Susan: You're gonna be like i never should have had this idiot on my show! When your

Susan: bean has knit enough socks this you can sell the socks in air quotes sell to

Susan: buy furniture and accessories for your beans apartment

Danny: Hi, and welcome to 5 Random Questions, the show with unexpected questions and unfiltered answers.

Danny: I'm your host, Danny Brown, and each week I'll be asking my guests 5 questions

Danny: created by a random question generator.

Danny: The guest has no idea what the questions are, and neither do I,

Danny: which means this could go either way.

Danny: So sit back, relax, and let's dive into this week's episode.

Danny: Today's guest is Susan Barry. Susan is known for connecting ideas across hotel

Danny: investment, operations, and marketing.

Danny: As host of the award-winning Top Floor podcast, named a Top 10 Hospitality podcast

Danny: by the International Hospitality Institute in 2025, Susan sparks curiosity and

Danny: conversation by interviewing leaders who are shaping the future of the industry.

Danny: Susan founded Hive Marketing, a firm specialising in B2B demand generation for

Danny: the hospitality industry, and she's also known for her sharp insights,

Danny: humour and ability to push conversations beyond the expected.

Danny: She lives in Atlanta with her artist husband, Sean. So Susan,

Danny: welcome to 5 Random Questions.

Susan: Danny, thank you so much for having me. What a nice introduction.

Susan: I just want to put that on repeat and listen to it.

Danny: You're very welcome. And obviously, this is an audio-only podcast,

Danny: but we're in a room that shares video.

Danny: And I mentioned before starting recording, behind you is a lovely print that

Danny: turns out that your husband is the artist of.

Susan: Yes, it's a huge painting. It's an abstract with lots of different colors,

Susan: which is a little bit out of character for him,

Susan: but still something that I feel really lucky to be able to have my hands on

Susan: because it's too big for him to transport to fine art festivals.

Susan: So I get to have it as my backdrop, and it always sparks a lot of conversation.

Danny: Understandably so it looks amazing and this is one of the reasons I wish I did

Danny: a video version of this podcast yeah it looks very very good so kudos to your husband,

Danny: And as I mentioned in your intro there, your podcast, you know,

Danny: it's a top podcast, an award-winning podcast, and it's been running for more than 200 episodes.

Danny: And one thing that caught my eye in the description on your website is come

Danny: for the expert tips, stay for the load and dock stories.

Danny: I'm guessing the load and dock is the delivery because you used to work as part

Danny: of that. Is the delivery load and dock area of hotels? Is that correct?

Susan: Yes. Okay. And in hotels and restaurants and maybe every other kind of company,

Susan: the loading dock is where people go to dish the dirt and tell their secrets,

Susan: share their crazy stories.

Susan: Hospitality is very, very, very famous for having the truly craziest stories of all time.

Susan: And so when I initially started planning out the show, I really just wanted

Susan: to invite people to come on and tell me their hard-to-believe stories.

Susan: But the folks that I was developing the show with were like,

Susan: it's probably going to be a pretty short show if all you do is take one story.

Susan: So that's how we end every episode after the interview, by hopefully getting

Susan: people's crazy, funny, weird, wild, wacky stories. My mom is an avid listener

Susan: and in her words, the more salacious, the better.

Susan: So you can truly hear just about anything on the loading dock.

Danny: It sounds, and as you mentioned, also there's like some crazy stories that you

Danny: would imagine would come through.

Danny: And speaking of your hospitality career, you started that by sleeping in your

Danny: car, events and parties.

Danny: I've got to assume that that must have been pretty a different kind of experience

Danny: from what you do now. No more sleeping in your car now.

Susan: No, it was horrible. So I ran an off-premise catering company in Tallahassee,

Susan: Florida, which is the state capital of Florida.

Susan: And during the legislative session, we would be so crazy busy that there wasn't

Susan: time to go home and sleep or change or do anything like that.

Susan: So I would have to like catch a nap in my car in between events.

Susan: Also, and this is so gross, but I often drove my car for like smaller caterings,

Susan: you know, if we were dropping something off or whatever.

Susan: And I at one point had like an half inch thick layer of baked beans in the trunk

Susan: of my car from it splashing out over the side of the hotel pans,

Susan: like very disgusting, very nitty gritty hard work.

Susan: Everyone thinks that the hotel business is a lot of hours and a lot of work,

Susan: but compared to off-premise catering, it was a cakewalk.

Danny: And I can imagine, so we spoke, you were from Atlanta, baked beans,

Danny: I would think, can be a bit pungent if left on a trunk or a car in hot weather.

Susan: It was so bad.

