341 - From Dishwasher to Hospitality Leader: An Inspiring Journey of Growth with Remington Hospitality's Jason Reader

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Jason Rita, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the Chief Operating Officer of Remington Hospitality, which is based out of Dallas, and it's one of the largest hotel hospitality management firms in the world. But you didn't start that way.

Not even close.

You started as a dishwasher at a tiny little podunk cafe somewhere in Pennsylvania?

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania at a Perkins Restaurant. First of all, it's great to be on, Doug. Thanks for having me. And I will tell you, I wasn't even that good of a dishwasher. So, I think I was that C-minus average. I did enough to not get fired, but I wasn't showing off either. I was like, down the middle.

How do you show up as a dishwasher?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can tell you I didn't for a while. Although I can tell you I can remember the day when I stopped washing dishes. It was a busy Saturday night, and this Perkins had, believe it or not, had two lines going. So it had an A side and B side. So A side is all that you opened up during a regular volume, but You open up the second kitchen when it was busy. And we had, I think, 3 call-offs in the kitchen that day.

What are those?

Normal staffing levels would've been 8 to 9 cooks between those 2 kitchens. And so we had 4 or 5 between the 2, which really means you can't really open a second kitchen. You can with 1 person, but so, yeah, not enough room. So I remember hearing that there was a guy who was the wheel cook and the wheel cook's the guy that calls out the orders when the tickets come in and runs the kitchen from behind. At least in restaurants like this, executive chefs would be that person in a more fancier place. And I remember I hear the reader fryer and I'm like, what? I mean, I'll try to basically, here was the exact quote. I hope this is family friendly, but he basically said, get your ass on the fryer. And I was like, I don't know how to cook. He said, shut up and get over here. Maybe a couple other words in between.

Right, right. Pretty rough.

So I come over to the fryer. He goes, look, this is really easy. He goes, here's all you do. You put the stuff into the basket, you drop it in the oil. You see those little buttons up there? If it's chicken tenders, you push chicken tenders. If it's fries, you push fries. When it beeps, you pull it up, you shake out the grease, you put it in the basket. Think you can handle that? I'm like, yes sir. And then anyway, so I could tell you that was the— my last day of being a full-time dishwasher. I certainly still wash dishes when— because guess what, dishwashers call off too, right? But I From there on, I was a cook and started at the fryer and worked my way all around the kitchen. Wow.

And then how did you, how did you, how did you get into the bigger hospitality business of running hotels?

So this isn't even a lot. It's, they say that, uh, you can't, fiction isn't as good as the truth, right? So this is the real story. So I'll skip the details cuz the story could get too long. We'll run outta time. But basically I had worked my way up to GM of this restaurant. And it took about a year and a half, 2 years to do. So I went from being the dishwasher to the GM. So I'm the GM and we, this hotel in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, right? This is summertime. That's their tourist season. Battlefield. If you're into the history and that stuff. I remember we were surrounded by 3 hotels in our parking lot. And the GM of one of these hotels came into me and asked to meet with me and said, I've got great news for you. I was like, great, what is it? They're like, we just signed a contract for a group called Elder Hostel. I was like, okay, what's Elder Hostel? It's for people 55 years and over that basically it's like a package. So if you liked history and you wanted to learn more about the Civil War, you would pay this one price and it would include your hotel stays for the week, 3 meals for the week. You tour the battlefield, learn about the Civil War. You get the idea, right? It's all one price.

Transportation, busing, everything, right?

