I call them universal truths and it's love.

All, serve all.

All is one.

Save the planet and take time to be kind.

We have those mottos.

We don't just put them on our walls.

We endeavor to live those every day.

And you put them on t shirts and sell millions of them.

You see these t shirts everywhere?

We get around, for sure.

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On this podcast, the world's most innovative senior leaders share their top success strategies to motivate your direct reports, cultivate your top leaders, and accelerate your career.

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Here's Ben.

Hey there to lead the team nation.

Welcome back.

A fun one coming your way today with George Goldhoff, who is the president of Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City.

Under his leadership, they were recognized as a USA Today Top Workplace 2024.

And yes, the Hard Rock Cafe, Hard Rock hotel.

This brand is iconic.

They've been recognized by Forbes as one of the top employers to work for in the US.

Deloitte recognizes them as bet as a best managed organization.

And George himself has also been ranked as one of the top ten CEO's during his tenure in Canada back in 2019 and cannot wait to get to behind the scenes with George today.

George, welcome to leave the team.

Hey, Ben.

Good afternoon.

Good to see you.

So let's dive into this.

What was your first job and how does it influence your leadership still today?

Ah, well, my first job, Ben, I started dishwashing when I was 15 years old at a small, privately, an old restaurant in my community where I grew up in upstate New York.

And all my friends were working there.

We were all dishwashers.

We were in high school and we were making a few bucks.

And one day the chef came to me and asked me if I wanted to learn how to peel onions and make dressings.

And I'm like, wow, I'm getting a promotion.

And so I was ecstatic.

I was really pleased.

But I was curious.

I asked him why I'm working side by side with all of my peers and all of my friends.

And he said, well, there are really three things.

And the first one, I kept my area, which was a stainless steel table, essentially, that I worked on, and the dishwasher and the pot sink.

He said, you keep it really organized and clean so we know you can do your job.

And so I said, okay, anything else?

And he said, well, you get along with your colleagues really well.

It seems like when you come in, you're optimistic and you have a, a good attitude, and people like to be around you and work with you.

I go, oh, that's nice to hear.

Well, thank you.

I'm glad that matters.

Anything else?

And he goes, well, the last thing is that because of those two things, it feels like you really have a focus on the guests and the diners, in that case, that came into that little restaurant.

And so those were three items that had always stuck with me through my 30 plus years.

And I, the entertainment, gaming, hospitality businesses that I've been in, that collegiality, that sort of high quality work product, and that relentless focus on the guest.

So that was my first role at age 15.

Turns out you can learn a lot from slicing onions and doing, or being designated as the chief, I guess the chief onions, the onion chopper and dressing maker.

And I love that.

So they, so he could see these, these qualities in you.

And by the way, hats off to chef for actually having a way to sort of prioritize who to promote and who to move, who to move up.

I think a lot of times these decisions are made based on likability or maybe a degree.

But he's sawing you.

He's like, hey, this is what makes our restaurant successful.

This guy seems to get it right out of the gate of, and I assume, too, since he told you that you're able to focus on it and probably did pretty well in the restaurant, right?

Yeah, it was, I was off and running and learned how to make dressings, and then he, maybe another year later, he put me on the cooking line, and I learned to cook.

So what is the best dressing?

What's the best dressing?

Well, I'll tell you what.

I learned to make a russian dressing, essentially that creamy, eggy with the relish and everything.

You lather that on a wonderful sandwich with rye bread and maybe some corned beef and.

And sauerkraut.

Amazing.

That is a.

What's the sandwich name?

It's the.

I like the sandwich.

The Reuben.

Reuben.

It's a Reuben.

It's a Reuben.

Yeah.

Okay, y'all, there you go.

Russian dressing.

Delicious.

Now I had, I had the turkey Reuben, which is a slightly, I guess, healthier version.

Good.

But it's still not, it sounds healthier.

It sounds healthy.

It sounds healthier, especially put the more, maybe some butter on it.

