Barbell Shrugged - What Makes A Great Team Is Not Luck- Business of Fitness #65

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

As General Manager of The Resort at Pedregal, Fernando Flores brings more than 18 years of hospitality experience to the award-winning property. In his role, Flores is responsible for continuing the success of the prestigious resort while cultivating both domestic and international relationships with guests, colleagues and owners. From achieving financial results and implementation of capital expense projects and focusing on maintaining an efficient and profitable function of the day-to-day operations on property, to providing exceptional guest service and satisfaction property-wide, Flores has made an impact at the resort for over a decade.      Since joining the team in 2008 as Assistant Director of Food & Beverage, his innovative, fresh ideas and determination have enabled him to quickly excel through the ranks, holding various positions at the resort including Director of Food & Beverage, Director of Rooms and Resort Manager. Flores’ multifaceted experience and familiarity with The Resort at Pedregal paired with his compassionate leadership skills allow him to further enhance the resort’s undisputed benchmark for providing the very finest in luxury hospitality and guest satisfaction. During his tenure, The Resort at Pedregal has been named the No. 1 Resort in Mexico by Travel + Leisure three times since the grand opening, was awarded the coveted Forbes Five-Star achievement for both the hotel and spa, and is consistently in the top 5 Resorts in Mexico (Western) in Condé Nast Traveler.     Flores earned a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Biomedical and Medical Engineering from the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara.    To say the Resort at Pedregal is phenomenal would be an understatement. The five-star resort is ranked by Forbes, TripAdvisor, and received Travel Leisure’s World’s Best Awards making it’s resume speak for itself. In today’s episode, Jason and Fernando discuss how reaching this degree of service and notoriety was possible. Through creating and maintaining a service culture rooted in harvesting meaningful connections and positive impact, The Resort at Pedregal is second to none when it comes to the service industry. With over a decade of experience, Fernando provides insight and takeaways for any business owner in today’s show. Enjoy!    Minute Breakdown:    0-5 – Getting Started in Customer Service Industry  5-10 – Creating and Maintaining Quality  10-15 – Rebranding: Communicating Mission and Vision  15-20 – Identifying Talent and Onboarding Process  20-25 – Making Your Team Gameday Ready   25-30 –Refining and Practicing Standards: Creating Alignment    Check out The Resort at Pedregal here: www.theresortatpedregal.com  Find The Resort at Pedregal at @resortatpedregal  Find Jason at @jasonkhalipa  Keep up with Jason’s latest project at: www.ncfitcollective.fit 

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Business of Fitness podcast. I'm Jason Kleep and on today's episode we have Fernando Flores. Now Fernando doesn't come from the gym business and that's okay. Fernando comes from the hospitality industry. He's the GM of the number one ranked hotel in Mexico. This guy puts together an amazing team with a phenomenal product, and there's so much we could learn about the customer experience, customer service. We dive into all of that on this episode.

Now, before we get into it, just want to remind you, if you're a gym owner, if you're a coach out there, and you haven't checked out the NC Fit Collective, I truly believe we are putting out the best session plans, programming, and coach development tools because we have to. We're using them for all of our gyms. So if it's not good, we're in a lot of trouble. If you haven't checked it out, go ahead and get in a free trial by emailing collective at nc.fit. And we look forward to hearing from you. Guys, let's keep putting one foot in front of the other. Let's keep rising the tides. I hope you enjoy this episode. All right, everybody. So I'm here with Fernando Flores, who's the general manager of the resort at Pedregal. And I've stayed here probably a lot of times, And it is by far without question, the best resort I've ever stayed at.

It's ranked by TripAdvisor, the number one resort in Mexico. It's five-star rated by Forbes and Fernando has led the charge here for quite a while. So I'm super, super honored to have you on the show. I know we could learn a lot about customer service from you. And that ultimately is what you guys do better than anybody else I've ever seen. So welcome to the Business of Fitness podcast. And even though you're not in the fitness space necessarily, you still like to throw down on some workouts, which is great. But this show isn't just about fitness. It's about service-based businesses. And that's all you guys are.

