It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast

Susan Barry, President & Queen Bee, Hive Marketing, interviewed by Lan Elliott

• David Kong

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An entrepreneur by nature, Susan delves into how she approaches risk and why her tolerance for risk is getting higher.  She shares the story of how she became an expert networker at a young age, and how she creates real connections.  Susan explains why problem solving is key to distinguishing oneself, and why we can’t outperform our way to equity.

Lan Elliott:

Hello and welcome to DEI Advisors. My name is Lan Elliott on behalf of DEI Advisors. And today I am really happy to have Susan Barry on the show. She's the President and Queen Bee of Hive Marketing. I think that's the best title ever. And she is also the podcast host of Top Floor, one of my favorite shows. favorite, most humorous hospitality podcast. So welcome Susan.

Susan Barry:

Oh, it's such a thrill to be here. I've been following the progress and success of DEI advisors since your launch. So I'm pretty honored to get to be a guest today.

Lan Elliott:

I don't know what took so long, but I'm glad you're here now.

Susan Barry:

Me too.

Lan Elliott:

So I know actually from your podcast a little bit about your journey, but I'm really curious about some of the inflection points in your journey and how you got to where you are. I know your story is fascinating and I wonder if you could share some of the key turning points in your career.

Susan Barry:

Absolutely. I think there's probably four, maybe five. But my story in a quick nutshell is that I was a hotel director of sales and marketing for 10 years for Starwood in Denver, Colorado, Washington, D. C. And then here in Atlanta, Georgia, where I still live. And most of what I did was open new build hotels, but that was at the second half of the career. And I started doing that. As a result of, or in tandem with the first inflection point, which was moving from Denver to Washington, DC, I was single, I didn't own a house and my hotel got sold that was in the sort of asset light days, and we were owned and managed by Starwood. So the idea that real estate could get sold and a transaction would threaten your job was like, not common at that point. In the olden times. And so because that happened, the company gave me the opportunity to apply for, all the DOSM openings. And I got a position opening a new build Weston in the DC market. I had moved from Florida to Denver, but with someone. And so when I moved from Denver to DC. It was all by myself with my two cats and like my scraggly furniture and all this stuff. And I think I was 28 or 29. I know people do that, but it feels like when I look back at that, the fact that I did that all by myself is I'm sorry, excuse me, what? How is that possible? So that was the first one. That project was probably the best thing that I ever did in my on property hotel career, and I absolutely loved it. I went from that to opening another hotel, a W here in Atlanta. That move I did not undertake alone, so it was not as exciting. And then got that hotel opened and realized that it was very much time for me to make a change. so much. And so in the spring of 2009, I left Starwood to start my company, Hive Marketing. At the time I remember thinking like it was at the time of the sort of great financial crisis. And I remember thinking that people were doing all these weird startups and like people were getting laid off and crazy things were happening. So I was like, Maybe nobody will hold it against me. If this business fails, they'll understand that this was what was happening at this time. So now's the right time to do this. I better go ahead and do it now. So thank goodness, 15 years later, the business did not fail and we're still alive and I have a house and all that good stuff. But, having this sort of, I don't know Rug swept out from under us in terms of the greater economic climate was the inflection point that let me start my company. And then I've pivoted a multiple times over the years we've done all kinds of different things, but I made a very conscious decision to change the business model and change the focus of the business in 2019. So 10 years in, I was like, finally, maybe I should figure out what the heck I'm doing. And I knew that I needed to do something to give me a fresh mental perspective or like fresh set of ideas, something new. And I decided to go to the Castell project. This was in the early days. So I think I was the second cohort. It was before they were split and to build and elevate. And Castell wasn't necessarily a perfect fit for an entrepreneur. That's a lot of people who were working within organizations, but it gave me the opportunity to stop and think and concentrate and focus on my Self, my personal development, my career development and my company, which is exactly what I needed at that time. So that was the third one. You didn't know I was going to have 75 inflection points. Did you land? But the last one is my most favorite, which is starting top floor. Which I did with my partner in that show, Jonathan Albano and some other folks who are no longer working on it in September of two thousand twenty one. So we're almost to our third. It's the absolute love of my life. And had I known when I was young, that such a thing would exist in the future, I would have been doing this for a lot longer.

