Brett Oetting: Innovation in the Eye of a Pandemic

[Music] This is DMOU, Destination Marketing Organization University, the DMO Sectors Podcast, and I'm your host Bill Geist. 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 conversations on DMOU is elegantly simple, it's three questions and a bonus round. And today's episode is sponsored by our friends at Longwood's International, one of the premier research firms in the travel and tourism space in the world. Longwood's produces groundbreaking research, thought leading insights and excellent council and service to DMOs in areas such as visitor research, advertising effectiveness, image research, and their new resident sentiment study. Learn more at www.longwoods-in-tl.com. And now it's on to our show. Brett Audeing has spent his career building high-functioning teams that have reached the highest levels in their respective industries. Prior to his career in destination marketing, Brett was executive vice president of operations at Perish Hotels, winning multiple national awards, including the top-winded brand hotel in the world two years in a row. He also spent several years in the restaurant industry with garden restaurants, where he won the coveted Red Lobster Diamond Club Award for the top restaurant in the country. Now, prying to taking over the helm of visit corpus Christi a couple of years ago, Brett was president and CEO of Visit Topeka, and was responsible for the vision and leadership strategy of the destination management organization there by creating festivals like the Tap That Beer Festival, the Kansas Chocolate Festival, Takos Itakila, Cyclovia, and more, visit Topeka, made that region a destination for all walks of life. Brett displayed his persistency in sales negotiations when he announced Topeka as the new permanent home for the country stampede, one of the five largest country music festivals in the world. Brett earned his CDME, his certified destination management executive designation, the highest industry designation there is back in 2017, and he currently serves on the destinations international board of directors. Brett Audding, welcome to DMOU. Good morning Bill, thanks for having me. Absolutely, it is the I'ds of March. This is the day that a lot of us kind of refer back to as the day that travel stopped two years ago, and you are celebrating your two year anniversary this month as president CEO of Visit Corpus Christi, which means you started with a brand new community, a brand new board, a brand new staff on the day that our world shut down. Before we get to your three questions in bonus round, you've got to tell us what that experience over the past two years was like for you. Well, I don't recommend it. We can laugh now, right? It was definitely a case study and had a handle adversity. You know, I spent only a couple hours with the staff before we had to send them home and go virtual. I went virtual by going back to the hotel. My wife wasn't even in town for another month, so I spent 24 hours a day in a hotel trying to learn what zoom was. And then, you know, in the evening time, transitioning three feet to the couch and just watching the news. There was nothing really going on. There's no festivals, events, no bars or restaurants open. So I literally didn't really have anything to do except for the job once my wife got there and got a little bit better because I knew one person in town. But I'm an eternal optimist. So, you know, looking back what I would say about that experience was that with the slowdown, we as an organization were able to do two to three years worth of work in about eight months. We did a three year strategic plan, completed D map, started and beginning a T bid. We were finishing that up this week actually. New brand, new website, new staff, all kinds of stuff like that. And that you can't do that in eight to ten months if you have normal business going on. Texas was one of the first states to kind of reopen during what I suppose it was late spring of 2020. And I remember, I mean, your brand new, there is some advertising that is out there, I think in outdoor that was saying come to corpus Christi. And there was some push back early in your 10 year from people saying, whoa, dude, we're not ready. And yet that was not advertising that you would place, but that was like pre-COVID, right? Yeah, you know, it was it was interesting. At one point, the New York Times reached out to me and wanted to do a story on corpus Christi. And some help and this was in late May and the story was that with the pandemic raging around the country, corpus Christi was the largest city in the country that still had not had a certain level of positive cases. But as a huge outdoor destination, the whole city was closed down and restaurants and bars closed. And just how, how was everybody handling that well around that time. And so I was showing up in corpus Christi because it said we were open and outdoor destination, but within three weeks corpus Christi was then in the news for leading the country in COVID cases. Yeah. And that advertising as we were still trying to get a lot of it off the airwaves, so to speak, I hadn't happened fast enough. And there were a lot of people that were blaming us for bringing COVID to corpus Christi. Yeah. Which was fun, you know, 45 days in. Exactly. So despite all that, you have launched, as you said, a number of innovative