Isadore Sharp built Four Seasons by focusing on the work no one sees—discipline, trust, and care done right over time. This episode shows how unseen choices create lasting greatness.
This is the story of, Issy Sharp a quiet builder from Toronto who helped reshape the meaning of service, leadership, and workplace culture across the world.
In this episode of Deeply Driven, we step inside the rise of Four Seasons and the steady, values-driven leadership of founder Isadore Sharp. What began as one small hotel in 1961 would grow into one of the most respected luxury brands in the world — and one of the longest-running companies ever named to Fortune’s list of the Best Places to Work, appearing every year from 1998 through 2020.
Issy believed something simple but powerful. If you take care of your people, they will take care of your guests. And if you take care of your guests, the business will take care of itself.
That sounds easy. It is not.
Four Seasons built its name on trust, kindness, pride in craft, and steady day-by-day work. No shortcuts. No loud promises. Just clear values lived out through thousands of small acts — the way a guest is greeted, the way a team member is trained, the way leaders listen when problems show up.
In this episode, we walk through how Issy shaped a culture that held strong through recessions, industry shifts, and rapid global growth. We also explore how Four Seasons earned one of the longest streaks ever on Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For list — proof that strong culture compounds over time.
But this story is bigger than hotels.
It is about the long game of leadership. It is about building teams that believe in the mission. It is about learning that service is not a slogan. It is a daily choice.
If you lead a team, run a business, or dream of building something that lasts, this episode will speak to you. Four Seasons shows that true luxury is not marble floors or gold trim. True luxury is how people feel when they walk through your doors.
This is the story of a founder who believed that the invisible parts of a company — trust, care, and purpose — often become the strongest parts of all.
Deeply Driven Books (Amazon Affiliate) - 100% of commissions will be donated to help support Children’s Literacy!
Big Shots Interviews with Issy Sharp
How Issy Sharp Built The Four Seasons and Transformed The Hospitality Industry Forever (Part 1)
An Unfiltered Conversation With The Founder of The Four Seasons: Issy Sharp (Part 2)
Past Episodes Mentioned
Estée Lauder: Divine Purpose of Beauty
E18 Harry Snyder: In-N-Out and the Power of “Keep It Real Simple”
#16 How Jim Casey Turned Service Into UPS's Superpower
Sam Walton: Simple Ideas & Deep Business Impacts
#10 Fred Rogers: Deep Business Lessons for Entrepreneurs
So much of long-term success is based on intangibles, beliefs and ideas, invisible concepts. On the surface, these words are simple. They're easy to say much, much harder to live by. When we take the invisible, such as trust, kindness, friendship, beliefs, culture, discipline, purpose, and forgiveness, and we mix them together and apply it against hours, days, years, and decades, we're given a gift to see the invisible become visible. Most people don't notice it happening until it's already done.
This is the story of Four Seasons and how Isadore Sharp started in 1961 with his first hotel mixed in the invisible, and came out on the other side with the finest five-star hotel brand in the world.
These opening words, so much of long-term success is based on intangibles.
[00:01:00] “Beliefs and ideas, invisible concepts” This is a quote from Isadore Sharp, the founder of Four Seasons, and it opens the introduction chapter of the book, for which I'd like to talk to you today about. And right away as I read those words, I was hooked.
So many great founders that we've studied on the show carry this same belief. Sam Walton, he said, the secret of successful retailing is caring about your people and your customers. Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines, he rejected basic business rules and he put spirit humor, trust in love first, Estée Lauder, perhaps the best saleswoman of all time.
She said, I didn't sell makeup, I sold hope. And my personal favorite, Fred Rogers, he often said. What is essential is invisible to the eye. That saying, it comes from the children's [00:02:00] book, The Little Prince, those words, they're simple, yet very deep.
What you'll notice again and again, is that the things that last the longest are built out of the things that we can't measure. The book for today's episode is called Four Seasons, the Story of Business Philosophy, and it's the autobiography of Isadore Sharp, and it was written with Alan Phillips. The book will be the main source for today's episode, and as I was reading the book, I found a fantastic two-part interview with Isadore.
And you know what? Actually, everyone calls him Issy. I'm sorry about that. I shouldn't have called that out upfront as we started here and for the episode today, we'll call him Issy because that's what everyone naturally called him for his entire life. So, we'll call him Issy as well. Anyway, this interview that I found, it was on a YouTube channel called Big Shots.