Yeah, everything's included. And we've— this is 50 people, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. And we would love to do breakfast here at Perkins. Being the young, probably a little bit cocky Perkins general manager that I was, I said, that's great. What about lunch and dinner? And Doug, I'm telling you, if you could see the face of this GM, almost appalled that I would even ask such a question. And the words came out like this: No offense, but we're not going to serve them Perkins food for lunch and dinner. We're going to serve them a really nice meal in our ballroom, in our meeting space. He goes, and by the way, we're going to have that catered by one of the nicest restaurants. We're doing an RFP. We're not serving Perkins food. So what do I say? I say, we don't have to serve Perkins food. What are you talking about? By the way, I have no permission to do this. I'm just going on a limb here, right? I said, I said, we have a kitchen, we have food, we can— we don't have to serve Perkins food. It would make the most sense for us to do it. We're right beside you. We have a kitchen. We can get some hot boxes. We could cook it and wheel it right over. We go back and forth for 20 minutes. Finally, the GM agrees that I can at least participate in the RFP. So now here's the problem. I'm a dishwasher who turned cook, who turned GM. I'm not a chef. I don't know how to create menus. I went to the— I had a friend who I used to go out drinking with who was the server at the nicest restaurant in town at the time. It's called the Dobbins House, if for those of you guys who are Pennsylvania. So I go to him and I explain my conundrum. I had 2 weeks, by the way, before the— before we had to do the— yeah. And I say, hey, listen, I can't afford your chef. I can't even afford your sous chef. But do you have an aspiring line cook? And I gave him, you know, what I just told you. Here's my situation. He goes, oh, I've got just the guy. I said, he's actually working tonight. I'll bring him out. And I was like, great. I'm fully expecting a no, by the way, right? So the guy comes out and again, I'm just winging it. I said, all right, here's the deal. I explained what we need to do. So I'll pay you $5 more an hour than what you're making. I'll guarantee your job for 90 days. If we win the business, it's yours. It's your creative genius. You can create new menus and do the whole deal. If we lose the business, I pay you for 90 days. You can find another job. He's, I'm in. I'm kind of like, really? So we end up winning the business. So now I'm running a restaurant and I'm running 2 meals a day, 5 days a week in a ballroom next door. I'm doing all this. I still haven't asked permission, Doug, by the way.

I was going to say, what does the owner say?

Yeah. So my regional manager, I remember his name. His name was Mike Brady. He had red hair. I remember Mike comes in one day and goes, I think you got a mistake in your numbers. Your numbers are up like 90% year over year. I said, no, that's not a mistake. That's our numbers. He goes, what the hell are you doing? So I explain it to him. Oh, he loses it. What the hell are you doing? You can't do this. That sounds good. So after he's done yelling, I said, let me ask you a question. He goes, I said, aren't you bonused on like year over year growth? He goes, huh? He's like, you know what? You and I never had this conversation. Walked out. So I was like, all right, I guess that's okay to keep going. So anyway, so now I'm meeting weekly with the hotel GM, right? Because I'm basically like a director of catering, right? Going through menus and counts, all the stuff you do. And by the way, I'm all over this business. I knew how important it was. So I'm like, I'm in the ballrooms every day. So this goes on for a year and a half or two years.. And one of these weekly meetings with the GM, I say, because I noticed I'm walking to the hotel, like people are in suits, they smell good. I've got like a, I smell like a fat fryer. I've got like a Perkins polo shirt on. I'm like, what am I doing wrong? And I, so I say to the hotel GM, I said, I think I might want to get in the hotel business someday. This seems like a really good business to get into. And the GM says, because at this point I've known the GM, right? They go, actually, we're building a hotel. In Gettysburg. I said, I can get you an interview if you want. I'm like, that'd be great, Doug. This is the only time in my life where I went to an interview and didn't know what I was interviewing for. I borrowed my dad's suit. I'm sure I looked terrible. I walk into this to meet this guy. His name's Denny. He had curly gray hair. It was a small outfit. This is— so this company had 5 hotels. I remember they were based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I don't remember their name now, but small company. And so I come in, I sit down, and I'll forget— Denny sits back in his chair, arms crossed like this, and says, can you explain to me how your revenues have gone up 90— whatever it was, 120— whatever it was, how your revenues have gone up over the last— they asked a year and a half— how have you done this? So I tell him the story. What I didn't know was that the owner of the hotel was a partial owner in the restaurant.

Wow.

He was getting the quarterly statements that showed the growth. So he like, that's so like, I didn't know that going into it. But so I tell him the story. He sits back, he goes, you're going to be my hotel general manager. I said, hold on a second. I said, I'm working at a hotel. I said, I don't know anything about hotels. I said, all I know is restaurants. He said, relax. He says, based on the story you just told me, you're going to do really well. And by the way, we haven't even started construction yet. So you'll learn housekeeping, you'll learn the front desk. I'll hire you on now. You'll learn it. You'll do great. So, you know, it was an 83-room country and suites hotel in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. So here's what's weird about Doug. My first hotel job was a GM at that little hotel in Gettysburg. And then everything went from there. But isn't that crazy? That's how I got my start.

