Your Home Between Homes During PCS Moves
by Lizann Lightfoot - June 10th, 2021
Interview with Mother Daughter LLC
Mother Daughter LLC is a small business, and it primarily came out of a need, and necessity. The owner and the CEO of the company are both military. The owner’s a military spouse, and the CEO is a retired lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps. So they’ve been there, done that. They’ve done moves with kids, animals, you name it, everything!
The genesis of Mother Daughter started with Cindy Janae, who is our VP of operations and the owner of the company. She worked with government contracts for many years and primarily on food contracts for the Army. She kept seeing a need and a trend, the constant need for lodging. She’s developed this amazing company that provides services for the military. We do Yellow Ribbon events, we do Strong Bonds events, we do events for the state here in Virginia, and we help the Department of Health Department of Education. We have event managers that help execute these events.
Most importantly, what we do is, two things: we build very very very strong relationships with our vendors, our hotels and our clients, that’s important to us. We’d like to know you on a personal level, we want to know what do you need, what do you want to do we can get that for you. The second thing we do very well is we negotiate pricing. So for example, you know, anyone can go to a hotel and make a reservation. However, if you want to get the best pricing possible you work with a company like Mother Daughter, because we’re going to negotiate that for you. We’re going to get you the best price with the best, best value.
We know which hotels are great, we know which locations are fantastic, we know which locations are kind of slim. So we’ve got a little bit more research and we have to find something for you, but that’s really what the genesis of mother daughter is. We saw a need, and we ran with that need.
How can military families use these services during a PCS move?
During the pandemic of COVID-19, as a team we all just put our heads together and we thought of what are other opportunities that are out there that we haven’t really tapped into. And so we figured, our military families: they’re constantly moving.
I remember, oh my goodness, driving cross country with a toddler, a dog, you name it, and I’m probably dating myself a little bit because this is 2005, when we moved to Virginia, and I’m in a car with a map, because GPS were like $900, so I couldn’t afford that. I was looking for any Days Inn hotel that we can stay at. And then I would look at amenities.
What a great opportunity for us to help you, our military service members. We know these hotel teams, we know which ones are going to be the ones that have hotels, which isn’t going to be the ones that have kitchenettes, which ones are going to have extra amenities that you really didn’t think of but we know you need it because we’re military families and spouses also. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know but we’ve been there, done that.
So we can certainly help you as you’re driving cross country, you give us a call and tell us “Hey, I’m going to make these pit stops, can you help me find a place?” That’s where we build our personal relationship with you, and we ask you: "what are your needs? How many children do you have, are you traveling with pets?" You tell us all this great information, and we will find that place for you. That may mean that we find you a hotel that has a great pool, a sliding pool for these kids you want to wear them out because you want them to sleep at night. Also, you want to make this PCS move enjoyable.
There’s nothing more stressful than already knowing that you’re going to the unknown. Let’s make that transition from here to there, a nice one. Let’s say we want to help you do that and that’s our goal.
Does Mother Daughter LLC work for international moves?
Right now we are not in the international market, but that’s not to say that we would not expand. We just don’t have those resources right now, to help us kind of build that. We are always open to expand, no matter what. And that’s probably going to be our next step as we strategically look at how else are we are going to market ourselves and place ourselves in the industry. But for now, the answer is no, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen.
When should a military family contact you?
As soon as you know that you’re going to be PCSing! And I say that because there are different seasons in the hotel market industry as well. You’ve got families traveling all year long, so the sooner we know that you’re going to be traveling and where your locations will be, the easier it is for us to find you the perfect place, and also to get really good negotiated pricing for you with all the amenities that you want.
That’s not to say that we won’t take a last minute request, because we certainly will. We will try to help you as much as possible to find that perfect place, but it makes it a lot easier for us to build that rapport, establish that relationship with one another so that we can anticipate your needs, before you even know that you need them when you start telling us what your plans are as you’re traveling.
Every move is different, so how do you anticipate PCS needs?
I had one PCS move where I did not expect two things happen: I lost my military ID on the way. Then I got really sick and I had to go to a clinic in Yuma, and I didn’t have my ID. I mean, thank goodness I have my service member with me, but I had strep throat, we ended up having to stay in Yuma a little longer than we wanted to, because then our daughter got sick, so you know it’s all these unanticipated things that we can help you with.
