TCP081: Scaling Hospitality Excellence Featuring Michael Cohen

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This show is powered by Growth Advisors International Network, where travel and hospitality companies come to grow.

For more information please visit gainadvisors.com this is Michael Cohen, Managing Partner of Growth Advisors International Network GAIN and you're listening to Skip on the Tech Chef Podcast.

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I am thrilled to have Michael Cohen Managing Partner at Growth Advisors International Network.

Those that follow me on a regular basis have heard me throw this name around quite a bit lately regarding how GAIN can be your technology partner on the F and B side.

Today you will hear more about how GAIN got started, some of their core offerings, and some great insight around how they have created an incredible talent pool of well known industry experts to help you with your next hospitality technology project.

With over 25 years of experience in the commercialization of travel, hospitality, mice, AI and spatial computing technologies, Michael Cohen is a C level growth leader, Strategic Advisor, Board member, keynote speaker and go to market enabler and of course an all around nice guy.

Joining the show today, I am very honored and privileged to have Michael Cohen Managing Partner of Growth Advisors International Network, otherwise known as gain.

Michael, thank you so much for joining the show today.

It's a real pleasure Skip.

I'm an avid listener, so nice to be participating as well.

Nice.

Well, I'm glad to hear I got some listeners out there.

That's a good sign.

And you continue to Come back.

That's a good thing too.

Well, I've been talking about GAIN for quite at least a couple months now.

Some pretty big announcements came from my side to my network and I've been talking about how it relates to the people I know within the restaurant side of the industry.

But as I'm having these conversations, there's a lack of knowledge certainly from my sector in regards to what GAIN is, what it's all about.

So I thought this would be a great opportunity to bring you on the show and talk all about the great things that GAIN does.

But let's talk about you first.

Most importantly, tell us a little bit about your background and really, you know, the journey that got you to, brought you to GAIN and starting gain.

Well, I won't go back to the small shack in Alabama where, you know, it all started.

No.

I have always been in technology and innovation space but in multiple different scenarios.

Originally in some of my first jobs in the business world and corporate world were in the advertising and marketing side of things, pure play advertising.

And I started working in my late 20s with a lot of technology clients, Dell, Apple, as an account executive for some of the largest advertising agencies in the world.

And I really enjoyed the interaction with my tech client base.

And over a period of time I gravitated and was frankly offered opportunities in, in the tech side of, of the marketing and advertising space on the, on the client side.

And once you get into that milieu in that space then you're, you know, you're interacting with commercial, you're interacting with innovation, you're interacting with engineering.

And I just got really embedded in the whole cycle of vision, ideation, take a breath, mvp, confirmation, feedback, execution and scale.

And that has been the kind of framework of my entire career in different instances and different scenarios on the client side, on the sales side, on the vendor side, on the entity side, but always with that kind of flow about frankly working with great people.

Obviously early in my career, great mentors and then in, you know, mid and later in my career actively leading the whole concept of taking vision to reality and predominantly reality is commercial growth, success, execution.

I think part of the lack of knowledge about GAIN is my customers or my, my audience tenants to be more of a restaurant based audience and you come from the hotel side of it.

Some of the announcements that came out in regards to our cooperation and our participation together and joining your organization to help develop this new piece of GAIN is pretty exciting.

We'll talk about that a little bit later.

But let's talk about, you know, as the managing partner.

What are some of your responsibilities and how do you ensure GAIN delivers that really measurable value to its clients?

Sure, I mean, it's important question, so.

But it also relates and.

Well, I know we'll talk about it a little bit later, but it relates to why GAIN even exists.

I built GAIN for people like us.

Now.

What does that mean?

It means that, you know, it was very clear in the stage of my career and many other people that I trust and respect and have relationships in all areas of travel, hospitality, on the restaurant and the hotel side, and even the mice industry, you know, that, that this, this ongoing focus on growth, ongoing focus on innovation, ongoing focus on patron, passenger, guest, front of the house operations, back of the house.

There's a lot of consistencies, a lot of similar themes in this kind of troika of related adjacent industries of restaurant, hotel and mice.

It was evident post the pandemic that there was a real gap in capacity and staffing and everyone was talking, and it still is talking about at the property level or the restaurant level, you know, the actual, the service level, the engineering level of on premise, let's say.

