195: Gary Sherwin • The Power of a Private-Sector Tourism Improvement District

Speaker A: Welcome to DMOU Destination Marketing Organization University the DMO Sectors Podcast and I'm your host Bill Gies. DMOU is where you hear the best and the brightest in the destination marketing space, sharing innovative and compelling stories to inspire you to take your destination and organization to the next level. The format for our our conversations on VMOU is elegantly simple as three questions and a bonus round and this episode is sponsored by our friends at Fired Up Culture. There may be no more challenging time to lead than in today's environment, and building a strong, cohesive team is hard at Fired Up Culture. Their tools, their coaching and expertise empower DMO UH leaders to harness the power of culture to lead their organizations forward. Learn more about FiredUpCulture.uh com and check out the testimonials from many of your peers. And now it's onto our show. A 40 year hospitality industry veteran, Gary Sherwin, CDME APR, has served as President and CEO of UH Visit Newport beach since 2006 and oversees the Global Destination Marketing Organization that promotes Newport Beach, California as a premier luxury conference and leisure destination. He is also the past Board Chair of the Orange County Tourism Council, the California Travel association, the state's leading umbrella tourism advocacy organization, and Destinations International. He is also a founder of the Newport beach foundation, which encourages civic leadership in the city with its Distinguished Citizen Program, which has generated dozens of graduates who now serve on City Council, several boards and commissions, as well as other nonprofits in Orange County. He's a founding member and current co chair of the California Travel Industry Association Political Action Committee, a non partisan organization dedicated to fostering tourism champions in state government and in 2023 he received the Brad Burlingame Award for his long standing service to industry advocacy throughout the state. Prior to joining Newport Beach, Gary served as Vice President of Market Development for the Palm Springs Desert Resorts Convention and Visitors Authority, Vice President of Marketing for the Long Beach CVB, and Director of Media Relations for the Los UH Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. A nationally recognized leader and consultant in community brand development, Gary also co authored the international bestselling book Destination Brand Science. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications in Political Science from California State Fullerton and received the University's Vision and Visionary Award, its highest alumni honor. Gary Sherwin My friend, welcome back to dmou.

Speaker B: Oh uh, my good friend Bill, it's so good to see you or at least hear you. And man, listening to that, I feel very old this morning.

Speaker A: Well, it was great to in quotations see you in Portland at Destinations International, but we never could get through the crowds to actually press the flesh. But at least we've got you on the show. Uh, how was the conference for you?

Speaker B: I always love it just to catch up with my friends. Every time we see these folks on the road, we're there for other purposes and usually it's to engage our customers. So we don't have time to really just sit and be with each other and talk about our industry and what's going on at home. So that's what's kind of wonderful about it, is we're all going through this together, we all understand the issues, and we could kind of let our hair down a little bit and, you know, see what's working around the world, literally. So to me, I don't really care what speakers they have. To me, it's the one on one interactions that I have with all the colleagues out there. It's terrific.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, hard to believe it's been six years since we had you on the show last and discussed the innovative Newport beach and Company organizational model in the insane summer of 2020. I said then, and I still maintain it to this day, it is the most logical structure to build brand awareness, empower economic development, and create a framework for the successful marketing of a community. But during the last six years, you took this model to a whole nother level. So tell us how Newport beach and Company is now a purely private sector DMO.

