#198 - Hospitality Meets Conor O'Leary - Global Adventures and Ferret Frenzies

Phil [00:00:02]:
Welcome to hospitality meets with me, Phil street, where each week we take a light hearted look into the stories and individuals that make up the wonderful world of hospitality. Today's guest is Connor O'Leary, managing director at the world renowned Gleneagles Hotel. Coming up on today's show, Connor speaks the truth.

Conor O'Leary [00:00:20]:
You know, there's worse things to learn Than wine 

Phil [00:00:22]:
Phil probes for a story. This sounds like there's a story here. And Connor talks to us about ferrets.

Conor O'Leary [00:00:30]:
I think the ferret's then gonna bite me. So I thought, I don't want that.

Phil [00:00:34]:
All that and so much more as we chat through Conor's amazing journey so far. Conor retells his story with a self reflective honesty which is very easy to get on board with. As a result, there are great stories and takeaways throughout his journey, as well as an insight into what makes Gleneagle so special. So I'd be forever grateful if you can hit that subscribe button and tell everyone you know. Enjoy. And a huge hospitality meets. Welcome to Connor O'Leary.

Conor O'Leary [00:00:58]:
Hi, Phil, how are you?

Phil [00:00:59]:
I'm very well. How are you?

Conor O'Leary [00:01:00]:
Very good, very good. Nice to chat and see you.

Phil [00:01:03]:
Yeah, I know I've been itching to get you on, notwithstanding, obviously, Glenn Eagles is, you know, world renowned for a start, but also it is kind of. It's a stone's throw from where I grew up. So there is a little bit of nostalgia here for me as well.

Conor O'Leary [00:01:21]:
Where was that?

Phil [00:01:22]:
Perth. I was just in and around Perth. So for the first eleven years and then we relocated to an island on the west coast of Scotland.

Conor O'Leary [00:01:29]:
But, yeah, very close.

Phil [00:01:30]:
Very close to you indeed. Yeah. I was too young to really appreciate it, I think, back then. But we'll get into. Actually, we'll talk about Gleneagles for maybe the two or three people out there who don't know what it is and what it stands for, etcetera. We'll do that later as we go through your journey. Where are you today? You're recording in the hotel in Glen Eagles in Perthshire?

Conor O'Leary [00:01:51]:
Yeah, just down the road.

Phil [00:01:52]:
Brilliant. This is the problem with people who are listening to this won't appreciate this because we can see each other while we're recording this, but having conversations with people from the luxury five star sector really makes me feel like I need to up my background game big time.

Conor O'Leary [00:02:08]:
I've got a little lovely picture of Gleneagles there. One of the original railway prints of Gleneagles.

Phil [00:02:13]:
Very nice. Right on message.

Conor O'Leary [00:02:15]:
Exactly.

Phil [00:02:16]:
Brilliant. Right, well, let's just get to it take us all the way back. How did you get into hospitality in the first place?

Conor O'Leary [00:02:22]:
So I grew up in Strathdunavon. It's a Torrest town, as many people know, birthplace of Shakespeare. I went to the same school and did Latin in the same classroom and all that sort of malaria. Yeah. I wasn't probably as good as he was at it, but in school holidays, it was always hospitality jobs. You know, it was waiting tables, working in the kitchens, pot wash and plate wash, and then you get old enough to work behind the bar and then did the longest stint, did sort of a long season, I suppose, as in hindsight, I remember as a duty manager, and in hindsight, I would never have put the 18 year old me in charge of building or customers inside it, but that's how it was. And I liked the industry and just felt comfortable in it and enjoyed it. I like hospitality.

Conor O'Leary [00:03:06]:
So it's those various experiences of restaurants, bars, hotels. And eventually I said to my parents, look, I think I like this and I think I want to do it properly. And they pleasingly supported that. And we sort of said, if I'm going to do it properly, let's go to London and apply to a few five star hotels. And I always remember how things changed, but I had to choose the hotels that I applied to out of the AA hotel guide. So you look through a book and you choose ones and the AA red Star ones and circle those. And I remember writing letters to them and getting letters back and I remember, you know, even to this day, I remember who did and didn't reply and who invited me for interviews and so on and so. Yeah, yeah, correct.

Conor O'Leary [00:03:43]:
So, yes, that was it. So it was that sort of growing up in that town where to earn a few quid on your part time roles, it was hospitality.

Phil [00:03:51]:
Yeah. And actually, I think you and I are kind of of a much similar era in terms of the times that we probably went to school and uni and all of that kind of stuff. But the thing that I just picked up on from that very kind of brief start, if you like, is I'm completely with you. You look back on your 18 year old self and think, what, you know, kind of what were they doing? I had this exactly the same experience when I was 23 years old, when they worked on cruise ships, and they gave me a role that I thought, I'm absolutely not ready for this, I'm totally not ready for this, but supported really well by the leadership around me. But I look back on that now and I think I still to this day, think, what were they thinking? The 23 year old me was, yeah. Difficult to wonder why they came to that conclusion. But anyway, this is the benefit of working for good people, right, who see something in you.

Conor O'Leary [00:04:43]:
Yeah. And I think also that all of that kind of shapes a bit of me today. You know, you never forget, I said to someone the other day, you never forget carrying luggage off a tour bus up windy staircases in Stratford and Avon, and these big american suitcases that you had to get to all the rooms and put chalk on the corner of each one. It wasn't the poshest hotel I was working at, so you'll understand that. But, you know, that gives an empathy with the team. Job today, breakfast at the weekend, wherever you work, whether it's the Ritz or whether it's a little hotel, Stratford unhaven is going to be busy at the weekends, and you have to rush to clear tables and reset them, and someone's probably called in sick and things. And those dynamics don't change whether we're in Gleneagles or, as I say, sort of 18 year old me. So I think it just gets into you, and you understand the dynamics, you understand the frustrations.

Conor O'Leary [00:05:25]:
They haven't changed over the period of time. I can still relate to those now and make sure that we're best set up not to be impacted by them. But that's hospitality.

Phil [00:05:35]:
Yeah, absolutely. Was there a moment in that, or can you recall the moment in that kind of first foray into the industry where you started to think, well, hang on, I really like this. This could be the career path for me?

Conor O'Leary [00:05:50]:
Yeah. I think it was probably encouraged by my parents eagerness for me to choose something. I dabbled with university, but I didn't like the course that I'd gone to. And I said to them, look, I want to take some time out. And in hindsight, I was a kid that should have taken a year out. I should have had to fend for myself and realized, you know, you need to knuckle down and things. But. But anyway, I went straight to university, didn't enjoy the course I left after in the first year, and came back and said, right, I'm going to do a sort of season and sort my shit out and decide what I want to do.

Conor O'Leary [00:06:17]:
And so a little bit of their pressure, me realizing that I enjoyed hospitality. And I think, you know, whether this was conscious or what I've learned since is that you can often be good at the things you enjoy, or it's easier to be good at the things you enjoy than things you have to sort of force. So that kind of came naturally and I, and I thought, right, I need to choose something. I like this. I see. And to your point, people see something in you. So I, you know, I was being given duty management roles and shifts and you know, offered promotions and things as a youngster into super visual roles, nothing too serious. But I thought, okay, this seems to be something that I can do and do reasonably well and enjoy at the same time.

