Blake Danner, Proper Hospitality

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Blake Danner from Proper Hospitality. Blake, thanks so much for joining us today.

Blake Danner: Thank you. Excited to be here. This is going to be fun. I’m looking forward to it.

SSR: We’re in a beautiful setting for those of you listening. We’re at the Proper in Santa Monica. So we picked a good place.

BD: We did and on a beautiful LA day. So happy.

SSR: So let’s start at the beginning.

BD: Let’s do it.

SSR: Where did you grow up?

BD: Born and raised in Dallas, Texas. I know, you don’t hear the accent right now, but I guarantee you if I talked to my mom, the next day you’ll say, ‘Blake talked to his mom,’ because the y’alls come out really heavy. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas.

SSR: So growing up, did you have an idea of what you wanted to be? Was there any sense of hospitality?

BD: Oh my gosh, I had no choice. So, here’s the scoop. My mother was the general manager of a hotel, literally, lived on property for awhile and I would watch my mom and I just thought, ‘Man, she’s got the most glamorous job.’ I would watch her entertain guests and I would watch her throw corporate parties and every now and then she’d invite me to one and I’d think, ‘Wow, this is kind of what I want to do.’ And so fortunately for me, my mom let me work on property as I got a little older. My very first job ever was to be the PBX operator. Do you remember PBX?

SSR: Yes.

BD: I was like the old school PBX operator. So the phone would ring, I’d take the cord, I’d plug it in, ‘Howard Johnson’s North Central, can I help you?’ They’d ask for room 201, I grab the other cord, I’d push it in. That was like my first hotel job. Like it was old school.

SSR: How old were you?

BD: Oh my God. I was 14. Don’t tell anybody. Literally, I was 14. She made me sit in the back so no one could see me and I had to use kind of a deep voice. But I was kind of born into it. I just thought what she did was super glamorous and I loved her passion toward it and I loved that she included me in it, and I knew that I wanted to be in some level of hospitality. I wasn’t always sure exactly what I wanted to do, but I saw her and the joy she took in it and I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I want to do. That looks fun.

SSR: And was it only one hotel or was she at multiple hotels?

BD: So she was mostly at one. For a brief time she oversaw two. She oversaw both the Howard Johnsons and the Sheraton in Dallas, which shared the same owner. But keep in mind, she was a female general manager back in the late ’70s, early ’80s. This was transcending. I was so proud of her and so moved by what she did and I wanted to follow in her footsteps.

SSR: Was there any other job that you did besides the PBX operator that kind of stuck with you?

BD: So she made me work through every department. I literally have worked in every department in the hotel. It might not surprise you. It wasn’t too good in engineering, but let’s not talk about that. But look, I think where I really resonated was at the front desk. I’m kind of gregarious and outgoing in my nature. I loved working at the front desk. You’ll probably know that later on I had a long tenure in sales and what I learned working at the front desk was I was a natural salesperson.

‘Where are you from? Why are you here? Who are your friends? What are your friends name?’ I really enjoyed the interaction and the personal interaction. And keep in mind this was a small, 150-room Howard Johnson. So you got to know people. This was back before all the technology. This was really high touch. We had regular guests. I knew them; I knew their families. I knew they came back every year for Thanksgiving. The front desk was really where I really kind of found myself and thought, ‘This is something I enjoy doing. I love this interaction.’

SSR: And I guess that’s like the basics of hospitality, right? Like even with all this technology, there’s still something to say for that connection and maybe even more so now because there’s so much technology?

BD: I think what you’re seeing right now is a return to the high touch, because we’ve been so technologied out. We’ve lost some of that real hospitality. And I think one of the things that you’ll see that we’re focusing on in our brand is really going back to that high touch. Because at the end of the day, that’s what people are really craving.

SSR: And it’s what they remember?

BD: Yeah.

SSR: So did you end up going to school for hospitality?

BD: I did. So I got my degree in hotel and restaurant administration. I went to Oklahoma State University [OSU]. My father was a very smart man. I had narrowed it down to two schools. I was either going to go to OSU or Cornell, and my dad being the smart man that he said, ‘Son, anywhere you want to go, you can go. But I want to do property visits with you. I want to go see these schools with you.’

So my dad, being the brilliant man that he is, planned a visit to Ithaca, New York in February. I got off the plane. I’m a kid from Texas. What do I know? I got off the plane and I looked around and I thought, ‘Maybe a great education, but I’m not sure about this.’ And then he took me to Oklahoma State homecoming weekend, gorgeous university, just far enough from home that I felt like I was on my own, but close enough that I could still feel a little connection to my parents. And they happened to have a really great hotel restaurant program at the time. So Oklahoma State, it was.

