Podcasts: Conversations With Entrepreneurs - Felix Laboy - E-Site Marketing

• Podcasts (1)
• Clips (21)
• Interviews/Lectures (1)
• Company Info (1)
• Speaker Bio (1)
• Themes (1)

Info Conversations With Entrepreneurs - Felix Laboy - E-Site Marketing Speakers for this podcast Felix Laboy Bio All clips for this Podcast See more clips on Hospitality Industry

Preview Conversations With Entrepreneurs - Felix Laboy - E-Site Marketing

Bookmark Go to My Bookmarked Clips Download Audio File (.mp3) Transcript Email this clip Login here to email this podcast.

Transcript

Our second Conversation took place with President, CEO and Co-founder - E-site Marketing Felix Laboy.  

Prior to establishing E-site Marketing, Mr. Laboy worked in executive level positions with The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Westin Hotels & Resorts, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, ANA Hotels and Resorts, and the Puerto Rico Convention Bureau. 

Mr. Laboy is an active Cornell alumnus, a keynote speaker, a panelist for industry events and a featured contributor the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International Marketing Review… let’s  here his thoughts on the Hospitality industry. 

FL:      Thank you very much Cathy.  Good morning… actually good afternoon.  I thought there would be three people in attendance today, so this is a big, big turnout for me.  Guiseppe, how are you?  Nice to see you.  That’s right, that’s right.  I’m all mixed up.  First of all thank you so much for including me in this conversation with entrepreneurs.  I had breakfast with Jim this morning and it sounds exciting that Hotel School is embarking on at least providing some of this information to our students and other options if you will, even if you’re not wanting to become an entrepreneur right when you graduate from school and before I get started, I think …  Laboy01_entrepreneurAnecdotesMy daughter asked me yesterday where I was going today because I always tell her… she’s 13 years old and I have a 16-year-old son and my daughter Grace said, where are you going tomorrow, daddy and I said I’m going to Cornell, where I went to school to visit, and she said, well what are you going there for and I said, well to speak on entrepreneurship and she said, what is that, is that when you give money to people. I said, no, not necessarily and I gave her a description of what an entrepreneur was and it so happened that I was reading the New York Times yesterday and the sports section, there was an article about a … I think he was 10 or 11, I’m not sure, 10 or 11 years old and he has two companies.  One is, he sells some form of baseball trading cards that they use to play online games and he also sells baseball bats that are made of bamboo.  So a little bit environmentally friendly… I don’t know if you know but bamboo grows within five years as opposed to you know, the traditional wood they use for baseball bats and he already has sold 265 bats at $65 each and so here is a 10 or 11-year-old entrepreneur with two companies and then I don’t know … those of you that read Fast Company or… see most of you are not … probably not students here but probably a lot of the students use Facebook.  How many students do we have here?  Couple … okay.  So do you guys… do you use Facebook?  Okay.  So the cover of Fast Company this month is Mark Zuckerberg who is all of 22 years old and he is the CEO of Facebook and according to this article he’s spurned Yahoo! and Viacom and told them that he’s turned down a billion dollars for his company. And in between I have … this is a magazine that I read a lot, it’s called Fortune for Small Business and in here there are probably, you know, many, many articles and stories about entrepreneurs that … probably a little bit more than the 10-year-old and probably a little bit less than the spurning a billion dollars.  So really what I’m here to say is that there are a lot of ways of being an entrepreneur, a lot of companies that … whether you’re turning down a billion dollars or just making a living but there’s a way to be an entrepreneur. OUT Before I get into more about the … my experience, let me tell you a little bit of my background because I think it’s important what I’m going to talk about today really I encourage everyone… everyone’s got a unique situation and so I’ll share my situation and it may or may not apply to you but I think that’s … that’s what it’s all about. (00:04:12) Laboy02_background1I was fortunate enough to come to Cornell and I got here because my younger brother was looking at schools and I had unfortunately gone a different route in terms of looking at schools.  I first started at the … at West Point, United States Military Academy and I realized that I didn’t like very short hair and people telling me what to do all the time.  So I was there for a short stint, then I went to the University of Maryland and I loved it there but I didn’t really feel a passion about what I was doing.  So my younger brother… I decided to take him around different schools and we stumbled across Cornell and he had mentioned something about a Hotel School and so I drove him up here and we went to visit a few other schools up in the northeast and the mid-Atlantic and I fell in love with the campus and I met Sherry Ferrell who I think some of you may or may not know and I said, wait a minute, I can go to school and I can learn about things that I really like which … and I had been working in hotels since I was about 14 years old.  That’s a different story, in terms of child labor laws. So I was enthralled with the university and I ended up actually transferring and was accepted before my brother was accepted as a freshman.  So it was exciting to come to school here.  You know, my family background, my parents have a third grade education and a fifth grade education.  So we didn’t really have anyone going to college and so going to college for me was a big deal and Cornell was a wonderful place to get that started.  When I came here my thought was that I wanted to own a restaurant, because I had worked in restaurants and I thought well that would be really fun, you get to own something and I thought that would be what I wanted to do.  