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Transcript

[00:00:12] Matt Welle:  Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another Matt Talks Hospitality and it's a very special episode. This is actually the 50th episode that I've ever recorded, and it felt like a good moment of reflection to look back at the things that we've done in the last year and the engagement that we've gotten. So I asked Ella to come in. Ella is our Vice President of Environment, Social, and Government and she is going to launch her own podcast. So, I thought as a rehearsal for that, why don't you come in and interview me? Because, you know, maybe people are interested. Maybe they're not and you can tune out right now, but maybe, my perspective’s about why I started this podcast. So, Ella, over to you.

[00:00:53] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yes. Thank you for having me. The tables have turned, so this will be good practice for me. I'm really interested to know why you decided to start Matt Talks in the first place. Why did you decide to do a podcast, and what did you hope it would become in those early days?

[00:01:10] Matt Welle:  So for me at the time, there's always a few things playing. So there's always thoughts that someone says something and it sticks in the back of my mind and another founder had said, you know, I just wanted to put out content, and I find it so easy to produce content nowadays and you can put out there. And that kinda stuck in my mind how fast you can go because often when you say I want to do a video, then the marketing team comes with an entire crew, and it costs €50,000. And video content shouldn't cost that much. At the same time, I realized that people were sometimes interested in what I had to say as a CEO of a big leading software company in hospitality. And I couldn't, you know, my LinkedIn is good, but it's short form and sometimes I have opinions that are 20 minutes instead of just like two paragraphs on a LinkedIn post. So that was the other thing. And then the third thing was I struggled with mental health a bit last year, and I was on this hamster wheel that I couldn't get off, like I was just running, running, running. And I needed to figure out a way to make my weekends different, like, it shouldn't be about catching up on emails. I wanted my weekends to be, to do something that I actually get inspiration out of and this kind of forced me into what’s my narrative and how do I like, my creative juices were flowing to kind of figure out how to talk for 20 minutes to a camera and for people to get value out of that. Like, I can talk to a camera, but people might not get value, and I want to make sure that I pull something together that makes hospitality a little bit better. So those were kind of my intrinsic motivations at the time.

[00:02:40] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  And have you found since then that that has really helped you to take stock? Because I've done a small amount of podcasting myself in the past. And I did find also that, yeah, I'd have a jumble of different thoughts that I didn't know how to express and, actually, that was a great vehicle for me to express them.

[00:02:59] Matt Welle:  Like, very much. Because my weekends were always just catching up on things and now, like yesterday, the first thing is it's awkward to record videos in your house when your husband's in the other room, and he's like, is he talking to himself on camera? Like, what is happening in the other room? So it was really embarrassing but now I've got over that, like, really awkward beginning. And now, I use my brain to think, okay, well, what would people be interested in, and how can I help facilitate that conversation? Rather than how can I get through my mailbox in the fastest way possible, which doesn't add value, like, that's not the job I'm supposed to do. It's about context setting. So, I realized that my job as a CEO is a different job than I was doing when you're in this darkness of, like, being close to burnout. I wouldn't say I was there, but I definitely struggled and this helped me to shift my mind to use it for something different, more creative, and I feel so much better a year in. My husband said this weekend, we were out for dinner, he's like, I feel like you're in a much better place now than you were a year ago. It's funny how he sees these two different people, and he's seen the change in me. And I think this is one of those really critical pieces for me personally.

[00:04:11] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Interesting. And it is those people in our lives, isn't it, that give us that sort of feedback loop because sometimes we can't necessarily see when we're in the woods ourselves. 

[00:04:19] Matt Welle: Yeah. 

[00:04:20] Ella McCann-Tomlin: Have you, you've talked about the distinction between last year till now. Have you gone back and listened to any of the early episodes, and do you think they've evolved a lot in the past year?

[00:04:31] Matt Welle:  Yes. I have sadly gone back to some of them to see in preparation for this. So the first ones were, I was like, right, these are just videos that we're gonna post on our website. So, they were a PowerPoint presentation with a camera of me on top of it and at some point, I realized people are not always gonna listen on screen, so maybe I should just make sure that I facilitate a proper podcast format. And the first 15 episodes, I think I only had two guests. So it was really just me talking to the camera for 20, 25 minutes. Whereas now, I disperse it mostly with guests because, you know, in the beginning, people are like, well, first of all, I am a podcast with no viewers or listeners, so no one would come on. So, it takes me a while to build up that kind of momentum, and now I can actually get really interesting guests on because they've seen oh, actually, he's a nice guy, and he asks relatively smart questions. So now, it's much easier to get guests in. So, it's definitely morphed in those 50 episodes significantly.