Danny: But now you've moved on from that. No more baked beans in your life,

Danny: or at least not in that way anyway.

Susan: Exactly. Although I do have a slight aversion to baked beans and now I'm starting

Susan: to put it together. Maybe that's why.

Danny: It's coming from your past, coming from your past. Yeah, I can imagine that

Danny: would be something. It put me off some point as well.

Danny: Well, hopefully we don't have an inversion. Nice move, little segue there.

Danny: Hopefully we don't have an inversion to any of the questions that we're going

Danny: to put you in the random question hot seat for.

Danny: So if you're ready, Susan, are you ready to jump into the random question hot seat?

Susan: I am so ready, nervous, and excited at the same time.

Danny: Awesome. Let me just bring up the random question generator and we will jump in.

Danny: Okay, interesting one to kick things off with actually. So Susan,

Danny: question number one, if you could relive any day of your life, what would you choose?

Danny: And what would you do differently? So a little two-paro there.

Susan: Oh my goodness. Okay, I can absolutely think of a day that was so amazingly fantastic.

Susan: I would love to relive it like once a quarter.

Susan: And that was on a trip to Europe with my husband to visit his brother,

Susan: who was stationed in Germany in the Air Force.

Susan: And we were going to a bunch of different places, but we went to Florence,

Susan: met up with some of my brother-in-law's friends, and took a day trip to Tuscany.

Susan: So there were six of us, five, six of us, crammed in this tiny little European

Susan: car with a private tour guide who took us from farm to farm,

Susan: olive oil grove to vineyard all throughout Tuscany.

Susan: And the last place we ended up, we were going to have lunch.

Susan: It just so happened to be my husband's birthday. And so the proprietors of this

Susan: vineyard where we were having lunch offered to let him learn to saber a bottle

Susan: of sparkling wine as sort of like the celebration of his birthday.

Susan: Now, this is probably as a result of the lunch, which included quite the significant

Susan: wine tasting alongside of it. But it was just the most magical experience.

Susan: I can still picture him saboring the top of that bottle of Prosecco.

Susan: And then on the way home, our private tour guide decided that we needed to have

Susan: a teeny tiny car karaoke.

Susan: And so was playing all these songs that he thought a bunch of weird Americans would like.

Susan: And they were all songs that we had never heard before.

Susan: So it was quite the experience. And we just sang along and pretended like we knew what we were doing.

Susan: It was absolutely top three life experience of all time. I wish I could do it once a week.

Danny: And like you mentioned there, Tuscany, that's a beautiful part of Europe.

Danny: It's like gorgeous. And obviously the vineyards there, you sampled, gratefully.

Danny: So I'm curious, what songs did the driver feel that you would enjoy?

Susan: I don't know. I think that we were giving an 80s vibe, like sort of the skating

Susan: rink, Madonna, NXSC kind of music.

Susan: But it wasn't that. I do not know what he was playing, but it was nothing that

Susan: I knew the words to. So I just...

Susan: Sang along and tried to fake it until we finished each tune.

Danny: Well, that's the best way, though. It's like I always, it reminds me of my uncle

Danny: when I used to live back in Scotland as a young teen.

Danny: He'd love to get up and sing, you know, at bars, well, not so much restaurants,

Danny: but bars and places like that.

Susan: Sing for his supper.

Danny: Yeah, exactly. But he did not know a lot of songs. So he'd start off with the

Danny: words that were correct, but then me and I went to...

Danny: I don't know if that's a Scottish thing, but yeah, it sounds like,

Danny: you know, that kind of translates across the globe.

Susan: A hundred percent.

Danny: That is awesome. There's a guy here in Toronto. Well, I'm not in Toronto, but close enough.

Danny: He's like a cab driver, Uber driver kind of thing.

Danny: He's got his own channel on like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, et cetera.

Danny: And what he does, I think he's called Trip Guy, and I'll leave the link to his

Danny: channel in the show notes.

Danny: But what he does, when the guests, if you like, get into his cab,

Danny: like the passengers, he'll hand them, so he'll put on lights,

Danny: like big sort of, you know, LED lights to turn the car green,

Danny: blue, red, all that kind of cool stuff.

Danny: Give them a mic and they choose the song they want to sing from his collection.

Danny: So they know the song. It sounds like that'd be something that you'd probably

Danny: be more up for because at least you know the song, right?

Susan: Yes. Well, plus those karaoke machines will give you the words.

Susan: So even if you don't know, you can sort of figure it out.

Susan: Whereas just these random songs on the radio, I was a little bit lost.

