Lisa Lutoff-Perlo: The CEO’s Guide to High-Performance Leadership

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How you handle the highest of highs and the lowest of lows is a great test to determine your ability to be a great leader. Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Podcast. My guest today is Lisa Lutov Perlow. She's the former president and CEO of Celebrity Cruises and the author of Making Waves: A Woman's Rise to the Top Using Smarts, Heart, and Courage. In today's conversation, you'll hear Lisa's remarkable journey through personal and global crises, how she led Celebrity's 20,000 team members during the pandemic when their business was essentially shut down, and the insights, principles, and values that have guided her to the pinnacle of success. Lisa's story is a testament to the power of leading with smarts, heart, and courage, and having an unwavering belief in the power of her team. With that, please enjoy my conversation with Lisa Lutolf Perlow. One of the things that comes with the territory of being a leader is that you are likely to experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And I know you've been through both of those. And so let's go back to March 8th, 2020. I think that was one of the high points of your career. Tell me a little bit about what was going on on that day.

March 8th was a historic day for all of us at Celebrity Cruises. We embarked on Celebrity Edge on our history-making, barrier-breaking cruise on our award-winning and transformational new ship to celebrate International Women's Day. For the first time ever in the industry and the last time ever in the industry, and we're probably still the only brand that could do that, we had 100% of the bridge of Celebrity Edge manned by women. We also had women leaders across every operational area of the ship— hotel, marine, HR, all of the different functions that we have on board. And it was a momentous time for all of us that we were all very proud of. And I had spent quite a few years looking at the gender balance on our ships because it's a very traditional industry, very heavily male dominated. So we were able to celebrate so many things at that time. Edge came out and won so many awards and we were on this International Women's Day cruise. And I remember standing in the Grand Plaza. Captain Kate, who was the captain of the ship, a rock star, she was mixing martinis standing on the bar in the Grand Plaza. Melania, our associate hotel director, was playing Led Zeppelin on the electric guitar, and the crowd was wild. Everybody was having an amazing time. And I remember standing there thinking of everything that I had accomplished in my career. This was a mic drop moment for me. It was— I remember thinking I could walk away right now from my position and it could not have gotten any better for me in terms of what I set out to do and what I was able to accomplish. So that was the biggest high and the most wonderful time that I can remember in my career.

Now, of course, you couldn't walk away at that moment even if you wanted to, because the world changed shortly thereafter. So tell me about what happened, and your industry was one of the most affected by what happened. So how did you deal with that after coming from this super high high just a few days earlier?

So I got off the ship on Wednesday— I can't remember if that was the 11th or 12th of March— and I was back in the office on Thursday and Friday. We went home for the weekend on Friday, and that weekend we shut down. We shut down operations all over the world, and we ended up being out of business for 15 months because of the COVID pandemic. You talk about going from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows and just being completely out of business. You've got ships being built in the shipyards. We were supposed to take delivery of our next ship in the Edge series, the sister ship to Celebrity Edge that I had just come off 2 weeks later, and it ended up sitting in the shipyard until September of 2020, and with nowhere to go even in September. So I don't— I can't even remember how I felt. I just knew it was like, are you kidding me? Who would have ever thought, number 1, that our industry would shut down? Number 2, the world would be experiencing this global pandemic. And number 3, we just never knew. We didn't know when we were going to come back in business, and we had such a task in front of us trying to get all of our guests home, all of our crew home, and wondering, you know, just what was going to happen and if we were ever going to come out of this in the right way. It's impossible to prepare for something like that. You just have to hope that everything you've learned throughout your career comes into play in the right way so that you can lead yourself and your team through an unimaginable time and keep them optimistic and hopeful.

And you mentioned that you really can't necessarily plan for something like that. Were there any experiences in your background, whether it was lessons that you learned, something your parents taught you, or something that you really developed over your career that you could really lean back to and say, well, I've never been in this exact situation before, but I'm going to go back to— I'm going to call it a playbook for lack of a better word. But were there anything where you went back to and said, I can't just sit here and freeze. I've got to take action. I've got to be the leader. People are relying on me. So like, did your instincts take over at that point?

