Transcript

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Welcome to Hospitality On The Rise, the podcast about the people shaping the hospitality industry and their journeys. I'm your host, Alice Cheng, founder and CEO of Culinary Agents, hospitality's go-to hiring platform. And I'm here to give you your dose of virtual mentorship.

Here, we'll be sharing the stories, lessons learned, and advice from hospitality leaders who've carved out their own path to success. After all, this industry is where many get their start and go on to do incredible things.

Whether you're a pro, starting out, or just love the hustle, this podcast highlights what makes hospitality extraordinary, the people.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

We're so excited to have Liz with us today. Liz Murray is the Chief Operating Officer of The Marlow Collective by Andrew Tarlo and Mark Firth, a wonderful collection of restaurants here in Brooklyn and now also Manhattan Island. On the island. 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

True!

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And Co-Founder of MORE Coalition, which we're going to hear more about. No pun intended, but intended. And on the Board of Directors for a series of organizations. I'll name some of them: New York City Hospitality Alliance, New York City Small Business Services, Hospitality Council, Emma's Torch Culinary Council, etc., etc. So Liz, welcome.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Thank you. It's great to be here.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

We're so excited. Like I was saying before I hit record, this is just casual, let's just talk about all the things because there's not enough time to cover everything that you're working on. 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Everything.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

So let's pick and choose some things and start from the very beginning. So how did you get into hospitality?

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah, it's a crazy story. I love that we've never talked about this so that I can tell you the story for the first time. You know, it's funny, the paths we go on to become who we are, this long and winding path, I think I've been listening to other people you've hosted and the great stories of like, “I knew at five I wanted to work in the industry.” Or like “I came up with my parents' restaurant.” 

But I thought I was going to be an economist. I went to school for economics and I went straight into a PhD program for economics and got about a year in and was like, “Oh my God, if I have to sit in a windowless room and do a really challenging calculus and matrix algebra for the rest of my life, I'll lose my mind.” And I had an incredible professor-mentor in the program, and we took a walk and he said, “You need to figure out if you want to be the one…” – I'm studying development economics – “You need to figure out if you want to be the one in an office somewhere deciding where the mosquito nets go or if you want to be the person on the ground handing out the mosquito nets.” And I was at that instant I was like, “Oh dude, I'm the person on the ground handing out mosquito nets every time.” 

So I left graduate school. I have an incredibly supportive family and they were like, “You're going to do fine. You're going to be great. If this isn't the thing, then this isn't the thing.” So probably not what they anticipated I would do next. I moved to a surf town on the coast of Mexico. I'm a Texan. So I was in Texas and I moved to Mexico and I was like, “I'm just going to take a year and travel and chill out and do sort of soul searching, figure out what I want to do.” 

So in the afternoons I would sit in this punk rock surfer beach bar owned by this woman named Kristen from Philly. She was like 26 and owned a bar in Mexico. It was kind of insane and crazy and wonderful. And one afternoon, one of the bartenders didn't show up. And I was sitting there reading, and she was freaking out and I was like, “I don't know, just teach me how to do it.” And she was like, “What are you talking about?” And I was like, “It can't be that hard. You're popping Pacificos and making margaritas. Like I can do that.” She was like, “Okay…” 

So she taught me how to bartend. And that was, I mean, I'll never have an experience like that again. It was just madness and craziness and like touristy beach towns are in Mexico. 

So I did that for about six months and then came back to the States very briefly before moving to New York. And I got here with my partner at the time, and I'd been here for about two weeks and he was like, “Dude, you have to get a job.” And I was applying for jobs in development economics and doing land rights work, which is what I was intending to do in grad school. And shockingly, no one was giving me a job. So–this is pre-Culinary Agents–I got on Craigslist, right? And I was like, okay, well, this is… I asked all my friends, “Where do you get a job?” And they're like, “Just get on Craigslist and find something.” 

