How exactly does a former Marine and professional magician eventually find himself leading a global hospitality consulting powerhouse? In this episode, John Fareed, Global Chairman of Horwath HTL, takes us on a journey through his unconventional career path—from his early days as a magician to becoming a respected leader in the hospitality industry. John shares the pivotal moments that shaped his career, from negotiating a life-changing deal with his Egyptian grandfather to founding and scaling a multimillion-dollar consulting business. He explains how he transitioned through various personal brands, built a successful consultancy, and eventually joined a global firm to compete with fellow industry giants.
In this episode, you will learn:
- How to strategically build a consulting brand that stands out in competitive markets
- The power of professional networking and active involvement in industry associations
- Insights on transitioning from a small consulting firm to a global leader
- The importance of niche expertise in winning major clients
- Practical advice on balancing self-care with high-level business demands
Welcome to the Consulting Success podcast. I’m your host Michael Zipursky, and in this podcast, we’re going to dive deep into the world of elite consultants where you’re going to learn the strategies, tactics and mindset to grow a highly profitable and successful consulting business.
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John Fareed, MSc CHME ISHC, is the Global Chairman of Horwath HTL, leading its US offices and global brand. With decades of consulting experience, his clients range from Fortune 500 companies to international investors. A recognized expert in the hotel, tourism, and leisure industries, he has spoken at events worldwide and appeared on major media outlets like ABC, CNN, and in the New York Times. Fareed holds advanced degrees from Dublin Institute of Technology and Cornell University, and has earned top industry honors, including HSMAI’s “Top 25 Extraordinary Minds.”
In today’s episode, you’ll discover how to strategically build a consulting brand that stands out in competitive markets and the key role professional networking and active involvement in industry associations play in success. You’ll gain valuable insights on transitioning from a small consulting firm to a global leader, learn the importance of developing niche expertise to win major clients, and get practical advice on balancing self-care with the demands of running a high-level business.
Connect with John Fareed
Discover more about Horwath HTL
Hey, John, welcome.
Thank you, Michael. Happy to be here.
I’m excited to dive into our conversation today. I mentioned to you I read your book not too long ago as I was flying over to Miami for a client event and really enjoyed it. You have a very interesting story. Today, you are global chairman of a very large hospitality consulting group. You work with very established organizations all around the world. You ran your own successful consulting business prior to that, and you have a very interesting start even before that, which is the world of magic, which nobody probably would have expected just by seeing where you are today.
Early Beginnings: From Egypt to the Marines to Magic
So why don’t we start off, have you take us back in time a little bit? Because you have a very interesting story, upbringing, whether it’s in the military, time in Egypt, just in a couple of minutes, share your early beginnings, and then we’ll transition into how you started your first consulting business.
So I’m a first generation American on my mother’s side of the family. My Egyptian grandfather was a fighter pilot in the RAF. He’d worked his way up to Brigadier General and later ambassador from the Arab League to Japan and the UN, but he eventually finished his career in travel. He opened the Nile Hilton with Conrad Hilton back in 1958 and later became head of Hilton’s kind of small but important Middle East division and finished as head of PR at Egypt Airlines. But back in those days, Michael, well heeled Egyptians sent their sons and daughters to go to university in Europe or the US, and he was a lifelong Rotarian, so he secured a Rotary Scholarship for my mom to come to university here in the States and was quite pleased with it.
Shortly after arriving here, my mother, unchaperoned for the first time in her life, met the school’s, I guess, equally naive, 6’4”, blonde-headed, blue-eyed basketball star from Alabama. And boom, I was conceived. And as you might imagine, my devout Muslim grandfather, more or less disowned my mom upon word of the pregnancy had cut her off financially and emotionally. “Don’t come home, don’t write, don’t call.” But luckily for me, they had two daughters, and I was the firstborn male and carried his name, Fareed, which is kind of a big deal. So I spent my summers growing up in Egypt, being treated like a prince, while my mom would remain sequestered in the back bedroom where only the women could visit her. I rarely got to see her until we were headed home to fly back to the States where we lived in North Georgia, primarily, a lot of time, I would say, on food stamps and welfare.