Yes. Not only did my instincts take over, all of the things about me that probably had gotten me from the very bottom of the career ladder all the way to the top of the career ladder kicked in in overdrive. And those were optimism. You know, I've been described as a relentless optimist. Those were motivation, inspiration. I'm a sales and marketing person, so I, you know, you always have this— you got to rally the troops, you've got to rah-rah, you've got to give people hope. I'm always a hopeful person. I'm a glass is half full person. I wasn't going to allow myself or my team to wallow in the misery of what we were all going through. I wanted to stay positive and think positively and get them energized and thinking in a positive way. So we did things at Celebrity that others didn't do. We thought about our comeback versus the fact that we were shut down. I was in constant communication. You know, I credit myself as being a fairly good communicator, and I was in constant communication with 20,000 crew members around the world. As a matter of fact, Captain Kate and I were talking through WhatsApp the other day, and she said that she had just gone through her archives and found a video of me communicating with everyone. Imagine having 15 ships, anchored off different countries around the world with a skeleton crew of 100 people. And you needed to be visible, you needed to be transparent, honest, open with people, telling them while you weren't sure of what was going to happen and when, you knew in the end it would be okay. And she said she immediately started crying when she listened to that video because it evoked such memories of what we're all going through at the time. I just needed to be that beacon of hope. And so I just dug down deep for all of the things that had gotten me again, from persistence, perseverance, optimism, and knowing in the end you were gonna be able to figure it out and you were gonna put people back to work who had lost their livelihoods for such a long period of time. And I think that's what leaders need to do. We need to pivot and you need to dial up certain things at certain times and you need to dial down certain things. You know, I need to dial down that driver, that results focus, that key performance indicator leader who was looking at traffic lights all the time. You didn't need to do that when there was no business coming in, but you needed to keep 20,000 people hopeful and motivated and focused on the future.

So those 20,000 people were looking up to you to be that beacon, that light out there. But you're the CEO. You're in one of the loneliest spots in the world. So where did you turn? Where was your beacon of hope? How did you keep yourself positive and uplifted during the depths of all that?

Well, you know, our executive committee was pretty tight at the time, and we all, you know, we were all talking about what we needed to do, all of the things that we were doing behind the scenes. You know, there was so much work behind the scenes of all of the leaders within the cruise industry, but our company took the lead. And that's, again, another thing that was so important during this time. We've always been the leader in our industry as a company, and we took the lead at that time as well to ensure that we were going to do the things that we needed and keep the lines of communication open with all of the health organizations around the world, but especially the CDC here in the United States, so that we could get the industry back up and running. You know, our financial team went to all the financial markets and kept our business afloat by borrowing tons of money and, and knowing that we were going to have to do whatever it took. But that's sort of where I got my inspiration and motivation. And I knew that so much was happening behind the scenes to get us back into business that it was— it made it easier for me to go back to people and say, we got this, we're going to be okay. And then, of course, you know, my family that I lived with at the time, and they always provided the shoulder to cry on, I guess, when you had to shut the door. And, you know, I even admitted it as I was, you know, writing this chapter. I myself was uncertain. We thought it was going to be a couple of months. When we shut down in March, we thought we were going to be back up in June. And then when we weren't back up in June, we thought we'd be back up by the holidays and we weren't. And then we thought after the holidays came and went, it would be first quarter of 2021. And it wasn't until June of 2021. And after a while, even I'm saying, is this nightmare ever going to end? But what I also learned as a leader is you've got to leave that at the door. You can't share that with people that are counting on you to make them believe everything is going to be okay. Sometimes it's lonely. To your point, Steve, it is lonely. And that's why we're in these roles and in these jobs.

And as if the pandemic wasn't enough, I think you received some pretty devastating news in April of that year, more on a personal note.