Speaker B: Well, you know, Bill, you said it was 40 years and it has been. And I've seen this industry through lots of different forms and through different crises and different technological evolutions. And I truly feel that today DMOS are more necessary and more vital than ever before. Conversely, I also think that DMOS are in a much more fragile position than ever before. And I say that because if there was a US Conference of Mayors meeting and someone went up and said, you need to go back and defund your dmo, just get rid of them. I would venture to say within six months and assuming the politics all worked. Obviously this is theoretical, but, you know, I would say within six months there would be chaos in a lot of cities around the country because we are solely dependent on the good graces of city councils that allow us to exist. And I kind of look at that as a serious problem, that DMOS are doing amazing work and creative work and the annual convention, you see that, uh, on stage. You see it in your conversations. We are in a wonderfully fertile time, but we still are struggling with elected officials understanding our essential value proposition. And in an era where resources are only getting tougher. If funding a tourism organization or putting cops on the street, you know where they're going to go. There are a lot elected officials. Right, right. And I just think that we need as an industry to say we need to find our own way so that we are not dependent on the gracious nature of our elected officials. And I'm going to say this as someone who has a wonderful relationship with our city council. I love our city. I love the elected officials. This is not about what I'm experiencing locally. What I'm seeing though is nationally this fragility. So to answer the initial question is that we had a T bid. T bids are marvelous. I love John Lambeth's efforts over the years to do that. The problem though is that even now T bids are becoming politicized. And we've seen it just even here in my own neighborhood, Huntington beach, they're trying to compromise. And uh, the city saying, we'll approve a T bid, but if you kick us back some money, it's like, no, that's not what it's about. Anaheim is going to have to go through an increase and they're going to use money towards, you know, employee housing. You know, it's all these issues that are not really marketing DMO related. Yes, they are related somewhat to hospitality, but it's not the intent why these T bids were created. So even now tbids are becoming the new tot, which, you know, is not what they were created for. Right. So, you know, we, uh, you know, our TBID was coming up for a renewal. I went to a couple of our hotel owners. We're blessed with all local hotel owners here. And I said, listen, if you love the tbid. And they said, yes, they'd. And in fact they said, you know, right now we're contributing 3%. We want to take it up to 5%. This came from the hotels, not us. I said, that's great. And I said, I, uh, have one other thing is that if you love it so much, why do you need give the money to the city first? Just send it to me first. Just same amount, just change the address and just send it to me and we get rid of the city. And they said, uh, I don't have any problem with that. And none of the hotels did. So instead of going to a T bid, we just came up with a very simple, I think it's two or three page contract that we sent to every hotel. It's the exact same contract. And they signed a 10 year deal saying we will contribute 5% of our monthly revenue to your organization, and they will remit it within days after the closing of the month. So, you know, historically, cities collect the money, then they sit on it for a month, collect some interest, and then remit to you. Not anymore. Now we get the money funneled directly into our bloodstream. And that's wonderful. It also, because we're now private in that respect, we don't have to disclose the finances, where we spend the money, how the governance is set up, because nobody from the public are invited to attend these things. It's really just the hotels, the assessed businesses that govern it. And the delightful thing that they have determined is they only want two meetings a year, one meeting at the beginning of the year, one meeting halfway through the year, send them monthly reports, and they're very happy. So it's simple and clean.

Speaker A: And this didn't require enabling legislation in Sacramento, correct?

Speaker B: Nothing, no. But you don't need enabling legislation because it's a contract between you and the hotels. You can contract with anyone you want. Right. So if a hotel agrees to do that and they sign the form, then you're in business and it takes it completely out of the public domain, 100%. Again, because it's a percentage, it's not a fixed rate. We both share in our success. I do better for the hotels than my organization does better. I see it every month. I see how each hotel is performing too, because we're tied in with their specific revenue stream. Now, I'll also add, though, is that I still do have a contract with the city of Newport beach, and I get $7.2 million from them out of 23% of the TOT, that is for specific overall brand development for the city, and our chief marketing officer primarily manages that. However, that amount of money is considerably less than what I'm getting on the private side. The important thing is that I'm not saying every DMO can do this or should they do it? But right now, because I, uh, derive most of my money from the private sector, the city can't destroy me. They can't go in and say, we're going to defund you. They could take their money and I don't want them to, but they could. But I'd still live another day and I would still have a reasonably successful budget in excess of $10 million because I have private sector money. So that's. The important thing is that there is a path to financial independence with a dmo. My model may not work in every city, but I think we've shown that it is possible to get there in some form, even though it may not always be applicable, depending on everyone's individual marketing and political conditions that they face.

Speaker A: Right. And, um, pardon me, I really jumped right into the private sector play that you've made in the past year or so. For those who didn't hear our original conversation in 2020, just go to Billgeist.com, look in the vault, and you can essentially see what I call the Newport beach model. Uh, Newport beach and Company. And that's really where this whole tale started. Right? I mean, you were able to put together five or six organizations and have every one of those organizations essentially forward their marketing dollars to Newport beach and Company. That way you have absolute brand cohesion. Um, and I remember you likened it to Disney. I mean, Disney has five divisions, but it's still Disney. And it looks like Disney. And there's not five logos and there's not five voices. It's Disney. That's what you created. That was. That was essentially the superstructure. Then you go to tbid and now you go to private tbid and it's just brilliant. But here's the thing. I think that one could be excused for offering the critique that this new private sector model puts you directly in service to the whims of your hotels to achieve the revenues necessary to achieve your mission. And we've been saying for 20, 30 years now that this is not about heads and beds. Yeah. But for you it is.

