Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:14]:
You’re listening to the Keith Blakemore Noble Radio Show. Interesting chats with interesting people about interesting things and no adverts. Here’s your host, Keith Blakemore-Noble. Hey. Hello. Hello. Welcome back, dear listener, dear viewer. However you’re catching us, welcome back to another episode.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:39]:
This episode, I have a guest by, a lady by the name of Brenda Maddox. Now Brenda is an experienced consultant in the hospitality industry, and she loves helping her clients bring their vision to life. She has got more than twenty years of experience working in major projects like the MGM Grand in Detroit or the Saint Regis in Washington DC. Pretty big projects here. And now she’s applying that experience to projects, well, like yours, hotels, large restoration projects, fixer uppers of all sizes. Whatever your budget, Brenda can help you make sure it’s well spent. Her superpower is combining the big picture perspective with a team whose attention to those critical details makes all the difference. And she can also make sure you have full access to her extensive network of vendors and suppliers.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:35]:
That’s why she is so good at what she does, and that’s why we had to bring her in to this episode. So without further ado, let’s bring in my guest, Brenda. Hey, Brenda. Are you there?

Brenda Maddox [00:01:46]:
Hi, Keith. Thank you for having me.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:49]:
Oh, my pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. We’ve heard your bio, Brenda, but who is Brenda? Who is the lady behind it all?

Brenda Maddox [00:02:00]:
Well, you know, my background is commercial construction. And when I got the chance to get into the hospitality industry, I looked at it and fell in love with pretty, pretty fabric and carpet and wall covering and not having to get up at 04:00 in the morning and worry about concrete and steel girder delivery. So

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:25]:
I

Brenda Maddox [00:02:25]:
just I I got hooked about 02/2002, and I’ve never looked back.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:32]:
02/2002, you you started in

Brenda Maddox [00:02:37]:
I did in hospitality. We

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:38]:
did Hospitality. Where those are going to find.

Brenda Maddox [00:02:43]:
I started out purchasing, FF and E, which stands for furniture, fixtures, and equipment, and have had several businesses that I’ve run on my own.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:54]:
And I’ve worked for lots of industry leaders in that and learned so

Brenda Maddox [00:02:54]:
much, and I I

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:01]:
enough who’ve been involved

Brenda Maddox [00:03:01]:
in my career up until now. And I decided to combine the two about eighteen months ago and put my construction background into my purchasing, and let’s do hotels from the bottom up or the top down, as they say.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:21]:
They do. They do. Although it always strikes me as more sensible to build from the bottom up. That way it doesn’t fall down.

Brenda Maddox [00:03:27]:
What fun is that? Do you know? There’s no tragedy in that whatsoever.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:34]:
So, yeah, I mean, one of the things I wanted to ask you was how did you get into all of this? What was your journey? I mean, as a as a young girl, were you going, this is what I want to do? What’s what happened? How did you how did it happen?

Brenda Maddox [00:03:47]:
You know, I never knew what exactly I wanted to do. And I went to college in High Point, North Carolina, got my degree in business management, which was fine, but a little ambiguous. What are you going to do with that? So I stumbled around looking for a job and found someone who would take me on a temporary basis and learn how to do electrical estimating for commercial projects. So transformers, safety switches, motor control centres. And was absolutely fascinated by the process of building a building that nothing was there. It’s an empty lot. And now there’s some great something. And I progressed from there.

Brenda Maddox [00:04:35]:
I got a couple of clients who liked working with me so much. One happened to own their own construction company and asked if I wanted to join as a project manager. And they sent me to college to earn my construction management degree. And it was so much fun. I realised that one of my my true strengths is being able to see a project from the very beginning, not only being able to understand it myself, but being able to explain it to almost anybody who asks, sometimes ad nauseam and until they’re crying, Uncle, please stop explaining this to us. But I really enjoyed the process of not only seeing something that I was involved in come to fruition because it’s like telling a story. And stories are our life from the beginning of time. We all tell stories.

