Top of the mornin’ to ya! Wherever you are and whatever percent Irish you have in your blood, I wish you a very happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Aside from the propensity to enjoy a Guinness, green beer or two (or twelve), what’s great about this holiday is that it’s also a great time to do a quarterly checkup on your New Year’s resolutions. After all, you’d be a fool to do this on April Fools’ Day.

So, how are those goals for 2014 looking? Are you on your way? What’s holding you back? We’re nearly one-fourth the year, so if you’ve been procrastinating then now is your chance to kick it into the next gear.

Aside from its timing in the year, I want you to pay attention to the colors associated with St. Patrick’s Day – green and orange. Green is the obvious one, and I want to point out that although orange has a powerfully negative connotation for the Irish in the form of the Orangemen, it is nonetheless a color of the flag so I’ll include it. My apologies if including orange has offended anyone; this wasn’t my intention. To get back on track, both of these colors are quite symbolic of what you should look to achieve for your hotel organization (and your own personal goals) in the coming months.

Green is the color of wealth and health. Whatever objectives you set out to pursue in these areas, let the wash of green in your beverage and on your clothes be a conspicuous that they are wholly achievable with ample doses of steadfast, prudent work. Green is also the color of growth and prosperity, which are two traits necessary to lead to wealth and good health. When in doubt, keep a little green lying around the office; it may inspire you to keep looking for opportunities to grow, both in riches and personal character.

Lastly, green is the color of the environment. I know, this gets its own special day on April 22 as well as its own hour in the evening of March 29. But that doesn’t mean we should only consider environmental impact on those two days. I’ve discussed at length how sustainability in a hotel’s operations can save hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to the bottom line, so best start investigating your options.

Moving onto orange, we are presented with a color traditionally representative of craziness and irrational behavior. Yes, it’s that, but if you pull the curtain back just a touch, you’ll see that orange is also the color of adventure, spontaneity and risk-taking. In case you haven’t realized by now, hotels that aim for a middle-of-the-road, unexciting presentation are the ones that fail to impress their guests and generate word of mouth.

In order to build future business, you need to be bold and rash at times. You need to have the enthusiasm and gumption to try something a bit outlandish. Only then will you stimulate your guests. Yes, you might turn off a few guests, but at least you’ll be getting an emotional response, which is far better than sheer apathy whichever way you put it. You need to be bold in order to differentiate yourself from the competition. I can guarantee that you will fail at least once, but every time this happens it will only make you stronger.

Therefore, when you put green and orange together, the real message of St. Patrick’s Day becomes crystal clear: the road to riches requires prudent dedication to personal and organizational growth, and sometimes the only way to achieve that is through risk-taking and out-of-the-box thinking. It’s going to entail a lot of hard work, so be sure to snatch a few cloverleaves and top of the morning to you!

(Article published by Larry Mogelonsky in HOTELSmag on March 14, 2013)