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

I'm so excited to have Aldo Sohm here with us today. Aldo is the Wine Director of Le Bernardin and Aldo Sohm Wine Bar here in New York City, USA Brand Ambassador of Zalto Glassware, kind of the loveliest glassware that you can have in your hand, and Winemaker at Sohm and Kracher Wines. He also is an author. He's got his second book coming out, November 18th (2025), his pub date book launch. So be on the lookout. And we're so excited to have you here with us, Aldo.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Thank you for having me.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and we were joking around because I know, in my prep notes here, I know you are an avid athletic person. So we're going to get into that. But we were joking around because– 

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

As athletic as I can be, let's put it that way. Let's play in a casual mode today.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Exactly, exactly. I had to get somebody to pull you away from the gym, getting your early morning workout in. I love it. Thank you for making time for us. But I want to take a step back and hear about how did it all begin? How did you end up in the hospitality industry?

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

That's obviously a couple of weeks ago. Oddly enough, I saw once my parents went to see a friend who just got back from a cruise. He was a chef there. And I saw the buffets and all of the stuff they cooked, and the way how he traveled the world, that kind of inspired me a little bit. And then I wanted to become a chef.

And then my father, luckily I listened to him, he said, “You know, you should go to a culinary college” because that's when you get the more depth, not only focus on the kitchen because you get a little bit of wider range. And in my first internship, I realized very quickly the kitchen is not my field. And luckily in the last week of that 10-week internship, they were short of staff front of the house, and they put me in front of the house to help. And I just blossomed up. And even the chef said, “You know, what a waste of time to put you in the kitchen.” And I fully agreed with him. And I realized I want to be with people. And then one led to the next. But back then, I wasn't really into wine yet because I thought I had more approach to Bacardi Coke, which is unimaginable, but this is how it was. It made also sense. I mean, everybody who gets into alcohol, you want something sweet, something smooth, who takes the edge a little bit away, and that just fulfilled the job. 

But then I met, about two years after I graduated from college, I saw then there were two Swiss couples. They were like me today. They were excited at breakfast, what to have for lunch, and what to eat for dinner, and what to drink with it. And I've never met people who are so passionate about food and wine. And this was before the internet. So in my afternoon break, I drove to the local library, purchased some books, and started reading about wine. And that's when I realized, oh my God, there's a world out there. I read about the wines from California, from South Africa, from France. And I realized I don't have to travel an inch, and I can travel the world. Eventually I traveled the world. And then one led to the next, and then this is where my passion started, and yeah, turned my passion into my job.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yeah. Wow. And we're fast tracking through many years of experience here as well. So I'm going to kind of dive into that a little bit. When you started really understanding that wine was a place that had all these possibilities and that's where your passion was, were you thinking, “Well, one day I'm going to be a wine director at one of the best restaurants in the world and then have a namesake bar, a wine bar across the street”? Or alleyway.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

You know, when I turned 50, I took a moment and kind of looked back in life. I mean, life is kind of this incredibly, can be incredibly… it's a miracle, miraculous, because in a way, I always look at my passion I love and it's… I wake up in the morning, I come to work. Rarely I go out, I go back home, and if I'm lucky enough, I put a gym or a cycling session in. That's it, so I focus everything on that, but the things they unfold and the people you meet, and I think we work in one of the best industries overall because we have access to the smartest and to the brightest minds in this world, but not only from the hospitality, but also we let some lawyers, we let people in finance, in acting, in music. We have access to these people, and we can learn from them if you have an open mindset. 