Brenda Maddox [00:05:35]:
And when that led me to hospitality, that’s what really, really got me is being part of someone’s story. In the hotel industry, there’s so many things that happen. Graduations and surprise engagements and giant birthday parties and retirement parties. And to think I’m part of someone’s story even though they’re never going to know me just makes me happy.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:06:05]:
I love that. I love that. And you’re right. There’s so many stories, or we bring our own stories that hotels and and and so form a a part of, often just the back I say just often, the backdrop to our story and yet still, playing a a very important role. Because if you have a bad experience with a hotel, they can ruin the whole story.

Brenda Maddox [00:06:29]:
It really can. It it really, really can. So that’s where your customer service and your internal teams and things come in. And we also help with that. We’ll help find an operations manager if the hotel buyer doesn’t want to do the day to day themselves. And quite often, the people we’re working with now don’t. They’re buying properties to diversify their real estate portfolios, and it’s a great way to do it. Boutique hotels are on the rise.

Brenda Maddox [00:07:00]:
And some other things, like Airbnbs, are not falling by the wayside, but there isn’t as much potential for return on investment as there are in hotels. So, really, diversifying a portfolio is much easier if you’re buying a property that’s small. Forty, thirty rooms or under, generally speaking. And if it’s in, an age old building, you know, say, grade two or grade one over in The UK, We can also find those local craftsmen who really know how to work on them and also the people that can tell us exactly why they’re listed the way they are and what we can change and what we can’t.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:46]:
Yeah. I I I imagine, certainly, for some developments, having a a grade two or a grade one listed building can be, quite challenging because, obviously, there’s a there’s limits to what you can do. I imagine in in some ways, it can also can also kind of help inform the direction that the redevelopment takes so that you work with the, the restrictions.

Brenda Maddox [00:08:09]:
It really does. And that’s we’re preserving and retelling the story of the building itself. And you also wanna make sure that you’re researching that in the beginning because if you’re taking out a fireplace that Winston Churchill maybe smoked next to a hundred years ago, before you’ve asked the council if you can do that, you’d get in big trouble.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:37]:
Yeah. And I know with some of these things, they can make you put it back to how it was.

Brenda Maddox [00:08:43]:
They really can. Yeah.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. A a common theme with with all these things you do is you say about the the story, the other people’s story when they come to the venue, the the story of the development, the story of the venue. I guess, again, thinking about these grade one, grade two type listed buildings, I guess when we’re developing redeveloping them, it’s it’s all about sticking it, in keeping with their story, which could be many hundreds of years of big story. We’re just we’re just adding the latest chapter to that story rather than creating something completely from scratch.

Brenda Maddox [00:09:23]:
It’s so true. You’re absolutely right. And, really, we become part of its life for a little while. It doesn’t become part of ours, though sometimes those really challenging ones leave a mark on you. But we really get to be involved with them. We start thinking of the building as this living, breathing creature that you really wanna take care of and do justice for.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:09:50]:
Yeah. So, it it Brenda we’re basically, we don’t own the building. We are simply looking after it for a for a period, a chapter of its life before we then pass it on to the next people for the its next job.

Brenda Maddox [00:10:03]:
Exactly. It’s a little like Kahu, which is really a Hawaiian term for dogs and cats, and it means we’re their guardians. We don’t own them. We are their guardians and caretakers. So we can we can do that for buildings as well.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:20]:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s lovely. I love that. So just imagine, I don’t know. My my lottery tickets come up or a long lost great uncle has sadly passed away and left me his entire fortune. And I’m gonna invest it in, I’m gonna invest it in a nice 40 room 40 room hotel, because I quite fancy having a nice hotel. It’d be a lovely thing to run.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:46]:
Haven’t a clue. Never done any redevelopment. Never run a hotel. Brenda, talk me through it. What what’s what are the kind of things that you would you would help me do? How would how would we make this happen?

Brenda Maddox [00:10:58]:
Oh, that’s the fun part, the found money. We’re very sorry for the old uncle, but he was 250 years old, lived an excellent life. So He did. So it’s okay. Well, hearkening back to our same theme, we wanna hear your story. I wanna hear your story. Are you interested in building a hotel? Do you want just an investment, something that you put a couple of million pounds into and then step away and just cash a check every quarter, which is always good? Or do you have a vision? Have you found the building? Is there a building in a town nearby that we’re going to find for you? Do you want to offer things like horseback riding or spa services? We if you haven’t found the place, we’ll help you research what we’re really looking for. And once we get a sense of exactly what Keith wants in his property, we can go forward with, hey, look at this as a fairly new building, but we can make it something really special.

