 Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, 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 highly respected leader who is the president and CEO of Outrigger Hotels and Resorts. He is Jeff Wagoner, and today we are going Beyond Hospitality. Hey, Jeff, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Thank you, Rusty. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Jeff, I'm so excited to have you on the show today. I mean, everywhere you've been working, I mean, you've improved every company you've been with. But first of all, can I have you share a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the hotel industry? Absolutely. And I think when you say that I've been successful in all these places, Rusty, it's not because of me. It's because of all the people that I work with day in and day out, but a little bit of my background. I grew up playing sports my whole life. I honestly thought that the only thing I would ever do in my life was play sports. I played football. I played basketball. I played baseball. I ended up, our high school football team, went to the state championship. And then I went off to college and went to Virginia Tech and was there a little while and didn't finish. And when you look back on things like that, they define a piece of you and your life and what happens. And so you're clearly not finishing. I had to go find a job. My mom worked in the Marriott corporate offices right outside of Virginia in Bethesda, Maryland. And I kind of had a little bit of hospitality in my blood, so I went to work for Marriott. I worked in 14 different hotels over the course of my career before I got into a corporate role. And then I had several corporate roles over my time as well. But I love the hospitality industry. I love how competitive it is. But this is an industry that is so right for opportunities for not only myself and what I was able to do, but really anybody who jumps into this business. Jeff, share with me some of the hotels you've worked with before joining Outrigger Hotels. You know, Rusty, I worked for several different companies. I worked for Marriott and just an incredible foundation. This is a company that's one of the largest hotel companies in the world. And so to be able to work in a company like that and learn foundationally the right way to do things helps you from a career perspective to be able to say, I've seen different ways to do things. And we know that this particular company does things right. I also worked for Starwood, which is now a part of Marriott. And I worked for Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, which is about 9,000 hotels today. I worked for Wyndham in really four different iterations of that company. And that's where I ended up in my first corporate role as well. I also worked for the Trump Organization. I ran all the Trump hotels across the globe. And I worked for them prior to coming to Outrigger. I've been here at Outrigger now for four years. I love Hawaii and I love this company. Well, Jeff, I am so happy that you're here in Hawaii with us. And wherever you've gone to, you've created such a superior culture of excellence. Can you share with me what that culture of excellence looks like? Rusty, I don't really have a roadmap for that. It's one of those things where you come into a company and you want to understand where you are. You want to understand the organization. You know, I'm the kind of individual who wants to listen and find out what's happening. I had an individual tell me once you have two ears and one mouth and you should use them in that proportion. And so to go into a new organization like Outrigger, for example, you have to do a lot of listening. You have to understand the organization. There's this amazing foundation that has occurred here. And so you want to come in and respect what's there today. But then you also want to be able to build on that. So part of that is to understand where you are, understand the environment that you're in, and then try to build and create more success for the organization. So, Jeff, I mean, obviously you're a successful leader. And if you can reflect back on why you're successful and what do you feel the greatest leaders do if you can share with me about that? You know, in playing sports, like I indicated earlier, I think if I wasn't doing what I'm doing today, I'd be a coach. You know, you get so much joy out of coaching and helping people be successful. And then being a part of that celebration at the end when they are successful. And Rusty, with your incredible tennis career, you've coached so many people. I'm sure you've seen that joy over and over and over again. And for me, it's the same way. You know, I love to be able to teach. I love to be able to coach. And I love to see people kind of meet the goals that they have for themselves internally as well. So for me, it's all about that. I get so much joy seeing the smiles on the faces of our teams as we create all these successes across the industry or in a corporate environment or at any one of our hotels individually. Well, Jeff, you might not be coaching a sports team, but you know, like you said, you're coaching business teams. You're mentoring so many of your team members. How would your team members describe your leadership style? You know, that's like self-reflection, Rusty. I don't know. That's very difficult, you know, to be able to think through that. But I think that my team would say that I'm collaborative, that I'm knowledgeable. You know, when you think about working in 14 different hotels, you know, there's so many things that I've seen that I can help our team to be able to not have to go down every path. I can help guide them to some degree so that we can just get to the things that matter and that are important within our particular organization. I'm competitive and they all know that. So, you know, I love to win. You know, it's funny, I was almost, the words came out of my mouth that winning is everything, but it's not, there's a lot more to winning than just winning. But it is important to set yourself up for success. And, you know, we're all doing what we do in order to get to a certain place or to create something or to win potentially. And so I think that competitive nature that my team would definitely say that I've got that spirit in me. Well, talking with you before, Jeff, I know you're competitive, but you're such a classy