🎙️ From a Brazilian Napkin to 150 Countries: Adam Harris and the CloudBeds Platform

Adam Harris, co-founder and CEO of CloudBeds, built one of the world's leading hospitality management platforms from a single insight — that independent hotels deserved better tools and a seat at the table. From an early pivot in Brazil to acquiring seven mission-critical assets and processing $15 billion in annual room sales, Adam's journey weaves together finance discipline, hospitality purpose, and technology as the bridge between them.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Career path from Wall Street analyst to hospitality tech CEO

• Original CloudBeds idea: connecting travelers to unlisted Brazilian properties

• Pivot from booking platform to full hotel management after World Cup

• Acquiring MyAllocator, going global overnight in 60+ countries

• Unified platform replacing 14 of 19 average hotel browser tabs

• Signals product: causal neural engine forecasting demand at 95% accuracy up to 180 days

• Remote parity principle: eliminating two-class employee dynamics

• Two reductions in force and the fiduciary tension of building with heart

• Neurodivergent diagnosis at 12 — retraining the brain as competitive advantage

• No exit strategy: building by chapter, driven by purpose over transaction

🌟 Adam's Key Mentors:

• Richard Valtr (Co-Founder): Shared founding vision and complementary technical leadership from day one

• MyAllocator Team: First acquisition that forced the pivot from transactional to SaaS and launched CloudBeds globally

• Early VC Partners (Peak Spans, Cultivation Capital): Provided institutional credibility and scaling capital during formative growth

• Adam's Father (Surgeon/Hearing Expert): Modeled turning a deficiency into a life's work; inspired grit and hard-work ethic

• CloudBeds Team (750 People, 44 Countries): The daily reason to build — celebrated as the real milestone

👉 Don't miss this wide-ranging conversation about purpose-driven entrepreneurship, the intelligence layer reshaping hospitality, and why the best hotel tech is really about amplifying humans.

🔗 Connect with Adam Harris:

LinkedIn: Adam Harris

Website: cloudbeds.com

📄 Transcript Available: CloudBeds Took 12 Years to Reach Purpose — Founders Say That Was the Point, with Adam Harris

📺 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 Painting Bridges to PhD: Greg Waller's Journey as the Blue Collar Scholar of Business Valuation

Greg Waller, Managing Partner of Cornerstone Valuation and Windward Advisors, shares his unlikely path from painting structural steel bridges and going bankrupt at 26 to earning a PhD from Purdue and becoming a trusted advisor for middle market business owners navigating valuations, exit planning, and M&A transactions.

Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Dropped out of college to run a structural steel painting company before a mentor on a job site sent him back to school

• A bankruptcy at 26 from overspray damage and a called line of credit became the catalyst for his MBA and eventually his PhD

• Blue collar roots plus academic rigor create a rare perspective for valuing and selling companies other advisors miss

• Business value equals benefit divided by risk, and reducing concentration risk in customers, vendors, and key employees raises value

• Three years of clean financial data is the minimum baseline before taking any company to market

• Cash basis financial statements often need to be restated on accrual before a professional buyer will engage seriously

• 1099 employee classification and E-Verify compliance are emerging deal risks that professional buyers scrutinize closely

• Taking a company to market without a price and running a structured auction process consistently produces better outcomes

• AI may handle rote report writing, but qualitative judgment in valuation still requires trained human eyes

• Informed sellers are rare and most business owners are outmatched by well-resourced professional buyers who do this every day

Greg's Key Mentors:

• Old-timer on the bridge scaffold: Told a young Greg to go back to school, the moment that changed his entire trajectory

• Ohio University faculty: Encouraged him to pursue academics and a doctoral program when he had no such plans

• Bill Duellen, Purdue Executive Education: Gave him room to run real estate deals while finishing his PhD

• Jim Edge, Cornerstone Founder: Gracious in transitioning the practice and served as an unexpected mentor in Greg's adult career

• Entrepreneurs Organization: Ongoing community providing peer education on business development and personal growth

Don't miss this conversation about what business owners don't know that professional buyers already do, why bankruptcy can be a tool rather than a failure, and what it means to bring academic rigor to a blue collar worldview.