Brenda Maddox [00:12:10]:
Or there’s a much older building. We can help it along to make it special, but there’s definitely time and money constraints. Or do we wanna put up something brand new? Your vision is brand and new, and nothing has ever been created that way. So we’ll find the land for you, help you make sure that somebody local has okayed building on that, your use? Over here, they call it sort of location and use. Is that that location located used for that particular thing? And your environmental impacts are huge no matter where in the world you are. And then we’ll help you focus on what’s the most important thing to you. Is it incredible, beautiful guest rooms and limited public space amenities? Or do you want the community to come in and share this experience and we want to have a grand ballroom and some fabulous restaurant? And then we’ll also have nice guest rooms, but maybe they aren’t splendid. That’s how we’ll play with your budget a little as well.

Brenda Maddox [00:13:25]:
You come in with a certain budget. This is all I can spend, and we will work with that from acquisition to successful turnover of the keys.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:37]:
Okay. So it’s the the full the full works. And there’s a lot more to it than just, oh, I wanna run a hotel.

Brenda Maddox [00:13:46]:
Well, yeah. The and the running of the hotel is quite, a feat in and of itself. So it really can be a matter of the heart. Do you really want to spend most of your days counting towels and making sure that everybody has the shampoo they need and things like that? Or are you taking the rest of the pot of money and you’re gonna go to Tahiti for a month or so? And you just wanna come back for the grand opening, and then you’ll have somebody a whole team running it, and maybe you pop in on occasion.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:23]:
Gotcha. Yeah. One one thing I noticed that was quite interesting is as you were talking through all the different options, particularly when you were looking at how we’re gonna set the thing up, what type of hotel you want. And, what I found really interesting was you’re talking about lots of the different options, and it was interesting the way some of them I felt. Oh, I’d love that. And others like, yeah. So it’s it’s I I guess and a lot of them are ones which, oh, Mary, obviously, I’m not thinking of setting up a hotel, but there there there are lots of them are things which I’d never never even considered would be something to to think about. And yet it was interesting not to hear my reaction, and I imagine listeners as they were listening or or watching, they’ll have each some bitch that they’ve gone, yeah, maybe.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:06]:
Another bitch, they’re gone, oh, you know what? That would be lovely. So it does show the the importance of of really figuring out what exactly is it that you want from the stand up before you do anything.

Brenda Maddox [00:15:18]:
It’s so it’s so important. And because I’m so budget driven having come from not only commercial estimating, but, FF and E purchasing, I really wanna work within your money constraints. Yeah. I hate to promise something like, let’s make a pool that looks exactly like a Greek island, and it turns out you’re in Northern Scotland. And to use that pool is going to be four days out of the year unless we do something geothermal warming, which isn’t impossible, but it’s going to cost a lot.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:56]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Brenda Maddox [00:15:57]:
So maybe you would have a fantastic Grecian spa beach location, but everyone has to sleep in a tent.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:16:07]:
Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. You say one one of the things that you work on, is actually, fitting out the rooms, with within your hotels. I know off often, you get chain hotels where it’s pretty obvious they buy the whole lot. It’s a job lot that it’s always the same. It’s Right. Which room you wake up in which of the hotels, it it looks exactly the same.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:16:37]:
You could be anywhere. Others go the it’s a total opposite where every single room in that hotel looks completely different and has their own themes. Now how do you how would you go about creating themes for it? And is it easier to have all the rooms the same or every room different, or is there, like, a happy medium?

Brenda Maddox [00:16:58]:
Well, it’s interesting that you bring that up. Yeah. There’s if you go with some of the big flags, Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, they have a formula.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:17:12]:
Okay.

Brenda Maddox [00:17:12]:
And that makes it much easier, not only for corporate. You can buy those as a franchise, almost like a fast food restaurant. And what they do is you buy the ability to have that flag, which is what they call your big signage. And that comes with a lot of perks. It comes with things like built in reservation systems and knowing how to run the hotel. So it takes some of the tricks out of it. And all of the rooms, the way they do it is, the formula, when you wake up somewhere in one of these particular brands, you’re supposed to know that’s the brand you’re in. But in the public space, if you’re a franchise, you’re allowed to personalise the lobby and some of the public space areas so that you get a flavour for your local your local spot.