Well, you know, I think that life at certain times throws things your way that are unimaginable, right? And I had two unimaginable events happen, our business shutting down and my sister's cancer diagnosis. And it kind of put business being shut down in perspective for me. Losing my sister was the most devastating experience of my life. I also talked about sort of this relentless optimist, and every day I woke up, I looked for the silver lining in the COVID-19 cloud. And the silver lining for me was my sister lived me. She lived with me for many years, and one month after the shutdown, you know, we found out about her diagnosis. But the silver lining was being stuck here at home for 15 months, I got to spend every day of the last year of my sister's life with her, and that was priceless. I'll never forget that. And if it weren't for COVID, that wouldn't have happened. So I think that gave me perspective, and it also made me realize what really is important in life. And sometimes it's not always business. But to your point, it was really hard for me to juggle these two devastating experiences for the things that were the most important in my life— my career, my business, my position as CEO of Celebrity, and my family and my sisters especially, who have always been the most important people in my life that I adore. Again, you as a leader, we oftentimes compartmentalize. We deal with what we have to deal with at one moment and then we we go right back to dealing with what else we had to deal with. And that was also something I couldn't let bleed into how I was motivating and encouraging 20,000 people, right? I couldn't let that personal tragedy leak into who they needed me to be up to and including the, you know, digital launch of one of our amazing ships in April of 2021. We did a virtual reveal of this ship and it was amazing. It was the first time— there were so many historic things that happened during COVID— the virtual delivery ship and the virtual reveal of a ship. And I remember it was April 26th, 2021, and my sister passed on April 29th, 2021. So 3 days. And, you know, by that time she was— we knew she was in the end stages, and I had to come on and be this like, rah-rah, look at this beautiful new ship we're building and look at all the amazing new features and, and isn't this wonderful? And I had press from all over the world and my team counting on me. And so many people in the company afterwards, after they heard of my sister's passing, said we would have had no idea that that was going on, you know, in another room in your home while you were doing this virtual launch. And so I'm happy about that because I didn't want that to overshadow what I knew was a really meaningful time for the brand and also my team.

Yeah. And this idea of compartmentalizing it where we've got things that may be happening in our personal life and yet we've got a business that we've got to run over here. I think oftentimes as humans we tend to forget that if someone that we're working with or someone we're in relation with is having a difficult day or they're behaving in a way that maybe we would not have expected from them, to give them a little grace because we don't know what may be going on behind the scenes.

Well, you know, I did share with my immediate leadership team what was going on so that they would understand if maybe I just couldn't be there at a certain time for a certain thing. And, you know, they might need to step in and jump in for me. And I shared it with my boss, who also was really good, you know, the chairman and CEO, and he stepped in for me as well. So, you know, to your point, you know, I didn't go through it 100% alone. And I also think sometimes as leaders, you do have to share that there's something terrible going on in your life and you might need some help. And that's okay. But I did it with a very small core group of people that knew the real situation and could help me at certain times if I needed to be somewhere else at the time. And there's, you know, there are other times in the book where I relate other circumstances that had to do with my sister's passing where I couldn't be where I needed to be. I couldn't be in two places. You know, Celebrity was the first ship to restart out of a U.S. port when the CDC finally let us back in business. It was June 26th, 2021, and it coincidentally happened to be the same day that my sister's burial at sea was planned in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which is where we're from. And I was like, what are the chances of that, right? That those two things were also going to happen on the same day? I just told my boss I couldn't be there. As important a day as that was for our industry and our brand, because we were starting up I knew exactly where I needed to be, and there was no question in my mind. And he agreed, that's where you need to be. But the other thing about leadership, your team has your back. Your team is prepared. You've done everything you can to create the most successful outcome possible when all the eyes of the world are watching you. Because, you know, the industry is finally back in business and it's going to be with Celebrity Edge, with Captain Kate at the helm. And I just trusted my team to carry on and do an amazing job, even though all the press from everywhere was there. And they did it. They did an amazing job. Job. It wasn't about me. It was about them. And it was about coming back. And, and I had built a team and trust and a set of protocols, and we were ready.

You knew where you needed to be. And I suspect that that probably gets back to the fact that you were very clear on your leadership values. And I think in the book, you wrote about 10 of them. And so oftentimes, when just in the normal course of business, we need to rely on our values, but when things get really difficult, that's when the values really come into play. So I'd love to explore a couple of these or so. One of them is nurture employees. You've touched a little bit about that where the team members had your back. How do you think about nurture employees and how does that fit into one of your leadership values?

