TJHC Hotel

A great book to start the year with. Real insights in to the success of a brand – it certainly did not happen over night, but Issy Sharp has followed the 3 C’s rule of branding.

Clarity – almost from the outset with one small motel in Toronto he knew what Four Seasons was going to be and he has communicated that same message year after year.

Consistent – he has refused to waiver from his Golden Rule (the values) and deal with people in a way that he would want to be treated. The bumps that he did encounter he learned from and underlined for him why his approach was the right one.

Constant – an almost fanatical zeal for superior service. He has also been a constant innovator in the industry that the rest try to follow and emulate, by which time he is ahead of them again.

This is an excellent example of a brand that allows it’s employees to be brands themselves and deliver on the corporate brand promise because of it. A great read for any entrepreneur looking to establish true brand leadership.
Rating: 5 / 5

While I have never stayed a night in a Four Seasons hotel, this books inspires me to want to experience the life’s work of Isadore Sharp and his worldwide team of dedicated employees. Here is a company that is fiercely dedicated to their four (later five) pillars of quality, service, culture, and brand (the fifth is: become the undisputed industry leader). Sharp also built their culture around the Golden Rule. He emphasizes both its importance and its universality in every major world religion. Turn to the (strangely) unnumbered page 284 to see a once page listing of the goals, beliefs, and principles of the Four Seasons. As fine a one page guide to the soul of a company as I have ever read.

No matter the heights of wealth, prestige, and luxury Isadore Sharp has attained through a lifetime of focused hard work, he was not born to it. His parents were immigrants to Canada and worked very hard for every scrap they had. His dad was a builder, but in the sense that he was honest, worked hard, and got some work to build small buildings, additions, or repairs and did much of the labor himself. All this despite the fact that his father didn’t speak English all that well. I loved the story of his mother wanting a cottage. They obviously couldn’t afford one, but his father said he would build one for his mother. They purchased a tree-filled lot near a swamp without a beach view and built a small little cottage over six weekends with four of his Dad’s workers. All the while fending off hoards of mosquitoes. His mother had her cottage.

Issy was a gifted athlete, quite smart, but never bookish. He was always able to dig deeply into problems and had a wonderful intuition for sensing when he had found the right answer and resisting decisions until he had. Not that he never made mistakes. One of this book’s many strengths is the author’s willingness to be frank about his mistakes. Some he could fix, others he could not. For example, when he decided that he would build his business of only five star hotels, he sold the one in Israel that could not measure up. However, his father loved that hotel and used it regularly. Now, Sharp realizes he should have made that one exception. Mature regret helps hard driving young men become wiser, a touch softer, and stronger.

I really enjoyed watching Issy grow up, how he became the leader in his father’s construction company and became a builder in his own right. The transformation to hotelier took longer than you might expect if all you know is Sharp’s success with the Four Seasons. The lessons he shares are wisely chosen to show how high level business relationships are formed, the risks Sharp took, his wise moves, his poor moves, and when good fortune smiled on him despite the vagaries of reality.

But Issy and his wife Rosalie have not had a life without pain or shadow. They lost their son, Christopher, to cancer before he was out of his teens. Sharp writes movingly about all his children, but there is a special glow around Christopher. Sharp was also instrumental in assisting Terry Fox during his run across Canada to raise awareness about fighting cancer. Terry also lost his battle too soon. But Issy has kept the memory of Terry alive and his dream moving forward. Sharp and the Four Seasons have raised millions of dollars each year to enable the Terry Fox Run to provide aid to cancer patients around the world.

When Sharp settled on his vision of the Four Seasons’ culture, he still had to instill it in the company. While many accepted the vision enthusiastically, a residual group would not and this led to some serious turnover in the company. Nowadays, the company is known for its far below industry turnover rate and its loyalty to its employees. During the post 9/11 hospitality industry crash, the Four Seasons did all it could to avoid layoffs and maintain their standards. This was not the course most of their competition took and Sharp explains convincingly why his company took the right course.

I cannot take you through the entire history of this interesting company, but I want to commend it to you. Sure, I like to read about businesses and the success of failure over time. But this story is much more than a mere corporate biography. Sharp is trying to teach us the spirit behind his company and why the fulfillment of his corporate vision has been so good for his customer, his employees, his investors, as well as himself and his family. Frankly, in this world where so many companies seem to be in a race to the bottom, I am inspired by a man who is trying to lift the lives of everyone he serves and works with. I honestly think you will find it inspiring and instructive, which is a rare combination in most business books. Sharp is also very generous in praising others by name for the successes the company has enjoyed while taking personal responsibility for things that went poorly. What the company is an expression of Sharp’s vision, it is a vision accepted and fulfilled by their thousands of employees all over the world.

Two final points. First, Alan Phillips has done a great job in giving Sharp his voice in the book and putting the story together. This book is not a mere chronology. While there are sequences where the years follow each other, most of the book is more about using events to explore the principles that matter to Sharp. He is fully acknowledged in the book, but I also wanted to praise him for his fine work. Second, this book is wonderfully produced. Look behind the dust jacket and you will see color photographs on the cover of the book and on the back of the dust jacket! The paper is beautiful, and even the end papers are emblazoned with the Four Seasons’ logo. The pictures included are put near the relevant text rather than grouped together in the middle of the book. We readers are treated to a handsome book that feels and looks as luxurious as the hotels.

I would love to meet Mr. Sharp to thank him for this book and for making the world a nicer place. Not only for the wealthy who can afford to stay at his hotels, or even for the employees he obviously cares about so deeply, but also because when you bring good things to the world, you make all of it a bit brighter for the rest of us.

This book is now on by top shelf of business books that matter a great deal to me. I hope you take the opportunity to enjoy it for yourself.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Rating: 5 / 5