighbor Who Worked for DePuy Orthopedics: The first person who showed him what a career in medical devices actually looked like after medical school fell through

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what it means to build a career from a series of closed doors, why the hardest part of faith is applying it in the present moment rather than in hindsight, and how a motocross racer who never made it to the pros ended up building one of the more unusual advisory practices in healthcare.

🔗 Connect with Brian Carlisle:

Website: carlislestrategic.com

Email: [email protected]

📤 Transcript Available: Brian Carlisle on Why Most Commercial Problems Are Not Market Problems and Not Product Problems Either

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📤 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency — Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Ron Klabunde, founder of Smart REI, spent 18 years as a pastor, got fired at the height of a national speaking career he describes as the moment humility finally arrived, built a nonprofit that mobilized 76,000 volunteers across 29 states and fed 170,000 children, watched COVID wipe out 78 percent of the revenue in three weeks, stepped off salary to protect his 32-person team, and eventually found an entirely new vehicle for the same mission: helping real estate investors build a life worth protecting before they commit capital to a deal.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• Leading a high school Bible study at 15 and going directly into ministry after college

• The arrogance that came with a national speaking platform at 25 and the church firing that stripped it all away

• Why he structured the Replenish Foundation as non-faith-based to unlock corporate funding

• The first event: 600 people, 40,000 meals, under two hours — and the 16,000 meals the school principal called to say nobody would eat

• 76,000 volunteers, 650 business partners including Microsoft and Volkswagen, 29 states — then COVID in three weeks

• Coming off salary to save 32 jobs and the leadership principle behind that decision

• The investor happy hour where he discovered his empty pond in real estate lending

• The four numbers every investor must know: holding costs, rent-to-mortgage ratio, total wealth ROI, and cash flow

• Why every spreadsheet is broken and why the Smart REI platform uses 23 interconnected calculators instead

• The dream determines the deal — and the numbers protect the dream

🌟 Ron’s Key Mentors:

• His Nonprofit Investor (Turned Connector): The woman who had funded Generosity Feeds and knew Ron’s character well enough to invite him into lending when he needed a new vehicle for his mission

• JP (Real Estate Investor, 22,000 Units): The mentor who modeled how to use real estate wealth to genuinely serve tenants — free telehealth, tutoring, and financial coaching for every door at $15 a month

• The COO of Replenish Foundation: The leader who held the organization together through COVID and carried the mission forward while Ron stepped aside

• His Faith and Scripture: The anchor through every reinvention — from the church firing to COVID to the new chapter in lending

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what it looks like to lose everything you’ve built and find the mission still intact, why 78 percent of your revenue disappearing in three weeks can still be the beginning of something, and a philosophy about money and real estate that has nothing to do with wealth and everything to do with the dream behind it.

🔗 Connect with Ron Klabunde:

Website: smartrei.us

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: Ron Klabunde

📤 Transcript Available: Ron Klabunde on the Four Numbers Every Real Estate Investor Must Know to Make Wise Decisions

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📤 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency — Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Matt Lee, HR Business Partner at Shamin Hotels, started washing dishes at $4.50 an hour in a Georgia steakhouse at 15, earned a culinary degree, spent 26 years opening restaurants from Atlanta to Columbus to New Hampshire before his wife’s corporate career gave him the opportunity to hang up the toque, take a free education through the University of Richmond’s tuition assistance program, and figure out that everything he had been doing in kitchens was HR work with a different name.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• Starting at $4.50 an hour in a steakhouse and what Brian Davis, a manager who believed in him, made possible

• How Chris Brandt taught a young, hot-headed chef to channel his emotions instead of express them

• Opening restaurants in Atlanta, Columbus, and New Hampshire while following his wife’s Anheuser-Busch career

• The moment he realized he could get a free HR degree through the University of Richmond and what drew him to that field specifically

• Why career changers struggle to get callbacks and how relationships, not resumes, got him his first HR role

• The consulting versus compliance tension in HR and how Matt walks that line at 20-plus hotel properties

• The front office manager who wouldn’t hold her team accountable — and why she was right to be worried

• What accountability with grace actually looks like in practice and how it differs from accountability alone

• Rolling out a new HRIS system across 60-plus properties and what the training should have looked like

• Opus LMS: the AI-assisted learning management system that will let housekeepers map their own career pathway

🌟 Matt’s Key Mentors:

• Brian Davis (First Manager, Georgia Steakhouse): Saw potential in a 15-year-old dishwasher, promoted him to grill cook, introduced him to hip hop, and modeled what it looks like to believe in someone

• Chris Brandt (Executive Chef, Atlanta): Taught Matt to channel his emotions, pull people outside instead of confronting them on the line, and lead with curiosity instead of reaction

• Shannon Flynn (HR Director, Shamin Hotels): Hired Matt into the role and has been his mentor as he continues building confidence in the HR space

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what kitchens taught one HR professional that business school never could, why the hardest thing Matt has overcome is still a work in progress, and how accountability with grace is more than a philosophy — it’s a specific skill that looks very different from accountability alone.