Conor O'Leary [00:06:51]:
And I thought I'd give it a go. So it was around then. It was around what, 1920, something like that, right?

Phil [00:06:56]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and then you got your head into. Right, if we're going to do this, we're doing it in London. London, baby.

Conor O'Leary [00:07:04]:
Yeah, it's funny, my sister was in London at the time and I used to go down and see her and little things, you know, and again, I don't know what the equivalent is now. It'll be online and first things. But I used to read every week aa gill in the Sunday Times and read about these restaurants and envisage quaglinos and mezzos and places like that that were the places to go at the time and used to go to London and she would take me to them and I just enjoyed the buzz and the scene and so it wasn't necessarily London, it was the fact that that's where the good big places were. So if you wanted to go and work in a big five star hotel in a, and an international group and a brand, that's where they were back then.

Phil [00:07:39]:
Yeah.

Conor O'Leary [00:07:39]:
I mean still, still often is now as well, but. Yeah, but certainly then.

Phil [00:07:42]:
Yeah. And don't forget the streets are paved with gold so you know, apparently that's what they're told. Right. But also I suppose there's also some familiar familiarity for you there as well. If you had already kind of dipped your toe into the London scene in terms of what you where aware was there. So maybe that played its part as well.

Conor O'Leary [00:08:01]:
Yeah, a little bit. My sister was there, which was some comfort. Yeah. A couple of friends already there. But oddly I didn't know the five star hotel market at all. And you know, as I say, I was looking in this book and you know, some of the advice I got during that time of taking this role instead of that role which one on paper didn't look as good as the other one, but actually the more junior role in the better, well definitely better hotel but also better employer, you know, was great advice at the time, which luckily I took. And you know, that's sort of a theme throughout my career, and I think most of us in hospitality, we make, you know, I suppose anyone in life, you make these. These choices and you can be lucky sometimes.

Conor O'Leary [00:08:40]:
And I made a very lucky choice. I joined the Royal Garden Hotel and it didn't have. Didn't have huge recognition. It wasn't a big sort of famous international brand, it wasn't the four Seasons or anything, but I'd applied to a few, they were one of them. They were extremely professional in the process. They talked to me, they showed that they wanted me and gave all their signals. And whilst it wasn't the highest job that I hoped I could get, I could sense that they were, you know, they cared, they looked after people and it was true. And I did three years there and they developed me, they moved me around the business, they gave me different experiences.

Conor O'Leary [00:09:12]:
I'm still friendly with people that looked after me at that time and were sort of my senior managers. And in hindsight, it was a lucky choice. I could have joined a hotel that didn't give a hoot and chucked you into the deep end and just sort of left you to fence with yourself. And the Royal garden was a super employer at the time when I needed it to be in my first job in London, and I did three years there in 99 to end of 2002.

Phil [00:09:33]:
Right, yeah. Massively important point. We've had this on the show quite a lot, whereby, I mean, actually, I think in your notes, you even wrote this down as kind of sliding doors moments, right, are prevalent in everybody's career. Imagine if you go into a different place with a completely different mindset towards their employees and all of that, and all of a sudden that's your impression of the life and career in hospitality, which kind of, you know, from what this show stands for, is a massively important piece, is that we've got to, I suppose, as a united front, really call out the good stuff when it happens. And, you know, and like you, I mean, my experience of Royal Garden as a recruiter is that we rarely see CV's with Royal Garden on the CV, because I think people are just happy there.

Conor O'Leary [00:10:24]:
Yeah. To this day, nowadays, it's called culture and there's a lot of focus on it. But 25 years ago, there wasn't that, but they had good culture, they had good values and because of that, they had good senior leaders and because of that, they hired. There's a lot of books written about it, but it's not a complex science. They were decent employers, pure and simple. And I remember literally, the sliding doors. I had two offers from these first round of interviews, and one, it doesn't matter which brand, but it was one of those funny little hotels that's on that road out of Knightsbridge where you got all those hotels that haven't changed in 25 years, and they're still. That was the higher title and the Royal Garden was the lower title, but you could just sense and see, and someone during that interview process had looked, don't worry about the title, look at the opportunity here and the opportunity for growth.

Conor O'Leary [00:11:10]:
And they were correct. And, yeah, as I say, I could have joined it somewhere that would have turned me off hospitality. But actually, the Royal garden kept my enthusiasm and grew it. So we tried to do that here. And hopefully all the people that you've had on, I think would say the same thing.

Phil [00:11:25]:
Yeah, totally. It's a massively important point, I think, as well. It's not a bad place to get a start as well. Beyond the cultural element of you feeling happy and feeling like you found your place, the fact that they were kind of developing you through different departments as well. So it's just a really great way to kind of really understand if this is for me, but also specifically if it is, which part of this business is going to take me. Yeah. What departments did they. Did they get you working through?

Conor O'Leary [00:11:56]:
So, starting in what I'd call the fine dining restaurant, in hindsight, it wasn't that fine dining, but it was nicer than the other one. It was on the 10th floor, it had beautiful views. It was. It was a fine, you know, it was three rosettes at the time. So lunch and dinner, restaurant didn't have to do that bloody breakfast thing, you know, the weekend queues and what have you. But it was. It was, yeah. And so a few things on that.

Conor O'Leary [00:12:20]:
So sort of smart restaurant, a high level of food, high level of service, expected lovely views across Kenton Gardens. And I remember two things vividly there, just not quite. And then I'll go to where I moved on to, but I joined as a head waiter, so I was a sort of supervisor of the room, great restaurant manager at the time. He's gone on to good things as well, and you're doing your briefings and so on. And I remember two things. I remember. I remember going in and asking the chef what a sauce bursi was. So I had all these french terms and things, and I don't know how good swearing is on this podcast, so.

Phil [00:12:48]:
That'S up to you.

Conor O'Leary [00:12:51]:
But the chef wasn't very pleased with me asking what a sauce Percy was. And he felt that we should know these effing things and so on, right. And I remember he didn't tell me that very nicely, which, looking back, I can understand it was probably in service and it was probably the last thing you needed to be asked. But I remember thinking, screw you. That's the last time I'm asking anyone that. I'll learn myself. So I went away, bought my repertoire de la cuisine, because I didn't have that background. I'd been working in a beefeater restaurant, Stratford on Avon, and on my weekends and washing pots and things, then going into hotels and behind the bar and duty manager, so I didn't have this sort of food background.

Conor O'Leary [00:13:23]:
So I thought, screw you, I'm nothing asking anyone again. So I went and got my repertoire de la cuisine and what's the other one? La Rose gastronomique. And I had them. And every menu that came out, I would go away, research what it was, know myself, and come back in. And then similarly, I remember customers asking advice on the wine list. Now, a boy, a boy that sort of played rugby at school and drank around Stratford on Avon with his mates after, you know, on a Saturday, wasn't looking at the wine list. We were looking at whether it was Stella or Boddington and not much else. And so being asked advice on a wine list and my.