SSR: And what did you do right after school? What was your first job?

BD: I was super, super lucky. I did an internship before my senior year at a hotel called the Summit Hotel in Dallas, Texas. And no sooner did I start my internship, one of their sales managers quit, and it happened to be the sales manager that handled sports teams. And the DOS walked into me and said, ‘Okay, I know you’re just an intern, but I’m in trouble. You know sports. Would you step in?’ So I thought, ‘Wow, I’m swinging way over my head here.’ But I did it. And it was a great summer.

And so, literally, about halfway through my senior year, they called me and said, ‘You know what, we’d love for you to come back and we’d love to offer you a sales manager job.’ So the entire second half of my senior year of college, I already had a job. So my attendance record was not that great at class. I’m embarrassed to tell you. But I was really lucky. My first job was as a sales manager at the Summit Hotel in Dallas, Texas.

A great, great opportunity for me to really jump into a sales related role that I thought I was well suited for at a company, at the time managed by a company called Richfield, which was a very large third-party management company. And it taught me the basics. It was a great experience.

SSR:  Is there a memory from there that has stuck with you?

BD: Yeah. So it’s funny. Just this morning I was meeting here with our proper sales team and I told this story and I’ll share it with you. But sales was different back then. Today, we have such great tools to really target. But back in those days, I would show up in the morning, they’d fill my car up with 20 boxes of sticky buns and they’d say, ‘Don’t come back until all the sticky buttons are gone.’

And so I would go to office buildings and office parks and just meet people and say, ‘Hey, tell me who handles your hotel business.’ It was hardcore sales. You got rejected a lot. But every now and then that one customer says, ‘Well, you know what? As a matter of fact, we’ve got a conference coming up. Let me talk to you about it.’ That was the big win and that’s when you went running back to the hotel and said, ‘Boss, boss, boss, I found a piece of business.’ It was good times.

Things were different back to then. I also remind people that, I would walk into a building to make sales calls and no matter how nice people were to you, by about the second sales call, someone had called security. So I learned that after about the second sales call, you went up four floors, then you made that call, you came down three floors. I could usually make it till about one o’clock before security tracked me down and kicked me out of the building. Sales was a lot different back then. I tell the team today, ‘We’re so fortunate we have all these great, really robust tools so that we can be very laser-focused on how we approach customers today.’ It wasn’t like that back then.

SSR: No, you were literally pounding the pavement.

BD: Absolutely. But I learned it the hard way. And if I had to I’d sing the jingle.

SSR: And how long did you stay with that hotel and what was kind of next in your career?

BD: So I told you the hotel was managed by a company called Richfield Hospitality services. My career, I think, is a little unique. I spent 14 years with Richfield. I had a really good run with them. By the time I left the organization, I was senior director of sales. I oversaw a portfolio of about 25 hotels. So, I had a really long run with them.

But kind of grew through the ranks, became a director of sales, oversaw my own hotel, then oversaw a small portfolio of hotels. Then they gave me the equity portfolio of hotels that we owned. So it was a great progression. But the thing I liked the most about Richfield is, it was early in my career and Richfield managed a couple of everything. We managed a couple of Sheratons, a couple of Holiday Inns, a couple of Westins. And so I really got to kind of see, feel and touch a wide variety of product: urban, suburban, big 800-room convention hotels, small boutique. It was just a great proving ground for me.

SSR: You got to try a little bit of everything.

BD: I did. Look, I think it taught me the basics and I’ve always been super thankful for that because I think today I trade on a lot of that information that I learned back then.

SSR: And was it after that you went to work for Ian Schrager?

BD: So here’s the story. I’m working for Richfield, true story. I’m working for Richfield. I took vacation in Miami, I walked in the Delano and I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’  It was transformative to me. It had just opened and I thought to myself, ‘Wow, you mean I can take my personal aesthetic and kind of my personal lifestyle and kind of all the things that I find important about design and match that with my professional career? This would be so cool.’

The second I saw the Delano, I knew that I wanted to try to track down Ian Schrager, and I wanted to go to work for him. I started kind of stalking him and sending resumés and trying to get on his radar. And lo and behold, I got a phone call one day and my ex-boss at Richfield, who had left the company and not really told people where he’s going, which we all thought was a little weird, called me and said, ‘I’m working for this guy in New York. You probably haven’t heard of him. He’s done some really cool stuff. His name’s Ian Schrager.’ ‘You’re kidding me. I’m coming.’

