EP259: Glenn Turner on Trust, Delegation and Scaling RBS to Five Thousand Properties
In this episode, Jens Heitland speaks with Glenn Turner, CEO of RBS, about the discipline behind delegation, the real drivers of employee motivation, and how artificial intelligence is reshaping a hospitality business built on human connection.
Glenn shares why a to-do list signals a leadership problem, why recognition often outweighs money as an incentive, and what he learned about succession after surviving a plane crash in 2014. The conversation covers the Profits First framework, the risk of losing critical thinking to AI, and how growing RBS from 140 to nearly 5,000 properties has changed what customer intimacy requires.
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Why the Best Leaders Keep an Empty To-Do List
Glenn Turner runs RBS, a hospitality software company that has grown from around 140 properties in 2020 to just under five thousand today. Scale like that changes what a business has to manage. Restaurants, hotels, ranches and lodges generate constant streams of invoices, reviews and guest feedback, and the volume alone can bury the signals that matter.
Glenn described a habit he keeps returning to. If he has a to-do list as a leader, he has done something wrong. The task belongs somewhere else in the organization, and holding onto it is usually a sign of how hard it is to let go. He replaces the list with regular check ins, conversations about the initiatives the business is working through, and a constant retelling of where the company is going and why. He told me his best people keep asking for more responsibility, and the habit of handing tasks to them consistently is what keeps the system healthy as it grows.
Before we spoke about people, Glenn walked through the financial system underneath a hospitality business. The traditional formula treats profit as whatever is left after expenses. He flips it. Revenue minus profit equals expense, decided in that order, because a hospitality business has to reserve capital for the carpet, the paint, the landscaping that guests never think about until it is missing. Without that discipline, a property stops attracting the people it depends on. The same logic now extends into data. Where a night audit once meant checking the numbers once a day, Glenn described managing AI agents that watch reviews, invoices and guest communication continuously, catching what a monthly report would miss entirely.
Incentives came up in a similar way. Glenn talked about recognition and attention as forces that matter as much as money, sometimes more. Money becomes a baseline within weeks. Being heard by someone above you, or simply having a leader take the time to sit with you, tends to hold its value longer. He builds this into how RBS integrates new teams after an acquisition, starting with listening before any change is introduced.
The consequence of this kind of scale is that noise grows faster than judgment does. Glenn uses AI across the business to sort through reviews, invoices and guest signals that would otherwise overwhelm a team. He described it with a simple image, comparing AI to riding a bicycle with your hands still on the handlebars. The tool can carry weight, but the direction still has to come from a person who understands what the data actually means.
That distinction became clearest when Glenn talked about a plane crash in 2014 that kept him away from his previous company for months. The business ran without him, and the team met every commitment during that time. He has carried that lesson forward into how he leads now, treating the ability to step back as a measure of how well a system works.
Glenn asks people on his team a question that has nothing to do with the business itself: how has your faith shaped what is happening for you? The question has little to do with belief itself. It gets past the answer someone gives from a textbook or an MBA program, toward the background that actually explains how they think. In a company spread across cultures and geographies, that single question does more to build trust than any policy could.
Underneath the talk about AI, this conversation was really about trust. Glenn built a business where AI handles the noise, and people still handle the judgment, which is why he keeps asking questions no algorithm would think to ask.
Human Innovation with Jens Heitland is produced by Heitland Media Group.*
Guest Links
Glenn Turner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jglennturner/
Business: https://rbsgo.com/
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Glenn Turner: Well, Jens, it's, it's good to see you this morning. Where are you today?
[00:00:04] Jens Heitland: I am in the Netherlands in The Hague. Good to
[00:00:06] Glenn Turner: You're, in the Netherlands in The Hague. I'm in, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, at the, EAA AirVenture, which is a huge, air show. And little known fact, the air control tower here during the AirVenture is the busiest air traffic control tower in the world for seven days
[00:00:29] Jens Heitland: Amazing. So what, what, what did bring you to, to the air show in the first place?
[00:00:35]Glenn Turner: I think that's a good question. What leads people to have interests? As a college student and a young adult, several of my friends were into aviation, became military pilots and, this is 40 years ago now. I watched with interest and admiration as they flew helicopters and jets and did all kinds of neat things.
[00:01:04]Glenn Turner: And then, almost 30 years ago, I got my own pilot's license and, ever since then, aviation's been a big part of my life.
[00:01:14] Jens Heitland: Nice. So let, let's get in, in, into business. One of the things you mentioned last time when, when we talked was if you have a to-do list as a CEO, you have done something wrong. start with that and explain how you come to that statement
[00:01:31]Glenn Turner: Yes, and maybe I'm projecting onto everyone else what my own challenges are on a daily basis. But I think when you have high standards, sometimes it's very difficult to let go of tasks, no matter how menial they are or how substantial they are. It's very difficult to let go of them and let other people be responsible for them.
[00:02:02]Glenn Turner: But I find myself constantly having to remind myself, going, "Wow, I shouldn't be doing this. Someone else on the team should be doing this." And if I'm an effective leader, I don't have a to-do list. I just have check-in sessions with people to talk about the initiatives that we have and the things that we need to accomplish as a business, either strategically or tactically for customers.
[00:02:27]Glenn Turner: So yeah, that's really... I think that's a challenge for a lot of leaders that I meet, but it's certainly a big challenge for me: how do I push into the hands of someone that maybe doesn't have as much experience or as much opportunity to get it perfect right out of the gate as I think I do?