I believe they also have a podcast. And as I was watching the interview, I was [00:03:00] blown away by Issy and he is like 91 or 92 in this interview, and he's just super, super sharp. He's taking care of himself physically, and he looks like maybe he's in his early seventies. I took quite a few notes from that interview, and what I'll do is I'll leave a link down in the show notes if you'd like to check that out as well.
I highly recommend it. It's a good use of time. As always, if you'd like to pick up a copy of the book, there's a link in the show notes., If you do use that link, you'll be helping to support children's literacy, and I donate all affiliate earnings to help support that very important cause the book, it really has all the details. It's a fun and uplifting read that kept me busy turning and underlining the pages. It only took a couple of days to read this book. It is a fantastic read. I've gone over all my notes a couple of times and for the episode today, we're gonna find ourselves stepping into Issy’s life as a [00:04:00] teenager.
Growing up, Issy and his siblings, they're learning the ways of the world by watching their parents.
What they did was teach us by example, showing, not telling us the right thing to do and expecting, not merely hoping that we would do it, which we all did. This is also something we've seen a lot on the podcast, Estée Lauder always said, showing counts more than telling. For Issy, this shows up early in his life and his father, max, he was in the construction business doing plaster work inside of houses.
And so, Issy was just naturally on the job site with his father. I dug ditches, carried bricks for the brick layers to lay, brought plaster for the plasterers, and helped drivers unload their delivery trucks, heavy bundles of bricks, 80-to-100 pound concrete blocks.
He's learning by watching one step at a [00:05:00] time. As a teenager, he's building up his physical strength, so he works really hard because he knew what it taught him without having to say a word. The invisible is often the most important. I knew I was earning their respect, and that was then as important to me as anything I was learning.
Oftentimes, his father, Max, would let Issy learn on his own when he was on the job site. He would see that he might be doing something wrong, but he would let him continue on anyways.
One day on the job site, he was building these two small steps for a house, and he had made the wooden forms, he poured the concrete and he's letting it get all set up. Meanwhile, his father's just watching Issy work this entire time. Issy, he soon notices that the bottom stair was too big and the top one was too small.
What does his [00:06:00] father do?
Dad handed me a sledgehammer, and all he said then or later was, break it up and do it the right way next time, staying here just for a second longer. Max, he could have stepped in and saved a lot of time and money, but Issy says his father's method was unforgettable.
He feels the lesson in his hands and also in his head. If you've ever learned something the hard way, you know it's something you just don't forget forever on Issy would measure twice and cut once, as Issy learns the physical side of building. He's also watching his dad in the business world in one of his father's first jobs. When he first started out on his own in business was this house plastering job. Well, when Max started the job, he didn't see that it was actually a duplex. He thought he was just working on one house.
So, he bid the job way [00:07:00] too low and he could have just walked away and left someone else to finish the work. But he decides to take the hard road and he finishes the job. Putting the family in debt and it would take many, many years to pay off that debt. But he stuck with it. And this really taught Issy a deep lesson that he never forgot about keeping your word. More is caught than taught, which brings us to his mother.
Her name was Lil, Issy's mother. She was the boss of the house. She was direct and she spoke her mind always. My mother was strict, but kind, understanding, and practical. Always acting with common sense, always knowing the right thing to do what people now call tough love. She was the undisputed head of our family and in business, social and family affairs, her word was the [00:08:00] law.
As Issy's growing up, he moves houses and schools, something like 15 times. His mother, Lil, she would go out and buy a home. His father would fix it up and then his mother would go sell the house. Each time they did that, obviously they would have to move, and so his parents almost never had time outside of work to spend with Issy and their kids.
He says that he could only recall one day for his entire childhood that he spent with his dad after his bar mitzvah. His dad would ask him what he wanted to do and he would say, you know, let's go watch a movie. So, they would go watch Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant. I've never seen that movie.
I kind of wonder how it is. Any other time that was spent together was simply just done on the job site. But this leads Issy to become independent very early on in life. He says that he is a mixture of his mother's confidence and his father's good [00:09:00] nature. And this gave him the skills that he needed to work with both hard people and nice people in life.
He was well-rounded and he can handle any situation and he really didn't have a choice. This is just the way that it was. This is how he grew up. Earlier we said that he had moved like 15 times, and as he was doing all this moving around Issy, he really focuses on sports and school, hockey, football, basketball, track and field.
This quickly makes him a popular guy in school as he is moving around. And I know exactly how that is. As I was growing up myself, I personally moved around a lot. With sports, I could quickly make friends, and that gave me a feeling of belonging. When everything in your life keeps changing, you grab onto whatever helps you belong.