Lan Elliott:

I love that. And I love their, the independent streak that runs through each of your inflection points, and moving across. the country by yourself. That's a daunting thing, whether you're fresh out of school or you've been working for a little bit of time. And I know there's a little bit of an entrepreneurial streak as well. A huge one, right? I know you love being in charge. But all the things that you've done, a lot of them were about taking risks. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about that because you're someone that has taken a number of risks in your career. And sometimes that might be, for example, when you were at Hive, you had a business that was thriving and you said, I want to change it. I want to do stuff. blow it up and do something different or take it in a new direction. You could have kept going and that would have been the safe route. But I love that you take risks when you feel like there needs to be a pivot. And I'm curious if you could share a little bit of about how you think about taking risks. How do you approach that?

Susan Barry:

There's a few different components. I think a big one is doing things scared, like knowing that you're never going to be 100 percent ready. You're never going to have every tool that you need. And sometimes you just have to, build the parachute on the way out of the plane. I don't know if that's the right metaphor. But it's interesting because my Tolerance for risk and uncertainty gets greater and greater. My tolerance is getting higher and higher the older I get. And I think that's probably countercultural. I think that's different than what most people experience as they age. But I think it's because I've experienced so many risks working out that I'm like, what could go wrong? It's fine. Everything will work out and you know what it normally does. I don't know if it's wisdom or over confidence or just straight up hubris, but I get more and more tolerant as every moment passes.

Lan Elliott:

Yeah, I do think that over time, as you get more experience, as you have more contacts and a bigger network to lean on, the risks are maybe not as risky, even though it's a new path, you've really got more resources around you. And you talked about the recession pulling the rug out from under you. And I think if you're in the hospitality industry long enough, you are going to hit a downturn. Maybe not as big as the pandemic every time, but you're going to hit a downturn and that need to be flexible and to adjust. And I love the analogy of building the parachute as you're jumping out of the plane, because sometimes things aren't perfect. And even if you took the time to plan every single thing, life has a way of giving you left turns. I think just that feeling of, okay, I'm going to step off the ledge. I'm going to jump out of the plane. And if it doesn't work, I can adjust on the way down. And I think it makes sense that as you gain more experience and you know how to do more things from the past, and you have more people you can reach out to for help. I do think that I could see how what I could see how you would think that your tolerance for risk is higher, but I think the tools you have to recover if things don't go right are also higher.

Susan Barry:

Yeah, absolutely true. Practice makes perfect. Practice putting your entire income and financial security on the line enough times and you'll get great at it.

Lan Elliott:

I do think there is that moment of just learning to step into the abyss, right? And take that chance.

Susan Barry:

A hundred percent.

Lan Elliott:

There's a part of that because with great risk can come, great reward, and if it doesn't work out, adjust, go back, go backwards, do something different. A

Susan Barry:

hundred percent.

Lan Elliott:

We had mentioned network, and this is something that you do really well. You have a tremendous network. How do you. Build your network because for people, just the words networking, I think for a lot of people, you envision walking into that cocktail party at the industry conference where you don't know anybody and it's a very scary thing, but you always have a smile on your face. How do you build your network in a way that works for your personality?

Susan Barry:

I la. I hate to say it like this because I don't want people listening to think Oh I'm not that. So I'm as well, but I am such a natural born extrovert and a hardcore Southerner who was taught that you have to speak to everyone that you meet and that you have to introduce people to each other all the time. That was such a core component of my upbringing that I don't know how to separate Sort of the skill of networking, if that makes sense, I will tell you that I think this again has to do with like the wisdom or experience of getting older and progressing in your career, but the less separate. That my business and real personas are the more genuine and fun and real connections that I make. And I think there, it's like this comfort with discomfort in that you have to be willing to accept that you're not for everyone. And then you feel like more comfortable in bringing who you really are to the mix. Does that make sense? Yeah, I love

Lan Elliott:

that idea of authenticity, right? When you can finally just be who you are. It is such a weight to take off whatever mask or persona you've been wearing because you thought that's what other people want.