Well, you know, the leadership values are in no particular order except that one. It's number one. And that is something that I learned, especially learned in 2005 when I left sales and marketing and went into an operational role. And I became very involved with the ships. Because that's what you do in operations. And I would visit the ships and I, I gained an amazing appreciation for our crew, all of these amazing men and women who come from all over the world. They leave their families, they leave their children, they leave their friends. They work at sea for 6, 8, sometimes 12 months at a time. And I realized the personal sacrifice they make to come to work and provide a living for their families and in a way that they would never be able to do in the places that they come from.. And I knew that, you know, we're in an industry that's very hierarchical and it's a little bit militaristic because stripes, you know, you have the captain and then, you know, you have all these different positions on board. And when you come from a sort of a culture in sales and marketing and you go into this somewhat hierarchical and militaristic environment and operation, you try to make a difference in the culture so that everybody respects each other. And it doesn't matter if you're the cleaner on board or the captain, you know, we're all there are there to take care of each other and our guests. And I remember that when I took on these types of roles, I wanted to create a nurturing culture where everybody felt valued and respected regardless of their position. And I believe that that caring culture— I call it the boomerang style of leadership— I believe that caring is mutual. And I believe that if you care about people and you— they know you care about them and you show that you care about them, in any way that you possibly can every day, then they care back. And when they care, it's a lot different than when you come to work just to do your job. When you care about the person that's at the top of this pyramid, I guess, or the bottom, depending on if you invert that pyramid, which I tried to do, then I knew I was going to get a discretionary effort. And that's why they didn't want to let me down. So nurture our employees was always something that was very important to me. And every leader— the great thing about those values that you refer to, Steve, is that we all held ourselves and each other accountable to them. So if there was a leader who didn't nurture the employees or respect the employees, then they just had no place in our organization. And if you create this set of values, you really have to live by them or they don't mean anything.

How do you think about the balance between nurturing employees, respecting employees, everyone respecting each other, can it be carried too far? And how would you know when or if you were— might be carrying it too far where it doesn't become effective for the organization?

My answer to that would be that I push as hard as I nurture. My thing is that if I'm gonna push, if I'm gonna push myself, if I'm gonna push our team, if we have to transform the financial results of our brand, if we have to transform the stature of our brand within our industry, if we have to transform the experiences that we're going to provide, If we have to make sure that all our traffic lights and all our key performance indicators are green, that means I'm going to come in and I'm going to push, I'm going to drive, I'm going to focus on results. I'm going to sit in meetings and ask people why we're falling short and how we can, you know, make up whatever the gap or the deficit is. I'm going to push our head of sales to do better. I'm going to push our, you know, our digital team to book more direct business. But at the same time, if you're going to do that, it's okay. As long as you overlay the caring, because in the absence of that, then people just get burned out. They resent you. They don't wanna perform for you. But if you have all of these ambitious goals and you are holding people accountable to achieve them, at the same time, you have to nurture them and let them know that you care about them. And I think that's the best combination. Because yes, can you overnurture them? Of course. And will you get criticized for that? Yes. If you're not hitting your business requirements. When I wake up every day, returning extraordinary shareholder value is the number one thing in my mind every single day. For me, it's how do I do that? Part of it is all of these experiences we create and these ships that we build and the price we charge for our ships, but also it's creating a culture. Of mutual and genuine respect and caring and nurturing, where they nurture me as much as I nurture them, is one of the key components of getting there.

You said, I push as hard as I nurture. And that to me really sounds like the key here. And I had a woman who worked for me a number of years ago, and one of the things that she did so terrifically is she could give a team member constructive feedback, and coming out of that meeting, that team member would thank her for the feedback because, yeah, she delivered, hey, this is what you need to work on. But she did it in such a way that they knew that she appreciated them. She cared for them. She wanted what was best for them. But also, dude, you got to improve. You got to step up here. And they appreciated that. So that's a difficult thing to do, right? So it is. Was that innate with you? Was that something that you just learned over time?