[00:02:52] Glenn Turner: Which of course, I'm often surprised at how much better other people are at accomplishing things than I am
[00:02:58] Jens Heitland: But if, if we look back, I mean, you have worked in, in, in different organization, you have worked in different parts of the world and with different people from different parts of the world. H-how has that evolved over the last years? I mean, now we think about AI as one of the technologies that enables, if we talk about to-do management or whatever, but if you look back, how has that evolved in, in context as well for yourself, how you learned to do-- to get better at it?
[00:03:27]Glenn Turner: I think the way I learned is just by realizing that if I find myself being the roadblock or slowing the organization down, I know I've done something wrong. If we have initiatives that are important that need to be accomplished and I'm the blocker, then it's a problem. I think, how has it evolved?
[00:03:48]Glenn Turner: You ask a couple of different questions there about the evolution of task management over time, as well as the evolution of my own personal journey in having people all over the world. As I run RBS and as I ran the last business which I sold in 2017, a company called Firestream Worldwide, setting goals and objectives and checking in on those is a pretty big deal.
[00:04:27]Glenn Turner: How do you get down to a level of detail on what the goals and objectives should be? You have to pull it back up to a level of: where are we going? What's the vision for this business? And what are the steps that we need to take to get there? I was just having this conversation with someone the other day.
[00:04:48]Glenn Turner: The more often as a leader you talk about where you're going and why, the more the team gets excited and has clarity around what they're supposed to be doing every day. It's easy to get lost in daily routine and not have the context of why you're doing what you're doing.
[00:05:12]Glenn Turner: Over the years, I continue to be amazed at how hungry my teammates are to hear what we are up to, where we are going, and why we are going there. We try to have meetings monthly or every five or six weeks where we continually retell the story of where we're going and why.
[00:05:38]Glenn Turner: I think that's actually probably been a constant. No matter what technology has changed about how we work, or what geography has changed about how dispersed we are, one constant has been that the teams you lead want to hear why.
[00:06:02] Jens Heitland: I was in a CEO discussion, this lunchtime here in, in, in Europe where we had CEOs from different parts of the world in one call, and one of the topics we talked about was similar to that. one of the CEOs said something really interesting. He was saying it's not just the goals, it's also the incentives that drive people towards that goals need to be aligned.
[00:06:23] Jens Heitland: And if you don't communicate that properly over and over again, then people will forget it. And then worst case, the ascent- incentives are misaligned to the goals, and then things are falling apart
[00:06:34]Glenn Turner: Yes, I wish I could have been in that discussion because I would've been very curious to hear the other leaders' thoughts on that. When you say incentive, I think most people's ears immediately connect incentive to money.
[00:06:54] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:06:55]Glenn Turner: And sometimes it's that. Sometimes it's qualitative things, which, in my experience anyway, are just as important as the monetary aspect of things.
[00:07:10]Glenn Turner: We try not to over-focus on money, although it's a critical part of why someone works. We can't lose sight of the fact that you have to be competitive in what you pay. But yes, I would've loved to hear that conversation. I bet it was interesting.
[00:07:29] Jens Heitland: You can join next time.
[00:07:31] Glenn Turner: Okay,
[00:07:32] Jens Heitland: what is interesting if I look back for myself, incentives, because I worked in very large corporate and like money is a given in, in certain ways in a lot of things. For me, one of, one of the, the biggest benefits and incentives was always getting the attention from some of my
[00:07:49] Jens Heitland: the top managers. And when someone who is not, let, let's say a couple of levels above you, can be the, the, the CEO, can be someone else, takes the time and, and talks to you and listens to you, drink coffee, whatever it is, sometimes that, that incentivize you to work even harder than for money. Because, like, we get used to money in four weeks, and then you get it again, or two weeks, depending where you are in the world. And then you get used to it, then it's not really an incentive anymore, then it's the baseline for, for the next one. But spending time with someone and, like, getting listened to was for me one of the big things always.
[00:08:29]Glenn Turner: Yes. I should be interviewing you. That's a pretty good statement. And recognition, in front of your peers or one-on-one, and being heard are huge key things. You're 100% right.
[00:08:48] Jens Heitland: So let's, let's go into RBS. What is RBS doing and how, how do you work? Maybe let's double-click on how do you build a profitable hospitality business?
[00:09:02]Glenn Turner: How do you build a profitable hospitality business? I think there's a lot of simplicity to it in one sense that hospitality businesses are mostly commodity businesses and have to price competitively. And of course everyone would say location, location, location.
[00:09:27]Glenn Turner: But setting those things aside and assuming that you're on par with your location and that you're pricing competitively, I think you have to flip the traditional accounting formula that people think of when they think of profitability, which is revenue minus expenses equals profit.
[00:09:52]Glenn Turner: And we have had a number of opportunities to put the thought out there. It's not original work by me. There's an author named Mike Michalowicz that wrote a book called "Profits First: Transform Your Business From a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine."
[00:10:15]Glenn Turner: And it's pretty universal across industry. The whole idea is revenue minus profit equals expense. Decide what profit you want to make out of the gate, and then be very disciplined about your expenses in conjunction with the revenue that you're generating. Of course, in a hospitality business, when the revenue is dependent on demand, that becomes a very unique thing to balance.
[00:10:48]Glenn Turner: Hospitality businesses are particularly sensitive to needing to make profit. Some businesses, if you don't get much profit, it doesn't create much of a strain. I pay my employees, I pay the light bill and the other required bills, and if I don't have a big bank full of cash, it's not a problem.
[00:11:14] Glenn Turner: But in a hospitality business it's a big problem. You, you have to generate and reserve capital. The only way you generate and reserve capital is by creating profit. Why do you have to generate and reserve capital? Because, properties need to be refreshed. Whether you're running a restaurant or you're running a hotel or a ranch or a lodge or any kind of hospitality business, they need to be refreshed.