Susan Barry:

And I think people can perceive it when there is a disconnect between the Who you are and who you are at work or at an event or a conference or whatever the case may be. Whether, someone could articulate that or not, I think there's always this sense of something's a little bit off here,

Lan Elliott:

so I think being willing to be yourself, I love the piece of accepting that not everyone is going to be a perfect fit for you. I'm also curious since you're an extrovert and you have this drive to talk to everybody. What do you do when you go up and you start talking to someone and you run into an introvert? Do you have any tips or tricks for trying to connect with people?

Susan Barry:

Okay, so the first and most important thing, and this is not my insight, I learned this over the years, is that there is a difference between an introvert and a shy person. So an extrovert is someone who gets energy from people. communicating with other people. An introvert is somebody who loses energy in that exchange. So, an introvert has to protect her own energy. Like I can't do anything about that. A shy person on the other hand, I think I'm pretty good. with shy people. I'm married to a shy person. And I think because it's hard to explain this, but like I, I grew up in a family where my parents entertained a lot and had lots of parties and my sister and I had the assignment of Obviously picking up dirty plates and stuff like that, but also of looking around and identifying if there was someone who didn't have someone to talk to that we, our job was to talk to them or to introduce them to someone or to draw them into a conversation. And so be, the 000 hours, I have 10, 000 hours of experience in. Make, trying at least to give the feeling of you can sit with us. You are welcome here. And I think that helps that sound. I feel like that sounds a little self aggrandizing. It's not all credit goes to my parents for that, for forcing us to do

Lan Elliott:

it. What a great skill to have your children learn to do and how lovely and kind for your guests, right? But what a skill that is to develop early on. And I know, especially with kids, sometimes it's hard to talk to grownups. And so you probably had one of those harder tasks to do. It was

Susan Barry:

maybe hard to talk to grownups, but it was much harder to get in trouble with our grownups. So if we were faced with a choice between getting in trouble with our parents or doing something hard, Oh honey, we will be doing something hard every single time.

Lan Elliott:

I love that. Yes. Let's move over to support systems. One of the things we've talked about on our show is the importance of having a personal board of director that acts as your personal support system. Do you have one of those? And if you do, how do you choose who's going to be on your board of director? What do you go to them for?

Susan Barry:

I've had so many different boards of directors over my career path and lifetime, but I think I finally hit on a good. Set of rules for it over the pandemic. So during that time, I and a group of other women got together and created some free webinar content for different professional associations around things that they could be doing in sales, marketing, revenue, strategy, commercial, all that stuff. And. Through that process, all were like, Hey, we should be hanging out more. But of course we couldn't hang out because it was a pandemic, but also because we lived in different states and in different countries in one example. And so we put together a monthly sort of mastermind of. Five women, all of whom owned our own businesses in hospitality. We were all founders and entrepreneurs in, but we weren't competitors. We all had complimentary businesses. And we met once a month and it was like, Absolutely magical. It was such a great experience. None of us were good friends except for a couple. We just all knew each other through doing these webinars, but it turned out to be a wonderful sounding board. Great advice. We made great friendships, great relationships. And then now that concept is almost accomplished. is very similar to what we do at Female Founders in Hospitality, which is an organization founded by Nina Cleveland with the idea that it would be small groups of women supporting each other in the journey of founding travel and hospitality companies. So it's a very similar. I think what I found, I mentioned earlier this thing about When I attended Castell, it was really mostly designed for women who worked within organizations rather than entrepreneurs. And what I found is that I like having other entrepreneurs, founders, business owners to talk to because our, Needs are very different, but also our approaches are very different like that. Oh, yeah, sure. I'll risk my entire retirement to do a B. C. project. No problem that you would never see that from somebody who's like an S. V. P. in a corporate. environment, right? That just is not how that works. So that's probably one of my, one of the things I look for the most are people who are entrepreneurial and founder.

