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Isadore Sharp

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2021-06-06

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2021-06-06

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1. “Every couple of months I would go see him and he would patiently explain why he disagreed, but one day his patient gave out Stop bothering me, he said. Don't come back until you've arranged all the financing you need. I will give you fifty percent if you can get the other fifty. And that's all Izzy needed to hear, so he goes out and he's hitting up bankers, anybody he can. Now he does something that's really interesting as he's collecting money. He's going in with a few other partners. It's like a friend and then maybe a brother-in-law. He's not afraid Izzy does something smart. He's not afraid to ask other people for help. And I'm going to read what he does here and then I'm going to compare how Steve Jobs did the exact same thing. So he says, none of us knew anything about the hotel business. So when Murray, this is one of his partners, read in Time magazine about a man named Mike Robinson who ran a successful chain of motels, one of them in downtown Phoenix, I wrote him a letter. He invited us down so Murray and I flew to Phoenix.”

   2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “I was proposing. Then I went to my best friend and asked if he would invest it. So his best friend Wally, his parents had died young, so that left him some money, but he doesn't have control over. So he says, sorry, Izzy, my money's all in a trust and my trustee won't invest in something that he thinks that will never work. So this is the second person. This is a stupid idea. It's never going to work. So he approaches somebody else that had loaned him money to build houses and apartments. He says, you know nothing about the hotel business. I do and I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole. So everybody's telling them no, what is he doing? He goes out and looks for the best place to put this motel that he wants to make. I found a possible center. I found a possible center town site and then went back and Proposition sees all. This is the first guy. Again, he told me I didn't know what I was doing. Now this is a crazy sentence that I'm about to read to you. This went on and on for three years.”

   2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “So his very first introduction into hotels or motels or the hotel industry is building a motel for somebody else. So he starts building this motel for someone else. And then he starts to think like, why don't I just build one of these for myself? So he says his motel went over so well. He asked me soon after he opened to finish the other rooms. And I thought, if it works so well here, why wouldn't the same idea work downtown? The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became. I was still building houses and apartments, of course, but in what little spare time I had I had begun soliciting opinions from our current and previous financial backers on building a motel downtown. I began by calling Cecil is one of his previous investors. He's the head of a life insurance company called Great West. And this is Cecil's response. I'm reading this to you because every single person thinks he's an idiot for even suggesting such a thing. Cecil did not like this new deal.”

   2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Telling you, she said, there's somebody in the bathroom. I got up and went into the bathroom. I just think I'm laughing, thinking if you were like, think of it, if you were in his shoes, you're on a honeymoon. Somebody's in my bathroom. No one was there, but someone had been for the bathroom served two separate rooms. I thought that, and this is really fascinating his takeaway here. I thought that if a hotel like this was making lots of money, it shouldn't be hard to build a hotel that would make a lot more.”

   2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Okay, so we go backwards into timeline. He's talking about how work is always on his mind, and even when he's on his honeymoon. And this is very interesting. He's remembering this because something he repeats over and over again is that he never, like, he kind of, he always thought of himself as a builder. Even when he owned a bunch of hotels, he did not consider himself a hotelier, I think is how you pronounce it. And so he comes to a really important realization that even a mediocre business in some cases can make money. So if a mediocre business can make money, what will a great business do? So he says, even on our honeymoon, work was often on my mind. For our wedding night, in fact, I reserved a room at the airport hotel in Toronto. I heard that it was successful and I wanted to find out why. We expected glamour. It was anything but. Our room was small and noisy, people coming and going. Then in the middle of the night Rosalie woke me. There's somebody in our room, she said. Don't be silly, I replied.”

   2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “That's the end of her note. I doubt it changed me immediately, though I'd certainly did thereafter. For home eventually became the one place I could leave my problems behind and enjoy the moment. Life settled into a routine. On the job by seven AM and home by seven PM. No frills for us like vacations or the golf club. Work was my life.”

   2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “So he continues giving us an update on his station in life at this point. Three children, a couple still in diapers, in an apartment with only two bedrooms, our situation was not only a drain on income, but on time. I was working morning till night six or seven days a week. Rosalie never complained, never tried to change me, though she once left me a note so succinctly pertinent that I still keep the original in my notebook, and this was very interesting what she wrote to him at this point. Oh, remember, she's calling him an overachiever. She knows that his ambition right at this point in his life, his self-belief and his ambition far outstrip what he's able to actually accomplish in real life yet. And that's a main theme of his life. Belief comes first. Overachievers suffer loss of intimacy, no time for fun. Relationships starve on a diet of self absorption. Home is the place to express the playful part of oneself.”