Danny: I hear you. But no, that's a great memory. And because you're in the industry,

Danny: you know, the hospitality industry,

Danny: Do you ever get to, like, sorry, not quite replicate it, because obviously Tuscany

Danny: is Tuscany, but is there anything that's going to come close in your travels to that?

Susan: Oh, I would say because of the beautiful landscape and the vineyard of it all,

Susan: that being in the Napa Valley is so much like being in Tuscany and vice versa.

Susan: I did a consulting project in Napa many years ago for several months.

Susan: And so I was doing working at a hotel, the West Inverasa, Napa.

Susan: And I remember waking up the first morning because there was a huge time difference.

Susan: So I woke up at like five o'clock in the morning, just like wide awake and

Susan: And looking out the window and seeing hot air balloons, like floating across

Susan: the horizon and just thinking like, how is this work?

Susan: Like they're paying me to be here. This is insane. So definitely Napa is quite

Susan: the similar feel. And look, it looks similar too.

Danny: I've heard that. And anytime I see pictures of the Napa Valley in that region,

Danny: it's like you say, you've got all the vineyards and you've got like a sunset

Danny: that's glorious in the background.

Danny: And, you know, a lot of little birds or balloons floating across.

Danny: So that's part of my bucket list because I do like a nice wine.

Danny: So part of my bucket list is to do a proper, you know, tour somewhere where

Danny: it's got a really nice place like that.

Susan: Okay. Well, I have to tell you a secret. The general manager of that hotel,

Susan: of that Westin, his name is Don Schindel.

Susan: He's Canadian. In fact, he has a Canadian football league. Is that right?

Susan: CFL championship ring that he let me try on that weighs like about 15 pounds.

Susan: So maybe you have an in with him, the Canada connection.

Danny: But my buddy in Toronto, he runs his own marketing agency. He has a lot of connections,

Danny: you know, kind of like that. But I don't think it'd be that one. But that'd be awesome.

Danny: I'd have to just organise that. So that's on my bucket list anyway.

Danny: So I like that. That was a nice question to ease into the randomness.

Danny: So let's have a look then to see what we do at question number two.

Danny: This has been up before, but it's been a while back. And I kind of like questions like this.

Danny: So if it's okay, Susan, question number two. Would You Want to Know When Yule Day?

Susan: No, no way. I don't want to know. In fact, this is like a little bit crazy sounding.

Susan: So be cool. But ever since I was a little kid, I've always sort of fantasized.

Susan: I can't even believe I'm about to say this out loud. But I've always sort of

Susan: fantasized about dying in a rogue like drive by shooting or something like that,

Susan: because it would be so sudden.

Susan: You would have nothing leading up to it, no dread, no misery,

Susan: no discomfort, just like one day you're shopping and the next day you're gone.

Susan: Now, I really don't actually hope that I get shot, but I hope that I die completely

Susan: unexpectedly in my sleep at peace.

Danny: I think...

Danny: I was going to say, I think most people, not most people were your first example,

Danny: but I think most people, yeah, would like, would want it to be peaceful.

Danny: You know, you're asleep and you're not really aware of it.

Danny: I'm wondering, because I know the guest that had this question,

Danny: it was one of the early seasons.

Danny: So I can't recall the answer offhand. But the guest that had the question chose

Danny: to know in advance, only because from that point of view, you can maybe let

Danny: people know and ease them into,

Danny: you know, the people that would be left behind and prepare them.

Danny: But I don't know if that'd be the same.

Danny: I think that was more about if you had like that terminal wellness, for example.

Susan: I wonder if your answer is different if you have children versus not. I don't have children.

Susan: So, you know, I feel like there's probably a little bit less of the,

Susan: I mean, everybody I know is my same age, right?

Susan: We're all going to go at some point. So they don't need to worry about it.

Danny: Yeah, no, that's a good point. I mean, I'm a little bit older than my wife.

Danny: So hopefully she'd live another 10 years, at least before, you know, after I clogged.

Danny: But yeah, it's interesting you mentioned kids, because anytime I see people

Danny: that have kids and parents die, it can be really hard for the kids afterwards.

Danny: I watch the Jack Osborne show on his video podcast and when his dad died and

Danny: passed, you can see it still tears him up today.

Danny: And I always wonder, can you try prep your kids for that?

Danny: So I guess you can't really prep people. Everybody's different, how they react to death.

Susan: I don't think so because I have experienced the death of loved ones recently.

Susan: Who we knew would be dying soon.

Susan: You know, we were just sort of waiting for it to happen.

Susan: And it still felt different when the moment happened. So like,

Susan: you're sad leading up to it.

Susan: You sort of get accustomed to the idea.