Right.

But what was equally evident is that there was a brain drain and there was a challenge in the C suite for all sides of the equation for technology vendors and restaurant hospitality, hotel hospitality and mice, for the brand entities in those adjacent industries as well.

And even in the what, what I like to politely call the money in the venture capital and, and angel syndicate and family office world, there was just a lot of gaps because of post pandemic.

People left the industry, people retired early, etc.

So people talked about the blood on the walls in regards to, you know, again, the staff at the customer, patron, passenger, guest level.

We identified certain partners like David Mali and others who were in the original ideation for gain, that there was a real need and frankly an opportun and pain in the industry that gain could be the medicine for.

And that's a metaphor, very simplistic that we've used, I've used in my career multiple times.

Any opportunity that's worth working on usually has two components.

One is that there's a pain or a challenge or a gap.

And the other side is that there's medicine, a solution or you know, an opportunity.

And that's exactly why GAIN was created.

And also, by the way, I, I personally was fortunate.

It wasn't vertically oriented.

And we, and I really saw what my calling was perhaps and what I loved to do, which was domestic and international commercialization and frankly, being a technology diplomat, taking innovation, technology from one part of the world to the other, from one vertical industry to the other, putting, you know, organizing the go to market, organizing the funding, organizing the product development, the marketing scenarios to take great tech innovation that's either in its nascent, you know, startup stage or it's established in a particular region, particular country, particular vertical and bring it to where it's not.

That's a really important.

I, we found, I found a really valuable and important skill set and toolkit that when you can deliver that to regional leaders or governmental organizations that are have incubators or venture capitalists that are looking, you know, to provide direction and impact for their portfolio companies to go where they're not, logically go where they're not, then folks like us are a big part of that success.

So I guess the.

And.

Yep, go ahead.

No, I was, I was gonna say it brings up the question about, you know, how does GAIN differentiate itself from the advisory landscape?

Sure.

Well, first of all, and I say this with love and respect and some people, you know, may laugh at the other end of this podcast, consultants are amazing.

But we are not consultants.

We are advisors.

And there's a difference.

All are respected, all have tremendous value.

But there is a differentiator between consultants and advisors, which is specifically why we are GAIN advisors, why it's growth advisors, international network, GAIN, etc.

Advisors are, in my opinion, a very tight hybrid between obviously the skill sets that consultants can bring, which is, you know, the heavy lifting on the work, on the theory, on the research, on the planning, et cetera.

And then the other side, we marry with the actual advisory scenario on how to get it done and get it executed and be through and run through the base.

How do we efficiently append ourselves to organizations or come on advisory boards with organizations or provide fractional C suite leadership with the organ startup scale up or enterprise to move the ideation and perhaps the planning and the research that the consultants primarily exclusively deliver and combine that with actualization delivery and true scalability.

So that is to, in my interpretation, what is different between GAIN than a traditional consulting firm?

Now we're about to talk about the key offerings of gain.

Sure.

Which, first of all, I want you to define mice.

I'm not going to assume that this audience knows what MICE is.

And I live in Florida, so it's the land of the mouse.

But I'm Assuming we're not talking about the same thing here.

So it's interesting there, you know, people in the mice industry potentially listen to this, are going here we go again.

Because it, because it is multi, multi billion dollar industry.

What it is, is meetings, incentives, conventions and events.

Hell, hello folks.

Restaurant, hotel meetings and conventions, it's all hospitality.

It's all about facilitation of dialogue and communications and interactions and engagements.

Could be between again guest and a brand or it's between, you know, IBM is looking to where they're going to create their entire meeting and convention programs around the world.

Which convention centers, which convention hotels, which F and B convention hotels that they can support them, you know, which excursions.

So the travel component of it, corporate travel, it's all mice is the kind of like the epitome and the amalgamation of corporate travel, hotel industry, restaurant industry and convention meetings and conventions and incentives.

So the mice industry is probably the most multifaceted part of the, the troika, the three areas but it's sometimes the least known unless you're inside it.

Why would a client come to gain?

What are some of the areas that gain can really help them accelerate in.

Again, what's really important it is almost entirely about amplification.

Okay, that's interesting.

That's an odd response.

Perhaps skip them what you were expecting?