[00:05:309] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. And I think it's the intimacy of being in conversation with people. The back and forth, I think, is really helpful in a podcast format whether or not you're interviewing people or you're just having a chat. I think that that's kind of crucial. Yeah. But, yeah.

[00:05:45] Matt Welle:  When you’re on your own, you can kind of produce yourself. So you can say, right. I've got 20 minutes, and this is the talking track. When you have a guest, you don't know what's going to happen. Like, I know kind of roughly the questions I wanna ask, but those questions, I never reread them from a paper. I've got them in my head, and I'll see where the conversation flows. I like it. I like that it can go off the rails, and I need to figure out, how do I get it back on the rail some way? But it is a very different way that you go into it in terms of preparation, whereas if I have to do the talking for 20 minutes, there's probably a 3-hour preparation for it, whereas if the preparation is less, but in the moment, it's much more stressful. So, it's a different kind of exhaustion that you're experiencing, but it's a fun way.

[00:06:26] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yes. It's much more of an emergent stress rather than an in advance stress.

[00:06:32] Matt Welle:  I like jumping off a cliff not knowing what's gonna happen.

[00:06:35] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Exactly. There's only so much prep you can do for jumping off a cliff. On that note, what's the, you talked about it going off the rails. What's the most surprising thing that's happened or the most random thing that you've learned that perhaps you didn't expect?

[00:06:49] Matt Welle:  How much I enjoy it. Like, how much I enjoy asking questions and then actually listening to the answer. We're so busy having opinions nowadays, that I think figuring out a format in which I am, you know, using one of my skills. One of my skills is asking questions, and my friends always laugh at me because when a new friend gets introduced into the group, I interrogate them for, like, 30 minutes. And I go very deep because I’m just really deeply interested in understanding their motivations to life. So that skill I've always had, I've just never used it in a powerful way. And I think with a podcast, I have to ask questions. At some point, people are like, let the person speak, and I have to jump into what they're saying and figure out, okay, so how do I take this conversation through questions further? And it's one of the skills of, I think, some of the greatest leaders who can actually deeply listen and follow a conversation through and through rather than always injecting their own opinion at every point. And at some points, you have to add an opinion, but, like, I think the bulk of it is me trying to guide the conversations through questions, and that's a skill set that you can use in any part of life, I think, nowadays.

[00:07:57] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. And, actually, that's also a kind of distinction. You mentioned how you talk about LinkedIn, and that's a forum for you to talk. This is very different to that in that sense because, obviously, on LinkedIn, you've got that forum to say, here's how I feel about this, or this is my position on this issue, or this is how we've changed something at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ. Yeah but asking questions, as you say, is a very, very different skill set, and you have to, I think, in this format, not just listen to speech, but really, really listen with genuine curiosity. I mean, that's true.

[00:08:30] Matt Welle:  You get to curate it. So when I post something, I actually think very deeply about it. It's not me just randomly writing down my thoughts. I think for an hour, two hours, sometimes about a post on a flight, and every word matters. You don't have that luxury in a podcast, so you have to think on your feet. You have to pivot very quickly. So it requires a very different skill set, and it's just another way of communicating for me that I just enjoy learning. And I think it's a skill that a lot of people should learn.

[00:08:59] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. Absolutely. And how has, if at all, how has having all of these conversations impacted or changed how you think about either hospitality as an industry or also how you run ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ?

