🎙️ From Night Auditor to Hotel COO: Doug Karle's 30-Property Journey with LHR Hospitality
Doug Karle, COO and partner at LHR Hospitality Management, spent two decades turning complicated, underperforming hotels into market leaders across the Midwest. From his accidental start as a night auditor after the Army to managing a portfolio of branded and independent properties worth over $350 million, Doug shares the operational instincts, leadership lessons, and personal reckoning with a rare genetic cancer syndrome that shaped the way he runs his business and his life.
✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:
Starting as a night auditor and van driver after the Army and never looking back
The best advice his business partner ever gave him: you're not as important as you think you are
Taking over a North Dakota hotel during the Bakken oil boom with no labor and rates set too low
Raising room rates $10 at a time until the staff started raising them on their own
Why bad hiring runs feel like a streak and how fear and desire make them worse
Building culture as the only reliable retention tool in labor-scarce markets
Technology and guest experience: why Hilton's phone key freed staff to actually serve guests
Eight strokes in July 2014 that led to a VHL diagnosis shared with his son
Becoming president of the National VHL Alliance and lobbying Congress for NIH funding
Why calmness in complex situations is his most important leadership trait today
🌟 Doug's Key Mentors:
JD Detveller (High School Teacher and Coach): First mentor who showed Doug that someone could have an impact on everyone around them
Sergeant Bill McCutcheon (Army): Was harder on Doug than anyone else in the squad because he saw something in him; taught fortitude without apology
Ken Golder (Hospitality Leader): Assigned books like Seven Habits, focused entirely on leadership development and people
Jerry Troian (Real Estate Developer): Taught Doug the fundamentals of business in simple, relentless terms; the Dread Pirate Robert of mentors
Doug Roady (Business Partner): Brought together the people side and the business side; taught Doug to step back and work on the business, not in it
👉 Don't miss this conversation about what three decades in hospitality, a rare cancer diagnosis, and a good business partner can teach you about staying calm when everything is on fire.