Speaker B: It is, but it isn't.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: In the sense that this meeting, assessment, partnership, map, as we call it, we focus a lot of effort in spending those dollars in group and luxury leisure. And then the contract ave. Uh, with the city is really just overall brand development. I think part of it, though, is what kind of culture have you built with your hotels and how have you educated them about what a DMO does and the path to success? I have said many times that room nights are a byproduct of getting all the other stuff right first.

Speaker A: Correct.

Speaker B: Trying to chase a room night when you don't have a brand, you don't have infrastructure, you don't have storytelling, all of that other stuff. You're going to fail even if you've got a great product. My primary goal in working with our hotels is to make sure that they fully understand what a DMO does, how the other parts of it fit into a successful overall marketing effort, which is not just about heads and beds. And we need to be able to tell our story. We need to get into markets, we need to be Able to have activations, consumer brand activations certainly help us on the group side. So all of this stuff all kind of fits into a whole. If the hotels think I am only a lead source for them, then I have failed. And that is one of the things we keep trying to talk to our hotels, is that we offer so much more. We are much more than just, you know, alternative to cvent, where you're getting, uh, a lead and you're trying to convert it. What we're trying to do is create a healthy brand that everyone can activate. And we will certainly do it on our end for the benefit of the hotels. And when we do that, the hotels will then see the room nights. I just think too often you have sales that is focused on driving numbers and marketing that's out there doing marketing stuff. They don't work well together. There's no synergy. And hotels then begin to think the only thing you're doing for them is helping push numbers. And again, numbers are important, but that is not the path to DMO success. And I would venture to say if you ask any of our hotels, do they love our sales effort? Yeah. In fact, one of the things we do is we send a form out to all of our hotels every year and we say, please grade all of our salespeople.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Please grade them on these various elements. Are we responsive? Are we helpful? Do we give you good advice? Are we there for you when you need us? Are we problem solvers? And we do it for every single salesperson. We hire a third party to do it.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: Uh, so our fingerprints aren't on it. This person collects the data, aggregates, it does not tell us who said what and then gives us a report. And on a scale of 1 to 10, I have to tell you, the thing that's more important than the room nights is the fact that we got a. Out of a, uh, 10 being perfect, we got a 9.9 aggregate for all of our salespeople.

Speaker A: Wow. So that's, that's sensational.

Speaker B: You know, that tells us that they're seeing value in our team and what we're doing for them. It's more than just the sum of room nights. We've got people who are there, partners and they see us that way and they had an opportunity to criticize us or say, hey, you need to improve. You know, These forms went out to every sales manager at every hotel, every dos and every gm. They all graded our team. Is it scary for the salespeople? Oh yeah, it is. But in the end, I Think it's one of the most exciting metrics we have.

Speaker A: Yeah. So interesting. So, you know, we as DMOs over the years, when things go wrong in our destinations, we often will say, well, this is the weirdest relationship in the world because we're charged with selling a product that we don't have any control over. Price, quality, you name it.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: So, M hm, it sounds like your hotel community is completely bought in. But what happens if you have one or two that maybe don't take quality quite to the level that you need it to be in an aspirational brand? It, uh, sounds like there can be some interesting conversations there.

Speaker B: There is. And one of the things we have always tried to do is to make sure that our entire team stays very close to the product. And the way we stay close to the product is we have a program that we encourage all of our employees to do. It's called Stay and Play. And every year every single person has a budget and they do this like, uh, on a secret shopper basis. We give them a budget to pick any hotel that they want to stay in. They can stay in for two nights, they can eat out in a nice restaurant and do an activity of their choosing. And then they have to come back at a staff meeting and report out what they learned in that experience. Did the hotel meet the mark? Was there a problem? And if there was a problem that they saw, we then will contact the general manager and say, hey, by the way, FYI, our person was there this week. This is what they saw. Here's some candid feedback. I don't have a GM that would take offense to that if it's presented in a way of trying to improve and try to help get them to understand where their brand failings might be in a constructive, useful way. We're there for them because they know we're doing it from a. No, not trying to be critical. We're trying to help them in terms of their own service performance and their own product. And hopefully the alignment with the Newport beach brand. And all of our people can then look at it from a secret shopper perspective, from the receptionist to our senior vice president of sales. Everyone gets this benefit and everyone gets something really meaningful out. It also ties in our people a little closer with our product because we're Newport Beach. It's an expensive place to live. No one here, no one lives in Newport Beach. We all live kind of in the surrounding area. But we need people to spend time in the destination. And this is one way of trying

Speaker A: to do that very Very cool. All right, so third question. Let's stay on brand. You authored the book Brand Science back when branding was all the rage in the early 2000s.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: What have you experienced as you watch our sector announce things like, we're rebranding, uh, you know, we're going to create a new brand, we're going to update the brand. What did you write about that has been embraced? And what have we in DMO land? Misunderstood.