[00:09:14] Matt Welle:  So one of the things that I always struggle with is that we build this amazing platform, and then people buy it, and then they use it like their old platform. They just replace their old platform with ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ, and then they just operate their hotel in the old way. And I thought, how do I inspire people to think differently? And that really was the angle to it. And I wasn't sure whether people would actually listen. So would they actually listen to why they should have a kiosk in the lobby and why I think that actually adds to hospitality? Because the immediate thing when someone says you should put a kiosk in your lobby, you're like, right, so you dehumanized my experience. And I'm like, yeah but nobody wants to wait in a queue. So, like, if you have the choice to get to a kiosk or get in a queue, would you choose it? So I always knew that some of these technological advances were a good thing for hospitality, but I didn't have a forum in which I could express that and get people along. And initially, I thought, well, I'll just put it out there, maybe someone will listen. And then last, I think it was three weeks ago that Stella, our Vice President of Support, went on to cross-exposure at this hotel. I think it was MOMA 1890, they're called. And throughout the day, they said, oh, Matt said in his podcast that we should do it like this, so we've done it like this. And I have never personally engaged that hotel until after. I immediately reached out and said, thank you for that. But, yeah, somehow, there's a very deeply listening audience who are figuring out, okay, is there better ways to run our hotel with this technology? And when you see those little pockets of, like, green shoots, that makes every moment that I spend on this worth it.

[00:10:54] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. It's such an interesting sensation, isn't it? When you speak, I've had the experience as well of when you speak either in a presentation or on a podcast, you don't always necessarily have that feedback loop of how it's impacted people. So it's an interesting thing when someone comes to you and says, well, listen to that on your, I heard you talk about that. And you're like, when did I talk to you about that? It's like, oh, no. I listened to you on some forum talking about it. 

[00:11:24] Matt Welle: But on the weekend, I had a friend over at my house when she said, oh, last weekend, we were watching your podcast on the big television screen. And I'm like, Onwards, not tonight. I hope you need to, like, have bigger dreams than watch me on a Tuesday night on your big screen.

[00:11:40] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  I enjoy that they put it on the big screen, though. It's dedication. And are there certain episodes I mean, you said you've listened back to a few recently. Are there any that stand out to you? You know, maybe two or three episodes that stand out to you that if somebody hadn't listened to Matt Talks before, that you would say, these are the ones to listen to. These are the ones I'd recommend. 

[00:12:02] Matt Welle:  So I like the early ones because it was me, you know, really thinking deeply about, okay, what would people deeply care about? And, you know, one of the first ones was the kiosk. I think it was episode two where I talk about the kiosk specifically. And I think there's just this immediate resistance to it. I'm like, just listen to it. Just see what I have to say and see if it could change your mind. I did one with Bashar, who's a consultant in the U.S. And what I like about Bashar is that he is contrarian. He says sometimes he makes these crazy statements, and he might not necessarily believe them himself, but it makes me think. And you wanna surround yourself with people that make you think, but that can also engage in the conversation that follows. And I think that's what I liked about Bashar specifically, just because he said quite extreme things about hospitality. But I walked away thinking, is he right? Like, is loyalty just bribery? And I thought about that really long and I, you know, all these loyalty point programs, and I'm like, yeah, it kind of is bribery. And it, I like when people make me think and there was one where we had Rebecca Lane from Paradise Resort in Australia. And they used to have, like she was telling this story about how they used to have a line of cars outside their hotel because there are resort hotels where everyone drives up to this hotel, and they used to have this line of cars on a Friday afternoon. And since they've deployed ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ, then they don't experience that anymore because they have pre check-ins and online check-ins. So they have parking automatically in the system so people don't have to go pay for parking. And the impact that we were able to have on a physical operation, hearing it almost from the horse's mouth is so different from when I say it because I'm just selling my system. But actually hearing a customer say the impact, that is really quite impactful.

[00:13:53] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. It's such a visual image of the cars parked up. You know? It's such a tangible thing that you can tell the difference between what a Friday night looked like -

[00:14:01] Matt Welle:  Yeah.

[00:14:02] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  A year ago versus now, that kinda sticks in your mind. Right? Because, you know, with queues, you might be like, is the queue getting longer or shorter or whatever? But the cars lined up is an interesting thing.

[00:14:13] Matt Welle:  If you have a hotel where you have these queues, and I did a cross-exposure the other day here in The Netherlands in a hotel. And I talked to the hotelier, and I said, it gets busy on a Friday at 3, doesn't it? And they were confused how I knew and it's like, I just looked at your reports, and I see that that's the peak when all these check-ins are happening. I can imagine that your lobby is filled with people. And she said, yes. Out the door to the fountain, she said, with, they used to be. And, you know, they still have these queues and I said, but why don't you have an overflow area for kiosks, for example? So if it does get busy, you can have someone redirect it. Why don't you have tablets in the back office that you can pull and walk out to the front desk? So I'm hoping through this podcast to help see it is normal that you have these massive rush hours in your hotel. That is going to happen because you can't regulate when guests walk in your door, but you can prepare for the situation in the right way. And here are some tools and and I love when I get to share some of those best practices from different hotels. And what I enjoy the most about it is that hoteliers are willing to share because in some other industries, people like I don't wanna show you what I do, what my special sauce is whereas in hospitality, people are sharing what they've done that had a massive impact, and I just think it makes our industry better.

