Home in the West

Back in Denver? Check. Good job? Check. Circle of friends? Check.

So let's move to Las Vegas!

The last year and a half has been great for me – after the layoff at Sears, I made it a mission to return to Denver and the Rockies. I landed in financial services and have spent the last year acclimating to that culture and enjoying that incredible mountain view every morning.

And that’s what I intended to do for the foreseeable future. When, one day in December, an email took me on a whirlwind that is landing me a little further west than Denver.

I’ve had the great fortune in my career to have worked for some of the most supportive, intelligent, caring bosses on the planet. I've had at least seven supervisors who have had remarkable influence on my work life, and I am proud and humbled to have been able to work for them during my career.

Actually, eight: Bob was my boss at Noble Investment Group in Atlanta. He brought me on right at the beginning of the Great Recession, when I first had to leave Denver to continue my career, and we enjoyed a wonderful two years building performance excellence programs for the 50-hotel management company. When I left Atlanta on my journey back to Denver via Austin, Bob was sad, understanding and supportive – the kind of boss who is also a friend and mentor.

The Great Recession has affected many others besides me - and last year it touched Bob when Noble decided to sell its hotel management division to another company focused on the more tactical side of hotel management. It appeared that Bob’s more strategic focus on performance excellence (Bob’s a former Malcolm Baldrige award examiner) wasn’t going to fit.

Bob was able to land at the Venetian and Palazzo hotels in Las Vegas, where there is a culture and focus on performance excellence that fits in perfectly with Bob’s philosophies. Bob joined Venetian/Palazzo in the spring of 2012 and spent several months understanding the needs and culture of an 8,000-employee organization under one, massive, huge, complex roof. And then he contacted me. “I’m building a team – wanna check it out?”

I've written in more detail to many of my friends about how this all worked out - and amazingly fast - but suffice it to say that I simply couldn't turn down the opportunity to work again with a boss who thought of me first when looking to build a new team. Not to mention, the opportunity places me back in hospitality. While Denver is my physical home, hospitality is my work life home.

The positive side of this latest life change is overflowing. The job keeps me in the West, an airplane hop to Denver. It puts me four hours by car to Los Angeles, where my brother Jim, and my great friends Bill and Bob live. It opens up a huge new set of exploration sites that I’ve never been to – Death Valley, Yosemite, Sequoia – and puts other incredible areas like Zion and the Grand Canyon accessible as weekend trips. Las Vegas is surrounded by mountains, and the views are as breathtaking as Denver’s. And, being old and cranky these days (grin), there is a great appeal to living where it’s hot a couple of months and wonderful the rest of the time, instead of living where it’s cold/snowy a couple of months and wonderful the rest of the time.

Add to that a significant increase in comp and benefits, and a return to a Director level position, and honestly, it became a no-brainer.

So…off to Las Vegas! The whirlwind continues, as I’ve put my house on the market and gotten an offer 6 days after; the sale will close in March. I start at the Venetian/Palazzo as Director of Operational Excellence Monday, February 4. Back in hospitality. Back with a former boss who is one of the absolute best. Still home in the West.