I'm sure it makes that healthier too, right?

For sure.

Well, it's not a cooking, it's not a cooking podcast, but it's good to know, thinking about great sandwiches and what you're maybe going to order for lunch out there today all.

Now, George, you're also written about and noted for speaking a lot on change and I guess pairing change with optimism, which a lot of people look at change and it's maybe sometimes it's hard to face it.

What are your thoughts around that?

So that's an excellent comment.

I think there's probably a variety of different camps, but in the simplest of terms, there's people that thrive on change and then there's maintainers.

And quite frankly, in your environment, you need, you absolutely need both.

So not one is better than the other, but we are, and we do work in a world of constant change.

And when you recruit and hire somebody, if you're hiring somebody for a.

Yeah, a role that requires a lot of change, how do you, how do you change?

How do you communicate change?

How do you lead change?

And they're a maintainer, they're going to be awfully uncomfortable and really not very happy in the role.

And then conversely, if you have somebody who you want to put into a role that really maintains, let's say, compliance or is a very good scorekeeper, and maybe there's not quite as much change, and it is actually the opposite, then that maintainer could conversely be a little unhappy or that change agent that wants to get into it and wants to change the world, and it's a maintenance job, that is tough.

But we do, we live, particularly in this day and age, with technology and marketing is moving at thousand miles an hour.

How do you stay cutting edge?

How do you change?

How do you stay curious?

How do you innovate?

And so I think that has been a constant to anybody who's been in business for the last 25 years.

So that is certainly one area that we talk about.

Well, farah, so when people hear hard Rock hotel and casino, you are sitting at the intersection of a lot of industries that are in a big state of change and probably to some degree always in a big state of change.

What is a recent trend or maybe an industry shift that's challenged you as a leader and your team.

And how did you drive change or how did your organization drive change to either capture the opportunity or keep up with it?

Our organization is owned by the Seminole tribe of Florida and, and they have six properties down in Florida.

And I would say right around the two thousands, early two thousands, they consolidated.

They bought all the cafes and all the hotels.

And of course, we started a bit of a growth spurt and through, we.

Say a bit of a growth spurt.

What do you mean by that?

Well, we're in 72 countries, we have 300 locations, we have 50,000 employees.

We have 10 billion in revenues and.

So 10 billion, y'all.

So in 2004 through 2007, that wasn't the case.

We're really starting this consolidation and really over the last eight years, we've grown exponentially.

We've improved and expanded our operations, certainly in Florida.

We've added a number of casinos throughout the North America and we're still in that growth spurt.

We're going to add approximately 25 cafes, largely european and south american this year.

We have a number of hotels in the pipeline.

And in terms of casinos, we just opened our Rockford, Illinois.

We're going to open Bristol in November.

We're going to open Ottawa soon this year.

We're also, we have a property just outside of La that we've partnered with the Tejon tribe that we will be opening there.

Over the last six years.

We've opened Sacramento, northern Indiana, Cincinnati, and we've come up out of the ground in Greece, which will be an absolutely amazing integrated resort.

So as that relates to change, as your organization, anybody's organization starts to expand, where are you finding your resources?

Where are you finding talent?

How can you recruit talent?

What do your systems look like?

How do you integrate all of that technology?

What does your brand and marketing look like?

How do you stay consistent with your message and how you deliver service?

And so there's a whole variety.

You guys have got a mega brand, everybody knows it, and the expectations are high and how in the world are you trying to impart?

And, and I don't want to pick the challenge that you're going to talk about, but you've got a lot to maintain in this expansion mode.

Like, how are you, I mean, it's one thing to open a building, but you, but you just mentioned you gotta have systems, you gotta have a lot of security, right?

In the gaming world, there's providing these great experiences.

I mean, that's a bear.

Well, I will, I will say this.

I am, I am only responsible for hard rock Atlantic City.

And so our chairman and CEO, Jim Allen, who coincidentally also started as a dishwasher back in the day, now we know the qualification.

