Not Done Weekly - Lessons Learned From 8 Months of Podcasts!

Jonathon Vopinek came up through operations at Marriott — started at the front desk at 19, worked his way up, loved the company, and never planned on leaving. Then he and his wife experienced something no parent should ever face: they lost their three-month-old daughter to SIDS.

That kind of loss changes everything. It changed how Jonathon thought about time, about work, about what matters. He left Marriott and built White Label Hotels from scratch — not because he was chasing a bigger title or a bigger paycheck, but because he needed to build something that honored what he’d learned in the worst possible way: that life is short, that work should serve life and not consume it, and that the people in your organization are carrying things you’ll never see.

The biggest risk is to do something that you are no longer learning or interested in and you just start to become a dinosaur because you get stuck in your ways. Jonathon Vopinek, Founder & CEO, White Label Hotels

That conversation changed how I approached every interview after it. It’s why I started asking different questions.

Eight months ago, I sat down in front of a microphone for the first time and hit record. I’d been a CEO for eight years. I’d run a company with 9,000+ associates. I thought I had a pretty good handle on leadership.

Since then, I’ve had over 35 conversations with some of the brightest, most battle-tested leaders in hospitality and beyond — CEOs, founders, investors, operators, data scientists, and a few people who defy any single label. What started as a podcast has quietly become one of the most humbling learning experiences of my career. Not because these guests told me things I’d never heard — but because they held up a mirror to the things I thought I knew and showed me the gaps.

So, this week, instead of a guest spotlight, I want to share the lessons that have stuck with me. The ones I keep thinking about on flights, in meetings, and at 5 AM when I can’t sleep. I’ve organized them by theme, and I’ve tried to give credit where it’s due.

01. ON LEADERSHIP: IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS

Transparency Beats Confidentiality — Every Time

This is one I talked about on my solo “7 Principles” episode, and it keeps getting validated. Show me an organization that hoards information and uses knowledge as power, and I’ll show you a broken culture. Trust is given, not earned. Treat people like adults, share broadly, and yes — someone might occasionally take advantage of that. But the upside of a transparent organization crushes the downside of a secretive one.

Jensen Huang at Nvidia has over 60 direct reports and communicates to everyone at once. I don’t agree with everything about his style, but he gets that right. The old telephone game kills companies. Say it to everyone. Say it clearly. Say it again.

Leaders Speak Last

This is one of the hardest disciplines I’ve developed, and I’ll be honest — I still screw it up. I like to talk. If you’re the CEO and you share your opinion first, you’ve just biased the entire room. Everyone calibrates to your answer. But if you let your team go first — you get unfiltered thinking, you absorb ideas you wouldn’t have had, and sometimes your questions get answered before you even ask them.

You hire smart people to tell you what to do. So let them.

Fear-Based Leadership Has an Expiration Date

Jason Reader (COO, Davidson Hospitality) told a story about a manager from his dishwashing days who would dress people up and down publicly. The respect only existed when the manager was in the room. The minute he left, it evaporated. Jason’s takeaway: real leadership is when people run through walls for you even when you’re not watching. That only comes from psychological safety, not fear.

I’ll admit — the younger Sloan had some of that edge. When I was getting promoted every other year in my 20s with a very healthy ego, I confused being direct with being intimidating. It took me years to learn that the best performance comes from people who feel safe enough to tell you the truth, not people who are afraid of what happens if they do.

Things are never as good as people think they are, and things are never as bad as people think they are.Jason Reader, COO, Davidson Hospitality

Strategy Is About Sacrifice

Jason also dropped this one, and it’s deceptively simple. Davidson runs specialized verticals — Hotels, Resorts, Pivot — with dedicated teams for each. They say “no” to deals constantly. In an industry where most management companies will take anything with a pulse, that discipline is rare. You can’t be all things to all people. Strategy is what you choose not to do.

The Operator’s Heart Never Leaves

Craig Smith (CEO, Aimbridge Hospitality) had the dream retirement — sold the houses, moved his wife back to Southern California, bought the dream home. And then he got bored. After 35+ years at Marriott managing up to 2,500 hotels across 130 countries, Craig came out of retirement because he missed the thing that made him fall in love with this business in the first place: operations. Not strategy decks. Not board meetings. The daily rhythm of running hotels, coaching GMs, and optimizing P&Ls. That’s the heartbeat of this industry, and Craig couldn’t walk away from it.