Part of the program here was … and I think you may or may not still do this but it was a class where you ran a restaurant for a semester … for a class and then we also could actually run the restaurant or have the dinner or Sunday brunch in Banfi’s … I don’t know if that was… it was called Banfi’s at the time.  So a friend of mine Bryan Hale and another young lady and I ran the restaurant every Sunday for a semester. We had a fabulous time, we loved it, we were able to create the menus, hire the staff, determine profitability, etc., and after that experience I realized that I did not want to own a restaurant.  So my first tip here is that it’s always great to try something and I really wanted to do that but I realized that it wasn’t going to fit what I wanted to do with my life. OUT Laboy03_background2After leaving the Hotel School, I graduated and went to work for Four Seasons Hotels and at the time I was very fortunate back in the middle 80s, it seemed as though a lot of our classmates, you know, we had options and I think it seems like it’s like that now but it’s always you know, cyclical. So I picked the hotel company that I thought was the best where I could learn the most.  It wasn’t necessarily the most money offer that I had received and it probably wasn’t the most glamorous position that I had received in terms of my … you know, what I would be doing but it was in my opinion the best company that I could work for.  So I worked for Four Seasons for a little bit and then I got anxious and I wanted to work in sales and marketing and I had started in food and beverage and they didn’t have any position, so I left and worked for a management company in Washington, a small hotel management company which was dysfunctional, crazy, low paying, high stress, people… the management there would yell and scream and it was the most stressful job I’ve ever had but it was also the one that I learned the most, because I was able to deal with all of that and learn from it. After I left … that small company I went to work for Ritz-Carlton Hotels and at the time there were 5 hotels of Ritz-Carlton and when I left six years later I think we had about 27 or 28.  It was a great entrepreneurial type of experience at the time, they were growing, building new hotels around the country and really learned a lot of how to really work with luxury customers and also the commitment to quality.  While I was there the company won the Malcolm Baldrige Award for total quality management processes and it was something that I really enjoyed. Later I went to work for Westin Hotels for a couple of years and then spent 6 years with the Puerto Rico Convention Bureau.  My family is from Puerto Rico and I wanted to sort of work in a more international environment, so I was in charge of overseeing the offices in the States, Madrid and then we had an office in Miami for South America and there I learned a lot about a more international type of business. OUT Laboy04_initialChallengesSo that just bring me to where I started the company which was officially July 4, 1999 is when we signed the legal documents to start the company and you know, people always ask me, how… how did you think about this company and stop here.  Our company, if you don’t know what we do, we, in a nutshell, is we provide e-business solutions for the hospitality industry.  So we develop websites, internet marketing programs.  We do search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaigns, e-mail campaigns, high level reporting and tracking for hotels, resorts and destinations around the world. We primarily focus on the upscale market, so we work with mostly 4 and 5 star hotels and about 30% of our revenue comes from international… you know, we have properties in… a lot in the Caribbean, Europe, you know, Canada, Mexico, we have … we haven’t really done much work in Asia yet but that’s coming.  We have customers in Australia, Africa, so that’s what we do in a nutshell.  I’ll get into more of that little bit later on.  So some people ask me, well wait a minute, how did you come up with that idea, how did you get into that and really you know, the phrase, necessity is the mother of invention comes to mind, that I was working at the Puerto Rico Convention Bureau and I was working on a project to develop a website. This was in 1994… 1995, which for those of us that remember that time… there weren’t many websites, there weren’t many companies that had websites and there was … it was just in its infancy and so we were working with a company in Detroit that developed websites.  To make a long story short, I was working for Puerto Rico Convention Bureau, it’s quasi governmental, there were some political issues and we … because we had to use this particular company, it wasn’t my choice to select this company.  So somebody basically said, here, you need to use this company to develop this website, go for it.  It was a nightmare process. They didn’t understand our industry.  They were not the best web developers to begin with, they didn’t have a concept of marketing because for me the idea was well, it’s great if you have a website but so what.  What if no one ever gets to the website, what if your customers don’t ever get to the website, what value does that website have for that customer?  So you know, that process was just taking a lot of my time and that’s when I realized that hotels and resorts, if the internet was going to take off which back in 1994, 1995, we … we hadn’t gotten to that 1999 stage yet or 1998 stage but I really thought that that was going… it was going to change the way we did business.  The internet was definitely going to change the way that meeting planners and travelers were going to find information, get information. OUT (00:13:12) FL:      So shortly thereafter… I’d always loved my jobs.  I have to be honest.  