Literally, two weeks later I was on a plane, in New York, meeting with the team, meeting with Ian and it was serendipitous. I always say it was meant to be. I was so happy for that transition. And keep in mind, when I joined Ian, it was in the early days of the organization. So, the W Hotels of the world didn’t exist. The Standard, the Ace, none of that existed.

What he was doing was, really transformative at that time. And me and many of my friends who worked for him back in those days, we call it our Camelot days. It was such a fun time. The things that we were doing were so fun and unique. We were opening hotels like St Martin’s Lane, Sanderson, Hudson, Cliff. It was a really exciting time, and I learned an immense amount from him and have huge, huge respect from him.

SSR: What did you learn the most from him?

BD: Ian had this wild ability, this voracious appetite of pop culture. I would see him sit at his desk and pull out Vanity Fair, Esquire, you name it and just page through them and just absorb it. Just page through them. Page, page, page, page, absorb, absorb. He had this voracious appetite for pop culture, understanding what was hip of the day, understanding what the look of the day was, being able to translate that. I just always respected his just voracious sense of making sure he knew what the tastemakers were about.

I would watch him plan a night where he’d go to five different nightclubs, he’d stay in each one of about 15 minutes. He’d walk in and look around, get the vibe, understand it, got what was going on and say, ‘Okay, let’s go to the next one.’ But he just had this great sense and ability to understand what was of the moment. You’ve seen some of his most recent hotels to this day, he still maintains that.

He gets what’s important to the tastemakers. He stays current. So from him, I learned just this great voracious sense of pop culture and making sure that I stay present and that I stay up to speed, and make sure I understand what our customer wants.

SSR: Was there one hotel in the portfolio at the time that you were opening that you really loved or there is some connection with it either from the sales side or just opening side?

BD: I’m going to go back to the Delano, and not because it was the first hotel that I saw, but one of the great things about Ian and Philippe Stark’s relationship is that, all of these hotels had these great stories and the design was so purposeful. It’s not by accident that when you walk in the front door of the Delano, all of the columns lead you directly down to the ocean.

Ian recognized that there was a lot of beach hotels that really didn’t connect to the beach. And so he and Philippe together really created this sense of the first thing you see when you walk in that hotel down that long corridor is the beach. Philippe would tell these great stories about how when he was young, he would play under his grandmother’s dining room table. And if you think about it, all the curtains of the Delano come about halfway down in the lobby. And that’s because that was his memory. So there’s these just great, great stories about the design that I’ve always just been so charmed by and that is why I think that hotel is still to this day has a little bit of fairy dust sprinkled on it.

SSR: Sales director’s dream.

BD: Yeah. Easy to sell. Easy to sell the dream.

SSR: So you were with Ian for 14 years?

BD: Yeah.  A long time.

SSR: Why did you decide to make a shift and where did you go?

BD: If you think about it, Ian went public. The company became Morgans Hotel Group. I love the company. I’d been there a long time. I didn’t love working in the public company environment. One of the things that drew me and fed me and made it so wonderful to work for Ian all those years was it was small. It was entrepreneurial. You could walk in his office, you can get a decision made.

And so when the company went public, I decided that it was time for me to venture out and maybe try something different. So I didn’t love the big kind of public company environment. I met a man named Andrew Zobler who was at the time starting up a company called Sydell Group and I thought, ‘Wait, knock, knock, here’s this great visionary entrepreneur looking to build something unique,’ and it was just a really great opportunity for me to make a transition.

SSR: And what was it about, Andrew that drew you in and what he was doing?

BD: So, Andrew is so interesting. So first of all, Andrew by trade is a lawyer, which always shocks me because he’s not a lawyer to me. The thing that drew me to Andrew is one, he’s probably one of the most consummate dealmakers I’ve ever met. He can make deals happen that other developers just can’t cobble together. I don’t know how to quantify that skill, but I’ve seen him be able to take deals that everybody else said, ‘You’ll never get this to happen,’ and he’s made it happen. So he’s the consummate dealmaker.

But what I always respected the most about him is even though he’s a lawyer and even though he’s a great dealmaker, he has a fantastic sense of design. One of the things I learned from him that was not something that I really knew was I have a new found love of found objects. It’s one of the things, if you think about the hotels in the CDL portfolio, they all have a collection of found objects.

That comes from his own personal sense of kind of design and I think his own history. His grandmother used to take him on these trips in the summers, where they would go to various fairs and find objects of art. I love that part of the story, and I really believed in him. And so I wanted to join him, I wanted to take that leap with him and I did.

SSR: So for those that are listening that might not know, it’s the LINE, it’s NoMad, it’s Freehand.