For me, it was sports Issy, he took the same route. He would excel in sports and physical activity, and this is something that he kept with him for his entire life. And I believe that's [00:10:00] why he looked so darn good in his early nineties.
Issy, he would graduate high school. He would go on to college to study architecture, and once he was done with college, he ends up joining his dad, max in the business, effectively doubling the size of their business from one to two. But they quickly hire a few guys that start helping them with a few projects.
And one guy, his name was Vito, he ends up staying with Issy for more than 40 years. That's quite impressive right from the start. Max is quickly gonna step aside and let Issy run the business, as a young man, he pushes upstream from building houses to apartment complex. Now, this next part that happens in the book is nuts. One slice in time that could have gone one of two ways, either destroys him or keeps him on his path in life.
The Northview apartment building was close to another one next door, so I figured we'd need steel piles and wooden [00:11:00] planks to support the structure around the excavation. But when you do that, the vertical steel columns have to be braced as you dig down, and I didn't know that. One afternoon when they're working on the job site, they're gonna be hit with a major storm.
Issy, he notices that the walls are starting to move a little bit. He's hit really hard in the gut, and this is the type of feeling that tells you this is not a small problem. If this building falls, he is finished. No one is gonna trust him as a
builder. This isn't about money, it's about trust.
He takes action quickly and he phones up his concrete supplier, who would agree to come down and help him out, along with his dad, Max. Both he and Max came through and in the driving rain that lasted hours, we reinforced our entire series of columns. Everyone working like Trojans to save the building, [00:12:00] which we did.
If we hadn't, it's doubtful that this book could have been written. The storm almost buried him. Instead, it makes him, and I love seeing these slices of time, where battles are either won or they're lost. This allows the next change to start for Issy.
One afternoon he goes to the bank, he wants to get a loan to buy some land for a construction project. The banker, he's gonna give him a little bit of advice.
Why don't you get rid of the rubber boots and start working with a pencil and paper instead of a pick and shovel. Next, we see a small hint of what's coming, Issy, he says, I got the money, but not until afterwards did the significance of this advice sink in. He was telling me. You've got a good business mind.
Why don't you stop laying bricks and use it?
I wrote one word in my book next to that [00:13:00] section. Seeds they don't look like much at first, but they're gonna start growing very soon, now, outside of work is he says that he was dating a few women here and there, and one weekend while he's at his cousin's wedding, he meets a young woman by the name of Rosalie.
They have a nice dance, and he asks for her phone number. From Rosalie's point of view. She tells her friends that she had just met the man of her life, but she was quite sure that he would never call.
And I think you can guess, he does call about a week later and they've been married for 73 years now. That is impressive. My hat's off to both of them.
Together, they have four children. Rosalie, she's really the rock of the family.
I was working morning till night, six or seven days a week. So, with few qualms, I left the upbringing of our children along with the care of our home Rosalie never [00:14:00] complained, never tried to change me.
Let's see, I think I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here. We have to go back just a little bit and we're gonna talk about Issy's friend Jack Gould, who had asked him to build a hotel or a motel.
Now, when Issy sees the land where Jack wanted to build, he's kind of scratching his head here because it, it's really a hard place to see from the highway. He doesn't really think this is a good spot. How's anyone ever gonna know It's out here. Jack just really wants a little motel with seven rooms on each side of an office. And right away Issy jumps in and he says, why don't you build it twice as long on each side? It won't cost much more and what I'll do is I'll leave 14 rooms unfinished, and then I'll give you the 14 rooms that you had asked for.
The difference here was that this gave him a bigger roof. So, Jack, he put up this huge sign on top of the [00:15:00] roof, and Motel 27 was open. His motel went over so well. He asked me soon after he opened to finish the other rooms, and I thought, if it worked so well here, why wouldn't it work downtown? The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became.
We're starting to see something waking up inside of Issy
In fact, on his honeymoon, he's taking home movies of all the hotels where they're staying, that were rated first class. He's seeing that they're making a lot of money, but he feels like the first-class part might be missing. Therefore, he starts thinking that I can do this better from the, uh, big shots interview with Issy.
He says that he had this really strong belief that whatever he wanted to accomplish in life, even if others couldn't see it, he knew that it was possible because he could feel it.
He could see the end results that he wanted. And this is key. This is what
[00:16:00] drives him forward. He always has a belief in himself that he can accomplish whatever it is that he sets out to do. And then on top of that, he says that he never had a fear of failure growing up, something that he had learned from his mother.
I see this as like a double compound. When you have a strong belief and you don't have a fear of failure, you really can't set out and accomplish whatever it is you put in front of you. And for Issy, he needs it.