So I got to start here, Fernando. How did you get started in the resort at Pedregal? How did you get started in the hospitality industry, and what laid your foundation to ultimately build the most successful or one of the most successful hotels in Mexico? Thank you very much, Jason. It is a pleasure to be with you here. And as you mentioned, you've stayed with us and your family, and it's always a pleasure to have you back. I started in the hospitality industry when I was a young kid. I was about 13 years old. My parents had a restaurant, and I was a busboy at the restaurant. And one of my younger

brothers, he was helping out in the kitchen. And ever since I was a kid, and I remember helping out in the restaurants and seeing customers leave happy, see families, some of them coming back for a second, for a third time, that gave me a lot of joy. Eventually, I went on and graduated as a biomedical engineer. Well, you took a shift there, huh? Quite a shift. I always loved math, so I was always between engineering or medicine. My grandfather was a doctor. So I chose a discipline that combines both engineering and medicine, and I wanted to change people's life or people's quality of life through technology and I worked a few years in hospitals and then I decided that

there was something missing in my life. I met a girl back then now we've been married for 17 years and it's funny because one day I'm at a hospital and I'm working and she calls me and she says, Fernando, I need to talk to you. I have some news. I'm driving to her home and on my way to her home, I have a car accident. Luckily, nothing serious happened, but she comes where I was and she tells me Fernando you know we want to get married we want to travel the world someone just called me they are opening a hotel in Los Cabos they are looking for waiters why don't we just give it a try let's go to Los Cabos let's start a new life let's start a new life. Let's start a new chapter. We can save money. We can travel.

And, you know, at that point I looked at my life and I decided to make the change. Next day, I showed up work, told my boss I was quitting. He thought I was crazy. He said, really, you're going to leave? You're going to go and become a waiter? And I said, said yes I am going to start a career in hospitality so you left uh I would assume relatively high paying uh you know job utilizing your degree and just left and came to be a waiter in Cabo San Lucas that is correct that was about 18 years ago the first hotel that I ever worked at was Hilton Los Cabos I was part part of the pre-opening team. I was a waiter at the main restaurant. My girlfriend at the time, now wife, she was a cocktail waitress. And it was great. That's when I realized that I had a passion for service and that I could make a change. I

could make a change in people's life through service. So this became my career and I never looked back. And I worked my way up until one day I became a general manager. Wow. So, you know, for everybody listening right now, whether you're in the CrossFit space, whatever space you're in, I could say with 100% confidence. I travel personally. I travel over 100 days a year and I stay at all different types of resorts. And I could say with 100% confidence, the service level that you guys bring here is the highest I've ever seen. And so what I'm really curious about is

how you keep as a general manager here, how you keep quality from the management all the way down to the people that are cleaning your rooms to whatever is going on. Because at this resort, when you walk down a walkway and there's anybody, they always do the same thing. They step to the side, they greet you, they know your name. You've almost like Googled everybody to understand exactly what they even like before they even say they even like it. And so what I'm curious about is how'd you guys get to this point? So before when you were, you were food and beverage manager, then you kind of worked your way up and you became manager when the resort switched over ownership from Capella, who's the management company to being independent at that time. What you were saying earlier was that the resort went through some, some tough times.

What I'm curious about is as the manager, how did you get the confidence back from the community and then get the confidence back for the team and where the vision was you guys are going? Because you were originally part of the Capella brand. You then got rid of the Capella brand. What happened then? And can you tell us what you learned for anybody that's looking for a rebrand or perhaps they're going through a tough time in their business? What did you learn from that experience when you became manager and you had to go through that change? Thank you, Jason. Well, I have the honor of being in this property since day one. I was part of the pre-opening team, so I'm going to turn 11 next month. And out of the 480 colleagues that we have by the end of the year 65 of us will be

turning either 10 or 11 years so that tells you that we have a very high retention the lowest turnover in the destination and that is really because of the culture and it it always start with selecting the right talent. You know, we take a lot of time selecting the people that not necessarily have the experience, but that they have the attitude. I want people that, you know, when you're talking to them, you know, they look to you in the eyes. They are smiling.