BD: Andrew Zobler is the founder of Sydell Group, and there were really kind of four brands that came out of that company. In the luxury space, you had NoMad. In kind of the high design lifestyle space, you have LINE Hotels, and in kind of the premium hostel money, Millennial-focused traveler, you had Freehand. It was very rewarding to get to take those brands to market while I was there.

SSR: And looking back from your Ian Schrager days to now being with Sydell group, how had your role changed? As more design lifestyle hotels came out was it easier in a way to kind of sell these to customers or do you think it was always something that people are looking for?

BD: So double-edged sword. First of all, when I was with Ian and we go out on sales calls, people would say, ‘You’re that nightclub guy. No, we can’t stay there.’ There was actually a lot of pushback in the early days. And customers would actually say, ‘You’re a little too out there for us.’ That started to change. We became more acceptable. People wanted it more. By the time I got to Sydell, the market was starting to get a little bit more crowded.

But what interested me the most about Sydell was what Andrew was doing was still very unique and very authentic and very residential in feeling and didn’t rely on the nightclub feel, but relied on great authenticity and connection to the community. So to answer your question, it got easier, because customers started to understand the product more. But it also got harder because the landscape got more crowded. So you really had to differentiate yourself. You had to be a smarter developer, you had to be a better owner, you had to do better design. And so I think that inspired us all to do better things.

SSR: And what was your role there?

BD: By the time I got to Sydell, I had made a transition from just sales. When I was with Ian, I headed up sales. By the time I got to Andrew, I was the COO, chief operations officer. So I took on the leadership of the entire operation, which encompassed sales and revenue and all of that, but by then I’d become kind of a full fledged operator and had a larger footprint in the organization than I’d had earlier.

SSR: Did you like that role better?

BD: Sure. Why? Because I like orchestrating everything. I love being the producer. I’m obviously a very sales-centric leader. But I loved being able to touch all the aspects of the hotel from guest satisfaction to financial performance to how we worked with the design and held the design and kept kind of the purity of the vision. I think I continued to be a great sales leader, while I took over kind of a more operational approach to the building.

SSR: What do you think designers don’t realize about operations? You talk about form meets function?

BD: Oh my gosh. They don’t realize how quickly fabrics wear out. They don’t realize how some flooring’s scuff. I mean, gosh, there’s always going to be this great tension between design and operations. I think one of the reasons why designers that work with me like me is the first thing I tell people is, ‘I am not a designer.’ Let’s be super clear. No one ever hired me for my design aesthetic. I’m a hot mess when it comes to design. It’s not my go-to skill. But I understand it and I understand why it makes us special and I have reverence for it.

I think some operators walk into a building that’s been designed by designer and they think, ‘You know what, six months from now I’m going to tear it up. Or six months from now I’m going to dumb it down.’ I never do that. What makes us special is that design, I have great reverence for it. As an operator, my role is to figure out how we can maintain their vision, and do it in a manner that is feasible, that’s operationally functional, and that’s where I get to be super creative. It’s not always easy. But I have great reverence for what makes us special, and I’ll never be the guy to dumb down really good design.

SSR: And you’ve opened a bunch of different hotels for different people. I know every project is different, but what keeps you up at night when you’re opening up a project? Is there one thing that is more cumbersome than others or one thing that you really focus on that you think sets your properties apart from others?

BD: So let me just speak about real day time. In the last nine years, I have opened 15 hotels. So it’s been just an incredible busy run. And that wasn’t all by design by the way. Some were late, somewhere early. So before you knew it, you just opened up a lot of hotels. But I think the number one thing that keeps me up today is staffing. We’re in a less than 3 percent unemployment. It’s tough to find people. The markets are incredibly competitive. So much of what we do is about building the DNA of the hotel.

So the two things that keep me up are night is, one, how do I build the DNA? Because that’s what makes me special. That’s our value proposition to the customer. How do I find the right people to do it? It’s just gotten harder and harder. So we spend a lot more time now in making sure that we are recruiting early. Before put out an ad and you said, ‘Hey, come work for us.’

And today I think, you really have to mine, you have to work to find the right staff. The number one thing that keeps me up now is staffing. The rest, construction delays happen. The rest kind of happens, but at the end of the day, it’s really about the people. The people are really what deliver this great experience that we want to contribute to. And so staffing has really become tough.

Companies, like ourselves, that are kind of forward leading, are able to attract some really good talent. We were just talking about with our sales team today. I want to keep giving them the best tools in town so that they want to work for us. I want to make sure that we’re focused on work-life balance, because I want them to work for us and I want them to stay working for us. As a leader right now, I’m spending a lot of time making sure that we legitimately are a good environment to work in, so that we can hire the best and keep the best.

SSR: Easier said than done.

