Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Former Celebrity Cruises CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo

I recently interviewed former Celebrity Cruises CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today was the first female CEO of a major cruise line. Lisa Lutoff-Perlo was the CEO of Celebrity Cruises, where she led a multi-billion dollar business and more than 20,000 people. Lisa is also the author of the new book Making Waves. Lisa, thank you for joining us.

Lisa: It is an absolute pleasure to be with you today, Adam.

Adam: Pleasure is mine. You grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, right on the water. You spent most of your career working for one of the largest cruise companies in the world, starting off in an entry-level sales job before working your way up. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons most significantly shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Lisa: Well, I'm sure it's a combination of so many different experiences and roles and whether life or professional experiences. But yes, I grew up in a very small fishing town, Gloucester, Massachusetts. Most of the people in Gloucester were Italian and Portuguese, and most were fishermen. And I do say fishermen because there were very few if any women that were out fishing on those commercial boats when I was growing up. But my parents were always in the hospitality business, they owned coffee shops and restaurants in Gloucester when I was growing up. And so I was in hospitality. From the time I was a little girl at six years old, they took a milk crate, they turned it upside down, they stood me on it. And I would make change for our customers who were coming in for their coffee and pastries to go. So I learned social skills. I learned math, and I learned hospitality at a very young age. And I always find it serendipitous that I ended up in hospitality on the oceans, since that's where my formative years were also spent. I'm the oldest of three girls. And oftentimes people ask me, when did you know that you are a leader. And I always say with confidence and honesty that it's when I was two years old. Because for some reason, the minute my first sister was born, I thought I was the boss of the family and the leader of the family. And I took on that role. Nobody assigned it to me really, I just took it on because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. My sisters probably didn't like it as much as I liked it, because I always felt like I was the one that was telling us all what to do and get ready for school and brush your teeth and make their lunch. So I think that I just naturally and organically took on these roles throughout my entire life. And maybe that's some of the reason that I got from where I started to where I ended up.

Adam: At two years old, you started leading and for many people, their leadership journey doesn't start until later on in their lives. Many of us feel like we're natural leaders. Many people feel like they lack innate leadership skills and innate leadership qualities. But I'm a big believer that anyone can become a successful leader, that it's a learned skill that we have some advantages if we have natural tendencies that allow us to take on leadership in a more natural way. Curious to get your thoughts on what anyone can do to become a better leader.

Lisa: That's interesting. There's the age-old question are great leaders made or born? And I think that it could be a combination of things. But I do think your point about innate qualities in a great leader is critically important. I have seen many people ascend to very high leadership roles and they have not been great leaders, nor have they learned how to be great leaders. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I don't think they think they need to learn or they are willing to learn. Sometimes when you are put into progressive roles and you continue to achieve professional success, you don't look introspectively to figure out how you might be a better leader. You think those things already exist because that's why you've accomplished what you've accomplished. But I think that that's not true. I believe that's not true. And I know that I evolved as a leader over time. But I also know it's because I was willing to evolve. And I was willing to learn. I was willing to try things a different way to achieve the success that I was able to accomplish over time, because what you realize more and more, at least, what I realized more and more as I was ascending the corporate ladder and put in more roles have more responsibility, and also leading more people, culminating in being the CEO of celebrity and leading 20,000 people is that I needed 20,000 people to be emotionally invested in the success of the brand, because it was important to my success. So I wanted to understand the things that I needed to do better or the ways I needed to lead better so that I could rally 20,000 people around the cause in a way that they were emotionally invested, they didn't just look at it as a job, because I truly felt that the discretionary effort that I would get in that regard would be priceless. And so I was a very, I guess, active leader who wanted to always do better and be better. But that's not always the case with leaders.

Adam: It definitely isn't. And you're bringing up a lot of really interesting themes that I would love to dive into. I give talks to audiences, and one of the things I share is the key characteristics of the most successful leaders that I've pulled from my conversations with hundreds and hundreds of the most successful leaders in America. And on that list, self-awareness, and humility goes right to the heart of what you just shared. Another thing you said, is the importance of continually evolving. No matter whether you're born with strong leadership tendencies, or whether this is something that you need a lot of work on, we all need to learn continually. The most successful leaders are lifelong learners, the most successful leaders are always trying to grow, always trying to take that next step, always trying to better themselves, and don't view their current station as the end game. View their current station as one stop on the journey.

