Surviving Crises and Uncovering Golden Opportunities with Dave Parmley of Chesterfield Hotels Inc.

Hospitality is often one of the first industries to feel the sting of global events like the COVID-19 pandemic or, looking further back, the 2008 recession. For a business like a hotel to survive the highs and lows, it must rely on a combination of ingenuity, forward-thinking and just a touch of audacity. 

For the final episode of season 2 of But Who’s Counting?, host Dave Hartley met with Dave Parmley, founder and owner of Chesterfield Hotels, Inc., to discuss the lessons the hotel mogul learned over his long career in hospitality. Parmley details how he deviated from convention to choose his locations, what he’s done to retain talent post-COVID and the guiding philosophy that enables him to remain proactive, even under unexpected and unforeseeable circumstances. The discussion also covered:

• The story behind Parmley’s purchase of the former Campus Inn in Columbia, Missouri 
• Why he made the move from real estate to the hospitality industry
• How the impacts of the 2008 recession and the COVID-19 pandemic compare and their differing effects on the industry 
• Why it’s so important for business owners to establish a solid banking relationship

“Try to find a location that has high barriers to entry. It’s probably going to cost you more, it’s going to take you longer, but at least at the end, you’ve got something that somebody else can’t duplicate easily.” – Dave Parmley

This episode marks the end of season 2 of But Who’s Counting? The podcast will return in 2024 for season 3 with more episodes, guests and valuable insights.

Resources to Count On
Want more insight into the conversation? Check out these resources to learn more:

·      Check out The Broadway in downtown Columbia

·      Learn more about Chesterfield Hotels, Inc. and its properties

·      Connect with Chesterfield Hotels, Inc. on Facebook

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Transcript

Narrator: 0:00

You're focused on making important decisions to take your company to the next level. But who's counting? We are Counting on trends and insight to move your business forward operationally and strategically, focus on helping executives achieve their highest potential. But who's counting is a podcast shedding light on and breaking down critical issues and opportunities for businesses Brought to you by Anders, cpas and advisors.

Dave Hartley: 0:29

On this episode of but who's Counting, I sit down with Dave Parmley, president and owner of Chesterfield Hotels Inc. Dave shares how he got his start in the hospitality industry, the early decisions that gave his businesses an edge over the competition, and the philosophy that helped his businesses survive both the 2008 recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. Enjoy the episode. So when I think about industries that were impacted by the pandemic, hospitality certainly comes to the top of the list. So our guests today live that firsthand. So, Dave Parmley, welcome to the show. How are you today? Great, Thank you, Dave. So Dave Parmley is the owner and president of Chesterfield Hotels Inc. Dave has a portfolio of hotels, and so we'll talk about that. But before we get into what you're working on today, what made you interested in hospitality? Has that always been kind of a thing that you were naturally drawn to?

Dave Parmley: 1:24

Yeah, so I mean my first job. I grew up in Warnsburg, Missouri. My first job on my 13th was a roller-skating car hop at Sonic Drive-In, I think 65 cents an hour.

Dave Hartley: 1:36

So you actually did the roller skates. Oh yeah, I'm familiar with Sonic and I remember back in the day that you still had the roller skating you actually did the roller skating.

Dave Parmley: 1:44

Oh yeah, it was optional, but it helped tips a little bit, I guess. So it was good. Yeah, entertainment value as well, yeah, so I did that through high school and then the system manager when I was like 16 or 17. And then from there I got a job down to the lick of the Ozarks OC to be each and worked as a waiter at the OC House Resort all through college and saved up money every summer. Worked out well, so I kind of got to give me the bug to be in resorts and hospitality.

Dave Hartley: 2:07

Okay, so that got you, I guess when you were and I talk about this a lot with my kids some of the jobs that you get when you're younger are really foundational for what you learn. So I guess in those roles did you get exposed, like to hotel operations and kind of how that works, or what did you see as well?

Dave Parmley: 2:24

Yeah, somewhat, I was mostly doing beverage, but I tell my kids the same thing. And then in high school and college and complaining about the jobs the jobs you're doing today, those define that what you don't want to do the rest of your life.

Dave Hartley: 2:36

Yeah, absolutely. And because every experience can be a learning experience, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but you've got to learn and take away something for everything. So did you work in the industry for a while before you decided to actually start doing your own developments and building your own hotels?