programs and initiatives over the past couple of years that maybe you couldn't have gotten done in the time that you did. But I'd like to know more about a couple of these. And so help me with the backstory and the genesis and now the execution of what you call tourism academy. Yeah, tourism academy is very exciting for us. We actually just launched the first level of it here two weeks ago. I'll say that we created the program really for two very specific reasons. The first one would be that when I look back and retrospect, I think that a lot of my growth as a leader and my involvement as a confident human came through me being fortunate to go through the leadership to peak a program at a younger age. And then just a couple of years ago, I went through leadership Kansas. So I wanted to figure out ways that we could help our industry here have those same opportunities. You know, most of the time chamber of commerce are the ones running those programs and it's very geared towards the business community. So in Corpus Christi, we've had a couple of employees that have went through it of recent, but most of those seats are filled with traditional business, not necessarily tourism. So the Corpus Christi tourism academy will put a focus on our industry by helping them learn and involve their careers, hopefully wanting them to stay in the industry. So the second reason we created it is to ensure that the people of Corpus Christi understand not only the importance of how to talk in an endearing way to those visitors, but also just the general importance of tourism and make sure that they have buy him. I'm not a shy person when it comes to admitting that our entire goal here is to get visitors to spend as much money as possible. And they're only going to do that if they're treated well, if they're informed on where their money spent. So the first level is called customer service training. That's what we just launched. It's pretty simple. It's a video talking about customer service best practices, our experienced team leaders, then have some one on one conversations with them. Just kind of talking about what it means to be positive, how to answer that question when someone says what is there to do around here and the wrong answer is I'm not sure. So we make sure that they understand the avenues to direct visitors. And one of the beauties of this that's already happened is that it's not just for the tourism industry. We're trying to get actual business owners and nontraditional businesses to do this as well. Just last week we actually had a very large bank go through the process. And also the corpus Christi black chamber of commerce completed the training. So what that means is if you are a employee and you go through this training, you become what we call as a CC me certified tourism associate. So you get a lapel pin you get some different other acknowledgements and so forth. But as a business, if you have one third of your business of your staff go through the training, you become a CC me certified tours and partner. And with that, you get some some static claims for your window, some signage for your business, but you also get put on our website under a special listing as a trust partner, you know someone that we're trying to tell these businesses that we're going to direct people to the businesses that we feel are going to give the best experience. So that's the first part of it. The second two stages are still in development, but we have announced them. The second stage is a precursor. You have to be a CC me associate to go through this, but it's called the corpus Christi ambassador training. So it's open to employees of our partners that show the signs of leadership, focusing on middle level employees and managers. So people that we want to stay in the industry, people that the hotel owner or the restaurant owner thinks that they have some chops that they might want to make sure that they stick around. Those are half day sessions they take place quarterly a person has to go through four different quarterly trainings to graduate from the ambassador training and most of that time is filled with keeping them up to date on industry trends, taking some tours around corpus Christi so they get a more intimate knowledge of what corpus Christi is. So at the final level, we're probably about a year out from launching that, but it is going to be a traditional leadership program. for tourism, similar to a chamber of commerce, where it will only be those from the hospitality industry. It will be very, very in-depth with leadership focus, as well as making sure they fully understand what the tourism ecosystem in Corpus Christi is all about. We have a dream from there that we're going to help supplement the cost for those employees to go through the Texas Travel Alliance Travel and Tourism College. So in Texas, they have a four-year college for employees. Once you go through that, you get your CTE, your certified tourism executive designation. So our hope is that they'll go through our program and that'll be a good precursor to then graduate to the next level of state leadership. And this is what I think is so amazing about this program. The Tourism Academy is you've layered customer service with leadership and also kind of an insider status that's really attractive to a lot of people that they're going to be on the inside with Visit Corpus Christi. I mean, it's