Susan: And then when it happens, you're sad all over again. There's no amount of preparation,

Susan: at least for me, there was no amount of preparation that would have changed my reaction.

Danny: Yeah, I always wonder how our daughter would react. She's a weird one.

Danny: She's a teen, just became a teen last year. She'll be 14 next month, actually.

Danny: And she cares. She's a very caring soul.

Danny: But around death, like when our dogs passed, she was like, was there blood? Are they dead now?

Danny: It's very matter of fact in your face about death and no emotion.

Danny: And she was sad, but it was the same when her great-grandma passed and she asked

Danny: her grandma, so her grandma's mom died, And she asked her grandma,

Danny: so what happened? Was there blood? Is she dead now?

Danny: And this was about a week after the lady had passed. And obviously,

Danny: my wife's mom was distraught.

Danny: So she's very in your face. And I don't know if that's a good thing or not. What do you think?

Susan: I think everyone copes with sort of unknowns and grieving in different ways.

Susan: I mean, I probably have a tendency. First of all, I'm a crier,

Susan: so I will cry like if I get too happy, I'm crying, much less too sad.

Susan: But also I think I have a tendency to make maybe some slightly inappropriate

Susan: jokes, which probably doesn't please everyone in my life.

Susan: So I think there's a huge spectrum. It's also maybe trying to understand death

Susan: and trying to understand the sort of physical properties of it,

Susan: thinking that that will unlock understanding of the emotional properties.

Susan: Not that that's necessarily possible, but that may be what she's thinking.

Danny: That's a good, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I don't want anybody to die,

Danny: so I can test that theory.

Danny: That's a good point.

Susan: Get a goldfish. That's a good practice.

Danny: Yeah, we used to have beta fishes. We couldn't keep these poor little souls alive.

Danny: So we'll probably bypass that one. But yeah, I like that, actually.

Danny: And it's like you say, everybody's different from a joy point of view.

Danny: How people react to positivity can be different as well as negativity, right?

Danny: So I shall ask. I won't ask her. I'll just monitor her.

Danny: Next time a major event like that happens, I will monitor her and I will let you know how that goes.

Susan: Well, and here's a way maybe to test the theory is to give a detailed explanation

Susan: physically of what happened and see what,

Susan: then what is the reaction. Do you know what I mean?

Susan: Like, well, the heart stopped and then that caused the, you know,

Susan: I don't feel like getting into too much detail, but you know what I mean?

Danny: Yeah, I'd prefer to put an explicit rating on this one. But yeah,

Danny: I hear you. It's just like, yeah, we'll try that for sure.

Danny: And like I say, I will update you. So you'll either get a happy update or a, what did you do?

Danny: What are you telling me to do? Update.

Susan: Okay, okay.

Danny: We will see. Well, that's a different one. It's a different one.

Danny: So let's have a look then at question number three.

Danny: And I feel this might be a lot, but I'm going to find out. Question number three,

Danny: Susan. How often do you use your phone?

Susan: Oh, my Lord. I use my phone all day, every day.

Susan: Here's the problem. I am a very avid reader, but I only read e-books like I read on a Kindle.

Susan: And my favorite way to read on a Kindle is on my phone.

Susan: So that is a very stupid habit to get into because if you're already holding

Susan: the phone and you're reading a novel, it's quite quick and very tempting to

Susan: slide right on over to TikTok,

Susan: watch a few videos, and then go back to your book.

Susan: I'm gonna tell you this though, I got an app maybe a week ago, maybe a little bit more,

Susan: I am going to sneak a peek at my phone because I cannot remember the name of the app.

Susan: But if you're searching for it, you can Google Hank Green Productivity App.

Susan: Okay, it's called Focus Friend.

Susan: This app I learned about on TikTok, of course.

Susan: It's a little bean and the bean knits socks.

Susan: So when you want to focus, you set a timer and the bean will knit socks for

Susan: the entire time that you don't touch your phone. Every time you touch your phone, you lose a sock.

Susan: When you've, when you're, you're going to be like, I never should have had this idiot on my show.

Susan: When your bean has knit enough socks, this, you can sell the socks in air quotes,

Susan: sell to buy furniture and accessories for your beans apartment.

Susan: It seems like utter nonsense, but for whatever reason, if you start the timer

Susan: and then you pick up your phone and it says, don't interrupt me.

Susan: And you're watching the Bean knitting socks, you're like, oh my God,

Susan: oh my God. And you like throw the phone away.

Susan: So listen, my point is this, I'm working on it.