Connect with Greg Waller:

Website: middlemarketvalue.com

LinkedIn: Greg Waller

Company: Cornerstone Valuation / Windward Advisors

🎙️ From Pepsi VP to Career Coach: Maigread Eichten’s Mission to Get College Grads Jobs in the Hardest Market in Decades

Maigread Eichten, founder of Career Expedite, built a $450 million revenue division at PepsiCo, survived the dot-com crash as a single mom of three, got fired from an energy drink company the day after a New York Times feature, ran a cannabis company she didn’t personally use, and eventually found her purpose mentoring the young people who reminded her why it all mattered. Now she runs a concierge career coaching firm with a 99% success rate, helping college grads navigate a market that’s as hard as anything she’s seen in her career.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• How a “depressing” reassignment to sales turned into $450M in new revenue at Pepsi

• Why being on the revenue side of any business is the best career insurance you can have

• The dot-com crash that put her family’s financial security at risk — and how she survived it

• Getting fired after the New York Times feature at FRS — and what the investor said years later

• Why she tried AI-first job coaching and walked away from it

• The one thing 29 out of 30 job applicants get completely wrong in interviews

• How to use LinkedIn as a social media algorithm — not a resume database

• The cold outreach strategy getting clients a 20-25% response rate from strangers on LinkedIn

• Why 50% of college grads who take remote jobs are unemployed within a year

• How one client went from nine months of no offers to two offers in six weeks

🌟 Maigread’s Key Mentors:

• The PepsiCo Culture: Taught her the power of being on the revenue side and leaning into who you are in rooms that expected someone different

• The CEO Who Cried (VeriSign): Showed her that even stoic leaders break — and that pivoting to profitability in a crisis is what keeps people employed

• Lance Armstrong’s Comeback (FRS): A timing lesson — and a reminder that a company’s trajectory is not the same as a CEO’s worth

• Her Three Kids: The real reason she got through being fired and the dot-com crash — showing up for them anchored everything else

• Her Cannabis Company Team: Young people who helped her see what she was actually built to do next

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what actually gets people hired in 2025, why the job market is brutal but not hopeless, and how one of the most non-linear careers in food and beverage led to a 99% success rate in career coaching.

🔗 Connect with Maigread Eichten:

Website: careerexpedite.com

LinkedIn: Maigread Eichten

📎 Transcript Available: Maigread Eichten on the One Thing 29 Out of 30 Job Applicants Get Completely Wrong

📺 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 Brooklyn to Five Decades of Impact: Frank Fusaro on Staffing, Scholarships, and Service

Frank Fusaro, co-founder and president of The Forum Group, shares his journey from a Brooklyn childhood raised on $75 a month, through the Marine Corps that gave him the confidence school never did, to building a 50-year staffing firm by helping his competitors retain their best people, raising over $22 million in scholarships through the Columbus Citizens Foundation, and now channeling his network toward Tunnel to Towers at $5.4 million and counting.

Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Graduated last in his class at a Jesuit high school, joined the Marine Corps at 17, and credits the experience with giving him the confidence he had been missing his whole young life

• Built a staffing practice inside the public accounting world by forming a networking group among competing firms, giving away presentations for free, and letting the relationships do the selling

• The most important clients he ever had came not from sales calls but from charitable and community work, a pattern he repeated across Catholic Charities, Columbus Foundation, and Tunnel to Towers

• Launched the Columbus Citizens Foundation Adopt-A-Scholar program with a simple brochure, no budget, and two calls that raised $900,000 on day one alone

• Raised over $22 million in scholarships funding 500 students a year and ran the New York Columbus Day Parade for 10 years, earning Emmy nominations each year

• Tunnel to Towers has built smart homes for catastrophically wounded veterans, paid off mortgages for fallen first responder families, and removed 17,500 homeless veterans from the streets

• Passed the Forum Group CEO role to his son Chris after a deliberate two-year transition where disagreements went the son's way in the final stage

• The firm's growth model today offers proven producers equity on day one, no capital required, guaranteed first-year comp, and a full back office so they can focus on billing