Yes.

So amplification of their product development, application of their go to market strategy and commercialization.

Amplification of their pure play brand equity marketing.

Amplification of their just in time advisory when they need to a reach out to a specific group of serious and experienced executives sort of on call.

That also is important part of amplification.

The reality of filling the gaps in senior and C suite scenarios with fractional leadership.

So people who have certain skill sets, who have run companies, been founders of companies, who have been senior vice presidents of companies, all sizes.

We have a bench, we have an, we have a very well curated bench of senior experienced folks, you know, women and men from the industries that we've talked about and now you skip coming in and we've proactively worked with you on you know, our strategy and our growth now within the restaurant sub vertical.

So as you are the global director of restaurant technology and innovation for game and you know, so is that helpful?

Does that give a better idea of kind of like at a high level, you know, where we fit, who we are, what is the value we bring?

This is a turnkey executive on call advisor availability, project work, you know, six month agreement, 12 month agreement, perpetual agreements.

I mean it really is focused but there is a level of flexibility to enable or startups scale ups and enterprise in the restaurant, hotel and mice industry that are involved in innovation either on the brand side or on the vendor side to be able to amplify and grow their business in the most efficient way.

So part of the GAIN terminology and the name is international.

We have advisors all over the world.

How many, how many countries do we cover?

For goodness sakes?

It's a lot.

I'm from a country perspective I think it's like 14, but from a continent perspective it's 5.

And what's really important as well is, and we, we all know this, anyone listening knows this as well is you know, business is about people.

It's not about technology, it's not about finance, it's not about marketing, it's not about you know, hr, of course it's about all those things but really it's about people.

Either the customers or the organization, you know, or the funders or government or the intelligentsia like you know, universities and thought think tanks etc.

So business is about people and you know, using a cliche that was one of the first things that I was ever taught in my training at foot.

Conan Belding Advertising one of the old school global advertising agencies in the world.

In the old days I was given a book by Mr.

Belding A Foot Kona Building FCB and the book was, and people have heard about this, you know, the inventory goes down in the elevator at night.

That's the first significant business book that I read outside of university was the inventory goes down in the elevator at night.

And it all focuses on the reality is you can have an amazing product, you can have incredible financing, you could have a wonderful market opportunity, you could have regional and global, you know, confirmed interest.

But if you don't have the right people in the right places at the right time with the right skill set and in the right mindset, you're going to fail.

What I love about the fact that we have these advisors all over the world is, you know, I'm seeing it from the F and B side of it where restaurants are expanding globally.

How has globalization impacted the strategies businesses must adopt for sustainable growth?

From what you've seen?

Well, a couple of things is that it's, it's, it's only in intensified in the last 10 years but it's always been, you know, a logical strategy of any organization.

If it was a startup, you know, they knew the only way to go global was they probably would have to be acquired or a Very rare, small percentage would, you know, leg it out and get to a point where they could be a global player.

But you know, on enterprise level, obviously that's the whole raison d'etre.

And that.

And for our American listeners that means reason for being.

Just so you know, the raison d'etre of these corporate entities is obviously to grow and scale from their home or core market and their shareholders and their board of directors immediately ask the leadership, where are we going, how are we scaling, how do we amplify, how do we multiply our business?

And the way to do that many times is either you go into multiple verticals and or you go into multiple regions.

The challenge and why we deliver something quite special is many, many, many experiences with many organizations, small, medium and large.

People blow their brains out creating beachheads in other regions, travel.

The higher expensive talent, they assume that they're going to have this kind of turnkey expansion, that everything that worked in North America is going to work in Japan or everything that worked in Korea is going to work in, you know, Central Europe.

And that's absolutely not the case.

It's very, very rare.

And it's, and there's a ton of massive investment from a corporate perspective.

It's a, if it's a corporate player or from a VC who's funding a scale up, you got to throw so much money at that kind of international growth to provide the coverage for all their true challenges of doing it in these kind of like strategic.

But they're sort of, let's see how it goes.

No one says that publicly, but that's really what's happening.

We believe that our success methodology that in our region is going to be applicable in another region.

All we got to do is find three great, you know, people to hire for 300 grand each and throw 500,000 in other ancillary services, marketing, trade shows and we're good to go.

