 and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is the vice president of hotel operations for Disney. He is Elliot Mills, and today we are going beyond hotel management. Hey, Elliot, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Hey, hello, Rusty. How are you, man? It's good to be here today. Elliot, you know, I enjoy working with you and your tennis game, and I gotta say, you've been getting really good at tennis. It takes a lot of effort, and you put me through my paces. I'll tell you that much, but it's been great fun. Well, you know, if I started you some years earlier, I would have no doubt that we'd be at Wimbledon by now, right? Ha, ha, ha, ha. Now, Elliot, I'm gonna ask you if you can share with me about what schools you attended growing up? Sure, so I'm originally from the Big Island, from Montcroy, Hawaii, and attended St. Joseph High School for the majority of my time, and then went to the University of Hawaii, Shrider Business School, and then I did a little stint post graduate with Cornell University with regard to hotel management in Singapore. But yeah, I've been at UH and St. Joseph. Wow, so Elliot, how did you get interested in hotel resort management? You know, it's funny, my mom is a teacher for 47 years in the DOE, and so I was on a pace to become a teacher. I went to UH with the thought that I was in a major in education. And while I was there, I was working, while I was in school, in Waikiki at the Moana, I just got a taste of tourism and hospitality industry, and just caught fire, and I switched majors about halfway into my second year to business, and I emphasized in travel industry management when the travel industry management in school was, I think number seven in the nation, and it was fantastic, and I just love the industry, I love the interaction with people, and most importantly, all of the employees that you work with every day here locally. So it's been a great, great ride. Wow, that's impressive. And Elliot, which Disney hotels do you oversee? So when I started Disney, I opened the Awani Resort and Spock here at Disney Resort and Spock, and then I also now oversee the Disneyland Hotel in the Disneyland Resort, as well as the Grand Californian and the Pixar Paradise Pier Hotel. Whoa, all excellent hotels for sure, and Elliot, I wanna ask you, I mean, because you're on the inside of Disney, and Disney is such an iconic brand, why is Disney a super successful organization? You know, Russ, there's so many reasons why it's such a, incredibly successful brand, but I think the biggest thing that we have worn for us is our storytelling. You know, that is at the crux of what we do best, and storytelling is what makes Disney the brand it is. And I would say that people around the world know that Disney brand and love the brand because of all the storytelling we do, both in our films, at our parks, in our cruise ships, it's a very diverse company with all types of things and all types of ways that our guests, our consumers can interact with our brand, and they love the brand, they trust the brand. And it's also because of the incredible leadership that we have throughout the company. We've been so blessed to have incredible people running the company and our cast members throughout the world are just fantastic. And I think everybody appreciates it, and I think it's made the brand what it is today for many years and years now, so. Yeah, no, it's definitely impressive. I mean, I find it overly impressive, like how they just are able to sustain success and just to really keep outdoing what they've done to really be on the forefront of entertainment or like you said, on the cruise ships or hotels. And Elliot, I wanna focus more on Awlani right now. I mean, Awlani is an absolutely beautiful resort, and you were there through the building of it. And I wanna ask you, in terms of the priorities in respecting and highlighting the Hawaiian culture, how did that all come about where everything is just so immersed perfectly, I feel, with the Hawaiian culture? Yeah, so when we opened the resort initially, it was the thought about really respecting and understanding the culture. And I think Dizzy did a great job of engaging the leaders, culture leaders in the community. And it's coming to the islands with a sense of respect and really understanding the culture in a way that we're not trying to be and try to represent the culture itself, but we're more of a portal to help others who are visiting to the islands understand the culture, whether it be through the language, through our art. But most importantly, I'll tell you, then I think most people agree with me is that the people at our resort are fantastic. And I'm so proud of each and every cast member there because when you come to Hawaii, they definitely represent our lower spirit and their genuine hospitality that they give to each of our guests that visit Awlani is the most important thing that we have there. And that expression of that lower spirit that hospitality rings through for our guests and that's why they keep coming back and enjoying the resort every day out here. Oh, that's for sure. I mean, great, great people. And Awlani has so many fun activities. And Elliot, what are some things that your team members specifically focus on to give your guests the best experience possible? So I think it's being intuitive about their service. They really think about putting themselves in the shoes of their guests and understanding what their needs are and trying to be more proactive than reactive to providing great service. And I also believe that we really speak to a value-based culture there. And so everybody's kind of in sync with what they have to do every day. It's really