BD: Totally. I admit it and I tell people all the time, ‘I want you to take time off,’ and then they say, ‘But I’ve got this and I’ve got this.’ I’m like, ‘But sometimes we have to draw the line.’ So we’re working really hard at it. I am a great proponent of really encouraging folks to have balance and trying to make sure that we create an environment where they can do it.

SSR: Well, can you give us all that secret when you figure that.

BD: I can tell you the secret for me, it’s making sure that I do a couple of Soul Cycle classes a week and get to the gym. But it’s different for everybody. For some people, it’s spending time with their kids. For some people, it’s playing cards, but whatever it is that makes them sing, I need to help them find time to do it.

SSR: Is there one property that defines your time at the Sydell Group?

BD: We opened so many great hotels while I was there. The one I think about the most, and it will be self-apparent, is the very first Freehand that we opened. Freehand was this vision that Sydell had to kind of take European hostels and bring them to the U.S. to a market that wasn’t particularly as open to them as possible. So, it was this little 66-room hotel in Miami and it was very early in the Sydell days, so we didn’t have a large infrastructure, and I just remember being so proud of that little hotel and it was really the first time that I recognized that as a leader, my role was to make sure that everyone understood what to do. We opened that hotel the night before Art Basel. Crazy, right? Who knew?

SSR: Glutton for punishment.

BD: Yeah, I think so. Glutton. We opened that hotel the night before Art Basel, and it was all hands on deck and we were a small kind of scrappy company. So everybody was there. I was carrying beds. It was just one of those experiences where I recognized as a leader, I had to step up, I had to give clear and concise direction and it was not going to get done unless somebody said, ‘Look, these are the five priorities and this is what we’re going to focus on.’

And so as a leader, it was just a great learning curve for me. It was really the first time when I recognize I had the ability to take something that could have been a trainwreck and say, ‘No, team, this is what we’re going to do. This are the priorities, this is how we’re going to make it happen.’ And we built it off and then we all high five each other and went on to the next one.

SSR: Took a nap in between.

BD: Barely.

SSR: We always say here on this podcast that you learn more from your mistakes than your successes. Is there one mistake in your career that stuck with you or that you’ve taken and learned from?

BD: Yeah. Wow. So this is where I have to give it up, right? I told you that, I’ve opened a lot of hotels in a very short amount of time, and I think the one thing I’ve learned is that I think sometimes when you open a new hotel, there is a tendency to say, well, it needs to mature. And so margins don’t have to be great at the beginning. And I think that as I’ve opened more and more hotels, I’ve learned to be much less patient and to really focus on fiscal responsibility a lot sooner.

The truth is we have aggressive investors and the margin for error is a lot slimmer than it used to be, in the old days. So I think what I’ve learned is that there’s not a lot of grace period. You need to open really tight. Earlier in my career, there was some time to kind of build. Anymore, I am much more focused on the fiscal responsibility and the financial performance of hotels much sooner, much sooner.

SSR: And it’s interesting too, I was having a conversation with someone about how when everyone thinks once you open a hotel, then you’re done. But it’s where it all starts for you.

BD: That’s just where the work starts.

SSR: Exactly. But it’s a living, breathing, evolving thing. To get that right mix and get that fiscal responsibility early it’s not easy.

BD: It’s not. Look, I think, first of all, I’ve never opened a hotel where the first couple of months you weren’t wrestling the building, whether it’s a new build or a renovation or whatever, you’re always wrestling systems. So that’s kind of number one. Number two, there’s a lot of costs associated with that, because invariably, within the first few weeks of opening a hotel, you have a pipe break or it’s just part of opening hotels.

It’s hard to be really tight when you’ve got those kinds of challenges going on. It takes you a while to get into a groove and to kind of wrestle the building into submission, so to speak, and then start to kind of find out what’s the ebb and flow of your customer and what’s the ebb and flow of the building, and how do people walk through the building and what do the traffic patterns feel like?

I spent a lot of time in the early days, are the lights right, is the music right? Is the vibe right? Does it feel right? Does it feel good? Does it feel like I want to be here? Those are incredibly important touchpoints that really kind of solidify the DNA of the hotel.

SSR: Do you just sit in the lobby and watch?

BD: All the time. I am a huge people watcher and here’s the great thing. I sit in the lobby and as people walk by, I make up stories about their life. ‘Okay, now they’re from New York, and I bet they’re here to see a show, and I bet they’d been dating about six months.’ I’d totally make up stories about people in my mind, it’s just my game. But I sit in the lobby all the time. I just watch. I like to watch how people interact with our staff. I like to watch how they interact with the furniture.