• Senior employees stay for decades because Frank never asks anyone to do something he hasn't done himself and never took money from the business that he didn't need

• The real driver behind 50 years of building was never ambition but fear of failure rooted in a childhood with nothing to fall back on

Frank's Key Mentors:

• His Mother: Raised two boys on $75 a month with a smile on her face and a rock-steady even keel that set the emotional tone for Frank's entire life

• His Stepfather: A dock boss and one of the most ethical human beings Frank ever met, a quiet force in the household from the time Frank was eight

• The United States Marine Corps: Gave Frank the discipline and confidence that school never provided and set the leadership standard he carried into every role that followed

• New York State Society of CPAs: The platform where Frank built relationships, delivered lectures, and turned competitors into his most loyal referral sources

• John Farrell, JPMorgan Chase: A dear friend met through Catholic Charities who gave Frank access to one of the firm's most important long-term client relationships

Don't miss this conversation about what it really means to build a business through service, why the people you meet at charity events are worth more than the ones you cold call, and how a kid from Brooklyn with nothing built something that will outlast him.

Connect with Frank Fusaro:

Email: [email protected]

Tunnel to Towers: t2t.org

📎 Transcript Available: Frank Fusaro: What a Brooklyn Kid, the Marine Corps, and 50 Years in Staffing Teaches You About Life

📺 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

🎙️ Exit Planning Theater and the Truth Below the Waterline: Rick Thomas on What Most M&A Advisors Won’t Tell Founders

Rick Thomas, founder of First Generation Advisors in Washougal, Washington, grew up crossing borders before he could ride a bike — through Venezuela and West Africa as part of a family Peace Corps program — and spent his adult life watching what people do when there’s no safety net. He carried that lens through 13 years in manufacturing, through leadership consulting, financial advising, and three failed partnerships that eventually led to a surrender moment on his knees, alone, that changed everything. Today he works with lower middle market founder-led businesses on growth strategy, exit readiness, and the things no one on the deal team will tell you about selling a company you built with your life.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• What growing up in Liberia and Venezuela taught Rick about joy, contingency, and the human condition stripped bare

• Why Rick calls most exit planning ‘theater’ — and who is actually being served by it

• Confirmation bias in M&A: how cocktail napkin valuations hijack founder decision-making

• Why the highest transaction value is often the wrong choice — and what gets left off the balance sheet

• What happens to founders emotionally after the sale and why most are never warned about it

• The iceberg analogy: what the M&A world sees versus the 90% of the founder experience that’s underwater

• Why three failed partnerships were all the same lesson in different clothing

• The surrender moment in 2007 — down to $1,000 a month, marriage in counseling, everything at risk

• The wood pile principle: what a country boy from North Dakota taught Rick about building anything

• How Rick is now building AI agents to grow First Generation Advisors while working fewer hours

🌟 Rick’s Key Mentors:

• His Mother (Puerto Rican, Bridge Between Worlds): Gave Rick his first experience of cultural duality and the resourcefulness that comes with it

• His Country Boy Business Partner (Manufacturing): Introduced the wood pile principle — leave it higher than when you started, every single day

• Portia Nelson (Author, My Life in Five Chapters): Her poem on recovery gave Rick language for the cycle he kept repeating with failed partnerships

• His Wife: Stayed through the hardest years, the counseling, the near-bankruptcy, the reinvention — the only partner who never left

• His M&A Strategic Partners at Pilot Wealth: Introduced him to the world of exit advising through a 2012 conflict resolution project that changed the trajectory of his business

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about the difference between a transaction and a transformation, why smart founders get outmaneuvered by advisors who see their exit as a capital placement event, and how a man who watched children play soccer with a milk jug for a ball came to understand what actually matters.