Dave Parmley: 2:51

So I was working at the lake. When I graduated I got a job back at the same resort I worked at. It was 1983, right Then there was recession going on, unemployment's pretty high. But I got a job as food and beverage director at the same resort. Did that for about a year and then Don Breckenridge took over management so I worked for him and he transferred me to Columbia, to the campus in hotel Columbia, right by the football stadium. So I moved there and lived there. I was 25 years old. I lived there when I was 48, daily maid service, free food and beverage, college, town, living life around me.

Dave Hartley: 3:26

So when you're in your 20s, that sounds like the perfect, the absolute perfect setup.

Dave Parmley: 3:30

Yeah, it's pretty good, yeah, so I did that probably a year and a half, two years. And then Breckenridge transferred me at the St Louis to manage a couple of hotels, the Daniel and Clayton, vermont and South, and then it was a callback King's Inn at the airport. I had the glass elevators out. So I did that, breckenridge, probably seven, eight years.

Dave Hartley: 3:50

So how was the transition from food and beverage, where you had responsibility to that, to then having responsibility for the whole operation?

Dave Parmley: 3:57

Yeah, you know it was. You know I went from food and beverage director sales, that's kind of back in the house type thing, so I kind of picked that part up but it wasn't terrible. I mean it's pretty good. A lot of people underneath you. All these were full service hotels, so you got more staff to help you out with some of those other areas.

Dave Hartley: 4:13

So how complex is it to run a hotel with full service food and beverage versus limited? And then I guess from there we'll transition into kind of your choices of the types of hotels that you're running now.

Dave Parmley: 4:26

Right? Well, it's a lot more staffing involved, and I half heartedly joke and say that probably 90% of your headaches, and maybe, if you're lucky, 10% of your profit, comes from food and beverage. So it's a lot of work. That kind of leads to where I started out on my own.

Dave Hartley: 4:43

You started young. You got exposed to the business. Then it sounds like you had the opportunity to manage a couple of different hotels. At some point you made a decision hey, I think I can do this and I can own my own property, I guess. Help us understand. How did you come to that decision, Because not everybody's made out to be an entrepreneur, I guess. When you started out, how did you think that was the right thing for you?

Dave Parmley: 5:05

Yeah, I'm trying to think back to the self-conscious path I took. Obviously, I was running hotels. I do know that I, when I got married, it was when the SE the savings loan crisis hit in the up. Whatever company was, sipc took over all those assets and found a deal down in Rolla, missouri, where you had to buy 150 rearman holiday in that, just had gotten a $3 million loan on it and they agreed to sell for me for $600,000. So I wrote a contract on it and I was going to plan on renovating it and move down there. It took me 10 months. I never could get the contract closed because they were so one handed and no other one was doing. That's when they were like down in Dallas and stuff. They were padlocking the wrong office buildings. That's how they were. Then they finally set up some federal group to go with that, they started to sort out the mess. And what year was that? Roughly, oh, that'd been late 80s, early 90s. Let me see, that's, I guess, that point I will be.

Dave Parmley: 5:57

Back up in college I waited tables. By the time I graduated I'd already bought two rental houses and then I was 21, 20. I probably had 13, 14 different rental units. So I've been buying real estate. I was back then. It was all these books about how to buy real estate and no money down. I was too enough to believe it. So when I did it, so anyway. So that kind of got me the entrepreneurial bug, I guess, to start with, okay, certainly, and as you can see, it's a small version to that. But then when I finally did build my first hotel, I just basically sold all my little pieces and put on my ex-one basket.

Dave Hartley: 6:31

So we're visiting today with Dave Parmley, who's the owner and president of Chesterfield Hotels Inc. So, based on the name of the company, sounds like your first property was in Chesterfield, missouri. Is that correct? That's correct, okay. And so you? You basically had some real estate holdings that you had and you got rid of those, took all those proceeds and then decided to make the leap to build a hotel, which I you'd never done before. Had you ever been, you ever had experience with that before?

Dave Parmley: 6:59

No, it was quite the learning curve. So in between there's when I told you to stop trying to buy that hotel at Rala. Then when I and that didn't work out, I'd had my real estate license over 18, so I just went to work for so I'm real estate and I got license with remax and I did very well. Remax realty it's kind of a newer type thing where you get 100% of your commissions, you're paying for your office fees. So did very well there. So I did that probably for six years.