Coming back to your question, no, I mean, I'm a humble person. “Good morning,” a smile and a “thank you” opens you pretty much every door and never forget where you came from. Yeah, had I told you– I mean, had you told me 10 years ago, I have a book, right, translated now in nine different languages and now there's a second book coming, I would have laughed in your face and said, “Whatever you put in your coffee, don't put it in again.” Yeah, but this gets to teach you also. Once you have a passion, once you work hard and put everything on one card, you should be careful what you wish for because you might get it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I mean, that's that's great advice because sometimes, especially when you're talking to… I would say people who are starting out in the industry, some of them are very aggressively mapping out their timelines of what they want to do by what age, and this, that and the other.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

That's a sticky topic. No, no, no. That's a sticky topic because we all are similar, especially when we're in our 20s. That is normal. You know, we want to accomplish something. We want to get to something. But especially in wine, everything takes time. And the key element, as annoying as it often is when you have senior people, they have the experience because they know the outcome. They know what's going to happen if we set these type of actions. And of course we all have setbacks, but the setbacks are just as important because you learn from them. You learn from them the most. And it's actually a life test. Do I really want that? Many people give up, but it's just a test that I want to go to there.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and you're so right. Sometimes a smile and you put the positive energy out there, you never know what will happen, who you will meet. Right? And that's a lot of the hospitality world. Right?

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

You know, this is what I do on a daily basis. We don't know our clients, what kind of day they had. They may have had a horrendous business meeting before, and then they have to come with a client, have to put on a good face, which is challenging enough at that moment. And you know what? We have the power to soothe their day out a little bit. And for me, it's super easy. I give them a glass of wine and everything starts becoming more OK.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And you saved the day, and then you move on.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

I wouldn't go that far, but at least if you have a little positive mindset you can influence a lot of people, and it doesn't cost nothing.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I will say side note, frequently my friends and I look forward to your… was it 11PM or midnight pours–? 

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

9PM pours.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

9PM pours of special whatever was happening. That was an actual thing that we looked forward to, so thank you. 

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

At the wine bar.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yes. Yes. But we're going to get to that. OK. So rewind a little bit because you developed a lot of your early kind of passion and love for hospitality and wine when you were in Austria. At what point where you were like, “I want to travel and go work in the US,” right? Because that's a whole other your experiences cross-ocean.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Yeah, that's a big question. Because look, when you're young, it's difficult. You being in your twenties is actually tough. As fun as it is, it can be incredibly tough because you have to make life, career decisions, which basically affect the entire life. And funny enough, if you're in your twenties, you think you have all the time. But the matter of the fact is you have no time. Especially in a high-paced world like today, you have no time. Because in your 30s you have to get established, in your 40s you have to be established, And that's kind of the thing. It's difficult, right? So...

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And you made difficult decisions.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

To me it started basically, I tried to find my way and then I got onto wine, and I realized this is something I absolutely loved. And I started learning and I started training, and during my sommelier exams, you have to be also at the right place at the right time. I mean, the star setting has to be aligned, and I sound like a hippie, but I'm not. Not at all, but the star setting has to align. And during my sommelier exams, there was the Best Sommelier in the World competition in Vienna. And the person who managed the entire sommelier program was the candidate. And they were looking for people who traveled with them for the international delegation. So I raised my hand. And very much to the not-understanding of all my colleagues in the sommelier program, they said, “Are you nuts? This is basically the weekend between the exams.” I said, “Yeah, but what I don't know by now, I will never know in next week. There's no way. And secondly, this is the best opportunity to see the very, very best and learn from them.” 

And I did it. With late night trains, just to arrive at the right time to go to the exam, it didn't matter to me. And that's when I saw the first Sommelier competition, and I saw the intensity, I saw the adrenaline from them, and I thought, like, this incredible pressure and tension. And I said to myself–this was 1998–“I will never do this.” Yeah. 

Nine months after, they came to me and they said, “We're looking to build up a candidate for Austria. You'd be a perfect candidate for that.” And I said, “There's no way I can do that, right? I mean, I'm just a small guy from Tirol, right? Just fresh sommelier.” And they said, “No, no, no. I think you have everything. We'll help you to train.” And then a year after, I hit my first competition. 