   2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “So this is the beginning, this is the very beginning of his career. And just a reminder, the beginning of his career was extremely hard. He did not have a lot of money. Money was tight, and he had a growing family. So he's married at this point. They still married to this day. The boys put a considerable strain on our income. But Rosalie, growing up with little money to spend, was a highly proficient economizer. She not only did her own decorating and made her own clothes, but she also shopped with inorderate care. Instead of having milk delivered, she would walk with the kids to the store and buy milk by the judge, which gave her one quart free. It was five years before we could afford our first vacation, which was three days of sunlight and sunburn at the Midtown Motor Inn in Niagara Falls, which we then considered glamorous.”

   2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “I got the money, but not until afterward did the significance of his advice sink in. He was telling me You've got a good business mind. Why not stop laying bricks and use it I didn't know it then, but I'd be doing”

   2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Quick profit. And he's like, I don't want to sell. I know what I'm doing. I want to build. He's going to say the same thing here, but remember this for later. So he says, you know, I could sell the land tomorrow and make a significant profit. I said, but I don't want to sell it. I want to build on it. And I want you to loan me the money I need. You may say I'm putting no money down, but that's not true. What I've gained on my land is my equity. And if I'd come to you when we first looked at this land and said, we'll put up that amount of equity, I'm sure you would have gone along with it. Well, our gain on that land, which is easily checked, is exactly the same. He then gave me some advice.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “I was not only in charge of construction, I was the rental agent, the salesperson, and the financier. Once at age twenty one wearing rubber boots and work clothes, I went to the Bank of Toronto and explained to the branch manager how we this is really, really smart, what he does here. And we're going to see, and the banker picks up on, okay, this guy's got a brain here. He's not just, you know, somebody that he could be doing much more than where he's at now. So he says, and explain to the branch manager how we option land, now worth considerably more than we had paid. And before I read this quote from Izzy, he's trying to convince him to give money, even though he doesn't have any money to put down. So he approaches it from a different angle. He's like, well, I do have, you're saying I don't have money, but I am bringing equity to the table. And this is what he means by that. You know I could sell the land tomorrow and make a significant profit, I said. But I don't want to sell. So this is funny now me reading this. I'm going to interrupt myself. I'm sorry, but it's funny rereading this because there's many times where he's presented with the opportunity to make a”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Job, this banker puts an idea in his mind. And let me read this to you. So it says, I was forced to be a jack of all trades, working alone in a little construction shack with a small sales office in front. And when I wasn't there, I'd be on site, not only giving orders to workers, but also doing whatever needed to be done.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Want to fast forward in the story a little bit. He's now outside of, he's not in school anymore. He's starting to work. He's around 21 years old all the time, and he's working in the small construction company with his dad. The back page says, how did a child of immigrants, starting with no background in the hotel business, create the world's most admired and successful hotel brand? And how has four seasons grown so dramatically over nearly half a century without losing focus on exceptional quality and unparalleled service? Izzy Sharp answers these questions in his aspiring memoir. He started out in Toronto, the son of a modest builder from Poland, but ambition and fate took him beyond his father's three-man construction business. So that is where we are in this story, his father's three-man construction business, and we start to see this advice that he gets from a banker. And again, I think this is really smart what his dad did, whether intentional or not, he forced his son to be resourcefulness, not only when he was a kid, but now he's an adult. And part of this resourcefulness is making him do every single job. And as a byproduct of doing every single job,”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “And one more story for you from his childhood. And then I left myself on this page as well. That's one way to force resourcefulness. My parents never question how or what I was doing. Not only were they totally involved in work, monitoring a child's playtime was not in their tradition when they grew up. My father never took his children anywhere. He never took me fishing or swimming, though he did teach me to swim. He took me and my sisters out in a boat, threw us overboard, and said Now swim.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “The best teacher, and we see his father's preferred teaching method. Dad, too, taught me in his own inimable way. I was building two steps for a house, making wooden forms that were going to be filled with concrete. Dad, who was watching, never told me I was building them wrong. And it wasn't until I had poured the concrete that I saw my mistake. The first step was too big, and the top step was too small. Dad handed me a sledgehammer, and all he said then or later was break it and do it the right way next time. He could have saved me a little time and money by telling me before him beforehand measure twice cut once, but the method he chose was unforgettable.