I’m very lucky that I’ve loved my jobs and that I’ve had in the different companies I’d worked with but I’d always wanted to have my own thing and so the idea was maybe there are other people that are in the same boat that I was in which is frustrated with having to develop website in the marketing but not really having the expertise to do that or the resources to do it. Laboy05_businessTipsMy co-founder and my business partner, his name is Robert Dawson, I had hired him to work as a project manager for this project with me and we started chatting about the idea and we decided you know, let’s start this … let’s see if we can work this out. Maybe we can develop something where we help hotels with their marketing of their websites and see if we can maybe make this a company and I was at the time and I still am married, but I had a wife who had stopped working as an attorney, two younger children and so I really couldn’t afford to just drop what I was doing and start the company.So another little tip here is that there are obviously a lot of different ways to start a company.  We decided that we would do it nights and weekends and see if it worked because I didn’t have the luxury of just saying, drop everything and as it was I have to say, the other important part of being an entrepreneur is that whoever… if you’re married then the spouse has to be supportive because when I came home and I said, honey, I’d like to start a company and you know, do this, this and this and I’m going to work nights and weekends and we’re already busy with other things, with two children, you know, you have to have someone that’s going to support your dream. So I give her a lot of credit.We … you know, we formulated a business plan and at the time to be … I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t really have… I mean I went to … I mean not the library… I went online, I looked for some things.  I actually did go to the library and look … get a book about business plans.  I talked to some folks and … but the idea was that we were going to do this … it was going to be self-funded.  So to this day I’ve not spent … we have not raised a penny.  We have had many offers of people wanting to give us money and we’ve turned them all down and you might think I’m stupid and crazy but I think … what we thought was that, if we don’t need the money then I’m not going to take the money.  So another little tip, if you don’t need the money, don’t take it.  My experience is that, when you investors, then you have other people that you have to report to. OUT So we were fortunate that we were able to start the company, get it going by working our full time job and get it going enough to then almost a year later then say, oh now we have enough customer base that we can let go of the regular jobs and move on. (00:16:30) FL:      Actually Robert… I kept my job, I let Robert ‘cause he had a lower salary at the time and he’s a little bit younger than I am and he didn’t have the same responsibilities that I did, so I said, why don’t you go ahead and start working on this more and then I came on when I could to join in. Laboy06_differentiationWe started with the concept of helping hotels and resorts.  So one thing what we wanted to do was we wanted to work with the higher end customers.  So we had that as a plan, as a goal and that’s something that we’ve stuck to.  So we had opportunities to work with other types of companies and hotels but we thought that if we start to sort of digress into a different market that we’re not going to be really true to what we wanted to be you know, promoting and that was also another point that I think has made us successful, we really stuck to that and that’s helped us differentiate ourselves from the pack.  You know, we feel as though we were the first company out there to do both and there were some companies that were doing hotel websites and then there were some companies that were doing hotel internet marketing but we were, I think… I don’t have any statistics to show this but we were the first to sort of just do both at the same time and focus on the upper end market. And that’s what really has I think differentiated us, helped us to set ourselves apart from the competition and we stuck to our guns in terms of the pricing that we have, you know, we’ve decided that we’re not going to be the least expensive, so we… and I hate to sort of borrow this phrase but I feel as though we tried to develop you know, the Ritz-Carlton or the Four Seasons if you will of internet or e-business companies, internet marketing companies… and it was difficult because you know sometimes in the beginning you want to take what they call the low hanging fruit.  You want to take any business that comes your way but we felt that if we did that we wouldn’t be different and so that was one thing we stuck to. OUT Laboy07_bestInTheWorldThe other, you know, elements that we’ve really focused on is we wanted to be the best in the world and when you have two employees lets say, or three employees, it’s hard to sit there and have a staff meeting and say, we’re the best in the world. You know, I mean the other employee will look at you and go sure buddy, you know, here we are borrowing office space and you know, we have three clients and you’re the best in the world, come on.  But that was what we kept emphasizing to our team.  We want to be the best in the world.  We don’t need to be the biggest, we want to be the best.  How did we become the best?  We focused unbelievably on the customer service and you might think, well wait a minute, aren’t you an internet marketing technology web development design company?  Yes, but we first are in the hospitality industry and we knew that service was going to be really, really important, that my experience with that other company was almost as much to do with the fact that they didn’t know how to handle a person in hospitality and we all are in hospitality, so we know we like to be treated nicely and we like to get what we want and we want when we want it and how we want it and so they didn’t grasp that and so I think that that was one of the things that we also focused on is the service and how would we provide service via technology. So that’s something that I think also has set us apart. OUT Laboy08_theThreeThingsWe focus on three things in our company.  One is customer satisfaction, the next one is employee satisfaction and the third is that we need to make money.  That’s it.  