Good.

Keep being washing dishes first, which probably teaches you a lot of humility, I think so.

I think when you wear your name on your, on your uniform for years and years, you have a real understanding of what people do for a living.

And you never, you never quite forget that.

But Jim Allen has the role and responsibility for integrating everything that I've just talked about.

I am only responsible for my microcosm in this larger organization.

And so.

But I think it's scalable, but it takes a lot of strategy and surrounding yourself with great people, and that's what he does really well.

And staying true to our core values and our four core values, which we call our mottos, started in 1971.

So that's about 53, 54 years ago, we opened our first cafe, which is to say that our two founders, Peter Morton and Isaac Tigret, opened that and had the four mottos, and I call them universal.

You probably know a few of them, or all of them, which are more relevant today.

And I call them universal truths.

And it's love all, serve all, all is one, save the planet and take time to be kind.

And lord knows we need a bit more of all of those things, I would say, in our daily lives.

And so we have those mottos.

We don't just put them on our walls, we endeavor to live those every day.

And we're the well, and put them on t shirts and sell millions of them because that love all, serve all.

The first thing you said, I bet listeners today have probably owned a t shirt.

I'm Gen X, so a lot of Gen Xers probably have that.

That was probably the first one, right?

I recall back in the day, yeah.

I mean, you see these t shirts everywhere.

I think we have one.

We have a group of young kids surrounded by Mother Teresa in India about 30 years ago, and one of them has a hard rock t shirt on.

So, I mean, we get around for sure.

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So we've been.

I've been a lot of the hard rocks, but we've several times been to the hard rock resort down in Mexico for concerts, the Avert brothers weekend.

And anyway, always, always a good time in that.

Now, bringing it back to your experience here, when was a moment when your leadership made a difference in creating an unforgettable experience for guests or for your staff?

Well, I can think of a couple of challenges that I've, I should say how would.

I would put more of a positive.

I had the opportunity to be involved with, and one of those big challenges was a natural disaster.

And my heart goes out to everybody who has experienced these, and one is front and foremost on our minds right now.

And so God bless everyone that has been affected by the inland hurricane that came through.

But I lived through Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, Mississippi, when I was working.

You had a long stay there, right, at the MGM.

Yeah.

And the way we came together for the community and, and fed the first responders in the community and partnered with FEMA and I brought everybody together in short order and made phone calls to ensure our team members in the community had what they needed.

I think that was a challenge, that we had a big impact on our team members, our leaders, our community.

And people lost their businesses, their jobs, their churches, their groceries, everything.

And so I understand these kind of natural disasters and coming together made us a lot stronger and living that experience.

So I think putting yourself and you can really build trust and foster great communication skills and strengthen team dynamics if you have to look on the positive side.

I never want anyone to go through that type of thing, but that also helps us embrace that, those difficulties, whether it's a day to day challenge or work that you're doing or something larger, and embracing that challenge with curiosity and knowing that you're looking forward, you're looking at the glass half full.

You have to be optimistic to be creative and come up with solutions and embrace the world.

Yes.

Yeah.

So I just want to play that question back for the listeners.

Right.

I asked about an unforgettable experience that you provided with your leadership for guests or staff, and you went to a disaster that the community like, no, we didn't bring in pizza and have kiss come perform.

Right.

We reached out to the community, and in reaching out to the community in a time of need, we strengthened our guests.

Right.

And our reputation, our image in the world by helping people and our employees who actually live in the communities.

Yeah.

And what they're going to remember is, hey, MGM and George and his team, they reached out and they helped take care of us in this time of need.

It wasn't about their free pizza.

No.

It's about active listening, and it's about perseverance, and it's about resiliency.

And I think all of those concepts, philosophies play into everyone's everyday life.

And so it's conceptual, but how do you make those things come to life?

And we're faced with these opportunities all the time.

Yeah.

All right.

So, kind of building up on that, what event or concert has really showcased the hard rock brand and your leadership vision?