Brenda Maddox [00:18:06]:
When you walk in, you’re supposed to know, oh, I’m in Germany. Oh, I’m in the American Southwest. Things like that. You understand that. But then when you go to the rooms, what you’re expecting is there. That can be much easier because we already have a set of here’s what you’re allowed to buy, and here are the three or four vendors that you’re allowed to purchase from. Okay. Set and done.

Brenda Maddox [00:18:32]:
Budget. It’s much more fun to work on one of the projects that has decided to customise every single spot. The downside is you’re not getting a package deal from furniture vendors and fabric vendors and things like that because you’re buying usually one offs, one or two of something. So your budget is gonna go up. And that’s where fantastic designers come in. Give that to them. That’s their job. It’s their job to figure out your vision and put that together in a way that makes sense.

Brenda Maddox [00:19:17]:
And that’s where our team comes in as well.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:19:20]:
You

Brenda Maddox [00:19:20]:
don’t want me to design your hotel. Everything would look like my living room, which is probably not good.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:19:30]:
Oh, okay. Yeah. So, yeah, it’s it’s again, it’s that’s quite, interesting the way you, describe with, with the, the major brands, particularly if if you get the franchise for it. I like the way you basically, you go from outside in whatever city you’re in. You know where you are. You go into the lobby. It’s Brenda like a halfway house. It’s a bit branded up, but it also has a theme of the the the place that you’re in.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:19:55]:
And then you go into the room, and it’s like, okay. This is a Hilton or whatever. Yeah. And I guess almost reverse when you wake up. Oh, yeah. I’m in a Hilton. And then you go into the lobby. You’ll get your breakfast wherever you start to get a bit of a theme for the place that you’re in, and then you go outside, and you’re in the actual place.

Brenda Maddox [00:20:11]:
It’s almost Exactly. Blending

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:13]:
from both of

Brenda Maddox [00:20:15]:
it. Yeah. And that and that’s what they and that’s what they sell. So that it was a great concept, and most of them have accepted that and expanded on it.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. So you you’ve worked with, on some pretty major projects in big hotels and some big, big, countries, big cities. That’s the word. I imagine even with the the most meticulously planned thing, I imagine stuff goes wrong or unexpected things crop up.

Brenda Maddox [00:20:52]:
Oh, dear.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:52]:
What’s a what any particular ones that that come to mind that that you can share with us?

Brenda Maddox [00:20:58]:
Well, you know, at at one of the hotels in DC where we were under constraints from the city and we had to move things around, Sometimes we did things that weren’t exactly signed off on and just held our breath and didn’t get caught. But there was one building down here in Florida where the inspector was coming, and all of the sinks hadn’t been installed yet. And this particular inspector insisted on three rooms per floor, three bathrooms per floor. So what we did was we took three sinks, put them in, but we didn’t actually install them. We just hooked them up so that the inspector could go in and turn the water on. And as he went to the next room, one of the maintenance guys took that sink out, ran up the stairs, and started putting them in other floors so that we could get our use and occupancy so that they could actually bring in the furniture. And then we went through and installed all of the sinks and tightened them down.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:22:12]:
Almost sounds like something out of a Laurel and Hardy film.

Brenda Maddox [00:22:14]:
You know? It was it was very faulty towers. I Oh, goodness me. Goodness. You there are there are these little tricks that

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:22:30]:
Mhmm.

Brenda Maddox [00:22:31]:
I love working with people who are, forgive me, kind of my age and older that know these things, that know that if you put some a certain number of towels underneath the carpet that’s laid down, it feels the same as padding. It will get you through inspection as long as you can put the padding back down. Yeah. Again, all these bad ideas, but sometimes you just have to get back on your timeline. Yeah. Goodness. I know there there’s been times where, designers or furniture manufacturers haven’t verified if there’s an elevator on-site. Or if there is an elevator, is it big enough to take this furniture that’s been ordered that’s come in one piece? And sometimes it has to be hooked up four or five flights of stairs.