I'm an operator at heart. I grew up through the hotels. At the core, I love operations and I love operating. Craig Smith, CEO, Aimbridge Hospitality

02. ON CAREER GROWTH: SAY YES, FIGURE IT OUT LATER

Half of Life Is Just Showing Up

Gilda Perez-Alvarado (Chief Strategy Officer at Accor, CEO of Orient Express) shared advice she got from the legendary Art Adler: half of life is just showing up. Her career exploded because she said yes to things beyond her job description, embraced scope creep, and never turned down an opportunity because it wasn’t in her JD. Nobody became CEO by declining projects.

I say yes and then I figure it out. Gilda Perez-Alvarado, CSO, Accor / CEO, Orient Express

A headhunter once told Gilda she lacked operational experience — despite having gone to hotel school. That feedback stung, but it stuck. She went out and intentionally filled that gap. Skills trump titles. Don’t audition for roles — accumulate skills, and the roles find you.

Have the End in Mind and Work Backwards

When I graduated Georgia Tech, I knew I wanted to be CEO of something. I didn’t know what company or when, but I had that north star. So I went and studied the profiles of CEOs I admired and reverse-engineered their paths. What degrees did they have? What roles? What experiences? Then I tried to fill in the middle.

Here’s where I’ll get uncomfortably honest: 80% of the CEOs I’ve interacted with stop learning once they reach the top. They rely on prior experience, their curiosity slows down, maybe they feel entitled after decades of grinding. I’ve caught myself drifting that direction too. The antidote is staying a student. The minute you think you’ve learned it all is the minute you start becoming irrelevant.

Constant transformation is really important. You have to continuously reinvent yourself to stay relevant. David Kong, Former CEO, Best Western

Break Out of the Box You’re In

Scott Roby (President, Pacifica Hotels) spent years as a revenue management specialist before deliberately petitioning leadership to move into operations. His mentor John Murphy told him something that changed his trajectory: you need to understand the whole thing — from guest satisfaction to employee satisfaction to profitability. Scott could have stayed comfortable as a revenue expert. Instead, he chose to be incompetent in a new domain so he could eventually lead the whole business.

Kurien Jacob (Managing Partner at Highgate Tech Ventures) made a similar leap — from “revenue king” at Highgate to venture capital. He described himself as “a sucker for punishment” for leaving a role he’d mastered. But he recognized that staying too long in a comfort zone breeds stagnation. Sometimes the biggest growth comes from being the beginner again.

The Non-Traditional Path Is Underrated

Pat Pacious (CEO, Choice Hotels) is a U.S. Navy veteran and self-described “recovering consultant” who spent 21 years at Choice working up through strategy and technology — not through a single hotel lobby. Chris Silcock (President of Global Brands, Hilton) studied computer science and then music before taking a part-time banquet waiter job at a Hilton in Watford to pay the bills. He was “destined to be a household name in the music business.” Nearly 30 years later, he oversees 25 world-class hotel brands.

The pattern is clear: some of the most effective leaders in hospitality didn’t come up through the traditional GM pipeline. Military discipline, consulting frameworks, music, computer science — these backgrounds bring fresh lenses to an industry that can get stuck in its own echo chamber.

03. ON CULTURE: IT’S THE ONLY THING THAT SCALES

People Quit Bosses, Not Jobs

This is something I believe in my bones. Of course, people sometimes pick the wrong industry. But most of the time, when someone leaves, it’s because they weren’t informed, weren’t supported, or weren’t inspired. Usually, it’s a combination of all three. If you can nail those three things as a leader — inform, support, inspire — you’ll retain people others can’t.

Gratitude Disarms Anxiety

Every hotel visit I’ve ever done, I start with housekeeping in the morning. And I always lead with a thank you. Gratitude immediately lowers the anxiety in the room. It shows appreciation. And then you can have a real conversation. I also share the story of how painfully slow I was when IHG made me work housekeeping for a day at a Candlewood Suites. The staff always laughs. It makes you human.

Some of my best ideas as CEO — including the Remington Relief Fund and our paternity/maternity leave policy — came directly from skip-level conversations with associates. I stole the “Coffee with Sloan” format from Mit Shah (Founder & CEO, Noble Investment Group), who did “Coffee with Mit” at Noble. The associates see what’s broken. They know what’s working. And they have ideas. You must create the space to hear them.

