Hello everyone and welcome to the within range coaching podcast.
I'm Ranger, certified holistic success coach, and in this podcast, I'm bringing down the
journey that entrepreneurs face as they start their organization, find solutions to the
roadblocks in their way, and create an impact that lasts.
So if you're an entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, or purpose driven community member that wants
to learn how to grow your impact and develop yourself as the person behind the mission,
then this podcast is for you.
I know you're just as eager to get started as I am, so let's jump right in.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening everyone, and welcome to today's episode.
Now, as most of you know, I'm doing my walk across America currently, and I'm still kind
of in that beginning leg of my journey.
About a week and a half ago, I crossed the South Carolina border into the beautiful state
of Georgia.
And one of the things I tell myself every day during the walk is that there's good people
out there.
I'm not sure if that's just manifesting, convincing myself it's true, or just kind of intentionally
putting my attention somewhere so I can find more of it.
But I will say, regardless of what it is, it's working out very well for myself.
And the reason I bring that up is there was my second night, oh, the night right before
I crossed into Georgia, actually, when I was looking at my route plans for the next week
or so, and I noticed that it was just campsite after campsite after campsite.
One day had a 36 mile walk, there was terrible weather planned for one of the days and the
forecast, and I was just kind of freaking out at my campsite trying to figure out how
I'm going to make it work.
And I don't know about everybody that's listening, but camping isn't something I'm the biggest
fan of.
The ground's hard, it's cold, I don't want visitors at night, it's just not the most
ideal.
I always prefer four walls and a bed.
And as I was looking at my route plans, kind of dreading the reports and the path and everything
I was going to be going over the next few days, I got an email back from a hotel on
my route I had reached out to a day or two prior.
I opened it, it said to give them a call, so I did just that.
And I was able to speak with one of the owners of the hotel, and thankfully, she told me
that they'd be willing to sponsor a room for me for a night or two while I passed through
Washington, Georgia.
And when I tell you the relief in my body made me feel, I don't know if weightless or
I just felt less sore for a second or just not so worried.
I don't know, but I could feel the relief kind of all over my body.
I was going to be able to stay in the historic Fitzpatrick Hotel, avoid the weather, sleep
in a bed, and actually get a day to explore one of the small towns I was walking through.
And the reason I tell you all that today is because we actually have the opportunity to
speak to the couple that's making the magic happen over in Washington, Georgia at the
Fitzpatrick Hotel slash Fitzpatrick Industries slash Fitzpatrick Entertainment.
I am joined today by Brittany and Casey Buttrey.
Casey, Brittany, hello.
Thank you for joining us today.
Hi, thanks for having us.
Of course.
I'd love if you guys could give us a brief introduction of yourselves, a little bit about
who you are, what you do, your background.
But let's go ahead and get started first.
If you could just let the listeners know what y'all's intention for our episode today is.
You know, kind of when we moved to Washington, we left Atlanta, which was our sort of our
home before here.
Our intention was to seek out a different or better quality of life for our standards
to to redirect our life.
And we have found that you can do that with a little bit of creativity and stamina in
a small town environment.
And so we we love sharing that message with folks that you're not pleased about where
you are in your life or in your career.
You can always redirect.
And in this instance, it was a big leap of faith, but has turned out to be a huge blessing.
Yeah, kind of jumping from that, what I'm assuming what the hustle and bustle of the
big Atlanta area to the small town, is that kind of what you're saying?
Yeah.
So, you know, I mean, I hate to put it this way, but like feeling like you're you're living
in a rat race, you know, you're not living in the moment.
You're not enjoying today for today.
You're thinking about what's happening next or what's happening next.
You're always chasing that that next thing, which is sort of the nature of the city, I
feel like sometimes, or at least it was for me.
And so, you know, we were looking looking to slow things down a little more intentional
life and putting ourselves in a rural situation has helped us do that.
Gotcha.
So it sounds like different and better quality of life is being able to slow down and live
more intentionally and put your focus more so where you want it rather than all these
external factors that kind of come with living in a big city.
Yeah.
I mean, for me, I sort of grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta and then I moved to Atlanta to
go to Georgia State and I lived there longer than I did anywhere else, and I always thought
I would like be a city person forever.
