Is about seeing potential in others.

I really like to focus on building trust and open communication with my team.

Each person learns and develops differently.

One of my proudest moments this year was working with a bartender named cj.

Midway through our season this year we had an opening for a hotel manager position.

It was a no brainer.

CJ was the perfect person for the role.

He had some doubts about stepping into a management position.

CJ ultimately decided to take the role and told me stepping into leadership was his proudest moment in his career so far.

For me, moments like this are why I love what I do.

Real quick note.

My family and I just got back from an incredible cruise with Uncruise.

Now, we'd experienced what cruising was like on a big ship with thousands of people and frankly, it just wasn't for us.

But this one was completely different.

It was a small boat of less than 100.

We had an amazing time where we saw whales and other wildlife, inspiring nature hiking, kayaking and bushwhacking, which is hiking without the trails.

And we received incredibly personalized service guides who get you off the beaten path and gorgeous sunsets.

Everything was so easy and with no lines, they provided incredible meals, including sustainable seafood, not to mention a list of impressive cocktails.

My wife, daughter and I loved it.

When we returned, I asked Uncruise to become a show sponsor and I was excited when they agreed.

Right now they're offering special deals on cruises in Baja, Mexico and Alaska.

That includes the incredible luxury, service and adventure that we experience.

To learn more, go to benleads.com cruise that's benleads.com cruise for the latest deals.

Welcome back to lead the team with number one bestselling author and in demand corporate trainer Ben Fanning.

On this podcast, the world's most innovative senior leaders share their top success strategies to motivate your direct reports, cultivate your top leaders and accelerate your career.

Get started.

Here's Ben.

Hey everybody.

Welcome back to Lead of the Team.

Today we have for you Donnie Rensbottom, who has over a decade of experience with Uncruise small Ship Adventures.

Now my family and I, we have sailed on two Uncruises, one to Alaska and one to beautiful Baja.

And let me tell y'all, they were inspiring, remarkable and so unique.

So much so that we've actually hosted their founder, Dan Blanchard and other leaders, their guides, people that have worked on their team and we've connected with them so much that they're actually a sponsor of the show.

And today I'm even more fired up because we have a completely different perspective today with Donnie because he started out with Uncruise as a Steward back in 2013 and then served as senior hotel manager since January 2024, overseeing operations and fostering the exceptional guest and crew experiences.

And I can vouch for him, he's held over six different positions in the hotel department within Uncruise.

And he's known well for his mentorship, inspiring leadership and including coaching team members and coaching team members towards promotions and career path inside the organization.

Donnie, welcome, welcome.

Welcome to lead the team, sir.

Thank you.

I'm excited to be here.

Yeah.

So how have you approached mentoring team members and could you share a success story?

Yeah.

I personally believe mentorship is about seeing potential in others, providing them tools, guidance and encouragement they need to succeed.

For me, it's not about micromanaging, it's about creating a supportive environment where people feel confident to grow.

I started UnCruise at 25 and as an out gay man, it was the first workplace that I totally felt confident to be myself.

So I knew when I came up in management, I always wanted to create a safe space for people where they just felt confident to be their true authentic selves.

As far as my mentorship process, I really like to focus on building trust and open communicate communication with my team.

I really like to use individualized approaches and just recognizing that each person learns and develops differently.

I think that's super crucial.

I think understanding that everyone has a different communication style was definitely my biggest flaw as a manager.

But once I understood that, everything else came easy.

It's just really important to provide real feedback, celebrate everybody's wins and use challenges as a teaching moment.

I would say probably one of my proudest moments this year was working with a bartender named cj.

CJ just embodies the confidence and charisma you'd expect from a great bartender.

And he is an incredibly bright, very personable.

Midway through our season this year, we had an opening for a hotel manager position.

And in my mind it was a no brainer.

CJ was the perfect person for the role.

When I approached him about the opportunity, he was a little hesitant at first.

He had some doubts about stepping into a management position.

And that reminded me of when I was approached for my first leadership role.