[00:15:25] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Why do you think that is? What do you think it is about hospitality that people are so willing to share and so open and not sort of guarded about their secrets?

[00:15:33] Matt Welle:  Like, possibly because we're also passionate, like, when you go and study hotel management, it's because you have a genuine love for hospitality, which I do. Like, from the age of 4 or 5, I think, when I stepped into the first hotel, I knew that I was gonna work in this industry because I love hospitality. And we have just a deep, like, love for guests and figuring out, how do we make that experience better? And it's like, if you tell me something, I'll share my thing and we definitely have a very warm and sharing community that I haven't seen in most other industries.

[00:16:06] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah, really interesting. I used to work with, in a past life, our customers in a tech company I worked at were accountants, and that is a very, very different industry in terms of openness. So, we would sometimes host these kinda round tables, and we'd try and share industry tips and secrets and stuff. And the really forward-thinking people would come to them, and they would be more willing, but it was really hard.

[00:16:32] Matt Welle:  Yeah. Very hard.

[00:16:33] Ella McCann-Tomlin: It was really hard to get people to share. So it's an interesting distinction that that kind of industry change. I much prefer hospitality, I have to say. 

[00:16:43] Matt Welle:  Right. You're doing well in hospitality.

[00:16:45] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. Hospitality is more me, I have to say. You mentioned Bashar and I suspect your answer might be him, but has a guest completely changed your perspective on something or challenged your thinking from when you first sort of, went into the conversation?

[00:17:05] Matt Welle:  No one has transformed my thinking, but I like to surround myself with people who think differently. And Bashar is one of those people, but also, you know, you have Dina from Staypineapple come on. And I think Staypineapple is this really forward thinking brand in how they're transforming their business. And I just want to surround myself with these people that think differently from what I would do, and they are successful business operators. Right? So maybe what I would do isn't the best way to go about it, but I wanna hear how they did it and then what the impact was and Dina really talked about the transformation of Staypineapple under her leadership, and it was really powerful to hear. And then you get Nicole who was from Ett Hem, this really spectacular hotel in Stockholm that I've stayed at. And she talks about, you know, we purposely don't have a back office because back office and front office should all happen in front of house and there should be this blending of what happens in a hotel, but everything is front of house. You should always be upfront with your customers. And I like those different kinds of perspectives from people that do a very small boutique business to scaling hospitality business and then your consultant, Bashar, who has seen it all, who's worked for the biggest kind of hotel companies. And if you like, you just wanna get the perspectives, and that's my goal with Matt Talks. Like, we have one upcoming episode that I've yet to record. It might, you know, I don't know when it's coming, but it's with a hotel that has leaned into dogs as a concept deeply. They're really targeting owners of dogs for their hotel, and I think it's really smart because people with, you know, good disposable incomes often have dogs. And I don't wanna put my dog in a kennel. I want my dog to come with me on holiday, and I'm willing to pay for it. Like, I'm one of those crazy loonies that will order dog room service if it's available. And I think that there's a niche there. So I like to find those pockets of madness in our industry and just have a conversation to see if we can convert some other people.

[00:19:01] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah, really interesting. My dad and stepmom often will come, they live in Spain, and they'll often drive all the way to the UK so that they can bring the dog, if they come for a long time. And so they have to map out this journey all the way because they live in the South Of Spain, all the way up through Spain into France on the ferry, dog friendly hotels all the way. It's for the faint of heart. Yeah.

[00:19:26] Matt Welle:  Yeah. Like, I live in The Netherlands and in The Netherlands, most hotels do not allow for dogs except for a couple, like there's Rosewood in Amsterdam, and Rosewood as a brand makes it a point to welcome dogs. And they're so dog forward that we will always prioritize booking the Rosewood over a non dog friendly hotel because I want like, if Beyonce comes with me, it just makes for a better holiday. And I'm surprised at how few hotels have embraced it. My dog makes less of a mess than some children make in a hotel room, I think, sometimes. And, like, why wouldn't you allow for my dog? She's very well, relatively well behaved but she doesn't destroy anything. And, like, why would you not allow her to come?