And now we live on a farm that you can't see from the road.
And it's like my dream come true.
So and I don't know why or how that happened necessarily.
It's just, you know, for some people.
And I remember being there thinking I would never do anything like this.
But for me now, it's just a more peaceful experience.
And even though I miss like the nice cheap grocery stores and available restaurants and
you know, stuff like that, it's like you have to sort of live a more like intentional life
out here just to be able to, you know, because you're not so immediate access to everything.
But yeah, it's ultimately a better experience for me for us, I think.
Yeah.
A little bit of background on Casey and I, like I said, Casey said he grew up in the
suburbs.
He grew up in Athens, which is about an hour from where we are now.
It's where the University of Georgia is located.
But the surrounding community is very rural.
And I did grow up on a farm.
And we met after we finished college and lived in Atlanta for a while.
My background is in like parties and events.
So hospitality overall, been in food service for 23 years now in some capacity or another.
I've always sort of like had whittled my career down to be focused on corporate events, music
festivals, food festivals, sometimes weddings still I used to do, but parties and events.
And then Casey's background and he can tell you a little bit about that.
I guess like my jobby job for a long time in Atlanta was coffee.
So I like worked in coffee shops and managed coffee shops later on and like learn from
some of the best baristas and then trained a lot of kids for a while.
Like I was, you know, folks were getting me to like train new baristas on like coffee
stuff.
So that's kind of what I'm doing now in town, which is pretty cool just to get back to doing
that.
But while I was with Brittany, you know, while she's doing events, anytime you're sort of
like hanging out with a caterer, you just sort of become an emergency caterer, which
is like how it started, I guess, like, hey, we need to move this on this truck or else
we don't get to go home.
And it well, OK, I'll help.
You know, and then I don't know, after doing that for a while, it was kind of like, oh,
we should we could actually work together and do our own thing because we have all this
experience, you know, and hospitality here.
And it was like, well, is it going to be events?
Is it going to be floral?
Is it going to be whatever?
And then when the opportunity for, you know, managing the hotel came up, it was just like,
I mean, it was like, what movie are we living in?
Like this is crazy.
It doesn't make any sense.
But sometimes in life, I don't know, things happen and it comes at the right time.
How many things didn't come at the right time that we didn't take.
But this one was at the right place and time for us.
It sounds like there's just a lot of different background because it sounds like you both
have very different but complementary backgrounds and experiences that, like you said, when
opportunity showed up here, you had the background in order to.
Jump for it and actually do something with it.
What have you learned about yourselves during those times that opportunity showed up and
you were able to take advantage of it?
I mean, so one thing that I can say about about myself is that I've always sort of been
a risk taker.
I've always been sort of been some somebody who is I enjoy like taking the leap of faith
and then hoping that I land on my feet and then using my intuition in the moment to get
through.
I've always sort of been that kind of person and it has allowed me a lot of opportunities
in life and not all of them are all good.
I mean, obviously, if you're the kind of person who takes as a risk taker, you're going to
often things are going to happen that are not so great or that your consequences are
of the nature that you have to work through.
But sometimes and in many times in my life, it has afforded me opportunities that I would
not have otherwise had the advantage of experiencing.
And this is definitely one of them.
When I told Casey about opportunity to move into this space that we're in right now, the
hotel in Washington as a greater entity, he was like, you have lost your mind.
Like I remember we were living in Atlanta.
We were about to go to bed and I was like, hey, I got this phone call.
This is wild.
What if we did this?
You know, we sort of bounce some ideas around before.
What if we opened a collective for musicians and events space?
What if we open our own coffee place?
Like what if we blah, blah, blah, blah?
What if we did this?
He was like, you lost your mind.
And then two weeks later we were we were out here in Washington checking stuff out and
it was just so terrifying, but so exhilarating.
And it still feels that way five years later, you know, I would say for me, it's probably
more about like the process of like growing up.
I would say I've really done here.
I mean, I did a lot of going in Atlanta, but something about like I was always handy, but
being in this kind of place where air conditioners are dying and wood is falling off and it needs
to be read.
The amount of work that has to be done in a place like this on a regular basis, things
that I've never done before.