And I second guessed myself, as I'm sure a lot of people do.

I took the time to just listen to CJ's concerns, really validate his feelings, and then just laid out all of his accomplishments over the years and I explained why his successes in his current role would translate seamlessly into being a great hotel manager.

CJ ultimately decided to take the role, and in my opinion, he did a phenomenal job at the end of the season.

He wound up applying to be a full time hotel manager for this next summer and told me stepping into leadership was his proudest moment in his career so far.

And for me, moments like this are why I love what I do.

I love watching people grow and just realize their potential.

It's really incredibly fulfilling for me.

Over the years, I feel like I've learned so much about the food and beverage industry while working with Uncruise, and my goal is to just share that knowledge with my team.

Every season, I really strive to help my team members gain the skills and confidence they need.

So by the end of the season, they're not just leaving with a cool experience, they're also leaving with a skill set to be able to walk into any restaurant in America and hopefully get a job.

And for me, that was just such an exciting testament to see CJ go through that process.

Yeah, I can tell from that story that it is really, like, really proud of that.

And so one, you had to identify the talent, nurture the talent, see the possibility within the people working for you and then encouraging them to step out of their comfort zone.

Now, for listeners, they're hearing this word hotel manager.

I thought Uncruise was a cruise line.

You explain why there is a hotel department on a cruise line?

Yeah, so the hotel department, we handle basically everything that's inside of the vessel.

So the hotel department consists of a hotel manager, bartender, and stewards.

And so that team is responsible for cleaning all your cabins.

We are making your beds, we're serving all of your meals, serving all your drinks during cocktail hour.

It's a very busy department, but a very fun and rewarding one as well.

Yes.

One of the things that's unique about cruise too is you get on the first day and they're like, okay, this is the hotel manager.

Like, you're meeting the people.

And like, he mentioned CJ the bartender.

I have not met cj, but I have.

I know I've met a couple of bartenders.

And y'all, there's like, there is one bar, there is one bartender, maybe a backup bartender, but I mean, they are responsible for making a lot of drinks all week.

I mean, it is a lean operation, but the people you have on there, they are so energetic.

And man, you, you have put together some great teams, at least on the ships that we bought.

I've been On.

Yeah, I can say this job really attracts a lot of like minded people and everyone is just so happy to be there.

And the guests that we get on board at Uncruise, they are there for the trip of a lifetime.

So they're just excited to be there.

So seeing their excitement really gets our team excited and just really allows us to provide amazing guest experiences.

Yeah.

So what's it like being a cruise line executive?

So getting in there, I mean, you could be a leader at any kind of organization, but you are here.

You are going all in on small ship cruising.

Like, what's that like?

Well, I would say it's a unique and multifaceted role.

No two days are the same.

One moment you're working on budgets, the next you're handling guest experiences, mentoring team members, trying to fill holes in schedules.

There's a blend of hospitality, adventure and operations that makes it incredibly rewarding, but it also comes with challenges.

We're always adapting to unpredictable environments, balancing crew dynamics.

We have anywhere from two to six vessels operating at one time, depending on the season.

And they're operating in different states, different countries, different time zones.

So that alone comes with a lot of challenges logistically.

And I would say one reason I wanted to take on this new role is because I felt like I knew the kind of support I wanted and needed when I was an onboard manager and I wanted to be able to offer myself to be that support.

So whether that's hopping on a phone call at midnight, answering the last minute email, my hours might be 8:30 to 4:30, but the ship is operating 24 hours and my team knows I'm always available.

They even all have their own special ringtone.

So I know when it's a hotel manager calling.

Even my partner is familiar with that ringtone.

So he knows when he hears it that I'm definitely is.

Dan's like a bear.

If he called or something like that, like, or maybe a friendly bear.

Dan Blanchard, the founder's ringtone, does he have a special ringtone?

Not so much for Dan, just for my onboard hotel managers.

Okay.

Oh, the people.

All right, y'all, check it out.

So it's not his bosses, it's the people that work for him that might be calling urgently.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Sorry, dad.