a very transparent culture. Everybody's taking care of each other. They have values like Kuliana and Kalike and Malama that we really base ourselves in. So nobody's really more important than everybody else. And so it's really a very black culture there. And we really take care of each other first. And if we take care of each other first and everybody's feeling very good about coming to work and about the person that's working next to them, then they have more of an opportunity to really take care of our guests every day in a really sincere and genuine way. And I think that's what makes it different, you know. So many people that I know that have stayed out at Awlani, they all say that it's just a fantastic experience for themselves and their entire family. And Elliot, you've created a superior culture of excellence. What are some of those core values that is within your culture of excellence? So I think I mentioned a couple of them, but what we did is so obviously Disney has great values, openness, you know, a culture of courage. We tried to blend the Disney values into Hawaiian based values. And they're very similar. We wanted to make it relative for our cast members here from Hawaii. So we have Kaulike, as I mentioned, right? We have Ma Lama to take care of. Kuleana to be responsible for your actions. Olu Olu to have kindness and taking care of our guests. And these types of values really stick with what we're all about. So when we think about making decisions at any level, we always come back to those core set of values to make sure that they pass the litmus test, that the decisions we're making, whether we are in a housekeeping or we're in a restaurant or a server or in management, they all have to pass that litmus test but making sure that they're value based. And that's to me what creates a successful culture out there is they all take ownership of that and they're very proud of that. And I think it's, and that's what creates that family atmosphere of everybody taking care of everybody else at the resort. And I think that's one of the key pieces of why we are successful out there and why people enjoy coming to work every day. Elliott, how important is hiring on character? Because I mean, it just seems that every employee that you guys have, they have great character and they're just great team members. I think it's really important integrity, character, it's really we hire for your attitude and your, and how you treat others and your, I guess, your outlook on how you're gonna be able to intermingle with not only your fellow cast members, but our guests. And so we really look at that beyond the technical skills that some positions do require. We look at attitude and look at how you feel, how you speak, how you communicate and how you respect and treat other people. And that's key to creating a great culture and making sure that the people are there are enjoying each other's company there and taking care of each other. And I think that's core to creating that culture that we have. Elliott, you have both of my books and as you know, I talk so much about creating that superior culture of excellence in it. And what are some concepts that stood out to you in the books? So I think, like I mentioned to you in my, in our last tennis session out of there, is that I think the biggest thing that struck me in all of your books for us D is really making it relative to the people who are reading the books. And what I mean by that is that you have these stories about these incredible kids that you coach over the time. You make your principles very relative. There's so many things in your books that are very relevant to leadership and creating a culture of success. When you apply those, I think those key components into those stories, and it becomes very real, became very real for me. It got me honestly a little emotional going through reading through some of these stories, but it just hits home when you see it actually happen and the stories that you tell are real. But I think, you know, if I have to pick out one or two things that really struck me, it's like owning your emotions, right? Owning your decisions, understanding what decisions you're making and how that's going to impact you and anything you do, whether you're playing tennis or whether you're in business, it's really applying that knowledge and being conscious of that and being holding yourself accountable to that going forward. And I also would say that, you know, people are important, right? It's your relationships. It's the word that you say. Like you mentioned in your books, it affects everybody around you. So you have to be very careful and be self-aware as you mentioned in books as well. When you're dealing with teams or you're dealing with business teams, sports teams, I think it's a critical component of how you manage yourself and how you manage your teams. Yeah, words and actions matter, right, Elliot? I mean, that's why you're such a successful leader and you've helped so many other people become successful leaders. And what do you feel the greatest leaders do? So there's a, obviously there's a lot to that and you speak a lot about it in your books, but I think listening is critical. And I think as I've gotten more seasoned in my time in these positions, it's really being patient, listening, having empathy and being self-aware of the decisions you're making to those around you. And I think it's also surrounding yourself with really good people because you can't make the whole team successful unless you have great people that surround you that you can trust and lean in on. And I think it's really important that you do those things to be successful in business or in sports or anything