But as long as you approach it with an open mind and you're like can watch a few YouTube
videos and learn about like how the thing works and take some time and learn, you know,
figure out how to do it right.
I mean, I've done that with so many things over the years that learning to trust myself
in a whole different way.
And I think maybe that's just a part of getting older or growing up or like, I don't know,
but like, you know, now I'm that frustrated old man when somebody's like the TV's broken
and it's like, it's not plugged in, just plug in the stupid thing, you know, just like.
I think that what I'm hearing you say, Casey, which was something that I've experienced
in my life is competence.
Growing up, I was not a very competent person.
I wouldn't say that I like was introverted or anything.
I just wasn't a competent individual.
And it is amazing what you can accomplish if you have enough confidence in yourself
to to say like, hey, we have 40.
So we have 44 air conditioner units here at the hotel.
It's a hundred and thirty year old hotel.
The air conditioner units are 20 years old themselves.
They break all the time.
There's something wrong with them all the time.
But if Casey has the confidence in himself to say, I can figure this out, almost certainly
he could probably figure it out because he has that that like he's ready to say, like,
I'm going to do this.
And it's the same thing with taking leaps of faith.
Like you have the confidence to say to yourself, if I can land, if I can, if I can do that,
then I can I can figure out what happens next.
I know I can.
And if I can't, then I'm going to be all right because I can figure that out, too.
You know, that's.
And like faking it till you make it is such a terrible phrase because it implies that,
you know, you're just faking when I don't know.
It's more like, you know, dress for the job you want in my mind, because when you do the
thing, you're becoming the person that you want to be or that you're doing the thing
that you want to do.
And then there's there's no faking it to that.
You're actually doing it.
Millennials, we struggle hard with imposter syndrome.
You know, that's real.
That's real.
But if you're doing it, you're actually doing it.
Yeah.
I'm not doing it.
Yeah.
Well, the first step in doing something right is doing it wrong.
And Brittany, I was going to say you tied together what you both said very eloquently
because even I noticed what you were saying with risk taking and what Casey was saying
with trusting yourself is a lot of it just stems from confidence.
And there's a model in coaching and I guess psychology, whatever you want to call it.
The B do have model where you kind of just declare yourself as being the person that
can do the thing, doing it.
And then you have the results.
And it sounds like that's very much what you guys are saying is that it's not necessarily
like you said, faking it till you make it.
It's actually declaring yourself as able to do the thing, whether it's fixing an AC unit
of moving from Atlanta to Washington and kind of I don't want to say starting over, but
starting something different and really just jumping in and saying, I am the type of person
that can do this.
Then you do it.
And now you have everything.
And then when you have the result that when you have that result, that gives you that
gives you so much foundation for confidence moving forward.
So one result gives you the confidence to achieve five results and five results give
you the confidence to forget that you were never confident in the first place.
You know what I mean?
Like to be the wrong person.
Yeah, there's I'm going to butcher the quote, but Alex Hermosy, one of the things he says
is to I think it's Alex build a stack of proof that you are undeniably who you say you are.
So even if you aren't where you want to be yet, just do one thing, then do another.
Then over time, like you said, after your hundredth AC unit, it's not even a question
if you can fix it.
It's just what's the issue?
What's going on?
Again, whether it's something in the hotel and your coffee shop, et cetera, et cetera.
It's just so true to yourself that you can do the thing.
Yeah, you know, we I think and then in a bigger sense, this community itself is on a precipice
small communities in the south.
I mean, that number nationwide were impacted greatly by the Great Recession in 2008.
Because then some communities have died, some small communities have died.
Some small communities have held on to life.
Some of some have like done well.
This community has sort of just been on its ebb and flow for the past few years and we
for the past 20 years.
And we got here at a time when there were people in government, people in the community
who were all sort of in agreement that we could we have a very beautiful place full
of very kind citizens and we can use that to build the kind of community that we want
to have.
And, you know, what we realized in Atlanta is that Casey didn't mention that he's like
an incredible drummer.
He's been part of touring rock bands for a long time.
But you know, like we what we found out when we came here was that when you're in a city
of four million people, you can do incredible things.
You can do incredible parties for Mercedes Benz.
