We were lucky to catch up with Samantha Irwin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Samantha, thanks for joining us today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

In 2006 we bought a 21 room 3-story brick hotel that was built in 1907. It hadn’t been opened consistently for guests since the 1940’s. The (then) current owners had purchased the hotel as a passion project, jumping into physical restoration, adding a few en-suite bathrooms, repointing the brick, roofing, and also getting the hotel on the National Historic Register.

Over the years the then owners, Howard and Pat Green, had gathered antique furniture here and there, sometimes stripping and refinishing pieces before adding them to the rooms.

When we purchase the hotel all the furniture had been auctioned off. There was not a stitch of furniture remaining, just some “Gone with the Wind” moment draperies in the lobby.

The building needed more cosmetic refurbishing like plaster repair, stripping original woodwork of the brown paint (LOADS of stripping!), and re-glazing original windows – taking care not to break the 100 year old glass.

There was also an acre of grounds that needed landscaping.

No furniture
Grounds need landscaping
Not open consistently since the 1940’s
Location was in a town, population 600ish

After 11 months of restoration work, landscaping, and furnishing we opened hosting our first visitors, quickly followed by our first wedding!

Regards to hiring, many business owners are having trouble hiring people right now. How about hiring the right fit people when your pool consists of 600 people? The nearest town was a 15 minute drive so I was able to pull from there as well. However, the majority of my staff were from the small town.

When I started hiring when first owning the hotel it looked much different than a few years down the road.

I learned very quickly that the importance was on hiring personality and training skill – ESPECIALLY when hiring for customer facing staff members.

My hiring process evolved from a place of being desperate, to being desirable. That’s the goal! Creating a workplace where EVERYONE felt valued and appreciated was pivotal to increasing staff retention. That staff retention heavily influenced customer retention and freed up my time to work on other business building items.

Now I teach and train front line customer facing staff in hospitality and retail to understand how valuable and equip them with the skills to consistently deliver excellent customer service experiences.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Leaders hire me or use the tools and resources to equip and train their front line customer staff to deliver consistently excellent customer service experiences.

When speaking or running workshops the goal is to empower front line staff. Oft these roles are seen as “transitional jobs”, not holding a lot of importance in the eyes of staff, customers, and many times, sadly, the business owner.

This thinking is 100% wrong. These people have GREAT power and influence. Many just do not know HOW important to business growth they are.

When staff realize the impact they have, through training like the Power of People Academy, a hospitality bootcamp, they perform, they step into creating excellent customer service experiences which increase the businesses profitability. When staff understand their value not only does employee retention skyrocket but so also does customer retention and profits!

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Oh goodness are there!?

One of the first books that became an annual staff read is Hug Your Customers by Jack Mitchell. I bought up scads of used books and had them in our library for our team. This book gave us incredible inspiration and understanding about the importance of serving your customer our customers extremely well.

There were some things the business owner did in that book that I would have said, “no thank you”, however, there are many, many things that the business owner and staff did to exceed customer expectations and grow a robust, successful business.

Reading about how this business served their customers made me want to get on a flight across the country and go be their customer!

This book (and some other training) became required reading for all of our staff. The first time we had the all staff “book club” I realized how inspired my team was. We’d agreed on coming together having read, say, chapters 1-5. When we met the conversation was hoppin’. They didn’t stop reading at the assign chapters. A couple staff said they just couldn’t put down!

The requirement for our staff read was twofold:

1) I provided the book.

2) They had to write in it.

Year after year staff would add new notes as they read and paused to read past notes from years prior.

Any advice for managing a team?

Value people for who they are, uplift them, equip them, and find out about the ways they feel appreciated. Leadership is supporting staff to deliver excellent customer service experiences over and over and over.

It’s also important to have regularly scheduled team meetings, individual check ins, training, and celebrations.

High performing people need these things to stay motivated.

Customer service is challenging on a good day. For leaders to increase staff and customer retention abdication is not an effective strategy. People thrive when given opportunities to learn and grow, when high expectations are set and support is put in place to help people achieve.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.Kaizen.Zone
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samantha_kaizen/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KaizenSmallBusinessSolutions
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthairwin/

Image Credits
Vince Ready Lasting Light Photo