Culture Isn’t a Poster — It’s Repetition

A message has to reach the point of nausea before it actually sinks into an organization. Jack Welch

I must have said “we’re the place where passionate people thrive” thousands of times at Remington. Every webinar. Every memo. Every back-of-house posting. It probably sounded repetitive to some people. Good. That’s the point. Some people learn by reading, some by watching, some by listening. You have to hit all three, consistently, or your culture is just words on a wall.

Second Acts Require First-Act Courage

Rogers Healy built one of the most recognized personal brands in North Texas real estate — those blue yard signs are everywhere. But rather than coast, he stepped away from day-to-day operations to found Morrison Seeger Venture Capital. His inspiration? Phil Collins’ final tour, called “Not Dead Yet.” Rogers named his daughter Collins. The man lives his brand. That’s not marketing — that’s authenticity.

There’s a hard stop of humility where I was like, my gosh, these things that I’ve been chasing mean absolutely nothing. Rogers Healy, Founder, Morrison Seeger Venture Capital

Raul Leal (Founding CEO, Virgin Hotels) is another one who defies a single label. He’s spent his entire life in hotels and has no plans to leave. But what most people don’t know is that Raul is a serious drummer and a talented artist who does superhero renderings. His creative life isn’t separate from his leadership — it feeds it. The best leaders bring their whole selves to work, not just the parts that fit on a resume.

04. ON THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY: WHERE WE’RE HEADED

The Alignment Problem Is Real

Brian Quinn (former CDO, Sonesta) laid this out clearly: the incentives between brands and franchisees are fundamentally decoupled. Brands focus on commercial engines and loyalty programs while owners are drowning in taxes, insurance, and utilities — the unglamorous P&L items where real margin lives. Extended stay and lifestyle segments work because alignment naturally exists. The rest of the industry needs to rebuild it.

If you can have that narrow bundle of services and be violently aligned with the guests, you don’t have to do that much. You just have to do what you promised them well. Brian Quinn, Former CDO, Sonesta Hotels

Chris Green (CEO, Humanitarian Hotels) echoed this from the management side. Base fees have compressed while chargebacks have multiplied — accounting fees, IT fees, revenue management fees. It’s a shell game, and owners see through it. Real alignment requires honest, transparent structures where the value of an exceptional operator speaks for itself.

Too Many Brands, Not Enough Clarity

Greg Friedman (Founder/CEO, Peachtree Group) and Brian Quinn both hit on this. With 20+ brands in some families, even operators can’t tell you exactly where each one fits. Retail learned to consolidate brands decades ago. Hospitality hasn’t. Brand proliferation creates confusion for guests, fatigue for developers, and dilution for everyone. A rationalization is coming.

The M&A Wave Is Building

Greg was emphatic: deferred maintenance, higher debt costs, lower performance, and lender fatigue are creating a forced-seller environment. Banks holding 50% of CRE loans have been extending-and-pretending since 2022. That’s ending. Meanwhile, supply growth is at 0.7% versus a historical 2%. For buyers who are capitalized and patient, this is a generational setup.

The Consumer Is Bifurcated

Amanda Hite (President, STR/CoStar) put hard data behind what many of us feel anecdotally. The stock market was hitting highs, but lower-income consumers had been struggling for two years. Economy and mid-scale hotels saw negative RevPAR first. Then after Liberation Day, demand softened in the upscale and select-service segments too. The headline economy and the consumer economy are two different things right now.

Ryan Meliker (Founder/CEO, LARK Analytics) reinforced this from the capital markets side — strong stock performance alongside declining hotel profits and negative job growth. The market and the operator are living in different realities.

Pat Pacious offered the most grounded take:

You can’t have a K-shaped economy forever. You just are not going to have a functioning economy if only 20% of the people are doing well and the other 80% are continuing to decline. Pat Pacious, CEO, Choice Hotels International

But he’s also optimistic about demand drivers ahead — tax relief hitting in Q2, low gas prices, the FIFA World Cup, and America’s 250th anniversary all targeting the road tripper and leisure traveler. As Pat put it: the consumer always prioritizes travel. It’s called discretionary in their budgets, but people take their vacations.

It’s just a complicated damn business we have. Tony Capuano, CEO, Marriott International

05. ON AI: THE GREAT EQUALIZER

IQ Is Overrated — EQ Is the Future

Here’s a confession: I spent years bragging about my analytical ability. It was my go-to answer in every interview through my early 30s. Every time someone asked my greatest strength, I’d say “my analytical ability” without hesitation. And it served me well — until it became table stakes. Let me tell you: that ego and that attitude will bite you in the ass, particularly if you’re a CEO of a lot of people.

