Employees
Staffing standards, role clarity, training systems, and the Grooming Academy.
The Journey
The industries changed. The mission did not.
Hospitality, marketing, multi-industry consulting, pet services, technology. The pattern is not industry hopping. It is repeated operational problem-solving across every environment that would have it.
The Common Thread
Every environment. One question.
How do you help a business perform better when people, systems, and decisions are not aligned?
That question has followed Linda through every industry and every role. The tools changed. The organizations changed. The fundamental work — diagnosing what is actually broken and building something that actually holds — never changed.
Over 35 years of operational work — hospitality, marketing, multi-industry consulting, and now pet services and technology — creates a rare kind of pattern recognition. Linda does not see an industry problem. She sees an operations problem that happens to live in a particular industry.
That is the difference between someone who studies your industry and someone who has lived the underlying mechanics in many different forms.
Career Chapters
Each chapter reinforced the next.
01
Hospitality & Finance — Bristol Hotels & Resorts (1988–2000), then FelCor (2000–2005)
Where the foundation was built across service, finance, staffing, standards, and portfolio operations. Linda automated a paper-based banquet-order process that was producing incorrect invoices and unpaid balances, then built staffing standards tied to occupancy, service levels, roles, and hours. The systems protected revenue, brought labor decisions into the financial model, and were replicated beyond the operation where they began.
02
Marketing — Valet Interactive (2005–2015)
After building early hotel websites and direct reservation systems, Linda developed search and digital-distribution programs that helped hotels recover direct demand. She helped organize and support hotel-brand efforts that contributed to OTA commission rates declining from approximately 30% to 15%. Valet Interactive later launched with a 176-hotel portfolio and operated for ten years, delivering websites, SEO, and online-presence management through a recurring service model.
03
Consulting & Construction Ownership — small businesses, cleaning companies, hotel companies, and her own construction company (2016–2023)
Entering organizations from the outside and finding the real problem quickly — not the problem described in the intake meeting, but the one underneath it. During this same period, she also owned and ran a construction company herself. One consulting engagement involved rescuing a multimillion-dollar contract for a commercial services company at a major U.S. airport by rebuilding crew scheduling, workflows, standards, and an airport-approved billing process, moving the account from loss to profit as the scope grew.
04
Pet Services — Bark & Purr
Bark & Purr Grooming is an established Main Street shop Linda owns and operates. It is the working environment where she builds, tests, and improves the tools and operating systems that inform Valet.
05
Technology — Valet Operations Labs
Building Valet Operations Labs alongside running Bark & Purr. Taking decades of operational experience and turning it into tools other service business owners can use without needing to live through all of it first.
EARN in practice
E
A
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The framework reflects work already done.
Advocates
Consistent service, stronger customer trust, and direct relationships.
Revenue
Recovered billing, direct bookings, pricing discipline, and reduced leakage.
Net Profit
Labor control, lower distribution cost, improved EBITDA, and sustainable margins.
The Proof
Bark & Purr is not a case study. It is a live business.
Bark & Purr Pet Grooming is an established Main Street shop that Linda has owned for about two years. The systems, workflows, reports, and tools that inform Valet are built and tested there under real operating conditions.
When Linda recommends something, it has already been used — not in a simulation, not in a controlled environment, but in a service business with real customers, real staff, and real stakes.
The value of that environment is practical: recommendations can be tested against real schedules, real customer expectations, real staff needs, and the daily consequences of operating decisions.
The Lessons
Explore the lessons from this journey.
Over thirty-five years of operational experience condensed into practical articles, founder notes, and working frameworks for people building real businesses.