Sometimes you see people sit and you realize, they’re not comfortable. And so you go, ‘Okay, note to file. We’ve got to talk to design. That’s something we need to change.’ But sitting in the lobby, interacting with our guests, making sure I’m in the outlets. I remind all of our GMs, ‘You need to be at the hotel when the cash register is ringing.’ And so for a lot of our hotels, that means I spend a lot of Friday and Saturday nights making sure that I’m in the outlets and I understand how they’re performing and I understand how they feel. For us at Proper, that means making sure they feel right and they don’t feel overly clubby and that they have this great relaxed vibe to them. And so, that’s an important part of the job. And you can’t do that on a Tuesday morning.

SSR: Speaking of Proper. You’ve been here almost two months?

BD: Yeah. Two months since I got here.

SSR: And then big shift from New York to LA?

BD: I am relocating. For anyone who’s listening, I am relocating after 21 years in New York City to Los Angeles.

SSR: In the same apartment?

BD: I know, right? Imagine moving that.

SSR: What drew you to Proper?

BD: So it’s super interesting and I think you probably know and probably a lot of people listening know that we were very fortunate that the Freehand brands sold. And so once Freehand sold that really freed me up to kind of think about what I wanted to do next. And I gotta be honest, I was going to take a year off. That was the plan. I was going to take a year off. I was going to travel …

SSR: How’s that going?

BD: Well, how’d that go? So lo and behold, four days after I wrapped up Sydell and Freehand, I got a call saying, ‘The Proper folks would like to talk to you,’ and I had so much respect for the brand I said, ‘Well, I have to talk to them, but I’m taking my year off.’ So I called them and I said, ‘I’d love to talk to you guys, but just so you know full transparency, I’m going to take a year off.’ And they said, ‘Hmm, come talk to us.’

So I flew out and I met with Brad and Brian and of course there’s also Alex. So the three principals of the company, and I spent a lot of time with Brad and Brian. Darn it, I just realized after I talked to them, when I joined Ian, it was at that moment of just great exponential growth. And when I joined Andrew, it was with that great moment of exponential growth. Those don’t come around a whole lot.

What I realized was even though I kind of wanted to sit on the sidelines for a year, I didn’t want to miss this opportunity. This brand is positioned to have that same level of success. They’ve just come off of three fantastic openings. The brand is getting great notoriety, great feedback, great connection with customers. And I realized that this was another opportunity to do what I like to do, which is join companies young in their growth curve and help guide them operationally through that growth spurt.

So I decided not to take the year off, but I told them I’m absolutely not going to start till after the first year. And they’re both very smart. They said, ‘Okay, that’s fine. After the first of the year. Just so you know our Austin hotel opens December 15th.’ Well, I couldn’t pass that up. Come on. So, December 1st, there I was in Austin, Texas, ‘Let’s do this.’ So we opened Austin on December 15th, and it was great. I was happy to be there and happy that I got to be there for the two weeks prior to the opening.

SSR: They’re very convincing.

BD: Indeed.

SSR: So tell us about the brand. How would you sum it up and how do you think it’s different than the other offerings that are out there?

BD: We occupy a unique space in the segment, which is we’re luxury lifestyle and we’re delivering at the luxury level in the lifestyle space. And that’s not what a lot of our competitors are doing. We also, have the added benefit that Kelly Wearstler has designed all the Propers. So all the Propers have this great kind of cohesive feel yet she has taken her own take in each market to be specific to the marketplace.

Where we differentiate ourselves from a lot of the people that are in this space is, certainly through design, certainly through our luxury delivery of service in a manner that’s not fussy and doesn’t feel white glove and it isn’t your grandma and grandpa’s luxury. We do it in a more casual manner, but it’s certainly a luxury delivery of service.

SSR: And so you have San Francisco, Santa Monica, and now Austin.

BD: Correct.

SSR: Since Austin is what you’re  most familiar since you were there the two weeks before opening. How would you describe the hotel translating from hotel that is very California to a city like Austin?

BD: Well, I think one of the things that Proper does incredibly well is partner with local partners so that the hotel really reflects the community. In Austin, we partnered with McGuire Moorman Hospitality, a great food and beverage operator in the marketplace. And I think they brought with them a lot of local influence and really helped us understand the local market and made sure that we represented the product that was right for Austin, instead of trying to bring someone from outside the market and force it on the market.

We did a really nice job at Proper of partnering with a great local restaurateur that created something special with us. I think Kelly’s design reflects the region. The color palette reflects the region. And so I think, again, what you saw was us say, ‘We really need to fit this market and make sure that it feels comfortable to Austinites.’ And people that are coming to Austin who say, ‘I’m coming to Austin. I want to see what the market’s reflected by. I don’t want to stay in something that doesn’t reflect what Austin is about.’ And I think we did a good job of that at Austin.