But the summer before my 18th birthday, my grandfather asked me over a quiet lunch. He’s like, “Are you going to university?” And I said, “I don’t plan on going to university. I want to be a professional magician,” which did not go over well, as you might imagine. And he said, “No, that’s not going to work. If you’re not going to be at university, then you’re going to serve in the military like me and my father and my grandfather before me.” And I told him, I said, “Look, that’s a big ask, and if you’re asking something this big of me, I need to ask for something equally big of you in return.” He had traveled with me all over the Middle East, carried me to business meetings, dinners, and obviously lunches and shopping. And he taught me much, Michael. He taught me how to buy a men’s suit or shoes or a gentlemen’s timepiece, business lessons, like the importance of longstanding relationships and negotiation skills, even the concepts of honor and face. And I told him, I said, “If I don’t ask for something big, then I know you won’t respect me.” So he thought I was going to ask for a car. He was ready to write that check. But I told him, I said, “I’d be happy to go into the military if you agree to take my mom back.” And he slammed his hand on the table, walked out onto the lanai, lit a cigarette, poured himself a whiskey, which was a rare thing for sure, especially in the middle of the day. He came back and sat down at the table and stared at me for 20 minutes in silence, which he’d always taught me in negotiation, after you make your ask, you do not speak. But eventually he looked up at me and he said, “Fine, I’ll do this, but it has to be the Marines.” What did I know? We shook on it. But he took my mom back the very next day, and we had a great reception at the Gezira Country Club in Cairo with the whole family. And it kind of opened a door, and my grandfather and my granny Lulu ended up moving to north Georgia to be close to us. And for the rest of their years together, they were very tight. So it was totally worth it.
From Magician To Consultant ($24M In Revenue) with John Fareed: Podcast #337 Share on X
I kept my promise to go in the Marines, spent six years in the US Marine Corps, but eventually, I followed through on the magic dreams and I spent 15 years performing in casinos, on cruise ships, and at nightclubs such as the famed Magic Castle in Hollywood, California. I enjoyed it, but I need to share with you that in my mid 30s, I came to this realization that maybe some others have had when they tried one career that’s nothing quite what they expected, but I realized I had no home, no car, no dog, no long term relationships worth speaking of, no kids. And I decided to make the natural pivot to hotel consulting. It was the only thing I needed.
From Magician to Consultant: A Shift in Personal Brand
So for the third time in my life, I had to rethink my personal brand. I’ll just say that again, for the third time in my life, I had to rethink my personal brand from Marine, think sameness, where my haircut and uniform are predetermined, to a mysterious magician, think lots of black highlights, eye makeup and wearing some tuxedos, to conservative consulting. For me, it was a big change behaviorally as well, and from a value system each step of the way. But I decided to approach this new consulting brand the same way that I had in previous lives, by getting very, very involved in professional associations as a member. Only this time, instead of the Society of American Magicians and the International Brotherhood of Magicians, it was the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International, which I joined back in the mid ‘90s, and I became an active member. I got on committees, the board, eventually spent four years as Global Chairman of HSMAI. I was invited to join the prestigious International Society of Hospitality Consultants, did the same thing, active member, committees, eventually on the board, and became Global Chairman of ISHC. I worked diligently to acquire industry recognized designations, certifications and awards. I started writing for our training labs. So instead of magic and the illusionist, it was hotels and hotel news now. And eventually, I decided to go back and I earned two postgrads in hospitality management. That’s kind of everything that brought me here today.
And I’ll just say that for everyone who wants to go much deeper into your story, because there’s many stories in that story of Egypt, military, and especially about magic. So for everyone, I would highly encourage you to check out John’s book From Invisible to Icon. We’ll obviously link that up in the show notes here.
Launching a Consulting Business: The Power of Associations
But let’s then kind of come to that time period where you decide to get into consulting, and the question I had for you, I mean, you started just talking about it right now, is that you joined different associations and professional groups. A lot of people do that. But my sense from when I read your book is that you didn’t just join a group and attend a meeting here or there. My sense is that you weren’t passive. You were very active in not just joining one group, but in joining multiple groups. And I’m wondering, what did that look like for you? Can you talk a little bit about specifically what did you do in joining these groups? How are you approaching networking, kind of hustling, getting out there to really land your first clients as a consultant?