Dave Parmley: 7:25

And then a good friend of mine who owns mortgage resources used to own mortgage resources. We both commented to each other once we said he was a very high producer in loans. He said you know, both of us are very transactional based or totally transactional based. We step off the curve and get by at Bustomar and our family's got nothing. So that was kind of the impetus for building the first hotel. If they're going to lease we'd have something that could carry on before gone. Kind of morbid at that point in age. We're not going to buy it but anyway. So that was the kind of concept.

Dave Parmley: 7:54

So we actually ended up having three partners go in on my first hotel, Swingley Ridge, here in Chesterfield, right across your offices here. This was 1997. Okay at the time, so I lived out here, but the time there's only one hotel in Chesterfield, it was the double trade hotel, the full service, and we were the first limited service hotel. I'm sorry there was residence in also over here, but really old residence in. Other than that there was nothing. So we opened limited service Hampton Inn and it just went gangbusters. Okay yeah.

Dave Hartley: 8:26

Cause Chesterfield. For those of you not familiar with the St Louis area, chesterfield has really grown dramatically over the last 25 years.

Dave Parmley: 8:33

So it did very well and we got our original investment back in my year and a half. Very good. So from there we just kept moving on and doubling down on the next hotel and the next hotel. So talk to us about that.

Dave Hartley: 8:43

I guess, did you? Have you had the same partners that you did on that first hotel? Have you used you know, have you been with those same partners on a lot of your developments? Or do you add, based on the, on the you know the individual circumstances of the deal?

Dave Parmley: 8:57

So the first hotel had me and Bob Obermeyer and Bob Jackson, who's a remax broker, so there's three of us. And then we also did the one in Chesterfield Valley where three years later, we built the Hampton and Sweets at Lewins Crossing. It was a bigger version of what we already had, 120 rooms versus 91 rooms. But this was still 2000, year 2000s, six, seven years after the flood it hit the valley really bad back in 93. So people thought we were crazy built down there in the valley in Gumbo.

Dave Parmley: 9:24

But at the same time I was in their planning department. It's a city, it's my. Michael Stainberg was back there too, planning the world's longest strip center down in Chesterfield Valley, two miles long. I said, well, you know, they're smart enough to be doing it. I guess I shouldn't worry about it flooding. And of course we bought flood insurance and the difference being really the land cost to buy something up in the high ground here around Chesterfield Mall Back in those 20, 25 dollars a square foot for land if you could find it sack, zoning most of it Down there. We bought our lot for eight dollars a square foot, so you can play for a lot of flood insurance for 300 years probably and still not be 25 dollars a square foot. Yeah, that's quite a delta in terms of the cost for that.

Dave Hartley: 10:05

So what do you love about the hospitality industry? I guess you know it sounds like you've got a. You know you started out doing more customer service, more customer facing type things and then you move to more of the development side. I guess, what do you, what do you love about? You know either parts of that and what. What really keeps you going in the in the development side? What keeps you going in the in the industry?

Dave Parmley: 10:26

It's. I do like the front end a lot more and then I'm going to realize that the new development, the creative side, finding the right location and what brands should go there and how the numbers all work out. I'm fortunate to have a lot of good staff, but my vice president been with me for 20 plus years and 99% times he'd make the same decision I would make with 1% time he called me. So he kind of takes care of the day to day of existing hotels and I'm kind of left there and find new opportunities Okay.

Dave Hartley: 10:54

So how do you? How do you do that? How do you identify? I'm always fascinated with that. When I see somebody building something somewhere, I'm always fascinated. Well, how did they come to that decision? And then also it's you know, when you make that decision you've got to get others to see that same vision and agree that that's a good idea. So walk us through that process for you, kind of how does that work for you? How do you? How do you make those decisions? How do you spot the new opportunities?

Dave Parmley: 11:18

Well, like I said, in Chesterfield, I actually lived here and I could look around and see there's no hotels in Chesterfield. I could see the growth here and there was no limited service hotels. So obviously, location, location, location. I'm always amazed when you drive on the highway to interchange them in a kingdom city or something, where you got four corners on the highway exit and there's a hotel on all four corners. Well, what's the advantage there? All you're doing is just competing for price between the four of you.