[00:11:38] Glenn Turner: They need new carpet, new paint, new decorations, new lighting, landscaping outside. All of those things are, are capital intensive, uses of money that i- if you, if you don't do them, people don't wanna, people don't wanna come to your property and the only thing you have if you're, in the hospitality business is attracting people to your property.
[00:12:06] Jens Heitland: So if you, if you say the old was you, you, you focus on that, what is the new playbook and what do, do you think other companies can do better?
[00:12:17] Glenn Turner: Again, we could go a million different directions with this. a- and maybe I'll just pull in AI, but perhaps we'll have other, other opportunities to talk about AI. But, one... You know, the traditional way of, of thinking about, financial statements and reporting is that, I look at my financial statements once a month and I see how I'm, I see how I'm doing.
[00:12:44] Glenn Turner: now many hospitality businesses are in the routine of looking at their financials on a daily basis. That's, that's essentially what a night, a night audit is, is I'm looking at what the health of my business is every day. but, but AI makes, looking at data so much easier for anyone. I mean, you can drop in a spreadsheet or a report from, the systems that you're running and ask AI to show you trends that are good, show you trends that are bad, compare your performance to your competitors.
[00:13:24] Glenn Turner: There are... It, it, it surprises me on a daily basis how much, capability AI can bring into, a business that's not used to thinking about, um massive amounts of data and what little things can mean in the massive amounts of data. Does that make sense, Jens?
[00:13:46] Jens Heitland: I think what is interesting on that one, obviously the big hospitality chains, they have like the overhead and the staff and the maybe even the tools to, to do that like more efficiently. But if you're a small, say a hotel that is just like one family-owned hotel, it's most probably differently run when it comes to these things than a big chain
[00:14:09]Glenn Turner: It probably is, but I would share with you that we see, even in businesses that run tens or hundreds of properties, some of them struggle with it just as much as single property owners. You'd be surprised.
[00:14:30] Jens Heitland: Yeah. I mean, I have worked in very, very large global corporations. I've seen things that you don't expect in, in, in, in this type of co- organization. I can get it
[00:14:40]Glenn Turner: In fact, I think almost the bigger you get, the more data and noise there is that prevents you from seeing what's happening. We're a small and medium size business, but we generate tons of data. On a daily basis, we're generating tons of invoices, and we have invoices coming in from suppliers. There's just massive amounts of noise, and AI is great for helping you get rid of the noise and get down to the essence of what's driving your business.
[00:15:18] Jens Heitland: Yeah, and then I, I think it's not just on the financial numbers, it's, it's in general. I mean, if you built it into the whole experience part and enable, let's say, the guest in a hotel, the guest in a restaurant to give feedback to it, you, you have qualitative data to a lot of extent as well if you utilize that.
[00:15:38]Glenn Turner: It's almost as if you've been in some of the meetings that we have with customers. There are things like online reviews, loyalty points, articles written by food critics. There's social media input. There are a million different signals that you can pick up, and it's easier now than ever to use those signals to try to make decisions to run a great business.
[00:16:10] Jens Heitland: Yeah. There are so, so many small things that can make a huge difference, and that can be, like you said, from Google reviews. Like, the, the... I, I've, I've seen an article, this is long time ago. There was, a review of the methodology of using Google reviews as a restaurant, I was just curious and, and, and digging deeper into that.
[00:16:33] Jens Heitland: And what they said was the restaurants that are replying to the good and the bad comments, they, they are more trusted than the, the ones that are only replying and deleting the bad comments. If you only have good, references, then it's sometimes also not good. So they really digged into that and, and said, in, in the best case, you answer to all of them and you thank them if they're positive and you, you, you, you don't push back when they're negative.
[00:16:58] Jens Heitland: Then you, you just say, "Hey, something went wrong." That's just one of the tiny examples. But as an organization, obviously data points that you can use to steer things if, if they're common themes.
[00:17:11]Glenn Turner: Yes, absolutely. All kinds of businesses get Google reviews, but I would say the restaurant and hotel and hospitality in general probably get a lot more reviews than some of the other industries. But you're right: picking up those reviews as quickly as you can and responding to those things... the bigger picture here is that hospitality at its root is a people business.
[00:17:47] Glenn Turner: And on our best days, you know, people, are, the cherry on top. They, they can delight guests and, and really make for a spectacular experience. But there are days when, things go wrong. People aren't at the top of their game, equipment breaks down, power goes out. you know, there's, there's a million, different potential issues that can get in the way of providing, good service and good experience.
[00:18:18] Glenn Turner: One of the things that we, believe it or not, as a software company, we, have service recovery issues that, that we have to address from time to time as well. We, we have times when, a customer service person doesn't respond exactly the way, we would have expected them to, to, a complaint or a concern.
[00:18:42] Glenn Turner: but that's, that's the daily life of, of a hospitality business, not, not a software business, is service recovery. Like, "Hey, we'd, we'd love to provide service at the level of a ten all the time, but when we fall short, how do we recover?
[00:18:57] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:18:58] Glenn Turner: how do we learn from the, from the recovery process?" That, that is something that, amazes me at how good some of our customers are at, at service recovery because we know you cannot run a perfect hospitality business.
[00:19:11] Jens Heitland: Yeah. No, agree. From, from your leadership experience and, and let's go back how you started the company. So you said you sold the company, and how, how did, did the idea for this business come along?