So I found an open call and I showed up to an open call. And this is really–there've been some pretty lucky breaks along the way, but the luckiest was probably that I walked into this restaurant for an open call and then… I knew nothing, right? I had no lay of the land, like nothing. It could have been anywhere, right? But I walked in and it was Walker Stern and Joe Ogrodnek, Battersby, the wildly successful lines-around-the-corner restaurant. And they were opening their second restaurant, Dover. And the people I interviewed with, you know, Luciana Autilio and Christina Gramly, they were industry vets. In the weirdest turn of events, Luciana had just gotten married in the tiny beach town next to the tiny beach town I lived in in Mexico. It was just like the stars aligned.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

It was meant to be.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

It was meant to be. But just crazy to be surrounded, to like show up for an open call knowing absolutely nothing and go to work for people who've been at USHG and a host of other really incredible places and to get to learn from them for a couple of years. So they gave me a job as a host. They were like, “You could be a host. That's about your skill level.” “Great!” 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

You gotta start somewhere.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

You gotta start somewhere. So I was a host for like a week. Luciana walked up to me in the middle of service one day as I'm plotting the room and she's like, “There's this job and it's called Expeditor. And you stand in the kitchen and you are like the air traffic controller of the kitchen, and you keep all the wheels on and make sure everyone's getting their food on time.” And I looked at her and I was like, okay. She's like, “I think you can do this job.” Like, okay, I'm sure I can do the job. And I was like, “Does it pay more than the job I'm making now?” And she was like, “Girl, all of these jobs pay more than the job you're making now.” And I was like, “Great, I'll take it.” 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love it. I mean priorities, right?

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

I'd been in New York for like a month, you know? So my next shift, she was like, “I'm gonna stand with you for the first part of this and show you how to do this job.” And, you know, she was maybe with me for 15 minutes, and it was like Alice falling through the trap door to another world. I found my people. It actually still makes me emotional thinking about it. I fell in love with that job so hard. Like just being in the thick of it and also getting to stand there and like…

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Boss everyone around. No, I'm kidding.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

I was just gonna say–! No, that's exactly what I was gonna say, but it's so weird because I also didn't know anything, right? But I just stepped into it really quickly, and I loved it and I did that job. I think I worked six days a week for like a year and a half. And that was the very beginning. I just… crazy.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Well, you answered my second question, you know, what was the moment that sparked the “this is for me,” right? Because oftentimes people– That's one of the wonderful things about the industry, you can work in it, you can dip your toe in it, you can do it as a side hustle, etc., and you can do many other things simultaneously. But at some point, those who then pursue careers in it, there was a moment where they were like, “This could be something real that I could really pursue.”

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah. Well that came later actually. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Oh, okay. Okay, well, let's get to that then.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

So when I was… Like I said, I'd been at Dover for about a year and a half, and Luciana had left and she'd gone back to Gramercy Tavern because Kim DiPalo–who’s now the Chief Development Officer for Drive Change and I know a friend of Culinary Agents and like just an incredible human being. Luciana had gone back to work for Kim because she'd taken over the helm as GM at Gramercy. And she texted me one day and she was like, “You've got to come to Gramercy. There's great things happening here.” So I was like, okay. So I walked–I don't know if you've ever been in the staff, through the staff entrance at Gramercy Tavern, right? 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yes, I have.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

So you walk through it–for everyone who hasn't been, you walk through these doors to the left side of the restaurant, and the floorboards are a hundred years old. It feels like they squeak, but it also feels real. And I walk–I will never forget this moment for the rest of my life–I opened the door from that staff back hallway into the dining room at Gramercy Tavern. And it was like everything went from black and white to color. I mean, like in that moment in Wizard of Oz, right? Where she's like in Oz. I could not believe how beautiful this place was.

And the staff, I mean, I think they were all, yeah, they were having pre-shift, and Kim was gonna interview me between pre-shift as they finished setting up for lunch service. And I was just like, where am I? And I sat down with Kim and I just immediately fell in love with her too. She's… 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Wonderful.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

…a visionary, a wonderful human being. And she was like, “You wanna come work here?” And I was like, “Dude, I'm all in!” That was it for me. I think I didn't know… You know, also the first couple of years here, I was–I'm sure most people are–so poor, right? Like I couldn't afford to eat at a place like Gramercy, right? I was like, my bodega guy kept me alive for those years at Gramercy Tavern. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Oh yeah.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

So it was like the bodega guy and family meal, right? So the idea that this–I didn't even know, right? That it was possible that something like this beautiful and incredible on a team like that was even possible. So that was the moment really, like I said, I'll never, I will just never forget it, walking in there for the first time.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I was wondering, love it. Yeah, okay, so now you're committed, this is the industry, this is the place for you, and you're working. You started there as a…?