Conor O'Leary [00:13:57]:
Remember, the advice I gave wasn't particularly accurate in helping them make the decision. And I could see them looking at me with so this very confused look. And again I thought, I can't do that again. So, you know, it sort of forced me to go away. And I'm not an expert, but I had enough to get by before the sort of sommeliers arrived or cavalry arrived, but sort of good learning. So from there, then they moved me to banqueting. So it's sort of the opposite. So Royal garden had big banqueting.

Conor O'Leary [00:14:20]:
I think the ballroom was 400 or so, you know, and lots of other rooms. And you had. It was. It wasn't that it wasn't fine dining, but it was solid hard work. You know, you're resetting rooms, turnarounds ahead of dinner. Lots of agency staff, lots of the old school that used to be the wine waiters in the banquet rooms in London and sort of negotiating that. And I was 23, 24, and having to sort of been promoted. So as assistant manager of banqueting and then again, a really good banqueting ops manager, Alan, that showed me the rope, you know, kept me right as such, regardless of how many mistakes I'd make.

Conor O'Leary [00:14:51]:
But. But, you know, to the point now that I believe an f and B direct is only good if they've spent some time in banqueting. I know I've got these. These sort of, sort of rules in my head that I stick by. I might be wrong, but that need to get things done to plan so to be planned two weeks ahead, whether it's your staffing, whether it's your equipment, whether it's, you know, what's coming, and to then have the energy and drive each day to get through bank, big, busy banking operations, I think is a huge skill to have going forwards in hospitality management in bigger businesses. So I loved it, and I did that for a year, 14 months, and then an opportunity came back up in the fine dining restaurant or the ground floor restaurant. I chose to go back up there again as an assistant manager.

Phil [00:15:28]:
Still avoiding breakfast, then?

Conor O'Leary [00:15:30]:
Still avoiding breakfast, yeah, I've done enough of that in Stratford and Avon. And again. Yeah, sort of managing teams. The restaurant manager, again, was super and gave me a bit of bandwidth to be sort of responsible for a big chunk of service delivery and operations and events and so on. Yeah, good, good experiences.

Phil [00:15:48]:
Yeah, no doubt. The thing I love about that section is this desire of yours to kind of take control of your own destiny a little bit, really. Or maybe this is part of the first step of you realizing that actually, if you devote a little bit of time, you know, away from the core just to get some fundamental learning under your belt, then actually that's going to pay dividends.

Conor O'Leary [00:16:09]:
Yeah, I think. I think it's. I think you realize that, but also, in hindsight, I shouldn't be asking the chef during service what something is I should learn and I should be able to teach my team. That's part of leadership and growth, and you probably don't see it at the time. I remember just being stubborn and thinking, screw you, I'm not letting you make me feel like that again. That was the initial drive, but your development is on you first and foremost, not on anyone else. They're small examples, but, yeah, it was on me to get that knowledge. I can ask the employer to help, but I have to drive it myself.

Conor O'Leary [00:16:43]:
And those were little examples of it, but I think it's something that has stuck with me.

Phil [00:16:47]:
Yeah, I would guess as well that part of that drive comes from the fact that you actually love to learn this kind of stuff as well, because you're in the midst of what you want to be doing.

Conor O'Leary [00:16:58]:
I remember explaining to sort of, when I was a restaurant manager and f and b director or whatever, telling people there's worse things to learn than wine. When you have to sort of drink some chablis, some sunsets, Australian Chardonnay or California, and then you've got to get your head around Bordeaux and Burgundy and Champagne's a whole new world. But there's worse things, you know, if you look back at your schoolmates and look what industries they're in, whilst, you know, hospitality has some areas that it needed and still needs to do better, it's not a bad thing to go out to different. And I loved restaurants, so, you know, I can tell you menus that I ate at the orre as a comparison at the time and the busier places in town. Mirabel. I loved Mirabel before it closed. So that was my research. Going to nice restaurants and bars and nice hotels.

Conor O'Leary [00:17:44]:
Something that we struggle with here because of our location in the middle of Scotland. But in London, you can go and sit in Claridges and you can order a Coca Cola or a beer. It's six quid. But you can be a Claridge's customer for 3 hours and just watch the world come and go and see that beautiful lobby and see the service touches that make it Claridges or Savoy or Dorchester. That's a nice industry to be in if you're interested in it and care.

Phil [00:18:07]:
About it, no doubt. I mean, that's got to be. That line in itself has to go on a t shirt. There are worse things to learn than wine, for sure.

Conor O'Leary [00:18:17]:
Yeah.

Phil [00:18:17]:
I mean, there's a battle cry for anyone who's listening to this, who's got a remote interest in maybe joining the industry, if you like a bit of wine, even if you are, as I was when I was a student, drinking the 299 bottles of bulgarian cabernet Sauvignon, because that was the cheapest one that was available. It's a start.

Conor O'Leary [00:18:35]:
Yeah, I remember. Yeah, yeah. Agreed, agreed. You can only go up from there.

Phil [00:18:38]:
Indeed. Absolutely. Great. Right. Well, I suppose we should probably close the Royal Garden chapter and move on. Otherwise we'll be here all day. This is great. So, yeah, how did that kind of end and what happened next?

Conor O'Leary [00:18:50]:
I've done three years. I enjoyed it, but also conscious I wanted to keep moving. I started looking around and also, you know, you get to know people, you start to get a network and so on and, you know, people that work at different places. I joined Mandarin Oriental as a restaurant manager and I remember it was tough, like being honest. That was the. So I joined in a chap called David Nichols. Some people will know, David, that. Listen to the podcast.

Conor O'Leary [00:19:15]:
David was a tough, tough taskmaster. He was a chef that had become chef and be. I still see him now and teased in the old time about his previous style, but he was bloody tough. And I was a youngster who was sort of trying to get on and I took on the role of restaurant manager in their busy restaurant. It was busy. They were doing, you know, the flat out breakfast, lunch, dinner, flat out, all day, every day. It was a really successful restaurant and I took it on and, you know, I look back at some of the ways I was managing it and I think you should have. You could, you could have done better or you probably needed a bit more maturity in hindsight.

Conor O'Leary [00:19:47]:
And I did 18 months there or something like that, and I didn't enjoy any of it, frankly. Really? Looking back. Yeah. And it was probably the only time in my career that I felt like that. And listen, a lot of that was on me and, you know, how I was doing the job. But, you know, in hindsight, I think we would have handled that better with a restaurant manager here as well. So, anyway, but there's lots of, you know, the huge learnings in that, how we deal with it, how you. How you sort of step into it every day, what you take away from it, what you make sure you're not going to do again, what you make sure you are going to do again, what you make sure you're going to do as a senior leader differently, you know? So it was what it was.