Lisa: I agree with all those things. But not everybody does it. What's hard to even argue about, are they the most successful leaders? I don't know. Because so many of these people don't practice the things that you just mentioned, self-awareness, humility, and continually evolving. They don't do it. They don't believe they need to do it. But you could say they are "successful". A lot of that is based on financial performance. Success is solely based on financial performance. And if they don't practice those things, but are still getting the financial results that they need to get, then they don't feel the need to do that. So I do believe that part of that is what we all choose to be as a leader. And there was a session I was in and there was a question posed, what is the definition of a great leader? And I thought one of the best finishes I heard was, someone people want to follow. And I always wanted to be the leader somebody wanted to follow, I always wanted to be the leader that people came to work for and with every day, who genuinely cared about me. Because they knew I genuinely cared about them. And it was this mutual respect and care and sense of caring empathy. I think empathy is a really strong characteristic that leaders need. And I think it's woefully short for so many leaders. And that was just how I chose to do it. Now, I believe that that's one of my superpowers. Everybody has different views on that. You could get a lot of people around the table who may or may not agree with me. It's just the way that I believe great leaders should be and it's all about people. The sad thing is, is that people don't realize, that leaders don't realize the only way they're successful is through the efforts of other people, not even their efforts. And so the fact that that is not a reciprocal relationship is a reality but not one that was something that I espoused as a leader and as I was growing and ascending in different leadership positions.

Adam: I love your definition of a leader, someone who people want to follow. Something that I say all the time. Before people are going to follow you, you need to become a person worth following. And I want to ask you, how can anyone become a person worth following?

Lisa: I think it's the attributes we described, self-awareness, humility. I never felt as the president and CEO of a celebrity that I was any better than the cleaner, who was cleaning the ships. When I would go on board the ships to visit, I always treated everybody with a tremendous amount of respect and never assumed that my role was any more important than theirs, continually evolving. I know that Darwin's theory of evolution is somewhat controversial. Not everybody agrees with it. But I bought a T-shirt when I was in the Galapagos because I just loved it. It says, 'Evolve or become extinct'. And being willing to evolve and learn is something that, again, takes a lot of self-awareness. And sometimes people are even aware, but they don't care. It's not important to them. And so these things have to be important to you as a human being to be the person that someone wants to follow. People are going to come to work, people are going to do their jobs. They need their job, they need their income, and they have themselves and their families to support. And we all know that that's not easy these days, even in double-income households so they will come to work. But do they want to follow you? Are you the leader that someone wants to follow? Do they care about you and your success? And that is the difference, again, with that discretionary effort that we're all going to get every single day because otherwise, they will go. In this post-COVID world, corporate loyalty, company loyalty is not as strong as it used to be. People are making very different decisions for very different reasons. So I think now more than ever, it's important to be the type of leader that people want to follow because they have an emotional connection that they don't want to walk away from.

Adam: Lisa, I literally cannot agree with you more. Not about telling someone what to do, but compelling them to do it through inspiration, through the why, and why we do what we do. Evolve or become extinct, which speaks to the importance of flexibility, and adaptability, something that you had to live and breathe during has bigger crisis than any that we've experienced in our lifetimes. And no industry got hit harder than your industry. What were the best lessons that you learned during your experience leading through COVID, leading through crisis?