I think I learned it more over time. Because I was always the push, push, push. And I realized again in 2005, I've got to dial up some other things that are inherent in me as well. I've always been very nurturing. I've nurtured my family. I take care of everyone. I rarely, if ever, like to talk about gender as part of the equation. But I truly do believe that earlier in my career, I suppressed some of those innate nurturing attributes to just be the driver. And maybe I thought that that's what was expected and I wasn't supposed to be soft or empathetic or caring. That wasn't what men were. And that wasn't, you know, how I was going to get ahead, become CEO, even though at that time that was never even in my plan. And then I thought, you know what, I've got to find a way to change the culture that more aligns with my values and what I believe in. And that's where I dialed up those things while never dialing down the others. Just because you dial up one thing doesn't mean you need to dial down the other. Now, except during COVID which I did have to dial down some things because they weren't relevant at the time. But on any given day, when you're leading a business and you're leading an organization, one does not— they can both be equal. It's okay. But also, you know, there wasn't one person that worked with me or for me that knew if they didn't perform, it was okay. Or if we didn't hit our targets, it was okay. It was not okay. You know, I led a highly accountable organization. And the thing is, though, I held myself as accountable as I held everybody else. And I think that's what great leaders need to do as well.

So how did you hold people accountable? And how do you know when someone's never going to get there and it's time to move on or move them into a different role?

When you go through those situations and you finally sit down and you have to have that conversation, that tough conversation where it's time to move on, number one, And then you try, if your organization is big enough, to find a role that they will be good in because they probably have some attributes that are really good, but maybe they just don't, you know, have enough of them. And sometimes it's not just about performance and metrics performance. Sometimes it's even how they lead because, you know, for me, the how is always as important as the what. And usually when you end up having those conversations with people, when you finally come to the realization as the leader, you've got to make that tough decision, it's usually a relief for the person because probably more often than not, you've had numerous conversations with them where they have not been performing. The hardest thing for a leader, even the hardest thing for my own leaders, where I would, you know, recognize that perhaps someone on their team wasn't really cutting it, getting them to the place where they would finally agree and do something about it was also difficult. So sometimes it's not just you that has to make the decision about who's performing well and do they have to be moved aside or moved out, but you also have to manage and coach your leaders to see the same thing and take the same action with the people that work for them. And that's one of the hardest things about being a leader, is the people and impacting people's lives in a way that is tough for them but right for the business. But we all have to do that. It's— comes with the territory.

Another one of your values is do the right thing. And what I find interesting about this is what is the right thing for you might not be the right thing for someone else. And so you're in Florida and you're in the cruise business. I think in recent years there's been some back and forth between the state of Florida and the cruise industry. So how do you think about do the right thing when it may not be the right thing to some other party that could be affected by that?

So the leadership value before do the right thing is find a way or make a way. And sometimes if you don't tell people that it's important to find a way or make a way, but they also have to make sure they do the right thing. The order of those values was critically important to me because oftentimes you can get a good result by doing something in the not right way, bad way, unethical way, in a way that you compromise your integrity or the brand's integrity. And that was really where that do the right thing value came in because it's always important to me that people act with the greatest amount of integrity. You also have 15 ships sailing all over the world with people that aren't under your immediate purview that you can't watch every minute of every day. So the moral compass had to be we always needed to do the right thing because sometimes not doing the right thing is the easier way to go. So it was always very important that we instilled that integrity and behaving ethically and morally at all times was critically important. In terms of, you know, do the right thing in the state of Florida with the fight with the governor, that's a whole different story. That was a really difficult time because the point of view of the administration was clearly in conflict with the point of view of the CDC and what it was going to take for our industry to get back into business. Because, you know, without vaccinating our guests and our crew, we were never going to be able to get sailing again. And so there was, there was a bit of conflict there, but we found a way. Again, find a way or make a way. And we always did the right thing. We were never in non-compliance with the state. But we also found a way to do what we had to do to get back in business. So if you're creative, and I will say there were open lines of communication between our industry and our company and the administration's office to figure out a way, even though there was a certain point of view there, to be able to get back into business. And we worked it out. And again, it was through open communication and finding a different way to do it. And we solved for that as well.