In terms of being an active member in these associations, I was voracious in terms of a member. I wanted to be at every event. I wanted to get involved with every committee. I had worked my way into board positions from treasurer, I’ll do the books, whatever it takes to work my way up the board. But what I found was that in most of those associations, Michael, the other members of the committee or the board were potential clients, prospectively very big clients, and wrote sponsorship checks to the associations for their conferences and events. And I was getting, I would say, I would have an affectionate relationship with these individuals on a personal level because we spent so much time together working in conference calls and planning events or raising money even for the associations. And to me that was the game.
And then the other part was that it made everything a lot easier for me when you go to an industry conference. For instance, in the hotel, tourism and leisure space, there’s a lot of industry conferences, and they’re fairly large and big money kind of things. But when I would attend those and I would be at the cocktail parties or the sessions, I would always have this group, people who could make introductions to me with others that they knew, and vice versa, because of the association connections. So it really did, I would say fast track. I never understood why someone joins an association, writes a check, and doesn’t really get into that well, doesn’t attend the events, doesn’t get involved. And I was telling you, you need to really invest in yourself, in that association. Join, speak, write, take on leadership roles, anything that you can to get the most out of it. And it’s amazing how much business I earn from members in the association that were on boards and committees with me. One of my biggest clients ever turned out to be a very large hotel company, and the chief marketing officer and I became very good friends. And now she works with me. So she works at Horwath, but I think that’s key.
Initial Consulting Services and Growth
What were the services that you were providing in your initial consulting business? So before Horwath, what consulting business? What did that look like?
Yeah, so initially it was marketing, branding, strategic marketing. In terms of long term planning, it seemed to be the lowest hanging fruit and the least, how do I put this, the least risky for clients. Unfortunately, the world of corporate America values marketing at a lower level than other areas of consulting. So it was a good entry point for me originally just thinking about marketing, positioning new openings, repositioning hotels, those kinds of things came naturally. I really enjoy marketing and branding, and quite honestly, it was very easy to acquire that knowledge through books and texts and these associations and training sessions and whatnot. And I would plug into that and be very aggressive in that market. But my goal was to always move up the food chain to real strategy. And eventually I started winning clients like an icon in our industry, Mike Leven, when he repositioned Hawthorn Inns & Suites and Best Inns & Suites and we launched Microtel Inns & Suites together, I was able to migrate from just the marketing guy, so to speak, to more of a strategic thinker, and I would follow that way. But originally my firm was called Fareed & Company, which was a hospitality marketing firm. And I migrated to another name, which was Fareed Zapala Koepke And another one was eventually was John Fareed Consulting, LLC. So I wanted to divest myself of just the marketing and get more strategic.
Scaling the Business: Challenges and Considerations
So, how big did your consulting business – and I know there’s several names, as you just mentioned – but collectively, if you think about the business that you were running before you joined this larger consulting group being Horwath, how big did that consulting business get? I mean, revenue wise or people, anything you could share.
Yeah. At one time we were about 30 people and we were doing about 24 million a year under the Fareed & Company. And as we continued to grow and get smarter, better, faster, as we did in what I would say the early 2000s, we became a smaller, tighter group, focused more on larger strategic fees and opportunities. So, I would say we shrunk in terms of people but grew in terms of fees. And it was good. But I have to say I was very frustrated because we were doing great work as advisors, but we were competing with the Deloittes and the McKinseys and the JLLs and CBREs for so long and it was very difficult to walk, I would say, for a prospect to walk into their board where their owners group and say, “Hey, I want to hire these people, John Fareed Consulting LLC,” as opposed to with the bigger names.
The Decision to Join Horwath HTL: From Lifestyle to Asset-Driven Business
Ultimately, you decided to join a much larger firm so that you could compete and win business away from the McKinseys, the Deloittes, and others. But if somebody else was in your position, they may have looked at it and said, “We have a successful multimillion dollar consulting business here. We’ve become maybe even more profitable, higher fees, fewer people, maybe we can’t win the largest deals out there, but there’s still the mid market. There’s still plenty of opportunities.” And so can you talk a little bit about why that didn’t interest you or why you ultimately decided not to kind of fish, just maybe to go to a different pond if maybe it wasn’t as big, but just find other opportunities and continue, you know, this really good thing that you had, at least from the outside, looks like a really good thing. Why not just do that instead of looking to shift?