Dave Parmley: 11:42

So try to find a location. As high bearers entry, which Chesterfield did then probably still does not. As much maybe, but one lamb is expensive. The city is very picky about the buildings that look like, with color standards and stuff like that. So the two in Chesterfield are very well. Since then there's been quite a few new hotels built in Chesterfield but on the same hand Chesterfield is still growing. I mean, it's amazing that kind of stuff in some way. I believe probably in all of St Louis County the most undeveloped land available is still in Chesterfield Valley for future build out. So you can already open the paper every two weeks and you see some new announcement of sports facility or that recording studio thing that built them down here, which is massive. So that's kind of how we pick it. Find a location that's high barriers to entry. You're probably gonna cost you more, it's gonna take you longer, but at least at the end you got something Somebody else can't duplicate easily.

Dave Hartley: 12:37

Yeah, so we're visiting today with Dave Parmley, who's the owner and president of Chesterfield Hotels Inc. So, dave, thanks for sharing your story with us today. So one of the things I do know you've mentioned a lot sort of the Chesterfield area of St Louis, but I know you've also got property in Columbia, which is where the University of Missouri is. So the Broadway is your hotel there and it's not really like any other hotel in the area. So describe to us kind of, how did you come in to build the Broadway? Some of our listeners may be familiar with it. How did you decide that Columbia was a market you wanted to be in and then was the Broadway a development? Just, was there something there that you tore down? Was it something that you built from scratch? Tell us about the Broadway.

Dave Parmley: 13:24

Sure, to get to the Broadway kind of got to work backwards here. So prior to that I built the Hampton Suites Hotel and stayed in Grille right next to the Zoo football stadium, in basketball arena, and that site was actually the site of the campus in that I was director sales at and lived at back in the 80s.

Dave Parmley: 13:44

So I just told the story. This weekend I was down in Columbia for a football game but I told somebody just about well, I'm talking about Zoo football and how this one little thing could have changed the game one little thumb ball recovery or whatever. So my son had a little league baseball tournament in Columbia 15 years ago, maybe longer than that, and they ran a pizza party one night. I said, eh, I must get that. I'm gonna drive around for a whole time's sake. And I drove by the campus in, took a look at it. Man, this thing wasn't great shakes. When I was here it was anything better. So it took me two weeks to track down the guy that owned it. Turned out to be four miles away in town and country and I called him in the morning. He says oh, you're the first person in comedy. I said what do you mean? He goes I just put for sale sign on the campus in this morning. I said I'll buy it. They're not making any more land inside the University of Missouri, literally surrounded by the.

Dave Parmley: 14:29

University of Missouri, 2000 feet from the football stadium. So I bought it, and then we go around.

Dave Hartley: 14:35

But just so we're clear, you said the hotel was bad two decades before the game. And so when you got it, did you know were you gonna try to operate it for a while?

Dave Parmley: 14:45

Oh no, it was carried out.

Dave Hartley: 14:46

Okay, you knew right from the get and go, no doubt.

Dave Parmley: 14:48

Yeah, I can tell you some horror stories about it. Yeah, digress there. So, yeah, tore that down, built the Hampton Suites there and it's been very well from there. Well, actually, back in the up, we opened August 2008, which I like to tell people it was probably the worst time in history to open any business. It's also hotel on one month before Leeman Brothers goes down. So but we did okay because it's location, location, location and I knew I knew from working there 20 years before whatever that there's a lot of demand there and we need a lot of meeting space too. Most Hampton's don't have a lot of meeting space because they're limited to service, but I knew there'd be a demand there, so, but more probably had more meeting space probably than 95% of the Hampton's in the country and it's worked out well. But, yeah, the location is great.

Dave Parmley: 15:32

Matter of fact, I got a call from the, from the secretary of the chancellor's office, saying it's our hotel is called Hampton and in Suites Columbia, at the university, it's our official name. She said that's about time Chase Daniels came on the scene and his football started doing great. So she calls and said the chancellor wanted me to call you. It says name your hotel. It makes it sound like you're associated with the university. He'd like for you to change your name. I said really Well, I'm sorry, I don't know if they're all letterhead printed business cards. He helped me. Legal approved it. I said I don't know, I guess we could change it to Hampton Suites surrounded by the university or Hampton Suites and I went inside the university See if he likes those better. She got real quiet. She just leave it the way he got it.

Dave Hartley: 16:15

Anyway, so that's the way it is to this day.