🔗 Connect with Rick Thomas:

Website: firstgenadvisors.net

LinkedIn: Rick Thomas — First Generation Advisors

📎 Transcript Available: Three Failed Partnerships and a Surrender Moment: How Rick Thomas Built First Generation Advisors

📺 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 Five-Star Hotels to an African Savanna in Wine Country: Keo Hornbostel’s Second Act at Safari West

Keo Hornbostel, executive director of Safari West, spent nearly 30 years rising through the Hyatt system — from Denver to Grand Cayman to Maui to Kauai — before a referral and the right moment led him to a 400-acre wildlife preserve in Sonoma County. What looked like a dramatic career pivot turned out to share more with luxury hospitality than anyone expected, and the leadership skills he’d spent decades building were exactly what Safari West needed.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• 30-year Hyatt career across Puerto Rico, Maui, Grand Cayman, and beyond

• Why managing a wildlife preserve and a mega resort are more similar than they look

• Safari West’s breeding-first model — over 200 giraffes born on property

• 35 permits to operate, including three federal USDA licenses

• AZA accreditation denial: choosing radical transparency over spin

• Hiring two on-staff veterinarians and earning ZAA accreditation within months

• COVID layoffs of 100+ staff in a single morning — and what the next day looked like

• Sonoma County Tourism Board work and the Wheel of the World accessible travel initiative

• Announcing the Safari West Zoological Society nonprofit transition

• Capital campaign goals: a vet clinic, animal welfare buildings, and long-term preservation

🌟 Keo’s Key Mentors:

• Peter and Nancy Lang (Founders, Safari West): Trusted him with their life’s work and gave him the space to lead it forward

• Aphrodite (PR Manager, Safari West): Introduced him to the Langs and helped shape Safari West’s public presence

• Hyatt Leadership Teams: Shaped his belief that great hospitality comes from genuinely meeting people where they are

• His Mother: Her experience navigating travel with a prosthetic leg directly inspired his work on accessibility

• His Military School Commanders: Instilled the leadership-first mindset he carried into every role that followed

👉 Don’t miss this conversation about leading through fires, a pandemic, and a public accreditation challenge — and why Keo’s answer to every hard day is the same: wake up and go fix it.

🔗 Connect with Keo Hornbostel:

Website: safariwest.com

📎 Transcript Available: How Keo Hornbostel Turned an Accreditation Crisis Into a Stronger Safari West

📺 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 Seven-Year-Old Watching Grandfather's Fish Taco Bicycle to Opening Fusion Restaurant During COVID: Rigo Espinoza's 45-Year Family Legacy

Rigo Espinoza, founder and owner of Raw Kitchen and Cantina in Rancho Cucamonga, California, shares his journey from seven-year-old watching grandfather bicycle from Baja California 1976 with ocean catch creating first fish tacos, through 12-year-old busboy getting dollar tips cleaning tables sister's restaurant (getting super excited), left for insurance brokerage then sister pulled him back 2009 managing location, to creating made-up-on-spot restaurant concept when landlord said "too many Mexican restaurants" during pandemic 2021—sent menu 24 hours later, business plan same day, got denied but family said "do it on your own, your time to shine." Through stories about opening February 2022 with Valentine's 180 reservations not knowing what to expect, staying open till 2-3am trying to please everyone costing business and family (wife, kids not seeing him), and wanting Michelin inspector attention sending emails getting magazine covers, Rigo reveals how customers voted fish taco number one even though wanted elevated gourmet presentations, extensive menus waste money (chilaquiles not eaten daily), and everyone has talent—manager responsibility finding what that talent is putting them where they shine and thrive.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Grandfather’s Legacy (1976): Fish taco pioneer bicycling from Ensenada with fresh catch, sparking a family tradition.

• Early Start: At 12, worked as busboy, discovering passion for customer service.

• Insurance Detour: Tried brokerage, but returned in 2009 to manage family restaurant.

• La Bufadora Baja Grill Growth: Expanded to 13 locations with commissary model for consistency.

• Concept Creation (2020): Landlord rejected “another Mexican restaurant,” so Rigo invented a Baja‑Asian fusion bar concept overnight.

• Family Push: Encouraged to launch independently, found Rancho Cucamonga location in 2021.

• Opening During COVID: Debuted Feb 2022 with 180 Valentine’s reservations, patio dining ready for shutdowns.

• Fusion Identity: Baja‑Asian mix with raw salmon and tuna alongside Mexican cuisine.

• Customer Demand: Despite gourmet ambitions, fish tacos on blue corn tortillas became top seller.