in a way not to equate it to higher education, but it's almost like getting a bachelor's and a master's in a doctorate, right? I mean, that's how we're thinking about it, Bill. It really is. And, you know, Corpus Christi is such a huge tourism destination and it's so important to the economy here that we want to make sure that we are doing what we can to keep the best and the brightest in the industry, you know, all around the country. You hear of the struggles of first off, even getting people to want to work in the industry. But that also goes to second level. Once they get there, there's some really good employees around the world. CEOs of major companies that at one time was a dishwasher to restaurant or a front desk agent at a hotel and, you know, not to say how do we keep, you know, one of them in our industry. Why not? Why not? How do we keep the best employees in the industry and make sure that they understand the impact that they can have on the community? And I can't help but think that one of the major reasons that people leave the hospitality and tourism industry is they don't see the opportunity in front of them. This is a perfect way to make sure that it's visible. And I mean, who wouldn't want to work in this industry as long as you know that, hey, up front, you got some dues to pay. But then there is just an amazing amount of opportunities for people. And I think that's the biggest thing that they get through those first couple of years. So cool program. And I'm sure that people can go to your website and learn more about it. You've also taken your engagement with visitors that are already in the market to the next level with not golf carts, but golf carts and the golf coasters. So tell us how you built this program and how it's proven to increase length of stay. This is definitely the most exciting project that I have ever done and it's been a lot of fun. So I'm very passionate about customer services we just talked about. And again, not shy of trying to figure out ways to get visitors to spend money. So the golf coasters program was really born out of the idea that it's our responsibility to take charge of the visitor experience. So last summer we bought and customized two golf carts with our branding, put some very loud speakers in them, hired a bunch of college kids that were super extroverts and told them that they're now called the beach hype squad. We gave them these cream sickle, Columbia fishing gear shirts that you see on the coast. And then just told them to go ride the golf carts around on the beaches and strike up conversations. And it was very successful. So the beach front hype squad, they just drive around on the golf carts and they interact with visitors. And there was really two priorities. The first is to get visitors off the beach. So we have miles and miles of beaches, multiple islands. And that is by far and away the biggest draw, two corpus Christi is the beach. And when you're sitting on the beach for two, three, five days, you're not spending any money. And it's not that the people don't want to spend money. That oftentimes they don't realize that there's another experience out there that might be interested in. So the goal is to be driving around giving out coupons, giving out recommendations. We have digital passes that we partner with bandwagon and just making sure that we're educating the people that are out there that there are other things to do in corpus Christi. One of the beauties of corpus Christi when we talk about our branding is that we are not so to speak intentionally built beach community like a lot of them are along the golf coast. Corpus Christi has half a million people in the MSA. It's a functioning city. And so there's a whole city atmosphere in addition to the beach. And that's what we're trying to get them to do. The second goal is to conduct surveys. So while they're out there, we're asking them to take surveys and kind of disguise it as small talk. You know, where are you from, where are you staying, how long are you here, who's with you, and so forth. So that's how they start the conversation. And then from there they turn it into the recommendations. So they have iPads that they go around. They enter all this info that they get from everybody. They have a certain quota. They have to take each day. And then at the end of the year, last year at the end of the summer, we presented that to our board, the findings of what all the surveys said. And it was fascinating information. And the mayor asked me then to go present that to the city council. So I presented to the city council and everybody loved it. And from there on, it was a couple times a week that me or one of the staff was going around to these different groups, you know, Rotary and Kiwanis Club and groups like that, presenting this info that was just very fascinating. And so it just had a lot of great momentum from that. So going into this year at Spring Break here right now, and there are thousands and thousands of people here right now, we've doubled the golf carts. So we have four. We are also in the process of finalizing building a teaky hut right smack dab in the middle of the airport. And these employees are literally all over town, all wearing the same uniforms. And what we're doing is we're trying to train the visitors to seek out these shirts because they know that there's going to be coupon, there's