Dave Parmley: 16:17

Yep, exactly. So it's obviously a great location. And I even had a reporter that called me and said you know you open this new hotel. All the other hotels are out on the highway. Aren't you worried about cool Not gonna find? She said not really, cause, I mean, most people come in town or a lot of them are coming here because of the university business. They appreciate the convenience for a location. So I said it's fine if you want to stay at the funny hotels out in the highway, if you want to, if you don't mind listening to somebody as you go by on that long and eat it out backstage house. Well, I hadn't dealt with journalists most before that. No, no, they print the paper and they're quoted verbatim. My wife's like you, dummy. So I didn't know they were gonna take me serious Anyway. So yeah. So I went back and tore that down and it did very well, even despite the fact that we had the meltdown financially at that point.

Dave Hartley: 17:12

So how long does it take you to build a hotel, when I think about all the way from permitting, all the way through to actually opening the doors, kind of. How long does that take? Obviously depends on the complexity of the project. But what's your general rule of thumb with that?

Dave Parmley: 17:24

Opening soon. So the first hotel I forgot we supposed to open in February 97, and I painted March one and I painted April on it and we opened for, yeah, until probably 20 years.

Narrator: 17:36

Now we did open 97 still.

Dave Parmley: 17:38

So now my joke is, I just put on that opening soon. It varies. I mean the construction time should be you put a shovel on the ground to open 14, 15, 16 months. I had Broadway by probably 24 months. The contractor was so far behind. But then before that you get all the pre-time too of planning, zoning, rezoning, you get the financing. So three years probably. We'll be safe from start to finish. Okay, three years.

Dave Hartley: 18:05

Now are you I think I read that you're doing you're actually adding to that hotel in Columbia.

Dave Parmley: 18:11

Yeah, yeah. So trying to back to the story of the Broadway. So I told somebody so if my son hadn't had the Little League Baseball tournament down there, I wouldn't have been able to build the camp down in Sweets, which means I wouldn't have built the Broadway either there. Once I got the camp in Sweets opened, we had every celebrity coming to town staying with us. I'm thinking, yeah, it's a brand new hotel, it's nice enough, but it's just a limited service hampton in it. So I've been hiring I mean so Obama stayed with us four days for the election. Any entertainment person or sports star coming through would stay with us.

Dave Parmley: 18:43

So at that time there was no hotels in downtown columbia. Oh, there was. It was called the redancy hotel, it was. It was worse than the campus in actually, uh, condition-wise, and it was the old tiger hotel, but it hadn't been renovated. And back to the hotel yet. So I tried buying that one too. It decided not to pursue it. So I thought, well, if we built some place, it's full service downtown, we'll be on to something. And we got such a great downtown columbia the people want to be there, walking distance to everything, all the activities and concert venues and shopping, et cetera, et cetera. So that was the impetus for that one.

Dave Parmley: 19:18

And then I was trying to find the brand and I couldn't find the right, was going to try to do a hotel indigo. And then they turned my application down. Um, because they were just expanding that brand in the us and they wanted to go into primary markets, not secondary, tertiary, just trying to get their average rate high enough to some more franchise In columbia being a second tier town. But then I went to chicago and the state of the Hotel Called the wit a double tree by hilton, is the boutique hilt double tree and there was only about 20 boutique double trees in the country.

Dave Parmley: 19:52

Really cool. I had a rooftop bar on it and why stay there? So I liked it so much that when I'm way back I called hilt and said, hey, I had to stay at the wick and I do something like that for my I'll be a project downtown. They said yeah, I probably. So I said why have to follow any color scheme plans or requirements? Color scheme a, b or c? No, you can kind of do what you want, good, good because that's normally what you only.

Dave Parmley: 20:14

Yeah, right, you got to this color tie on this color building. Yeah, I heard, I am no decision.

Dave Hartley: 20:19

So this one you could get really creative with exactly and they were.

Dave Parmley: 20:22

Yeah. So she said well, you got to do the cookie. Though I said well, I can do the cookie, because double tree is known for the chocolate chip Cookie. Check in.

Dave Hartley: 20:29

Ah yes, the the drawer that they pull out, that has all the cookies in it.

Dave Parmley: 20:33

Yes, warm cookies.