Conor O'Leary [00:20:25]:
I think we, I think we often take jobs and maybe that one wasn't the right one at the time, but you find that out when you're in it, maybe. And so I did that for 18 months and then I wanted to leave. And so there was an opportunity to open a new hotel nearby. With that, friends of friends were leading. It was the Bentley in Harrington Gardens, and it was a privately owned hotel. It wasn't an entirely successful hotel at the time. I don't know how it's doing now. And again, these sort of things come up in your career.

Conor O'Leary [00:20:55]:
I needed to get out of the job I was in. I wasn't enjoying it. It wasn't, it wasn't. No one was winning. So it took me out and it was a sort of twelve month thing that I knew wasn't going to be a long thing. But then I had the opportunity to get back into sort of, I would say, the path I wanted to. So the Langham had just come out of being the Langham Hilton. It was rebranding, and I went and took on that restaurant manager.

Conor O'Leary [00:21:16]:
It was going. It was supposed to go through a refurbishment, but that got sort of delayed and things. But anyway, the new senior management team, new brand. Fascinating to sort of watch that, see that evolve and how coming out of Hilton, first property of the Langham group. But clearly there was a big ambition for the Langham group, and so watching them sort of put together their values and their sort of philosophy, their branding, their collateral, their product, that was great to see as a youngster and also how you come out of a product and how you articulate that to your customers. There was a lot of customers that were old, old customers that were coming to this same property, but a new label and a new brand. So saw all that. Worked for a chap called Duncan Palmer there, who's a super hotelier and very enthusiastic and energetic person, did that for a while.

Conor O'Leary [00:22:00]:
They then offered me a role to go to Hong Kong as an assistant f and b director, and at the same time, I was offered a role at the Ritz in London as assistant f and b director. I'd met the eam f and b sort of six months previously, and we'd stayed in touch and he called me back and said, look, I was thinking about you and we've got this role coming up and would you like to join? And that's probably a sliding door moment in my career. I was in Hong Kong for a week to see the role there. And I remember it was a live in role in a bedroom in the hotel, working six days a week. I remember going away thinking, that'd be odd, wouldn't it? Just living in a hotel room. It didn't feel that wasn't the romance of how I wanted to experience Asia and Hong Kong. Living in a hotel and coming down on the lift and going to work. So that was sort of niggling.

Phil [00:22:47]:
Save on your commuting costs, there's definitely no transport.

Conor O'Leary [00:22:52]:
And then the Ritz. You know, when you're youngster in the UK, growing up in hospitality, the Ritz is an incredible name. You know, it's hard not to be attracted to that. And so I took the job of the Ritz. I don't know to this day whether that was the right choice. It was because I'm here and I'm okay. But what I mean is, I often wonder what direction my career would have taken had I would have gone the other way and where my life would be now and so on. And I sometimes think that's the the other hotelier that I'm not is the one that went to Hong Kong in 2006 and might still be in Asia now, working for, you know, an asian based whoever, hospitality company.

Conor O'Leary [00:23:32]:
So it's not. It's not a regret as such, but it's a one, you know, that's the. That's the sort of. I think the biggest v in the road that I took went to the Ritz. It was privately. Well, still probably owned, but it was probably owned then by the Berkeley brothers. It was very clear on what it wanted to be. It didn't want to do any different.

Conor O'Leary [00:23:47]:
For a youngster trying to make a way to be told, you know, don't touch anything, it's all fine, just leave everything as it is. Wasn't perhaps the brief I wanted or thought, but anyway, I had a good time there. It's a great product. It's getting some investment now, which possibly was overdue, and we'll see, sort of hopefully a fantastic new product at the other end of it. There was some sad things. News happened there and then there was some shifts in sort of the structure that meant that I probably wasn't going to grow into the role that I hoped to. They're very aware that if I wanted to grow, I needed to get into a group rather than a single property. So started sort of sniffing around and then had the opportunity to join Hyatt.

Conor O'Leary [00:24:27]:
So they opened the Andaz, or rebranded Great Eastern hotel as the Andaz, on Liverpool street. Obviously a big company, Andaz was quite an exciting brand at the time. It was at the early days of this lifestyle movement, which now is so, so significant. And here I am working with a company called NsmoR. Now that sort of is dominating the lifestyle market. But back then, Andas was one of the early, early arrivals on that scene, did that for a couple of years and stayed with Hyatt and joined the church. And it's funny going back to the Andes, I remember that the launch was. Everything in Europe included, clear, singular pricing in restaurants.

Conor O'Leary [00:25:03]:
So it was almost like all mains, 20 quid all as far as ten quid. This simplification of a product, because it was the feeling that hospitality had been overcomplicated and there was so much good in that thought process. But then the 2008 financial crash happened and people. So they were going for sort of all inclusive pricing. Once you pay your room, everything else would include your laundry, your minibar, your films. They were just trying to make this clear, the cleanest possible thing to customer. And I remember thinking that that just works that just. That philosophy should be so good.

Conor O'Leary [00:25:31]:
2008, everyone very sensitive about expenses and spend. So it just started at not quite the right time, but anyway, Andas is growing from strength to strength. And I. And I got transferred within London to the Hyatt Churchill as director of food and beverage. And I spent four years there, four happy years. I got married during that time. The London Olympics, the Jubilee. It was a nice time to be in London.

Conor O'Leary [00:25:51]:
We had the opportunity to develop a new bar, the Churchill bar, which was my first sort of major project in terms of spend for my role now, you know, when I look at sort of the refurbishments we've done here at Glenn Eagles. But. But then, you know, a new concept spending, I think back then, two. Two and a half million pounds on a beautiful bar. Really beautiful. Getting involved in the menu concept, the artwork, the furniture, the storytelling. What, you know, what we brought through with it. It was.

Conor O'Leary [00:26:17]:
It was. It was a really enjoyable learning curve. I worked for a guy called Michael Gray, who. Still a good friend, family friend, but he was just an incredible hoteliere. Well, incredible leader, manager of us. And that was definitely the time that my leadership evolved. What became what I think I am now as a leader in my philosophy, what I value, what's important, how I try to be, was shaped in those four years more than any other. Well, I'm sure it's, you know, we all shape over time, but those four years, I probably realized and learned and defined my own through that.

Conor O'Leary [00:26:51]:
So it was good. I'm rattling through here. Sorry. And then I get. Then I get on the roll. Well, then. So I'm married now and hired to make it clear, if you want to grow with the company, you need to go overseas. So I said, my wife.

Conor O'Leary [00:27:06]:
Well, that's.

Phil [00:27:07]:
I mean, in many ways, that's bringing you back to this hotel here that might have gone to Asia. Here's the opportunity to tick that box off, I guess.

Conor O'Leary [00:27:16]:
Well, you'd think so.

Phil [00:27:19]:
It sounds like there's a story here.

Conor O'Leary [00:27:21]:
Well, I said, you know, yeah, we're keen. We're going to do it. You know, we. Again, it was a bit of a v in a road. If we. If we don't, we would have probably, I don't know, bought a bigger. We lived in Putney in a small apartment. We would have put some roots down, maybe, and sort of doubled down on London.

