Sarah Dandashy: "I’ll Build It So They Can’t Tell Me No"

Sarah Dandashy of Ask a Concierge got a flat "no" from a major brand two weeks before we taped this. Her response: build something they can't turn down. In her third visit to Check-In with Bryan, Sarah opens up about the rejections behind a career that looks effortless from the outside — the year-long TV development deal that died, the brands that passed, and the mindset that carried her through all of it: "It's not rejection, it's redirection." Sarah made her professional debut at 14 as a fairy sprite at the Georgia Renaissance Festival — eight hours a day on her feet, inventing a character and pulling strangers into a world that didn't exist. She still calls it the best hospitality training she ever got. From Jeddah to London to Atlanta to Washington D.C., she trained at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service pointed squarely at diplomacy, and landed in hospitality instead. In 2012, working the concierge desk in Beverly Hills, she started filming what-to-see-and-do videos in Los Angeles and took her advice off the desk and onto the internet — years before anyone called it a content strategy. "I was creating reels before other people were creating reels." In 2015, Les Clefs d'Or International named her Best Young Concierge in the world. She has since written the bestselling HOSPITALITY FROM WITHIN, spoken on the TEDx stage, and now spends more than 200 nights a year on the road. IN THIS CONVERSATION Why rejection is a redirect, not a verdict — and why "the rent is too expensive" to keep living in that feeling The passage from HOSPITALITY FROM WITHIN that stopped Bryan cold: "Follow the yeses." Turning concierge tenacity on your own career — if you'd find a guest a Plan B, C and D, do it for yourself The year-long TV development deal that ended in a no, and what she built so it couldn't happen again Why she turns down content ideas that would probably perform well Telling a brand their idea will fall flat without making anyone feel stupid — and having no ego about whose idea wins Content creation as a legitimate small business, and why the "influencer" eye-roll is about a decade out of date Filming since age seven on her grandfather's camera, including interviews with rocks The audience she never expected to find: not tourists, locals looking for a date night idea Bryan's own first stage role, which involved an elf costume and tights Then we close the way every episode this season closes — with a game. Tyler reads real hotel guest reviews and Sarah and Bryan guess how the guest actually rated the stay. Black mold, a cockroach in the bed... and a two out of five. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CONNECT WITH SARAH DANDASHY Ask a Concierge → https://askaconcierge.tv Instagram →   / askaconcierge   ABOUT CHECK-IN WITH BRYAN Hosted by Bryan Fish, CEO of Reliance Hospitality — conversations with the owners, operators and creators shaping hospitality. On your side of the table. Subscribe →    / @check-inwithbryan   For more - check out our website at: checkinwithbryan.com Season 6 presented by Immedia. Produced by RH Media Productions. Special thanks to our supporting sponsors: Regency Group, Avalon Risk Management, Arcstone Insurance Advisors, and Achilles HR. #Hospitality #ContentCreator #AskAConcierge #Concierge #HospitalityFromWithin #GuestExperience #CheckInWithBryan