Lisa: Well, that's how I opened the book. The book isn't a COVID book by any means. As I was finishing the book, it was the most recent event that I hope none of us have to live through again in our lifetimes, or anybody has to live through. But I think it goes to your comments, Adam, about flexibility and agility. And I think one of the other critical things for leaders and what I learned during that time was that you have to de-emphasize certain qualities that got you to where you got to, whether it's drive, ambition, results, traffic lights, key performance indicators that you track every day to understand if you're bringing in the amount of business that you need to if your expenses are in line if your p&l is healthy, if your EBIT margins are strong, your operating income is growing, leaps and bounds and you're generating superior shareholder value. Let's face it, at the end of the day, that's any CEO's primary responsibility when they come to work every day. And then when you're shut down for 15 months like we were and there was no business coming in, and the industry was borrowing billions and billions of dollars to stay afloat, pardon the pun, but you have to dial down those innate driving skills as a leader and you have to dial up empathy, you have to dial up the key role that I had during that time was to continue to give 20,000 people hope that we were going to get back into business, that their livelihoods were going to come back. We have 20,000 people all over the world who were displaced and didn't have any income and had to provide for their families. I had to flex the muscle of inspiration, motivation, confidence, hope building, and just be that leader that people looked to every day as a beacon of hope and confidence, even when I didn't know on any given day that that was going to happen as that shutdown got longer and longer and longer and longer. So I think that pivoting as a leader is critically important in understanding at any given time what your people need, and making sure that you're maniacally focused on that because that could certainly be a change to a degree that none of us ever imagined during COVID. But there are different, I guess, aspects or phases that people both through as leaders or businesses go through where leaders just need to understand they can't always be the same, to the same degree in these different attributes that got us to where we're going to go. And I think during COVID, I especially learned that and to a degree that I never had to use those types of things before. And that's what got me through. And that's what got my team through those 15 months.

Adam: Combination of flexibility, and laser focus on what's incredibly important right now. Doesn't matter what was important yesterday, what's important today, being present, being there. Being here for your team, being here for your organization, being here for the people around you, doing what it takes leading by example.

Lisa: And you never knew what personal situations people were having during this awful time. Not only just financially but emotionally. When you think about the impact that the shutdown and even the pandemic had on so many people, there are so many things that I don't think we'll understand for another decade about the psychological impact of COVID. And you just had to keep in mind that people were going through a very difficult time, not only professionally, but personally.

Adam: I want to know if you could take listeners back. We've been talking a lot about your leadership style leading during the hard times. But I'm particularly interested in your journey. You started off working in the cruise industry in your 20s selling cruises door to door. Fast forward, you're the CEO of a multibillion-dollar cruise company, the first female CEO of a multibillion-dollar cruise company. What were the keys to rising within your career? And what can anyone do to rise within their career?

Lisa: Well, clearly ambition is necessary. But one of the things that I talked about in the book as well is I didn't always have a plan. I didn't have a plan, I'm going from door-to-door sales to President and CEO. One of the brands that was never even in my line of vision. I don't know why and probably that is a lesson learned. I always only want it to be the head of sales. So as I was progressing through sales for my first 17 years in the company, that was my ambition. That was my goal. And I was just waiting for my boss to decide he wanted to retire because I just knew that job was mine. Funnily enough, I never was the head of sales, I was moved out of sales before he retired by our Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. I think back over the 30-year journey that I had from when I started selling door to door to becoming president and CEO, there are a few lessons. Number one was to be open to trying new things and different things. Because sometimes when you have a clear line of sight or only one path, it's very limiting in your career. Because if you gain different experiences, and you're open to doing different things and learning different things, it might take you somewhere you never thought you were going to end up and that's what happened with me. The other thing is never to give up. Once I decided that I had a bigger career than I initially thought. And I had bigger aspirations than I originally had, and I then had to work my way up to that. And it wasn't always easy. I had three different roles within our company that no other woman before me had. I never thought about my gender as it related to my career trajectory, nor did the people who were putting me in these roles because they were all men because our industry is all men. It's led by men and has been that way for the 100 years or so that the cruise industry has been around. These men were giving me these roles and these positions but sometimes the people that I was leading, or the colleagues that I was working alongside were skeptical that I deserved to be there or that I knew what it took to be a leader that could lead the different disciplines that I was leading at the time because I was not a subject matter expert, and I didn't have experience in those areas. I spent a lot of my career proving the skeptics wrong, and having to do that one interaction at a time and proving that as a leader, you don't need to be a subject matter expert. You need to be a great leader, and you need to surround yourself with great people who are smarter than you. And I think a lot of leaders are not willing to do that or are threatened by people who are smarter than them. And I think that's stupid. I think that as a leader, the people that you surround yourself with should be smarter than you. So, that's the lesson I learned. And then the other was to never give up. Because many times throughout my 30-year career until I was appointed to this role, I was told no, I had to ask for a president and CEO role three different times before I ultimately got it. And I use no as a motivation to turn it into a yes. But throughout my career, I was persistent. And I never gave up. And so those I think were probably the three biggest lessons that I learned along the way. Don't limit your aspirations. Prove the skeptics wrong. And if you're put in positions that you might not be a subject matter expert in, hire people that fill in your gaps, because a lot of leaders don't do that. And then they're not successful and just don't give up. Turn a no into a yes and find a way to do that.