Leadership vision and the hard rock band.

So we have trace Atkins playing this weekend, and we have an amazing organization in South Jersey, the 177th air wing of the Air National Guard, led by Colonel Cooper.

And we have invited whole group of the airmen and the maintenance crew and everybody else that makes that air wing fly, and they're going to come in and they're going to be at the concert and hopefully meet trace.

And so I think that embodies the spirit of us supporting our national.

Our national Guard in this case, but military and veterans and military families, and so really, really proud of that and living our values.

And Trace Atkins is a huge supporter of military.

So that's this weekend.

That's a real life example.

So when I hearing that for you and I tied back into Katrina, you seem like you have a really community minded approach for casinos and resorts, where a lot of it seemed like from the outside, like, hey, resorts are about getting tourists in there.

And then I have them gambling, playing the games and the gaming piece and all this.

But your vision seems to, I think, might surprise some people because you seem to be very, hey, we're part of the community.

How can we serve them?

Is this.

Am I articulating it?

No, you're right.

You're right.

You're right on.

It's unexpected to me.

You're right on, Mark.

Entertainment and gaming and food and beverage and hospitality is our soul, but philanthropy is our DNA.

And we have years, decades of supporting our communities everywhere that we work in, all 300 locations in 72 countries.

And that is just an example of how we operate.

And it's that important.

It's an important part of what we do, and it brings.

It brings us together.

It improves, certainly improves morale.

I think it's professional development to be out there and supporting people, and it engages our team members, and it improves retention.

There's all those tangible things, but there's a real intangible that I don't think I can articulate.

But we are 100% aligned when if I wasn't being interviewed and you interviewed a different person in our organization, I think it would also come up, this notion of philanthropy and supporting our communities.

Very, very cool and very interesting.

What are.

What's a common misconception that people have about the gaming industry and maybe gaining mis leadership?

Misperception?

Well, we are the most regulated business in the world.

We have federal regulators, we have state regulators, we have county regulators, we have jurisdictional regulators.

And this is throughout every part of North America and certainly Canada, where I worked as well.

And so to think that there's somebody running these organizations that are.

That it's nefarious or something like that, I know that's.

That.

I think it's a misperception.

I hope it's not a common one.

But somebody might have that, because let me.

Somebody.

You know, I hold a license.

It's a privileged license.

It's not my right to have this license and to have that license.

There's 200 pages that we turn in about 1520 years of our past history to the regulator, and they go through with a fine tooth comb to ensure that the people that are hired in the gaming industry are of the highest ethical standing and that kind of thing.

So, yeah, the slot machines are not fixed, the games are playing, and the people that are running them could work anywhere in government or any other organization because of the fine sieve that we go through in terms of that ethical background check.

Okay, that's great.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds really regulated.

And it's not just a bunch of just nefarious activities going on behind the scenes, like, might be represented in certain movies.

So on the misconception front, so let's.

Let's roll with Atlantic City.

Atlantic City.

So people know the Bruce Springsteen song and by the band Atlantic City, they know, you know, the history of Atlantic City is quite colorful.

And so what role?

Like, what.

What's.

What's it like running a casino and a resort there?

And it feels like, to me, is that Atlantic City's kind of evolved quite a bit since the old days.

But what it, like, what's been your experience with this reputation that some people might say about Atlantic City being tough and gritty and full of stuff you hear in the Bruce Springsteen song versus, like, the reality of where you all are today?

And what's your.

How's your leadership in the brand doing with it?

Sure.

Well, Atlantic City, you're.

You're absolutely right.

We have a history, long history.

I mean, if you took all of the movies and the Netflix series, I think that was Boardwalk Empire.

And.

Okay, I was trying to be right.

I was talking around it.

Yeah, you got.

Yeah, yeah.

If you took all the books and podcasts and movies and made for tv series and everything and you put them into a realm, it would just be overflowing with amazing stories, probably some true and some not.