And many people know here in the United States the Court of Master Sommeliers, part of the movie SOMM. And many people ask me, “What is that sommelier competitions?” And I say, “Look, it's very similar to that movie SOMM with two major differences. It's not about passing an exam, which is difficult enough as it is. You have to win. That means you can't really train with others because you give up knowledge or you give up an advantage you might have in the contest. And secondly, we have to compete in a foreign language. We're not allowed to compete in our native language, which adds a whole new layer of complexity.”

And that's when I realized in 2002, all the top people, they lived in a foreign country. The French, they lived in the UK, right, or in other countries, so basically to get fluent in foreign language, because that was always my dilemma. My English was okay, but not good enough. And I had to focus more on my language rather than what was asked. And that's with age 33, I decided, let's fix this problem. 

I decided to come to the United– I was looking for the United States. Now naturally, as an Austrian, we want to go to Wolfgang Puck because he's an icon from an Austrian perspective. And I never got a response. And in hindsight, it's all good. It worked out just perfect. But then there was this wine competition with a judged wine, Star Wine in Philadelphia. And I was invited there on my flight back, was accidentally from New York. And the winemaker put me in touch with a chef who was looking for a sommelier. It was a small Austrian restaurant. And I drove there, we interviewed. And three months after I came, very much to the not understanding of my very best friend who mentored me for the sommelier exam, he said, “Are you out of your mind? Now you're very, very top in Austria, and you're going to the United States starting from absolute zero. And let's be honest, London wasn't far enough from you.”

But you know, he gave me the greatest actually encouragement and kind of push to bite through the challenge which was about to come. England, I didn't feel, I didn't have the right instinct. The mind would have been, this would have been an easy logic choice, but I didn't feel it. I felt America, felt New York. And even though every logic spoke against it, but I came, and I have to admit the first year is tough until you get established, even though I was legal and everything, but it takes you time to get to the social security number. And until you get a credit card, that's just basically… I mean, you feel like the hamster in the wheel nonstop. Right?

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Sometimes I feel like that's still now...

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

But in dealing with problems, you didn't even know they existed, right? You think a bank account was one of the most normal things, you realize it's not, right? I couldn't afford the electricity bill because it was the cheapest on top of it, $16. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Oh wow.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

And so me, naive, fresh from the Alps, right, imported into the US, I go to the bank and visit, “Can… can I transact $16?” It was $16. They said, “What do you want to do?” Because in Europe, we don't have checks for a long, long time. They said, “We write checks.” I said, “Yeah, I don't have a bank account, but I need to pay my electricity bill.” So I went to the chef from that restaurant and said, “Could you write me a check here, $16 so I can pay my electricity bill?” He was laughing because he went through the same.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Wow, that's a great story. Those are just some of the challenges you don't think about when somebody says, “I'm going to move to New York,” and you know…

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

You know, that's the magic part. And you realize this very quickly. I was mesmerized coming to New York very quickly because, yes, the concrete jungle is kind of… it's impressive at first, but that's not the true beauty. The true beauty in New York, what I see, is the people. And… I love it when I go into, when I'm the minority, and for instance, sometimes I go out with people and we go and eat dim sum deep in Brooklyn and I'm the only westerner guy in there, right? And I'm the one who serves champagne to everyone, right? That's how you connect, right? They drink tea and they say, I think you can do better, right? We have a glass of champagne with it and it's fun, right? You learn so much. And that's what I love about New York every single day.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yeah. And when you came to New York, you started working with Wallsé and Café Sabarsky, the first place that you started working?

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Yeah, it was kind of a logic choice because fresh off the boat, I still had a little bit of my culture as a little bit of an anchor because you literally, it's like you unroot the tree and put it back into play in another. So it was a softer, basically, landing. And it was a very important time. And it was also very authentic. That helped me quite a bit.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yeah, and they grew and they were very popular, and I've actually dined there several times back then. And then at what point were you– I see oftentimes when I speak to leaders such as yourself that have done so many things, there's like big gaping holes where all of a sudden now they're the wine director. But I see you went from that group and into Le Bernardin.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Yeah, but that was a little gradual. In a way, it was... I was training, still training for the competitions, and I got to meet Andrew Bell, which was the president at the American Sommelier Association, and he asked me if I would teach there. See, I barely speak English, how can I? No, they wanted to have someone who talks about Austria and Germany in their program, so I did that. And then also in terms of tasting. And then they did a contest as well and I said, “Would it be okay if I participate also in the Best Sommelier in America competition? Because it's a good trainings ground for me.”