Adam: What advice do you have for women in male-dominated industries? And what advice do you have for men on how to be better allies?

Lisa: In my industry, and then my company and my brand, I've always been a poster child for gender equality or gender balance. When I started in my role as president and CEO of Celebrity, 3% of the crew members on our bridges were women. When I stepped down from the position in April of 2023, 33% of the crew members on the bridges were women. And I didn't do that by myself. I worked with amazing men who believed as much as I did in gender balance, and improving the culture, and how cultural or gender balance does exactly that, it improves your culture. And these men were the ones who went out and recruited all of these amazing women. And I could never have done it without them. And nor could I have done it with all of the men who are on those bridges, who had to welcome women and also involve themselves to understand that the bridges were now going to become much more balanced. You could go on some ships and 70% of the crew members on the bridges are women. We did our March 8, International Women's Day cruise of 2020. 100%, of the bridge crew, were women. And so you have to give credit to the men who have been in these, I have a ton of respect for them for having helped in that regard. And to your point of allies, I do a lot of speaking, and as many men as women come up to me and ask me how they can do better, how they can think about this in their organization. So many men asked me what they could go home and tell their daughters. And so I know there are a lot of male allies. But one of the things I also learned is you have to be intentional and you have to be purposeful, you can't just talk about it. Because it doesn't work. I've always been the type of person who walks the talk. I believe in doing a lot more than I believe in talking about doing. So for the men and allies, I think that you have to believe that gender balance is critical for strong cultures, and strong business outcomes. And you have to be purposeful and disciplined around doing it. And for women. Listen, I would say that we've all come a long way, we still have a long way to go. I know that I'm not naive in that regard. But I do think that we're at this turning point where now's the time. And if we continue to make a difference in the areas that we can control. I always say that you can't control what you can't control, but you can control the situations you're in the environments you're in, and even your destinies. And I think that we just need to keep at it because nothing worthwhile happens quickly or easily. And I do think that the pendulum is swinging and there's a lot more focus on that now. Women should take advantage of whatever opportunities come their way so that we can all ascend into the types of roles that we all should have and want to have. And then the other thing I would say to women is to bring other women along with you because if you accomplish something and you don't do that, then what you've accomplished means Absolutely nothing.

Adam: You not only spent your career working in hospitality, but you spent your life living in hospitality, your parents running a hospitality business. How can leaders create and cultivate truly customer-centric organizations?

Lisa: The customer is at the center of anything that we all do, nothing happens without the customer, and nothing happens without a sale. Certainly my formative years growing up, I understood customer service. If the customers weren't happy and came into our coffee shop or our restaurants, and if the meal wasn't good, and the service wasn't good, they weren't going to come back, the restaurant wasn't going to be successful, my parents wouldn't be successful, I wouldn't get a good tip because I wasn't delivering good food or a good level of service. So I've always been focused on the customer. And then I chose a career in sales initially, and that's always about the customer. And then I went into marketing, and a lot of my responsibilities in marketing centered around product development based on customer feedback. And then I got into operations, and then everything that we did in operations, and every experience we created, and all of our metrics were aligned around was our customer happy, what were they telling us after their experience, and then how could we continue to improve. And so I believe that like everything we've just talked about, Adam starts at the top. I believe that the way the leader feels about the customer is it's trickle-down. It's trickle-down leadership, it's trickle-down focus, it's trickle-down priorities, and I think it needs to start at the very top. It's like gender equality. I believed in it because I thought it was critical to the success of our brand, I thought it was critical to the success of our culture. But if I didn't have leaders who I worked with every day who believed in the same thing, then it wouldn't have happened. So my advice to leaders is, number one, believe in it yourself and practice it. Then ensure that every single person that's in your leadership team does it and make sure every person on their leadership goes all the way down to the frontline employee who's dealing with the customers every single day. And again, it also goes back to how you lead, are you a leader people want to follow, just because you care about the customer, just because I cared that our ships were meticulously clean and well maintained, that needed to get all the way down to the cleaner, who was doing the job. And when I would go on those ships I would see them working morning, noon, and night to keep these ships so beautifully pristine, and I would walk up to them and say thank you, then they knew that I cared about that. And that it was important and that I noticed it. A lot of leaders don't take enough time paying attention. And there's an adage, I'm sure you've heard it. What you expect is what you inspect, or what you need to inspect is what you expect. And if you expect customer service, then you need to make sure that you're focused on it. And you're looking at how you're performing and customer service. And you let every person in your organization know that it's critically important. And if it's great? Wonderful. And if it isn't? It needs to get better. And that's what your team is responsible for doing.