For the next five years, he works on his hotel plan. He's researching furniture, he's looking at interior design ideas, studying the various types of beds, what types of plants and trees make you feel at home.
And oftentimes he's working in the evening. He says that this was a lot of fun. He says that he can really see the hotel clearly in his mind, what he wanted. He tries to go out to get the money, and he's rejected time and time again by friends and by banks. Rejection. It doesn't stop him, it shapes him. The [00:17:00] spark that he has inside, he says it never goes out.
He sees this as a sign to keep moving forward. It reminds me a lot of Kent
Taylor, who we spoke about on episode 11, who had been rejected more than 130 times trying to get money for his Texas Roadhouse stream, Kent, he also had that spark inside and he kept going until he found three doctors that eventually believed in his dream and would fund that first location.
For Issy, those that believe in his dream are his brother-in-law. Eddie, in his best friend Murray, they each put up $90,000 to help him get started. Issy, he takes this money, $180,000, and he goes to see a man named Cec Forsyth.
He was the head of great Western Life Insurance. In Cec, he had promised to give Issy 50% of the financing once he had raised the other [00:18:00] 50%.
But the twist here is that Cec, he doesn't want borrowed money. He wants equity. Issy, he pushes back. He says, no, no, no. You told me once I had 50%, you would be willing and I got the money. It's right here. He holds Cec to his word, and he breaks down and agrees to lend Issy the other $180,000.
This is just another slice of time that could have went either direction for him.
Now, while all this rejection was taking place, Issy, he sees an article in Times Magazine about a man in Phoenix who was running several motels that were doing quite well.
So, he reaches out and he hops on a plane for a weekend trip to Phoenix. And just imagine you're arriving at the hotel and. It's in a rundown section of town across the street. There's this noisy bus depot. There's nothing to look at that gives you any level of hope.
And just stay with me here for a second. Inside you find a lush [00:19:00] courtyard and there's a nice swimming pool. All the rooms. In this two-story building they face inward towards the courtyard, outside was noise. Inside is calm, it's sunny, it's attractive, and it's peaceful. The idea of creating a courtyard oasis without spending a fortune captured my imagination Back home, Issy, he runs with this idea.
He finds open land that was basically in the Red light District of Toronto.
People thought he was really crazy for considering even building a hotel here. But remember, he has that deep belief. Inside Jarvis Street was a hangout for gangsters, hookers, and street people with many houses on that street selling drugs or sex.
But I believed in our courtyard concept with financing in place and a patch of dirt on the wrong side of town. Issy starts building. He works out a handshake deal with most of his [00:20:00] suppliers and contractors that they would wait to be paid a portion of their work when the job was completed, the buildings go up and all the rooms face inward.
Landscaping, it ties the building into the courtyard. The courtyard, it's an oasis with a swimming pool and lounge chairs. And so, what would they call this place? The first name that came to mind was Thunderbird after the popular Ford car. But he says that they quickly found out that this name was taken by another hotel.
So, as fate would have it, his partner Eddie had stayed in this hotel in Germany.
And I'm gonna butcher this really badly, but I'll attempt it. where Chetyre Sezona, I know that's completely wrong, but it translates to Four Seasons. Issy, he says, this just sounds right. Now, another thing here is Issy. He says he wasn't a hotel guy.
He doesn't know anything about running hotels. He knows that he needs help. [00:21:00] So he goes to a competing hotel and he talks with the GM. He lets him know what he's doing and that he's looking for a manager to help him. And this GM points him to a gentleman by the name of Ian Murrow.
Ian. He was from Scotland, and he has this really deep background in working at the finest hotels all over England. Issy doesn't know it yet. But Ian is the perfect man for the job.
Ian gave us class. Class in the way he made our customers welcome no matter how they dressed. Class and hiring and training staff to be friendly and efficient. Class in the affluent atmosphere he created with little money. We became good friends and everything that I learned about running a hotel, I learned from him.
Right from the start, Issy and Ian, they craft ways to stand out from all the other hotels. These are the first hints at what would later become their golden rule, and [00:22:00] more on that coming up soon, this next move that he takes here, I see this as the spirit of Estée Lauder and Harry Snyder, founder of In-N-Out Burger, rolled into one.
This is brilliant
Because we couldn't afford advertising. We decided to make food our drawing card and establish the dining room as our showcase something people would come for and talk about, thus attracting others. When Estée Lauder couldn't afford to hire an advertising agency, she took the $50,000 that she had saved for advertising and she put 100% of it into her cosmetics that she would give away with or without purchase.
