Episode 5
The Art of Building Memorable Experiences with Bashar Wali
I'm just gonna kick us off because I don't think I even know, and I wonder if you even know all this stuff that it is that you do. Can we start there? I wanna unpack that.
Bashar Wali (00:48)
Let's start there. I love the freedom to do what I want kind of thing but I tell people my entire world revolves around travel, broadly. I'm a true believer in do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. This is not work right. So if you were sitting next to me on a plane or you're about to put your headphones on you're like what do you do? I'll say to you, I'm a hotel owner and operator. I am proud of the fact that many people don't know what I do, because I tell people, I am who I am, not what I do. You are who you are, not what you do. And I hate this Western thing that we have. Hey, nice to meet you. What do you do? So I try to hold out for a long time before I ask you what you do. I basically have a company called This Assembly is a collective of other companies and the common thread between them all is me. And me because I feel like I've established enough authority to say, I kind of know what I'm talking about when it comes to hotels. I'm an idiot on many other things. I wish. I was working on curing cancer because that matters. Hotels who gives a shit, right? But I'm such a neurotic hotelier that I view it as truly my passion and my profession. So This Assembly is the collective that I lead that has a company called Practice Hospitality. Practice Hospitality is a hotel management company. Then I have a company called Future Proof Investment. And FPI is essentially you wake up in the morning, you say, I think I want to build a hotel. I don't know where to start. You call me. So all things hospitality real estate. Then I have another company called Andrew Alfred creative. Andrew Alfred is a fantastic designer good friend. He designed the lion's share of the Graduate Hotels we all know and love. So he has a design studio and I am his partner in that To make sure that when we go to an owner that we're not just bringing them design, but we're bringing them market sensibility from my influence and engagement with him. I also have a company called Table and Tribe. If you wanna concept a restaurant, design a restaurant, run a restaurant or a private club, so F &B. And then last but not least, I am working on a hotel brand of my own to use on my assets and provide for others.
Doug Logan (02:57)
That's a lot of hats, not to mention hat you're wearing quite physically on your head. I've got like two businesses, maybe three if you include investments, but that was at least six or seven.
Bashar Wali (03:08)
Something like that. And more to come.
Doug Logan (03:10)
And more to come. How do you keep all that straight? I mean, from my own perspective, the one thing that's been very hard.
Bashar Wali (03:11)
Sure.
Doug Logan (03:18)
Scaling a business is one thing, scaling yourself is a totally different thing. And so I found that I had to really rely on people in the second business to get the culture right, because I couldn't spend enough time in that business. It's a restaurant. And so I just couldn't. The agency keeps me so busy. There's not enough of me to then also step into a restaurant and try to nurture the staff and build the culture there. I'm curious from your perspective on the leadership side, how does that work for you? How does Bashar scale?
Bashar Wali (03:49)
I mean, it's always, always, always about hire people that are smarter than you are and get out of their way. I play the culture game, the vibe game. I want those companies to represent my ethos. But at the end of the day, I am probably the least qualified to run any of them, right? But vision, vibe, everything is a vibe now. The vibe is me. The smarter people than me are doing it. I can't be everywhere at the same time and I can't do everything. So I want to provide direction guidance. I don't need to be involved in every detail because if I am, to your point, you can't scale and you're doing your clients disservice by saying you'll be there and you're not going to.
Doug Logan (04:24)
Interesting.
Bashar Wali (04:24)
But soul, right? It's all about soul. I'm like the chief soul officer. I want to make sure that the work we is our soul. It's our ethos. It's who we are. If I'm pitching you a deal, I'm not any different than if I was hanging out with you having a coffee at a conference somewhere talking shit about people. Like it's all the same. You can't be… different people. have to be the same because people will either get it and like you or they don't. And if everybody liked you, you're doing something wrong.
Doug Logan (04:48)
Yeah, no, I'm a big believer in that. We're not made to be compatible with everyone. We're made to fit with the right people vibe with them, like you said, and then that's where business can happen. That's where we're. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Bashar Wali (04:59)
And magic happens if you do. Magic happens.
Doug Logan (05:03)
Yeah. I think I've, I've taken on a, in the last probably 5, 10 years on the primary business since starting the restaurant. that came second. The agency was first and, and is my first love. I've pivoted back to saying that, no, I don't actually want to grow it beyond a certain size where I'm not involved in the day-to-day and I'm not involved in the strategy. I'm not working hand-in-hand with clients because I've found that that's what I love to do. And like you said earlier, this is what I love to do.