Conor O'Leary [00:27:37]:
But no, we haven't done that yet. So now is the time if we're going to go. Let's go. So. Great. Wheels in motion. Michael Gray calls me up one day and he says, great news, tokyo. Are you keen to go there? And I said, 100%.

Conor O'Leary [00:27:48]:
That was. That was Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, they were my three top, my list. Right, leave it with me. Sort of nine months later, still checking. Is that going to happen? These big companies, sometimes it's hard to move the cogs as such, because there's so many. Someone needs to move for that person to move, to free up your role and so on. It just wasn't happening. And so eventually they said, look, do you want to go to Dubai? There's an opportunity there.

Conor O'Leary [00:28:13]:
It's a very big operation. Grand Height. Dubai is the biggest Hyatt at the time in terms of F and B, offering sort of 16 or 17 outlets. And I said to my wife, look, Tokyo is not happening. Why don't we get going and then move that way? Move that direction, yeah, yeah. And so we did that. We had three good years in Dubai. There's pros and cons about Dubai, but there's pros and cons about everywhere.

Conor O'Leary [00:28:33]:
I think we'd done a time I was keen to go to this asian market that I had been trying to for some time and again, higher being a big company, sometimes not as agile on moves, maybe. I just, you know, so waiting, exploring a couple of other companies, one promising role that then couldn't happen because of a restructure there and a bit of frustration on my part, perhaps. And Glenn Eagles got in touch and initially I'd said, look, we're not keen to come back to the UK. We've packed our bags and we moved. It feels a bit too soon to come back, so we're going to keep trying. And that kind of went back and forth a couple of times and then they called one day and I remember just saying, let's have a chat, you know, why not? It's a super brand. I was slightly aware of the new ownership, but that was the catalyst for me to find out a lot more. So it recently changed ownership and, long story short, came and met them, went away, spoke again, spoke to the owners.

Conor O'Leary [00:29:34]:
It felt right. The ambition was clear, the commitment was clear, the commitment to quality was clear. I think we've all been in hotels, in the hotel industry, where I. Owners bought hotels and said that they're going to do x, Y and Z or, you know, there's lots of grand plans in all walks of life. This one was already delivering at the level and ambition in the early stages of that sort of journey, you could see the intent very clearly and commitment. So it felt right. And I remember sitting with my wife in Dubai and we were having a drink, saying, right, we need to choose this. Are we going? And we said, yeah, and sort of fully committed and happily came over here in the end of 2016.

Conor O'Leary [00:30:13]:
Now, October 2016. I'm eight years at the end of this month.

Phil [00:30:16]:
Eight years, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot to unpack in what you discussed, but, no, I love it. I love. There's so many really interesting elements to kind of explore with this one that I wrote down here. And this is something that I think is just a wonderful, wonderful lesson for everyone. And I was late to the party on this lesson myself, but actually, the description you were giving of those jobs that you had that were tough, where you thought, I've maybe not made the right choice here, is that actually, as you say, the lessons that they were teaching you, and you probably don't realize it at the time, but you can't have a. It's very rare at least to have a career that's just one lovely upward trajectory of perfectness. And so, actually, you know, to have some exposure to ways that you wouldn't necessarily take on board yourself, teaches you so many different things notwithstanding, generates a bit of resilience as well that maybe is not there when things are too easy.

Conor O'Leary [00:31:17]:
100% on every level, resilience. And again, you've got to have. I think we all have varying degrees of it, but you've got to have that little bit of toughness to say, I'm not going to let that happen again. Now, what I would stress is, in all of the experiences, whilst I can look back in a professional way and wonder if I'd have handled it the same way those employers handled it, that's irrelevant. That's a learning. It's all on me. I'll make my choices. They were who they were.

Conor O'Leary [00:31:39]:
That's up to them. It's not for me, you know, so certainly not saying any of the employers were right or wrong, but certainly some of the roles didn't fit who I was. Now, that could have been failures on my part or opportunities to learn on my part or whatever. It doesn't really matter. As you say, you're never going to have a perfect straight line curve upwards in your career, and you learn so much more in tough environments than you learn in the sort of, in easy, enjoyable environments we all want. Easy, happy days and happiness shouldn't overlap with toughness in a career. It doesn't have to be unhappy. You can have hard experiences, but you still can be happy through them.

Conor O'Leary [00:32:15]:
But the learning is so much more. That's definitely true.

Phil [00:32:17]:
Yeah, absolutely. And something I just wanted to kind of ask you, in terms of making that transition as well, from a London base into a completely different territory, completely different culture, way of doing things, working culture, all of that. Describe that to us in terms of going through that process. How do you make a success out of that?

Conor O'Leary [00:32:39]:
Yeah, it's harder than I thought. And I was not initially as successful as I hope, being candid and looking back. So I came out of London and I'll give you two scenarios. So London at the time and still and rightly so, and our industry is better at this. Empowers, asks, opinion, cares for people's work life balance. The power is with the employee, not with the employer, and that's only growing and that's right. So I've come out of that environment and I go to Dubai, which is a very, very different leadership model. It might have evolved.

Conor O'Leary [00:33:13]:
We're talking, as I say, ten or eleven years ago, when I got there, I remember the first day I was there, or first week I was there, I joined a briefing and it was a big food and beverage team and the then assistant director of f and B was going through the day and, you know, right, we've got this day. And he'd go and he went around the room and he said, you know, Vikram, you're working in the pool bar today. What time do you finish? Four, right. No, you don't. Then I want you to go to room service at four because I'm going to be busy later. Right, so, and so, what are you doing today? No. And after that, I need you to go here. Who's in tomorrow? You're off tomorrow.

Conor O'Leary [00:33:45]:
I need you in. And everyone said, yes, bus. Yes, yes. And I remember smiling because I remember, like, only a week before I'd be in London and I'd say to someone, Steve, any chance you can stay late tonight? No chance, I've got plans. And I remember just this difference. And maybe a better example of that is the pool manager, pool bar manager. They had him wearing a black suit and I thought, this is bananas. The guy must be scorching.

Conor O'Leary [00:34:10]:
And I said to him, I said, hey, it's not that cool, B. Let's get you something a little bit cooler. You're running around, it's hot out there. What would you know? What do you think? Just a shirt that, you know, just a lighter shirt and some chinos. Happy, boss? Yeah, yeah, fine, fine, fine. And I said, well, what colour would you like? You know, what shirt? You know, up to you, right. I said, no, you've got a choice. No, up to you.

Conor O'Leary [00:34:29]:
And this. I didn't love this feeling that it was quite directorial. Everyone's sort of submissive to this big boss mentality, and there was definitely a little bit of, you know, expat versus subcontinent, you know, and sort of implicit. Maybe I was oversensitive to it, but I just didn't love. I prefer discussion, I prefer bringing people on a journey. I felt I evolved that, and that was a style that I was good at and comfortable with. To flip back to solely 100% directional, not giving opinion, not waiting for an answer. I didn't.

Conor O'Leary [00:35:03]:
I didn't love, and I probably didn't do it as well. And that audience needed that. You know, I. I expected them to shift to me. Well, that was wrong of me. I needed to shift back to that style. And they've all sung, and we did over the three years. I think that did evolve a bit, but I should have adapted quicker and been that quicker.