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Backwaiter.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Backwaiter, okay.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yep. I was a backwaiter for three weeks. And I kind of– You know, the incredible thing about USHG and about companies like USHG is you start to have access to other… you start to see other jobs, right? You're like, “Oh, there's this job I never knew about and this job I never knew about.” The context for what's possible starts to expand, right? Which I knew coming out of being an expeditor, I was like, “I love the kitchen. I love these people. How do I…?” but I also recognize it wasn't sustainable for me. I didn't walk into this industry–like when I was in Mexico, I was 28, right? I was 30 when I moved to New York. I was like, I can't do this forever. But I wanted to stay as close to the action as possible. 

So, Union Square had just rolled out a new position called People Operations Manager, and they were embedding them in the businesses to do really people operations and HR and that kind of support, inside of the businesses. And the woman, Rachael Nemeth, who now owns Opus, the woman who had that position was going with Mike to open Untitled. And I remember–I'd been there maybe three weeks–I walked up to Kim and I was like, “I want that job.” And she was like, “Okay.” Like in the middle of service, right? I'm like, I want that job. And she was like, “Well, that job is opening because Rachael's leaving.” She's like, "Are you qualified for that job?” And I was like, “Let me tell you, there's all kinds of stuff you don't know about me.” So she was like, “Well, I have a final interview with someone tomorrow. So if you're serious, I'm going to send you the job description, and you should look it over and you need to put your name in the hat.” So I did, I applied. I went to the home office and interviewed with Legna Santiago and they gave me the job. 

And I think about that moment a lot too. And it's something that I try to instill in our teams and that do with a lot of workforce development work in the city. And I think that taking bets on someone, making kind of a big, educated, big bet on someone. And there's a lot of, you know, the skills-based hiring, all those fancy words for it. But I think I try to pay that forward because the bet that Kim made on me was really the beginning of everything else and gave me access to a whole, again, it's like, then the world got bigger, right? Then that role made the world get bigger. And I started to have access to the home office and be working with people in the home office. And, you know, for a while towards the end of my time at USHG, I was leading the community council for the company and meeting people from all over different businesses. 

So I think I just really try to instill that there's–on both sides, right? You have to raise your hand and go for the big leap. And then for the people who have the honor really of giving people those opportunities, like trusting your gut and helping people make the leap. Because I think hopefully I've helped the companies that I work with and for be successful. And if Kim hadn't, you know, I think I probably… I'm so ambitious, frankly, Alice, that it would have only been another three weeks before I was like, “Oh no, I want that.”

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Matter of time. Yeah.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah, right, it was a matter of time, but it's so important.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

But that's important because sometimes part of it is really asking yourself, what do you want to do? And that can be something that you continue to ask yourself. 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Because it's OK to say, I don't know, I'm doing this now, I love this, what do I love? And then what else? And then like you said, your world gets a little bit bigger because you're exposed to different things and different people with different skills. But if you don't share those desires with people, then it makes it more difficult for them to help you. Right? 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Right.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

So even if the timing didn't align perfectly at that very moment, Kim already knew from that moment on…

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Exactly.

HOST ALICE CHENG

… that that was something you're interested in, and that could open up things that you're just not even aware of. So I feel like that's something that is a really, really good little piece of advice that I'll latch onto.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah, I mean, you have to put yourself out there. I think–I say this to people all the time–no one, no one but you has the responsibility for getting yourself from A to B. We're lucky if we have community and sponsors who get us, help us move from one place to another. But yeah, you have to speak up, especially women, because we tend not to.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah. Yeah. Well, how did you transition to the Marlow Collective where you've been for over eight years?

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

I know it's crazy, isn't it? I'd been at Gramercy for about two years. That was during the hospitality-included period. So I was really hands on with Kim and John Reagan and Mike and building the pathways, especially because a huge part of that work that people probably don't know from the outside is that we were trying to build career pathways for back of house workers in that process, right? There was a lot of work happening to actually define what that pathway looked like. 

So did all of that work alongside those incredible leaders for probably the last year of my tenure there. And I was working on the community council, and I could feel that I was ready to, ready for… I think you're both pushed and pulled, right? Some part of you is like pushing you into the future. And then when you find that thing–or this is how it's always been for me–I find that thing, and then it's the thing that pulls me then. 