If you plan on being at a certain hotel, but something has come up, we can call that hotel and tell them “they’ve had a family emergency” and we can more than likely get you out of any requirements for payment or anything like that, because we can help that way. That’s what our specialty is.
How do you help military families with special needs?
How many of you have a family member that is a diabetic and has special needs for their illness? We make sure that the hotel that we find for you has a refrigerator in that room, so you can store your medicine appropriately. We also look for hotels if you have a service member who is disabled, an amputee or, and so forth, we will work with that hotel to make sure that one it’s an ADA compliant facility. We will check some of their amenities like their swimming pools, and also see if they have some of the tools that are used for people that are deaf, so we want to make sure the hotel has that if someone may be hearing impaired.
We ask for those things in advance, when we build that rapport in that relationship with you and you’re telling us what your needs are. Those are things that are crucial that you don’t necessarily think of because you’re like “I just need a hotel room as I’m driving cross country.”, But these are all little things that when you get to the front desk and then you’re asking these questions: “Can I have this? Can I add that?” And they may say, “We don’t have a refrigerator for you in the room.” So we we try to anticipate what those needs may be for you, depending on what your situation is.
How would military families use Mother Daughter to secure lodging during a PCS move?
I see Mother Daughter as an additional support to service members. With the military, they’re gonna find you a hotel they’re going to find whatever they think you need. We’re gonna do the personal approach to it, and we’re gonna really give you what your family needs. Especially if it’s a long term deal--let’s suppose you’re going to stay at a hotel for a month because your housing won’t be ready for a month. We’re gonna try and find you a place that also has maybe free appetizers in the evenings, sometimes that happens at some hotels. We’re gonna try to get you that best rate for the entire month. So I don’t want to say that we’re replacing what the military can do, but we will certainly augment and help out as much as we can in any way that we can.
And you could say we’re gonna drive cross country from California to New York. These are the pitstops we want to do. These are some of the sites we want to see while we’re there because we’re going to make this a vacation, we’re going to make it fun. We’ve got the kids. So we’re going to help you find those perfect places along the way. And then if you get to your final destination, and you don’t have a place to live yet, let us help you find that extended place for you to stay for a while.
We ask the hotels very specific questions about the safety on their property. We ask them, “Do you have sufficient lighting in your parking garage?” We ask them, “are you in an area that has no crime or low crime, no prostitution no drugs?” We asked all of those questions. And then we also do our research. We pride ourselves on giving our servicemembers and their families the very best at a very good value.
We will never give someone a lodging of less than a triple A rating. Whenever we propose a hotel, we look at their rating. We do our research on TripAdvisor, we look at how many complaints have they had, what were the complaints about, and you know sometimes you have to take those with a grain of salt because sometimes you’ve got a person who walked in in a bad mood and nothing was gonna make them happy, no matter what. However, we take the time to really research these properties. So because we want our service members to be very very safe, no matter what that is primary, but we also want them in a very good hotel that’s going to take great care of them.
And I can tell you a lot of our hotel partners love our military. So many times we hear it over and over, and they tell us “thank you for your service” because everyone in our company is military or prior military. We have our military spouses. We make sure that their safety is definitely taken into consideration for sure.
What are the service-specific requirements for lodging during PCS moves?
In order for us to get you the best military rate at any hotel, you will, you should have military orders in hand when you check in, because we’re negotiating pricing with them. We’re telling them that we’re doing this for a service member and their family. They’re going to expect those orders, so if you’ve got military orders showing that your PCS from one location to another, then have that available and ready for long term logging.
Our military families, they’re not all the same. Some have larger families. Some hotels have smaller rooms for our larger families, we can usually try to get them a large room, because that’s a challenge. So if you have five kids, or you’re traveling with pets, a specific hotel may not be able to give you one room for all those people, but we can help you find a suite. You may need a suite with two bedrooms, you may need cots, you may need cribs, you may need a pull out couch, you may need all those things in order for everyone to fit in that room, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re in compliance with fire codes and restrictions that each hotel has.