• Hard Lessons: Staying open until 3am and trying to please everyone strained family and business; learned to focus and set boundaries.

🌟 Rigo's Key Mentors & Influences:

• Grandfather: Fish taco pioneer, origin of family legacy.

• Oldest Sister: Raised Rigo, taught discipline and negotiation, pulled him back into restaurants.

• Family Team: Supported independence and Raw Kitchen launch.

• Marketing Manager Joaquin Gallegos: Helped create menu presentation overnight.

• Rancho Cucamonga Chamber of Commerce: Supported local business growth and community connections.

👉 Don't miss this conversation about grandfather's bicycle fish taco legacy, making up restaurant concept on spot to get landlord yes, and learning customers vote with dollars not your elevated gourmet dreams—adapt or waste years fighting demand.

🔗 Connect with Rigo Espinoza:

Website: rawkitchencantina.com Company: Raw Kitchen and Cantina Location: Rancho Cucamonga, California

📄 Transcript Available: From Grandfather's Fish Taco Bicycle to COVID Fusion Restaurant Launch

📺 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

🎙️ From 16-Year Side Hustle to Full-Time Business Broker: Kristi May’s All-In Moment

Kristi May, owner of J&E Business Group in Pennsylvania, spent 16 years building a consulting practice alongside corporate roles — including COO of a multi-state real estate firm — before a cross-country move and a midlife marriage gave her the reset she needed to go all in. Today she helps service-based entrepreneurs buy, grow, and sell their businesses, with clients regularly exiting at 3X profit and seeing 40%+ revenue growth under her guidance.

✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:

• 16 years of parallel-track consulting before going full time

• COO role at multi-state real estate brokerage during and after COVID

• Acquiring J&E Business Group in 2025 with 10+ collaborating associates

• Buyer representation launched in 2025 amid surge in acquisition interest

• Financials-first consulting approach: numbers reveal the full business picture

• SBA loans, earn-outs, and hard money lending as acquisition pathways

• Transfer readiness: why sellers fail before a buyer ever shows up

• Two-book red flag: when to walk away from a listing

• Baby boomer retirement wave meeting AI-driven buyer demand

• Personal breaking point that taught her never to quit on herself

🌟 Kristi’s Key Mentors:

• Jean Cruz (Former Controller): First collaboration that launched her into the COO role

• J&E Business Group Founders: Recognized her background and invited her to acquire the firm

• Her Husband: Steady encouragement and support through the leap into full business ownership

• Her Faith: Core source of strength during her most difficult personal season

• Her 10+ Associates: Collaborative team that stayed through the ownership transition

👉 Don’t miss this honest conversation about integrity in business brokerage, what sellers get wrong before a buyer arrives, and why Kristi believes the current market is the perfect storm for business transfers.

🔗 Connect with Kristi May:

Website: jebusinessgroup.com

Email: [email protected]

📎 Transcript Available: The Perfect Storm: Why Now Is the Time to Sell Your Business (and How to Do It Right)

📺 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 Aviation Operations to Small Business Diagnostician: Kristopher Hart's Journey at Cogent Analytics

Kristopher Hart, senior business analyst at Cogent Analytics, shares his journey from growing up with nothing in Pasadena, Texas, through a decade managing private, military, and celebrity flight operations at Universal Weather and Aviation, to building a spirits company and a whiskey festival from scratch alongside his wife after falling in love with scotch to impress a skeptical future father-in-law, selling both businesses on the cusp of COVID, and joining Cogent Analytics to spend the past four years diagnosing and saving small businesses across the country. Through candid stories about a 22-year-old who inherited his dying father's construction company, a 49-year-old printing firm that was two months from closing before their turnaround, and an electrical contractor who went from 3 percent net profit to 28 percent, Kristopher reveals why the real problem in most small businesses is not incompetence but a business owner who does not know what they do not know.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Built Texas’s largest whiskey festival, launched an ESPN spirits radio show, and bottled whiskey for celebrities before selling both companies just before COVID.

• Cogent Analytics focuses on small and mid‑sized businesses, which make up 99.99% of U.S. companies but are often ignored by big consulting firms.