The word-of-mouth advertising that this generated, she says, was far more powerful than any work that an advertising agency could have possibly done if we keep going here in the book. In the end, we decided to serve only roast beef [00:23:00] to make our roast beef the best in the city.
So, after some research with the help of Eddie Creed, who also loved food, we found a company in Chicago selling very high-quality roast beef from corn fed cattle right there. That's pure Harry Snyder. He focused on the highest quality ingredients for in and out selling only burgers, fries, and drinks.
To make the hotel stand out even more. Issy went deeper. He knew that the towels that other hotels offered basically sucked. So, what does he do? He puts in big, fluffy ones. Growing up with three sisters, he knew they wanted to use shampoo to wash their hair, not soap like all the other places were giving out.
So, shampoo was included in all rooms, a first at its time. Simple things make really big impacts. Guests, they don't notice the details. They feel them, Rooms, they fill up quickly and it begins to feel like something [00:24:00] real is happening. The hotel has life, the popularity of the restaurant.
It draws in a radio show host by the name of Elwood Glover from across the street at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Soon thereafter, Glover was so impressed by the restaurant. He starts broadcasting from their dining room that turns into an hour-long television show that's gonna run for 13 years from their first Four Seasons location.
Talk about nice free advertising. I'm broadcasting live today from Four Seasons. Amazing.
Issy says, not only did the show make the first four seasons quickly and extensively fashionable, it also made it profitable beyond all expectations. It was an extraordinary beginning for a small, unknown hotel company.
Honoring his word is he quickly pays off suppliers and contractors, which is really good because he is [00:25:00] gonna need them again here soon.
Not long after life calls. Again, when his partner Eddie finds a 16-acre field that's for sale. It was the perfect spot for a hotel, but like their first location, it had a few hard spots.
There was a set of railroad tracks that ran behind the land, and then on the other side of the street was the city garbage dump.
I recognized the drawbacks while envisioning the possibilities, what's created, what seems to me now looking back. A subconscious belief and success, I liked it. Our second hotel was even more of a gamble than the first.
I was putting more scarce capital in a business I really didn't know yet. I was still primarily a builder constructing houses and apartments.
On the site, Issy, he can see a 200-room hotel with a pool and a courtyard that was surrounded by parks. The big question, [00:26:00] where is the money gonna come from? He would go to the local bank of Nova Scotia who said that the loan that he was asking for was way too big for them to deal with. So, they sent him up to the head office to meet with a gentleman by the name of Cliff Ash.
He was the GM of the bank. And imagine that you're new in the hotel business. You're here asking for the biggest loan in your life. Your palms are sweaty, your mind's racing with what to say. We've been in rooms like this. You know exactly What that feels like. The bank officer says, what are you here for? How much do you need?
You counter, can you just gimme a chance to explain? You hear, I understand. You know your business. What can I do for you? You stumble a bit. You're kind of afraid to spit out the amount you need. Finally, it rolls off the tongue. $600,000.
The banker's response. Okay. That's [00:27:00] it, you ask. That's it. He says, and like that, Issy was on his way. Next, stop the architect.
His tradesmen, they trust him. They take a handshake for partial payment later. The building is designed using this Frank Lloyd Wright concept with these 30- and 60-degree angles. This gives them room for future growth and it's really a unique looking building. There's a picture in the book and it's kind of cool to see how there's a central building and that it has wings on either side with these unique looking angles, and then you can kind of see the courtyard in the middle.
Now, one question that Issy ask himself when he is building this hotel is. What would customers want the most? The twist here is he doesn't have any market research, so he simply just answers like he was the customer. And what he wants most is he wants a quiet room, he wants a good night's sleep, and he [00:28:00] wants to have an invigorating shower in the morning.
Therefore, sound, it's critical. These are some of the hidden details that really make a big impact. He makes sure that no plumbing in the rooms touched any concrete. This helps to reduce vibration.
He made sure that no two electrical outlets backed up to each other. This helps to prevent sound from passing from one room to another room. He went out and he tested tons of mattresses, making sure that he found the most comfortable one. He made sure that the shower heads had high pressure. These small details, they have big impacts.
As the hotel opens, it's gonna be run by his first GM, Ian, and they have this beautiful courtyard concept. They have a large pool. They have a separate pool for diving. They have two tennis courts, flower gardens, pathways, walkways, and they call this hotel the [00:29:00] inn, on the park and the cherry on top.
The city, they had agreed to move the garbage dump that was across the street.