[00:20:06] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. I feel the same. I think it's, and that kind of niche is really interesting. Right? Because I haven't heard before of a hotel actively prioritizing that and making it part. It's like some allow it, but I haven't really seen one that's based their brand around it.

[00:20:23] Matt Welle:  Can I ask you a question, actually? Because we're talking about dogs, but you're starting a podcast that's called The Future is Human. So I guess it's not the dogs that are the future. It's the humans. 

[00:20:33] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Not so much. No.

[00:20:34] Matt Welle:  What's the premise of the podcast?

[00:20:35] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  So, it's a podcast that we decided to do, myself and Naomi, Chief People Officer and it's really about sort of untold stories from the world of work. And we're, it's a sort of two-pronged podcast. So it's called The Future is Human, we're talking about the future of work but we wanted to come at it from two different vantage points, really. So Naomi's gonna be talking with external thought leaders about the contradictions, I guess, of scaling culture and what that looks like, and these are some of the challenges that we face in a day-to-day and that we think about a lot. And then I'm gonna have humans of ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ, which is speaking to people internally where I essentially spotlight people within ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ, not necessarily executives, not necessarily senior leaders, but just people from across the company. And the angle for my conversations is gonna be almost like a Humans of New York, but for the workplace stories. So that's kind of the premise. Everyone talks about building world class culture but I think what does that actually look like in practice? We think about this a lot, but we wanna talk to other people, and I think that starts with the humans living it, the people who are navigating career changes, relocations, the sort of quiet turning points, I guess, that shape how people work.

[00:21:59] Matt Welle:  I really like that. Like, how much do you worry about the impact of AI on companies and their humanness?

[00:22:05] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. A lot. I see it. It's something that I think about a lot. And one of the things we've talked about is that, you know, I think a lot of the future of work content is either really dystopian, and you see a lot of people online just talking about refusing to use AI point blank, you know, kind of almost boycotting it. 

[00:22:26] Matt Welle:  Yeah. 

[00:22:27] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  And then you also have the sort of naively optimistic, I think, which is, it's not gonna change anything. You know? It's another flash in the pan and I think, actually, probably neither of those are true. We reject both of those. And I think we're all, especially as leaders, in positions where we can actively shape what comes next. It's not just about what is going to happen to us. So I think there's a question here of how do we navigate AI? How do we build it into our workflows while still building diverse teams, while still building human teams and while still kind of thinking about the innate value that humans bring to the workplace? I think it's an and both. And there's a dearth of conversations around the and both, I think, at the moment. So I really am excited for us to delve into that kind of naughty complexity of what that looks like because I don't think you can stick your head in the sand and say this isn't happening, or I'm not gonna engage with it. And at the same time, I think there can be misuse and overuse and and the wrong ways of using these kinds of tools.

[00:23:34] Matt Welle:  Yeah. And I think it aligns very much with what ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ has been the mission that we've been on for the last twelve years, which is not to make people redundant. It's just like, nobody wants to enter data into a system. So what would a great hotel look like if you didn't have to do data administration into this core system? And it is human. Like service, Nicole said this really well from Ett Hem, and she said, service comes from the inside. It comes from your heart. And I think that is a real thing. If you genuinely care about giving great human service, you have to be passionate about it. And a lot of people that we've hired historically were not necessarily passionate. They just needed a job. They knew the systems that they had to work with. They were trained on that so they could enter data really fast into the systems, but we should shift it back to, okay, what makes hospitality special? Why would you want to have a career in hospitality? Because it's one of the most human industries and I, that's why I joined. It wasn't because I wanted to enter data into systems, and I think that's why your podcast aligns so well. So I cannot wait for this to kick off.

[00:24:41] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. I'm really excited. And as you say, I think it gives the opportunity, some of these technologies and things like AI, we're not necessarily structuring ourselves as an AI podcast as such, but I think this is the big existential question for the future of work right now. And there's a question around the possibility, right? Like, I think in a lot of industries and a lot of work, you get lost in all of the admin that you have to do and all the bureaucracy you have to do, and it takes you away from the reason you got into that work in the first place. And so, this sort of, these technologies that force us to grapple with these existential questions, I think, can can open up some stuff that that we haven't had time to do for a while or we haven't been able to get to.