Bashar Wali (05:30)
And again. If that's what you love to do, then absolutely. And if, by the way, love and good at because that's the point. I may love design, but if I'm not good at design, I shouldn't touch design. That's the problem a lot of people face is like, but I love this. I'm good for you. You love it. You're not good at it. If you happen to find both, Nirvana, right? So you need you always need a visionary, but you need a tactics. Now I fly in and I do the tactical if I have to. I know how to do it. I've done it. But that's not the highest and best use of my time. Right. So that's the tension is yes, do what you love if you're good at it. The biggest problem in our spaces, you have a bunch of middle-aged white dudes who are not cool, who are deciding what's cool. I actually wrote a piece about it on LinkedIn called the Merchants of Cool. Hoteliers are supposed to be the cool guys who show you, tell you about the new music and the new flavors and the new design and the new art. But they're not trusting the people that are around them to do it for them, disaster. Because dude, you're not cool. I'm sorry to tell you. Mariah Carey blaring in the lobby. I don't care how much you love her except at Christmas time is a bad idea. I'm like, dude, you're not building this for you. You're building it for your audience. And that's fundamentally the issue is leaving your ego at the door and truly accepting what you're good at and what you're not good at. And not only you, validated by those around you who are not afraid to tell you, dude, you're not good at this.
Doug Logan (06:51)
That's a very good point. So if I want to open up a white dad hotel chain someday, I'm qualified for that. Jorts and hot dogs are.
Bashar Wali (06:59)
That well, you know what you know what though. Let me tell you Authenticity vomit vomit inducing we're not allowed to use it but authenticity means in my opinion an unapologetic point of view if you want to open a Not Cool Dad Hotel and own that shit. You will crush it you will crush it.
Doug Logan (07:17)
Kegerator in every shower. It's perfect.
Bashar Wali (07:19)
White. White new balance shoes with white tube socks standing at the grill.
Doug Logan (07:25)
Let's do it.
Bashar Wali (07:24)
Done.
Doug Logan (07:26)
But you know, what kind of pulled me into this space is that we do a lot of marketing and we have a client, a hotel, and have been working with them for a while. And trying to sort of help them level up their analytics and understanding like what's working from a marketing perspective. And it's amazing how many hoteliers I meet who can't actually like close that loop between we ran this campaign and a bunch of traffic came in from Instagram. And then what do they do? We have no idea. And to me in other industries that we work with, because we're obviously not just focused on the hospitality space.
Bashar Wali (07:57)
Mm-hmm.
Doug Logan (08:05)
That's like table stakes. every time I'm like talking with a hotelier at one of these events, I'm amazed at like, it's like they've got 50 different tech platforms. They don't know how to use half of them. And I'm like, look, we need probably the less technology and more technicians to figure this shit out and make it all work. You probably have plenty of great tools. You just need somebody to actually show you how to get the car running. But I'm curious to your thoughts on that and technology in this space in particular, because every time I turn around, it seems like there's a new platform out.
Bashar Wali (08:36)
We tend to be late adopters, hotels, and generally it was for good reason because You have pissed off customers, your people coming and going, it's inventory issues, et cetera, et So generally speaking, the legacy systems took a while and it's a capital intensive business. Obviously the world has changed, cloud-based, et cetera. It's easier to do it. For some reason, not many have cracked the code on sort of bringing them all together. You always need the middleware. They don't play friendly with each other. They don't want to open their system for another system. It's very old school mentality. Yet you look at everything today, it's like open source, open source, open source, right? So that's part of the problem, the cost, the complexity of the transition. The other thing about us, and we talked about middle-aged white dudes, and I'm hating on middle-aged white dudes because I'm a wild feminist. We were talking about this idea that I call those guys the double-breasted shiny suit guys from the 90s and the 2000s who thought they've reached the pinnacle and they know everything. Those are the same guys who said, that internet thing is a fad, it'll go away. The example I use, I took my, 17 year old daughter on a spring break trip. We went to Asia. We went to seven countries in 10 days. And at the beginning of the trip I said, you're in charge of hotels. Very hard for me to do, right? You're in charge of hotels. Here's the box. Price, quality, etc. Every single one she found, she found on TikTok, booked on TikTok. I would have never found it and I loved it. Because in my brain, I'm going to… Conde Nast, New York Times and all that stuff. Her brain doesn't care about that. And the reason why I use that example is I say to my friends who want to be in the New York Times, that's great for your ego, it's not good for business. You need to be where your customers are. And you touched on this. We used to think Instagram and TikTok, I'm included, but at least I did it when it was new. I'd say, look, you can't talk about ROI on Instagram. Instagram is about brand recognition, right? AT &T spends four million bucks to put their name on a stadium not because they want to track how many new phones they sold or new plans they sold. They want name recognition. So for us social media initially was name recognition. It's becoming a bona fide source of business if you know how to track it right and you have the right metrics and the right campaign behind it. And if I hear one more person telling me influencer not all influencers are created equal. There's a it is become science. It's not just there's a pretty girl. Let's hire her and have her do she has whatever followers? So I think the problem is those in charge are still stuck in the 2000s hotels.