The inn on the park would also become home of the Fitness Institute. This draws in hotel guest. It draws in local residents and also business executives. Like the first hotel, the restaurant. It also becomes an instant success. It says in the book that Table Reservations took months to get. For Issy, he's just getting started, things are going really well here, but he still considers himself a builder.
So, with a little bit of success, Issy and Rosalie, they decided to take a little trip to Europe. In their 10 years of marriage, they hadn't done hardly any traveling and they wanted to get out and see the world a little bit. So, when they arrive in Europe, Issy decides that they're gonna spend one night in a luxury hotel, and then the next night they would spend in a low-class hotel.
And this just helped him [00:30:00] balance his budget. What he doesn't know is that this trip is gonna change him in London. They're gonna stay at the worldfamous Dorchester. I was just blown away.
Everything about it was beyond anything I had known. You start to notice something is changing in them. Issy and Rosalie, they bounce to Paris then to Italy and Israel. The wheels this entire time, they're turning in his mind thinking that I can do this just as well, or maybe even better. Back home in his office, one day, outta the blue Ian pops, a builder from London to see Issy he's really excited. He is like, yeah, I just got back from Europe and I loved it. One place I really loved, was the Dorchester.
The response from the contractor was, my company owns that hotel. How interesting. Issy, he responds kind of jokingly, and he says if they ever wanna build a hotel [00:31:00] better than the Dorchester, he could do it for them.
He smiles. They part ways he kind of forgets about the meaning.
But a few weeks later, he gets a call asking him to come to London to discuss the hotel with the McAlpines, the owners of the Dorchester. Issy's heart jumps and he books a flight right away. The first meeting is friendly, but if we know in advance that it's gonna take four more years to agree on the project, he really only took a baby step here. They wanted a 400-room average scale hotel. Issy, he wants to do a 230 room, first class hotel that's gonna compete against the Dorchester.
A few months later, Issy, he goes back for a two-hour lunch. No deal. Industry experts all claim that the first-class market has way too many hotels, anyway. Issy, he holds his ground time, passes another trip,
another [00:32:00] lunch, another handshake, another flight home, wondering if it's ever gonna happen. This goes on and on, 20 more trips each time he's building trust and friendships; he's building what I call a friendship muscle. It's key. He needs it now, and as we'll see, he's gonna need it later in the future.
On the last trip, they ask him to bring along his wife, Rosalie, and she agrees to travel together with Issy.
All those meetings with Glover has served a single purpose, having little to do with the completed project. The McAlpine’s simply wanted to know for sure who they were dealing with before entering into a long-term business relationship.
Finally, after four years, the deal is done. When I think about deeply driven people, this is it.
He wasn't looking for the easy way out. It reminds me a lot of Samuel Cunard, who we spoke about on episode 15. In [00:33:00] 1826, he made a bold move. He learned that the East India Tea company needed merchants to bring tea from the Indies to Canada. Cunard, he sits on a ship from Canada to England for six weeks watching the Atlantic roll by with the intentions to win the contract. Staying here for just a second more.
The travel, it was important as most business at the time was just done through mail that was unreliable and lacked any real relationship building power. In person, he wins the deal plus the contacts that he makes while he's there pay off big time for him in the future, and this is one of the major reasons why his company still exists 185 years later. It's all about the strong relationships
Now let's switch from one fellow Canadian in Samuel, back over to Issy. He had won the project building. It soon begins on what they're gonna call the [00:34:00] inn on the park. From the big shots interview with Issy, he says that this was the most enjoyable time of his career, seeing the hotel come to life and opening it to the public.
Adding to this from the book, I no longer thought of myself primarily as a builder. I was now a hotelier with a clearly defined objective. I believed that what we had done in London, we could do anywhere in the world, be the best.
We see the hotel open in 1970, and it's a success right from the start. The first year the London property opened, it was named Europe's Hotel of the Year. Its occupancy was consistently the highest in the city, and it's still one of London's most successful hotels.
The success in London, I call it a purpose light switch. It's now on. The firstclass hotels, they have this really snooty way of treating people. If [00:35:00] you're not dressed properly, they won't even talk to you. He went the other way and he looked past social class.
He treats everyone with respect and is an equal, service was priority number one like so many years before when he looked at the hotel construction from the view of the customer, he does the same thing here.
Customers think primarily in terms of value. They buy whatever gives them the most value for their money. So, what do our customers value most? Our buildings give them beauty and comfort because we give them amenities, no one else does.