So that’s where we can provide assistance. We can get you a room that’s got the walkthrough rooms, the conjoined rooms. So that’s definitely something that we’re we’re planning for events, especially Yellow Ribbons. We always have to make sure that we’re telling the hotels, you may have people that come with more than four people, you know it’s going to be a lot of kids. So that’s one of the things that we get often. Another thing is, parents are always looking for a hotel that can provide those additional amenities for the children. So there are a lot of hotels that have swimming pools, but they also have slides and they also have, you know, indoor play rooms, and so forth. So we try to help you and find that for them. If a family tells us we have a child that has autism, we need to make sure that they are able to play safely in this hotel. We’re going to try to find you a place that has an inside playground for your child.
We can’t always find exactly what you’re looking for, because hotels, they’re all different. But we can try our very very best to help you find something that’s going to meet the needs of your family, and every family is so different in every challenge. Hearing impaired ADA compliant, we have families that have children in wheelchairs, service members in wheelchairs, so we have to make sure they can get in the showers. These are things that we need to make sure that you’re safe, but that you’re also having a good experience as you travel. We’ve built these great relationships with so many hotels to so they’re more than happy to help.
This is a free service to military families?
You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us on Facebook, and we also have a website, so our website is www.motherdaughterLLC.com. And there you will find all of the services that we provide. There’s a bio there about each and every one of us, you’ll see how amazing everyone on this team is.
I’m so grateful that I work with such amazing human beings who really care and love our military, and they just do it because we have to get back no matter what, you know we always feel like we have to get back but what a great opportunity to do it with our military servicemembers and their families.
When you get to your new destination and you want to plan a big event like a family reunion, call us, we’ll plan it for you. We’ll find you the space. Those do require additional fees because we’re planning something for you that big. And so those are administrative fees, but I can guarantee you that you’re not going to be disappointed. We guarantee that right now, you’re going to get the best of the best. So, for a nominal fee I think you know it’s always worth it for sure.
My personal number if anyone wants to call me on the phone it’s 540-429-2651. That’s my number, anyone can call me, I’m the Director of Sales and tell me what it is that you need. And we can try to help you as best as we possibly can. Go on our website, look at the people that work for Mother Daughter. We always also have opportunities for to employ some of our military spouses for sure there are locations where we don’t have a presence. If we may have an event in Miami, and we don’t have anybody in Miami, but if we happen to have a military spouse there, we need her to do a site visit and hotel and check it out for us. We’d love to pay you to go and do that for the day for us.
Guest is Samantha Morales of Mother-Daughter LLC
I have been a military spouse for a long time so my husband was 24 years active duty as a Marine. I did not get married until he was in already 11 years so technically I did 13 years active duty with him. However, that included a lot of PCS moves, and it also included an opportunity for me to work for the Marine Corps in different capacities, I worked as a volunteer. I think a lot of us know what the Key volunteers are, so I was a Key volunteer many many moons ago. I also worked for MCS, I worked for them for 12 years, and I was the program manager for Marine Corps Family Team Building for I think four years out of that but in Family Readiness for seven.
I love the military community, more than anything in the world. I’m so passionate about it, and it’s probably because I came in a little later in life, and just realized quickly what some of those challenges were, and I took some of those challenges and I embraced them, and I’m always looking for ways to help military families so when I was allowed to work for this amazing company Mother Daughter I jumped at the opportunity. There was no way that I was going to say no to being able to provide additional services, and help not only for our service members but for their families as well so that’s a little bit of background about me. I absolutely loved being a military spouse! My husband is now retired. We are in Fredericksburg, Virginia, which is just a beautiful location, and I have a daughter that just turned 18, and will be transitioning out and going away to college soon so I’ll be able to have a little more time on my hands to, to give more to the company that I work with, and. And it’s just been a very fulfilling life for me as a military spouse, so thank you.
Lizann Lightfoot, the "Seasoned Spouse" is a professional writer and speaker for the military community. After two decades with her service member, her family has been through 7 deployments and 6 PCS moves. Lizann has raised 5 children and published several books for military families. Her most recent book is "Open When: Letters of Encouragement for Military Spouses" published Sept 2021 by Elva Resa. You can find Lizann's articles and resources at SeasonedSpouse.com