Yeah, so they all have their special ringtones.

I definitely know it's them.

And it might not be the best work life balance for me, but it's something I'm willing to sacrifice so my frontline workers feel supported.

The highlight is just being able to create unforgettable experience for the guest and foster a tight knit community for the crew.

What do you think the rest of the leadership world can learn from a cruise line leader?

What can they learn from a cruise line?

Well, always be flexible.

It's easy for a lot of people in leadership to say they work nine to five jobs and like I said, the cruise line, it's a 24 operation.

It's always moving.

There's so many moving parts.

You definitely just need to be adaptable and flexible and have a lot of patience.

Have a lot of, yeah, he emphasized a lot of patience.

A lot of patience, flexibility and patience.

And so let's, let's dial it back a little bit.

So for those of you that, that can't see Donnie's office, he's got some New Orleans stuff and we started talking about it.

Turns out he's from New Orleans.

So what when thinking about your how you grew up in New Orleans and what that was like, what did you pick up?

Living there has helped make you a better leader there at Uncruiser.

I would say being from New Orleans, you, hospitality is just really beat into you.

It is such, it's a hospitable place.

Everyone is welcome there.

Growing up in New Orleans has just provided me with so much confidence in myself to be who I am as an individual.

It's just such a big mixing pot of so many different cultures and so much history and a growing up.

If I was walking down the street and someone said hello to me and I didn't say hi back, my mom would slap me across the head because that's just a part of being from New Orleans is it's hospitality.

It's in your blood.

You talk to everyone, you're nice to everyone.

You treat everyone with respect and just treat everyone the way you want to be treated.

Would you or your CEO be a good fit for this podcast?

If you know a uniquely talented leader who has a story to share and a message to deliver, then we'd love to host them on the show.

Go to beneleads.com apply to fill out a quick form where you can let us know a little bit about yourself.

And my team will take a look to see if we're a good fit.

That's beneleads.com apply and looking back over your career, what's, what's the advice you'd give your younger self or something you tell that person to try?

Well, I would say definitely trust the process.

Don't fear taking risk.

I think my younger self was often hesitant to Step out of my comfort zone.

But those decisions really ended up shaping my career the most.

One of my favorite mottos of the company is make new mistakes.

And I've definitely made some throughout my time.

But that's what makes you grow.

Learn from your mistakes.

Become a better version of yourself.

Admit your failures, especially to your team.

It makes them feel more confident in themselves, knowing that even someone in a leadership role will make mistakes from time to time, and that is 100% okay.

I think I also remind my younger self that leadership isn't about having all the answers.

It's about listening, learning, and most importantly, lifting others up.

So do you have a favorite mistake?

A favorite mistake?

I wouldn't say my favorite mistake was in leadership.

I was a steward on board.

I was clean cleaning two cabins at once.

And we have to sanitize the Jacuzzi jets and hot tubs every week.

And trying to save time on a busy turn day, I was filling one tub while cleaning the other.

Forgot about the one tub, and it flooded the whole cabin.

Flooded the cabin below it.

And I thought I was fired on the spot.

And Uncruise really lives up to that motto is, it's okay to make mistakes.

Just make different mistakes.

And I will say I've never made that mistake again.

And every season, whatever vessel I'm working on, I love to tell that story.

Just to let others know that it is okay to make mistakes, but also to maybe put in their head, don't fill two bathtubs at once.

Yes.

Because if they made it and you told them about it, that that might be the same mistake.

Yeah, but it's.

It's cool that that exists.

But there's Jacuzzis on cruise.

Cruise lines to be.

Oh, yeah.

It's really, really nice.

Cleaned.

Even better.

Oh, yeah.

Especially after a long day of hiking.

I bet that Jacuzzi tub feels really great.

What's the worst leadership advice you've heard?

I think the worst leadership advice I've ever heard is do it like it's always been done.

Obviously, we.

We don't want to reinvent the wheel, but if you lock your team into not being able to try something new, I feel like that's only going to stunt their growth.