You can feel their warmth, that they are genuine. Because at the end of the day, this business is all about emotions, about making emotional connections. It's about teamwork. You know, we have amazing colleagues, but at the end of the day, we're one team. So it doesn't matter if you're heart of the house, you're front of the house, we're all working towards the same objectives. So we opened back in 2008. Back then, as you remember, there was a financial crisis in the world. So it was not the easiest time to be opening a hotel. Back then, we were part of a brand called Capella.

And we worked very hard. We very quickly became the brand called Capella. And, you know, we worked very hard. We very quickly became the flagship of the company. By 2014, we had been ranked the number one hotel in Mexico by Travel and Leisure. Then we had Hurricane Odile. So we had to shut down the resort for about five months. And while we were closed, ownership decided to become independent so we became the resort at pedregal and i became the general manager and at that point like you say it was times of challenges because some of our customers they were concerned with the change.

You're becoming independent. What does that mean? Are you going to retain your people? Are you going to have the same level of service? And I think all of that is, those are valid questions. The same happens with the travel partners. So ownership, which we had great owners that always have taken care of the people, they gave me the opportunity to create a new identity, working with our key managers.

So we had a couple of sessions off-site with my key managers where we created our new vision and mission. And, you know, at the end of the day, what we're doing here is creating unforgettable moments, unforgettable connections with a team of professionals that inspire and support each other in the pursuit of excellence. So we create our identity. I start traveling with my sales team, visiting our travel partners and telling them that we have the same team, that we have the same people, that now as an independent, we can be more creative, we're more flexible. And I'm asking them to give us an opportunity to show them that really the resort is better than ever.

So we start working very hard. We have a very intense training program because I believe that success is success. It's training. How many managers though, not to cut you off, but this is curious. I mean, on a piece of paper here in front of us, I mean, you know your vision, the mission, you know what you want to do. You know where you want to go. How I think that at least speaking for myself, for our organization,

I wish we had done a better job clearly communicating what that looked like when we rebranded from NorCal CrossFit to NC Fit. That was something we really learned the hard way. When you guys did this, what made you realize you had to go off site? How many people did you bring together? And did you know, how did you know the team was really on board with where you wanted to go? I mean, what types of things did you do to ensure you have the right people in the room

to create that vision moving forward? I'm curious. Were those people that had been there for a while? I mean, what type of hurdles did you have to overcome? Because that's really tough because there's a lot of change going on. You changed the ownership. The ownership never changed. The management company changed.

Correct. We had the same ownership throughout that they always have been very supportive of the people. So ownership decided to become independent. So the brand leaves, but we had the same ownership. And at that time, we had the same team, team members that I've worked since day one. Some of them, they've been with us also since day one. So we had the executive committee about seven members and about 30 key managers and you know at the end of the day we are the leaders and we are the ones

that need to be driving the vision and the mission and we are the ones that create the energy that flows through all of the levels of the organization. And we are the ones that need to inspire the people. So my role as a general manager is to come every day for my people. I'm here to serve them. What can I do for them? I want to make them better professionals and hopefully, you know, better human beings, better fathers, better sons. I want to have an impact on people's life. And that is also what my leaders do every day, you know, spreading that energy, that enthusiasm, training, keeping the team focused.