I'm a bit of a historian.

I'm a little bit of a sort of archaeologist, and try to understand why things work the way they work.

And you're right.

Atlantic City has a long history, historic relationship with tourism and music.

We brought up Bruce Springsteen and, of course, Frank Sinatra and Bon Jovi, and.

There'S so many Atlantic city legends, right?

Atlantic City legends, yeah.

And so we have all of that, and I think that plays into a little bit of the mystique that makes it very exciting and a destination resort.

And we were at one time, one of two jurisdictions in the entire country that had gaming.

And then, of course, gaming proliferated over the years.

And there's gaming in Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Washington, DC and Connecticut.

You in Las Vegas for the longest period.

Right?

For the longest period, yes.

You in Las Vegas.

Those are the two hubs.

And so you attracted people.

Some that had great reps, some that did not have great reps.

That's right.

Yeah.

And gamblers, and I try not to put everybody in want, but gamblers are quite eccentric.

They have.

They do it for entertainment, and they get a lot of excitement out of it.

And so you partner that with the history of Atlantic City, the great entertainment, and the amazing resorts.

And we're on the beach, and if you think of any city, Charleston, where you are right now being one of them, or small cities like Ithaca, New York, or Boulder or Burlington, Vermont, or some of the big ones, like Barcelona with Las Ramboulis or Paris with Champs Elysees, they all have this walkable entertainment district, and we have the boardwalk and with lots of history, and it's overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

So we have this infrastructure and a really fun place.

Yes, we do have gambling, but we have world class restaurants.

We have amazing entertainment.

We have the best hospitality.

We have great hotel rooms.

We have the boardwalk.

We have beautiful little barrier islands that you can go to.

You can visit the beach.

We have the steel pier.

We have the historic lighthouses.

We have Cape May.

I could go on and on.

And because of all of those supporting actors, gaming works.

It's not like, and I'm not knocking it, because I've lived in and worked in some regional markets, but it's not the same convenience that you have for going to, like, your local 15 minutes away casino.

We offer so much more.

So we attract people nationally.

And so it's really, I feel so grateful and honored to work here.

And it's, it's an amazing community.

It's an amazing state.

It's amazing location, and it's a great company.

Best company to work for, hard rock.

And so we have a lot of upside here.

Yeah, I love, I love the rock memorabilia, by the way.

I really geek out on that stuff.

And I love, I mean, art of rock.

You guys put it on display and have the coolest.

It's just like a museum.

I mean, it's a museum of rock.

The, so you mentioned that you're a bit of a historian.

And so I'm wondering, is there an atlantic city, like, historic, historic atlantic city story that you have that comes to mind where that may be colorful or might surprise the readers or listeners?

Well, I've been here for two years, so it wouldn't come from, I should say this.

My first personal experience with Atlantic City was on a family vacation.

I grew up in upstate New York, and we, like many families in that era, drove in and we stayed on the beach.

And it was, I still have memories of that, even though I was very young, getting slammed by the waves and rescued by my parents and enjoying the beach.

And that still exists.

That still exists today for a lot of families and everything.

But there's just so many experiences that have happened over the years.

There's museums that highlight that.

And also some of the museums highlight like Sammy Davis Junior when he came here with Frank Sinatra, and they wouldn't allow him to stay in the hotel because of his skin color.

And Frank Sinatra got him into the hotels.

And so it goes back to the twenties where people were, they made a day of it and they dressed up with suit and tie to walk on the boardwalk.

It's not like that anymore.

But I think it's evolved.

Evolved quite a bit over the years.

So much fun today.

George, what's your parting thought for our listeners?

Take any direction you like.

I would say two things that we talked about, which is sort of change and resiliency and optimism.

I think we live in a great area era.

It's a wonderful time to be in the entertainment and gaming business.

Hard Rock is a fantastic brand that continues to grow stronger and just honored and grateful to be here.

And I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it.

Thanks for coming on the show, George.

Thank you.

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