You know, at Uncruise, we really value change.

And my mentors are Kirsty and Amy, who's our vice president of operations and director of hotel operations.

They really value that mentality.

And over the years, they just created a space for me to try new things.

And if it works and it's better, then great.

We found a better way of doing something.

If not, no hard feelings.

We'll do it the original way until we can maybe find a better solution.

I feel like every generation thinks that their generation knows best.

I'm even guilty of it.

I'm sure everyone out there is.

But the world is constantly changing.

Technology is changing.

The way we view things are changing.

So I think change isn't something to be afraid of, it's something to be celebrated.

And I believe that that goes for every aspect in life.

And at Uncruise, we.

We get a lot of young folks into the company every year.

And with that, they bring a ton of new knowledge.

They bring a bunch of new ways of thinking.

And we would be silly not to value their thoughts and ideas or at least scare them into thinking they couldn't pitch something if it's new.

I just know I would never want to work under someone who thought that way.

Yeah, it really goes to show, I mean, being a smaller organization, you.

You bring people in and you need them to innovate.

There's not an innovation department.

There's not a change department.

Like the whole entity is about change and improvement.

And it makes total sense.

I think everybody should be thinking about this for their team and themselves and bring people in.

Are they the kind of person that's going to bring new ideas?

And how can you create a culture like you've got an Uncruise in your team where you can foster that.

It's kind of fan.

That flame of innovation.

I think it's super important too, to.

To help your team grow in that way.

I've definitely had over the years, people say, hey, let's do something this way.

And in my mind, I know it's probably not the best way to do something, but if I don't let them figure that out for themselves and at least let them try, then I'm just gonna look more like a dictator.

Yeah.

And you're.

And you're setting them up to come to you and y'all, he's got ships out there every day of the year practically, and they can all.

They're always going to call you.

And they may need to problem solve.

Right.

They need to problem solve on board.

You can't magically transport yourself to La Paz to fix.

To fix things.

Right.

You got to have them willing to step into that.

Yeah.

As much as I would love to transport myself to La Paz, especially in the middle of winter, it's not always possible.

What so thing?

I mean, working for UnCruise for so long.

You have got to.

Have you shared the hot tub story?

But there are probably some other crazy stories of when the hotel situation was dire.

Something's clogged, something's broken, then somehow you got it done.

What.

What's one of the craziest stories from.

From the Donnie archive?

I don't know if anything is just too crazy, but we've definitely.

Everyone has equipment failures.

I think one of the craziest things that's happened to me over the years, one morning I got up and I see deckhands running around panicking.

And our deep freezer went out in the galley and you only have a short window for meat and milk and anything that's perishable.

So they're all freaking out and not knowing what to do.

And something clicked in my head and I said, hey guys, we've got beer fridges at the bar.

I said, so grab everything.

Let's grab everything now.

And so at 7 in the morning, we are just loading meat up into the bar area.

We took the beer kegs out, we're putting meat and eggs and milk into the beer fridge.

And the guests are wondering what's going on.

And I always believe, be honest with the guests, there's no reason to lie to them.

And so we just told them, hey, one of our freezers went down.

So this was a last minute solution was to just run everything up to that beer fridge in the bar.

So.

And they were kind of.

They love when, not when things fail, but they love to see us just problem solving and doing things.

And they get so excited to know that when it's almost comforting for them to know that, yes, we're out at sea, but we are so well trained that we are pretty much prepared for any problem, hopefully.

I love that.

And it's inspiring.

It's inspiring to be with people that are on their game and used to responding.

And I know inside is probably tying you all in knots, but you're presenting it very pleasantly.

And I suspect because you're forcing that smile, it does.

Like, okay, we can handle this.

It's an encouraging environment.

And on the, on the, on the guide side, I mean, y'all, you're in nature in Alaska, right?

You're in Baja.

Things change, the wind changes.

Yeah, you have to be flexible.

And it's.

That's one of the things I really appreciated about this was it wasn't an uncruise is not an overly like, sanitized experience.

