Hi. This is Paul Zellizer and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review. We got an awesome review today for episode 337 of Megan Bott. Anyway, if you could do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business.

Thank you so much. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to LaVar Jackson and our topic today is vertical integration and sustainability in the hospitality industry. LaVar is the founder and CEO of the Yo Group, a sustainable and impactful hotel development and management group. Yo Group is making great strides to be the vanguard of hospitality and sustainability as society transitions to an interconnected, intelligent, and low carbon world. LeVar Jackson, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be on.

There is a few things to talk about here that you guys are doing such awesome work. And but before we get into what you're doing now, LaVar, what would somebody wanna know about you and your background, you know, to give them a sense for the work you're doing now?

Well, I I I'm one of those people that was kind of like the jack of all trades. I've done so many different jobs except for food service because I'm very clumsy. And I've worked at the airports. I've done I've worked at CSA. I've done so many different jobs in my background, but I've spent a large amount of my life, adult life in hospitality, particularly around art and sustain I was trying to do some sustainability around art because hotels are, you know, change out very quickly. And instead of having all the art go in the garbage, what can we do to help keep that out of the waste stream? I also ran a nonprofit. It's called the NWH New York. I was the first president of color and gave away the most money for, scholarships.

We give hospitality student scholarships. And, we and we made our awards focused on impact versus just GPA because the person that has the 4.0 is gonna either get a scholarship through us or someone else. But the person that's struggling along with a 3.0 or a 2.9, but their life circumstances keep them from being able to achieve higher, I really want to focus on that because I have my own experiences going through school. I worked 3 jobs to graduate school without any loans, but I nearly worked myself to death and nearly broke myself. And I became an adult, and I was like, I don't want anyone else to go through that.

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. So we'll find a link and put a a link in the show notes so people can go check out that previous work. And then along the way, you said, okay. Hospitality industry, there's some things we could do different here. Is that fair to say?

Yes. And hospitality has a unique value proposition for changing industries because it's such a large industry and in many countries that are are, you know, island nations or are even the global south, tourism is their number one industry. So hotels, hospitality has an enormous push and they have an enormous push around the contracts that they sign. So when you're doing a hotel, there's $5,000,000 for flooring or textiles or electronics. And depending on that's an individual hotel and they then can redirect that to more sustainable things, you make a huge impact without actually really doing anything. And it's it's just such low hanging fruit that because hospitality is a very old industry, that's kind of like, this is the way we've done it and this is the way we're always going to do it. And we have to kind of break that stigma. Like, yes, you the things that work you keep, but the things that do not work, you move on from and you try a little new things and then you build on on top of that.

When When it comes to sustainability, just got back from a conference, and they're still talking about LED light bulbs and low flow toilets. And, you and I as individuals have not been able to have access to non low flow toilets or non LED light bulbs for 20 years. So if the hospitality is that far behind and we need to push it far ahead. When it comes to the way hotel is, you have a hyper concentration of people being highly wasteful in a very small space. So you've got a 150 sick, you have a 150 room hotel. That's 300 people. If it's 2 people per room, maybe it could be more, it could be 4, it could be 6. And they're, you know, coming in, turning the AC all the way up or the heat all the way up.

A lot of people like to see in their clothes in the bathroom, and then you're not supposed to

do that. But it's I mean, like, it it's highly wasteful for the amount of, like, hot water that has to be produced.