And they say, “Yeah, actually you check all the boxes, sure.” And I won that. And that basically got really more awareness onto me and then received a phone call from Le Bernardin. In 2009. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, they say, “Hey, what are you doing?”

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

No, they were looking for a wine director. They were looking for a chef-sommelier, actually. And that's when we talked.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Right. And the rest is history, right?

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Yeah, that was May 1st, 2007, I started here then. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Wow, wow, and then…

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

I had two jobs while I'm in America, in 21 years.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

That's, I mean, that's really incredible. That's really incredible. And especially in this day and age where this industry is notorious for just having high turnover. And there's a lot of different factors that go into why people stay, why people go, etc. But there's something to be said when you find someone who's worked at a place for many years. Right? Your leadership style, your kind of techniques and all that stuff permeates through, I'm sure, both the Le Bernardin program as well as when you opened the Also Sohm Wine Bar. Talk me through how that came about.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Well, I work with the most... Let me add on to that one element because it's such an important thing, because for many people, “You're working for 18 years in one place?” And I said, “Yeah.” And they say, “Why?” And I said, “It's very simple. A) While I'm not considered or known as lazy, I am lazy.” To me, moving around is a nightmare. Because I take great pleasure in routine. Because I think a lot of people underestimate the power a routine has, because you can perfect your skill, you have everything in your muscle memory, and that can really zero in on the client and can go really into fine tuning. That's why I don't like move around. If you move around, it takes you two years to get established in a restaurant. I mean, of course you can do it faster, but until you know all the politics, all the dynamics, knowing each individual client, that takes a long time. And to me, that's the most painful part. I know the ins and outs, right? I can focus. If I don't have something, okay, how about this, this, this, this? And we can tune in.

To answer your question, 2007 I started at Le Bernardin. In 2013, Eric and Maguy came to me and said, “Listen, you are with us for such a long time and you went above and beyond. We'd like to make sure you stay with us in the Le Bernardin family. Would you be willing to open a wine bar with us?” And I thought, I have the two best bosses in the world, right? I mean, yeah!

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, you missed in your previous comment, happiness, right? That's another reason to stay. If you're happy and your boxes are getting checked and your needs are being fulfilled and you're still enjoying and growing and all those things, like sometimes there's just no reason to move.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Well, it's... I like to be a happy person. Because look, the more negative you are, the more [you] attract that. Even though sometimes not everything works out the way you want it, but there's always a silver lining, and I focus on those. Right? There's always learned from something. And that gives me joy. And I put energy onto that. And that's why you want to surround yourself in the team with that. Is it always possible? No, but you make it work.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and you know, that shows through your projects and your wine bar and your teams, right? I used to joke around, my friends and I would–industry friends–and we would meet at Aldo Sohm Wine Bar after work, after post-shift, and it was like our third space, our living room that was never going to be our living room, right? Especially in New York, right? Of course, of course, for those of you who are listening or watching who've never visited to go visit, you'll get what I'm saying is, yes, it's a great place for a business meeting, grab a lunch, have a post-drink, dinner drink. But it's also got this beautiful balance of being just a casual space to just go hang out, if that makes sense. You and the team have really done an amazing job consistently keeping that vibe because I would say my experiences from over a decade ago there mirror and mimic the experiences that I even had a couple weeks ago there. So kudos to you and the team, whatever you're doing, whatever you're pouring there, keep pouring it because it's working.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

I mean, look, the weak spot of every restaurant is the consistency. I learned this from Eric. That's the tough part. So that's why you see me constantly there. I work five doubles, which is not normal. But I choose to have it that way because nothing runs on its own. That's just my take on. Other people figured this out, I have not figured it out yet how it runs and you personally not there.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah. Well and everyone has their own thing. 