🔗 Connect with Matt Lee:

Email: [email protected]

Website: shaminhotels.com

LinkedIn: Matt Lee, Shamin Hotels

📤 Transcript Available: Matt Lee on Why Accountability Without Grace Is Just a Countdown to Someone Walking Out the Door

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📤 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency — Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Megan Johnson, Director of People and Culture at Simple Modern, entered HR by conducting layoffs she never saw coming on fresh-out-of-college money, almost left the field entirely, rebuilt her conviction through a consulting firm that showed her what HR could actually look like, and spent five years in oil and gas learning to be disruptive from a mentor who told her to go figure it out and come back with the results. When a LinkedIn job posting caught her eye at a drinkware brand she’d never heard of, she took a leap from a stable insurance company to become Simple Modern’s first in-house HR director — and she’s been building ever since.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• Conducting mass layoffs at Chesapeake Energy fresh out of college and what that did to her view of HR

• The consulting firm that showed her HR could be fun and how two women there saved her career

• Five years at a second oil and gas company and the mentor who taught her to take the meeting without the boss and fail forward

• Four years building sales compensation expertise at American Fidelity and why it turned out to be exactly what Simple Modern needed

• Why Simple Modern exists to give and what that mission does to the energy inside a company of under 100 people

• The giving summit: how employees vote to allocate charitable dollars and why every staff member donates to their own cause each year

• Moving from a PEO model to full in-house HR and what the level of service actually changed

• What Rippling gave them that the PEO couldn’t — and why birthday lunches were an immediate win

• Hybrid schedule, catered lunches twice a week, 12 weeks paid maternity leave, and a childcare stipend — and why none of it compromises profitability

• JumpScore: the cheer competition software platform Megan has been building since maternity leave

🌟 Megan’s Key Mentors:

• Two Women at the HR Consulting Firm: Showed her that layoffs can lead to growth and that HR done right can be fun — she’s still having lunch with one of them

• Kelsey (Leader at Second Oil and Gas Company): Gave her full permission to be disruptive, fail forward, and build relationships with executives without a chaperone

• John Coulman (Hiring Manager, Simple Modern): The LinkedIn post that caught her eye and the leader who brought her into a company she now can’t imagine leaving

• Mike Beckham (CEO, Simple Modern): Built a company around generosity from day one and creates the cultural permission for everyone else to follow

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what it looks like to build an HR function from scratch inside a company where the mission is giving, why loose culture and serious profitability are not opposites, and how a people-first approach to water bottle sales ends up changing how every employee shows up on Tuesday morning.

🔗 Connect with Megan Johnson:

Website: simplemodern.com

Website: jumpscoreofficial.com

📤 Transcript Available: Megan Johnson Started Her Career Doing Layoffs, Now She Runs a Culture Built on Generosity

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📤 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency — Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com

Skip Harless, Managing Director of Grand Geneva Resort and Spa, graduated with a fine arts degree from Texas Tech, took a personality test, and walked into every hotel in Dallas until one of them hired him. Thirty-five years later, he runs a 1,300-acre resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin that started as a Playboy club, earned the number one spot in the 2025 Condé Nast Traveler Reader’s Choice Awards, and has posted three back-to-back record years — after a first year that nearly broke him.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• How a fine arts degree and a personality test called What Color Is Your Parachute launched a 35-year hotel career

• Lesson one at a 1,600-room Hyatt during the air traffic controllers strike: lean into your team, not away from them

• The GM who taught Skip the art of details — and what a daily 5 PM transformation at a Colorado ski resort looked like

• Walking into Grand Geneva in 2022 to a property slammed with post-COVID demand and nowhere near enough staff

• Building a 170-bed associate housing facility from scratch as a recruiting tool for international interns

• Why the middle manager is the most overlooked level in hospitality — and the 30-minute lunch training sessions that changed everything

• The executive team fight that almost derailed the strategic planning session and became the turning point for three record years

• Managing 16 direct reports and 1,200 peak-season employees across 1,300 acres — and the scheduling system that keeps him connected

• The glamping ridge overlooking the entire property that could open as soon as next summer

• Why luxury guest expectations post-COVID are higher, not lower, despite everything that happened to service quality

🌟 Skip’s Key Mentors:

• His First Hyatt GM (Dallas Fort Worth Airport): Put him in a management development program with no experience and gave him the foundation he still builds on

• The Detail-Obsessed Hyatt GM He Worked With Twice: Opened a luxury ski resort from the ground up with Skip and taught him how to curate every sensory detail of a guest experience

• His Wife: The long-distance sounding board who held him together by phone from another state through the hardest year of his career

• The Jade Point Consultant: Guided a 16-person executive team through a two-and-a-half-day strategic planning session that turned a big fight into alignment and launched three record years

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what it looks like to question every decision you’ve ever made and then find your footing anyway, why the fight that almost fractured an executive team became its greatest strength, and how a fine arts student from Texas Tech became one of the most decorated resort managers in the country.

🔗 Connect with Skip Harless:

Website: grandgeneva.com

📤 Transcript Available: Skip Harless Spent His First Year at Grand Geneva Wondering Why He Ever Said Yes

📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast

🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast

📤 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency — Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com