You can be on tour with a famous band.
You can whatever.
But you're just one person in a four million or really six million person greater metro
area, right?
One person doing something really cool.
Lots of other people doing really cool stuff too.
But in a small community like where we live where they're just at thirty three hundred
people to really determine individuals, not to mention as many as we have in town, but
us to determine individuals can make a huge impact.
And that's very gratifying and very confidence building.
We've done a lot of things wrong.
We made a lot of mistakes, but just being able to make an impact.
And that's I think that we all want to do our jobs.
I would live and work, have those things be gratifying in some capacity, you know, to
help people to improve our human existence and being able to do that in and of itself.
You know, for the people in a small community is very gratifying for us for sure.
And very confidence building.
Yeah.
And this is you saying all that reminded me of something that one of my best friends from
high school used to say, like it's rather than be a big fish in a big pond to be a big
fish in a small pond.
And it sounds like that's more so what you're saying, but more with the impact that you
can make in your community.
Yeah, so yeah, definitely.
I think that, like I said, I think that everybody in their careers, I can see for myself that,
of course, you want to to be happy and be at peace for us.
We just want to be able to, like I said, improve the condition of what's around us and just
be the person who when someone asks for help, that we're the ones who raise our hands and
put ourselves in scenarios where we have opportunities to get involved and being involved.
I think that people think that we are like, how do you do all the things you do?
Because you know, we have a hotel, we have a restaurant, we have an Irish pub inside
the hotel.
I run a small business pipeline called Washington Wilkes-Makers Market.
We have an entertainment portion to our business where we book 180 live music acts a year here
in town and around Washington.
And then and then of course, the coffee shop endeavor.
Now, how do you do all this stuff?
And the answer to the question is through focus and determination by surrounding ourselves
with people that share our desires and have their own skills and that we trust.
And we have a group of 25 staff persons that work on our team that in that in and of itself
is a huge risk, you know, surrounding yourself with people to help you pull off the thing
that you're working on.
And it's not because we have like special ability to stay at 24 hours a day.
It's just that we have we have a great staff.
We have a great a great team.
Yeah.
And I think that's also something that's so important to remember is you guys might be
the head and you might be the the people that are more outspoken or doing that shaking hands
and kissing babies.
But there's other people you have that are really on the ground that you've empowered,
that you've mentored, that are really making that vision come to life.
And that's the cool part.
You know, like we were talking earlier about confidence, the hardest part when you're dealing
with employees is like giving them the tools to make the decisions for themselves.
It's like I've hired you because I trust you to make the decisions.
So you don't need to come ask me for every little decision.
And if you screw it up, like it can be fixed.
There's nothing, you know, so big that we can't fix it.
So yeah, I mean, that's the hardest thing around here.
People are very like, oh, no, can I do this?
One thing that I tell our team members a lot is like, hey, I'm going to support you no
matter what decision you make, especially to the customer.
I will always support our team.
You have me to champion you whether I agree with you or not.
Most of the time, if you make a decision that I don't agree with, like I won't challenge
you publicly, I'll tell you, hey, I would have done it this way.
But I hired you because I trust your judgment.
I trust your ability to make this decision.
If you do something that I wouldn't have done, I'll let you know.
But I'm not going to be mad at you.
Like there's I'm not disappointed in you if you're making your best judgment call in that
moment.
And I think that that liberates people to do that.
And that's when you get more hours in your day when a person can use their own judgment
to make a decision without feeling like you're going to be in trouble or there's going to
be some kind of consequence because of that.
So you know, like I said, sometimes like I said, sometimes it's not what we would do
ourselves.
But that's what we're here for is to tell them how we would have handled it and then
help them to hopefully learn a lesson.
Yeah, and that's something just the way that you describe it right now reminds me of the
concept that feedback is just information, that it sounds like you approach it from a
very nonjudgmental, like I'm not mad at you, like I'm not whatever.
But this here's some feedback.
Here's some information.
Use that in the future so that we can make better decisions moving forward.
A big part of I feel like coaching folks is to let them know, like, hey, this is not personal.
I always joke this sort of grass, but like, hey, here at work, we're here to like get
paid and fart on each other.
Right.