I worked with many companies that had lots of vision statements, mission statements and I really learned that you have to live it and to me the easiest way to live our mission or vision is to make it very simple and talk about it all the time.  And so we talk about that all the time.  Customer service, I mean customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and really the need to make money, I don’t talk about that as much. That’s mainly for a core group of executives but for the rest of the team we talk about the first two all the time and what has happened is that we’ve created a culture, a culture of excellence, a culture of that customer service and that is what I think has helped us. OUT Laboy09_advertisingWe never spent a dollar on advertising, so we’ve been around for… since 1999, really 2000, because we didn’t really start working full time until 2000.  So we’re not a big company, we have 60 employees.  We have a little less than a couple hundred accounts, again mostly independent resorts and hotels around the world.  We work with companies like Rosewood Hotels, Montage Hotels, it’s a company that’s owned by the chairman of eBay.  We helped launch Exclusive Resorts which was a company that Steve Case owns, the former chairman of AOL and Time Warner.  We have customers like Capella Hotels which you may or may not have heard of, it’s a brand new brand that Horst Schulze, the former chairman of Ritz-Carlton is now starting and it’s a “six star brand.”  Very upscale. We have customers like the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington DC, Half Moon in Montego Bay, the Puerto Rico Tourism Company.  So we really have tried to keep you know, our focus on those kinds of customers and because we don’t advertise and because we don’t promote ourselves at trade shows, all of the business that we’ve generated has come from word of mouth.  All of the growth that we’ve had has come from someone saying, wow, E-Site Marketing did such a great job.  They refer us to somebody else or we’re working with a customer and they move to another company and they call us.  And I think you know, that again is … we’re very proud of that because we feel as though that’s the best type of business you can get.  You know, it’s a lot easier to make that sale when you have a customer that says, oh I heard from Frank that you guys are the best in the industry.  So tell me what you can do for us and it also helps when you may have pricing that is higher than your competitors because since that time since 1999, you know, maybe at that time we had one or two other competitors, now we have a lot of people that say they do what we do.  And so as all of you know when you have more competitors, you know, a lot of times it’s more based on price and people will reduce pricing just to get the business to get business. OUT You know, I think in talking to the team here before I came up, one of the comments was, talk a little bit about what you’ve … what you’ve done well and talk a little bit about what you maybe could have done better. (00:24:10) Laboy10_thingsDoneWellI think what we’ve done well is we’ve focused on the quality, I think another element is the customer service part of what we do.  So if we need to you know, certain examples, we would get a… I remember this in particular.  We got a call on Labor Day Friday at 5 o’clock and most companies are shut down by then, it’s the Labor Day weekend, they want to go away.  We got a company from a client saying, you know, we forgot to tell you this but we need to put this on our website immediately and it wasn’t something you could just do in five minutes.  I mean it was a five, six hour project and I think you know, our culture was that the person who got that phone call, they were going away just like everybody else was but they knew that they needed to take care of that customer.  So they took care of that issue, stayed the amount of time that it needed to and then they left.  And you know, the customer appreciated that so much that they’re still a customer seven or eight years later. Little things like that that we’ve … you know, we’ve ingrained in our team to make sure that we’re providing that level of customer service.  You know, another thing I think we’ve done well is we’ve hired the right… you know, good people.  Although I have a Cornell degree like many of you do, I don’t consider myself the smartest person in the world.  I know what I’m good at, I know what I’m not good at and I know how to surround myself with people that know more about a particular issue than I may.  You know, perfect example was our… you know, my relationship with my business partner.  I’m the 75% owner and he’s 25% owner but you know, I knew that he had some skills that I didn’t that were going to help us out.  I know that as I’ve built the company, I’ve hired individuals that have allowed me to do what I need to do and what I do well and then have them do what they do well to help us as a team. So I guess you have to have a little bit of an ego to be an entrepreneur.  But I think what I’ve tried to do is check that ego at the door when I need to.  I think the other thing we’ve done really well is we’ve stayed innovative.  We’ve stayed in front of the pack, ahead of the curve.  We’ve developed products where individuals, you know, other companies are still developing them.  You know, our company… we were talking about blogs and podcasts and web 2.0 issues two and a half years ago and we hosted a travel industry blog almost three years ago now and now everybody is talking about web 2.0.  You know we developed RSS-enabled technology, which stands for really simple syndication which in the last year or so has been really one of the hot topics in our industry. We developed Travelocity’s RSS-enabled technology almost three years ago.  So I think we were constantly keeping ahead and I guess you can do that when you have you know, 40, 50, 60 employees and you own the company, you know, we can just decide what we want to do. OUT   Laboy11_couldHaveImprovedI think the things that we could have done better are… the first thing I would say is I think I could have self-promoted more.  