And that's why you're the CEO, because you're the person who can make all that happen.

So I appreciate that.

It's not easy some days.

It's not.

No, I get it. I'm a huge fan of having values like you're describing here, but oftentimes people will roll their eyes and say, oh, it's just a plaque on the wall and I walk by it every day, but I don't really pay too much attention to it. So you've got 20,000 team members spread probably all over the world. How do you incorporate these values? How do you keep them alive and vibrant in every single one of those team members so that they live and breathe those on a daily basis? It's got to be difficult. How do you do it with such a large, far-flung organization?

Well, they have to be ubiquitous, right? They have to be everywhere. They're in every job description. They're in every training manual. We do videos about them. A lot of the leaders talk about the values and what they mean and what their favorite one is and why it's important. And the other thing, though, is that you truly just have to live them every day with every interaction. And as long as it's consistent, and again, you hold each other accountable. So when we would be in a room and somebody was doing something, or one of the leaders might have done something that was against our core values, the team would call them out on it. And if I did something, you know, they would call me out on it. So you have to live and breathe them every single day with every interaction. Because you're right, we can have them everywhere. We can have them in every job description. Be hanging on the walls and all the crew areas on the ships. But unless the leaders don't live them, refer to them, manage by them, coach by them, call each other out when they notice that somebody isn't doing what we need to do or what our core set of values is, it doesn't work. It was always really great for me, Steve, when I would meet a candidate for a position that we had open on the brand. I always had the team Interview them first. And the team decided who was gonna come and see me because the team decided who was not only the most qualified, who, but who would fit the team well, the culture well, and really be a team player to help us accomplish our brand goals. And what was really nice is that when these candidates came in, they had different conversations with different people on different topics, but they always told me how aligned the leaders were. How they knew what we were doing, where we were going, what the mission was, what we're trying to accomplish, what was important to us as a brand and as a team. And so many people that sat with me— and this is another thing we all need to know as leaders— is people can find out so much about you. They can find out about you personally. They can find out about your leadership team. They can find out about your brand. And so many people sat across from me and said, I've done a lot of research and homework on celebrity. I've done a lot of research and homework on your culture. And this is a place that I want to be because I think I would really enjoy being part of this culture. So when they can do all of that research and figure that out and they can sit with such a diverse group of people with all of these different conversations and topics and come to that conclusion that everyone is aligned and we all agree and believe in the same things and are headed in the right direction. That's the best thing that you can hope for as a leader.

Well, one of the other main roles of being a leader is you've got to make a lot of different decisions. And we hear a lot about, oh, we make data-based decisions. I look at the data, what does the data say? But then also sometimes we have to make intuitive decisions. And I think you were saying here just a few minutes ago that you were more, you know, the hard-charging driver, driver, driver, hit the KPIs. But then when you let some of the the intuitive side come in, some of the empathetic side come in, that, that made you an even better leader. So how do you think about the balance between making decisions that are based on data versus making decisions that are more intuitive? And I think in your book you gave an example about how you changed the pricing on one of your ships right at the last minute, to the dismay of a lot of the folks that would have to do some of the work to change the pricing. So tell me about how you strike that balance.

Well, the data showed us what the pricing should be, right? All the data, everything that we had been able to charge as a brand, everything that the competitors were charging. We knew that we needed a premium for this ship. We put in a premium that many smart people using a lot of data did a calculation and said this should be the pricing of the ship. This is very aggressive. We've never done this before. And here I come at the end of the day saying, uh-uh, the prices aren't high enough. Okay, so what ended up happening is, as I was doing interviews with the press, embargoed interviews for the introduction of this new ship, the press was very familiar with our industry. They were all industry press. They had seen everything. There was not too much that could impress them anymore. And here I was, not the head of marketing. I did these interviews myself. I shared what this ship looked like and all of the features with the press myself because this is how important this ship was for us. And every conversation, they're gasping. They were like, I can't believe this. I knew it was going to be great, but this is phenomenal. It's transformational. The industry has never seen anything like this. What's your starting rate? And I told them, because the team prepped me, it was in the press kit, and I said, this is the starting rate. And every single one of them said And that's all. And so, okay, so you could call that data, not instinct.