Dave Parmley: 20:34

Yeah, I love that drill. Yeah, exactly so, uh, so I knew. I knew when you look at Columbia, you look down, we're on Broadway, downtown Columbia. Well, you look down Broadway, 90% of the businesses are mom and pops. You don't see a lot of national franchises. So I really didn't want to build a cookie cutter double tree like you'd see at the airport, and so I was very excited about the boutique branding on it. So we did that and picked everything out from scratch and we actually got the award the first year we opened for worldwide business double tree hotel. That was nice.

Dave Hartley: 21:09

And so the so you're. So the addition that you're doing now, I guess, are you adding services, are you adding rooms? What are you adding?

Dave Parmley: 21:15

Yeah, both actually. So the current first hotel had 114 rooms, rooftop bar, which has been our signature item, very popular and then meeting space wise, we only had 3,500 square feet, which I think our largest room maybe seats 130 for a banquet. Well, it means you really can't even do a decent wedding. Most weddings are figuring around 200 people, so we just didn't have the space. We're working on a half acre land. We built this thing. So the new tower is going to have additional 80 rooms, but, more importantly, it'll have the ground floor meeting room for about 150 and then a small boardroom, some sales offices, etc. But on the rooftop we're putting a ballroom with panoramic view downtown on the eighth floor that will seat 330, banquet style plus pre functionaries. We're almost going to triple our meeting space we have now and bring hopefully more people downtown to Columbia for meetings, conferences. So is there anything?

Dave Hartley: 22:08

like that today.

Dave Parmley: 22:11

Downtown? No, not really. There's the old Holiday and Executives Center on the highway. But that property now it's Mark Rita, bill I think, but it's tired. It was built back in the 70s and kind of functionally obsolete. I guess you might say I'm getting there. So we think downtown is really where people want to be.

Dave Hartley: 22:29

So what is it? I guess what are the KPIs that, when you think about whether you're successful or not, other than you know what's in the bank, at the end of the day, I guess what are the KPIs that you're going to be able to do? What are the KPIs that you focus on? Is it more about the people? Is it more about pure occupancy, or what are the things that you really focus on to run the business?

Dave Parmley: 22:46

Yeah, it's people, business all around. You know there's a saying in the business that service will always trump product. That's true. Luckily the Broadway we've got both, so that makes even better. Matter of fact, when we built the Hampton and Sweetson Columbia we became the market leader all around, probably average rate 20% higher than other hotels. So it's kind of a gene-embezzled position because then all the hotels are watching you when they go to set their rates. So, for example, we see a slow week each Easter weekend. We slow, if we lower our rates, all the other hotels into the same thing proportionally. All that means is everybody coming to Columbia just got a discount.

Dave Hartley: 23:24

So how do you? How do you know that? I always wonder. That is like when you bring your rates down. How do competitors know what your rates are?

Dave Parmley: 23:31

Calling around. It's pretty and you can do star reports there. It's opaque, you can't tell which one, but you've got to set hotels. But you just go online, I mean, every night. You can check every five minutes if you want to see what our rates are. So, and they do change from being an occupancy like airlines. So, yeah, they're pretty, pretty tight knit. People know what's going on. So, yeah, once in service is the main thing there. I'm very fortunate to have a great staff. All my hotels Broadway hotel, I think probably two thirds of my managers have been with me since day one, which will ever 10th anniversary next March.

Dave Hartley: 24:04

Wow so, and I imagine in the hospitality industry that's quite an accomplishment because it seems like people move quite a bit within the industry.

Dave Parmley: 24:11

Yeah, turnovers very painful and hard, but having managers are dedicated there. You got hospitality school in Mizzou, so we get a lot of the graduates from there, a lot of the interns and stuff like that, even students is working in the restaurant who are going to hospitality school. We have probably 115 employees to Broadway now probably two thirds of my part time which makes it hard to keep track of them. I feel bad. I used to know everybody's name, first name basis, yeah. So what's your properties?

Dave Hartley: 24:34

How do you create an environment where you can attract the employees that you really want that are going to stick with you for the next decade.

Dave Parmley: 24:47

You know, I don't know so much about attracting as retaining them, and I think, well, I don't know what the real recipe is, other than just treat people fair, be honest with them, pulling punches and be genuine, and I think the employees have worked for enough bad employers to tell the difference that you have to tell them what the difference is.

Dave Hartley: 25:11

So when you walk into a hotel, you get significant clues about how that property is being operated, just based on the customer service that you receive.