By nature I just don’t like to pat myself on the back and I’m more reserved and so I think we haven’t done enough you know, press if you will, promoting our company and our successes and the types of customers we have and all of that and that might have you know, just given us a little bit more PR and maybe more business.  And then you know, if I had all the money in the world and could have done things better, faster, I would have maybe taken products to market a little faster.  Sometimes you, as an entrepreneur, you just have certain resources or limited resources and you just can’t do everything.  We’ve got so many great ideas.  I was talking to Cathy this morning, you know, I’ve already got another idea to have another really exciting product but I just need time, money, and more resources.  So it’s a matter of you know, focusing on what we can get done and doing the best we can with that. OUT (00:28:32) FL:      you know, I didn’t want to take the entire time in sort of talking because I would like to see if anybody has any particular questions but I have a few more things that I would mention and I would say that you know..   Laboy12_valueOfExperienceIn my particular experience as an entrepreneur, all of the experiences that I had leading up until that day when we decided to start the company were valuable to me.  My philosophy was in every job I had was to learn as much as I could from that situation, take what I liked and leave what I didn’t like, you know, and the example I gave about that, that hotel management company, I didn’t like a lot of things about how they managed, about how they led, what they did but I … but they were very aggressive in terms of marketing and sales and so I picked that up.  With Ritz-Carlton, you know, there were great things that dealt with customer service and quality and so I picked that up.  You know, Four Seasons had the same type of situation, just a little bit of a different spin on it.  You know, with Puerto Rico I learned a lot about how to deal with the international community and that if you are a US based company you have to really get global because that’s what the web’s all about and that really helped me understand now that I’m dealing with international customers how to work in that environment.  So I think all of the experiences I had helped me to be a successful entrepreneur today. OUT You know, and for me I think also it’s …  Laboy13_passionAs an entrepreneur I’m very passionate about what I’m doing.  For those people that knew me in my previous days, maybe at Cornell or in my … beginning of my career, they would never probably think that I would be the CEO of an internet marketing company ‘cause I’m not necessarily technical in the sense like my business partner is or some of the people that we’ve hired, you know, I can’t program, I can’t develop a website. I don’t… I don’t do the programing, I don’t do a lot of the back-end work but that’s not important for me in my role.  So I found… but I’m passionate about the industry, I’m passionate about helping our customers you know, generate a high return on investment.  I’m passionate about the web and the internet and how it’s changing how we do business still and I believe and I was talking to Cathy this morning about is that we’re still in you know, I mean we’re pioneers literally, all of us that are in the web, you know, when we talk to our … I have two children, they … you know, they’re on Facebook, they instant message, they don’t … they will never pick up the phone to call and make a reservation to the hotel.  They… my staff … our average age is 26 and a half which for some of you may be ancient and for some of you may be really young.  But it’s a fairly young environment and so if you ask anybody on my team how they interact, it’s all web enabled, you know, they are in the … they’re in our company and if they’re going to make a reservation for an airline, they’re going to go to the web.  They’re going to make a reservation for a restaurant, they’re going to go to the web.  If they’re going to make a reservation for a hotel, they’re going to the web. If they’re going to find their news, they’re going to go to the web.  So it’s all about you know, I think most things are moving in that direction and so I think that what we’re doing today is really just the… you know, tip of the iceberg. OUT And then I think you know, the last parts are… I know some people were asking about you know, do you go get money, do you not get money, how do you develop those kinds of things and if anybody has any particular questions I’d be more than happy to answer those.  Again I think that in our particular case, we decided not to get outside funding, we were fortunate to be able to do that.  We have … throughout the time, we had individuals coming and wanting to make investments and actually it’s funny.  I almost had a really bad story to tell you and I got lucky to get out of it but we… it was after a couple of years, we’re starting to make a little bit of money and we got a little greedy in the sense that we thought, oh wow, maybe is somebody came by and started offering this sort of pie in the sky scenarios. (00:33:15) FL:      We’re going to bring you money and if you do this then you’re going to make X more dollars and you know, we’ve been working pretty hard and we’re thinking you know, that’s not… that would be a good exit strategy and it turned out this guy was more of a scam artist and we ended up finding that out pretty quickly.  So that’s just a caution to anybody that’s, you know…  Laboy14_moneyAdviceFor those of you that maybe interested in doing that, is really look at the sources of the money and make sure it’s legitimate and I think you know, we’ve held out to a point because we … what I wanted to say is, you know, if you’re going to become an entrepreneur, a lot of individuals will do it because they want to make a lot of money.  