guy. I mean, and then you're in it for the right reasons because you wanna really help the teams, your people. I mean, you're a great people person. And Jeff, can you tell me about Outrigger Hotels and Resorts? I love your hotels here in Waikiki and can you talk to me about that and some of the hotels and resorts you have around the world as well? Yeah, we're, a company today is 33 properties and we're a global hotel company. You know, Outrigger, this is the 70, the Diamond Anniversary, so 75 years that this company's been around. And the Kelly family did an amazing job with this company to develop a tremendous foundation for us. And we're now working on that platform. So part of the last four years for me was to go in and do a few little tweaks with the company, renovate some of our properties to take them a little more upstream and then to grow the company as well. And we've been able to add several properties recently. We've added, I think five properties in the last eight months. We added three properties in Thailand, one in Kau Lek, one in Koso Lui and one in Phuket, really fabulous resorts. We're renovating those hotels now. Two of them are open, the other one will open in August. We purchased a property on Kona and we've converted that property to the Outrigger Kona, it's 509 rooms. We're going to spend $40 to $50 million on that property. And we've also just recently added the property right over my shoulder here, which is in the Maldives. And this property is two months old. And this picture right here, Rusty, we sent an employee out there, one of our individuals from the corporate office here, he went out to do some training for the team there. And he just came back this week and said, these pictures don't do it justice. He said, this is the most spectacular property in our company. So we're really excited about our growth and what we've been able to accomplish. We've got three more properties that are signed that unfortunately I can't announce today, I wish I could. And those will be really great properties to be able to add to the company. So that's the real estate portion but I have to tell you, Rusty, it's more about the people. We've got a spectacular team here at Outrigger. It just continues to get better every day. People are so passionate about our company and our success. And to me, every single day, I just love it. I love spending time with our team members and working hard to create the kind of success that we'd all like to have. Jeff, I heard that you actually spend time with your frontline employees. Is that true? I do. It's important to spend time with them. I love to be able to go over to the hotels and have a chance to be able to talk and chat with our team and see how things are going. I know that just this past week, our chief people officer and our senior vice president of operations went and met with every single one of our property teams to be able to talk to them about things that are going on in our community and how we're gonna grow as a company. So it's important that not only I spend time with our team members, but all of our leadership is really day in and day out understanding what's happening in each one of our properties with all of our people. Well, Jeff, that just goes to show why you're a great leader. I mean, you know that that's necessary to really know what the vibe and the pulse of your whole organization is. Jeff, what are some things that you're doing that consistently strive to become one of the premier beach resorts in the world? You know, that's kind of our tagline is that we wanna be the premier beach resort brand in the world. And, you know, we went out and created a plan to be able to spend about 300, 320 million dollars across all of our properties. We needed to improve our assets and make sure that they were, we could take them upstream to be able to make a big bold statement like that. It's important that we do that. So, you know, we've done that. We've also worked with our team. You know, we just promoted two individuals here in our corporate office to senior vice president. We have promoted a vice president of operation in our Asia Pacific region. We've just brought on a vice president of revenue management for our Asia Pacific region. You know, so it's not again all about people and the buildings. A lot of it is when you're creating the premier beach resort brand in the world you need the right people, the right talent. You need to coach and give them the tools that they need. But then you've also gotta give them the assets, the quality assets in order to really have a premier beach resort brand. Well, it sounds like you're definitely well on your way to accomplishing that goal. And Jeff, you have both of my books and I wanna ask you what are some principles that stood out to you in the books? You know, incredible books Rusty. I have to tell you, and I don't want to, I don't mean to embarrass you at all, but you know, John Wooden's books, I've read his books and I love this guy. I had an opportunity to have lunch with John Wooden and it was just one of the most amazing experiences of my life to be able to ask him questions. And John Wooden, he didn't win a championship till I think he was like 56 years old and then he won 11. And to win 22 championships in tennis is just, it's unheard of. And so it's such an amazing feat. And so the books are really spectacular and people should read these because not everybody has done what you've been able to achieve or what John Wooden was able to achieve at UCLA. But you know, there's some interesting aspects of what you said in the book. You know, one of the things he said, I already kind of mentioned it a little bit is listen, first, speak, last. And I'm gonna tell you something about that. I went through, you know, when you go through a career, you have all kinds of things come about and somebody created this meeting with this transformational leadership guy, right? So we're all sitting in a room for six weeks with this guy and he like peeled you apart. Every single aspects of who you are and you know, so forth. And one of the things that they tried to figure out is what do you listen for? And what I listened for, what I was able to figure out and it's pretty clear is I listened for the point. So what that means is that I would tune out. If you didn't get to the point really quick, I was gone, you know, I was out somewhere else listening to something