In a day and age where AI can automate intellect, EQ and people skills become exponentially more important. Physical strength mattered until the Industrial Revolution gave us machines. IQ mattered until AI made everyone analytically brilliant. What’s left? How you make people feel. How you build trust. How you lead through ambiguity.

Dean Cheng (Dean, FIU Chaplin School of Hospitality) is building his entire curriculum around this idea. His contrarian take: hospitality will thrive during AI disruption because it requires irreplaceable human connection. Unlike trucking or accounting, you can’t automate the feeling of a great hotel experience.

Everyone Sees AI Through Their Own Lens — And That’s the Problem

Here’s something that surprised me across 35+ conversations: almost everyone is biased by their own background when predicting how AI will reshape hospitality. The revenue managers see AI as a pricing optimization tool. The operators see it as a labor solution. The tech founders see it as the platform that eats everything. The investors see it as a valuation catalyst. And the educators see it as a curriculum problem.

Nobody is wrong, exactly. But nobody has the full picture either. And that’s what makes me uncomfortable — I don’t have the full picture either. I’m a revenue-management-turned-CEO guy. I know my lens is biased too.

Klaus Kohlmayr (Chief Evangelist, IDeaS) spends a third of his role in constant dialogue with startups, consultants, and technology companies just to understand where the industry is going over the next three to five years. That’s his entire job — horizon scanning. And even he would tell you that the rate of change makes confident predictions dangerous. Adam Harris (CEO, Cloudbeds) warns that LLMs are designed to be emotionally sticky and tell you what you want to hear, with inherent bias from training data. Felix Undeutsch (CEO, Hiver AI) focuses on the data moat, not the algorithm. Roman Pedan (CEO, CASA) just raised $40M from Silver Lake specifically for AI. Dean Cheng is worried about AI governance and gives 50-50 odds on existential risk if we don’t get policy right.

AI needs to be a compass, not a GPS. Arash Azarbarzin, CEO, Viceroy Hotels

The lesson? Be deeply skeptical of anyone who speaks about AI with absolute certainty. The most trustworthy voices are the ones who admit what they don’t know.

I don’t think there are really that many AI experts. Anyone who really knows what they’re talking about realizes how fast things are changing. Joshua Wohler, Founder, Mindstone AI

06. ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP: THE BUILDER’S MINDSET

Serendipity Favors the Open-Minded

Ben Rafter (CEO, Hotel Equities & Springboard Hospitality) came from tech and didn’t know what RevPAR was when he entered hospitality. A casual conversation during a trek to Everest Base Camp led to his hotel career. Tony Capuano ended up at Cornell Hotel School because his dad carpooled with a hotel industry lobbyist. Arash Azarbarzin (CEO, Viceroy Hotels) was studying computer science and took a part-time kitchen job to pay the bills — that led to the CIA, then Four Seasons, and now running one of the most respected luxury brands in the world.

I didn’t choose hospitality, hospitality chose me. Arash Azarbarzin, CEO, Viceroy Hotels

The pattern is striking: many of the best hospitality leaders didn’t plan to be here. They were open to conversations, to pivots, to opportunities that didn’t look like opportunities at the time. Careers aren’t always built — sometimes they’re discovered.

The Power of Being Early

Lou Zameryka — Employee #2 at Booking.com Americas — has built his entire career on a pattern: positioning himself at the earliest stage of things. His first job at 14 was at a grocery store during its grand opening. He did multiple hotel new openings. Then Booking.com, pre-everything. Some people are steady-state operators. Lou is a ground-zero builder. Knowing which one you are is half the battle.

The Independents Are Coming Back

Ben Rafter also offered a prediction that stuck with me:

The pendulum has been heavily swinging towards branded. The pendulum swings and it’s about to stop and start swinging the other way. I think it will be a rebirth of independent properties that emerges from this, particularly with AI. Ben Rafter, CEO, Hotel Equities & Springboard Hospitality

That’s a bold call. But when you combine AI-powered distribution with the guest’s growing appetite for unique, non-cookie-cutter experiences, it starts to make a lot of sense.

07. ON HOTEL DISTRIBUTION & TECHNOLOGY: WHO OWNS THE CUSTOMER?

I’ll be upfront: this section makes me uncomfortable because I don’t have a clean answer. The distribution landscape in hospitality is shifting under our feet, and most of us — myself included — are still figuring out what the new world looks like.