[00:19:26] Glenn Turner: I sold FireStream Worldwide in 2017 and, and worked for PDI Technologies for, for two and a half years. and as I was sort of getting, to the point where I was thinking, "Okay, it's time for me to, to relax and, and spend time with family and friends," one of my friends that runs a large hospitality business in the United States, was, saying, "Hey, w- I wish, we had a better sense for what was happening in the business, and, you know, we had more control of things, and it takes too long to get information, and can you, can you take a look at these things?"
[00:20:06] Glenn Turner: And so I spent, a year working, with that business, really both from a finance and, and IT perspective. And while I was doing that, I, started talking with one of the software companies that, was providing service to that business and, and ended up buying that company. And, you know, the, the business case to buy that company was it was, running some legacy technology and, I think, you know, I have a passion for, for building software and, and particularly cloud-based software.
[00:20:46] Glenn Turner: And, so I convinced that, person to sell their business to me and, and we focused on moving that old piece of software onto the web and that, that's how I, I got involved. It, it was a very niche part of hospitality that I got involved with back in, in, late 2019, early 2020, which was hunting and fishing lodges, and dude ranches in the United States.
[00:21:13] Glenn Turner: And then, as we focused on that market, I began to realize that, there was quite a bit of overlap between that market and, and more traditional hotels and, and restaurants. And so we looked for opportunities to acquire some businesses to, to pull us over into hotels and restaurants and, and we've been, we've been successful at doing that.
[00:21:39] Glenn Turner: So we've gone from, in 2020 and '21, maybe around 130 or 140 properties that we manage, to now just under, under 5,000. Some through organic growth, a lot through organic growth, but mostly, through, some of the acquisitions we've done over the last couple years.
[00:21:57] Jens Heitland: It's amazing. I'm curious, so w- when, when you took over the business, how did you bring in your leadership spirit? Like you mentioned already before, like the high standards and the, the vision that, that you get into and then the goals. How, how did you change that? Because I guess you took over the, the, the team members as well, and with the acquisitions as well.
[00:22:21] Jens Heitland: How, how did you, how, how did you get everyone on board in understanding where you want to get to?
[00:22:27]Glenn Turner: It's not a single action. As we were talking about before we started the podcast, it's really a constant recasting of where are we going and why. An acquisition for us on day one or day two starts with an all hands meeting where we're introducing ourselves and also getting to know the team.
[00:22:54] Glenn Turner: because we have a dispersed, global team, you know, sometimes those first meetings are on Teams. But as quickly as possible, we try to get face to face with, with our, our new teammates and, you know, to your point earlier, start listening to them. What are some of the things that, that they're excited about?
[00:23:14] Glenn Turner: What are some of the things that they're frustrated by? and we start helping them see where we're going and their role in getting us there. And it, it-- I wish it was one meeting sometimes, because it's, it, it can be fatiguing to constantly be telling the same story over and over again because you feel like you're repeating yourself,
[00:23:37] Glenn Turner: which, which you are.
[00:23:39] Glenn Turner: but, but that's a, that's, it, you know, you hear the old story about, well, you have to tell someone something 12 times maybe before it sinks in and, you know, we, we find that to be true. You just have to constantly keep, engaging with the team. And I, I think, the other hard, truth is that not everybody is a fit for, where you're going and that's another reason why it's important to tell the story. whether we're a, business that was in the mode of acquiring or just in the mode of being a growing business and we're hiring new employees, sometimes people get on the team that aren't a fit. And the sooner you figure that out, the better it is for those people because they move on to places where they are a great fit, and the better it is for, the business.
[00:24:37] Glenn Turner: And, that, that, is an awkward thing for me to say sometimes because, it hurts people's feelings, to, to say, "Hey, I'm not sure you're a fit, to be on this team." and you know, candidly, I take it personally sometimes when, when people opt out and I think, "Gosh, they would've been great here. Why did they leave?"
[00:25:02] Glenn Turner: but, but it's the reality that the sooner you get down to, people that are aligned with what the, the vision of the business is and the customers that you serve and what's necessary on a daily basis, the, the more likely you are to, to achieve your goals
[00:25:22] Jens Heitland: Yeah. And, and that is connected to, to, to the initial statement with the to-do list in the same way. As more they know you as well as a leader and can predict how you behave and, and how you think even, as easier it is that they do the task that you anyhow expect from them, I guess.
[00:25:40] Glenn Turner: Very true. Very true. I'm glad you keep pulling me back to, to my to-do list because, you know, the, the, the very best people on our team are hungry for more. They're like, "Give, give me more. Give me more. Give me a challenge. let, let me prove to you, or let, let me show you how far I can stretch." and some, s- I I'm often surprised by, by how great our, our teams are, but, but I love seeing in them the realization that they've accomplished something big.
[00:26:15] Glenn Turner: and it, and, and, and that's, that's actually probably my favorite thing in being a leader
[00:26:20] Jens Heitland: Yeah. And that also means that certain things happen where you're not there for a certain amount of time. Like this week you're, you're at least in, on, on, on the, on the show, but you, you had an accident a while back where you, you were out of business a little bit. Share more about that story
[00:26:45] Glenn Turner: Yes. I, in June of 2014, I was in a, a plane crash. and I was out of, work for a long period of time, about three or four months. I couldn't, couldn't really go to the office. and in the early days following the crash, the, the leadership team, of Firestream Worldwide and the, the entire team of Firestream Worldwide really, sent a clear message, which is, "Don't worry, we got it."
[00:27:26] Glenn Turner: And, and they did. the business, continued to run well without me. and, you know, I, over the years before that happened, I, I spent a lot of time on the road with our sales teams. And as we would meet with new prospective customers, I think a, a common question is, "Hey, what's your succession plan?