Conor O'Leary [00:35:22]:
I might not have enjoyed it as much, but it's what that team needed from me initially. So it was a learning, and so I don't want to work like that. It's not my way. I don't believe it brings the best in people, but it's what was going on there. So you do adapt to these environments. You do have to learn quickly. It's not as straightforward as you think, and you can't just assume your ideas work. They won't always.

Phil [00:35:44]:
Yeah. I mean, that's the same principle as, I suppose, the people of our generation saying that this is the way we did it, so that's the way you have to do it. And then the whole generation coming through has to adapt to us. It's kind of, if we take that mentality, we're just going to fail, right? Yeah, absolutely. You can't get a generation to bend to a way of doing things, and it's the same principle here. I 100% relate. I had the flip side experience on ships, coming off ships, which was very much. We would do roll call, and you'd have three out of your 300 staff would be on death's door with cold, flu, whatever, and you have to say to them, no, no, no, go back to your cabin, rest.

Phil [00:36:29]:
It's fine. We'll figure it out. And then when I came to London, I really struggled, actually, with that unwillingness to work almost. It was like, how do I make an excuse not to come to work today? That was kind of the organization that I moved into at that time. Now, as you say, there's a lot of reflective moments and moments like this because at the time, I was too young, perhaps not experienced enough in leadership to understand that actually, I could have had maybe a little bit more bearing on how we turned that around and taken the lessons from it. But, you know, that ship has sailed, as it were. Another ship analogy. The other thing that I had written down here was your time with Michael Gray, who is a legend of the hotel world, I think that's probably safe to say, and I kind of love as well, that.

Phil [00:37:17]:
That it also highlights, again, the importance of the people that you work for in terms of, we've had an experience with you whereby you've worked for somebody that you didn't see, that that's the type of leader that you wanted to be. And then you've worked with somebody like Michael, who's maybe had a lot more alignment with you in terms of what you do want to be, because you've kind of, I suppose, seen it firsthand as well, that actually the benefit to the business, the benefit to the people, the benefit to everything by leading this way is, you know, is actually where it's at.

Conor O'Leary [00:37:47]:
Yeah. And I'd stress that. So those two experiences were ten years apart. I devolved, the industry, devolved, you know, lots of change. So it's. And again, so I put a lot of me in my evolution over that time as well, and maturity, I suppose. But, yeah, there's little things that I remember that, you know, Michael, when you're young and you're sort of in the f and b world and you're trying to get on and everything matters, and you things we will lose. It's black and white, and you find yourself in too many petty conflicts or squabbles.

Conor O'Leary [00:38:20]:
Not conflict, but just your targets are the most important to you, whether they be financial or concept or all those things, you're sort of young, trying to prove yourself. And I remember Michael had this ability not to sweat the small stuff. The bigger win, the bigger picture, the longer play was always the right play. And as a younger manager, I'd be like, no, but this happened today. And I remember Michael would just smile at me and I could see in his eyes, sort of, what are you stressing about? You know, is that going to matter in a week's time, in a month's time, in a year's time? And I got better at it. I worked with him for four years. And in the beginning, this happened today, and this isn't right. And so on.

Conor O'Leary [00:38:57]:
And he sort of. And at the end of it, I'd be, well, hey, I'd stop doing it. But I could see halfway through my sentence, him just sort of smiling at me that it's not big. How do you turn this around to your benefit for the long term? He was incredible as well. The other thing that I remember stood out for me and I think it's the shift from being a selfish manager to an inclusive leader. So leadership's, you know, the creating the best for everyone and if they can all do their best job and live their best life, that, you know, the overall win is better. Whereas I think as a manager and as a junior, you're focused on your targets and your small world and at the expense of others, potentially. And I remember there was an opportunity.

Conor O'Leary [00:39:35]:
We had a super, super revenue manager and the business going well, you know, that department growing in importance and we had the opportunity to. She got requested, you know, the company requested to move her elsewhere and grow her, and he actively pushed her. You know, he wanted her to go and that was at the expense of the hotel. You know, we were then going to be worse off, but somewhere else. He didn't mind. It was the right thing for her, you know, it was her. It was her development. We'll find a way.

Conor O'Leary [00:40:04]:
And I'd like to. At that time, I wasn't sure I would have made the right decision. I'd like to think I would do exactly that now, but at that time I would have probably said, no, you can't have a we need a type thing. Whereas Michael was, no, no, this is, what a wonderful opportunity for her, let's help her get there sort of thing, just little things like that that kept on cropping up and you just learn from. And you absorb from. He was very good at. You know, you have a team, a team of eight or ten execs, whatever you have in hotels these days. Our business is set up slightly differently here, but you have eight execs.

Conor O'Leary [00:40:34]:
He would make sure that pretty much always on a Friday, you'd at least have a glass of wine or a catch up before the weekend. No. And there's always a squabble between the HR director and the rooms division or the rooms division and the engineer, or the rooms versus. There's always that in hotels that never continued because you'd always have a little bit of social time with Michael that he just, you know, you just. It was very hard to carry into a Friday night glass of wine around the corner that so and so hadn't completed the authority to recruit form and you had an argument about it at midday. You know, you just left that stuff behind and it was. It was very good. Team engagement, leadership, just, again, bigger picture leadership, rather than managing small things.

Phil [00:41:11]:
Yeah, love it, love it, love it. And final thing to kind of, I suppose unpick is much like the move to Dubai, the move then back as well, but especially having, you know, set your stall out, really, in London in terms of your career trajectory, etc, etc. Dubai itself is obviously a big city as well. And then a hotel in the middle of nowhere.

Conor O'Leary [00:41:33]:
Yeah. Oksorada, Oxorada, Perthshire. And I remember coming from eight lane highways in Dubai and then driving the country roads here to get to a sort of local pub restaurant type thing. And it was bucketing down the first week we got here. Absolutely bucketing down. And we just come from Dubai. But, yeah, yeah, very different. I mean, lots of comfort.

Conor O'Leary [00:41:51]:
It's Britain. The mentality, the ethos and things were clearly very comfortable. The biggest shift here was that it had come out of a corporate ownership for 20 plus years into a private family ownership that were incredibly dedicated to look at every single interaction and detail of the property and were restless in that. And after a company that didn't show a huge amount of interest and would have quarterly board meetings here with the team, but not much else, it was self managed. And suddenly you've got a hugely enthusiastic, energetic owner who wants every single detail of the business to improve and grow and be enhanced. That was a shift, real shift for the team.

Phil [00:42:29]:
Yeah. And I think, as well, that you've been on this journey. Right? I mean, with the property. You've been there for eight odd years now. You didn't start in the role that you're in at the moment. You came over as hotel manager. And I suppose there's also another question, because that was your first, I suppose, more general position, rather than being a specific f and B focus. So how did you manage that transition upwards?