That's amazing. You know what it, you, there's so many lessons to be learned from all of that. What is it? Here you are now, you're CEO of this massive multibillion-dollar international company. What is it that keeps you excited about work today? Back then, I think it was just ambition, just raw ambition. I can do this. I'm gonna go places. But what, what about today?

It's so many things, right? One thing is When I look back at my career, and that's just the very beginning of it, there are so many times in my career where someone took a chance on me or believed in me when I didn't have the experience to back it up. It started with Denny. If you talk about hotel career, he hired a guy as a GM who had never worked in a hotel before. But the ability to impact culturally team members that you give them a chance to do something they've never done or have earned a promotion. What drives me more than anything, quite frankly, is helping others succeed and do more. And sometimes believing in people before they believe in themselves. And that's talking about a motivational thing. Right. And also I would tell you it's a fun business. I mean, I love to travel. Guess what this job is? You get to go travel. You get to go. And listen, I'm not minimizing. There's plenty of hard days. There's plenty of work. There's plenty of emails. I'm not trying to say I just walk around, but I will tell you that it's generally a fun, fun industry. And you get to know people and you get to do these get to bring in new hotels. And I will tell you, I genuinely love my job. And I know people say, oh yeah, you're just saying that. And I say, I love what I do. And I think it makes— I think you have to when you have a job like this that does take a lot of hours, and otherwise it would burn you out very quickly. But no, that's what— I mean, what motivates me is helping others, meeting new people, traveling, all those things all together. It's all great.

So you guys— Remington is the management company. I take it that what the property owner will bring you in to manage the property?

They will.

And you'll do it under the label, some label like Marriott or—

Yeah. So we have— yeah. So we're a franchisee. So we manage— so we have to break it down for you. We have called 140 hotels. Of those, about 50 are Marriott hotels.

Okay.

About 50 are Hilton hotels. We've got a couple Hyatts, we've got a few IHGs, and we've got, call it, 25 independents. So I'm summarizing, but that's about, right? I'll tell you, yeah. And like Marriott, as an example, requires you to be an approved manager to run a Marriott. So not every company can just say, yeah, I'd like to run a Marriott hotel. So we have all those approvals to run with all those hotels. But so yes, we do. We manage for that individual, like family office who owns a hotel. We manage for companies that own hotels.

Hmm.

That's a variety. The owners come in all shapes and sizes.

They own the property as an investment. And you're managing the property to turn an ROI for them.

Oh, and there's all kinds of scenarios. So as an example, we have a hotel in Costa Rica where it was a, it's an independent hotel and the husband and wife, the owner are actually from Michigan. And they would go to Costa Rica on vacation, loved it. They are, they're in the, they were in the steel business, so had done well in life and they decided to build a hotel. And this situation happens more often than you think. And they decided to run it themselves. So as an independent hotel, you can do whatever you want, right? There's not a brand rules or regulations. And they had run this hotel for a couple of years and decided, you know what, this is much harder than what I thought, because it's hard to have all the resources and things when you're not a bigger company. And so they hired us to run their hotel because they want the fun parts of it, not the parts of, hey, I got the front desk clerk called off, someone's got to check people in. So yeah, it happens all over the place. But yes, we, that's our business model. And then we also have the 140, we have 58 hotels we manage for Ashford, which is our parent company. So we have a Picture it, you've got less, a little bit less than half that were managed by— we have 2 REITs that own hotels that we manage for, and then you have almost 2/3 of hotels that are managed for— we manage for individual property owners or investors. Wow.

And you're COO, so what's your job? You gotta make sure all the wheels turn in the right direction.

Yeah, I would say what's my job? Every day it's different. Ultimately, I'm responsible for all the operations. So if you think about, we have 10,000 employees, about 9,800 of them fall into the operations of some kind.

If you think about going to a hotel.

We're an operations management company, right? So pretty much everything falls in the operations category, right? But yeah, ultimately my job is to affect change in a way that drives value for the owner and drives results. And that comes in a lot of different ways. And I can tell you there's not a single day that looks the exact same for me. Another thing that I love. So it's every day, it's every day, it's a little bit something different. But yeah, ultimately my role is to ensure that we're operating the hotels the way we should be. And driving value to owners.

So when you look back at this crazy career you had, if you don't mind me calling it crazy.

No, as you should, by the way. I already told you one story. There's plenty of others that would be—

I bet there are. I'm curious, what is it, as you reflect back on what, 20, 20, 25 years probably?

Yeah, 25+ at this point. Yeah.