Danny: But that's why I sort of gave that little preamble beforehand because I feel

Danny: that with your job and the industry you're in, it's very much always on kind

Danny: of, you know. Yes, yes. It's a 24-7 industry.

Danny: So I completely get that. I do love the sound of that app.

Danny: It's almost like it knows you've got bad habits, for example,

Danny: but it's showing you whether you can have a bad habit, but in a good way.

Susan: Yes.

Danny: It'd be really cool. And maybe it does this as well. I'm definitely going to

Danny: check it out because I can be really bad at, you know, going down that vortex

Danny: of YouTube, TikTok, everything. And I think, where did the last four hours go?

Danny: You mentioned, so obviously Knit sucks and then you can buy stuff for his apartment.

Danny: I mean, it'd be really cool if some of the stuff that you could sell maybe for

Danny: other users, you know, that could buy or even,

Danny: you know, if you're really good, an X amount of percentage of app profit or

Danny: whatever, whatever that looks like. I'm just waffling now.

Danny: Goes to, you know, like charities for kids with ADHD, anything like that.

Danny: You know, that'd be kind of a cool.

Susan: That's a good idea. There's a pro version of FocusFriend that I don't pay for.

Susan: So there may be all kinds of other options that I just don't know about.

Susan: I'm still very new to the sock knitting business. But once I learn more, I will share more.

Danny: Sock knitting business. I like it. And obviously, as you mentioned,

Danny: we can understand why you're on your phone a lot.

Danny: Is there an app that you wish you could use?

Danny: Take off, even though you'd miss it a lot, because you know that takes up a

Danny: lot of your time that doesn't need to?

Susan: That's a hard question to answer because some days and after some things happen,

Susan: in the United States. I wish that I had no apps. And I wish that I could stop

Susan: seeing how crazy things are getting in this country.

Susan: But so I guess my knee jerk answer was going to be Instagram.

Susan: But then Instagram brings me so much comedy and happiness and joy too,

Susan: that I would never want to give it up.

Susan: I think probably the answer with Instagram is to continuously reset your feed

Susan: so that you're focusing on the things that make you happy and not interacting

Susan: with things that bring you down so that you don't get more of it.

Danny: Yeah, I hear that. I stopped using Twitter.

Danny: I can't call it X. I know it's called X, but I stopped using Twitter when it

Danny: was still Twitter because I just felt it was becoming really toxic.

Danny: And I can't be doing with that.

Danny: So I moved over to Blue Sky and was very specific about feeds I followed and

Danny: not getting recommendations. And I have like auto play switched off for videos

Danny: because I don't want to see something accidentally, especially,

Danny: you know, as you mentioned, news cycles, etc.

Danny: A lot of times show really horrible stuff to get clicks and views.

Danny: Right. So you don't want that in your life.

Susan: Absolutely.

Danny: I hear you. There's like a really cool. I mean, this is just like a really poor suggestion.

Danny: But there's a phone called like the Simple phone or something.

Danny: And it basically it all allows you to make calls, receive texts.

Danny: And I think that's it. And set alarms and there's nothing else.

Danny: You can't download apps or anything. And I've always tempted to kind of try

Danny: that, but I feel like yourself, Susan. I miss Instagram and the fun stuff you can see in there too.

Susan: Absolutely. Well, and you know, the other thing that I feel like it's important

Susan: to say because most people won't ever say this is I actually don't think that

Susan: being on your phone and screen time is like the devil that we believe it to be.

Susan: If I weren't doing that, I would be watching TV.

Susan: So I'm just watching TV on a different size screen.

Danny: No, one of my previous guests, Tim, Tim Truax, he's a Canadian,

Danny: and he was talking about, no, it wasn't Tim, sorry, it was Colin Gray from the podcast host.

Danny: And he was talking about the same thing where a lot of the time we look at our

Danny: kids being on their phones a lot and thinking it's bad.

Danny: But what he found was his daughter was playing Fortnite and basically the phone was on.

Danny: So her friends could FaceTime as a private group, you know, they're not letting

Danny: anybody in. And they could speak and talk and, you know, make plans in that

Danny: whilst working as a team on Fortnite.

Danny: So it's not, it was keeping up the art of conversation as opposed to just playing

Danny: this video game all the time. Right.

Danny: So I think there's more nuance than just having a six or eight inch screen in

Danny: front of you taking away your life, so to speak.

Susan: Agree.

Danny: All right. Well, I like that. And I do, I do like the fact that you,

Danny: you know, you have some bad habits and you've got that app that will help you.

Danny: And you know that, yeah, you could get rid of Instagram, but why should you?

Susan: Because Instagram's got great stuff too. I would laugh so much less if I got

Susan: rid of Instagram. I have a hilarious feed.