[00:27:50] Glenn Turner: You know, we, we hear your vision for the business, but, you know, what, what happens if you get hit by a bus?" Of course, that's sort of a... The f- the funny question about succession planning is how big is your team and, and are they, are they ready to, to step in? Can they do, you know, can they do what you say the business can, can do?
[00:28:09] Glenn Turner: And, and we got to test that in, in 2014. I, I think as, as far as I, know and as far as I can remember, I don't think we missed any commitments because I wasn't there on a, on a daily basis. which is a, a lesson that I will never forget, which is why when you and I spoke the first time I, I said I'm constantly thinking about, you know, how do I unload my backpack and, and make it the, the responsibility of, of others.
[00:28:39] Glenn Turner: My, my father, used to-- my father passed away a few years ago, but, he used to go to-- He and my mother used to go to a restaurant in Washington, DC. And the guy that ran that, uh that restaurant, his name was Nizam, he would look at every single plate that came out of the kitchen, and he could tell by looking at it if this food was cooked right, if the parsley was wilted, if the salad wasn't fresh, if the vegetables were overcooked.
[00:29:10] Glenn Turner: I mean, he, he would look at every single plate. I can't do that. I, I cannot look at every plate that comes out of the kitchen as we run, RBS. So I have to trust, that the other leaders and all the people on our team recognize what, what good looks like and recognize, you know, what our customers, expect of us.
[00:29:35] Glenn Turner: and, and just like, you know, I said earlier about recovery, sometimes we have some recovery to do, but for the most part, our teams get it right. They, they know how to take care of customers
[00:29:45] Jens Heitland: Yeah. You, you mentioned that you were on, on the street with your salespeople. that was reminding me to a management methodology one of my mentors did with me, which was learning through osmosis. I was just part of his daily life in between and was l- like, like w- with most probably you, when you go on a sales road, road show, then you just do the things that you do normally and the, the junior is, is going with you and they learn while, while they do it together with you. How did you do that now in, in RBS when you started? How did you get the others understanding how you think, how you operate, and where you want to get it?
[00:30:28] Glenn Turner: you have to dig in. I mean, you know, as much as, it, it's-- I, I think in, in an ideal situation, you wouldn't have to be involved in all the details. But, but I do dig in. I sit with our teams on a regular basis and talk through the challenges that they face in selling to new customers. we talk through product challenges.
[00:30:51] Glenn Turner: I ask lots of questions. I send people back to the drawing board pretty often to go, "Hey, let's think about that a different way." and then sort of circling back to this you have to get out in the field idea, I, I go out with, with our, our sales teams and, and our other leaders and go sit in front of customers and listen to, you know, what their business goals are.
[00:31:18] Glenn Turner: and, you know, I, I learn a lot, I learn a lot from that. And that, that shapes, that shapes the, the plans of, of the company at, on a product level on a regular, on a regular basis. I think, you know, it's funny you said you, you learn through osmoti- through osmosis from the leader that, would, would come spend time with you.
[00:31:42] Glenn Turner: I-- he was-- he or-- was it a he or a she?
[00:31:44] Jens Heitland: G, yeah
[00:31:45] Glenn Turner: Yeah. He was probably learning as much through osmosis, back from you and from, from the, the customers that you visited as the other way around. And, and that's really true for me, is sometimes when I'm sitting with a, with a customer hearing things firsthand, I, you know, I think to myself, "Oh my gosh, you know, that there's an opportunity for us to, add a feature to one of our products or to change how we, provide service."
[00:32:15] Glenn Turner: And so I think, I, I was having this conversation recently with a number of different people about real versus AI, and although I love AI, I, I, I'm a big proponent of, of its use in, in our business and the business of our customers. I think there is absolutely no substitute for real interaction, real face-to-face interaction, not, through Teams, although I loved talking to you today through, through, through a we- through the, the web technology.
[00:32:53] Glenn Turner: But I think if you and I were sitting in the same room, we'd get something different out of the conversation. And, and, and I think that will increasingly be true. how, do you pick up the nuances of an in-person conversation and do something with them that couldn't be done otherwise?
[00:33:12] Jens Heitland: Yeah. And, and linking that to hospitality businesses, they're all physical. Like, they are real people meeting real people, restaurant, hotel, whatever it is, and I think they will just go up over, over the next decades because, like AI, I- I'm, I'm always thinking there's two extremes. One is the physical world, and one is 100% digital, and digital is so fast that we need the, the counter to that as well in, in a physical world.
[00:33:41] Jens Heitland: Like you being at the, at the flight show now physical context, having a digital conversation with me, and I'm pretty sure we'll meet up in the future in person as well
[00:33:52] Glenn Turner: I want to. I, I think that would be awesome
[00:33:54] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:33:54] Jens Heitland: But let's, let's talk deeper about AI. What do you see the opportunities, but also down- downside of AI, in business and in society going forward?
[00:34:06]Glenn Turner: Let's start with the downside because I think some caution is necessary. You can't turn over your thinking completely to AI. Can you use AI to power and inform your thinking and to accomplish tasks? One hundred percent.
[00:34:38] Glenn Turner: but I don't, you know... did you-- in the Netherlands, of course, you must ride a bicycle. When, when, when you were young, did you ever ride a bicycle with your hands off the bicycle? Like, you raise your hands in the air and they're, they're not, they're not steering. And, and I think, you know, using AI is like riding a bicycle in one sense that, you know, you've gotta have your hands on the handlebars.
[00:35:02]Glenn Turner: You've gotta be controlling where AI is taking your business and your team. If you take your hands off, eventually it's gonna wobble and the bike will crash. And so I have said to a few people that I think there's a risk that AI will make some of us dumber. That may sound like a callous comment, but I think there's a lot of human tendencies at play here.