Lan Elliott:

And Nina has been on our show and is wonderful. She's just one of those people, when you meet people, you just click with them. Yes. One of those wonderful human beings. I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you. And I love the idea of it could be an informal group, but it could also be a more formal group, right? Yes. That has set up and there are cohorts of women that in their cohort get together and talk and share the things that they're going through which are, which is really interesting.

Susan Barry:

Yes, absolutely. On the informal side, obviously my mom and my sister are my number one board of directors. They have, they're a lot like more easygoing and nice than I am. So they're really good for me to balance things off of because they're nicer, but they are always on my side. So they help me to be nice. It's great.

Lan Elliott:

Do they help you when you are. But what do you go to them for? Like when you need a boost or do you, or when you need encouragement to do something difficult or where you feel like, am I doing the right thing?

Susan Barry:

Difficult conversations. Help me figure out how to handle this confrontation I have to have or this. difficult conversation that I have to have, or like role play it with me or talk me through it. Or what do you think this person means when they're saying this, that kind of stuff, like very much the soft side of business relationships.

Lan Elliott:

I like that you talked about at the very beginning that your board of directors has changed over time. So it's not like you need to find your four people that are going to be perfect for you for four years. Like people can come in and out over time. But also it doesn't have to be just people in the industry. It could be people who know you well and that you choose different people to go to for different things. And everyone brings a different strength to help you.

Susan Barry:

That's interesting that you brought that up. It made me think of something I've been wondering about for a while, which is, do you, are people mostly friends with people in their same industries or are they mostly socially social friends with people who aren't like my, most of my social friends and local people that we hang out with and have dinner parties and stuff are not in our industry. But when I grew up, my parents friends were. All in their same industry. I don't know. It's a curious question.

Lan Elliott:

It is interesting. I think it depends over time. We have, my husband's in the industry as well. So it makes it easy to have a lot of friends that are in the industry, but it's also fun. There was a time when he was at Marriott and I was at host and all our friends were pretty much in the industry. And I met a good friend that worked at the Pentagon here in DC. And it was just very cool to know someone in a different aspect of life.

Susan Barry:

Totally.

Lan Elliott:

That can be really fun as well. Yeah,

Susan Barry:

a hundred percent. I agree. And is that person still on your board of directors?

Lan Elliott:

She is. Giving security

Susan Barry:

advice.

Lan Elliott:

She is now actually the mayor of the Pentagon. So what the guard dogs at the, Pentagon. They, through their handlers, ultimately report up to her. She runs the Pentagon. So very different than our world.

Susan Barry:

That is so interesting. Lan, I'm about to turn this conversation into me interviewing you about your Pentagon friends. Tell me to shut up.

Lan Elliott:

I'll just bring you to dinner with her. Okay, fantastic. I

Susan Barry:

wanted

Lan Elliott:

to talk about advocating for ourselves because there's a common generalization that women don't do a really good job and it could be other people. It's not just women. It could be people from underrepresented groups or it could be men who are shy. And I find it's very easy for me to speak up on the bad on behalf of my team or my company, but for myself, it's a very different feeling about how do you speak up? So I'm curious how do you navigate that? And what advice would you have for people who are struggling to find their voice? Because you always have your voice, I feel like.