[00:25:23] Matt Welle:  And I think differentiation is only reached through humans. If you genuinely want to build a brand that is different from everything else and everything feels so commoditized in the world, like, if you're leaning into the human side, that is the way that you can differentiate, kind of, your brand in some way, and you need humans for that. You will always need humans for that.

[00:25:43] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. Yeah. And we also, I think, because we're a remote first company as well, that we think a lot about the human side of things even more so maybe than when you take it for granted because you're going into an office all the time. I was speaking to a colleague recently about the podcast, and she started, I don't know how we got into this, but she started talking to me about how she grew up in East Germany and what that was like and how she used to kind of go near the border and listen to the radio. And just this whole kind of wealth of human story came out of her just talking about the concept of the podcast. And I was like, wow, we work together all the time. I had absolutely no idea that this was part of your story.

[00:26:21] Matt Welle:  I think that's the nice thing about running a podcast like this, is that you get to invite people that you think have an interesting perspective. And if you do it consistently like, I've now done this for 50 weeks every single week. I have to put an episode out, and I never missed a beat on it. But it forces me to figure out, okay, so what is a narrative that we haven't had yet? Who's a person that can add value? So I often interview people at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ because I think we hire really special people. And I just wanna get proactive. I just wanna get the smartest people to say out loud what they're thinking or their experiences and the diversity. And this is what you get when you consistently execute on a podcast. It can't be if you are thinking about launching a podcast yourself, and you are, but if you're listening to this and you're thinking about it, first of all, if you're thinking about it, just do it. It doesn't cost anything. You get a Riverside account. It costs you €20 a month, and you've got all the software that you need. And once you get going, don't just do two episodes and think no one's listening. You build it up. And the numbers of listeners to this podcast are growing every single week consistently. We've been looking at the data recently. Like, I don't actively engage with the data because I just wanna put this out there. I just enjoy doing it. But then recently, the person that's running the podcast for me behind the scenes, Kristina, she shared with me the data, and it is growing every single month steadily, like, by, 10, 20% because people are really engaged with it. But it does take you to do 50 episodes before you start to get real traction. So, don't be nervous when you don't have huge traction in the beginning. Just consistently execute.

[00:27:58] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. That's really good advice. I also think in the kind of world that we live in now, we're very impatient. So there's also a point of doing this if it's not getting what I want. It's not yielding the listeners that I want. What's the point of doing this?

[00:28:10] Matt Welle:  And it's always someone listening who gets value out of it. And it might just be one person in the beginning, but if you make their life a little bit easier or better, like, it's worth it.

[00:28:21] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. And there's also value as you've found in the act of doing it regardless of, you obviously don't wanna put a podcast for which no one's listening in perpetuity, but there's value in doing it and in and of itself.

[00:28:36] Matt Welle:  I feel like if you get to episode 50 and you still have, like, three or four listeners, I think that might be the time to pull the plug on it unless you deeply enjoy it but you definitely need to, at some point, look back at the numbers and think, okay. Well, you know, I asked the team which episodes did really, really well. And, you know, the little clips that we post on social media are often not the episodes that do really well. They do well as a sound bite on LinkedIn. But some of the conversations around AI that don't do well because everyone is drowned out by AI on the Internet, but they actually are the most listened to episodes because I think people are searching, like, when they think, okay, I need to use AI. How do I do that? And then through search, they get into the episodes, and that's why they're thriving so well. So, just put it out there, be consistent, look at the data, and then learn from the data as you pivot, but just have fun.

[00:29:28] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. Great advice. Can I ask you selfishly as I'm embarking on this journey myself, What's a key mistake that you think that new hosts tend to make or perhaps that you made that I should try and avoid making?

[00:29:44] Matt Welle:  I think a lot of people are nervous about putting video content out on the internet because they feel like they're being silly or they come across as idiots or, like, whatever. Like, whenever I record myself, I'm like, jeez, like, I feel like, I hate watching myself back. And now over time, I've done it so many times. I'm really comfortable with it. And at this point, I don't really care. You do get better over it, but you have to get over that threshold. People do wanna hear what you have to say, and you've gotta put content out. If you're a business leader, you know, a new generation of people, the Gen Zers or whatever the term is for, even the generation that comes out after that. 