Mike used to get every cookbook, right? So like anytime a cookbook was released, they sent it to Mike. And I had another one of the great good fortunes of my career has been that I shared, for the two years I was at Gramercy, an office that was like five by five with Beth Wisniewski.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I've been in there.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

I mean, right? It's, you know, I have a lot of love for that space with Beth Wisniewski, who now runs regional recruiting for Cane's Fried Chicken, right? Like just, you know, people who've gone on to have incredible careers. Anyways, we would be the ones receiving all of these cookbooks, right? So we get first and then they'd go on this whole bookshelf that cooks had access to, it was really very cool. 

So Andrew's book came, that was when Dinner at the Long Table came out, right before I applied for the job. And I remember looking through it and thinking, “Wow, this is cool. This is like a different kind of community and a different way to think about a group of businesses, right? And how they all weave together.” And so I thought, it's a long shot. Leah was leaving here to go I think to open Hart’s actually, Leah and Nick. And I just copied and pasted my resume in the body–and like, don't do that–but I copied and pasted my resume into the body of an email and hit send. And they interviewed me and offered me the job. And they were in the process also of gratuity-free, so I think having the experience that I had at Gramercy of hospitality-included, and that whole process probably really helped me get the job. But I made the leap, you know?

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and you've done incredible things since and have grown with and have grown the group as well. But you didn't jump right into Chief Operating Officer. 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

No.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

You worked your way up to that as well.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah. So I was hired as the HR Communications Director, I think. But obviously, of course all of us are wearing a million hats because these are–you know, everyone who's listening to this probably knows that feeling. And so I was doing operations and HR and communications and really the first year just getting a lay of the land, right? I was walking into a group that at the time was already almost 20 years old. So it took a long time to just kind of get my footing. And then I bet we went through gratuity-free here, took another business live, really tried to make that work for a year, went through that process. And then very shortly after we publicly decided that we were gonna end that experiment of gratuity-free COVID hit. 

And the period… Andrew and I had always worked really closely together, but the period of COVID really shifted our relationship. Yeah, I think I recognized that I was doing that role. And I went to him and said, “I'm your COO.”

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I mean, advocate for yourself, right? It's like, you know...

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

“I'm your COO, and I want the title.” And he was like, “What does that even mean?” And I told him and he was like, “Oh yeah, you do. You already have that job.” And I was like, “Yeah, I do. And now I, and I want the title, and I want everything that comes with that.” 

So yeah, it was very natural. I think this was a place–of course, how can you know really when you walk in? I've never been… I think now I would be, but I, at the time even when I came here, I was not like, “I'm going to do all this research and I have a plan.” I was still just like, okay. So I think, you know, he and I are incredibly different in our process, but the place we're trying to get is often the same. So that communication and partnership was just, especially after the first couple of years, really like I said, it changed around COVID, and it was just very natural. I've been incredibly lucky. He gives me so much leeway and so much space to learn and practice and the grace of that. Right? I think, yeah, I've just been very lucky here.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Well, you know, I would say sure luck probably is a piece of it, but you know, your skill and your dedication and your hard work and all those other things didn't hurt, right? So I think part of being a leader and a respected one and a long lasting one is recognizing other leaders or recognizing gaps that you may personally have or that you need and you want others to fill them, right?

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yes.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

So clearly, like you said, you guys work really well, but you're different. Sometimes those make the best types of partnerships to make sure that you've got everything covered, right? 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Because especially with as many restaurants that you'll run together and the different types of projects and all these things. And the people: the people you hire, the people you meet, the guests you serve, they're all different.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Very, Yeah, very. I mean we have, and the company at this point is half of our businesses aren't restaurants, right? They're food businesses, but they're not–I mean, one of them is–but we're general contractors, right? So the diversity of the company and what we offer, yeah, I mean, the difference is really helpful. We also have our HR business partner, Megan Niggle, has been with the company six months longer than I have. Jackson Kuang, our CFO, came from years at Eataly. Emma Kramer, who's our Ops and Accounting. We just have a crew full to run, somehow runs the facilities for all of our businesses. We have a team that I think the tenure of Jackson was the newest one to come on, and that was almost four years ago. 

So I think also we've been able to build a team that is incredibly… All of us are incredibly different, but incredibly cohesive and supportive. One of us always is able to motivate everyone else in like the hardest moments, someone always catches all of us and helps us move forward. So I'd be remiss not to mention that. And then of course, our incredible operators who run these businesses day to day are also just incredible.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I mean, of course, team and team culture– 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

It’s huge.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

–stems from leadership, right? And in an industry that is very notorious with extremely high turnover, when you find folks that have been somewhere for years and years, you know that there's something special that's holding it together, right? So congrats to all of you. 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah. Thanks.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What is next? What's next for you?