Conor O'Leary [00:42:54]:
Yeah, I suppose there's a bit of a comfort blanket. The role as hotel manager, overseeing food and beverage, accountable for. I was keen to continue growing. They were keen to get someone with f and B experience that could take them through quite an aggressive renovation and develop the plan. But I was keen to add other areas to my remita. I mean, a few different things. You take your opportunities, right. I came in, got to know the property.

Conor O'Leary [00:43:17]:
The general manager then that hired me left or gave his notice after six months, and these opportunities come and go, but that could have been bad. They could have brought someone in who would have stayed here five years and potentially blocked my path. But they didn't. They held without hiring, felt that we were strong enough, and hopefully felt that I had the ability to grow into that role and gave me the opportunity. So, ten months after joining, I think I became general manager of the hotel and clearly with a much bigger remit than id arrived with, but was able to grow into that. It might have been a bit longer, but anyway, not much longer, because certainly the person that hired me in general manager Paul, resigned in the summer and I joined in October, and then there was a three or four month period before I was promoted. So you grasp these opportunities, right? And again, you back yourself. Of course you back yourself.

Conor O'Leary [00:44:05]:
But I did have reasonably good experience of diverse businesses, and I'm not simplifying it, but leadership is often allowing people to do what they do. And I think that sort of growth, of not needing to know everything about everything, but actually trusting in your experts and trusting in your team, but giving direction and giving the right energy and so on, that, I think, is where I sort of added value in that space.

Phil [00:44:30]:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, describe, then, if you can, if you're willing, to, the journey that Gleneagles has been on in terms of what it was when you arrived, to what it is now, because it's been quite widely reported around its rise and rise, in terms of the things that it now does that it didn't used to do. And the investment, that's been very, very clear that the owners were absolutely backing the property's potential.

Conor O'Leary [00:45:00]:
So start by saying that it was sold in 2015 by Diageo to Ennismore, as it was publicly sort of reported, but actually to the family that own Ennismore. Charan and Aisha in particular, husband and wife, who have. This isn't widely reported, but Ayesha family have strong scottish connections and had been not only born here, but been visiting the area all her life with her parents, and so had a huge care for the region, the area, the property, the town. So are hugely invested in bringing Glen Eagles to be the best. It can be the best version of itself, and that is through financial investment, but it's through their own personal care and investment and interest in the team and the product and the storytelling. So going back a bit, I suppose Glen Eagles had become a little bit. It had become known for golf. I think that was probably laziness on their part, frankly.

Conor O'Leary [00:45:50]:
It's always had golf, but only 10%, 12% of our veterans play golf. Loads of people come to eat and drink and socialize and shoot and fish and be outdoors. But it was known as a golf hotel. It was very corporate, a little bit male, not particularly stylish in its way, but it was iconic. It's, you know, it's 100 years old this year. Everyone knows the brand. I go on sales trips and meet my peer hoteliers and I wait for them to explain where the hotel is. And I go and I say, I'm from Gleneagles.

Conor O'Leary [00:46:16]:
And you see people's eyes light up. They know about it. They've had, they've got funders for it. It needed a full, refreshing plan. It had significant financial investment. I must say, that was underpinning a very ambitious revenue and EBITDA growth. So there was a business plan to the investment. It's not unsubstantiated.

Conor O'Leary [00:46:32]:
And we were lucky. Aside from COVID we hit all our financial targets after this investment. We refurbished every single bedroom, every single public area, every single restaurant, reinvented a few of the restaurants and bars, restored the original american bar in a slightly different location. But we had one of these beautiful David Collins designed american bars. When I joined, I think there was probably 20 activities that you could do while you were staying. We're now at 55, 58. You can while you're here. Our occupancy is growing, our rates growing.

Conor O'Leary [00:47:00]:
Our business mix has changed. I would say we're very much in the luxury lifestyle market as opposed to sort of. We still have a little bit of corporate business. Of course we do. We need it in certain months, but it's not. It's a different product. And the. I'm careful not on demographics.

Conor O'Leary [00:47:15]:
I don't think that's the right phrase, but sociographic, the type of people that we have coming here for adventure, here to be outdoors, here to try different things. The length of stay is increased because we're providing more to do. Number of families coming has increased because everything that adults can do, we make sure kids can do. There's two things they can't. Drinking and shooting and definitely not in that order, but kids can't do those two things, but everything else they can. And again, I think we found this moniker, the glorious playground in the early days of this journey with Sharon and Ayesha. And it just fits. It is a glorious playground and it has that iconic brand.

Conor O'Leary [00:47:50]:
And I think it's probably back to when it opened in 1924. It was the place to be. And I think, not saying we're the place to be, but we're back in that sort of neck of the woods with the product now.

Phil [00:47:59]:
Yeah, no doubt. And I think it's much like the global recognition of somewhere like the Ritz. I mean, if you're coming to London, you do afternoon tea at the Ritz. Right. Because that's just a thing that you do. And Gleneagles, I think, has always had this kind of luster about it and it's just really great to hear that there's just the custodians of the property now really, really care about it and what it stands for now and what its future will be and all of that. And when that happens, I mean, real magic happens.

Conor O'Leary [00:48:32]:
Yeah, absolutely. Right. And we've. I mean, they genuinely do, and they care about the brand and the team and the town and the area, you know, sort of fully invested. We're lucky we've got people. I mean, every year I do long service dinners and we've got people at 40, 45 year service, and we're blending those with new, young, enthusiastic people and new people, not necessarily young, but we're finding the right balance and just this evolution of Glenn Eagle's version of hospitality. And it's just a pleasure to be part of, frankly.

Phil [00:49:02]:
Yeah, absolutely. I can't let your story pass without bringing up a ferret, which is something I never thought I'd say on this show, but there we are. So, yes, talk to me about ferrets.

Conor O'Leary [00:49:15]:
Yeah, this was an interesting evening the other day. So, Gleneagles has all sorts of activities, including falconry and gundogs displays. We take people out sort of walking, stalking, looking around the local estates, scottish estates, but on the hotel grounds, we show how that process works. We show how gundogs are trained and how they retrieve. We show how falcons are an essential part of the sort of hunting journey, and that's historic. And we teach people the history of that and how the hawk works with the falconer to capture and share prey and so on. And part of that journey is ferrets. Ferrets are used to flush out rabbits.

Conor O'Leary [00:49:50]:
The falcon catches the rabbit and rest, you can imagine. So we have a little ferret school and they're the cutest little things and people love them and kids love holding them. And again, we talk about how they're important on that journey. And I think we've got. Well, we had eight, but we had some babies recently, so we've got a few more than eight. Anyway, I'm at home a couple of weeks ago and those that know me would know that I have a dog and a cat. The cat came from Dubai. It was a wild cat.

Conor O'Leary [00:50:13]:
My wife took them in. We actually had three, but certainly two aren't with us anymore. But one cat, Felix, is with us still. And my dog, Rollo, Felix, has no fear of anything and. And particularly does not like Rollo the dog. So we're all in the kitchen. I get up to go to the utility room and I see something move and I think, what is that? And, you know, we live in the countryside. It could be anything.