And maybe it is clean, but I mean, it's not.

It's not like you're.

You're like a stale environment where everything's just perfect and everything's just set up like.

So everything on.

I feel like everything on the ship has a purpose and it's very organized and you get to see some behind the scenes.

You get to see the guides planning stuff.

You get to see.

I never got to saw the beer, the beer cooler used that way, but I would have enjoyed that.

And then it probably would have cracked a beer on top of that.

No, this 7:00am oh man.

So, Donnie, what's your.

This is diving into a little bit behind the scenes.

But obviously we're in a world full of giant cruise ships.

Here comes mighty Uncruise on the smaller scene.

How do you think about that as a leader?

You know, people, you know, what you're.

How you're presenting on cruise versus people that might be used to going on bigger cruises and what their expectations should be and how they should think about it.

As far as a guest or crew.

Yeah, either one or both.

Well, I just think that with Uncruise everything is so different.

I've been on big cruise ships and I've had fun on big cruise ships.

They're fine.

I don't want to talk ill about them.

But at Uncruise, it's a different experience.

We are such a small ship.

Our largest ship is 86 passengers.

And so you are going to get to know every guest whether or not you want to.

Because we don't have a signed seating.

It's everyone come in.

And we, during COVID we did kind of have a signed seating.

But now that that's kind of gone, we really encourage the guests.

Sit at different tables, talk to everyone you know, and you're even going to get to know the crew.

And it's so exciting at the end of a cruise.

We all line up at the end of the week and guests are hugging us and they're crying and they're just.

It.

It's so magical to be part of someone's experience.

And for a lot of people, that was one of their dream trips of their lifetime.

And it's just so great to be a part of that.

It's just.

It's such a different experience from a big cruise ship, I feel like.

Or a crew member.

You are not just a number on our ships.

You.

Everyone is just this one cohesive team and everyone knows everyone.

And I hate to use the words we're a family, but I have made some of my bestest friends I've ever made working at Uncruise and we've just.

It attracts like minded guests and it attracts like minded crew.

So you just get a lot of fun, energetic people that is so excited to be there.

Well, sweet people might be listening.

And by the way, from my perspective as a guest, I get that and the people I've interviewed, I mean I've interviewed the top leaders and it does seem like a like minded group.

And I'm just curious from your perspective like bottling that up and like a formula, like if you want to create a fun vibe that's supportive.

Are you hiring for this or you.

How are you all creating that lightning in a bottle as an organization over at Uncruise?

That is the million dollar question.

And I think really what it comes down to is that it's just like minded individuals.

This is not a job for everyone.

There's a lot of pros and a lot of cons.

The cons being that you basically are running away from your real life and coming to adult summer camp.

You're.

It's not for everyone.

You're working seven days a week, you're working six weeks at a time.

So we just attract those people that really want to do those kind of jobs and those people just happen to be some of the best people I think in the world.

Donnie, what a place.

Yeah.

Land this interview or I should say to Doc or McPort with this interview but I will turn it over to you for your parting words message to maybe share a little bit about either what it's like your leadership philosophy or what it's like working on cruise.

You've already shared a lot of that, but if there's anything else there.

Yeah, I think it's as far as being a leader, especially on a small cruise ship, you really have to give a little, take a little.

You just really need to be there for your team.

Working on a small cruise ship, you cannot be a manager that just sits behind a desk.

You really have to be active.

You've got a lot of different personalities that you're managing.

Managing.

You're in a region where it's not where everyone is from the same city or the same country.

So you've got a lot of people from different walks of life, different religions, different ways of thinking and you just, you have to be so adaptable and you have to really be there for your crew and foster a just pleasant, fun working environment.

If not, you are going to drain your team so quickly and they're just not going to want to work for you.

So really being there, showing them the support, allowing them a safe and creative space for them to be their own individual selves really reflects well on them and reflects well to the guests as well.

Thanks for coming on the show, Donnie.

Thank you so much Ben.

It's been a pleasure.

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