So here’s what was happening, quite honestly, in my head, and the big ‘why’ I did that was, for me, a very clear decision. Thanks to this group that I talked to you about, the International Society of Hospitality Consultants, which at the time was made up primarily of sole practitioners or small firms, and a lot of these individuals were my mentors, people that I really looked to from a leadership standpoint and an advice standpoint, they still are today. But what I found was, as they were retiring, there was a frustration level with them that they were walking away with nothing from the sale of their practice if they could sell it, mainly because their name was attached to the business. A great friend of mine, David Brudney, David Brudney & Associates, and he was a great mentor and someone that a lot of us in the industry still think about today. But he let me know that when he shuttered his business, he pretty much had only what he had put in retirement because a consulting practice was really your brand name. That concerned me because I saw that over and over again. And being John Fareed Consulting, LLC had its limits and I didnt want to experience that.
So I read an article, actually, I don’t know if it was from Fast Company or Inc., about the importance of transitioning your company from a lifestyle driven company, which mine definitely was a lifestyle driven company, to more of an asset driven company and the benefits of it. Everything in my life has been focused on reading books, magic books, or business books. So I reached out on a book search and I found three books on, there were only three, on how to transition from that lifestyle company to an asset company. And I was doing everything that they said were classic mistakes in the books, Michael, I had done. So I really made an effort to transition and divest myself. And part of that was joining a larger group, a larger network where I could really, really grow the asset even further so that hopefully, you know, when I do decide to retire, I will have something that I can divest myself of.
Acquisition Offers and the Horwath Partnership
John, do you remember the names of those three books or any one of them by any chance?
I do. Either, probably, but they’re in another– I mean, I have them in the another room. I can share them with you via email if you like, and you can put them here.
That’d be great. I can add them to the show notes later on. Did you consider at any point taking the kind of the lessons that you were learning, the best practices of how to shift from, kind of “lifestyle” business to, as you described it, like more of an asset focused business or a business that doesn’t rely on you? A business that has value and is saleable. Did you ever consider doing that, for example, changing the name to maybe JF Consulting or something that doesn’t have just only your face, putting more systems in place, maybe building the team, making sure that it can actually run without you so that it would be something that a potential acquirer would want to purchase? Did you play with that kind of option or opportunity at all? Or if not, I’m just wondering, did you not see it or was it not of interest to you?
I absolutely did. It was something that, in terms of building a new business plan, I put together a five year business plan, and I had to look at the pros and cons about- and I really spent a lot of time and energy on that, the amount of investment that I would have had to put forward to rename the company, secure a logo, and reposition in terms of marketing and assets and all of the accoutrements, if you will, that’s required at corporate America today was pretty steep, both in time as well as investment. And those are two things that we have to keep up with. You have to remember, I didn’t get into this business till I was in my mid 30s, so I’ve always been playing catch up for sure as a consultant. But I just didn’t feel like I had the time and was willing to part with the investment necessary to make it work.
So, essentially what I looked at, and what several of the books had recommended, was that you consider joining or aligning yourself with another firm, and Horwath HTL- I looked at several other firms that are competitors of ours, but it’s a network. It’s a network like Deloitte or PWC or some of the others that you’re familiar with, and Horwath had asked me to join several times before. They had a global development- James Chappell had invited me several times, and I’d always said, “No, I’m happy being a solo practitioner.” But I went to them and I looked at the opportunity there. They already had systems in place. It was a hundred year old brand, they’re a subsidiary with the 8th largest accounting firm on the planet, Crowe, and I felt like it was a shortcut for me to maintain my own practice, be part of this network, and grow the business. And it’s paid off, paid off in spades. I don’t know that I would have had the acceleration had I gone the other route, doing it myself, I think this was a huge opportunity. Knowing the biggest part of my issue was emotional, it was an emotional issue from a business standpoint, Michael, of getting rid of my name and my logo and my legacy that I had been pitching for years and acquiring or aligning myself with a nondescript company. Not that- Horwath is far from nondescript, but it’s not my logo, it’s not my brand, but it is now my company in a big, big way. So I’m enjoying that.
Did Horwath or any of the other companies that you were exploring ever show interest in acquiring your company or kind of bringing it under the fold or in the fold of their business, or was it really just more about bringing you on as an independent, as a solo person, and working as a career as an employee?