Susan Barry:

Oh, I don't know if that's true, but I'm gonna, my answer comes from Something that I think I have intuited for a long time, but got hard data around from Emily Epstein at Castel. She teaches negotiation and, She talks about that the reason that women have this reputation that they're bad at like self advocacy or bad at negotiation is that women are punished when they advocate for themselves and when they negotiate. They're treated differently than men are when they do it. So it's not that women don't do it. It's that we know that the reaction is going to be different because we're seen as not being collaborative or not being accommodating or not being feminine when we defy the expectations that we're just going to roll over and take something right so we get more pushback when we try. I think, this is. horrible or horribly disappointing advice, but the best way is to practice and do it scared. That's Oh, easy for you to say, but it's true. We've talked, I think a running theme in our conversation today has been this idea that the more times you do something, the greater tolerance you have for the fear of it or the risk of it. And I think that same is absolutely true here. I feel like younger women than us don't have the same problem that we have. And it's because they are moving from a perspective of of course, I'm going to negotiate. Of course, I'm going to advocate for myself. And it's a self fulfilling prophecy. They're getting less pushback. The other piece though, is that when we are leaders, and when I say pushback, I don't just mean like from white guys, right? Everyone pushes back because we're all raised in this same culture of gender roles and expectations for how women behave versus how men behave and all that stuff. So if we are in leadership positions as women, we have to make sure that we don't do to other women what That pisses us off when men do it to us. If we are like, wow, she really thinks she's worth a lot of money because she's negotiating. That's the same problem. And so we have to hold ourselves to account as well.

Lan Elliott:

Yeah. I think it's true. I think we all get raised with certain norms, right? That women should be nice. They should be collaborative. They should be nurturing. Not every woman is just like you could put any kind of stereotypes on any kind of person. Not everybody is. But I do think you're right that when we get raised with these ideas of how people should be when they're not that way. There is this pushback or a backlash because you're not conforming to what is normal in people's ideas of what should be happening.

Susan Barry:

It's totally true. And the sad thing is it doesn't just deny women like equal pay, although that's a huge problem, but it denies everyone the full range of humanity. Because if we say that women are nurturers. or women are collaborative, then being nurturing and collaborative as a man Is not allowed. I am not nurturing. I'm all a lot of things, but I'm not nurturing, right?

Lan Elliott:

I'm like, I'm still

Susan Barry:

a woman,

Lan Elliott:

yeah. I read a book that was really interesting and they said, if you want to see how gender norms are handled in a company, one great test is to look at what is the view of people taking paternity leave. And that if you want to see the women feeling comfortable taking maternity leave and that it's not going to impact their careers, look, if the men are actually taking paternity leave,

Susan Barry:

wow. That is, they're

Lan Elliott:

talking about a gender norm. And if they're taking the paternity leave and that's accepted, it's gonna be okay for the women to do it as well. But it's all that idea of what's what would you think of as normal? Not that it's normal or not normal, but we just have these ideas that. are ingrained in us. It's not bad or good. It's just what we're used to. And so being able to break through that, I think, as part of just seeing people differently and seeing things different.

Susan Barry:

Definitely.

Lan Elliott:

Let's move on to distinguishing oneself because I am curious, what is a quality or skill that you think someone needs to distinguish themselves in advance in their career? Or their business if they're an entrepreneur.

Susan Barry:

Problem solving. 100%. The easiest answer I've ever given to any question. Problem solving. The ability to figure something out. The willingness to figure something out and not just sit back and wait for someone to hold your hand and walk you through it. Looking up the answer before you ask, searching your own files before you request a resend of something like all of those things boil down to willingness and ability to problem solve. Number one, most important quality. I think in the history of time,

Lan Elliott:

the end. And also in line with what we've been talking about is to be independent, to try and figure things out for yourself first. Google or is there something you can look it up on the internet or has someone told you how to do that already once before, right? Take notes so that you don't have to ask the same thing twice.

Susan Barry:

Yes. And there's a deeper piece of it, which is a sort of, Intellectual curiosity or like desire to learn that, stands in for a growth mindset. If you are not willing to try to figure something out yourself, then you are going to be a stick in the mud and waiting for somebody to push you along and make things happen for you versus making it happen for yourself.