else or framing my response already. But you can imagine how limiting that is, you know, when you listen for the point. So listening is a critical aspect of business, but you have to truly listen. You have to listen and engage. You have to listen not with your prepared response. You have to listen to understand and then speak, last. So I love that point. I think it's a fabulous point in the book. You know, that goes back to my two ears and one mouth, right? You've got two ears and you really should be listening quite a bit first. The other is really about finding your passion, you know? And the way I look at that, it's so true. What I do is not work. This is my passion. I love this. Every single day I wake up and say, I can't wait to get there. And I also want to create that for others. And I not only want it to be what comes out of me, I want people working with me on my team that do that for their individuals, their employees as well, that you have this culture of everybody saying, I can't wait to get there. I mean, you know, people have had, we've all had jobs. I don't know if I've had one, but the jobs where they dread going. You know, you hear that story all the time. That's no fun. You know, there's nothing about that that's going to be engaging and going to create a successful environment for you. And so I love truly trying to create that environment where people say, I can't wait to get there today. And what that means is, you know, when I get there, I'm going to be valued. My opinion will matter. I can speak up without someone telling me, sorry, your opinion doesn't matter. Those things really count when it comes to creating an environment where people want to be there and be a part of your team. I love, Jeff, that you mentioned that listen first and then about finding your passion. I mean, that's so important. And you're right. There's some people that feel stuck in whatever job they're in. And, you know, they have a choice to do something different. I mean, yeah, it's a little risky at times, but what's the alternative, right? Absolutely. And, you know, it's, you know, when you think that whole section is kind of under a relentless pursuit of success and, you know, it's, to me, just find what you love. Do what you love. If you do and you end up with that passion for it, you know, you're going to be, you know, getting up every day and saying, I can't wait to get there too. Totally agree. And, Jeff, I want to ask you personally or professionally, what's a big adversity that you dealt with in your life that you overcame? Wow. So that's a tough one for me because honestly, it kind of goes back to what I just said, I love every day. You know, and that doesn't mean that things haven't happened along the way, but I almost don't look at it as adversity. I look at it as just, okay, I faced a challenge, somebody presented something, you don't even have to call it a challenge, you can, opportunity, whatever you want to call it, but it's now about how do we deal with that? And some will be presented with adversity or a challenge or some massive opportunity and get nerfed or retreat. Others say, I'm going to go head on into it, let's go figure this out. And to me, it's not a problem anymore. To me, it's an opportunity to let's go do this and how do we do it and let's collaborate and let's pull other people in. Who else do we need to get to solve this particular issue? So as I think about adversity, I'm trying to come up with something. I'm sure I've had some issue out there, but to me, it's about your pivot now. And you think about adversity, I told you earlier about school, about Virginia Tech. I could sit here and say, oh, gosh, I regret that. And to some degree, there are things related to that that I know would have helped me along the way. But to me, that wasn't even adversity or an issue, it was, okay, that's what happened. And now what am I going to do? And how am I going to handle that going forward? So I think that it's a tough question for me, Rusty. But I think that really, there's going to be issues. We're all going to have issues in our life, in our careers. And it will matter how we handle each one of those issues as they come about. Jeff, in the books, I talk about how the importance of mindset and self-discipline and how self-discipline leads to habits, which lead to success. How do you get your people to have the right mindset and to have the right self-disciplines? I'm going to tell you a little story about our strategic plan here at Outrigger. We've developed a five-year strategic plan and we had a lot of people involved with it. We could have had just take six or seven of the senior leadership team and said, okay, let's sit in the room and let's create a strategic plan. We went a lot more broad with that in developing this plan. And then this plan does help you create a roadmap. So once you can all agree and kind of lock arms that this is the path we want to go down, this is what we're trying to create within our company, it becomes a heck of a lot easier to go out and execute on that plan. I, you know, the other day we were going through the plan because clearly during COVID, we had to dust off the plan a little bit. We had to make some tweaks to it because there's five different elements to this plan. And I don't want to go through them in a ton of detail, but it's really interesting the way we did this. It's the first is, and we use paddles, it's the metaphor. The first one is best in class. We've got to be amazing operators of all of our properties. The second one was all about relationships and do we have great relationships across our business community here in Hawaii, in our international destinations and then with our partners in each one of our hotels. The third was property elevation. We've got to make sure that our properties are in really good shape if we're going to be able to grow. The fourth was growth. And then the fifth was the brand value, creating this premier beach resort brand in the world. So every single employee in our entire company has a goal that matches up to one of those five paddles. So when you think about that alignment, you think about the Outrigger canoe, for example, you've got somebody steering the canoe, but you have to have everybody in sync if you're really going to be successful when you're in that canoe. So the other day I was getting ready to say we were going through the plan again and this