[00:35:39] Glenn Turner: And we, we don't wanna to play to the worst of those human tendencies, which is, laziness and, you know, and, and taking your hands off. So, so the-- there's, there's lots of downsides. Of course, I'm not gonna get into talking about privacy and, and data security and all of that. I think we're all well aware of, of those kinds of, of cyber risks.
[00:36:00] Glenn Turner: But, but I think having, having guardrails and having your hands cleanly on what AI can do, that, that's the, the negative part. The positive part is that, AI doesn't get tired. AI does have the capability to, mechanize some tasks that, take up a lot of time and really aren't, aren't value added.
[00:36:27] Glenn Turner: And so when, you know, in the- In the last one year, we, we went through a, a project with BDO, the big global consulting firm, called Project Aurora in twenty twenty-five, and, and we were really looking at, you know, how do we leverage AI inside our own business? How do we introduce AI into all of our, our product roadmaps?
[00:36:53] Glenn Turner: And if I look at where the world has come since we did that project with BDO a year ago, it, it's dramatic. And so a year ago, we were talking about how do we make, an AI agent, accomplish a task for us. Now we're having conversations about how we manage ten thousand AI agents that can all be doing different things.
[00:37:18] Glenn Turner: And, you know, of course, it doesn't make sense to have ten thousand AI agents in a small business. But if you've got, an AI agent that's watching your reviews, another AI agent that is, watching your social media, another AI agent that's watching, email and watching your, PMS or your POS and pulling all that data together and flagging things that need your attention or responding to guests or customers that need your attention, that's amazing capability.
[00:37:51] Glenn Turner: and a-again, what, what's happened in the last twelve months is, is remarkable. A-in fact, every day I wake up to new-- I, I get a lot of information from different places, but I get a lot from, from Reddit. I... There are certain threads that I read on, on Reddit, and there's a few, blogs that I read. And every day I, I'm like: "Oh my gosh, I can't, I can't believe that.
[00:38:17]Glenn Turner: What an amazing idea." And then I'll go to YouTube and start watching videos and seeing what some smart, creative people are doing with AI, and I'm blown away.
[00:38:28] Jens Heitland: Yeah, same, same for me. I have like an evening, I have an agent that is informing me about AI news every day. So what
[00:38:37] Glenn Turner: Äh
[00:38:37] Jens Heitland: in the, world, and it's getting longer and longer, and longer. You cannot follow up with everything. One interesting point to, to your, to your point with decision-making, this week and next week I have the fortunate situation that I'm supporting young students from around the world who got, selected to be part of European program and learning how to build a startup.
[00:38:58] Jens Heitland: So they're in a three-week sprint, puzzled together, like one from Asia, one from the US, one from south of, of Europe, one from north of Europe, completely different backgrounds. What is interesting, building a business, you think AI can, can teach you everything, but it's very, very, very difficult because what they miss is, to your point of thinking, asking the right question. Because y- you, you need to start a business with a purpose and a problem that you solve as one of the examples, and they miss that right now. Now, I was thinking, oh, this will be super easy this week because they, they know all... They are native AI. They're all youngsters between 20 and 25. They all know their way and, and they, they don't ask me the basic questions. But it came down to all of them have, have asked the wrong question and come, come then back with, with topics that, that are really, really basic, at least for me, because I'm not grown up with AI. But if, i- if, if we don't learn to think for ourselves, it's very, very difficult going forward. To your point, I think it's, it's huge, especially for young people
[00:40:08] Glenn Turner: So, so Jens, what, what advice did you, give them when they start asking you these basic questions? What-- Give me an example of one of the basic questions they asked. I would love to hear that
[00:40:19] Jens Heitland: No, so, so one, one part was, "So what brand should we build?" And I said, "Okay, let's, let's step back. Like, I cannot give you advice on any branding topic if I don't know who your customers is. If I cannot advise you on customers if I don't know what the problem is." And they were not able to articulate what the problem is they're going to solve, and for whom in specifics. So I said, "Okay, let's, let's put the branding on the side and let's focus first on that." that was just one of, one of the many examples.
[00:40:51] Glenn Turner: Did they get it? Did
[00:40:52] Glenn Turner: they, they, did they, understand?
[00:40:55] Jens Heitland: it
[00:40:55] Glenn Turner: Yeah
[00:40:56] Jens Heitland: just they're, they're, they're in, in like a three-week sprint and they, they need to deliver money in three weeks. So they were obviously, "Ah, today is the branding day.
[00:41:04] Jens Heitland: Now let's talk about branding because you're the branding guy." It's like, let's, let's talk branding, but it doesn't help you if you brand something that doesn't make sense.
[00:41:13] Glenn Turner: Right. If it doesn't solve a problem, yeah. I, I think that's the, that, that should've been a light bulb moment for them
[00:41:21] Jens Heitland: Yeah, it was. But the in- interesting part of that is, is, is really have way more experience than I have, and I have way more experience than they have. And this critical thinking and the experience, I'm not sure if there's a right word for it, but it's almost like lived experience. That's never going away, and AI cannot reach that, at least in my perspective. As
[00:41:45] Glenn Turner: Prat
[00:41:45] Jens Heitland: as it can be, but you have so much different experiences that I don't have, and and I interacting, we get inspired by small things that we connect to all our, like, brain, like, ecosystem that is like one thing equals the other thing, and then it's, "Oh, next idea."
[00:42:05] Glenn Turner: absolutely. I, I, I do-- I think that AI can pick up signals where there's problems in the market and maybe lead, someone that's starting a business to seeing a signal and, and trying to exploit that for, for gain. But then back to our AI versus real earlier, you know, you can misinterpret a signal.