else. It's really a lot to do with people and how you interact and motivate and inspire others around you to create a better team. I completely agree with you, Elliot. And I wanna ask you about communication because that's such an important part of success for any team. And it seems like you guys are just spot on with communication internally and externally, right? You know, it takes a lot of work, nothing's perfect. We're always trying to be better at communicating both internally with our cast members as well as externally with our guests and our community, frankly, is important. But it is critical. I think the more you communicate, the more clarity you have making sure that people know the expectations ahead of time, understand how to get there and community in that constantly is super important. Like I said, whether it be internally with our own cast members or our guests or our community. So we try our best to do it. I don't think we're, you know, we always can improve but we do a pretty good job and we continually try to improve on the communication process because it's so important. Well, you know, I talk about the four misses in my book, miss communication, misunderstanding, misperceptions and misinformation and how we need to really try to avoid those four misses because if you don't, you go off on these tangents and it kind of takes you away from accomplishing the goals that you want to accomplish. How important is avoiding the four misses with your guys success? Well, I think it's critical because I think to your point, when you're not communicating and you have these misses, now you become reactive. You can't be proactive. You can't manage the narrative out and look at what we're gonna be gaining versus reacting to things that are misses right now. We have to go fix. So I think it's really a pin point to say that we have to make sure that we get those expectations out, that they're clear, they're reinforced so that we can manage that narrative, manage the narrative in a positive way so that we can continue to grow and continue to innovate. So it's really critical in that posture for sure, Rusty. Now, you know what I mean? I always say that all leaders are coaches and chapter one in the first book is titled The Choice Is Yours. I'm trying to help my teams throughout the years to choose better choices which would allow us to accomplish the goals that we want. How do you help your team members, your leadership team to choose better choices to accomplish the goals of the organization? So I think, you know, when we think about creating choices, it's creating environment. So I'm a big fan of autonomy and empowerment in our teams and it's creating that environment of trust to allow folks to get educated, right? And then choose their path, make decisions, take diligent risks to make sure they're moving forward. But it's allowing them the bandwidth to make those decisions and supporting those decisions and empowering them. And then understanding and coming back and seeing those decisions were made and how do they do and give great feedback and collaborative feedback so that we can learn and move forward. So it's really creating that culture, the trust and of course surrounding yourself with people who can manage that diligence and understanding the risk and then moving forward with those decisions and then be supportive because everybody's, you only learn when you fail, right? And so I think it's important for them to push the envelope and understand, okay, this is how this worked out and then go back and review it and you can have some wins, you can have some misses but you got to keep moving forward and just be supportive of the team members or I think is the most critical. And it's been very successful in my past at least. Yeah, and Elliot, you've been such a successful fantastic leader for many, many years now and how would you describe your leadership style? You're very kind by the way Rusty, I appreciate that. But I would say that, again, I'm more of an empowering, I don't micromanage too much, I try to allow and provide an environment where I'll let leaders take the wheel and run with different things but then come back and support them, also giving the right resources. I think people who are in leadership positions who want to advance themselves need resources to support them, you know, whatever it might be in that space but it's really creating a sense of autonomy, a sense of trust. And again, I think inspiring folks, constantly because to make sure that you were getting that support when you have issues or when you have the challenges to keep positive and to keep supporting them as they get through it, right? And I think the communication is another huge one. So I would very really believe in transparency and openness and having good debates and having a feeling of that you can basically communicate openly with any of your leadership team and their members and really creating a flat organization. So nobody's really more important than anybody else in our hotel, whether you're a housekeeper or you're running the restaurant or a chef in the kitchen or the GM of the resort, we all, the departments come together and that's what makes us successful. There's no authority that's gonna say that I'm creating more because I'm in my role, it's actually everybody pulling together to create that experience each and every day. We try to foster that as much as we can. I think that's so important what you just said there because everyone's a reflection of each other. And if one person screws up, it's like everybody screws up. So as an elite organization, nobody can screw up. And Elliot, in order for teams and businesses to really grow and improve, you have