Name: Back From Bankruptcy, Caesars CEO Shares Lessons Learned
Uploaded: 2017-12-18
Duration: 4 min 23 s
Description: Mark Frissora believes the turnaround was born from endless optimism.

Mark since you became CEO of Susie entertainment you have been through a couple of tough years going through this all bankruptcy situation. What's the most important lesson that you've learnt from this experience ?>> Making sure you never quit. That you learnt to say everyday you stay positive with your team. No matter how the adversity is, no matter the negotiation or what Experiences prepare you. or maybe not, for going through bankruptcy proceedings. Well actually it prepared me pretty well. I mean, it hurts, we were highly leveraged, spun out from Ford with private equity and with that higher leverage, you have to run company extremely tight. And we were successful in doing that, it hurts. And then before that at Tenaco, also a company spun out From the mother, if you will, from Tanico, and we were the auto parts part of that company. And again, very highly levered, which means a lot of debt, so we didn't have much room, if you will, to make mistakes. I think that those lessons of working with the consumer, and working in highly leveraged companies prepared me well If you will for Caesars. What about the Casino and gambling business? Did you have any experience in that? What did you know about gambling? Yeah, well other than not being a gambler myself, not very much. [ LAUGH ] When I got the job, people actually said to me, you know that's a perfect job for you Mark, because I love entertainment, I love hospitality, I love eating So everything in Vegas and what Vegas represents I really like. So, for me it was like coming to a place that was fun to work, not a burden. When you took this job I'm sure a lot of your friends or business associates gave you some advice. What were some of the pointers that you heard? A gentleman named George Tamke, it was the lead director at Hertz and he was form CD and R Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, and George was a big proponent of being in front of the troops as often as possible. So, I lived in Las Vegas, and now I live there, but I lived a half a block away. So, I was constantly walking every single night, every single weekend, At the transaction level. This is meeting the dealers, observing. Meeting the people, always just enthusiastically embracing them telling them this is gonna get better. And asking them about their work. Tell me about your job, tell me what you do. So management is so important as your taking a company in a new direction. You've brought in a few key senior level people. You've got 70, 000 employees at Caesar's. So, Now that you're ready to get going on the growth side of the story, what do you have to do to get everybody pointed in the right direction, bringing them together to work and follow your lead. So as a leader it's important for you to focus and prioritize things for the organization. When I first did the strategy here at Caesar's we had about 70 or 80 Different initiatives that people wanted to do to fix the company. We boil it down to four. And that was tough, we had to make people make choices. And the team was involved in all of those. And we made great choices. So my job is now only chief cheerleader, but chief organizer. To prioritize and focus the organization on what's important. As you know if you chase 20 things and you don't get any of them done very well, you fail. If you focus on four or five and you focus hard and you really the organization around those initiatives then you will succeed and you would execute. Mark obviously you've learned a lot about leadership from all the various places that you've worked, looking back on your career. What's the best leadership advice that you ever received? And why did it shape you as a leader? My father, back when I was 12- years- old actually gave me a little poem. And the poem was entitled, Don't You Quit. And in it, it talks about how when the times get tough, and really, really you're down on your luck What you do, what you don't do is you never quit and I tell my team the same thing. I want a team that's relentless, a team that's always focused and never gives up and I think at the end of the day, that grit makes a really good company. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Back From Bankruptcy, Caesars CEO Shares Lessons Learned

Finance

Mark Frissora believes the turnaround was born from endless optimism.