So I was mentioning that, you know, I started traveling at the early stages of the resort at Pedregal. We gained back the trust of the travel partners. And then 2017, after a lot of work, we started the year receiving the five stars for the hotel from Forbes Travel Guide, which is by far the biggest accolade, the biggest honor in the industry, achieving the five stars. Then we achieved the number one hotel in Mexico by Travel Unleashed Reader's Choice

Award. Second time in our history because we had achieved that with Capella, Pedregal, but the first time as an independent hotel and that clearly told the story that the resort was better than ever. 2018 comes and we achieve the five stars also for the spa, becoming the only hotel in Los Cabos to have the double five stars, one of two in Mexico. And, you know, all of that is because of the people, because of the culture we created of respect, of empowerment.

Our employees are empowered. If a guest encounters a difficulty, we own that problem. And if a guest has an issue and they tell us about it, for us it's gold because it allows us to turn their experience around. If there's an incident and they don't tell us and they leave, they might never come back. So we want to make sure that we are reliable, that we deliver consistent service. And look, at the end of the day, we're not perfect. But if something goes wrong, we do want to be perfect resolving any issue and so you know as a as a frequent guest of your hotel and you know you you you shared with us how at one point you went through a challenge you brought the

team together on this mission this vision you executed and the proof is in this third party saying hey we validate that you guys have done a great job here are your five stars so tell me when you're hiring people, I mean, I could tell just from knowing you for a while, you truly embody this idea of hospitality. You embody this idea of making an impact on your people and then them making an impact on your guests. Now, how do you identify key talent?

How do you identify these people you want to bring on? Because what does your onboarding process look like? Because for us, for example, as a gym, we identify talent that's passionate about fitness and we train them through a protocol. What does your protocol look like? Because I've never experienced anybody who keeps it as consistent as you do. And so how long is that process? I'm just curious. Well, as I mentioned, we take a lot of time on the

selection process selecting the individuals that have the talents that we're looking for and you know for that you're going to have an interview starting with the supervisor and there with the manager and then with the director and then at the end of the day i get to interview every single individual you do yes that's the last interview because i want to make sure that again they are aligned with the values and i want to make sure that they that i see that passion in the team members and you know we've created a wonderful team we are really a family and i want to make sure that every single new member you know lives with that vision and mission that we've created so once we hire them then they go through an orientation process

where we teach them about our identity our values our mission vision our standards and then we start to train them so usually we take a couple of weeks before they can even have that interaction with the guests so that they learn, you know, the process and the systems. So you really prepare them and then they are able to do the job. We also do a lot of cross-training between departments. And like I mentioned, at the end of the day, we're one team. You know, you can be working at the front desk. You can be a housekeeper, a gardener. Everyone is as important for the success of the organization.

And, you know, you've seen the comments from our guests. If you go into TripAdvisor, they are going to mention employees' names because they never forget what we make them feel. And they know Gino, Patrick, Fernanda, Viridiana, Livia, Isaac. It's all about the people. We're in an industry that we work with emotions, and our biggest asset is really the team. How many employees?

480. And every one of them, every single colleague here, you personally met with before you were hired? Most of them because I've been the general manager for four years. I started as director of food and beverage. So I can tell you i mean i know all of all of my team members i might not have interviewed all of them because i was not the general manager back then at your current job at gm any new hire has any new hire i want to have

the opportunity to meet with them and you know i want to give them my time also to answer any questions because at the end of the day, I'm here to serve my people. And when I was growing up in this industry, I've had great mentors and also I've learned what not to do. And there were certain things that I said, when I am a general manager, I am going to be someone that is there for the people. And we've been through many accolades and awards,

but also we've stayed together through the challenges. And that's really what makes a family. And like I say say i'm here to serve my team and to serve my guests so i think for anybody listening who's an owner uh manager i mean i'm picking up a lot from this conversation primarily because in our organization for example we hire someone new at the front desk it's not that that person to me is not important they're very important to the first person that greets them it's just i look at it as my role that i'm not hiring or firing that person so maybe i don't need to be involved in that process because they have a manager and but i