to be open to different solutions and new possibilities to really allow some creative ideas, new ideas to happen. You guys must have some really interesting meetings when you're hearing some of these different creative ideas, right? Oh, there's no doubt. There's ideas that pop up all the time, how we can move our business in different directions. And we have the fantastic abilities of our, well, Disney Imagineers who are just super, super creative and come up with these incredible, ideas that we talk about and we riff off of. And it's been fantastic. We didn't really create a sense of that inspiration of creating new things, creating new products, new movies, it's fantastic. And it's really fun to engage with them as well. It's been a good ride. Oh, I can imagine that. And Elliot, you have been such an important community leader for so many years. And I want to ask you, what are the various ways that you're helping to serve our community? I appreciate it, Rusty, again, so kind. But I try to do my part working on various boards in the community. And I like to, you know, my whole passion is really focused around children, primarily in the future of our state and education of those children and the welfare of those children. So I do serve on a few boards that focus on education and promoting preschool care through elementary and high school. And really, I think it's an area that the state really needs to continue to focus on because it's really the most important thing I can think of that's going to help our next generation of kids prosper. And second to that is their welfare. Obviously, we have issues around housing here that we want to work on. But I think education is primary, my primary goal and how I try to contribute back to the community as much as I can. Yeah, it's all about education. And, Elliot, when you're looking at other community leaders here in Hawaii, how do you see them framing the future for the next generation, like you said earlier about how you're trying to help the next generation of people as well? Yeah, so I think, you know, I work with a lot of great leaders, a lot of colleagues here in town that we definitely have a lot of conversations around the welfare of our future of Hawaii and our children. I think it does revolve again in our education, but it's also welfare and housing and ensuring that we're getting that housing issue solved. And so there's a lot of minds working on that and how we can solve that so that we don't have the negative population move that we saw last year. We really want to retain our talents here and keep our kids home, keep our graduates and have them come back to Hawaii to live and grow on my own children. I want them to be able to come back to Hawaii and we're staying in Hawaii to go to school, but come back here and live in Hawaii and prosper in Hawaii. And it's tough because the affordability issue is really difficult one to deal with, but it's one that I think we have to tackle. And I also believe that we have to just continue to concentrate on the educational space for our kids so that they can and will come back home and prosper in our communities here with us. So I'm hopeful and I'm encouraged. We just need more minds like yours, Rusty, to come in and conquer this problem, the challenges that we have here in Hawaii, but we'll get after it. Well, Elliot, I want more Elliot Mills in the world. To the kind of us, they appreciate that. We're doing, I think we're gonna try to do our part little by little and hopefully we'll get there. Well, teamwork, Elliot. Yes. Now, Elliot, when you were first in a leadership role, who knows how many years ago that was, Elliot, but when you compare them to now, how has your leadership evolved through these years? That's a great question, Rusty. I think when I first got into the role, it was a little bit, I wanna say easier just because of the way communication was dealt with this. And it's a little bit easier now because you have so many forms of communication, but it's very difficult to control the narrative now. So I think it's really about inspiring that next generation of folks and understanding how they communicate and how you can inspire them in the workforce or even in our sports or high schools. It's just difficult, a little bit more difficult to get that focus because there's so much coming in. And it's a little harder to control that. So it's, again, goes back to the words and how you communicate and making sure that yourself or you're basically speaking to these different populations in the way they wanna receive that information. And so I think solving for that has been a little bit more difficult. And I've tried to learn a little bit about that a little bit more about how to best communicate with these different populations of people as it becomes more and more diverse and it becomes more difficult to manage that narrative about what you wanna get across and how you get across that information. So constantly learning, I think is important. I don't think we'll ever stop learning. I continue to start, hopefully continue to learn in my space. And I also think just being empathetic is another one that you talked about in your book as well because there's so much going on in this world right now and different people are taking it in different ways. So I think having empathy and being patient and having a lot of gratefulness in the heart right now is a key component that I can continue to try to focus on. Elliott, obviously the pandemic affected everybody. Now, how did the pandemic affect you guys and how did you overcome that, I mean, major adversity? You know, the pandemic was a tough time, I think for everybody. And I think the way we kind of dealt with