is draft and we're looking at it. And I flipped back to the pages where it's got all of our properties. And it's got this $320 million of renovations. And I showed everybody again, I said, look at this one and look at this one and look at this one. I said, what we set out to do is actually happening. And I think I did it more for me than them. I think I was more excited than they were to be able to see that, wow, this is really coming together. But that's the excitement. You know, when you've got the team on a call like that and you're explaining, you know, that we're really doing this, this is happening. And it's happening because of the things that you're doing day in and day out. It really does create a fun environment to be able to go out and say, you know, we're well on our way to creating the premier beach resort brand in the world. So Jeff, I love hearing that insight about those five things. And, you know, in the past, when you would get involved in Marriott or Wyndham or Trump or now Outrigger, do you look at, you assess the current strengths and weaknesses and then what do you do to develop the right strategy to accomplish the company's goals? Yeah, you definitely need to. It's a little bit of what I said earlier, Rusty, it's important to come in and understand what you have. What's the foundation that exists today? And then it's important because people have worked hard to create that. And I've been in companies where someone will come in and they'll say, everything goes, we're gonna start all over my way. And it's the most demoralizing thing in the world. You know, you know, there are great things that have happened in this company and there are amazing people. When you look back on the Kelly family I talked about earlier and David Carey leading this company for many, many years, they had so much passion about our industry and what we were doing. There's bound to be a tremendous amount of great things in this organization. So it's important to come in and understand that before you go off and start saying, we're gonna do it different. And so I think people, they respect that. They feel like the things that they've done in the past are valued and are important. And then they are willing to accept the changes that need to come because they know that it's gonna be a marriage of what was and what can be in order to create this new successful company. Jeff, some of your properties are right there on Waikiki Beach. And Waikiki Beach is, I mean, I can't imagine Hawaii without Waikiki Beach. Now, what are your thoughts about how we can preserve the beauty of Waikiki Beach? You know, it's incredibly important. You know, when you think about the history of Waikiki Beach, it's a man-made beach. So, you know, there was a lot of swamp area around here and it's an important economic engine for this state. And so we've got a beach replenishment discussions that are going on. And there are a million different opinions on what we should do and how we should do it, how fast we should do it. The reality is we need to move forward. This is such an important part from a recreation perspective, from a surfing perspective, from an economic engine perspective to be able to tout that this is one of the most amazing beaches on the planet. Not just in the U.S. on the planet is a critically important piece of what we've been able to communicate to people for decades. And so, you know, the beach is eroding to some degree. We're dealing with sea level rise. We're dealing with climate change issues. These are all real things that are happening out there. So it is important that we quickly pivot to figuring out how we're going to replenish the beach here in Waikiki so that we can have this economic engine continue to provide for us as we move into the future. Jeff, you and I both know that risk promotes growth. And I want to know your thoughts about the importance of taking calculated risks. You know, I've worked with people over the years that I've been able to look at. And one of the things that I'm just, I mentioned something about that real quick is that people ask you all the time, who's your mentor? And I've got, I look at this and I say, I've got a lot of them. You know, we, you should like block from all the different people, all the positive attributes to be able to say, these are the important things that I want to learn over time. And one of the things that you learn from people is certain people have vision. And that vision takes calculated risks. So I worked for a company with an individual who this, this company was doing $5 million in revenue. He said, we're going to add 50 employees and we're going to do $100 million in five years in revenue and that happened. And so you think about a risk like that, a risk like that can say either it works or the company's out of business. So you have to be very careful. You have to be very smart about what you're doing. You can't do things that don't have some foundation in them, but you do have to have vision in order to be able to make those decisions in order to take those calculated risks. You know, one of the things I say all the time Rusty is, we think about the technology side of our business. If everything had to be perfect with technology deployment, we would never deploy technology because you're always going to have a snag here or there. You know, you look at all these big businesses that are out there today on the technology front, every single one of them have bug fixes all the time. And it's just the nature of it. And if they were waiting for perfection, then we wouldn't have any technology in the world today. Jeff, you're so right about the technology thing and bug fixes and Jeff, it was super great having you on the show today. I really want to thank you for taking time to join me. Rusty, thanks for having me. This was a pleasure and I really am inspired by your books. So thanks for allowing me to be a part of that and to read them and hopefully others will as well because you know, that kind of passion that you have, that kind of success doesn't come around all the time and it's important for everyone to understand that you can do it too. And I think these books really promote that. Well, thank you, Jeff. I like hearing that. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I hope that Jeff 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 thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.