recommendations, there's all kinds of, you know, fun coming from them. And like I said, these are just college kids that we gave some assessments to to make sure that they're very outgoing and extroverted. And they're out there having fun, you know, they're riding around with their buddies on golf carts, getting paid for it. So I mean, how could you go wrong? That's great. Yeah. One other thing that we're starting this year too is we have started a line of merchandise at our organization. We have a couple amazing, amazing graphic designers. And so we have a store called the Gulf Coast capital store. It's online. There's also a brick and mortar store that is our visitor center, but it's really more of a retail store. But the, but the Gulf coasters will be outselling t-shirts, hats, all designed by us and, and purchased by us as well while they're out there. So we're making some revenue while we're doing it as well as matter of fact, on Friday one of the young ladies was super, super excited because she sold like $412 worth of merchandise to one group. I have everybody want to match in t-shirts. So it's going to be a lot of fun to see how this plays out this summer. But this is something that I would recommend to everybody. The general premise of don't sit back and wait for people to come to you. Go to them. It gets us back into the whole visitor information center, being a static location versus something that's mobile. Yep. And I think, you know, the Gulf Cards really work. So tell me, it's rarely new CEOs intention to clean house. I mean, none of us go in expecting to do that unless maybe the board has said to us in the energy process, you need to clean house. But your staff underwent some changes over the past couple of years. Some were COVID related, some were just, you know, natural attrition. But you said something in our prep call that really stood out in my mind. You said it takes a lot for someone to work here. Tell us how you built the right team and the right culture at Visit Corpus Christi. This is going to be hard for me to condense down in less than two hours. This is a huge passion in my leadership and leading young people specifically. My education is in behavioral economics, which is different in itself. So behavioral economics is essentially business psychology. And I would consider myself a student of leadership. I'm a certified working genius facilitator through Patrick Lynch-Yoni, the gentleman that wrote five dysfunctions of a team and many other amazing books on leadership. And it's just something that I live in, live in breathe. Most importantly, I think the general premise of my thought process when it comes to leadership is that every single human is different and you as a leader need to learn what makes them tick. And you can only do that by building trust. And there's a lot of different consultants out there like Patrick Lynch-Yoni and they're all in a lot of ways saying the same type of thing. They just have their own stick on it. And when it comes to the root of it is trust. So I was taught long ago to higher slow and fire fast. And when I got to Corpus Christi, there were people that said that you have free reign to do whatever you want. You can cancel every contract. You can get rid of every staff member if you want to. Like it's your show. And I said, "That's not how I operate. I want to make sure and see what we have." So I told everybody that no one's losing their job for three months and six months. There was two different cutoffs. And I told everybody that no one's losing their job for three months and six months. spent that time meeting with them one on one and really trying to understand each of them from a personal level. I have my own specific questions that I ask all new hires and I did the same process with all the employees. They essentially re-interviewed. And I just wanted to get to know them. I wanted to see if they were the type of people that would live the values that we're going to live by. I wanted to see if they were willing to check their egos at the door and put the team in the city over themselves. And in a lot of ways, most importantly, do they have the work ethic to be able to handle what we're about to do, which is in my mind to revolutionize an entire city and culture within a city and change Corpus Christi for the better for the long term. So when I got here, there were 18 staff. There were four open positions. So 22, at one time, about six or eight months in, it was down to me and four people. And it wasn't really COVID-related, Bill. It was a general attrition of people weren't going to work out. And we helped some of them find other jobs, but they weren't the right fit for the organization of what we were trying to do. And so I think when I said it takes a lot to work here, I was probably literally speaking about the process. It's bigger than that as well. So I'll go through the process because it is lengthy. The first one, you fill out an application and to reach the interview process, you have to go through a phone screening with one of the employees. And it's a different employee often at different times. But they're asking some particulars about pay to make sure that it's even worth doing an interview. But they're also asking about their love for Corpus Christi, what they know about the organization, what are some favorite things they like to do around town, make sure that they have