Susan: So that is where I get all my good jokes to steal.

Danny: Exactly. Well, I like that. I like that. It's a good mid-round question, if you like.

Danny: So on that note, let's have a look at question number four.

Danny: What is, and again, I'm curious because obviously you're in,

Danny: you know, around the food industry. What is your favorite pizza topping?

Susan: Oh, Lord, Danny, this is impossible. I love pizza. I love it so much.

Susan: I have so many different pizzas that I like for different reasons.

Susan: All right. The first, if I could only have one pizza topping for the rest of

Susan: my life, it would be pepperoni. Obviously.

Susan: Pepperoni is delicious. The little baby pepperonis that curl up on the sides

Susan: and collect like a little bit of the delicious pepperoni grease on the inside, A++, amen.

Susan: However, if I were getting a pizza buffet for the rest of my life,

Susan: I would have pepperoni pizza, absolutely.

Susan: But then I would have a Hawaiian pizza, yes, with pineapple, bacon, ham, etc., A+.

Susan: I would have an anchovy pizza with anchovies galore, salty, weird,

Susan: delicious. Nobody else would want it but me. A+.

Susan: And then there's a pizza place in my neighborhood called Grant Central,

Susan: and they make something called, I think it's called the Deluxe Vegetarian or

Susan: the Supreme Vegetarian or Veggie Supreme, something like that.

Susan: But, you know, it has all the vegetables, but then it has little pieces of fried

Susan: eggplant, like what you use for eggplant Parmesan.

Susan: And then because we're contrary, we add Italian sausage to the veggie pizza. OMG delicious.

Susan: How much more time do we have? Because I could keep going on and on and on about

Susan: pizza, but hopefully that's enough.

Danny: No, and every single one of them, and I've said this before with other guests,

Danny: I have to stop asking food questions because every time you'll finish an episode

Danny: where food comes up, I'm salivating.

Susan: No, I'm so hungry.

Danny: That was mentioned in that episode. And pizza, I mean, pizzas are,

Danny: it's one of these staples, right?

Susan: Pizza is a perfect food.

Danny: Exactly. And I feel I'm glad you said Hawaiian. I'm really glad because that gets so much hate.

Susan: I know. It's so good. People are dumb.

Danny: It's good.

Susan: Oh, I forgot one. It's related to Hawaiian. There's a pizza place in Atlanta called Freedy.

Susan: And this is going to sound gross, but it is so good.

Susan: It's just like plain, maybe white sauce pizza. I can't remember.

Susan: Or garlic and olive oil, whatever. Like not red sauce is my point. Right.

Susan: And then they put pineapple and gorgonzola cheese.

Susan: Sounds disgusting. Tastes amazing. Highly recommend.

Danny: I may have to try and I'll find that website.

Danny: Hopefully they've got a website and look to see what they put on.

Danny: I'm going to have to try to do that myself and I'll leave links to these places in the show notes.

Danny: So, you know, if anybody wants to check out them, I'm curious though.

Danny: On the pizza front, are you a deep dish or are you a thin crust?

Susan: I like thinner crust, but I don't like crust so thin that it's like a cracker.

Susan: I like New York style where it's thin, big slice of pizza that you can fold in half.

Susan: And I really like just very delicious crust.

Susan: Deep dish, not for me. What about you?

Danny: No, I think it's weird. I think it depends on the pizza and where you're getting

Danny: it from because I've had some great deep dishes but I do tend to like the ones

Danny: where as you mentioned New York and you're holding this massive slice and you've

Danny: got to hold it with two hands and stop it flopping at the triangle part because

Danny: it needs to flop as a pizza.

Danny: So I feel that's my preference too. Maybe the crust, maybe a thicker crust.

Danny: And I know some places do stuffed crust now so you might have like garlic and,

Danny: you know, herpes cheese or something.

Danny: But yeah, I'm very much like you. I like to be not too thick that I have to

Danny: take an age to eat it. I want to scrunch it down.

Susan: Yeah, no knife and fork. No knife and fork with pizza. I want to be able to,

Susan: most of the time, pick it up and eat it.

Danny: Exactly. So it sounds like you'd be a New York versus a Chicago type pizza.

Susan: Thousand percent. Listen, if all I could have is Chicago style pizza,

Susan: I'm still going to have the pizza.

Susan: But if I got to have a choice, yes, New York for sure.

Danny: Okay, well, I shall make sure to point listeners over to your site so they can

Danny: debate the joys and the perils of New York versus Chicago and keep you busy

Danny: there. I'll get them to tag you on Instagram, actually.