mean listening to you speak on this i think it goes both ways one is you show that you you care right you care about each person that's coming on the team and you're giving them an open microphone to ask you any questions that they might have and so that's that's really a very um no that's a very interesting point right that whether it's the person who cleans the room or the gardener you want to meet with them and give them the opportunity because you might not after that maybe you don't run into them for a little bit and maybe they had something they wanted to talk to you about and they appreciate trust me i get a lot of comments of uh new hires saying wow i've never met with a channel manager in my selection process and thank you and i always say no thank you for your time thank you for being

here and welcome to the family. I think that is so important because it just sets the tone. It sets the organization for success because then, you know, there's that excitement. There is that pride of, wow, now I'm part of this amazing family. And, you know, it's showing everyone at every level that we are all equally important for the success of our organization.

So looking at your organization and recognizing that you guys are doing things exceptionally well, what other items? So it sounds like the onboarding process, you identify people and you take a while, right? You're relatively specific. You, you seem like you have a good training protocol that last weeks, right? Which is really valuable. And, but what other things do you think you do on an ongoing basis? Because right now we just celebrated, um, I know you're at 11, but you celebrated 10 year anniversary. And last thing you had a big, uh, 4th of July event. And I probably saw maybe 60, 70, maybe even 80 people work in that event. Maybe I'm off, but I mean, these guys are all marching to the same tone and they're all, and I saw a pre-meeting before the event. So what type of

things are you doing on a regular basis like that to make sure everybody's executing like on a micro level because before the event happened i saw them all huddle yes and then you also had a 10-year anniversary party where you invite all the staff to come and you told me something that that kind of lasted with me was that you're always the last person there so how often are you having these big events big functions how often are you doing these small ones and what's unique about that and what impact does that have on your business certainly well we do have daily lineups every day at all of the departments of the hotel we have a lineup where we are reviewing our vision our mission we review one standard per day all of the team members get to talk about it, get to express

their feelings. We also, you know, of course, review the arrivals that we're having in. We review any incident that we had with a guest. We also are reviewing any special preference. So look, at the end of the day, all we have is today. So we're coming in today to deliver the best service that we can. And, you know, we have great accolades. And for me, that is just a reference. I mean, yes, we were ranked the number one hotel in Mexico at Travel and Leisure, but that is a reference. We're coming in today for today's success. So daily lineup, it is very, very important. You mentioned that yesterday we had our anniversary celebration. The day before, we had one special celebration for our staff.

We typically have about two gatherings per year, the Christmas party. And along with my executive committee, we're always the last ones to leave because we want to make sure that, you know, after everyone had a wonderful time, that everybody gets home safely. But it's just those details that you do on a daily basis that build your success. And also the daily training. On a daily basis, we're training on all of the different areas, in engineering, in housekeeping. And we have training in English, and we have training in Spanish, and we have our Forbes training.

Because what makes a great team, it is not luck. What we've achieved is not a matter of luck. It's a matter of hard work, consistency. Every day. Every day. Every day. You keep focused and you drive the vision every day. What I love what you said is that these are accolades that may help get people here. But every day, it could be your last.

Meaning every day, we have a saying in our business where it's like we have to basically renew our members every day because they're on a monthly contract. And sometimes people think like, oh, I renew them every month when they pay their bill. But every day, if they have a bad experience, they're never coming back. That is correct. And so when you say that you do development every day, I'm really curious about this

and how this can relate to other industries because we do development with our team, but I'm curious how you do this. So when you say you do a daily lineup, every employee lines up together or is it in the individual? In the different departments. In the different departments.