Yeah, no one ever offered me a job, so to speak. And we did get calls occasionally to be acquired. Twice, I would say, we went to the table and had very lengthy discussions and looked at P&Ls and balance sheets, and I received some, what I would say, some nice offers, but I felt like it was too early. I wasn’t ready to have those discussions. I wanted to build my brand and the value of my business further. I felt like that would be too early, and I needed to continue to control my destiny, and I couldn’t do that within another organization, as an employee or even as a minority partner.
Horwath HTL’s Client Acquisition Strategies
So today, as you mentioned, you’re the Global Chairman of Horwath, 250 senior consultants working in the hospitality space with world class, very well recognized clients and organizations. What do you see, or what do you feel that you all are doing as a company to get clients that maybe others aren’t? Of course you have the brand, it’s well established, but what lessons could somebody who is either running a solo consulting business or maybe a small firm that have 10, 15, 20 people, what lessons could they learn from what Horwath is doing and what you’ve seen work from a marketing and branding perspective?
I would tell you that from our perspective it is about strategy, long term strategy, like five-year strategic plans, which drives a lot of our thought processes in terms of clients that we’re targeting that we think would be good fits for us. And assignments, we say ‘no’ to a lot of assignments. For instance, we’re one of the world’s largest hotel, tourism and leisure firms in the real estate hotel space, so to speak, but we don’t do brokerage. We want to remain independent. So unlike some of our competitors that we all know the CBRE and JLLs of the world who do brokerage, we want to maintain our independence. And I feel like that’s key.
The other thing is that we spend almost all of our marketing dollars on sponsoring major conferences around the world to get our members there, to get speaking opportunities, to have a booth or an event at each conference, to network more so than we do on social media or I mean we do have social media, but the vast majority of our money is spent big presence kind of footprint. I would say that the other thing that we do is that we can truly bring a global perspective to any client. Last year we had a major brand, they said, “John, we want to do a strategic plan for all of our brands,” it’s a hotel company, “and you guys are well positioned because you have a great footprint in Asia, Europe, you’re in the Americas, so, a lot of talent to help us build a strategy around that because you’ve got boots on the ground,” and I think that’s important. If I was a smaller firm, I would be aligning myself with other smaller firms in other geographies from a network standpoint so that I could offer bigger opportunity. But yeah, I think that’s key.
And then lastly, I think it’s really spending time with one another so that we understand all consultants are not alike. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses, we all bring special skill sets. And even in a small farm, when you really understand one another’s abilities and can market that, I think that’s huge. I think team more than anything. It’s like a football team. You’ve got a goalie, you’ve got a kicker, you’ve got all the different pieces parts, and I think that’s even more pronounced in consulting.
It shows how international you are that you said football, and then you’re referring to what people in North America call soccer. So I like that.
Competing with Larger Firms: The Importance of Niche Expertise
So we talked earlier about you found yourself at a point where it would be very hard for you to win business away from competitors like McKinsey or much larger firms. And so as you joined Horwath, now, all of a sudden you’re landing those seven figures and in some cases beyond projects and you’re winning them away from the Deloittes and the McKinseys. A lot of people who are listening right now who are, again, running smaller firms, they don’t necessarily have 250 consultants and boots on the ground all around the world. You’ve given some very tactical, some suggestions, which I think are great. Is there anything else knowing what you know today, John, that you would suggest that a boutique kind of consulting firm, owner, solo consultant, do if they want to try and win business away from larger competitors? And it doesn’t have to be the McKinseys or the Bains, but just if there’s somebody more entrenched, larger, what might you offer to them to kind of explore, think about, play with, look into? What comes to mind?
The first thing that comes to my mind is to stop trying to be all things to all people and get a niche, a really, really hard niche, where you are the expert, where you are sharing the Kool-Aid on what you know specifically. I went up against a very large firm early in my career for a big piece of business from Motorola out of their Schaumburg headquarters outside of Chicago. And several firms came into their boardroom and pitched the business and they were generalists. I mean, a lot of these very big consultants or even medium sized consultant firms are generalists. When I could walk in and they started asking very specific questions about the hotel industry, which was their target audience for a large product, I could tell them what the manager of that hotel was thinking every day, what his daily routine was like, what the management company was like, what the brands were thinking, and the relationships across the board of all those different moving pieces parts. And at the end of the day, I won it because my niche was so hard and so deep that they said, you’ve told us more in an hour about the industry, than we’ve been researching, so we want to work with you. I think that is important. And I think rather than be the old saying three feet deep and a mile wide, I’d rather be three feet wide and a mile deep because it allows you to focus your energy on true prospects, potential clients that match you and it allows you to focus your energy from a marketing standpoint and an education standpoint as it relates to your consulting team. And I find that’s the best way to beat the big boys.