And in my personal experience and many people who may be listening and also definitely in our networks is not the case.

Having on the ground experienced, available senior advisory talent to, to strategically validate.

It's almost like an MVP for your growth versus MVP for a product, you know, so it's like minimum viable, it's mvg, minimal viable growth.

Right.

It's how do we get into the Asian market without, you know, losing our shirt?

How do we do it in a way that we can test, we can escalate appropriately, we can mitigate some risk and maximize opportunity.

That's what gain is all about.

And Michael, we're Going to continue that thought and strategy and innovation right after this short break.

People stay listening because we have some great information and some pretty big announcements coming up at the end of the show.

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And we are back.

Michael, in today's rapidly evolving market, what role does innovation play in driving growth and how can you see businesses effectively foster an innovative culture?

Important question.

Because it's not only innovation, it's the fact that the world, your client base, you know, ideas and knowledge are constantly in a fast forward mode.

So either you innovate.

I don't like using the cliche innovate or die.

That's too extreme.

You either innovate or you become stale.

That's the challenge.

So innovation is a reality that every organization in some way, shape or form, I don't care if they sell, you know, they have a quarry that sells sand to a cement company or they're, you know, working on the next rocket that's going to be efficiently reusable rocket to, to fly to the moon.

Progress, science, new business models, demographic changes, just knowledge in general and also awareness of what can be consumer level, business level, governmental level.

It's all happening anyways, folks.

So you as an innovator, you can be a catalyst, you can even perceive yourself as a catalyst.

You're actually a reality, you're a realityist.

It's not a futurist, you're a realityist.

It's happening anyways with you or without you.

So innovation is like a core component of every organization, every startup, every governmental division, every, you know, financial organization in some way, shape or form.

So really it's, you know, are you going to be in the caboose or are you going to be driving the train?

Well, what I find interesting about that statement, as you know our industry from both fmb, I mean hospitality in general, we are very slow adopters and we're scared of innovation.

I truly believe Covid kind of changed that mindset quite a bit because they realized if you didn't innovate, you were in trouble.

I think one of the things that attracted me to your organization was the fact that you're Doing a lot of stuff.

In AI, you have some emerging technologies out there.

How do you see emerging technologies like VR, AR and AI, maybe even automation, kind of reshaping the future of hotel and restaurant strategy?

Well, look, first of all, the industry and people listening to this are tired of the hype.

They want to see and work with people that can actually organize their plans to implement.

What is the tsunami of change?

The tsunami of change is happening.

You know, automation, artificial intelligence, obviously it's everywhere and everyone's talking about it and everyone's either on board or they're going to be pulled on board.

And of course, you know, immersive technology, spatial computing, virtual reality, augmented reality, these are all part of the tsunami of change within our industry and others in general.

So the key scenario is two things is innovation and these type of specific emerging technologies, do they have a core place in your business or a core place in your offering or are they ancillary?

If they're ancillary, it's still important, you still have to put effort towards it.

But they're not as mission critical.

Many organizations, including in our industry, which, you know, Skip, I have to disagree with you a little bit.

I'm kind of tired of everyone saying that our industry is backwards, our industry is slow.

I talk to people in a lot of other vertical industries and it's not that much different.

Risk averse leadership, that's what it's all about.

Yes.

And that's applicable in many vertical industries.

Right.

We have, you know, for the last decades have focused on this.

Most of us have focused on travel, hospitality, restaurant mice.

So we just go, well yeah, you know, it's like it's.

People are so slow to adopt and it's real.

It's like talking to a wall.

And well, guess what, if you're in the finance industry, unless you're on bleeding edge fintech, it's the same scenario.

If you're in healthcare, unless you're on super in, you know, innovative healthcare organizations, it's the same thing.

If you were, if you're trying to sell to the government with a gsa, good luck.

It's very consistent across all industry.

Some are more, of course, some there exist because of innovation.

That's the thing.

Some industries didn't exist 10 years ago, 15 years ago, that's a whole different ballgame.

But the, let's call them the, you know, the core historical bedrock industries, every one of them have challenges, are slow, they're risk averse because change is scary, it's less predictable, hard to explain to your Shareholders are your quarterly meetings or your, you know, or your VCs and who you know.