[00:42:29] Glenn Turner: It's not until you sit down with someone that's really experiencing the pain, of, you know, running a business that, that you really get the insight as to what's really going on. Because the, the signal is sometimes so far on the surface that what's deep down below, you don't get to without a lot of question asking and back and forth
[00:42:49] Jens Heitland: And, and that's why it's so interesting talking to people like, like yourself on, on this podcast. So one of the things last time when we talked was
[00:42:58] Jens Heitland: there's a particular question that you sometimes ask people, and that sometimes throws people completely off. What is that question? Tell me more about that
[00:43:08]Glenn Turner: I think I know what you're referring to. When I'm getting to know someone on our team or sometimes customers, I'll ask the question: "How did your faith play into what's happening in your business?" It's not that I have a particular bias towards faith or no faith. I'm not biased.
[00:43:39]Glenn Turner: I'm a Christian, but I respect other faiths. But I'm always curious to understand how someone's faith informs them, or lack thereof, which is also an answer that I get occasionally: "I don't believe in God, and I don't think there's any part of it."
[00:43:59]Glenn Turner: That usually catches people off guard because that's really not a business topic. You're not supposed to talk about religion and politics. My wife always, when she's around and she hears me ask a question like that, is like, "Oh geez, why did you do that?"
[00:44:21]Glenn Turner: But you'd be surprised at what dialogue that opens up. So I ask it, and I ask it with curiosity and with respect for whatever's gonna come out of somebody's mouth.
[00:44:39] Jens Heitland: Yeah, I find it fascinating because you-- I mean, I'm also Christian. I, I grew up in a, in a very Christian environment, because my, my father was pastor in, in the Protestant church, so you can imagine. what is quite interesting a-about that question, I've never asked it anyone, but I, I-- Last time when you told me, I, I wrote it. The-- I will definitely going to do it. But it's interesting, especially with, like, older, like, like your generation, my generation, grown up in very specific ways, and also depending on where in the world, obviously. But you, you get more about their cultural background if you ask this question than if you just ask business topics or, like, what ice cream do you like?
[00:45:25] Jens Heitland: What, like, s- like, basic topics
[00:45:28]Glenn Turner: I think that really is a big point you just made: that gets someone away from their college answer or their MBA answer about a problem and pulls it into: "Here's my background, here's what I learned from my parents, or from my family, or from my community," to pull that cultural piece in.
[00:45:55] Glenn Turner: We have, we have, agnostic people on our team, we have Christians, we have a few Jews, we have Muslims, we have Buddhists. I'm not sure what, what other faiths are, are represented, but I'm, I'm sure it's more than that. but one, one of the other things that that conversation brings into play, when we're having it internally, is just the respect that teammates should have for, for one another.
[00:46:22]Glenn Turner: We don't let religious barriers keep our team from performing. Our Muslim teammates, some of them want to be able to pray throughout the day and that's not something that some of the other teammates are used to. So we have to open up the conversation just so that we head off any feeling of, "Oh, the company wouldn't like that if you went and prayed five times a day."
[00:46:59]Glenn Turner: I'll tell you a funny story. This is a little bit separate from faith, but I think what sometimes is at the root of frustration when you see someone working differently than you do during the day is the thought: "If that person is taking time out from their work during the day to pray, then..."
[00:47:26]Glenn Turner: I'm gonna be more productive than them, because I'm not taking five times a day out to go pray." This is the funny story unrelated to faith, but it's an absolute analog for that feeling that people have that somehow somebody's getting away with something. Years ago, I had a boss and I was 20-something; this was back when people stopped being able to smoke cigarettes at their desk.
[00:48:01]Glenn Turner: When I got out of college, you could still smoke a cigarette at your desk in the office. No big deal. But then over the few years after I got out of college, that became banned, so you had to go outside to smoke. I went to my boss one day and I said, "We have to stop the smokers from all these smoke breaks."
[00:48:25]Glenn Turner: I named some names. "I see this person and that person outside smoking all these times a day." I think my boss knew what was gonna happen when we started this conversation, but he was letting me figure it out. He said, "Hmm." We worked in an insurance company.
[00:48:48] Glenn Turner: We were processing claims throughout the day, so you can count people's productivity. You know, s- the number of claims that someone processes, you can count that. this is before computers processed everything. There was still a lot of hand o- hand touching there. Now I think, I think, the insurance company systems do most of the processing.
[00:49:06] Glenn Turner: But anyway, so he said, "Okay, Glen. I tell you what. Before we make any policy changes, why don't you go, pull some reports, and let's see what the actual productivity level of the smokers is versus the non-smokers?" and so we went and pulled these reports. The smokers were dramatically more productive than the non-smokers, even though they were taking smoke breaks throughout the day.
[00:49:36]Glenn Turner: And it wasn't a small difference. It wasn't 2%. It was a huge difference, 10% or 20% difference. I took it back to my boss and I said, "I think we need to hire more smokers." But the point is that what informs people's level of productivity has a lot of different factors to it, and sometimes it's not what you think.