Adam: It starts at the top. And it continues with your ability to lead effectively. Or you mentioned in passing, care. Leaders have to care. Period. They have to care about customers, they have to care about their employees, they have to care. And if you care, if you're a caring person, if you're a caring human being, you're going to be a successful leader. You're going to be the kind of leader who people are going to want to work for, you're going to be the kind of leader who customers are going to want to buy from.

Lisa: Amen. I believe in caring for every bone in my body. It is a core value of mine. I've always believed that your team is only as strong as your weakest link. I always use sports analogies. When I talk about winning, a winning culture, and a willing team. As soon as one person thinks they're more important than the team, that person doesn't belong on the team. What I always say to people who talk to me about the situation they're in, either their career or their company, is that we all have to choose a culture. That's the right culture for us. And for me, culture is everything.

Adam: How can leaders build winning cultures?

Lisa: I think through exhibiting a lot of these attributes that we talked about, what I learned is that it takes a long time to change a culture, and it takes about a New York minute to destroy it. And, again, it starts with the leader. If the leader is someone who believes in a strong culture, you're going to have a strong culture. If a leader inherits a culture that's not particularly strong, it's going to take them a while. I mean, it is something that takes focus, and discipline, you have to be intentional about it, you have to be purposeful about it, and you have to hire against certain attributes as you're bringing people into the organization. And that takes a lot of time energy and focus. And then when those great leaders who build this great culture are not there anymore, because they've moved on or moved into a different role or whatever, again, it will take a New York minute for another leader to come in and hurt a really strong culture. So building it is important, it takes time. And I think if as a leader, the thing that you're not particularly concerned about is culture, then I don't know how you build a great culture. But I think, to all of the things that we've talked about carrying humility, evolving self-awareness, motivation, inspiration, drive, and empowering people is important for a good leader to build a strong culture. Micromanagement is not. You don't build a great culture through micromanagement. Developing people is important in building a strong culture.

Adam: Lisa, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful, personally and professionally?

Lisa: Well, I hope as they've listened to the conversation, both through the things you've said and I've said, which are pretty similar, and how we think about great leaders, just think about yourself as a leader, if you are a current leader, and some of the things that you might be able to do better tomorrow than you did today or yesterday, to create an organization where you have people who are emotionally connected and passionate about what they do every day so that you can achieve better results. At the end of the day, we all want to do better and achieve better. And I think that hopefully, if there are some things that we've talked about, that you might not have thought about or practiced, by all means, go ahead and do that and see what you get from it. It was always amazing to me, the great response that I got, by practicing the things that I cared about as a leader. It was really beautiful to read the notes as I stepped down from people because one of the things that I always hoped for as a leader was that I made a difference. And as I stepped down, and as I stepped away, and as I get notes from people, and they tell me they miss me, it's always nice to say at the end of the day, the one thing that we hope always happens is that we'll be missed. And are those the things that you care about, is building a legacy something you care about, is how people feel about coming to work every day something that you care about and think is going to ultimately determine your ability to be successful? Then I think that you should maybe heed some of the things that we've talked about and some of the maybe skills that you want to dial up and some that you might want to dial down and hopefully, they'll be making waves that and then they'll learn a few other lessons along the way as well that I always felt were important in leadership and helped me gain more success at Celebrity than anyone ever thought was possible. And that's something that I was extraordinarily proud of. Building a brand and achieving success that no one thought was possible before I took the helm on Celebrity and the things that I did seem to work, which is always nice to know as well.

Adam: Lisa, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Lisa: Thank you for having me out him. It was an absolute pleasure, loved the conversation with you.

Adam: Pleasure was mine. A lot of fun.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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