You know, the dotcom era back in the late 90s and early 2000, a lot of young people and a lot of people made a lot of money for not a lot of work to be honest and maybe not even a great product but it was a snapshot in time where individuals made crazy amounts of money. We’re starting to see a little bit of that coming back now I think but what I would say, I would caution is, if you’re going in, don’t do it for the money, do it because it’s something that you feel passionate about or that you think is a great idea and that you want to make this something because you’re going to have to work really hard and it’s 24/7 in some cases, you know, it’s always on your mind if you own your own business and so if you’re doing something and the goal is just to make the money, then you won’t be as happy and I would say that you know, from the sort of a life experience perspective, I tell my kids who are 16 and 13, do something that you love and the money will come and so in this scenario when I started the company, my dream was not to make a ton of money, it was to be able to sustain my family with the same level, in terms of you know, economically enable to sustain my family but to also do something that was mine and you know, knock on wood, all of it has worked out. You know, the company has grown, you know, the money is there and we’ve been very fortunate that actually we’ve had a lot of interest in our company and so at one point or some point in the future possibly you know, we may at least be able to entertain some of those types of offers or situations as to what we do with the company but for now you know, we’re very happy doing what we’re doing.  We’re doing a great job for our customers, our employees love working with our company which is also you know, something that we feel very proud of and I’m having a great time.  It’s a wonderful thing to be your own boss and to make decisions on a daily basis.  So I encourage anyone that wants to be an entrepreneur to do so. OUT I’m going to be quiet now, so I don’t want to take all the time.  If anybody has any questions, comments, concerns… the only thing I would say, we are a privately held company and I will… I don’t like to share any dollar figures but if you have any questions around it, I can give percentages and things like that.  Yes.  Thank you. (00:36:33) Male:   A question I would ask, suppose you are at the end the 25% partner probably some place, if something happens to ______, what happens to the company? FL:      If something happens to my partner and I?  Right now the legal set up is that then my heirs would take over the company and right now we have a … we’ve had conversations with some of our key executives that if that would have happened, you know, there is a trigger of who then kind of takes over the management of the company but the ownership would still stay within the family. Male:   The ownership I’m not worried about, the company itself.  It seems from comments you made today of the good driving force and the light of the organization… but it seems do you really have underlings that could do the work that … that’s… forget the ownership part…  (00:37:34) FL:      Yeah now that’s a great point.  I think what we’ve done and I’ll be honest, when we were first starting out, there weren’t enough people for us to really say hey, if the two owners depart would that still continue.  The good news is that over the last couple of years my role has changed in the organization.  So … because I knew that if we’re going to continue growing that I needed to take less of a day-to-day approach to being in the business and really bringing in some folks as I mentioned before, I brought in some team members that have the experience.  We have a lot of young folks but we’ve also had to bring in some people that have experience in the industry that as I put it, have a little grey hair and have more experience in terms of running a company.  So god forbid that would happen.  We have some higher-level people that would be in place to be able to continue the company moving forward. (00:38:32) Male:   … hear sometimes about entrepreneurship, so how will you know when it’s time to let go?  What would be the conditions that would say, okay, it’s really time to let go. FL:      Bill, that’s a great question. Laboy15_whenToGoWe’ve had opportunities in the past to let go and at the time … I’ve always said and you know, because I’m 75% owner I can make that decision on my own and what I’ve always said is it’s got to have a couple of components.  The first one is it’s got to be good for the customers because we started the company again not to just make money, but we wanted to really do something of value. So the first thing is we wouldn’t want to let our customers down.  If that were to happen and the customers get taken care of, then there’s no problem there.  The second one is what would do same thing with our employees.  Would they be… would they benefit from this kind of a situation or would it be something that would be worse for them.  So we want to take that into account.  And the third thing is … then we would look at from a financial point of view, is it something that our… you know, my partner and I are interested in or is it viable at this particular time for us to do and what that structure of deal would look like. OUT Male:   Does that mean it has to include you? FL:      What's that? Male:   Does that mean it has to include you or would you move on something else…  FL:      Oh yeah… yeah… many, many options… yeah… there are many… Male:   ________. FL:      Exactly.  There are many options, I mean I think I’ve talked to other entrepreneurs and some people just want to be able to say that they own a company and so the CEO can say, alright, I’ll let you run the company, I’ll still own it, I’ll go and do something else.  You know, you can stay in it and still be the person in charge.  Lot of options.  Yeah.  Lot of options.  Brenda.  (00:40:24) Female:          You said that you were still working for _______ how did you get your initial clients? FL:      Great question.  And actually that makes… reminds me of something I did want to say is that Laboy16_valueOfContactsI’m a firm believer in keeping up with contacts, networking, talking, doing a good job especially for those of you that may be embarking on careers, never, ever, ever, ever, ever burn a bridge.  Never, ever, ever, ever burn a bridge.  