Yeah, 100%. Completely agree with that. I think that’s great advice.
The Power of Branding: Investing in High-Quality Touchpoints
When you sent me a copy of your book, it came with a letter and stationery that you wrote on. That wasn’t just any ordinary stationery, and it really got my attention. I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about. Maybe this is just the way you’ve always done things, but the feel of that paper, you could just tell this is a very special paper. I thought this is a great example of somebody who’s in the world of who understands the power of brand actually talking the talk. Today, you’re very established, you’re successful, you’ve accomplished a lot, you rub shoulders with high rollers, as some people might say, or very high net worth people and organizations. I’m wondering, is this the kind of thing that you always did, John? Were you always making investments in things like very high quality paper to differentiate yourself? Or is this something that over the years, as you’ve been able to acquire more money and wealth and you kind of built to a certain level, now it just makes sense for you to do? I’m wondering, did you see that early on or as time went on, you kind of realized this is another way to differentiate myself?
So I started that early on when I couldn’t afford it and everybody thought I was insane for doing some of the things that I did. But what I found was, all things being equal, we want to do business with people that we like and can relate to. All things not being equal, we still want to do business with those people that we like and can relate to. And what I found was that my clients, the best clients, had an aspirational way about them. In their clothing, I want to call accoutrements, watches, cars, everything, the restaurants that they would eat in and down to the business cards. And I wanted to be in that arena and I wanted to relate to them so that they felt comfortable. In the beginning, that was the goal. Now, it’s kind of SOP. But yes, the pieces that you got are handcrafted letterpress on Crane paper, beautiful paper, and very expensive. But when I hand someone that card, I always get the same response and it’s a big smile. They look at me and they’re like, “Wow, this is amazing.” I’m like, “Thank you.” But my clients don’t do that. My clients are like, “Yeah, thank you,” and they put it in their pocket. It’s really trying to set the bar a little bit higher and also differentiating.
Well, it certainly resonated with me. And part of that may have been that a past company that my cousin Sam and I started many years ago was a branding and design consultancy. And so we spent a lot of time selecting paper and doing stationery and letterpress stuff. So I’ve always had an appreciation for those kinds of things and good typography. But the moment I got it I just thought, “Yeah, I’m going to look forward to this conversation with John because he’s already walking the walk.” Sometimes you’ll get a book from somebody and almost like a postcard they printed at Vistaprint, there’s nothing wrong with that, but when you’re talking about brands, you’re right away demonstrating that, which I think says a lot.
Decision-Making Framework and Global Expansion
Another question here for you, John. Today, I mean, you oversee a global business. There’s a lot of things going on. You have to make decisions that for some of our listeners would seem incredibly risky, challenging, dangerous, a lot of money at stake, and a lot of potential issues that could come up. And I’m wondering over all these years, is there a framework or some principles that you use when you’re making decisions to invest into new areas of the business or hiring or just any business related decisions, anything that you kind of filter through or it’s a way that you kind of approach decision making?