The OTA Tax Is Unsustainable

Chinmai Sharma (President, Sabre Hospitality) didn’t mince words: Expedia and Booking.com taking 15–20% of bookings is an intermediary fee that doesn’t exist at that scale in almost any other industry. Hotels need alternative distribution partners that offer better margins while still delivering demand. The Netflix/Amazon model — proactive personalization, curated offers, one-click simplicity — is massively underdeveloped in travel. Whoever cracks that owns the future.

The PMS Is 30 Years Overdue

Richard Valtr (Founder/CEO, Mews) has been on a 12-year mission to replace hotel property management systems that were built in the 1990s. He’s refreshingly honest about the journey:

It apparently takes 14 years to become an overnight success. Richard Valtr, Founder & CEO, Mews

Mews just hit a $2.5B valuation because the need is undeniable. Legacy PMS systems are both the industry’s biggest barrier and, once solved, the biggest moat.

Geoffrey Toffetti (CEO, Frontline Performance Group) echoed this from the performance side: solving hotel data problems creates stickiness that’s almost impossible to displace. Legacy systems are painful to implement but once in, nobody wants to switch.

Building the Hotel of the Future

Roman Pedan (Founder/CEO, CASA) left KKR to sleep on the floor of his first apartment-hotel units. Now CASA operates 85+ properties with $150M+ in annual bookings and just raised $40M from Silver Lake specifically for AI acceleration. His model — tech-enabled, apartment-style, data-driven — represents a fundamentally different approach to hospitality. The old playbook is being rewritten.

08. ON PERSPECTIVE: THE STUFF NOBODY TALKS ABOUT

The Industry Needs More Honest Journalism

Rafat Ali (Founder/CEO, Skift) has built his career on asking the questions no one else will. Most travel media plays nice because everyone benefits from the status quo. Rafat doesn’t. His perspective: the concentration of platform power among OTAs, airlines, and mega-brands is reshaping the entire industry, and most operators aren’t paying close enough attention to the structural shifts happening around them.

Diverse Backgrounds Make Better Leaders

David Kong (former CEO, Best Western, 17 years) spoke candidly about unconscious bias in hospitality leadership. He was often the only diverse face on CEO panels. American corporate culture valorizes aggressive, brash personalities — but that doesn’t translate globally. Humble, respectful approaches dominate in international markets. Neither is right or wrong. Both should be represented. After retiring, David started his own podcast — “Personal Stories” — specifically to amplify underrepresented voices. That’s legacy.

Talent is distributed equally, but opportunities are not. David Kong, Former CEO, Best Western

Richard Garcia (Head of F&B, Crescent Hotels) is a high school dropout who served in the military and has cooked at the James Beard House six times. Dean Cheng moved from professor to dean at one of the nation’s largest hospitality programs after being told: “If you don’t do it, and I pick someone else, you only have yourself to blame.” Daniel del Olmo (Co-CEO, Sage Hospitality) has been in the industry since he was literally two years old. Mit Shah (Founder/CEO, Noble Investment Group) grew up watching his immigrant parents run the Winkler Motor Inn in Winston-Salem — and went on to become one of the brightest minds in lodging real estate. I stole a few things from Mit when I became CEO. He’d probably say I stole more than a few.

The paths are wildly different. That’s the point.

What I’m Still Working On

If I’m going to ask my guests to be vulnerable, I should be too. Here’s something I haven’t figured out yet: I still default to being the smartest person in the room instead of the most curious. I catch it faster now, but it’s still there. Thirty-five conversations have taught me that the best leaders — the Gildas, the Craigs, the Davids — lead with questions, not answers. I’m not there yet. But I’m working on it.

Progress, Not Perfection

Ninety percent launched, tested, relaunched, retested, and done five times in 30 days will almost always beat 99% right on the first launch. Speed and iteration matter more than perfection. If someone on your team messes up, don’t crucify them. Coach them. Fire people when you need to — I’ve done plenty of that — but create an environment where mistakes are learning moments, not career-ending events.

Be 1% better today than you were yesterday. Not against your comp set. Against yourself.

The Bottom Line

Eight months and 35+ conversations later, here’s what I know for sure: this industry is full of extraordinary people who got here by accident, stayed because they fell in love with it, and are navigating one of the most complex operating environments in memory. The leaders who will win aren’t the smartest in the room — they’re the most curious, the most transparent, and the most human.

I’m grateful to every guest who’s sat down with me. And I’m just getting started.

Not done.

— Sloan