I now have many of my customers I used to work for or I used to work with and so for me the reputation is really important.  How did we get our first … our very first customer was a property in Mexico and it was a friend of mine who I’d worked with in hotels, knew that I’d started the company and she said, hey, Felix I know that you’ve just started this company.  I’m working with a consulting company that’s working with this resort and they could really use this kind of help, why don’t you give him a call. So Carol put us in touch with Mark and you know, we presented and that was our first customer.  And really that’s … in the beginning it was a lot of that.  It was a lot of, oh… I used to work with you Felix or I used to work with Rob or I used to… let’s give you a shot.  After a while then it’s about producing.  Yeah you still have to do the production and results but it always helps to have that good entrée. OUT You have a question. Male:   Someone who aspires to be an entrepreneur, I’m really interested in the timing of the venture.  So do you feel that like … do you ________ start this just as easily as you did with the previous experience _________. (00:42:18) Laboy17_rightOutOfSchoolIn my particular case, I don’t think that I could have done this particular situation right out of school.  Only because we were … we’re really more about consulting company and the fact that we have worked in the industry before.  You know, one of the selling features is, I could go into somebody’s office and talk to a vice president of marketing or general manager or director of marketing and say, I’ve been in your shoes.  I did this job, I’m in the industry, I understand what RevPAR is and what you know, ADR is and what … I could talk the language for them.  Now having said that there are some parts of what we do, okay, that I probably didn’t need to have that background in that particular industry.  So it really depends on what your … what your idea is, because you know, for example, if you look at this guy Mark, he’s 22, obviously he doesn’t have a lot of contacts or experience in an industry, he just came up with a really good idea that a lot of people then … thought was also a good idea and he went in and got venture capital to start the company. So it depends on the situation.  In my particular case, I think I wouldn’t have been as successful without the experience. OUT Male:   My question has got two points.  Firstly you were talking about ________.  I guess I’m curious what is the rest of the entrepreneur ________. FL:      Sure. Laboy18_webExpectationsWell I think that what we’ve seen is that in the very beginning, I was … when we would talk to a customer about what we did… blank stares.  What?  What do you do?  I already have a website.  What do I need you to market it for and what is this search engine optimization and what is blah… blah… blah… so I think that what has evolved is in the beginning it was very educational what I did. It was really more not sales, it was … I was teaching them what we did.  Over time what has happened … and so at that point it was really difficult to pry money out of their wallets because no one had a line item budget for what we did.  You know, if you have a hotel or resort destination you have advertising, PR, blah… blah… but it’s all traditional.  There was no line item for e-commerce.  So trying to get money was difficult.  Now over time what's happened is because of the interest, because of the consumers now going online, so you know, you see the statistics… the other day I read Forrester just put out that I think over 50% now of reservations are made online for a hotel.  That was not the case in the beginning. So now the properties are saying, wow, I’ve got to do something and so I need to learn this even if I don’t know anything about it.  I’ve gotta invest in it, okay.  So having said that the market has dictated our ability to grow.  To your point about the tip of the iceberg, I think that what's happening is that you know, I look at my kids and what I said before, I look at my children.  They’re not going to go through traditional means to make a reservation or to find information.  Are you familiar with the term Web 2.0?  Web 2.0 for those of you that aren’t, is the term that has been coined for the area that we are in now in terms of the web.  If you will, web 1.0 was the hotel or the company tells you what they’re all about.  I’m Half Moon, I’m in Jamaica.  I'm a great hotel, you should come stay with me because I’m a great hotel.  In the web 2.0 world, the users, all of you tell each other if that hotel is good or not. So through you know, testimonials or online reviews or you might blog to a friend or you might instant message a friend or you might hear a podcast that somebody stayed there, etc., etc.  That’s user generated content and that’s the web 2.0 world.  So I think that has changed how things are being done.  The web 3.0 world is … I read an article in the New York Times about a month ago about the 3.0 world and 3.0 world is that in the future the websites will be so intelligent that they will be telling you what… so personalized and so customized.  So I don’t know you but let’s say you come from Chicago and you like pizza and you like softball and whatever, that the web will almost know intuitively based on information that they’ve gathered what you’re all about and will give you information that’s pertinent to you as opposed to what Guiseppe likes and as opposed to what Bill likes. So I would say that for us, more opportunities to help our customers with reporting mechanisms on really drilling down into how does this web work and how do we make the internet marketing that we do much more effective.  I think that the explosion of how the web will change you know, in terms of how all of you are searching and researching and… you know, TV for example has changed in tremendous ways.  You know, my son watches The Office online, the show The Office online as opposed to watching it on TV.  That was unheard of a few years ago.  So I think what … for us we’ll be able to continue that growth you know, I think we still continue the old fashioned way.  We develop products because the customer needs it.  