Yeah. What is it about you as an individual that you can think about that has made you be this successful in your career?

So there's two things that come to mind right away. The first is that, so as a kid, I moved 8 times in 12 years before college. And I will tell you that at the time I hated it. And I will also tell you, as a kid, I was painfully shy. Shy to the point of if there was a knock at our door at the house, I would run to my room. I was the kid cowering behind his mother. Yeah, it was not the most, not the most manly thing to admit, but it's true. As a kid, I was very unsure of myself. Didn't have confidence, whatever, you name it. I got to college and I came out of my shell and blossomed. My point is, I think I became very adept and quick at being able to adapt to new situations and changes very quickly and not being scared of it. So part of how I was able to grow my career was I would always raise my hand. So that 83-room hotel, my next opportunity was a 220-room hotel. Wow. Next opportunity was a 300-room hotel. The next one was a 450-room hotel. You keep going. My last hotel was 800 rooms. There's a lot of hotels in between. I think there's a lot of people that say, I don't want to move, or I'm afraid to go do this, or that's outta my comfort zone. I was always like, so what? Let's go do it. So I always had that personality type from, I think, and I, if I'm being honest, I think it goes back to being a kid and just getting dropped into this new school or new situation, just having to figure it out. It didn't— I didn't mind going into new situations, which provided, I think, more opportunity.

It sounds to me like there was no fear.

Yeah, really.

But no fear.

Yeah, bring it on, bring it on. Exactly. And I— it's funny, now they have all these personality tests. I test like a 99-point-something percent extrovert, so clearly I'm out of my shell today. Back then I wasn't. So that's one. And I think the other thing And I've always led this way, and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it certainly works for me, is I think from starting out as a dishwasher and working kind of all the jobs in between, I've never felt that I'm defined by what I do. In other words, I'm just as happy to lead from the back, give people credit when they've done the hard work, recognize them. Like, to me, the win is if the hotel does well, and the team members that did the job are recognized. It's not me jumping in front of everyone saying, look what I did. And what you'll find is it has to be authentic, by the way. We're very smart, intelligent creatures. You can tell the used car salesman pitch when you see it.

That's right.

But I've just learned to lead from the back, really get to know the people you work with, like genuinely. You don't just go to them when you need something, actually take the time to ask them how their weekend was and really listen, not just say, hey, how you doing? And keep walking. That's the words came out of your mouth, but you can tell it doesn't matter. And then once you get to know them, it's crazy how you can do just the smallest things that matter. And I'll give you one really quick example. I was a GM at a hotel in Columbia, South Carolina, and we had this front desk associate who was a star. And this hotel, when I came in, I was the new GM. Part of why I was new was the guest service scores were terrible. And so I rolled out a program that basically said, if you get your name mentioned in a survey, And that survey scores a 9 or a 10, meaning it was a really good survey. You get like a $25 gift card or whatever it was. And then we tracked it. And then I'd do a drawing at the end of the month for the top associate. We'd give them gift card, $100 gift card or whatever. And there was this woman named Mandy who just killed it. She was getting mentioned like 20 or 30 times. I got to know her. I'd go down and I'd thank her. I found out that Snickers was her favorite candy bar. So it became this running joke. Whenever she got a mention, I came down and gave her a Snickers bar. Now, you know, what that meant to her was I actually knew that was her favorite candy bar. So if I'd gone down there and given her a Milky Way, yes, it still would have been— she would have thanked me and said, "That's nice." But doesn't it mean more when the person who's giving it to you knows what your favorite candy bar is? And so I think when you take the time to learn and listen, you'll have these pockets where you can show them that they matter. And they matter because you're doing something that's individual to them. So I would say those two things, I'm summarizing, would be—

Totally get it.

Reflecting back. I think that's what's been a difference maker.

Yeah. You define leadership empathy in a really beautiful way. You're talking about listening. You obviously have become a good listener. How did you learn how to listen?