• The “profit platform” method diagnoses businesses through four pillars: people, process, marketing/sales, and measurement—each interconnected.

• Discovery is intentionally confrontational, since the biggest obstacle in most small businesses is often the owner’s mindset.

• Owners consistently underprice services, leaving staff underpaid and themselves exhausted.

• Labor waste can be massive—one garbage company lost $1M annually to unchecked overtime.

• Cogent stays involved for 12 months post‑project to ensure changes stick and profits are measurable.

• “Control the controllables” became the COVID mantra: diversify, build proactive sales teams, and reduce risky customer concentration.

• A 22‑year‑old client nearly lost everything after family tragedy but was saved by Cogent’s intervention—one of Kristopher’s most memorable cases.

• Kristopher has never lost a client engagement; his projects average 80%+ net profit improvement, making him Cogent’s youngest senior executive analyst at 38.

🌟 Kristopher's Key Mentors:

• His Wife: Partner for 20 years, four kids, guided their joint decision to sell businesses for family first.

• Pentecostal Grandfather: Taught him to know one thing deeply and something about everything else.

• Rob Braiman (Cogent Founder): Military veteran who built Cogent from nothing, embodying grit and bootstrap ethos.

• Future Father‑in‑Law: Whiskey lover who inspired Kristopher’s decade in the spirits industry.

• Ryan Holiday: Stoic philosophy shaped his belief in ownership over victimhood.

👉 Don't miss this conversation about why most small business owners are the biggest obstacle to their own company's success, what really happens in a two-day business discovery that makes grown adults cry, and how a garbage company was losing a million dollars a year to smoking cigarettes.

🔗 Connect with Kristopher Hart:

Company: Cogent Analytics 

Website: cogentanalytics.com

📄 Transcript Available: Kristopher Hart on Why Most Business Owners Are Working Harder Than Anyone and Still Not Getting Paid for It

📺 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

🎙️ From Night Auditor to Hotel COO: Doug Karle's 30-Property Journey with LHR Hospitality

Doug Karle, COO and partner at LHR Hospitality Management, spent two decades turning complicated, underperforming hotels into market leaders across the Midwest. From his accidental start as a night auditor after the Army to managing a portfolio of branded and independent properties worth over $350 million, Doug shares the operational instincts, leadership lessons, and personal reckoning with a rare genetic cancer syndrome that shaped the way he runs his business and his life.

✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:

• Starting as a night auditor and van driver after the Army and never looking back

• The best advice his business partner ever gave him: you're not as important as you think you are

• Taking over a North Dakota hotel during the Bakken oil boom with no labor and rates set too low

• Raising room rates $10 at a time until the staff started raising them on their own

• Why bad hiring runs feel like a streak and how fear and desire make them worse

• Building culture as the only reliable retention tool in labor-scarce markets

• Technology and guest experience: why Hilton's phone key freed staff to actually serve guests

• Eight strokes in July 2014 that led to a VHL diagnosis shared with his son

• Becoming president of the National VHL Alliance and lobbying Congress for NIH funding

• Why calmness in complex situations is his most important leadership trait today

🌟 Doug's Key Mentors:

• JD Detveller (High School Teacher and Coach): First mentor who showed Doug that someone could have an impact on everyone around them

• Sergeant Bill McCutcheon (Army): Was harder on Doug than anyone else in the squad because he saw something in him; taught fortitude without apology

• Ken Golder (Hospitality Leader): Assigned books like Seven Habits, focused entirely on leadership development and people

• Jerry Troian (Real Estate Developer): Taught Doug the fundamentals of business in simple, relentless terms; the Dread Pirate Robert of mentors

• Doug Roady (Business Partner): Brought together the people side and the business side; taught Doug to step back and work on the business, not in it

👉 Don't miss this conversation about what three decades in hospitality, a rare cancer diagnosis, and a good business partner can teach you about staying calm when everything is on fire.

🔗 Connect with Doug Karle:

Email: [email protected]

📄 Transcript Available: Doug Karle's LHR Hospitality Journey: From Army Leadership to Managing 20 Properties

📺 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