Speaker B: Wow. Um, so the book was written back in 2005, and I spent the summer when I was in Palm Springs writing this thing. And I thought at the time that it was going to have a very short shelf life because it was written a very practical kind of, here's the way, you know, a. What I call a genuine brand is developed, which is really based on strategy and good research and talking to your customers and your stakeholders. It's not a creative exercise where, you know, you hand it off to your ad agency and they give you a new logo and rename you and give you a tagline and all that stuff, which I think, you know, is traditionally what most people have considered a rebrand. I consider branding personally. And kind of what the book was about was to be a much more transformational moment that really, you know, is about engaging people because again, we're the dmo. We can pull some levers, but we don't have control over the brand either. You mentioned we don't have control over price, product, you know, limited control over promotion. We don't have total control over our experiences, but we can help influence those experiences throughout our community. And that means we have to engage with them and bring them in. We can't just say, this is the way you're going to be. We've decided we're this boom. And that's the greatest way to brand graveyard that people go, well, I don't understand that. Okay, now we're here 20 years later, and I thought, okay, this book will probably be done and over with in two or three years. CDME created a course on brand development that was at the request of, you know, at the time, you know, icvb, dmai, you know, and the course has been taught and it's been going on, but the issues that I just talked about, about how people see branding, M is still very much with us, Bill. And, um, people, you know, they, they say, we've rebranded, we're now visit Blank instead of Explore Blank. Or, you know, we have a new font, or we've decided that, you know, we're this and we proclaimed Ourselves, the king of this or whatever it is. If it's done through a strategic process and there's some research to validate it, then that's great. But most people hand it off to a creative shop, and the creative shop has to give you something for that. And it's very often, I think, somewhat superficial. So I would hope that maybe our colleagues will, you know, maybe embrace kind of a more methodical approach to this, which I think will get them to a better place. I will say I've, uh, you know, teaching that brand course for so many years. I had a lot of people going through the branding process and when they did, if they followed the methodology, they usually ended up in a pretty good place. I haven't heard of anything that exploded, but I heard of lots of times where there were branding agencies and they would be peddling the same tagline or, you know, a similar logo to different destinations. Mhm. As they had to, you know, fulfill their mission. And that breaks my heart. I hate seeing that. So I think people understand that branding is important. I think there's still confusion as to what it is or how to do it, I guess is the way of looking at it.

Speaker A: Yeah. A couple months ago we had Ryan Short on the program, and he has recently written a book called the Civic Brand. And in our conversation he takes essentially the tenets of destination brand science and believes that you don't turn it over to an agency. And he goes a little further than I think I've ever seen anybody take it, where he, uh, actually says, go out and get your enemies on board. Yes, it's not a true brand if everybody doesn't have their fingerprints on it. And good, bad or otherwise, you've got to have those kinds of individuals. And it reminded me of a fairly difficult time for a DMO which will go nameless. They put together the brand pretty quickly with an agency and it just blew up. I mean, uh, in the media. In the alternative weekly, the bureau was just getting attacked. And finally the director finds the person who actually started the ball rolling, who was a blogger, 23 years old. And, and after the bloggers started to attack, then everybody just saw it as chum. And everybody loaded on and she called him and she goes, who are you and why are you doing this? He goes, I'm the guy that has 20,000 subscribers and you didn't ask my opinion. Yeah. So to be able to get the community on board, um, that's what we want. It isn't really a brand if we don't have that kind of participation.