Susan: Oh, fantastic.

Danny: Awesome. So that was like, and again, I'm salivating. So let's move on from

Danny: the food question because I will start to want to actually make that food.

Danny: Okay. Yeah, I like this one, actually. This is a nice one to sort of finish off with.

Danny: I'm curious about this, because you mentioned, you know, you've got your husband

Danny: who's done his art and you've got your career, etc.

Danny: Susan, for question number five, what is the ideal age to get married?

Susan: Ooh, what a question. This is controversial, I think.

Susan: I was 31 when I got married, but my husband and I started dating when I was 23.

Susan: I have seen many, many, many people that I know get married at age 25,

Susan: and he and I were together when we were 25.

Susan: So I think 25 is the youngest you can be without being too young to get married.

Susan: But I still, my gut tells me that you want to be late 20s, early 30s,

Susan: just so that you don't regret your decision.

Susan: What about you? How old were you when you got married?

Danny: Yeah, so I was 37 when I got married.

Danny: So yeah, a good few years back, aging myself there.

Danny: But yeah, I feel that was good because I was able to get any weird stuff out

Danny: of the way, you know, and then just concentrate my time on my partner, stroke wife.

Danny: But I do also see the other side where you see high school sweethearts and they've

Danny: been together 30, 40, 50 years. I think my wife's grandparents were that actually.

Susan: Oh, wow.

Danny: Not high school, but they were, I think they got married and I could be wrong

Danny: but I think they got married around about the Second World War period,

Danny: so they met as part of like a blackout you know and you got chatting and you

Danny: know when you went underground to the cellars or whatever it was to stop bombs

Danny: etc I think that's what was happening.

Susan: That's romantic well plus when you're going through something like that you're

Susan: like the world's probably going to end let's just go ahead and get hitched

Danny: Yeah that's true and they were so happy they were so happy if I had to give

Danny: a template for how to find true love and happiness in a marriage,

Danny: I would point to these guys.

Danny: They're both passing unfortunately, but yeah, it's just,

Danny: I do feel, now do you feel like you can have a younger marriage,

Danny: so like 20, 21, even 25, as you mentioned, but kids should maybe wait until

Danny: you're in your thirties.

Danny: So, or is that something? Because I know you mentioned that you don't have kids.

Susan: Yeah, I don't have kids. My sister got married when she was 25,

Susan: I think, and then had her daughter when she was 27 or 28.

Susan: I'm making that up. It's something like that. And she's incredibly happy,

Susan: has a wonderful now grown adult daughter.

Susan: So I think it really probably depends on the person and the couple versus a hard and fast rule.

Susan: And if there is a hard and fast rule, I am not the person to make it.

Danny: Well, it's interesting because we've got friends that have got kids and not got kids.

Danny: And the friends that do have kids had them at different times of their life

Danny: compared to other friends.

Danny: And the ones that don't have kids are 100% purely happy.

Danny: They're not even bothered about kids. So I think it's like you say,

Danny: I feel like society, hopefully, isn't as well.

Danny: To be a happy family, you need to be the man, the woman, the two nuclear kids.

Susan: Right, right.

Danny: I think the stereotype that used to be, right? It's like hopefully better now,

Danny: though I can still see there's still mindsets that need to change on that front too.

Susan: Absolutely.

Danny: Well, I like that. I feel like I know my listeners.

Danny: If I look at my data, my listeners are between 25 and 44. That's the prime age

Danny: group. And it's a pretty even split, actually, between male and female.

Danny: So there's food for thought. You're in that age bracket.

Danny: Susan's just told you what her thoughts are. I've just shared what happened to me.

Danny: If you ever feel that we did talk sense in this episode, now you know what age to get married at.

Susan: Yes.

Danny: But I feel that was a nice way to end your time in the random questions hot seat, Susan.

Danny: As is only fair, I've had you in there for about 30 minutes on the hot seat

Danny: there, 30, just under 35 minutes.

Danny: It's only fair to hand over the question asking baton to you.

Susan: All right, Danny, my random question for you is, what is the worst piece of

Susan: advice you've ever been given?

Danny: The worst piece of advice?

Danny: Uh i'm trying

Danny: to think of like i got advice from parents that didn't work out

Danny: or teachers or anything like that or even bosses um

Danny: actually yeah so it's it's not

Danny: quite advice um but it was advice on

Danny: someone's point of view and thinking if that's allowed because

Danny: i can't think of advice offhand but this put this like sticks

Danny: with me um so when i was younger as i mentioned i lived in

Danny: scotland and at that time certain attitudes

Danny: certainly my family's side or certain generations of

Danny: my family had a very bigoted ignorant

Danny: attitude and i was told it was a so

Danny: that where we lived in scotland it was like scottish tenements very working

Danny: class you know um area and there was a it's all white people and then there

Danny: was an indian family moved in around about when i was maybe eight nine year

Danny: old or something and my family just told me horrible things about indians and people and such as.