So just like, let's try and make the best of it and be respectful and loving to each
other while we're here.
And it doesn't have to be a personal thing when I come to you to discuss how something
went down or how would like to see it in the future.
It's not, it's not about, about you.
It's about the task.
Don't think too much about it.
It's like, it's learning to separate yourself from the task or the moment or the has been
a big, as a person who doesn't like disappoint has been a big thing for me.
And seeing the way that I've grown through it through the years has helped me help other
people grow through it too.
Yeah.
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Our whole conversation is just reminding me of books and podcasts and people and all these
things.
And that, Roz and Ben Zander called The Art of Possibility, 10 out of 10 book.
I'll text it to you if you ever have time to listen to it.
But there's a concept in the book called rule number six, which is don't take yourself so
damn seriously.
And that just reminds me a lot of what you were just saying, like, oh, we're here to
get paid, toot around, whatever.
The job is serious.
Like what we do, the impact we make, the job, like that is serious and that is important.
But on the individual level, one mistake isn't going to ruin it.
Like what we do, like if we don't do 100% perfect, that's fine.
The walls are still here.
There's still going to be an AC unit.
We'll make it work.
Don't take yourself seriously, but take the job and the impact and the mission seriously.
Right.
And you know, that's like, that's easier for us as the leader.
Sure.
Remember all the time, but as long as we can remind them of that and when they need to
you're reminded of it and that's a big part of it.
At this point in our journey, the majority of our time is spent, the majority of my time,
I would say, especially is spent because I don't know how to fix AC units and I'm totally
confident that I don't know how to do that.
But the majority of my time is spent maintaining health of our employees and our staff because
25 people is a lot of feelings and it's a lot of a lot of personal connections and a
lot of personal issues and struggles and trying to live our personal lives at home, but that's
not real.
We're just people.
So I think that for me, a lot of what I do is try and keep our work ethos healthy and
just by listening and coaching and stuff.
So yeah, the con what leave your home life at the door when you come into work.
I feel like that is such a not easy thing to do and it also diminishes the individual.
How is that possible?
Right.
So yeah, if you didn't sleep well last night, then you're tired.
It's not possible.
Yeah, very individual focused.
Something I saw, I can't remember where the interview was.
Oh, shout out Atlanta.
I found an article that you guys were in and in the article, there's a portion that says,
I think this really just ties in everything that you're doing with the the different quality
of life from moving from like the big city to the small town.
You'd set something along the lines of other businesses aren't competition, but collaborators.
Right.
So more is people say like, what is your what's your mantra here in Washington?
More is more is our mantra.
So you know, when you move into a small town, there is a there there is a sort of an idea
that we call it a preventionalist sort of take on business.
Well, if they're, you know, let's say as a preventionalist might think that there's
a another restaurant, then my restaurant won't do as well.
There are only so many mouths to feed.
And if in this community of thirty three hundred and if they open another sandwich place and
nobody's going to buy my sandwiches.
Right.
Just a sort of basic sort of take on that.
And that's just simply not the truth.
So not only is competition breed excellence, but more options breed a larger audience.
So I think the idea that if you prevent someone else around you from succeeding, that it's
going to make you more successful is like one of the most short sighted sort of paths
to success that you that you can make.
That's not that's not sustainable.
That's not seeing the big picture.
So rising tides really do raise all ships.
And that's sort of like an overused colonialism.
But I think that it's super true.
Our local downtown development authority opened a dog park here in our community a little
while ago.
And the argument is certainly that our small like children's parks need help.
Other places, tennis courts need resurfacing.
There's no doubt about that.
But you know, having that dog park is a thing that raises the bar for our community, offers
more folks, more different kinds of people, different things to do.
And I think that when they open the dog park, being dog lovers ourselves, and we have a
human child too, but being being dog lovers ourselves, we bought a bench, a sponsored
a bench in this dog park.
And they're like, what do you want to put on the bench?
Like, what is the thing that you want to put above sponsored by Brittany and Casey Buttry?
And I was like, just put more is more.
More is more, less is a bore.
I mean, that's not really blanket.
That's not really true.
But I mean, I think as far as like, like business and momentum, preventing someone else or denigrating
someone else's progress does in no way make you more important, more successful or more
happy at all.