Speaker B: You can't fulfill the brand because the DMO is not out in the community necessarily providing the experience for our visitors. We're telling about the experiences, we're storytellers. But when people are coming, they're being serviced by all of our partners out there in the world. And if they don't understand that they need to be aligned with the story that brought people here in the first place, then we're just going to have a bunch of frustrated visitors going home saying, I thought they were promised me this, but I instead got that. And that's why we need these people to say, this is our brand and this is your part in it. You have a really important role to play in this and here's what it is. And you know, I think you and I have talked about. I had a developer of a hotel, a guy named Bob Olson, largest hotel developer for Marriott in the world. He happens to live in Newport beach and he was going to open up a boutique hotel on the side of our former city hall. And he came to one of our sessions, learned about our brand promise. And he came up, he says, gary, I want to build a hotel based on your brand promise. Those words right there. I want to create a hotel that lives that. And so we sat down and we actually created Lido House Hotel, that if you visit it Today, it's only 130 rooms, but it is a delight and it is infused with Newport beach culture because he said, I'm going to make your words a tactical reality. And he did. He was brilliant about it.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: You know, it's the first time I've seen a DMO's brand turn into a living, breathing thing, which I think shouldn't be the exception, it should kind of be the rule that hopefully our hotels look to us for things like that. And our other hotels have subsequently brought us in and they've asked us, okay, how can I infuse our product with more, you know, destination specific amenities or something like that? And we work with our hotel partners in that regard. But you do have to talk to people. You need to engage them. It cannot be a top down. A brand is very much a bottom up, I think, kind of process. Assuming you're engaging with people. And you're right, if you tell people who they are and what they need to be, and you tell them you know their culture better than they do, you're gonna run into a lot of trouble.

Speaker A: Well, I still have 21 years later. That book is still on my bookcase here in the office. Is there Gonna be a follow up.

Speaker B: Oh, I don't know. I have your book, by the way too, in my office. I'm looking at it right now. I don't know. You know, I think there are so many interesting case studies. At the time it was wr and there weren't many case studies. Yeah, I think it would be wonderful to go through it. Jennifer Walker, who's the CMO in Dallas, followed the book. She took the brand course with cdme and Dallas was a very difficult city to brand for a lot of reasons. And she went through the process and ended up in a really exciting place. I don't know if there was another book. I'd love to write about successful case studies that follow the methodology and to see where they are and also find out what the metrics, uh, are. How well is Dallas doing? Because they're telling a different story. You can measure a brand and I think that would be kind of fun to, you know, actually go from zero to a full brand and what that delta was and how that improved things within the community. So, yeah, you planted a seed with me, Bill.

Speaker A: All right, I'll be waiting. I'll be waiting. All right, time for the bonus round question. In our first conversation on DMOU, you shared how you used to sneak onto TV and movie lots as a 14 year old pretending to be a Hollywood journalist.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Listeners can find that story and nine others on episode 146 where we featured at least my funniest 10 bonus round answers for our fifth anniversary. But this bonus round question may be the most interesting one in almost 200 episodes.

Speaker B: Oh my gosh.

Speaker A: In the days after annual convention in Portland, you traveled up the coast to engage in a psilocybin experience. Now, for somebody my age, when hallucinogens were really making the scene in college, I watched a bunch of my friends experience really bad trips, you know, like rearranging your face and thinking it was real. So I never fortune, so I have no idea. You gotta tell us about your experience in the days after, uh, the DI convention.

Speaker B: What better way to end DI than psychedelic, right? Um, right. I'll preference it in this way. There's a journalist named Michael Pollan and he is Michael, um, J. Fox's brother in law. He is also a very noted New York Times journalist and author. He wrote a book called how to change your mind and it subsequently was a Netflix miniseries that I would recommend anyone look at. It's, it's a very interesting four or five part series. But I've always, uh, one of the interests of mine is understanding consciousness and what makes us who we are and why we act the way that we do. I think it's always been a journey of personal discovery. So what I did was it wasn't a hippie, dippy experience. It wasn't, you know, going in the woods and, you know, gazing at my navel and looking at the trees. This was a clinic that was in Ashland that is one of the nation's, I think, foremost clinics of things like this. It is a very intentional, very thoughtful process. And in this clinic, you pick a counselor because this is something you do not want to do by yourself. You need to have someone go through this with you who understands what this is. And, uh, I picked the guy who happened to own the facility. I met with him. We spent about three hours in prep calls before all of this began. And then when I showed up on the Saturday after Di, we spent another hour talking before he actually gave me the mushrooms which he grows himself. He provides about 40% of all the psilocybin, uh, in the state of Oregon. So then we kind of went through it. And I will say that I had a colleague who went through it with me. She had a very different experience than I did. Hers was more of euphoria, whereas mine was the dark night of the soul. It was clearly the most difficult, challenging experience I have ever gone through in my life. I guess the only way to kind of explain this is I kind of felt like, you know, it started out in this wonderful, relaxing way, and then it suddenly turns on you. At least it did for me. And it was, uh, like someone disconnected all the wires of your brain, pulled them out. You kind of go to the edge of craziness, and then you get reassembled with fiber optic cable. And at the end of it, you come out of it feeling kind of crappy, but also very clear. And the next morning, I woke up feeling like a million bucks. It was the weirdest thing. So somebody says, would you recommend it? I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I think there's, uh, a possibility would have my colleagues experience, which was wonderful and enlightening. And if you looked at his movies, I was the Odyssey and she was Elf. Um, you know, hers was different than mine. You can't predict what these things are going to do because everyone's mind is a little different. So if somebody wanted to go through it, I just say, be prepared for anything. And if you could go through a torturous experience. But if it's like what happened with me at the end, it will Be transformational, amazing, enlightening. It's almost like the windshield is cleared. You know, it's like somebody cleaning your windshield. But to get there was absolutely torturous. Uh, tortures.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: So, again, it depends. Uh, other people could go through, and it could be great. I was on 25 milligrams, by the way. My colleague, uh, actually was 27 milligrams. She was more closer to 20. And so it could be a dosage thing, too. 25 is the clinical dose that John Hopkins University that studies this stuff recommends. And by the way, there's a soundtrack that John Hopkins has created. Begins the minute you take the mushrooms all the way through. It's all kind of synced to music. It's pretty fascinating, honestly. But I will tell you, the weird thing is, as I'm coming into the office today, towards the end, there was jazz music. And there's a part of the experience, and my colleague had this, too, where it's like a wave, and the wave kind of comes up, and you kind of open your eyes saying, okay, I'm out of it, but you're not out of it. And then you kind of go right back into it, and it happens. You're going back and forth for about an hour. But it was synced to jazz music. And this morning, when I came to the office, I turned on a jazz station, and the whole experience came right back. It was like it planted something in my head. It was weird.