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

100%

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Everyone has their own thing. Whatever works for you works for you. It's working. I mean, I think it's working. I think many people would agree with me as well. But it was also the place to drink delicious things out of wonderful glassware. That really makes a difference. We're like, “Oh we'll never have these in our apartment because they'll just break. But we can go there and enjoy them.” 

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Actually sturdier than you think, that Zalto. We wash them in the dishwasher and that's very fine. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

That is true. That is true. If you have a dishwasher in Manhattan.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Or you wash it the next day, not while you had a couple glasses of wine after.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Exactly. OK, circling back, do you remember maybe what was one challenge that you had when you were opening up the wine bar?

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

I was actually sweating about one thing. See, when you open a new business, there's certain things you anticipate and certain things you basically caught up by surprise. The wine bar was before Palio, and there was this famous mirror in there, right? The Palio (horse) race. And I thought, we decided it's time to… there's two failed restaurants. Let's get the bad juju out. Right? And we lift this up, and I expected actually, to be honest, we will get a lot of pushback from the New Yorkers that that mirror came down. But the owner took it back, and they were after 20 years, they had to fix it up anyway. So it was kind of a win and win. But I thought at the beginning, the press is going to kill us on that. And actually, not at all. There were two, three people who asked for it. But another funny phenomenon came in that a lot of people in the atrium, when you walk through, a lot of people walking to Le Bernardin, they looked for Aldo Sohm. And they looked at me, and I said, “You're speaking to him.” But they looked for the wine bar, right?

HOST: ALICE CHENG

That's funny.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Yeah, I know, but it's constantly, and it's often these dynamics, right? At first, depending on who it is, they think I'm hitting on them, right? Which I'm not. And then there was one gentleman, I remember him, he looked for Aldo’s Wine Bar, and I said, “Yeah, follow me.” And then while I walk with him over and he says, “What do you think of this place?” And I say, “I think it's okay,” right? He said, “I heard many great things about it.” And then, of course, I got him started. And then I went there and introduced myself. I said, “I'm Aldo.” We had a good laugh.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, that's great. Hey, it's a conversation starter for sure, right?

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

It's a conversation now, but listen, every day is a challenge. I mean, sometimes we get a big push and then I help too. I bus the tables. It's not a problem. We do what we have to do. I have no ego in that. I realized, luckily enough, I'm way too poor to afford ego. That's too expensive and typically cost a career. It's good to remain humble. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

That's a good one.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

No, no, I'm really serious about that. I see this… you can see this often, right? That one thinks the other one, the other partner has to be thankful that I'm there. And then silly things happen for no reason.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yeah, sometimes we are our worst enemy.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Look, this is why I love working with Eric and with Maguy. Maguy, I mean, they're the greatest bosses. Do I agree with them all the time? No. Right. Do we have debates? 100%. Right? But that's why it's called a relationship. Right?

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yeah. I mean, relationship with your partners, with your management, with your team. I mean, this is a people business at the end of the day.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Correct. If you agree all the time, how boring would life be?

HOST: ALICE CHENG

That's true. So what's next? I know we've got pub date on November 18th, which is also the North American Michelin announcement, but we'll be looking out for both.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

That's actually Clarkson Potter put this publishing data up. They had nothing to do with it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

But I was like, that was either a strategic or not. But no, I know these dates get put on the calendar many, many months and probably years in advance. But excited for that. What's one thing that you love about this book?