[00:50:04] Jens Heitland: Yeah. And, and spending some time off computer or off, like very concentrated task will help you to, refresh, and that's most probably the case with them. Plus they had
[00:50:17] Glenn Turner: I think so. They had fun outside, yeah
[00:50:21] Jens Heitland: And, and ge-getting that back to, to the religious part, I think it's, it's similar to that. If you, if you can refresh in between, then it, it's fine. But I think even more important, which I like very much, that, that you have that conversations. Because these are, depends where you are in the world, very, very, very, difficult conversations to have. Because sometimes... It depends really where you are in the world. I grew up with many religions and understanding of religions and, like my parents taught us a lot about different religions, obviously. So I know the, the similarities and the differences just from a background perspective. But if you take religion away, in the end we're all human. Yes, we have a different background, we have maybe different beliefs, but in the end, you and I are not much different from a biological perspective. And in the end, if, if we want to get to know each other, if you want to spend time together, then we can do it, and we will do it over time. And I think that's, from an organizational perspective, if the team works together and they like to work with each other, that's the best thing that can happen. Doesn't matter which religion
[00:51:36] Glenn Turner: I think you're absolutely right. I think, it, it started maybe 15 years ago with phones. you know, I think this tendency to get away from human interaction, started to emerge. I mean, even now I, I see, at restaurants sometimes I'll go out and I'll look over at a table and there's two people sitting there, and they're both looking at their phones.
[00:52:01] Glenn Turner: And I think to myself, "Oh my gosh, you know, where, where have we come?" but, but this whole AI versus real, conversation is just an extension of, the emergence of mobile phones. It's gonna-- It, it-- The, the risk here is that it's gonna take us farther away from that human interaction. So to your point, pulling back to, you know, religion, family, culture, you know, what do you do outside of work?
[00:52:29] Glenn Turner: What makes you tick? I, I, I occasionally... not occasionally, every time I interact with someone in our company, I have to remind myself to start with, "How are you
.
[00:52:43] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:52:44] Glenn Turner: What-- How's it going today?" Because my, my tendency, e-especially with Teams and WhatsApp and, and Apple Messenger, is to go straight to the question,
[00:52:53] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:52:54] Glenn Turner: can you look up?"
[00:52:55]Glenn Turner: Imagine if you were sitting next to someone and there was never any cordial informality. It wouldn't be a pleasant place to work or a pleasant place to be. This conversation around faith allows us to get past being so focused on the work at hand and to understand a little bit more about what's behind the hands that are doing the work.
[00:53:38] Jens Heitland: Looking ahead, where do you see RBS but also the hospitality industry moving?
[00:53:44] Glenn Turner: I would have answered this question differently if you'd asked me, a week ago. a-and so l-let me separate the two things out. Where is RBS going and, and where is hospitality, going? Where is software going? That's the broader market that, that I'm focused on. where RBS is, is going is we'll continue to, expand the number of properties that, that we serve on a, on a global basis because I think the, the pressure, of spending on AI and technology will favor businesses that have significant scale, and we serve just under five thousand properties now.
[00:54:30] Glenn Turner: if you look at, Oracle and Muse and Cloudbeds, you know... let, let's, let's stick with Oracle first. Oracle serves about thirty to thirty-five to forty thousand, hotels around the world. they have good scale, and I don't necessarily agree with the way that they, they approach the market, but that scale allows them a measure of flexibility in how they invest, in their technology and platforms and how they serve their customers.
[00:55:01] Glenn Turner: And, and I think, I, I live in the tension of being small and agile and being close to customers and, at the same time, needing significant scale, so maintaining that level of customer intimacy. So we're gonna scale and maintain customer intimacy, and that, that's where RBS is going, and the mission of our business to make our customers more profitable.
[00:55:23] Glenn Turner: And, you know, w- we'll, we'll know that we've succeeded when we have more and more profitable customers. where... Let's talk a little bit about software and then come back around to, to hospitality. I heard an Elon Musk, interview the other day that was really, fascinating, and his, suggestion was that all software goes away.
[00:55:48]Glenn Turner: It's just all AI in the future. When you listen to that, you're like, "What do you mean? I'm not gonna have Outlook? I'm not gonna have Gmail? It's just gonna be AI?" And basically, his answer was yes. In the coming years, everything is just gonna be connected.
[00:56:06] Glenn Turner: You're just gonna talk to the, to the AI, however that happens, and it, it's your means of communication, it's your means of record keeping, it's your means of, marketing. And so it's hard for my brain to, to wrap around that. I, I think the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Software is not gonna go away.
[00:56:25] Glenn Turner: There still has to be structure. There still has to be guardrails and privacy and security and payments handling and all of those sorts of things. But I do think he's right in that things are gonna change dramatically technology-wise, over the next, over the n- very near future. which to me, weeks are going by at a faster click every, every, every week I'm surprised.
[00:56:49] Glenn Turner: I start on Monday and it's Friday before you know it. But, but coming back around to hospitality, I think it's the one, place where There's universal, need for, you know, human connection and being served. and people have different definitions of how they wanna be served, and they can, they can go to different hospitality places for that.
[00:57:15] Glenn Turner: But, but I think, you know, we, we can't disrupt, serving human beings, ser- serving customers and, and guests. I, I think the tools that, our customers have to serve their guests are, are gonna change a lot. We're, we're trying to introduce new things all the time. But I think, you know, it, it's exciting for me to be a part, of an industry that is still gonna have real people in it.
[00:57:46] Glenn Turner: and I don't see that changing
[00:57:48] Jens Heitland: Beautiful. Glenn, you very much for taking your time and sharing all your knowledge and, and your wisdom with me and the listeners. It was fascinating learning you, from you, and about you. Thank you very much for being on-- a guest on the podcast
[00:58:07] Glenn Turner: Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it, and, I, I look forward to, to meeting you in person. I'll have to come to the Netherlands and, and, and, and make a trip. It's-- I, I have been there, several times. It's been, it's been a while though. we don't, we don't have any customers in, in Europe right now, although who knows when that, when that might change.
[00:58:29] Glenn Turner: but, it's always a good stopping point in my other travels, so I'll, I'll make a point of it.