But most of all, we have been giving them better service than anyone else. Service, I'm convinced is key. Through service we can do over time what we're doing now in London, in any equivalent city in the world. Now at this time, he has like five or six hotels in Canada, in the [00:36:00] United States, and then we're providing decent service overall, but nowhere near the vision of what Issy wanted for a five-star hotel.
My mid-seventies decision to create the world's best hotel company was not taken seriously by most of my staff. I couldn't blame them. Our name was far from being a household word. We were competing with the world-famous companies, each with hundreds of hotels. And here I was saying that ours was gonna be the best.
No wonder they laughed behind my back
When you and I spoke about Harry Snyder, we saw that from day one service was his core mission When he opened Inn Out Burger, that's founder imprinting right from the very start, his employees knew it and they lived it, and he quickly builds a cult like following That remains to this day, 75 years later. For Issy, he's like 15 years in, he's in a different position here, [00:37:00] and we've seen this pattern before in Sam Walton when he started his first Walmart.
He admits that he didn't take good care of his employees, he didn't pay them very well. He was really watching his cost. He later corrects this with the generous profit-sharing plan, and he changes his point of view
If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you're taking care of the people in the stores. That's the most important single ingredient of Walmart's success. For Issy, he feels it in his bones, that deep change is needed, and so he turns to McDonald's.
Now, as a reader, when I first saw that, I was a little bit shocked. I mean, McDonald's? I guess I kind of feel like I was one of those executives that was laughing behind his back and I was wrong. It's easy to overlook lateral creativity. This is a [00:38:00] strong reminder for us. Issy, what he's doing is he's looking across industry learning lessons.
It all starts off for him when he calls his friend, who was the president of McDonald's of Canada, who allows Issy to attend one of their service trainings for their new hires and what he notices. It's something that's really easy to miss if you're not paying attention here. Almost every month McDonald's changed its TV advertising, but the film they were showing new hires must have been at least 15 years old.
It struck me then that when you have something people can identify with; you don't have to keep reinventing it. Once it's rooted, it sticks. Our service problem, though much more complex than McDonald's could nevertheless adhere to that pattern. The next day he brings his executive staff to the training.
[00:39:00] Many of them simply just laugh at the idea, questioning, how could this ever work? They're selling hamburgers, we're selling filet mignon. Issy, he knows in his heart what they're selling.
The point is they're missing the core of the message. Quality doesn't necessarily mean luxury. It means giving customers what they expect, meeting customers’ expectations every time. That's performance value.
Issy, he turns his team upside down and he asks them to start treating employees like how they should be treating customers. They laugh at him still, and many don't follow, and he says he can't blame them for their entire careers. They've been trained that profits come first. Employees, they're just a cost center, and they're not gonna work any harder than they absolutely have to.
Issy knows this is a [00:40:00] problem.
He sees his culture as the Titanic sailing along in the night heading for a disaster that he doesn't wanna see. The big question is, can he turn it around before it's too late. He's gonna call this perhaps the most difficult job of his entire life, selling the invisible.
Selling it internally, getting it across to our hotel managers and supervisors was proving exceedingly difficult. We needed to get it down to the front-line, clerks, bell, staff, bartenders, waiters, cooks, housekeepers, and dishwasher. The lowest paid and in most companies, the least motivated people, but the ones who would make or break a five-star service reputation.
For Issy, this is sacred space, the interaction between the customer and the employee. He says the following, when our employees remember them, greet them, know what they want, and provide it quickly. [00:41:00] They create a loyal customer whose referrals and long-term repeat business can often run well into the six figures.
But when our employees remember them, greet them, know what they want and provide it quickly. That creates a loyal customer whose referrals and long-term repeat business can often run well into the six figures.
That's a cycle of success dependent entirely on junior employees. We need employees able and willing to respond on their own to whatever comes up. Employees who can spot, solve and even anticipate problems. That means delegating authority as well as responsibility. We're asking them in effect, to be a self-manager.
This concept of self-management. It's one of the ways that Jim Casey, who was the founder of UPS, he used it to empower his employees. Jim, he knew the power of intangibles and was one of the finest [00:42:00] examples of putting service first. He was always saying service is the sum of many little things done well, Jim Casey started this from day one.
Issy spends years trying to turn his culture. His selling efforts are slow to take hold. His executives and hotel GMs, they say, yes, boss, but they do the opposite when he is not around.
Frontline employees, they watch the boss.
One thing Issy knows deeply, trust throughout the company was imperative. Actions speak louder and much clearer than words. And so, Issy, he develops a core set of values that are anchored in the golden rule. These values spell out to everyone in the company, top to bottom, how they're expected to act, treat each other, and treat customers with dignity and respect.