Everyone said, well I got a vc.

They must be, you know, super innovative.

No, guess what?

VCs many of them are, but many of them want you to make money and they need you to be able to have an exit.

And if you're too innovative and you push too much on emerging technologies, they, Even though they're VCs, you know, on, you know, in, at Menlo park or they're in Silicon Alley New York or you know, Mars center in Toronto, I've been in the meetings.

They love the emerging technology until it starts to affect the predictability of the growth of the business.

And that's every industry.

Okay, that, so that brings up an interesting question.

We're kind of running out of time, but this is important.

So what should a hotel be concentrated on from their hotel technology stack and you know, what does that look like today?

What should it look like and where should it be heading to specifically in.

The hotel technology space?

There's been an obvious revolution in the last five to seven years about on premise to cloud by the way, similar in the restaurant industry.

Again challenging, you know, legacy systems integrations, all those sandpaper beyond the move which is happening in great volumes and many, many organizations have already completed the reality of doing more with the same.

It's, I'm talking about, I'm giving you a non pure play technical answer but it is important perspective for this conversation.

Any emerging technology or innovation has to be overlaid on can you do more with the same.

I didn't say AI, which you can do more with less, which is not true.

You know, that's going to eliminate all these jobs.

Sure.

It's happening in some respects that there's a reshuffling of where resources are being allocated 100%.

Marriott just had a quite a significant change in their corporate offices and many people are, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people moved on and they many, you know, knee jerk reactions was well that's AI.

AI did this.

Well part of it could be that it's sure.

But it also is that there is a reformulation of where your resources need to be.

And of course innovation and emerging technologies are the catalyst or the tools to enact some of that.

But from a hotel tech stack per se, you know, there's a million acronyms, pms, rms, cms, crs.

There's all kinds and the same thing in restaurant and very much in mice.

There's leaders and there's followers.

What you need to be focused on is how do I get involved in an ecosystem if the vendors that I'm working with, are they well integrated?

Is, is there an ecosystem that either they've built or I'm going to get into based upon this particular vendor's offering or strategic partnerships, et cetera?

It's no longer and I'll be very brief.

One of my first deals in my career was in hospitality technology was like 18 years ago and I'm sitting in front of very senior executives at Marriott, at headquarters in Bethesda and they said two things to me.

They said, michael, your technology is fantastic, but we don't know which silo it will fit into.

Because their whole vision was we have the silo for telephony, ippx, we have the silo for Internet connectivity, hsia, we have the silo for pos.

We have the silo, we have the silo with the silo.

That's all changed.

And if you haven't changed, you are now behind the eight ball.

So the concept of hotel tech stack, lots of specific smarter people than me will be talking about this, have talked about this and gain, there's a particular shooting partnership that we'll allude to briefly as well.

There's much more technically proficient and smarter people than me within GAIN that I'm very fortunate to work with, that I've surrounded myself with.

Who can explain this better?

But what I just said I think is the real meat is it needs to be flexible, scalable ecosystem, strategic vision on a hotel tech stack.

So we're going to finish this out with a big announcement that just came out in regards to a partnership with Muse.

So even before I talk about the wonderful opportunity and the wonderful leadership and staff of a global unicorn in the hospitality industry, Muse GAIN would never have the opportunity to entertain the engagement with a company like Muse if we had not built a level of brand equity, a level of global presence, a strong now history of execution and some tremendous leadership and GAIN advisors within our organization.

So first of all, to thank all of our organization and what people have done and the effort they put in and how we've been very fortunate with client partners and the scale that we've done for ourselves, you know, in lieu of our client partners, of course, domestically and globally.

So Muse is, as many may know, is one of the unicorns of the hospitality technology industry globally.

They're leader in hospitality services that are cloud based.

So you know, pms, rms, they have many acquisitions, they've done.

So they're very much that ecosystem strategy that I was alluding to earlier.

And they're on a high growth track track and we're very fortunate that they saw value in what GAIN could provide to interested parties in the, in the industry that they're particularly looking to have engagement with.

And you know, we are providing one of our core services, Powered by Muse, which is called the GAIN Hotel Tech Stack Review service, Powered by Muse.