it again was really try to stay positive, try to be supportive. We really communicated a lot with our cast members both here and in California to make sure that they were as good as they could be and that we understood what they were going through and try to help as much as we could. And it's just keeping that positivity up to help everyone get through it. And then think from a community standpoint we did, I think that a phenomenal job of pulling together to help our community here and in the mainland as well but I think here was that we did a great job of pulling together to make sure that nobody was hopefully not left behind and cared for as best as we could. So I was really proud of how to stay pulled together. And I think we came through it very well and again, very grateful that we were able to pull through. Yeah, without a doubt. And Elliott, when you reflect back on your life so far, what's a valuable lesson you've learned? Well, I've said this to probably more than one of my friends but my dad gave me a piece of advice before he's passing a few years back and he said, the greatest gift you can give another person is the gift of time. And so I think that quality time spending with the people that you love and really care for as I get later in my years is the most important thing I think we can do in life is just to spend that time, that quality time that you have with those that you love and those that you care for and those who need support and help in our community. So I think that's one of the most important lessons I've learned in my time. There's many that I have learned, but that's the one that always sticks out to me and the one I always value the most is that time. And Elliott, for me, when I was coaching, I wanted to make sure that my number 12 player felt just as important as the number one player because everyone plays a role. And like you said earlier, whether you're a housekeeper, whether you're a manager, whether you're a cast member, everyone plays a role because everyone, I mean, everyone is a reflection of each other. Now, it's so important for the leader to be among the frontline employees. How do you do that and make sure that everybody knows that you are among the frontline employees? So that's a great, great point you make Rusty. So it's really important, I think. And what we do specifically, one thing that we do at Elani, very consistent is we meet with all of the different departments. So, food and beverage, housekeeping, security, we meet myself, the GM meets with them one-on-one and just talks about what's going on. What's going on in your area? What resources do you need? What are the challenges that are coming up? How can we be better? We take ideas from the frontline cast members almost every other month and we take that information back and we share it back with them what the outcomes are, what we're gonna do to solve some of these challenges. So there is a very flat organization and it's not a really tall pyramid. And it's also important that they see you out there understanding what's going on. I'm walking the back of the house and understanding in their shoes what they're experiencing. And I think one of the things I'll tell you, Rusty, too is that one of the things that really helped me as a leader in this business was working in those positions when I was younger. So being the valet, being the bar back, being the banquet help person, being the server. So you really understand I can relate with them which has been a huge help for me in talking and making sure that I'm relevant to my cast members is knowing exactly what they're going through because I've done it in the past. So I really highly recommend for our leadership team to get in there and part of the training process actually is to go do those roles, train in those roles every day so that you can relate and know what these people are going through and how hard they're working and how difficult those roles are at times. And it makes a big difference, right? Because they definitely respect that. And they know that you've done it and you can speak to them in the same language as they're talking. So it's been such a valuable lesson for me. So important, yeah. Like you said, I mean, you have their respect instantaneously because they know that you know what it's like. And Elliot, I want to ask you one more question before we wrap up. Sure. What gives you fulfillment? What gives me fulfillment is an easy one for me. My family is number one for me. So they give me the most fulfillment. I would tell you just see my kids at home and my wife and spending time with my family, my mom and my extended family is gives me the greatest fulfillment. The fact that we have our health and we spend good quality time together and the love that we have together is the greatest fulfillment that I have as a dad, as a husband and as a son. And I think the other part of my fulfillment on probably the community side is some of the work that I do within the community. Definitely gives me a lot of fulfillment to see kids prosper in more difficult communities through education or through welfare or health. Also gives me great joy and fulfillment in my life. So it's been an opportunity to do that has been fantastic and very rewarding. Well, Elliot, you are a man of great character and you are a fantastic leader. And I want to thank you for taking time to be on the show today. Hey, Rusty, thanks for having me, man. Thanks, really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, Elliot. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit rusticamory.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Elliot and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawai.com. Mahalo.