It's anecdotal data.

It's anecdotal data, but, you know, you could go out and look at what everybody was charging and see, you know, yeah, but their opinion was the ship was worth more than that. And so, you know, one of the things that was great about my career is it took me 30 years. I started at the bottom and I rose to the top. 30 years later, I held pretty much every function in the company and I learned the business from the bottom up. And I think that there's nothing like experience because it helps you overlay some bit of instinct on all the data that will tell you, even though all the data says this, could there be a different way? Could there be higher pricing? Could we do something different? I believe that that comes from experience. So at that time, I made the instinctive decision that we weren't charging enough despite what the data said. And I thought we had an opportunity. And, you know, sometimes you only have one chance at these kind of things and you need to take a risk. And what was the worst thing that could happen? The worst thing that could happen is we'd lower the price to what the team said they thought charge, but I knew if we didn't take this risk and go with what people were telling me and thinking, you know what, I think we could stretch this a little further. And guess what? Bookings came flooding in and we didn't lower the price. And you know, that could be a crapshoot. You don't know everything. No risk, no reward. Sometimes you'll make a decision that you think the data might suggest you not make, and then you could be wrong, but As long as it's a calculated risk and as long as you use everything you've learned over time to make it, I think the chances are pretty good you'll be right.

I want to read a quote from the book you wrote. At the end of the day, it's not only important to do a great job, but also make sure that the right people know it and see it. And so I think you were saying this in the context of, in some situations, you sort of have to run your own PR campaign to toot your horn just a little bit. I'd love for you to talk about that in the context of women in particular who may have a harder role to get noticed, because I know you're a huge champion of women rising through the ranks of an organization, particularly in a traditionally male-dominated field like the maritime industry is, uh, cruise industry that you're in. So how do you think about this idea of making sure the right people know it and see it?

Well, a lot of the research, to your point, shows women have a harder time doing that than men. And probably as I've navigated or grown in my career, I have probably looked around me and more than likely it's because it's all men. So I see men do this a lot. They pound their chests more than women do. I thought in my career it was one of the lessons I learned that if you just do a really good job, you get great results and you work really hard, people are going to notice you and they're going to promote you and you're going to achieve all of your career aspirations. And I realized when two men vacated their president and CEO roles of two of our big brands in our company and recommended me for their position, and I was told no three times by the chairman and CEO because he didn't think I was ready or didn't see what they saw in me, I realized that I should have done a better job running a PR campaign for myself so that the right people outside of just those I reported to saw what I was capable of and saw what I did and saw what I accomplished and the results I got and how I led. But the most important decision maker had not. And so it took me longer to convince him that I was the right person and I was ready than it should have, because only after those men vacated their positions twice within 2 years of each other and I was told no 3 times did I realize I should have done a better job at that. And finally, you know, he did say yes. And it was because he got to work more closely with me and he mentored me and he saw what I was capable of and what he saw what I did. And that was the gap that I needed to close to turn that no into a yes. I learned then that I should have navigated my way a couple of levels up and maybe more sideways. That I was actually doing because maybe I would have gotten there sooner.

Now, was it more about you putting yourself in a position to show the kind of work that you do in front of the person who's the ultimate decision maker? And/or was it also about tooting your horn a little bit and letting the right people know what my successes were, even if I wasn't directly showing those successes in their purview because I was maybe a couple levels down? Is it one or the other, or is it both yes and?