[00:30:20] Ella McCann-Tomlin: Alpha. 

[00:30:21] Matt Welle:  Alpha. That's, sorry, we’ll come back to -

[00:30:23] Ella McCann-Tomlin: That comes after, younger than Gen Z.

[00:30:25] Matt Welle:  Yeah. Exactly.

[00:30:26] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yeah. Alpha. Yeah.

[00:30:27] Matt Welle:  They want to hear what the CEO of a company has to say. They care if that's a person that they would work for, and I think it could work for a hotel, like, just tell the story of why you started the hotel, what makes you passionate about the hotel business, and some of the human stories in your hotels. And just put yourself out there and just do the thing that's uncomfortable. Do it a few times, and it gets more comfortable, and then you get better at it and you develop new skills. So just don't ever feel that you can't do it. The technology's out there. It doesn't cost anything. Cameras on our computers are good enough. AI is there to support you in figuring out how to modify the video in the right way, but just do it. Don't hold back.

[00:31:08] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  This is actually genuinely good advice for me personally because I struggle. I have a lifelong struggle with perfectionism. And obviously, you get used to talking on camera. You get used to doing Loom videos. This is not so far removed from that kind of thing, but you you do have to learn to, with speaking in particular, I think you have to learn to get better as you're doing it.

[00:31:32] Matt Welle:  Yeah.

[00:31:33] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  And there's no other way to do it than to get better as you're doing it. So, it's quite a vulnerable thing because you can't sort of go into private and figure out how to do it better and then kind of emerge perfect. You've got practice anywhere.

[00:31:46] Matt Welle:  Right? So you can upload your video into ChatGPT and say, give me feedback. Give me brutal feedback. And ChatGPT will just analyze what you're talking about and give you real feedback. When I post a video clip like, if I have a 40-minute episode, I just put the whole transcript through ChatGPT and say, what's the most interesting clip that you think I should post that will have good traction on LinkedIn? When I have a guest coming, I work with ChatGPT to figure out what are the most interesting questions based on what they've said on social media previously or what's their history, and that could turn into great questions. So AI is your friend. Like, it wouldn't have been this good a couple years ago, but today, all the tools are there, and it doesn't cost much.

[00:32:28] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Yep. I was doing some work over the weekend, and I put, I'd been kind of drafting something, and I said, can you give me some brutal feedback on this? And it was pretty brutal. So I was like, thank you. That's great. Wonderful. I thought it was a draft, but, yeah, it still needs work. So we've done one year of Matt Talks. What can listeners expect in year 2?

[00:32:52] Matt Welle:  I think as the podcast starts to gain traction, it's easier for me to get more guests in. And I'm hoping to engage the audience a little bit about who they want to see or what are some of the things that they wonder about so that we can because right now, you just gotta eat what I feed you, which is, like, whoever I put in front of you, that's the podcast. But I think it's much more interesting if you, and and if you're listening and you're seeing this really amazing person. Like, I get to reach out to some of those people nowadays and just say, hey, do you wanna come on and we just have a conversation? And I think those are the best conversations when it's a person that I hadn't even discovered or when you have a phenomenal experience at a hotel. And I don't just want ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ hoteliers. If you're seeing someone that's doing something out in the industry that's really game changing, like, those are the people that I wanna speak to. And thus far, I've really stuck to ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ employees or myself or customers of ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ, but I actually think it's much more interesting when we push outside the boundaries. So, I think that's where we're gonna go in the next year.

[00:33:53] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Really exciting. Yeah. Fantastic. I think we should probably wrap up there because I could talk to you all day, but I've been known to run over time. So, it's been a pleasure.

[00:34:02] Matt Welle:  Good luck stepping into my role, for one week. I really enjoyed this, and I can't wait to be listening to your podcast, The Future is Human, in the coming weeks as it comes out but, like, also, if you've been listening for the last year, I so appreciate that you're spending this much time with me, and I know that you all have very busy agendas. If it in any way helps you, I always appreciate a quick note on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. So just drop me a message in what way it helps because it helps motivate me to keep going. So if you're stuck with me, big thanks. Ella, massive thanks for doing this today. Can't wait to see what you do.

[00:34:38] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Thank you for having me. 

[00:34:41] Ella McCann-Tomlin:  Thank you so much.