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “So, they can't afford to take vacations, as you can imagine. Slowly but surely his dad builds up a smaller, you know, they're not unbelievably poor. They have their own place to live. In fact, because they couldn't find up, they had no money to rent like a vacation cottage, which was very common at this time, they decided to build their own. And Izzy has to help his dad. And I think it's two or three other people do this. And it only takes him a few weeks of really hard work. But I found this was interesting, and I'll read this part to you. We worked from dawn to dusk on Sunday as well after six such weekends. Dad presented my mother with a cottage. From my early teens, construction became very much a part of my life. I'd often get up with the sun during summer holidays, go to my dad's, then current sight, and work until dusk. And so in this point in the book, he's reflecting back on all the lessons. And a lot of times his father would teach him lessons without having to say a word. And really the summary of the next section I'm going to read to is experience.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “and a dog, three bedroom house, and one bathroom. By the time I reach my mid-teens, we had moved some 15 times. That meant changing schools, as always on our own, and being trusted that we knew what to do made us, I believe, independent at a very early age.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “More on this force for sourcefulness, my mother was prudently frugal. Growing up with three sisters I had some unusual hand me down, so that's not the first time I've seen this actually when I surprised me when I was reading, I think it was Titan, the biography of John D. Rockefeller, talks about even he was so frugal, even when he had, you know, he was beyond wealthy. He insisted to do hand-me-downs for all of his kids' clothing and he had a son, and his son would have to wear his older sister's dresses, which I thought was a little bizarre. So I'm fast forwarding the story. They wind up losing almost all the money they had, the little money they have. They had to move in with family. And it says his mother called her sister Sarah. We're coming to stay with you, she said, which we did. There were a family of six and a dog as we were. And for six months we all lived together in a small three bedroom house with only one bathroom. So that's”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “And then he gives us a description of his dad. He winds up working for his dad's small construction company, I think it was like a three-person construction company when Izzy takes over. But his dad's one of the most positive influences on his life. He said he was the kindest man he ever met. Never said a harsh word to anybody. And he lived to 102. And one thing you learned from his father was the value of hard work and just not complaining. And so he's still a little kid at the time. His family does not have a lot of money by any means. They're going to wind up having to lose almost everything they have to wind up living with their family members. But even when he had no money, his father taught him to do the right thing and to make sure that you're always doing the best job possible. So he says once often you took jobs anywhere he could get them. Once when he was excavating a basement with a horse and a plough, he broke his shoulder, but he shrugged it off and didn't complain, kept on working. That's something I never forgot.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “My mother gave me a quick look and slapped me across the face. She had seen at once that I wasn't badly hurt. Look at what you did to your shirts, he said. Then she cleaned my face, covered my cut with a bandaid, and ordered me to go out and play. That was the kind of lady my mother was, strict but kind, understanding and practical, always acting with common sense. And then he's describing his mother's parenting technique, what people now call tough love. I remember walking alone to kindergarten, trying to figure out how to get there. My parents never thought of taking me or picking me up. Not only did they have”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Curiously, the last of these four key objectives was set way back in nineteen eighty six. Sometimes people ask me, does that mean that you haven't thought of anything new since then? And I tell them that we make new initiatives every year, but nothing so far has been as fundamentally important. Our main focus is to continue refining and reinforcing those original four pillars. It's not as though lightning struck, and I said, I've got an idea, and we put it all together in a day. These decisions evolved over twenty five years. Each decision supporting the one before. Over the years, we've initiated many new ideas that have been copied and are now the norm in the industry. But the one idea that our customers value the most cannot be copied. The consistent quality of our exceptional service.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Looking back over the last forty years, I've identified the four key strategic decisions that form the rock solid foundation of four seasons. They are now known as the four pillars of our business model. They are quality, service, culture, and brand.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “I never thought that this was going to be 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 inkeeping from a customer's perspective. I was the host and the customers were my house guests. I decided what to build and how to operate by asking myself what would the customers consider important? What would the customers recognize as value? Because if we give them good value, they will pay what they think it's worth. That was the first strategy, and it continues to this day. The company evolved slowly at first, and I'll admit I made a few mistakes along the way, but I never made the mistake of putting profit ahead of people.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “So much of long term success is based on intangibles, beliefs and ideas, invisible concepts. People often ask me about my original vision for four seasons. Well, the truth is there was no vision or a grand scheme. In nineteen sixty one when I built my first hotel, I knew nothing about the hotel business. My only professional experience was in building apartments and houses. I was just a builder, and the hotel was just another real estate deal.”

    2021-06-06 · Founders · #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source