There is. It’s very simple. I have a saying that people laugh at now, but it’s, “Be open in all things, be lucky in all things.” And it has served me incredibly well from- think about the fact that I had to be open to going into hotel consulting or open to this Horwath HTL opportunity. Last year we spent a lot of money from a Horwath perspective, traveling to sign up new offices in Israel, in Egypt, in Oman, Portugal, Argentina. Part of our five-year strategy was to grow, and it’s grow in terms of number of offices and people, but also in terms of revenues. And the only way we could see that was to going into new markets. Now maybe the timing wasn’t so good in hindsight on the new Israel office, but I’m still very proud of it and I have a feeling there’s going to be some great opportunities there in the future. Let’s hope sooner than later. Egypt is doing well, surprisingly, but Oman has turned out to be awesome. A lot of people would have thought, let’s stay within what I would say is traditional borders. But I think the opportunities were too great to sign on these new offices and new countries and really some amazing people and amazing opportunities. So from my standpoint, it’s, “Be open in all things, be lucky in all things,” and let’s see what’s the risk-reward. We all know that Benjamin Franklin pros and cons list and all of that, but I think some of its gut. I’m very fortunate, Michael. I have an amazing global committee that works with me, board, for lack of a better term, that represents Europe and Asia and Latin America and obviously the Americas, and we make decisions together. That makes it incredibly easy for me. You’d be surprised. I don’t get to do a lot of decision making because as a group we tend to look at the issues, everybody gives their feedback and we come to a logical conclusion and we march. And they’ve been doing it a long time, as have I. And I think that’s been the way. My main issue is to really focus us on a long term strategy to get us the next five years of that growth and how do we do that and pull them along. But I’m not risk averse at all. I mean, come on. Marine, magician, consultant. I’m not risk averse at all. But it has to make sense and it has to be part of our long term strategy on point.
Habits for Success: Early Rising and Self-Care
So, if we take that a little bit further before we wrap up here, I’m wondering, you’ve clearly accomplished a lot over your years and you’re continuing to grow and to build and to think, as you just talked about, long term. What are maybe one or two habits of John that you feel are really critical to your success, to your performance, to your ability to still apply critical thinking and be strategic? Are there a couple of things that you do on either a regular or just daily basis that you feel are really kind of integral to your success?
I do. Two things for sure. One is I get up at zero dark 30 in the morning, as we say in the Marines. I’m usually up around 5:30, 6:00 in the morning. I get in my car, I leave the hotel if I’m traveling, and I take my briefcase and I go sit somewhere with my headphones on and take calls and do email and get busy. There’s something magical that happens in that morning space where you’re not being bothered by everybody else who’s still sleeping in. You’re focused first thing in the morning. I have a quad espresso first thing to give me that jolt. But I work through as many things as I possibly can, which means the evening before I do an incredibly detailed to do list that I know I’m going to start as soon as I get up in the morning. The other thing too is that it’s amazing how impressed clients are when they get an email from you that’s at five in the morning or six in the morning that they find- they know you’re busy and that you’re working. But it also allows me time to talk to my people in other parts of the world. This is the time difference. So that’s one.
The other is the only way I know to describe it is self-care. I spend a lot of time taking care of myself. I take a lot of breaks. I go on multiple vacations a year. I try not to work too much on the weekend at all. I go to a movie. I take my dogs and my wife on a dog park walk. I really want to take care of myself, eat well, try to keep somewhat fit. I’m a swimmer. But I think those are probably the two habits that- I feel I would fail miserably long term. I don’t like sleeping in. And if I sleep in at even 7:30, I feel like, “Oh, my gosh. Half the day is gone, and I’ve missed all these opportunities.” Thats one. And I also know what happens if you don’t take a break. If you don’t take a break and don’t do self-care you’re going to crash and burn.
Conclusion and Connect with John
Yeah, I’ve heard that. Taking time to recharge and let the body relax is just as important as putting in the work and being busy. Those two things are definitely interconnected.
So John, I want to thank you for coming on, sharing just a bit of your journey. I want to encourage everyone to go deeper, and you can learn a lot more about the years of magic and everything else kind of before and after that in John’s new book, From Invisible to Icon. I know you’re doing a bunch of book signings at Barnes and Nobles and other places, so the book can be found probably everywhere that books are sold. But for those that also want to learn more about you, John, and about kind of just everything that you are up to, where’s the best place for them to go?
I think the best place is on our social media channels, Horwath HTL, or my LinkedIn page for John Fareed. Or they can just google John Fareed. It’ll populate. I’ve been doing this too long, for sure, but if you’ve got listeners in New York or whatnot, I hope they’ll come see me at the Barnes and Noble there. I’d love to meet them face to face and shake their hand.
Sounds good. All right. We’ll link all up in the show notes. John, thanks again so much for coming on.
Thank you, Michael. I appreciate your time.
Important Links:
The Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International
International Society of Hospitality Consultants
Built to Sell and The Art of Selling Your Business by John Warrillow
Walk Away Wealthy by Mark Tepper
Sell Your Business for An Outrageous Price by Kevin Short
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