And it's very different because it's a program, it's, it's a partnership of course, in strategic partnership, but it's not just, you know, transactional, it's more, much more strategic and it's North America focused at this time and that's where our focus with Muse will be.

But you know, there's obviously global opportunities as well.

So we're very fortunate, you know, that it's been a multi month negotiation and due diligence and evaluation and we have successfully launched this future partnership publicly this week.

That is exciting news and I can't wait to start leveraging that and really working on that relationship with Muse and not only, you know, showing the world what Muse can do, but we, what we can do for the hotel industry as well.

So this.

Yeah.

And one last thing just to add, and I'm not trying to just, you know, pitch here, but what's great about it is that that is a very major initiative but we have tremendous relationships with a lot of other, obviously a lot of other mid to large size hospitality and soon to be restaurant technology or vendors and also the entities.

But what's clear is our AI for hospitality practice is growing fast and, and we are working with people who, and major global vendors who are delivering systems in the AI space and we'll have announcements about that in January as well.

So there's a cascading effect in some respect that we're very fortunate to have a very focused strategic growth plan for gain, as we should, because that's who we are, we're growth advisors.

But that the opportunity to work with these global organizations, you know, it's rare and maybe well earned, but it's rare and, and we're really fortunate and I'm fortunate personally to work with great people again and great client partners to even have the opportunity to move those forward.

Michael, in closing, how can listeners connect with you and learn more about Growth Advisors International Network?

Yeah, so one funny thing about gain is that gain wouldn't exist if LinkedIn didn't exist.

So absolutely, the primary, you know, vehicle to interact with me is Michael c.

Cohen on LinkedIn because there's another Michael Cohen on LinkedIn that now works for the up and come or used to work for the up and coming president who Lew up my LinkedIn profile years ago and I had to put my middle initial in it.

So it's Michael c.

Cohen on LinkedIn and it's Growth Advisors International Network gain on LinkedIn and we have a tremendous amount of, you know, thought leadership, you know, content.

Skip, you've done a wonderful job as a significant senior new addition, adding a tremendous amount of knowledge and contact on our LinkedIn company pages and our affiliated pages and our GAIN advisors individually, you know, posting like people like Adam Mogulinsky, Karen O'Neill, David Mulally, many others.

So that's really the best way to interact with us.

And also if you spend 15 minutes, 10 minutes literally going through our LinkedIn profile for our post for the last year, you'd be amazed, hopefully.

And also I believe it's quite efficient way to truly understand the opportunity and the value of GAIN could bring to your organization.

Yeah, I would highly suggest everybody listening to the show that you go out and you follow the GAIN company website because all the advisors that you did put together, Michael, they're very heavy influencers on LinkedIn, which is pretty cool because, I mean, there's tags coming left and right.

I cannot look at my LinkedIn profile without seeing about 20 posts about gain per day, which just goes to emphasize how quickly this organization is building and the power it has providing offerings to the industry as well.

So thank you for everything you've done to put this organization together.

I am super excited to be part of it and bringing some of the food and beverage opportunities to the hotels and also opportunities for my traditional restaurant clients as well.

Thank you again for your time today.

The listeners I know will enjoy this show and now they know a heck of a lot more about gain.

So thank you.

Thanks very much, Skip.

And we are very, very lucky to have you as senior leadership within GAIN as well.

And I appreciate the opportunity today.

Well, there you go.

Now you know enough about GAIN to be dangerous, right?

Actually, I'm sure you might have some more questions and if you do, you can reach out to me or the show via everything social@SkipKimple or everything @ Magic Gate Tech.

This includes X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

You can always go to the website@SkipKimple.com for all of the archive shows and the show notes and you can also hear all of these new episodes on the Magic gate website@magicgate.com and of course you can email me@skipagicate.com I have so many exciting new shows ready for you.

I'm not sure which one to bring you next week.

The episode on AI and ML Strategy, XR and Data analytics.

I also got an episode on high impact leadership for hospitality executives.

And to top off the year, a surprise guest many of you know in the hospitality industry.

Who is it you ask?

Well, you're going to have to keep listening to find out.

It is going to be a busy couple of weeks ahead of us as we all get ready for the holidays.

This time of year normally slows down.

Not this year.

For me that means I better go back to work.

So until next Tuesday, stay safe, stay healthy and stay hungry.

My friends.