Danny: And they told me not to play with their little girl who's the same age as me

Danny: because they're Indian, they're clearly going to be horrible,

Danny: smelly people. Horrible things to say.

Danny: And it took me a while, you know, when I was like a late teen,

Danny: early, like a man in my early 20s, to really get away from all that.

Danny: And when I moved away, I moved away from Scotland to work in England and that's

Danny: when I really started to get a broader view of the world, thankfully.

Danny: And I was sat beside her, I got placed to sit beside her at school at my primary

Danny: school by a teacher and she wasn't smelly.

Danny: She wasn't a horrible person. She was a lovely little girl that just wanted

Danny: to be liked by other kids in the classroom.

Danny: So I feel the advice not to, you know,

Danny: to steer clear of these people because

Danny: they're not us they're not like us they're gonna be horrible i think

Danny: that was really bad for want of a

Danny: simplistic term that was bad advice but it was ignorant advice obviously

Danny: and i'm i'm i'm always like sorry that i listened to that um because i didn't

Danny: know any better as a kid and it took me a few years to get over that and understand

Danny: they were completely wrong and because of that i then started to have a very

Danny: difficult relationship it with my family and their points of view.

Danny: So I would say probably that actually.

Susan: It's interesting that it took a trip to another place that was different from

Susan: where you were from to sort of help shake that loose.

Susan: I think that that is such a great illustration of why travel is so important

Susan: because the more places you go, the more you realize A,

Susan: our similarities regardless of our differences, but B,

Susan: that the things that make us different are also the things that make us exciting

Susan: and interesting and special and unique and fun.

Susan: So I think your story is certainly a tribute to the power of travel.

Danny: Oh, 100%. And like I said, I mean, it's,

Danny: I feel that a lot of that was maybe generational. They're very typical.

Danny: And I say this as a Scotsman myself. So that generation, my grandad anyway,

Danny: my dad or stepdad, was very much typical of Scotsmen at that time.

Danny: This was like we're talking mid-80s, like late 70s, mid-80s.

Danny: So, yeah, and travel was so key. It's like my first guest on this new season,

Danny: Keisha TK Dutas, who I believe, you know, she mentioned that about travel and,

Danny: you know, stereotypical, you know, people thinking that certain cultures don't

Danny: travel when they do. So, yeah, I rambled there. I apologize.

Danny: Great question. I appreciate you asking that, Susan.

Susan: Well, it was my pleasure to put you on the spot since I've been on the spot

Susan: for this whole conversation.

Danny: It's only fair. It's only fair. So, as I mentioned, I mean, I've really enjoyed

Danny: chatting to you and getting to know you and hearing your answers today.

Danny: So I appreciate that. Thank you for bringing them and sharing that with us.

Danny: For our listeners that want to, you know, learn about you, what you do in the

Danny: industry, you know, listen to your podcast, check out all the cool things you

Danny: do, or maybe even sneak us a few nifty dollars to buy some of your husband's art.

Danny: Where's the best place to connect and listen and etc?

Susan: Well, my podcast is called Top Floor and the website is topfloorpodcast.com.

Susan: The Instagram handle for Top Floor is topfloorpod. And then I spend a lot of

Susan: time running my mouth and sharing my unsolicited opinion on LinkedIn.

Susan: And so you can find me. I'm Susan Barry on LinkedIn and Top Floor is also on

Susan: LinkedIn with pretty frequently updated content.

Susan: So we'd love to see and hear listeners anywhere I can.

Danny: Awesome. And I will be sure, as always, to leave links to those in the show

Danny: notes. So whatever app you're listening to this episode on or you're listening

Danny: on the website, just check the show notes out and all the links will be there

Danny: for the good stuff to take you over to Susan.

Danny: So again, Susan, thanks so much for appearing on today's 5 Random Questions.

Susan: Oh, this is so much fun. Thanks for having me.

Danny: Thanks for listening to 5 Random Questions. And if this was your first time

Danny: here, feel free to hit follow and check out past episodes.

Danny: If you enjoyed this week's episode, I'd love for you to leave a review on the

Danny: app you're currently listening on.

Danny: And if you know someone else that would enjoy the show, be sure to send them

Danny: this way. It's very much appreciated.

Danny: Until the next time, keep asking those questions.