Dave Parmley: 25:21

Exactly, and once again I'm not a good judge because they're going to know who I am. Actually, I go make a point to introduce somebody new people to me. I don't know them already. Just let them catch them off guard. I'm not trying to get you on that thing.

Dave Hartley: 25:39

Got it. So what are the when you think about, like the business issues that you're wrestling with today? What are the things that you're you know? You've obviously got this development going on, the new tower at the Broadway. I guess what else are you you know? What else are the issues that you're wrestling?

Dave Parmley: 25:53

with Post COVID. Well, labor was obviously huge during COVID and our industry got hit very hard, as you all know. I tell people you look back at the previous recessions. There was one before this, whatever it was in 2008-2009. So in that one I call that recession there kind of an equal opportunity but, kicker, everybody got equally smacked down.

Dave Parmley: 26:18

This time around with COVID it was highly selected. So you have airlines, restaurants, hotels, taxi, gifts, delights and other businesses during COVID. Some of them had their best years ever during COVID. So certainly it wasn't evenly sprinkled around this time. So labor's been a problem, although our housekeepers before COVID they were getting starting 9-9.50 an hour, which has to be as hard as I wouldn't want to do it every day. It's hard work and we appreciate that. Within six months all of our hotels were paying $14-$15 starting, which I'm fine with. As long as other hotels are doing it. Guests can pay another dollar a night for the room, kind of a win-win for everybody. So yeah, it's been hard keeping housekeeping and back of the house. Kitchen is hard to fill. Dishwasher's cooked not too much from the house in too bad. Waitress is bartenders front desk.

Dave Hartley: 27:13

So let's talk about the pandemic for a little bit. I mean and you're right, you know, I guess previous recessions kind of things slow down, but sort of what happened with the pandemic, where one day just like everything was shut off. I guess that wasn't entirely true, because I think even after, like businesses had to go home, I think hotels were still open for a while but certainly a dramatic impact. So how did you, how did you even process what was going on at that point, because your occupancy, I don't know 70-80% or something like that, and suddenly it goes to zero.

Dave Parmley: 27:45

Well, we didn't close. We didn't manage to keep our hotels. Well, four hotels we managed to keep open. The one in Steamboat, the city actually. We went out Steamboat Springs. I sold it a couple years ago but after COVID got over, but the city of Steamboat just closed down the whole city, all the hotels, for 90 days. They were worried about international tourists coming in there and everybody's sick, so they just kind of buckled down the whole mountain down. Nobody welcomed the other ones we kept open and we just started through. But yeah, you didn't know At the time my son had just graduated from Mizzou Hospitality because he wanted to get a job at the high up downtown St Louis.

Dave Parmley: 28:23

We hold Adams Mark by the arch there and he was on the management fast-track program which, that's right, decided to form. And he texted me early first week in March, said dad, we've only got one person occupancy. Not it is that bad. I said it's nine rooms, yeah, that's bad. And then they shut that hotel down and then he got furloughed like a lot of people, played Xbox all night and like unemployment, was like everybody. So I told him early on I said when you graduate, I really don't want you coming to work for me right away. I'm like for you, go out and get your job, come here on the way and then you come back in four or five years and tell me all the stuff I've been doing wrong. You kind of looked like what that mean I need my radio safe I gotta take four or five years to have.

Dave Parmley: 29:05

So anyway, when this all happened so you know I told you I didn't want you working right away. But tomorrow morning you're starting a hotel in the valley. You clean rooms all day and do night audit night. We couldn't go that position either, so it was tough. We did at the four low people temporarily during the downturn, obviously with all my managers on staff though and a good thing. Hotel everybody's in hotel business worked their way up from a maid, assistant, housekeeper to housekeeper, so they obviously know how to clean rooms etc, etc. So it was tough processing. You had really no idea catching the falling knife thing where's the bottom? You don't know how long it's gonna last. You know everybody was and didn't know what was going on.

Dave Hartley: 29:46

So so what were your conversations like with your, like with your, your banks? I assume have you had long-standing relationships with banks and kind of one of those conversations.