SSR: Is it in the center of town. Tell us a little bit about where it’s located?

BD: Sure. It’s in downtown. It’s right off of Lady Bird Lake in the heart of the city, a great location and you should come visit us down there. It’s a mixed-use building, by the way. So we do have some residences in the building as well. That’s something you’ll continue to see our company do a little bit more of, which is mixed-use facilities, half hotel, half high-end residences. The residences sold incredibly well. So we’re very fortunate. We’ll have our first set of residents moving in next month.

SSR: So is it branded Proper residences?

BD: Proper Hotel and Residences.

SSR: That’s great.

BD: And we’ll provide full services to the residences. It’s a great new brand extension for us that I think we’re very excited about and I think you’ll see us do more of that.

SSR: And speaking of F&B, I mean, it’s interesting how important that layer has become for hotels, especially in places like Austin or even here in Santa Monica or San Francisco. It’s always been a focus of being with Schrager and Sydell, all very F&B driven. But how do you find that balance for lifestyle-luxury where it’s not too clubby but adds some life to the lobby and public spaces?

BD: I think it’s the secret sauce. It’s the secret sauce that a lot of lifestyle hotels are chasing because you want to create this sense of community. You want people to feel like they can come in the lobby and hang out with people that they like to hang out with. And so I don’t think it’s all that different. I think what you see us creating are these really great partnerships with chefs, even here in Santa Monica.

We partnered with James Beard-award winning chefs, like Gabriela Cámara and Jessica Koslow. Again, two great chefs that bring their own personality to the property, but in a luxury orientation. What you’ll find, I think, especially here in Santa Monica, is we’ve done a really great job of building out spaces that feel comfortable, that feel beach inspired. But there’s no ‘oonce oonce’. That’s not who we are. You’re not going to see a velvet rope and a lion around the door. And we really wanted to create spaces that we thought were in keeping with what Proper’s delivering, which is this, luxury-lifestyle orientation.

SSR: Is there anything that you think the brand is trying to redefine or rethink a little bit differently than others?

BD: I think we’re totally trying to redefine luxury. Absolutely. Look, when I started in the business, luxury was Ritz-Carlton. No deference to them, great company, but they had the little credo in their pocket and they were ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen is very formal. That’s still a great company and I have great reverence for them. But I think what we’re trying to do is create luxury in a manner that is more in keeping with what our customer wants.

Our customer still wants to be pampered, they still want all the services, but it’s in a much more casual and relaxed manner. The easy part about my job is the customer is my conscience. I just have to listen to them. And what they’re telling us is we still want all those luxury amenities but want it delivered in a more casual and a more authentic manner.

That’s what you see us doing. That’s why we’ve resonated with the market. We’ve really been one of the first companies to come out in the lifestyle segment that really says we’re going to deliver you a luxury experience, but we’re going to do it in a not so stuffy manner.

SSR: And what’s the collaboration like with Kelly Wearstler?

BD: She’s done every single Proper. Austin was the first time I got to watch her work, and it was mesmerizing. A lot of the objects in the hotel are objects that she’s designed and developed, and a lot are objects that she has traveled all over the world and found and watching her just sit in a lobby and start to put them all together in these mosaics. Again, I told you, I’m not a designer, so I find that skill so incredibly inspiring.

I wish I had it, but I sat in the lobby in Austin and she’s very peaceful about it and she just sits there and she looks, and you’ll just see her gradually move these found objects, these objects that she’s designed and start to really form this great mosaic of things. And so, that’s not something that is in my toolkit, but wow, are we lucky that it’s such a great part of what she does.

SSR: And what’s the growth strategy for the brand? Well, you’ve been here for a whole two months.

BD: I’m very interested in the growth strategy because that’s one of the reasons I came. Look, I think that not surprising to you, we would love to continue to grow the brand in major U.S. cities. We’re knocking on doors in Miami, we’re knocking on doors in Nashville, we’re knocking on doors in New York. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see us grow in cities like that. I think that we’re close to announcing something probably pretty soon in Portland.

So not surprising, we want to be in all the usual suspects here in the U.S. and quite frankly, we’ve gotten some really great international interest. So there’s a couple of international cities that have come knocking on our doors. I think the great thing is the company’s at that tipping point, right? So we’re at that tipping point where people are calling us and saying, ‘Hey, there’s some interests. Let’s talk.’

