The Secret to Finding Success at a Startup: Staying Light on Your Feet

Emily Bishop’s background has almost nothing to do with hospitality. She spent her first few years after college working on Capitol Hill, followed by several years, including the 2020 and 2022 elections, working in political fundraising… until she got a casual message from an old high-school classmate seeing if she had any interest in leaving politics to join him at a hospitality start-up that he believed in whole-heartedly.

Insert Record Scratch.

I am Emily Bishop – Most of the time, if you’ve read any of our blogs, you’re reading entries that I’ve worked with our talented team on. But I wanted to introduce myself to you after one year working in the hospitality industry at Brightwild, and to point out a few things I’ve learned in the last 365 days (literally, one year to the day.)?

If you want to be different, you have to do different.?

“You all don’t look like a traditional travel company.”?

“Your tone is so different from your competition.”?

“The units you all have designed are insane.”?

These are just a few things that I’ve commonly overheard while working at Brightwild.?

Our team is dare I say radical–And it starts from the top, down. Our founder and CEO, Billy Spottswood, is innovative, bold and is willing to take calculated risks, all to raise the standard of the hospitality industry. But what may be most important is the fact that he isn’t scared to learn from his own mistakes, catalyzing the rest of his team to emulate that same sentiment. (I have no need to try to earn brownie points here, just speaking the truth.)?

And then that funnels down to my boss, Dave Imber, Sr. Director of Creative. Dave is the most visionary boss I’ve ever had, self-proclaiming that he hires implementers while he helps collaboratively set the tone and vision for the company’s creative work.?

And then that funnels down, and down and down, hopefully being felt directly IN our properties.?

We don’t want our guests to get caught in the red-tape of travel. We want you to be the captain of your trip, with easy access to help, tips or advice all in the ease of your back pocket (No, we’re not going to shrink a team member and place them in your pocket with you, but we will guarantee they’ll always be available by phone call or a quick text message.)?

When you stay at one of our properties, we want you to tangibly feel a difference from every other ‘ho-hum’ hotel and vacation rental that you’ve stayed in previously. We want you to know that you have a team behind you who wants to make sure that your stay is memorable, from the “dreaming” process before you book your trip to the moment you board your plane or hop in your car to head home.?

Our goal at Brightwild isn’t to just provide you a place to rest your head at night and store your belongings. Our goal is to help you create a memorable experience that you’ll want to try to create again and again.?

Hospitality is a lot of work, by design, with intention.?

Sales. Operations (Maintenance, housekeeping, etc.), Accounting. Creative. Risk.. Real Estate. Owner Success. Guest Experience.?

So many different departments are necessary to create a hospitable property from the moment a property is listed online to the point where a guest leaves a 5-star review for their perfect stay. Think about it with me for a second:?

1. A property is onboarded, likely from our sales team and then our owner-success team.
2. Then, a property has to be staged and photographed.?
3. Those photos and descriptions of the home are then uploaded to numerous booking engines. Before that’s done, our operations team works on strategically pricing out units–all while making ownership easy and rewarding for our homeowners.?
4. Our GEMs (via operations) ensure guests have everything they need for their stay to be extraordinary. Regardless that be an itinerary for a bachelorette party, decorating a unit for a birthday or anything in between, our GEMs work their tails off to ensure guests are satisfied.?
5. Our creative team then works to promote these units – whether that be on social media or in paid advertising, should the owners want to go this route.?
6. The list goes on, but so much work goes into ensuring each owner is happy, our guests are satisfied and that we–as a team–are doing all we can to ensure all parties are content.?

As a communicator, I’ve been taught to tie my thoughts up with a bow, so let me try to do just that:?

Dave likes to joke around stating that agency hires are the best hires you’ll ever make. Thanks, Dave… Agency lifestyle is a grind, often cranking anywhere from 60-90 hours a week out of you, certainly during election season. Agency employees are often nimble, quickly jumping from one client to the next, all while tackling numerous types of projects.?

Bringing that experience in-house to a hospitality startup has been anything but boring, especially from a communications/digital perspective.?

At Brightwild, my role ranges anywhere from the simplicity of writing social content to the complexity of teaching myself how to build websites on a platform I’d never heard of before this job, Webflow. (S/O Webflow University.)?

Although my experience is just my own, I feel like it speaks to a lot of who we are at Brightwild.?

We all have many different roles.?

We’re self learners.?

We have light-feet.?

Our GEMs wear so many different hats, as built-in-travel agents, experience-directors, on-the-ground support and so much more.?

And I haven’t even mentioned our development team, who at any moment, is working on designing/developing properties all over the state of Florida, and these properties are guaranteed to stun you. Sneak a peek HERE and HERE.?

Saying that I’ve learned a lot in a year sounds cliche, but it’s the truth.?

Switching from the world of politics to hospitality not only lowered my heart rate exponentially (this isn’t an exaggeration,) it also strengthened my creative muscles that I hadn’t had an opportunity to flex in a long time.?