Lan Elliott:

That's part of being self motivated, right? And the intellectual curiosity just to let me see if I can figure it out myself. I love that. Also explains why you're an entrepreneur.

Susan Barry:

It also explains why I have the podcast that I have because I talk to somebody new every week and it's so interesting to me. If no one ever listened to a word we said, I would still do it because I am so curious about all of these different aspects of the industry. I think it's interesting.

Lan Elliott:

I think that's really true. If you had told me three years ago that I'd be doing a podcast and interviewing people, I would have said you were crazy, but I learned so much from all of these interviews and people's stories and I love it.

Susan Barry:

Me too. A hundred percent.

Lan Elliott:

I think there is no shortage of inspiring people in our industry to interview.

Susan Barry:

I agree.

Lan Elliott:

We're coming towards the end of our interview. So I have two questions for you. to round us out. The first one is what advice would you give to your younger self to 22 year old Susan starting out in her career?

Susan Barry:

It's two things, but they're related. The first is that there is no career advantage or promotion or career path or even dollar amount that is worth sacrificing your mental and physical health for. We all do it, especially in the hotel business. And I think we all regret it. I don't know. None of the, I could have had the same career I had and killed myself less, if that makes sense. I think relatedly, Being cognizant of the idea, and I think this is probably a problem that ended with Generation X and it's not happening to Millennials and Gen Z so much, but companies are never going to be loyal to you as an individual, so do not waste your loyalty on a company. Be loyal to your personal board of directors, to your friends, to your partner, to yourself, but do not be loyal to a company.

Lan Elliott:

Interesting advice. I think I could have used some of that advice earlier in my career.

Susan Barry:

Me too. That's why I'm giving it to myself now. Hopefully there's another timeline where I'm just coming along and I'll follow that advice.

Lan Elliott:

Yeah. And I also think walking that fine line of being a hard worker, but not killing yourself and making your whole entire life about work. Cause there's definitely moments, especially early in your career where that happens before you discover any kind of balance. If you ever do,

Susan Barry:

well, and listen, I love working. I really love working and I will work a thousand more hours before the week is over, but there's, I think a difference between working hard and tormenting yourself and not doing. Things like having friends for a few years while you're opening a hotel or you know what I mean? Like I think you can there are Many ways to skin a cat what a gross analogy And you can do it the easy way or you can do it the hard way. I think sometimes High achievers taught themselves into doing things the hard way I did, at least

Lan Elliott:

I'm there with you, and I do think balance and taking a break and stepping away can make you more effective in the end

Susan Barry:

1000%.

Lan Elliott:

All right. Last question for you, Susan. You have actually shared so much great advice. Do you have one last nugget for our audience that you would offer who are looking to advance their careers?

Susan Barry:

I do, and I'm going to do my best to articulate it. I don't know, I'm speaking to an audience of women, black people, other people of color, other people of disadvantage in some way. I don't believe that we have personal solutions to the collective problems that face these groups of people. You have to be. Personally, excellent. You have to hold yourself to high standards and, be intellectually curious and all the things that we've talked about. That's the price of admission for anyone who is ambitious in their career. But we can't outperform our way to equity. I can't be so good that sexism goes away. Black people can't be so good that racism goes away. My advice would be. That we have to be working in organizations, whether they're formal, like female founders in hospitality or black women in hospitality, or there's a zillion different organizations or informal, like the monthly mastermind that we talked about, personal board of directors, all of those kinds of things there, you ha you cannot operate in a vacuum and hope that you are going to be able Skip the line and close the door behind you. Collective solutions to collective problems are the only way we can make change.

Lan Elliott:

It's beautiful. Thank you so much, Susan. That is a wonderful way to end. So appreciate your being on and sharing your wisdom. And for our audience, if you'd like to see other great interviews, I hope you'll go to our website, DEIadvisors. org. Thank you. And thank you, Susan.

Susan Barry:

Thank you so much for having me. Wonderful to have you

Lan Elliott:

on.