So we're here to prop each other up for sure.
Yeah.
But your outlook is much more of a long term futuristic, again, building that foundation
for real economic development in the small town rather than just like a short sighted
viewpoint on it.
Yeah.
I think that's just a, I don't know if it's a, I'm not saying it's a small town thing,
but that's just sort of human nature of fear, right?
So fear is the mind killing, right?
So that's a silly quote too, but you know, that it is true that that's the people are
afraid of people have invested their whole life into their business.
Yeah.
And you understand why people get protective or get, you know, angry when a new thing comes
in that, you know, in any way competes that they feel with what they're doing.
But you know, our goal from the very beginning, because we have the hotel, our goal is just
to get more people here.
And that's all that really matters.
We got rooms to fill.
And we can't get people here if there's only two restaurants or if there's only our restaurant
and one other place, you know, it's like, we want a bunch of places and we want all
kinds of stuff.
So it's both the nature of our business and it's sort of part of the ethos.
It's like, we just want more, more stuff, more people.
When we moved here, being in a myth person, I moved here and I was like, holy crap that
we're not going, I'm not going to be able to find a fine, great florists here.
I mean, am I going to be able to find any cake bakers?
What about people who do lighting?
Am I going to be able to find people who do stationary and invitations?
Am I going to be, I mean, just like whatever list of litany makeup artists, MCs, bands,
like, am I going to be able to find all these people that it takes to pull off a killer
party in this rural community?
And it turns out that there are a ton of super creative people that live in our community
and probably in almost every community.
Then if you invite them to the table and you invite them to be part of the conversation,
they show up and we saw them show up.
And then we said, holy smokes, we need a place for these people to show up on the regs.
And so we built this makers market concept with the intention of having it be a place
where people who are creatives in our community can show up, do their thing, test their hand
at retail, test their hand at inventory, test their hand at space, interfacing with the
public in like a business setting where they're like low stakes, selling a product, inexpensive
to be part of the event, 20 bucks to be part of the event.
And it's become like a huge thing.
So makers markets five years old this year, and we have our next event coming up on April
20th.
There'll be two like really great local bands there.
There'll be like 13 food trucks in addition to our downtown restaurants.
And there are so many people at the event that we need those food trucks to supplement
our local restaurants just to feed people, which is incredible.
And there'll be like 70 craft vendors, so 70 local folks who make something, who have
made enough of something to sell at this event.
And then we have sponsors, local businesses that sponsor that allow us to offer free things
for kids like face painting, bounce houses, zip lines.
We do a variety of different things throughout the year at different stuff at different events.
But these events where we just sort of like opened the door up and said, hey creatives,
like come show up on quarterly for one of our events that we have on our beautiful downtown
square brought to you by Washington Wilkes makers market will organize it and will provide
you with the advertising and all that stuff.
Just show up and try your hand at it.
And we've helped tons of businesses get their LLCs and move into that next consulting phase
with the small business development center at the University of Georgia.
But anyway, yes, there are a ton of people in this town who can make and do and it's
surprising, like I said, when you ask, when you ask with an open mind and a clear intention
in your heart, who will stand up and say like, I can.
And I think that's a great way to kind of wrap up that conversation in terms of the
way that I kind of describe entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, community members is there
are people that make magic.
You are saying I am going to do this event.
You just say like it's a declaration, like you're saying I declare I'm going to do this
event.
That's kind of the spell.
And then a few months later, it materializes because you made those contacts.
You made that outreach.
You made the event happen.
And what's what I admire the most about your type of magic is it's about empowering other
people to share theirs.
And I think that's so needed and special and unique.
And just as a quick shout out, small business development centers are fantastic.
And if you are thinking of starting a business, I got mine.
I worked with the I think the UC Merced Small Business Development Center by where I live.
And that's just such a such a valuable resource.
Like you said, like you guys help people with their LLCs.
That paperwork is so complicated.
It's so annoying.
But there's so many people out there, free resources, cheap, whatever that are willing
to help.
So as a quick shout out to everyone, I mean, are also most public universities are going
to have a SVDC.
And like I said, the university is local and they have cheap, inexpensive, free, very inexpensive
business coaching that have helped us.