So here's another story. A couple things. So it's my second, no, it's my third hotel job. I joined a company called Pyramid Hotel Group. And at the time they only had 8 hotels. They're now a major hotel player in Boston. I was with them for 15 years, started with them as a GM and left them as a senior vice president of operations. I went to— there's this guy named Rick Kelleher. For those in the industry, they'll know that name. He was an industry icon for a while. He was— he ran Promise Hotels before they merged with Hilton. Anyway, he was the CEO of this company. So they had started this small advisory company. It was actually called Pyramid Advisors at the time. And I just told you, I never really get nervous. I go up to interview and I'm just interviewing with the 3 owners, right? Because it's just an 8-hotel company. And I'm sitting in this boardroom in Boston waiting for Rick Keller to come in. Cause I've heard the name, a big personality, Boston guy. And I found myself feeling a little nervous cause the meeting was supposed to start 10 minutes ago. I'm just sitting there waiting. All of a sudden he walks in, sits down, kind of gruff. I'm not here to interview you. I'm here to talk to you. I'm like, okay. You know, I'm a young GI at this point, I'm still in my 20s. I'm like— and what he would do is he would tell stories, and every now and then he'd ask a question. First question was, how do you get respect? And I said, Prophet Muhammad said, you earn it. He said, no, no. He leans in, he says, You give it.

Ooh, nice answer.

I'm like, shit, that's right. That's a better answer. And then he said, why did God give you two ears and one mouth? I'm like, shit, what is this? And you probably know this one, right? I know it now. I didn't know at the time. And he, and I'm like, I think I said, I don't know, which is probably, you listen before opening your mouth, right? Yeah. He said, you should listen at least twice as much as you talk.

Right.

And I found myself, and that was probably what, you know, very early in my career, but I listened to a lot of what he said. And what I found myself saying is I learned so much more in this interview just from listening to him, a guy who had been doing it for 40 or 50 years, than what I ever would have done him just talking about myself and, oh, I do, I did this and I did this. So I've learned throughout the years that if I go into a room as the CEO of Remington, and I start talking, I've already screwed up. That's right. Because everyone else now is just either going to agree with me or follow where they think I want them to go. So I purposely usually in meetings don't go first. I usually go last. And what I generally try to make sure I establish with people in a rapport is that they're comfortable telling me things even if it's not great, right? Even if it's bad news or even if it's something that They think that it's, it will upset me of some kind, but you still have to have people comfortable enough to say it. And so what I would say is just from a listening standpoint, by actually listening to what people say and giving them time to talk and letting them draw out, you learn so much more than if you just—

and you've probably run across a lot of people who have a real hard time with that. Ha!

I would say so. And I hate to say this, but there's a lot of C-suite level people that can learn that lesson. Because I— what happens is, the analogy I like to give is the larger you rise in an organization, the louder your microphone becomes.

Yeah.

So the reality is, if you still talk as loud as you did in a smaller position, it just rings that much louder, right? You almost have to talk quieter because the position itself has raised you up to where that— so if you talk less, you allow other people to find room to say their opinion.

Absolutely amazing. I need to send you a copy of my— the manuscript of my latest book. You'll love it.

Oh, cool.

One more question, I'll let you go.

Yeah.

What's one thing about yourself, Jason, that we would never know about? Oh, you revealed it to us.

I'll give you two, and I'll be quick. The first thing is I was a vegetarian from the age of 5 to 13.

Oh, okay.

I lived in a small town in Thurmont, Maryland, and it was in a farmhouse. My uncle was a farmer, and I was a 4 or 5-year-old kid, so I used to name the cows, right? I would name the animals. Every few weeks, a tractor-trailer would pull up, the cows would get on the truck, and they would drive away. Being the smart, educated person I was, I would ask my mom, where are the cows going? And she would say, they're going on vacation. I bought it. I'm like, that makes sense. Cows go on vacation. Why not? Fast forward, I don't know, 6 months, 9 months. And I'm with my uncle who was much more of a direct fellow, not as much of a— and tractor trailer pulls up and they're loading the cows on. And I say something like, wow, these cows sure go on a lot of vacations. And he goes, what the hell are you talking about? I said, the cows, they're going on vacations. He goes, no, they're not. They're going to get slaughtered. Where do you think hamburger meat comes from? I was like, So from 5 to 13, I didn't eat meat. What brought me down, Doug? I played basketball, 8th grade. We had a road game, played a full basketball game. It's 9 o'clock. We stop at McDonald's and I'm afraid to say I'm starving is an understatement. So you go for the burger. I took a cheeseburger and threw a bunch of fries in my mouth and now I eat meat. Vegetarian for 8 years.

There you go.

That is amazing.

Jason, this has been a really great conversation. Thanks so much for your time. I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, I did as well. Thank you, Doug.

You're welcome. Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.