a customer service tourism personality. If they pass that phone screening, then the next step is where I get involved. And I send them a series of personality and productivity assessments. Every single person takes the Myers-Briggs. They take the Working Genius program through Patrick Linchione. And then we also check their chronotypes. They take a chronotype test as well. I spend some time looking at that. I look at the answers from the phone screening, talk with the leadership team. We make a determination if we think that that person is worthy of being interviewed. And if they are, then they go through a panel interview with the leader of that department. And then that leader gets to pick two other employees on their team to do the interview. I give them recommendations on what are some questions to ask dependent on the personality assessments that they took. And we look at what it means to be an ideal team player. And the ideal team player is another book by Patrick Linchione. And we have very specific questions that dependent on how they gave answers in their assessment. The employees will ask questions related to that to try to see if they are, in fact, an ideal-- do they possess everything that they need to work on our team? And there's a lot of pride on our team. It's snowballed after we start getting people in. Everybody here feels a responsibility to make sure that they hire the right person. So assuming they make it to the final person, and they've passed in the panel interview feels that they've answered all their questions, then they sit down with me. And it's about 90 minutes, sometimes it's longer. And it's not an interview. We go through their assessment. I break down their Myers-Briggs. They're working genius. I ask them questions about their life. And it's more so just seeing if they're a good human being than it is asking about their skills for the job. Because my main goal, I feel, is to make sure that every person that comes in here is going to fit with their co-workers and do everything they can to make us successful. So in short, it's every person that is hired here. It's three assessments and three interviews. But what you see in the outcome is that every person on the team, they respect each other. They care deeply about each other. They know each other's Myers-Briggs by heart. They know the working genius by heart. They know their chronotypes. And they communicate. We have this interesting vernacular here in the office where people are talking about different letters of the Myers-Briggs or the stressors that their personality type brings up and so forth. And they're talking about it in ways to better each other. We have a book club where at different times, I will introduce a different book that we will all read. And we'll read a couple chapters then on a Friday. Afternoon, we'll sit down. We'll go through the book. So the last book we just finished was Radical Candor by Kim Scott. And it's a book designed to build trust and teach people the proper way to challenge each other, to be candid with each other in a respectful way. Our goal is to really bring everybody's whole self to work. Because what we're trying to do is to revolutionize an entire culture and city here. And so it's not for the faint of heart. I want to make sure that we're bringing people in for the long term. And what I love is every one of your employees has their own playing card. And not unlike baseball cards from our youth. You know, there's the person's name on the front. And then they're working genius, their competency, their frustrations, their Myers-Briggs, their favorite foods and sports teams. I'm looking at JT Garza's right now. And it's just, it's amazing. And what a way to build that culture, that this is a team. And I think the most important thing that I picked up from you just in the past couple of minutes is you came to Corpus Christi with a passion. You probably inherited people who were working there who just had signed up for a job and didn't share the same level of passion. And that's the key is not that we want to let them go. But we've got to make sure that everybody is a team player and produces at an exceptionally high level. Yeah, I can be easy to work for or hard to work for, depending on if you're passionate about your job. Because I demand that everybody has a passion for our mission. But also, at the same time, every single person was involved with our strategic plan. Every single person was involved with developing our new values, our mission statement, our vision statement. So there's buy-in. And so if I'm going to go to that level and make sure that they feel like they're truly a part of the team and their voice matters, they better be the type of person that is going to be a good human and be respectful of their co-workers and understand that we're trying to do something big here. And if you're not that type of person, we're just not going to get along. And so the offset of that is to help them find another job where it is just a job because this is a passion here. Yeah, absolutely. All right, great stuff. Time for your bonus round. Now, I grew up in a pretty small town that has produced four DMO CEOs. I think that is probably the most per capita in America. You grew up in a micro-town, in a trailer on a dirt road, in a town of 350 people in Kansas. You had 22 people in your graduating class. You played eight-man