Brenda Maddox [00:23:28]:
And sometimes that just isn’t possible either, and we’ve had to get a crane, take out the windows, and crane the furniture in and then reinstall the windows.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:40]:
Goodness. Wow. Yeah. It’s easy to overlook those sorts of things, I suppose, sometimes, isn’t it? But

Brenda Maddox [00:23:47]:
People get very excited, and Yeah. People get, you know, really kinda intimately involved in their projects. And as opposed to looking at it from the point of view is is this practical, we go with is it beautiful. And once the owners are sold on the beauty of it, it’s quite difficult and painful to be the person that comes and says, you can’t have, ottoman shaped like a unicorn on a cloud. It just isn’t possible. You have to have a pony in a stable.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:24:25]:
Yeah. You know,

Brenda Maddox [00:24:25]:
that’s where the that’s where the talking comes in and the calm voice and steadying it. We’ll get you something that’s similar, but we can’t have this.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:24:39]:
Yeah. And I guess a lot of, a lot of tact must and, diplomacy must come in some sometimes with those where you have to gently let them down and help them understand.

Brenda Maddox [00:24:52]:
Do. And you have to understand that people people have their own vision, even if at the beginning they didn’t think they did.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:25:02]:
Yeah.

Brenda Maddox [00:25:02]:
But they get very excited about this project, and it becomes all consuming. And you think something’s going to happen, and it doesn’t. Everyone is disappointed. So communication from the very beginning of the project and consistently and sometimes constantly is always good. And just being willing to listen to the venting. Sometimes people just wanna vent, and they don’t mean anything personal. They just need someone to listen.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:25:38]:
Yeah. That’s true. Some sometimes you do just need to vent to get it all out, and then you can move forward. But you can’t move forward until you’ve got rid of all that that that that. Of course. Of course.

Brenda Maddox [00:25:50]:
And that’s what we’re here for.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:25:52]:
Yeah.

Brenda Maddox [00:25:53]:
A little job site psychology never hurt.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:25:56]:
Very true. Very true. So, Brenda, for people who wanna find out a bit more, maybe you can get in touch. What’s the best way for them to do that?

Brenda Maddox [00:26:05]:
The easiest way is to email me at brenda@pineapple-strategies.com. It’s just the just the fastest. We’re all on our emails constantly, aren’t we?

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:26:18]:
Oh, well, yes. Awesome. So drop an email to brenda@pineapple-strategies.com. Be a Exactly. That’s us. Sure. I mean, obviously, Brenda’s also got the website and, on LinkedIn and so on. All their links to those are in the show notes.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:26:39]:
So, pop along to the show notes, the usual place, KeithBlakemoreNoble.com/show, and look for the one with Brenda Maddox. You’ll find all the details there, or just email her email her directly. Brenda, as always, time is marching against us. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your your very busy, very busy day to, to share with us a little bit of an insight into what exactly it is you do, and there’s certainly a lot more to it than than one might initially think.

Brenda Maddox [00:27:10]:
Well, that’s my pleasure. I I so appreciate you having me on. This has been great fun.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:27:15]:
Aw, thank you so much. And thank you, dear viewer, dear listener. Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed it. Hopefully, hey. You never know. Somebody out there might have suddenly come into a few million, and they go, you know what? I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna have a hotel. Sometimes. But even if that’s not you, hopefully, it’s giving you at least a bit of an appreciation perhaps next time you’re staying in a hotel.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:27:36]:
You can have a bit of an appreciation for all that must have gone on in order to, for it to be there for you. Exactly. If you enjoyed this episode, do give us a like, a comment, a share, and subscribe. Give us a review on your favourite platform. It all helps to spread the word. We’ll catch you in another episode very soon. Remember, all the episodes are on all your favorite podcast platforms. And in the meantime, I will leave you with Brenda’s favourite quote.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:28:04]:
It’s a beautiful quote. It’s from Mrs Maisel on Amazon Prime, and the quote is, it’s only cute to be a coward in the wizard of Oz. You’ve been listening to the Keith Blakemore Noble Radio Show. To find out more, visit KeithBlakemoreNoble.com.