Dave Parmley: 29:54

Yeah, I've been with the same bank well, eagle Bank slash Enterprise Bank they merged together a couple years ago but been with them for 20 plus years. So yeah, having a having a good relationship with your bank is a long term it's very helpful. And having local banks because I know a lot of hotel financing these days is done through the Wall Street markets these conduit loans were all bundled together and packaged and there it's. You know, there's nobody to talk to, that's just a, you're just a number and there's nobody's gonna make a teeny slack on anything or waive the reserve payments for this month or something, get you over the hump or help out. So having local banks will help. Somebody can talk to and they do.

Dave Parmley: 30:32

They deferred our principal payments for six months it was interest only on the hotel's helped and then behind that we started and suspended our reserve payments for like FF&E reserves for refurbishments and such. But yeah, at the beginning we were just shoveling money in our firm this as fast as we could and hoping we'd last, and then, luckily, the programs the government came out with when they got time certainly saved our business Okay so paycheck protection program and employer retention credit and all those other things yeah, certainly costly, but businesses like yours certainly benefited and were able to stay afloat.

Dave Hartley: 31:09

So so we've been visiting today with Dave Parmley, who's the owner and president of Chesterfield Hotel's Inc. So, dave, so one of the things we always do is we wind down these conversations as we do the make-it-count segment, so we try to identify, you know, from our conversation, what's the one thing that you hope our listeners would take away from this, that they would actually act on and implement from your perspective, just based on that discussion. Or maybe it's something that we haven't talked about today, but what do you think small business owners today could take away from this conversation?

Dave Parmley: 31:41

The one I have is kind of a tongue in cheek, but my cousin used to comment to me signs, dave, your toast always lands buttered side up. And first time he means to that to me I kind of figured it's a compliment or took it as a compliment. And then every every year I see we go on float trip every year, kept bringing it up and I started saying you know, do you have a problem with my toast landing buttered side up? It kind of seems like it. No, no, no, okay, are you just curious about how it works? Yeah, kind of here, get a pencil, get a piece of paper, I'll tell you the secret To maven your buttered toast always land buttered side up, butter both sides, that's all it is. I guess the story of that would be I tried to plan for our eventualities ahead of the time, so that outcome A, b and C are all maybe not equally good, but all positive, because you never know that coast might land once in a million times, running the edge too. So butter the edges.

Dave Hartley: 32:33

Yeah, dealing with uncertainty certainly is a is a challenge, and, as an entrepreneur, yeah, if you can have three decent paths, that's probably a really good outcome. Right, exactly. So any secrets to how you make sure the toast is buttered? Just?

Dave Parmley: 32:47

buy a lot of butter and have a sharp knife. No, just this is a thought process. I'm trying to think how this yeah, like I said, this is tongue in cheek, but planning what could go here, that didn't work out what's your next fall back position? And I'm sure a lot of people run busy. You have to do this kind of naturally, but just being prepared, yeah, that's the main thing.

Dave Hartley: 33:06

It's interesting when we have a lot of these, you know a lot of these conversations, and even, just in general, when we talk with successful business people and you ask them you know, what is that secret? I think a lot of times the answer is similar to what I'm hearing from you, which is I just do what I do and it works, and yeah, and so I think that's one of the interesting challenges in looking at a lot of small business owners is, you know, they just make it successful.

Dave Parmley: 33:30

Yeah, and my brother-in-law. One time he came to visit from California and saw him at a new hotel, the Broadway, and well, we were doing. I guess it's like, dave, what's your secret success? Which kind of bothers me sometimes. You see, this younger generation always wants to know what the shortcut is to success or how'd you get there. And so I just text him back and say you know secret? I don't know, I just like what I'm doing. Number one pick something you like doing and not working hotel business. We literally, the day we open the hotel we throw the key away. So it's 24-7. I told him, I said you know, here's the secret. Just jump out of bed every morning, put both pant legs on at the same time, work 25 hours a day, 53 weeks a year. They say you know, 40 years from now, magic.

Dave Hartley: 34:16

You'll be an overnight success after 40 years. Yes, yeah, a ton of hard work and things that go on behind the scenes. So, dave, appreciate you joining us today. Thank you for sharing your insights with us and we appreciate it. Dave, thanks for having me on. Appreciate the opportunity Great, thank you. Thank you for joining the but who's Counting podcast. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing on Spotify or Apple podcasts and let us know what you think by rating and reviewing. Connect with me, dave Hartley, on LinkedIn, and keep up with more Andrew CPAs and advisors insights by following us on social media through the handles in the show notes. We'll see you next time.