Conor O'Leary [00:50:35]:
And it's a bloody ferret. So now I was just a ferret. It was a bloody ferret. I now have a situation where to keep the dog in the cataway because who knows where that's going to end. My wife's upstairs putting my daughter to bed. I'm on my own. So I get in close door harmony and pick up the ferret. I think the ferret's then going to bite me.

Conor O'Leary [00:50:53]:
So I thought, I don't want that. So I put the ferret down, I close the door and I keep it in the utility room. Call the team. The team come around. Poor Nick lives about 15 minutes away. He's in charge of all our sort of outdoor adventures. He comes around, they take it. They put it back in the ferret house.

Conor O'Leary [00:51:08]:
All good. It's the end of the night now. An hour later, let's say. And I think I'll let the dog go out before we get to bed, before we sort of locked in for the. For the night. So I let him out the back door. I'm sort of tidying things up and I think, he's been gone a while. He's not normally gone this long.

Conor O'Leary [00:51:23]:
So I go out, I'm looking, having a quick look for him. The cat follows me. Next thing, the dog comes around the corner with the ferret walking next to each other, staring at each other there. Then becomes a bit of a standoff. The dog growls at the ferrethouse. I shout at the dog. Anytime I shout at the dog, the cat thinks it's fair game to also have a go at the dog, so went over to give him a slap. So I've now got the dog under my arm, telling the cat to leave the ferret alone.

Conor O'Leary [00:51:51]:
I then think it's better if I pick up the ferret. So I'm out. Like if there was a film of me juggling a cat, a dog and a ferret all arguing with each other out on the driveway. Anyway, I got. How did I do? I put the ferret in the porch, got the dog and the cat in the back, called the guys again and they found a little hole that the ferret had been escaping that come loose, some of that. Anyway, everyone was. Well, everyone returned. And the only downside was that my daughter, my five year old daughter, was furious with me because she felt that the ferret was coming to see her, and why didn't I bring it up to her room? So, yeah, so I couldn't win whatever I did on that one.

Phil [00:52:24]:
Yeah. Oh, brilliant. I mean, one, I never thought I'd be talking about a story about a ferret on this show, but two, it kind of, I suppose, also highlights that it really doesn't matter how long you do this job, right? There's always going to be something new to get your head into and try and figure out and. Yeah, I mean, that's. I mean, that is a. That is a story born and made for gleneagles, is it not?

Conor O'Leary [00:52:46]:
Isn't it just. Do you know. Do you know what those also show me or highlight? You know, again, when you're young and you're a manager, you think you need to know everything and be the best. And I think, and I think Finna Beveridge is bad for that. You know, the bar manager is the best barman, and the restaurant manager and the head. The chefs are the worst. You know, the head chef is this hierarchical thing. He's got to know the best and he's got to, you know, be the best cook and the best.

Conor O'Leary [00:53:04]:
So when. When you're in leadership roles, you're not going to be the best. I'll never know as much as our director of engineering about how our heating works or our electricity or our water or how to rebuild them. And you really get proved that when you're dealing with golf, horses, falcons, dog and so on, and it actually kind of reassures. You just do not need to be the expert at everything to, you know, to be leading those teams. You have to be great communicator. You have to articulate ambition and direction. You have to work with the teams to be on that journey.

Conor O'Leary [00:53:35]:
But I'm never going to know anything about falconry compared to the guys that look after our 30 birds that we have here, or ten gundogs or our 30 horses. Do you know what I mean? So it kind of almost reassures you to say, do you know what? I don't need to be. There's no way I will be. I'm never going to be the best golfer here, so just forget it. Just let the experts do what they do and provide the platform that they can do it.

Phil [00:53:57]:
Yeah, they always say that the general manager of any hotel that's got golf should be the worst at golf because it means otherwise you're spending too much time on the golf course.

Conor O'Leary [00:54:05]:
Too much time, correct.

Phil [00:54:08]:
Yeah. Brilliant. Well, the other thing that I did write down, just a sweeping statement here, is that I'd love the fact that on your form, that you filled it very kindly before we had this chat. What are you bad at? Waiting. Was that waiting tables, or is it like waiting generally? I hate waiting for stuff.

Conor O'Leary [00:54:25]:
It's probably both. I was an awful waiter. I remember. I used to. I remember giving the bill for the table of four to the table of two, and then when the table of two asked for the bill, they'd get the table for the bill for the table of four and the others had left and things like that. So I wasn't getting there. No. I understand from feedback that I'm not as patient as I could be, and I probably.

Conor O'Leary [00:54:46]:
I probably agree with that, but I'm trying to get better.

Phil [00:54:50]:
Yeah. But to be honest, Connor, that's been a. A really underlying message of your whole journey for me so far, is that you have a level of, or certainly a capability to self reflect and a willingness to do so and a willingness to take the learnings from that self reflection, because I think that's also a massively important part of leadership, because everybody teaches you something new, right? I mean, whoever comes into contact with you through your journey at Gleneagles or wherever it is for anyone out there, everybody's got something to impart.

Conor O'Leary [00:55:22]:
Yeah, it is. And not every environment is right for you, but it's up to you to deal with that. It's not up to the environment to change. You can look back and say you might do it differently, but that's irrelevant. That's the learning. But it's up to you how you handle an environment. Do you adapt to it or do you change it? But the environment's not wrong. It is what it is.

Conor O'Leary [00:55:40]:
You can have a view on it, but it's on you always.

Phil [00:55:43]:
Yeah, absolutely. Did you ever think that you'd end up being the MD at Gleneagles when you were waiting tables at a beefeater?

Conor O'Leary [00:55:51]:
Jesus, no. I have that sort of romantic ambition in hospitality, and the sort of big brands and properties have always been attractive. So the younger me would have loved to have thought that he could become MD of a property like Gleneagles and sort of be part of this incredible story. So would. I thought I could. It would have been an ambition. But as I say, you know, there's plenty of times that I could have chosen different routes and I wouldn't have been so. And who knows what I would have been.

Conor O'Leary [00:56:20]:
But, yeah, certainly it would have been right up there as an ambition, but probably not something that I was spending too much time thinking about.

Phil [00:56:28]:
Yeah. Brilliant. Well, look, thank you so much for your time. I know we've overrun slightly as well. I massively appreciate you coming on and telling your story. What a great story. That ferret is going down in history for sure.

Conor O'Leary [00:56:42]:
Her name was Courtney.

Phil [00:56:44]:
Courtney.

Conor O'Leary [00:56:45]:
Courtney The Ferret.

Phil [00:56:46]:
Very good. Very good. Excellent, Connor, thank you so much and wish you guys all the very best for the next stage of your journey there.

Conor O'Leary [00:56:53]:
Brilliant. Well, thanks a lot. Nice stretchy, Phil.

Phil [00:56:55]:
You too. Cheers. And there we have it. It was a joy to chew the fat with Connor about his career story so far. And I just loved how honest he was about his good and bad experiences, all of which have played a part in getting him to where he is now at the helm of one of the world's most recognizable hotels. We'll be back as usual next Wednesday at 08:00 p.m. so have a great week and I'll see you then.