This week in review on Hospitality Daily
Weekly edition + lessons from Edward Mady
It's a holiday weekend here in the US, and with a little more time than usual, I wanted to share the first edition of this re-launched Substack.
Hospitality Daily is, well, a daily show, and while I hope to bring the daily newsletter back at some point, I don't have capacity to do that now - and that's why I'm doing something a little different here now.
Also, while the goal of the Hospitality Daily Podcast is to provide you with a daily dose of inspiration, one more email to read each day may be too much for you. This newsletter will be a short, handwritten summary of the ideas that stood out most to me from the show in the past week. So let's get into it.....
This week, I featured my conversation with Ed Mady, the decorated hospitality leader that Ritz-Carlton founder Horst Schulze trusted to run some of his most high-profile properties, and who was most recently a leader with Dorchester Collection overseeing The Beverly Hills Hotel and Hotel Bel-Air. He has a new book coming out soon, Honing the Human Edge.
Some things that stood out to me from our conversation:
The power of a personal board of directors. Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent time with several friends at key junctures in their lives and careers, and am recalling how valuable their friendship and advice have been for me in my own journey. Ed has a process for cultivating his personal "board of directors" that I’ve informally used but am interested in being more structured with.
The power of presence for learning. Ed worked in more than 35 roles across hotel businesses before moving to executive leadership and credits the power of being present for maximizing learning at each of these steps. This stood out to me because it’s often easy to go through the motions of any work…but doing that misses out on a big opportunity to learn and grow. (Hear him talk more about this here)
Negative vs positive mentorship. Ed shared his experience working for an “anti-mentor” as well as someone who just might be the best there is, Ritz-Carlton founder Horst Schulze. While I’ve been blessed to work for and be mentored by some incredible leaders, I’ve also experienced “anti-mentors” and honestly probably learned more from them about what not to do. If I can just avoid the mistakes they made, maybe I’ll be an alright leader 😅 The truth is we can learn from everyone.
Creating a “culture of welcome.” I'm fascinated by what it takes to welcome people well, because the first moments of interacting with someone set the tone for the rest of their time with you. As a hospitality leader, you need to think about more than just orchestrating a welcome. You need to think about how you can create an internal culture that enables this in a consistent but personal way. What I found fascinating is how Ed cultivated this by focusing on how he welcomed, celebrated, and recognized his team, from the entrance to the music to the meals he shared with them to the rewards for joining the “quarter century club.” (Listen to him talk about this here)
“You have to keep getting better to stay the same.” Ed shared this as part of what he learned from baseball, and it inspires me to keep honing my craft and get a little better each day.
I created a playlist on Spotify for the entire series with Ed if you’d like to listen here:
And that’s a wrap for this week. I’d love your candid feedback on this weekly recap format, whether you love it or hate it! Hit reply to this email and let me know.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great weekend.
Josiah