Now, most companies just slap these up on the wall and they think that everyone's just gonna go read them and act as [00:43:00] such. Not Issy. He flies to a hotel in Houston and he rounds everyone up and he explains to them what they're doing, and he asks them to read the values. When they read it, I tried something unusual, great school stuff, I said. Would each of you read out loud a part of this? And then tell us what you think it means and what you feel about it. So, they discuss who they are, how they believe, what they believe, and how to be successful. The energy in the room, it starts to shift. An honest conversation starts taking place.
Issy ask employees, can you live with these values? responses, they're mixed. Verbal feedback says that people don't live by these values today. Issy, he keeps pushing them, saying, yeah, I know.
But he asked them again, do you think you [00:44:00] can do it? Are you prepared to work this way? Most of them respond and say, yes, we can work this way, and I'm imagining being in the room, the conversation's flowing and the energy it's building. Then someone asks the key question, what happens to people who don't live by this?
This is where Issy turns the ship. He says, I guess they'll have to leave. A quick clarification question would follow. You mean anyone who's not going along with this will be out? Issy says the following, this is what we stand by. Anybody who doesn't believe it, anybody doesn't fit in.
The invisible concepts have come to life. Once you feel it, you cannot un-feel it. Issy visits all of his hotels. I became an evangelist preaching the gospel of service every hour of every [00:45:00] day on every trip to every hotel, continuously restating it, clarifying it, developing it. My job was getting employees at every level to focus on one priority, pleasing customers, and it was also getting managers to focus on the obvious corollary, pleasing employees.
We treated the frontline people as members of an elite team, and for those who didn't comply, well, Issy took actions, I had to make cuts at the very top. GMs and some senior executives and even some personal friends. Some were competent technically, but we protected our values above all else.
Enforcing our credo was the most far-reaching decision I ever made. A painful process, often personally distressing. It's perhaps the hardest thing I ever did, but the fastest way for management to destroy its credibility is to say employees come first [00:46:00] and be seen putting them last.
And then one of the most important sentences in the book, if not the entire book. Enshrining the golden rule as our primary working guide was the most fundamental decision in shaping our future.
At four seasons, they focus on hiring on character and personality, believing that on the job skills, they just come with training. But no amount of training can change a poor attitude. Employee retention rates increase. Employees feel valued. Communication, it works two ways.
Management to employees and employees to management. Both are equally important. All employees are provided with key hotel financials. Nothing is hidden from them. Each goal is celebrated. If we fast forward five years, a new type of manager had evolved, a communicator, not a commander, a coach, not a [00:47:00] cop.
Our leaders showed their concern for employees by involving them in decision making. An old Japanese proverb. Put our manager's role in a nutshell. If they work for you, you work for them.
So, in 1998, Forbes, they're gonna come out with their list of the best 100 places to work in America in Four Seasons, would show up on the list at number 27, and they're gonna remain on that list for the next 22 years.
This matters because when employees are cared for, that sacred space between the employee and the customer is where the invisible becomes visible. Four Seasons today, they have over a 130 hotels and resorts with more than 50 under development. For me to read the list of customer service awards and rankings.
Would be longer than this podcast episode. They're quite lengthy and impressive. Quite simply, they are the [00:48:00] world's best five-star hotel chain out there, hands down. It goes back to the opening line. So much of longterm success is based on intangibles, beliefs, and ideas, invisible concepts.
Thanks for listening today.
I hope you can pick up a copy of the book for all the details that I couldn't cover. The stories and the learnings were endless. To close out the show today, I just wanted to leave you with a few final thoughts from Issy. In 1961, when I built my first hotel, I knew nothing about the hotel business.
My only professional experience was in building apartments and houses. I never thought that this was going to become a career, nor did I ever imagine I would one day find myself building and managing the largest and most prestigious group of five-star hotels in the world. I approached the business of inn, keeping from a customer's perspective, I was the [00:49:00] host and the customers were the house guest. What would the customers consider important? What will the customers recognize as value? I never made the mistake of putting profit ahead of people, and I believe part of Four Seasons worldwide acclaim is built primarily on strong relationships. The one idea that customers value the most cannot be copied, the consistent quality of our exceptional service. That service is based on a corporate culture, and a culture cannot be mandated as a policy. It must grow from within based on the actions of the company's people over a long period of time.
Four Seasons is the sum of its people. Many, many good people. Until next time, make it a beautiful day in the neighborhood. My friend.