You know, we developed several products that have been very important for us just because you know, the customer says, boy, I really need to know how to do this and we just say, oh, okay we can do that in a technological way and boom… now you have a new product. OUT (00:48:30) Male:   _________ you successfully drove through the dotcom bust and _____. FL:      Right. Male:   So why or how were you successful during that period.  I mean an awful lot of people _____ you talked about a lot of people that made money, 99% of them did… you succeeded.  That’s worked … FL:      You know, that’s a great point Bill and I think we made a …  Laboy19_survivingDotBombWe made a strategic decision in the beginning of our company to set up our fees in a certain way and a lot of … we had two options.  One is to go on a project based and say, okay, we’ll develop a website for you, we’ll charge you this much.  We’ll do a little bit of internet marketing and this is what we’ll charge you or to go on a more monthly retainer consulting fee where we would wrap up a bunch of services and then spread it out over the course of the year.  We still have some business that we still have to charge projects because you know, not everybody does a website every time, etc., but that was crucial.  So during that time you’re correct.  A lot of our competitors or people that we knew were losing business because when the recession hit there was … they were like, all right, stop all the projects.  No new projects. But in our case we had this agreement going and it was a monthly retainer and it was what the hotels and resorts looked at our business was they said, I have to do this.  I can cut out advertising, I can cut out putting up… doing a new brochure, I can cut out fixing my furniture but I have to continue driving people to my website ‘cause it’s the least expensive channel and it’s the most effective channel for generating business.  So that was what helped us through that point.  We actually grew during that time. OUT Male:   _______. FL:      Right. Male:   ________. FL:      Yeah.  And if I’m called brilliant… I’m called lucky sometimes too.  Any other questions.  Oh sorry. Female:          ________ you mentioned that you have a partner, and that’s 75-25 arrangement.  As you continue to grow, how do you reconcile the fact that you might have some really valuable employees who at some point would like to become maybe get themselves get a piece of the business and in order to retain them and their expertise, their intellectual capital you want to keep them around so they don’t potentially start their own business and become your competitors, how do you… I’m sure _______ how do you…  FL:      How do you deal with that?  Sure… Female:          Yeah.  How do you deal with that and maintain your ownership integrity? (00:51:40) FL:      That’s a great question.    Laboy20_ownershipIntegrityUp until this point what we’ve done is mainly compensated those individuals with money.  Bonuses, trips, certain… you know, luckily because we’re smaller we can customize the benefits package if you will.  So somebody may not be as interested in money as maybe more time off or flexibility.  We’re pretty flexible in terms of what we do, you know, I’m wearing a suit today but most of the time I’m wearing jeans and you know, a sweater or something and so they like that environment.  They like to be to customize … yes, as we growth, Cathy, we will definitely need to put in a more structured either bonus program, incentive program or profit sharing you know, as we grow.  But yes, it’s something to think about to keep good people. OUT (00:52:35) Male:   _________. FL:      Yeah.  That’s a great question, Guiseppe and I think what I would say is that if you are going to be an entrepreneur and again it’s hard to talk to every situation. Laboy21_balanceIf you’re just starting out and you’re young, not married and sort of on your own, then some of those things you don’t have to deal with, but if you’re in that situation and you’re an entrepreneur, I still encourage you to have a balance.  At the end of the day if you’re not happy then the money, the ego, the… whatever … success is not going to make you a fulfilled person.  That’s my experience and I know I sound like an old dinosaur saying those kinds of things but trust me on that one.  If you are in a family situation you know, like I am, I think it’s definitely a family affair, because as an entrepreneur, I have not talked to any entrepreneur that doesn’t have to be engaged more passionately if you will and that sometimes requires more time. So I think it has to be a family decision that you’re an entrepreneur.  Now it’s got unbelievable benefits as well, so you just have to balance them out and I think for me in that situation what has been great is that I’ve been able to travel with my kids, so you know, sometimes I’ll add on a little trip and then take the family and they all come and they travel, so what was really interesting is that my daughter told me the other day that what she wants to be when she grows up is she wants to be a person that produces and stars in these videos of travel.  You know, these people go around showing beautiful places and they talk about it, so she likes the camera, so she’s an actress, she likes to be in front of the camera and… but she likes to travel.  So that’s what she wants to do.  In our situation, I think what what we’ve decided is you know, we want to… I haven’t thought Guiseppe, to be honest with you to Bill’s point and do I want to keep the company forever or do I want to decide at some point, you know, to not keep the company and that I think is going to be determined on certain situations that are going on at the time if those opportunities ever become presented.  But it’s a very good point, you know. OUT (00:55:32) FL:      Somebody else asked me… my younger brother actually graduated from Cornell as well, the Hotel School, he’s a ’88 graduate, 1988, and somebody said well, is your brother in the company and I said, no, just because I’ve heard a lot of stories that you know, families working together… I’ve heard a lot of horror stories, so I figured you know, lets just leave it at that.