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Ooh!

HOST: ALICE CHENG

We love talking about the team, but let's bring it back to you.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah, what's next for me? I mean, we're in the midst of starting–you know, again, post-COVID in ‘21, ‘22–really thinking about what this company is gonna look like for the next 20 years, right? Taking a legacy institution in the city and continuing to keep it relevant and curious and creative and imaginative about what is possible. You sort of mentioned this at the top of the top of our conversation, but we just opened up our first restaurant in Manhattan in October. It just opened for lunch yesterday. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Get your reservations if you can.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Get your reservation. But that's just one piece. You know, that's the restaurant work we're doing. We also moved. We run She Wolf Bakery, this beloved, also becoming an institution in the city. We were in a manufacturing space in Greenpoint. We spent two years working with the city to build out a space in Building 77 in the Navy Yard. So that business has just moved to the Navy Yard ,where in a couple of weeks going to open the first brick and mortar version of that, right? Because all those spaces in Building 77 have these great little cafes. So we're imagining sort of what She Wolf looks like in that guest space and because right now we're in green markets and wholesale.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

So excited.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Right, so there's that. We had this great, very small, very special jewel box of an event space in Red Hook that we sort of lost close in 2020–it was January ‘22. And it's been a couple of years looking for a place for a new home for that business. And just a couple of weeks ago, opened New Castle and down the street in front of a Hill House. It's a penthouse loft overlooking the water, gorgeous event space. So that will now be the anchor for our catering events company. So right, I mean I think in the history, in the continuing in the history of this company, it's not just about restaurants. It's about all the ways that the expression of how we view hospitality and all the different ways that we can bring that to market or bring that to communities. Because I think we've seen over time–COVID really, really played this out–that the diversity across our company has been incredibly valuable for us. It continues to give people room to grow and room for the company to grow.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, that's a great point. I was actually going to ask if the perspective shifted a little bit post-COVID as far as growth and projects and what projects that you were all looking at and looking towards. And you just answered that. So you're just answering my questions before they even come out of my mouth. 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah, great!

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I'm like, I don't even know what I'm doing here. I just sit here in silence and just let you keep talking.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

We're optimists, right? Like I think there's a couple ways to come. I think there's–I mean, of course, everyone came out of COVID and it really changed in some capacity, right? But I think getting through that period and our company got stronger and we had, I think post-COVID that the two years post-COVID were probably the highest concentration of management talent we've had in a long time. So we felt we came out of it feeling really resilient and hopeful and excited about what, again, the next 10, 20 years of this company looks like. And so I think it was a catalyst for a lot of what we're doing now. And of course, because the real estate landscape changed, we had opportunities, right, that we wouldn't necessarily have had pre-COVID, things loosened up. So it was, you know,  we were able to take advantage of that, which has been really helpful.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, no, well, that's a perfect segue into quick-fire questions. What advice would you tell your younger self?

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Ooh, just enjoy every second of it, you know, probably that.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for someone struggling in the industry with whether or not this industry is for them?

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

I think probably explore, right? I think that's kind of why I said my advice to my younger self would be to just enjoy every second of it. I think there's, you know, the atmosphere sort of does this, right? I feel like maybe pre how the internet is now, it feels like it must've been easier to just sort of let your life unfold kind of. I think there's a lot of pressure now to know your path. I mean, just to be really blunt, like I never, I don't have any grand plan, right? I definitely am and probably will be for the rest of my life “I build the plane as I fly it” person. I'm extremely curious and I'm extremely curious about things outside of the industry, which has helped, but I think, exploring and staying curious about what's possible in this industry and outside this industry, right? This doesn't have to be for everyone forever. But I think if you're struggling, it's a data point. And I think if you dig a little deeper into why that is, and also the flip side, explore what you really love about it.

I think, and maybe we've talked about this before, Alice, but there's so much that you learn. Hospitality is an endlessly applicable skill. And so I think also, you know, I think that's probably the thing that people love about this work and that there's the things that would make it really hard. It’s hard, right? It's hard, very hard work sort of forever. So yeah, I think I would just say find the things you do love about it and explore how you can apply the skills that you've picked up in this industry to other industries that might make you happier, more fulfilled, or give, you know, I mean, work-life balance isn't even a thing as far as I'm concerned, but I have friend who says she strives for work-life integration. And I'm like, ooh, yes, that's good.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, that's a common theme too.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Right?