So I think the simple answer to your question is we want to grow. I don’t think the cities would surprise you. I think we want to grow in major gateway cities that can support a luxury lifestyle hotel. And this would be a great time for me to also remind you that we just announced two weeks ago that we’ll be hot launching Hotel June.

SSR: Tell us a little bit about that.

BD: I’d love to. So look, I think we recognize that Proper is a luxury property that can probably only be supported in cities that can generate a somewhat high ADR and probably doesn’t fit every city or every product. And we wanted something that still could deliver the same kind of principles and pillars that Proper delivers, but in a more accessible manner. And so our answer to that was Hotel June.

And so our first Hotel June will open probably, mid-April, early May in West Los Angeles. Super excited about it. And so I think that’s our answer to being able to take Proper to a wider audience, a more accessible audience. And maybe some buildings that wouldn’t necessarily support a luxury product. Maybe some cities that would necessarily support a luxury product, but still has the same kind of brand pillars. So we’re really excited about Hotel June. I think is a great growth vehicle for us and I seem to be getting a lot of interest on it already. So check back after we get the first one opened. I can’t wait to show it to you. We’ll do another chat like this there.

SSR: We should definitely do that. Will it be smaller roomcount? Are there any parameters that you are staying within?

BD: So look, I think by and large, Hotel June’s are not necessarily smaller. I think probably a little bit smaller room size. Again, I think you’ll find them in probably either secondary locations or primary locations where the cost of entry to the market is incredibly high. I think you’ll see it be a great vehicle for reinventing hotels that are ready for reinvention. I think Hotel June would be a great tool to go into a property that needs some capital improvements and needs a new life and we could really bring a new life to it. And I think that’s a great brand for us to focus on.

SSR: So you mentioned about how luxury is changing. What else has changed the most you think in your career in the hospitality industry?

BD: We only talked about it earlier and now let’s talk about it again because I think it’s a fear of mine. We’ve become so technologically driven and it’s a love-hate relationship. What we’re trying to focus on Proper is there are some guests that do not want to interact with you. And so for those guests, we need to make sure that we have the right technology so that if that is your choice, you can do that.

In my perfect world, if you choose, you should never have to stop and talk to anybody. Go straight to your room, use your phone, check-in and be done with us. But there are some customers that really want that interaction and it’s part of the experience, it’s why they’re coming here. And so I think where the industry is going is being able to let customers deal with you on their terms and not us demanding how you do it.

So if you are a high-touch customer, you should get high touch. And if you’re a low touch customer, then guess what? We need to support you in that. So I think the biggest change has just been technology. For all the great technological advances we have made, in some cases, we have displaced hospitality and that personally worries me.

SSR: I think that’s why there’s been a little bit of a resurgence in experiential, outdoorsy type of hotels because there’s almost a backlash to that technology where people want to just put it down and get away.

BD: Exactly.

SSR: And how do you describe success? I mean, obviously you’ve been very successful in your career, and worked with some amazing people, but how would you describe it and either for yourself or for an opening another project or?

BD: So easy. They told me you’re going to ask that question. Happy guests. So simple, success is happy guests to me. Everything I think about it, everything else comes from that. Financial success, growth, happy employees. Like, literally, happy guests is how I define success. If I have happy guests, everything else seems to work out. So at the end of the day, I just say to my team, ‘Look, what we do is not brain surgery. Let’s make happy guests. And I guarantee you if we do that, it means a lot of the other stuff is working.’

SSR: So simple, but so true. And last but not least, because we always end this part on this question, but we’ve talked a lot about your various lessons, but what do you think has been your greatest lesson learned along the way?

BD: Never forget you’re in hospitality. Sometimes we get so caught up in development and finance and systems and all that good stuff. Just never forget you’re in hospitality. I have employees asking me all the time, ‘Blake, I didn’t know how to handle this certain situation or this guest interaction happened and I kind of froze up and I wasn’t sure what to do.’ And I tell our staff all the time, ‘This is so easy. What would you do if they were a guest in your house?’ That’s my answer.

What would you do if they were guests in your house? If it’s a middle of the night and they want hot tea and we don’t have hot tea available, what would you do if they were in your house? You’d go find them hot tea. If they were in your house and the guest asked you where the restroom was, would you just say, over there? No. You’d walk them over there and show them. Anytime you’re in doubt, just ask yourself, ‘What would I do if they were a guest in my house?’ And I guarantee you 99 percent of the time, that’s the right answer.

SSR: I think that transcends many categories in many different industries. So I think it’s a perfect place to stop. Thank you so much for being here with us.

BD: This has been a joy. Thanks for chatting with me guys.

SSR: We’ll have to do it again.

BD: I’d love that.

SSR: Thanks.