So front desk will have their own lineup. Concierge has their own lineup. Housekeeping. And on the different shifts because at the end of the day, we run a 24-hour business. So even on the overnight shift, they have a daily lineup right so there's probably about 20 25 lineups throughout the day starting from seven o'clock and probably the last one is about midnight or one o'clock in the morning with the overnight shift but you said something i want to just pinpoint out you said we don't only talk about you know new arrivals and concerns and this and that i get that that

makes sense to me but you said one thing where you pick a topic to discuss for that day so can you tell me more about that so basically every day you identify a different topic is that the way it works we have 15 service standards so every day we are reviewing a different standard so monday we go with standard number one and then that's how we go and then we start all over. So we're constantly refreshing our identity, our standards because it's not something that you read the day that we hire you and then you forget about it. No. And not only do we review it on a daily basis, we have it printed and we carry this in our pocket. So I'm looking at, obviously you guys are hearing this on audio, but I'm looking at like a trifold, basically laminated piece of paper.

That's about a business card size, but it's multiple folded. And it has the mission, the vision on it. It also has these 15 key service components. And so basically twice a month you touch base on each one. That is correct. Wow. That's really cool. So that helps having everyone aligned on the company's objectives.

And, you know, this is what we do every day. We are living and breeding our service culture. And that is a major tool for you. That is our major tool. This is our identity. That is our major tool. This is our identity. This is who we are, and at the end of the day, we're not just doing a job here.

I mean, we're coming in to create wonderful connections, to have a positive impact, not only with our guests, but with our team members and the community. Guys, if you're not listening to this and getting inspired to increase the level of service to your business, I don't know what to tell you because I'm fascinated by this right here, this trifold and the consistency and the daily, daily development, daily. I mean,

to your point, it's this consistency that matters, right? And this is really, really, this is getting me just, man, what could we be doing better? I hope you guys all feel that same way. So for now, you've led the charge. You've created something very beautiful here with your team. And what does the future look like? What's the next thing on your horizon that you're excited about for the hotel? Because for anybody listening, if you're excited about for the hotel because for anybody listening if you're getting ready for a honeymoon a birthday any celebration you have to

come to the resort at pedregal you have to i mean it's mandatory and you gotta come say hi to our friend fernando here now tell me what what can people look forward to what's the next step yes well we're very excited just uh recently we announced that we have new ownership, Walton Street Capital. They are coming in with a long-term vision for the property. They value the people as the most valuable asset. So that is very, very exciting for us. And we are going to convert the resort and become the first Waldorf Astoria in Mexico. This conversion is going to happen later in the fall. We're going to convert to Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal.

And that is something very exciting because I know now that with this brand, with Hilton Group and Waldorf Astoria, we're going to take the resort to an even higher level. So that is very, very excited. I'm going to be staying on as a general manager, and so is the rest of my team. So we're very excited to start a new chapter with Waldorf Astoria. I love it. Well, guys, for more information about the resort at Pedregal, it's obviously in Cabo San Lucas. If they want more information about your resort

or if they want to book it, should they just go to theresortatpedregal.com? That is correct. That is correct, Jason. theresortatpedregal.com. And as I mentioned, most likely by the fall, September of October, we're going to be converting to wilder fastoria but we will be

sharing uh more news on that very soon yeah and let the reception know when you talk that you heard it here on the business of fitness podcast with jason and i'm sure they'll do something special for you they always do something special for us they always take care of us and um fernando i really appreciate you taking the time to sit down. I think that you had some remarkable things to say. You're a guy who lives by the code. You're, you're about hospitality and it shows here. The proof is in the pudding that what I'm looking at right here in front of me with this card just tells you that you're making small daily incremental steps towards where you want to go. And it doesn't happen overnight. And that's what I'm gathering from this conversation,

which is really powerful. You can hire the right people, but if you're not daily developing them, you're going to basically be staying where you're at. And you guys want to continue to raise the bar every single day. So super cool. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Guys, check out the resort at Pedregal. And we'll look forward to talking again soon about what the transfer of ownership looks like and what you learned from that experience. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Jason. It's always a pleasure to have you back. we'll look forward to talking again soon about what the, what the transfer of ownership looks like and how, what you learned from that experience. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Jason.

It's always a pleasure to have you back. And like you said, you know, we're looking forward to being better every day and we look forward to welcoming all of our guests. Thank you. Thank you.