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Because the word “balance,” I mean, balance, yes, balance kind of implies there's some sort of equal something. But everyone is just, once they reach their acceptance of like, as long as you're true to your own priorities and you make time and room and space and it works in your way and you feel fulfilled and happy and calm…

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yes. Whole. Yeah

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, then you're good, right? And if you're off, then you just kind of reshuffle some things and make sure that your priorities are still the ones that are your priorities and you're making time for them.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

I also, and I don't know if you ever feel the same, but it's like, I'm very cognizant of the fact that we have like 25 years maybe where you're going to make really big impact, right? It's like, these are the years that I had in my life to do all the shit I'm trying to do, right? In the work life, right? I mean, of course life is this whole beautiful, incredible journey.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah. Yeah.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

But I'm cognizant that there will be a point where I'm less relevant or I'm just not at the cutting edge of something. And so in these years that I have where I have the energy and I have a vision for what's possible, I just am like my foot–and I kind of drive this way anyways–my foot just pushes on the gas. How can you not, right? It's like you got one shot.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and even if that window passes and you're still relevant and you still have all… There comes a time, because yes, I think about this too–I don't know if it's a female thing–but I mean, I'm like planning and I'm always like, okay, you know, chunking my life in. But then it's like, am I going to want to? 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah, totally.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Do you spend your time in different chunks–if you look at your span, because I just had a milestone birthday–and it's like okay well for for X amount of years I'm glad that I did my 80 hundred hours a week and slept in the office and because I don't want to do that anymore right? 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Exactly, exactly.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I wanted to earn the right for myself to be like, I don't want to do that and I don't have to. And I feel really good about that because for many many years I said yes to everything, and I did bring coffee and wipe the tables, even though I was the one running the presentations, you know? And, you know, you just, kind of just do everything. You observe, you learn, you grow, you meet people, you keep yourself motivated, you motivate others, you give back, and then you get like chill. I mean...

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yes. I have this goal. By 60, I want no have tos. That's kind of how I call it, right? It's like, I can do all these things, but I don't have to. Right? 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Right. Yeah, I like that.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

And so I just, you know, and that's, what, 20 years from now, and it sounds like a lot, but God, they go so fast. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

It does.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

And there's, it's just, you know, it's like, again, I just am... Yeah, I'm just driven, I think.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I feel you. 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Yeah, I know you do.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And that brings me to what's your advice for fellow hospitality leaders?

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Ooh! Put your own mask on first. Right? This is such a great question, Alice, because it's like, what would you, you know, it's like you're basically talking to yourself. Put your own mask on first. I think that's been the hardest thing for me to learn. I'm still learning every day that I have to take care of myself first. Right? 

Then I think keep interests, keep deep interests outside the industry. Right? Like I love art and travel and being outside and all these things. And I read a ton about stuff that has nothing to do with this industry. And so… again, kind of going back to the you're just widening your scope that there's, it enables me to integrate all these ideas from inside-outside and make the whole of my life much richer. So I’d say that. 

Then the third thing is that in this industry in particular, it's so day to day, minute to minute operational that keeping time, blocking time, taking a day, even if it's a work day, a full day to just vision the next 6, 12, 18 months Right? I have to do that in my role because I have to be those steps ahead to bring our teams that place, alongside Andrew, of course, and the rest of the people who have that responsibility. So I think that always, you know, it's very easy to get stuck in the day to day. So giving yourself space and time to vision so that you have a thing that you're driving towards.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love it. On that note, Liz, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, speak with me, share a little bit about you.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Thank you, Alice. Such a gift.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I know. I'm like, I learned so much. I love these because I learned so much about people that I've known for years. Yeah, this is just my excuse to catch up with friends. But thank you. 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

So great. Also leaders, most of us don't like to talk about ourselves at all. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Of course not. So it brings me joy to force you all to talk about yourself and to brag about you in the process. 

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Thank you, Alice.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Well, so nice to see you and thank you so much. And I can't wait to see what's coming next.

GUEST: ELIZABETH MURRAY

Great to see you too. Thanks.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Remember, success looks different for everyone in hospitality. No two paths are the same. If you have a leader or a topic you want to hear about, email [email protected].

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