Even persons who are relatively mildly experienced in business have helped me to take new steps
and learning about.
I mean, they've sent me to economic development classes for our community, just as a business
person.
Yeah, no, they're they're amazing resources.
And I I encourage everybody to just Google, just Google Small Business Development Center
SVDC near me.
Go to your university, ask for resources like it's just it's fantastic.
But in terms of reaching out and checking out resources and everything, if people want
to learn more about you guys, the Fitzpatrick Hotel, I don't know, work with you or check
out your event coming up on the 20th.
Like where where should they go?
Cool.
So lots of ways to find out about us.
The Fitzpatrick Hotel dot com is our website.
You can visit there to see professional photographs of the hotel and our 17 hotel rooms as well
as our event spaces.
You can book online there.
Maddie's Public House, MADDYS pub is our our Irish pub here on site in this old Irish hotel
that we have here in Washington.
And the Nest is Casey's Community and Coffee House that's next door that's producing high
quality really great coffee.
And then, as I said, Washington Wilkes Makers Market is our is our small business pipeline.
All of those our little community uses Facebook like it's like it's the newspaper, let's just
say when you live in a community of thirty three hundred, you can communicate pretty
effectively through a free constantly updating source like Facebook.
So we're very active on Facebook because of that.
But all of our businesses have websites as well.
And our local Chamber of Commerce, of which I'm the president currently, our local Chamber
of Commerce, Washington Wilkes Chamber of Commerce dot org has an events calendar on
it that we work.
We as a chamber work really hard on keeping updated for our whole city so you can see
what's going on down from what our little local theater is producing to what the Garden
Club is doing to what one of our historic museums are up to to events we have on our
downtown square.
We have nine signature events on our square, which Washington Wilkes Makers Market helps
produce four.
So we have a lot going on in this little town.
We like we're kind of the place to be.
Just saying like but you can only move here if you're really cool or really weird.
So in between one of the yeah, no, I really enjoyed my time in Washington.
So if you are in that Atlanta area or Athens or whatever and you're able to make the couple
hour drive or week long walk to Washington, I would definitely I will put you up for free.
Seriously, it's yeah, it was it was amazing.
I don't know my I've been in a lot of hotels throughout my life and I just thought it was
so cool having a physical key.
I don't know why I'm so caught up on that, but I think it just really adds to the historic
aspect and really the vibe and step back you take when you're in the hotel.
Polarizing it's polarizing.
It's so cool.
You know, people we talk a lot about setting the expectations here.
So you're saying in America right now, if people are out of property, a chain property,
then you know that their expectation for what they're going to receive is very different
than what they would receive at 130 year old haunted hotel.
Right.
So the ghosts aren't real, but the stories are fun.
But so setting expectations that key is a that's you know, that really floors some people.
So wait, you don't have electronic.
No, no, we don't.
And it's we kind of like it like that.
And if you lose the key, we have to redo the locks.
So don't lose it.
But no, thank you guys.
I super appreciate it.
All of your guys's contact info and the websites email, all that kind of fun stuff will be
down in the show notes and the description.
But again, thank you for taking what 45 ish minutes to hang out with me and for putting
me up and show me a really great time in Washington.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
Of course.
Thank you guys.
And I'll see you later.
All right.
And of course, thank you to everyone for listening to today's episode.
I think that my biggest takeaway from Brittany and Casey's interview was just the importance
of taking advantage of opportunities as they arise and not just that, but really positioning
yourself in a way that allows you to take advantage of those opportunities.
And that really stems from their own experience living in that Atlanta area of really just
diving in on the different jobs, the different skills that they're able to develop so that
they could take them from that bigger city area and bring it somewhere that's really
needed so that they can create the biggest impact possible.
And once again, I'll be posting all of their information down in the show notes.
So if you are ever in the Washington area, go ahead and check out the Fitzpatrick Hotel,
go to Mattie's, their little Irish pub next door, the coffee shop next to that, and just
go to all the beautiful museums and libraries that the space has to offer.
There's really a ton to do in their small town.
So I'll be posting all that in the show notes.
Check it out.
And as always, remember to have fun, stay safe, and be yourself.
Thanks, guys.
See you next time.