Speaker A: Okay, so, uh, back to rock and roll for you, huh? Huh?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah. You know, listen, I. Knowing what I went through, I found it immensely gratifying. But I don't know if people. I told my wife, I've told my daughters, my daughter is a mental health expert. I said, I don't think you could do it, and I wouldn't recommend it, assuming you had what I went through, it would be too, too difficult. But if you could do it and get through it, you might be able to get to wonderful places, which is where I went. So it's everyone's personal choice, but this is not Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, let me assure you.

Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you, man, uh, like I said at the, uh, beginning of this question, this has got to be the most unusual question we've asked in almost 200 episodes. So, um, I'm sorry that you went through, uh, that pain, but, uh, it would have been interesting for you to experience that moment of clarity that you got, what, 48 hours later. So, yeah, very cool.

Speaker B: It is. Like I said, I woke up the next day, I was kind of feeling a little sick to my stomach, and I had a headache leaving the place. But the next morning, I woke up and it was. It felt like a million bucks. Second day, same thing today? This morning, I would say the same thing. So is it permanent? I don't know. You know, who knows? But you do feel good?

Speaker A: Well, we'll check back.

Speaker B: It's fun.

Speaker A: Gary, thank you so much for all you've done for our industry. Um, I'm going to hold you to that, um, book idea because it would be interesting, honestly. It would be interesting to see how you could build a new book based on the process that you outlined in the first book. But then to be able to say, they did it right, they did it right. And, oh, by the way, these guys over here did it wrong. Don't do that. And I think that would be interesting. But, uh, you know, for all the people who have, uh, benefited from your, um, expertise in cdme, and just those of us that haven't gone through cdme, thank you. It's been a hell of a run for you, and, uh, we're looking forward to continuing to see you out and about at our industry events. And hopefully this time we can actually have a drink together.

Speaker B: I hope so. And, Bill, thank you. There are very few people in this business that are able to understand the DMOs of different sizes. The smaller DMOs, the regional, the. The rural DMOs. You treat everyone in such a wonderful, equal way, and I love that about you. You are a true connoisseur of this profession, and we need more Bill guys out there. So thank you for everything that you do well.

Speaker A: Thank you. That's very kind of you. Thank you again. So that's it for this edition of dmou. Tell your friends and your peers. This is where the best of the brightest share innovative ways to tell people. All puns intended.

Speaker B: Where to go.

Speaker A: Past episodes of DMOU are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast platforms. Subscribe on your preferred platform and you'll get notified the minute new episodes drop. Thanks again to our episode sponsor, our friends at Fired Up Culture. There may be no more challenging time to lead than in today's environment, and building a strong, cohesive team is hard. Learn more@firedupculture.uh.com Billgeist.com is where you're going to find past episodes of DMOU, plus links to our book, Destination Leadership, the Z Newsletter, the blog, our position papers on board, diversity, and the future of community marketing@billgeist.com thanks for joining us and we look forward to our next conversation on dmou.