Doug Logan (11:01)
I think a lot of, hoteliers don't think from the beginning. And I think a lot of brands in general, not just hotels, don't think about what they're trying to accomplish in the end, you're absolutely right. There is an element of brand awareness. There is also though, a level where you can be very, very targeted and focused in on your audience. And in that case, you can do brand awareness. You can also get real growth. You can drive revenue, right? You can get bookings. You can do whatever you need to.
Bashar Wali (11:27)
100%. That's why I gave you the example of TikTok. is sure it's for brand awareness, but guess what? The kids are making the travel decisions for their families most of the time now. So if they're not seeing it and loving on it, they're not gonna follow your lead. So it is a bona fide source of business that you can actually track an ROI. To your point though, if the campaign is not built right, if the campaign is built as a brand awareness, cause whoever built it doesn't know any better and you expect ROI that you would get from a targeted campaign, you're going to be disappointed. So unless you get it right from the beginning, it's hard to measure its success.
Doug Logan (12:00)
I wanted to go back to something earlier. said when we first started the conversation. One of the first things you ever said to me, I think was something along the sense of be memorable, right? Like be memorable.
Bashar Wali (12:11)
Conversation, meal, hotel room, product, whatever it is, be memorable. Whatever you do, move someone. You've got to move them. They've got to feel something. Because if they don't, then it's forgettable.
Doug Logan (12:16)
So. ⁓ So how do you go from being memorable though, then to taking action and going to that next? What does that transition look like for you? What's the next step then when you say, now Doug, we should work together. How do you transition that?
Bashar Wali (12:35)
I am a terrible salesperson. When I write, people say, do a call to action at the bottom of what you write. I'm like, no. And it's stupid because I feel like… I shouldn't tell you, you should know, but the problem is you don't know. So I'd like to think I leave a memorable, I'm not saying always good. Some people are like, my God, most obnoxious guy on the planet. But at least I made you feel something, which is what I'm after. I was talking to someone earlier today about this idea of I want spaces that move you, that make you feel something. And if that's the foundation, then I'd like to think it sells itself. I'd like to think that I'm not selling you anything, As the leader and the founder, I'm selling you my passion, my neurotic attention, my neurotic experience across the globe as… what you'll get from me rather than telling you features. because people want to do business with people they like. So I always go to meetings thinking I hope they like me and if there's a way for us to do business, I will rise to the top because people want to do business with people they like.
Doug Logan (13:32)
I agree with you. But what's interesting when you're talking about that and the passion, I think the words that I want to own when I meet somebody is. You said knowledge and passion, would say knowledge and probably trustworthiness. Like for me, in a lot of the situations that I'm in working with clients, there's a lot of buzzwords that get thrown around. And there's a lot of ways that you can use data to tell a story for you or against you or however you want to portray it. I always like to come in as a translator. would come in and be like, this is how we're going to get to the same page as quickly as possible. So that when you say it's successful, I'm agreeing. And when I say it's successful, you're nodding your head. We're all on the same page. What I'm most passionate about is being as transparent and trustworthy as possible.
Bashar Wali (14:21)
If we don't have trust, we have nothing, zero. You as a friend, if we don't trust each other, we have nothing, it's meaningless. So think about client relationship. If they don't trust you, that you're doing right by them every time, you have nothing. They'll go somewhere else. And I think trust is earned. It's not just based on your knowledge, it's you've got to earn their trust by always doing the right thing. And transparency is like the price of admission.