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

You know, when we wrote Wine Simple, the first book, I realized one thing, because I'm not a writer. And after writing this book, I have the utmost respect of writers. Because I thought the restaurant industry is difficult business. Forget about it. Writing is so much more difficult. Oh my God. And the hours that go in. I mean, writing a long email is super easy. Packing the same information in five sentences is like, that takes serious time. And then the editing process and this and that, but the reason why we came onto it because I realized I work with people on a daily base. We did it at Le Bernardin, which its own brand, or at the wine bar. And I get to see the fears they have because wine can be awfully intimidating, and I wanted to take them that fear away and build that first step into it. And everybody feels so little, and then “I can't afford this bottle of wine” and everybody posts of course about the Chateau Margaux and the Romanée-Conti, and that's for me, I look at it, when I was in my 20s, there's no way you can afford that. But I started with Bacardi Coke, so how bad can you be?

It's not about the price. Price is often the noise we put onto things. But there is a joy in the product, right? I take great pleasure sometimes just drinking a simple glass of Chianti Classic, for instance, at home on the weekend. It doesn't have to be expensive. It has to be delicious. If you can do the right food, it's easier. So we got always, when Christine Muhlke, my co-author who wrote it with me, and made sure this is English and also politically correct. We created this fictional person, a young foodie who was interested in food, but too shy and too intimidated for wine. And Christine called her Josephine, like Josephine Schmoe. And we wrote everything on a sheet, if Josephine reads this, does she understand it? Right? And so we released Wine Simple and it was very, very successful right from the beginning. 

But then we realized during COVID, everybody started cooking more at home or going out more after. And I get these text messages non-stop from people who say, “I'm cooking this and this and this at home and I have friends over, what shall I serve with?” Or they're going to a restaurant, “What shall I serve with?” And then I thought, you know what? There's an opening in this industry. It's a very, very complicated topic from the beginning. And I do this quite a bit, food and wine pairings, for many, many years. And I take great pride in that because it completes a meal in a very, very different way. Whether I fuss around it or I just serve this alongside, because if you have harmony in a meal, you walk out of that restaurant in a different way, consciously or unconsciously. That's when we wrote, came up with the idea to write Wine Simple: Perfect Pairings and connect it. So Josephine has now– because when you look at most of the wine rules, salt goes with this, sugar goes with that, this doesn't mean nothing to her. Josephine doesn't have also 10 minutes time, when she sits at the bar on a date to figure out which wine she should drink, this has to be done in 15 seconds. And that's when it developed this matrix. So she can break it down in an easy step. 

Is Josephine becoming a three-Michelin star sommelier? Absolutely not. But I take that barrier way that she is just not fearful to make the first step to get her in, to be inclusive about that.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love that. It's kind of full circle too, because I think you said you got into wine initially because you were trying to help this couple find the pairings, right? So there we go.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Yeah… I never thought about it that way, but I think, yeah, that's actually a good point.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, there you go. You can add that to your book tour speeches. 

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Yeah. I’ll give you credit.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love it. On that note, we're going to go to quick fire questions. What advice, what advice would you tell your younger self?

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Be patient, listen to people with experience, stay focused, don't get distracted just by one other project, and hold on to the good things. And let things that are not good yet, let them go.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for someone struggling in the industry?

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

You're very lucky. You learn a ton with struggling. And just because no job is easy, none of them, right? No matter what industry you go, that's just a life test, whether you want that or not. Many people back off. The really great ones succeed because they find a way. You're on the right track. There's nothing gained with winning, nothing learned with winning. With struggling, you learn a ton. You're on the right track.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for fellow hospitality leaders?

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Be open to change!

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love that. Well, Aldo, thank you so much for spending time with me today and sharing your advice and your career path and what's coming next with our audience. I can't wait to get into that book.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Thank you for having me. And now I slip into more professional uniform, into my sommelier uniform which everyone typically knows me. Nobody knows me in my regular clothes.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love it. You saw and heard it here first, for those who were just listening. Then maybe you can just finish your workout and then change into your sommelier clothes. 

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

No, no, I'm done. I finished it. Everything was good.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Amazing. Thank you again. See you soon.

GUEST: ALDO SOHM

Thank you.

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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