Yeah, I think it's yes and because, you know, the people that were in those roles clearly saw what I was doing and communicated that. But until I was in the room, you know, in the purview of this person, and oh, by the way, also shared some other things that were going on that maybe he didn't see. So some things he saw, some things he didn't see. So sometimes you just have to write it down, you know, write it down. This is what I've accomplished. This is what I've done. This is what you've seen, but this is what you didn't see. And I really do think it's a combination of both. And then the other thing is that if you had a broader base of people, so had he heard from maybe— although he heard from two different presidents and CEOs of brands and they were very different people and they both recommended me for the position. So he did have two really important opinions that that he obviously didn't take. And that frustrated me, to use an okay word on our podcast conversation. But I just turned it into fuel. You know, I've always turned negativity into fuel. I turn resentment into fuel and channel positive energy. You know, I even said that to the Girl Scouts once, you know, I was, yeah, was I resentful that, you know, I was passed over a couple times and I had to ask 3 times? Absolutely. But I used it. I used it as motivation and I used it in a positive way. Way. But yeah, it's multifaceted and it's hard work, but you have to do it and you have to be comfortable doing it because I wasn't comfortable doing it, which was part of my issue. I had to make myself comfortable to do it. And sometimes you have to take yourself out of the comfort zone. And yes, I do believe there's a lot of research that says women have a harder time at that than men.

Yeah. And Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford University, he's written a number of books on power. And I was having a conversation with him one time, and that's one of the things that he talked about is if if you want power, you've got to be able to be okay tooting your horn a little bit. And a lot of people aren't comfortable doing that, and a lot of those people aren't going to rise to the top because they're not willing to go to bat for themselves. And so another delicate balance between showing what you've accomplished without coming off as, oh, that person is just all full of themselves.

Exactly. You can be really obnoxious about it, and I've seen that, and it really turns me off. You always have to do what's right for you, you know, do the right thing, do the right thing, do what's right for you, and live by your own values. But you still have to do it. And that's the thing, you're right, you have to find that balance, because it's really important and critical in your ability to ascend to whatever role or position you want.

And toward the end of the book, you wrote, I'm quoting you here, oftentimes we can't separate who we are from what we do. Because they become so intertwined with time, end quote. So how do you think about your identity as this high-powered, super successful CEO who now has opened a new chapter of your career? Do you identify yourself as a CEO, a former CEO? Like, how do you think about who Lisa is today versus when you were sitting in the CEO seat?

Well, that's a really good question, and that's the last section of the last chapter, because as I was writing Chapter 10, I had to rewrite Chapter 10 because I had to end it differently. Because at that time I decided, you know what, I've built an amazing legacy in so many different ways, and I think it's time for a new chapter. And that takes a lot of courage. You know, the subtitle of Making Waves is A Woman's Rise to the Top Using Smarts, Heart, and Courage. And I think if I had to pick one overall, it's courage, because so much of being a leader and so much of our conversation today has been about courage and what it takes to be a leader. It takes an equal amount of courage to decide when you want to be done with one chapter and start another. And that's where I was as I was finalizing and putting the finishing touches on Making Waves. I was also making a decision that it was time to do something else. I had taken the branch to an amazing pinnacle. I had gotten the branch through COVID. I had lost my sister. I'm certainly of an age where it's time to— I could do nothing for the rest of my life, although that's not me, or I could channel all that I've done and energy into other things in life. And I thought, you know what, this book is kind of a metaphor for a new chapter, right? It's— I'm writing a new chapter literally and figuratively. I'm leaving my sister. I'm letting myself open to the universe. I'm letting my body of work speak for me to see where, what direction it's going to take me in. And there have been some amazing opportunities that have presented themselves. What I find is that your body of work is never going to let you down because as long as you build a great reputation based on the right things, performance and who you are and how you've led and what you've done, you can do anything. And that's what I'm really excited about now.

Excellent. Lisa, is there any final thought or comment that you want to make here that we may not have touched on yet?

I just encourage people to never give up and, you know, like I did, turn nos into yeses. And it could be about your career. It could be about your business. You know, there were a lot of people along the way who might have been skeptical about my ability to lead. I wasn't always a subject matter expert, but I think going back to what we talked about Some women think that they need to be 100% ready for something before they throw their hat in the ring. And, you know, my thing is dream big and go for it and don't take no for an answer because the easiest answer someone can give us all is no. And figure out how to turn your no into a yes. And hopefully they'll read Making Waves and learn some things. And I hope it helps people. That was the intention of mine of writing the book.

Well, I think that's a great place to wrap up here, Lisa. I appreciate you taking some time today. Congratulations on an amazing career and a wonderful new book. I very much appreciate it.

Thank you, Steve. It was a pleasure being with you today.

All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms, and for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe.

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