football because you couldn't feel the full team. Tell us how a kid like that becomes one of the most gregarious and extroverted guys in the DMO world. Here's what I would say. My parents did everything that they could for us. And I grew up a great life, all things considered. And I learned the value of hard work at a young age. But I think most importantly, when I look back and when I was thinking about this podcast, I understood the value of how hard work can pay off. And so going to Salina, Kansas, which was a half hour away, a town of 40,000 people, but it had a Walmart and an Apple Beast. When we went to Apple Bees, it was a big deal. And the servers were so great and so outgoing. And I felt so special while I was there, because they were talking to you and singing along, happy birthday and things like that. And then my parents did everything they could to make sure that we could go on vacations as we were growing up. And our favorite place to go was to Branson, Missouri. And that was always a super special time. And I think that I'm so passionate about travel and tourism and just general customer service, because I experienced first hand growing up, that travel can change the way someone feels about themselves, about the world, and just how it can bring a family together. And so I think that I'm looking for the ability to do that for others through my career. As a matter of fact, one interesting tidbit-- and this is kind of funny looking back, but the reason I brought up Apple Bees is because my first real job was a busser at Apple Bees. When I became old enough to work, all I wanted to do was work at Apple Bees, because I thought that was the big leagues. And that's what really got my start in the hospitality industry. From Apple Bees, I went to Red Lobster, and then the rest of the history. Very, very cool. What a great story. Tell you what, man, I love the way you think. And I love that you're out to revolutionize not just Corpus Christi, but I think the destination marketing world as well. And I know that's one of the shared passions that you and I both have is how do you look at something that we've now done collectively most of us for 30 or 40 years? I mean, a lot of DMOs got their story. in the 80s. Yeah, there was a course Detroit back in 1896 and others that followed. But this is still a relatively young sector and we can't just keep doing it the way we've always done it. And I've always admired in you that you look at the situation and you go, there's got to be a better way. Yeah. Let's try something that maybe we learned from someplace else. So love the way you think if people want to know more about your programs, how can they find more? They can go to visitcorpuschristy.com and see all these different programs we talked about, have their own separate pages on our website. I'm also obviously I have a passion for all this, so they can reach out to me, bread at visitcorpuschristy.com. I'm happy to talk to anybody about some of the things we've done, give them the pitfalls of what didn't work along the way and what worked best and so forth. So you know, one of the best parts about this industry bill and I tell the new employees, this too is that it is kind of a big family and everybody's willing to help each other. And you know, I said in the hotel world, it was a little more cutthroat when I worked there, you know, because you're, you know, someone's going to stay at your hotel or say, "It's someone else's." But in the tourism world, people take two, three, four trips a year sometimes. So it's no sweat off my back if someone decides to take a vacation to one of my friends' destinations because they might come to us a couple months later. So let's all work together and figure out how we can all help each other out because the more positive experiences the people have, the more vacations are going to take overall. Yeah. Well, thanks for all you do and if anybody out there listening has chosen for whatever reason not to enter the CDME program through destinations international, know that bread is one of the instructors actually. You're on the board, right? The governing board of CDME. Yes, sir. Yeah. So building out the plan, building out the program. And we thank you for all that that you do for our industry. Thank you Bill. Appreciate your time. All right. That's it for this edition of DMLU. Tell your friends and peers. This is where the best and the brightest come to share their stories. DMLU.com subscribe to receive notification when new episodes drop or just look for us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other platforms. Thanks again to our sponsor, our friends at Longwoods International, producers of groundbreaking research, thought leading insights and excellent counseling service to DMOs and areas such as visitor research, advertising effectiveness, imagery search and their resident sentiment study. You can learn more at longwoods hyphen iNTL.com. DMO Pros.com is where you're going to find links to our services with the DMO sector, our book destination leadership links to past editions of the Z news, our position papers on community marketing and board diversity and the biggest DMO job board on the planet along with past episodes, of course, of DMLU. It's DMO Pros with the Z dot com executive producer of DMLU is Terry White and this is a production of DMO Pros. I'm your host Bill Geist. Until next time.