It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast

Peggy Berg, (Retired) Founder, Castell Project interviewed by Lan Elliott

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Peggy shares how she overcame adversity to become the first women elected to PKF Consulting’s partnership as well as the surprising (for some!) P.I.E. elements for success and advice for introverts.  She also shares the story of how Castell Project, the nonprofit she founded to advance women in hospitality leadership, got started - and what’s next to continue helping women advance in hospitality leadership.

Lan Elliott:

Hello and welcome to D E I Advisors. I'm Lan Elliott with D E I advisors and I am very pleased to have our guest today. Peggy Berg, the founder of Castell Project, which is a nonprofit that focuses on advancing women in hospitality leadership. Its goal is to see women promoted into one of three leadership and ownership positions. But before Castell Project, Peggy was already a trailblazer by being the first woman elected. To the PKF partnership as the founder of her own highly respected consulting firm, the Highland Group, and as one of the few women hotel owners when she bought her hotel, her first hotel in 2006. Welcome, Peggy. Thank you. So Peggy, if we could start by going back in time to 1979 when you first joined P K F. Could you share a little bit with us what the corporate culture was like back then and what the perception of women was?

Peggy Berg:

So the Equal Employment Opportunity Act was new, and to me that was of course women should have equal employment opportunity, but to the partners in pkf, it was a really significant change. It was upheaval, it was something that they had trouble. Trouble wrapping their heads around, but they knew they had to do something about it. They had to change the way they thought and the way they operated, and it was a difficult thing. So when they hired me around that same time, they hired a number of other women and the firm was in the throes of this transition, a really significant cultural transition.

Lan Elliott:

and when you joined pkf, that's a job that's heavily analytical with a lot of numbers, but you're a lover effects and data, but not everyone is comfortable with that. Can you share some advice for people who are not comfortable working with numbers?

Peggy Berg:

So I love that you described me as a person who's. Who's with numbers and data? Because when I came to my first job interview at pkf, I walked in and I said, I'd love to have this job, but I want you to understand that I'm really not good at math. You would never say that today. We all know how to do interviews better, but nobody taught us how to do job interviews, so I said I'm really not good at math. And to me, I really was not good at math at the time. I was dating a guy who was a rocket scientist, like literally he worked for nasa. He was a rocket scientist when compared to him. No, I'm not so good at math, but compared to the people that I was doing business with, that's a whole different, that's a whole different world. They were not working for nasa. They were just business people. And I found that math and business is adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, counting. I can do those five things. I'm really good at those five things, and I would bet everybody listening to this podcast is really good at adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and counting. So when you say, oh, I'm not good at math, don't do that. Probably you are just fine at business math and looking at the numbers, takes a little practice and that's it. Then they tell you a story. And it's been very useful to me to have what turned into a reputation for being good at math, because I'm willing to look for the story in the numbers.

Lan Elliott:

It really reflects what we tell ourselves when we're younger, that we're not good at it. We turn turns out later, someone just needs to show us how to do it. And then we actually are pretty good at things we didn't think we could.

Peggy Berg:

That is so right,

Lan Elliott:

So you were at P PKF for 10 years and during that time you were very intentional about your desire to make it into the partnership. But. You, so you worked really hard. You set records and billable hours. You built a big book of business. And yet your career didn't progress the way you had hoped, or at least not as quickly as you had hoped. Can you share what you were going through at that time and what you learned from it?

Peggy Berg:

So it turns out I'm a competitive person, try to squelch it. But truly I am a competitive person. And it ought to be that getting to something like being elected to a partnership happens in its own time. And when you are successful and you are happy about it. And I was truly happy about it, but a guy named John Jorgenson was elected to the partnership before I. and I was not happy about that because John started after I did. John's book of business was not as big as my book of business. And John, just in terms of how you assess a human being and should they be a partner before you, my qualifications. That I did a terrific job building this practice and running this practice and getting the firms out name out there. And John, he yoed, he golfed, he drank. Okay. He was really good at those things. I don't do those things and it just didn't seem fair to me. So they say part of what matters. in how you're treated is the pure how you treated, did you get elected? Yes. And the other part of what matters in how you're treated by your company is how do you feel about it? Do you feel like it was fair? Do you feel like it was equitable? And I didn't feel like it was as fair and as equitable. As it should have been now. I recognize that since electing women was not a comfortable or common thing for the firm to do, they really went out of their way. They really tried hard, most of us, but I don't know, takes a while to get over. I guess I'm still getting over it.

Lan Elliott:

And so you focused a lot on on your work, and it feels like John Jorgenson was focusing on his personal brand, his exposure. But you did end up getting elected to the partnership. So you must have done some of those other things to build your brand and your exposure. Could you share some of the things that you did? So that viewers maybe can get some ideas if they feel their cur careers are plateauing. Maybe this is something that would be great advice

Peggy Berg:

for them. So a few months ago, one of the people that presented for Castell, a man named Jeffrey Tobias Halter, showed us this chart called a pie chart. And I've never seen a pie chart before a this particular pie chart before. And what the pie chart says is that in terms of getting promoted, 10% is based on your performance. The p and 90% is based on exposure and image, the I and the E in pie. And I'm. Seriously. But when I got to thinking about it, I realized that was something that actually built into what had happened to me with P K F and to the things that happened to me through throughout my career. So basically, if 10%. Performance was really how everything in business ran. Businesses wouldn't run. We have to spend our time more than 10% performing, but when it comes to getting promoted, you're up against a group of people, all of whom are performing at a very high level. So the 10% is how much better than everybody who's already got table stakes is perform. The rest of it is how do people perceive you? Who do you know? Are they willing to speak up for you? Who's recommending you? What do they think your capacity is based on how they perceive your image? Where do they see you going in the future? And that's the image and the exposure piece. So when I think about it that way, the chart really does make sense. and I meet both men and women who don't understand that, who are completely focused on the performance piece and don't wanna, like me, don't wanna recognize that the image and the exposure actually has value and, but the farther along you get in your career, the more value it has. So you have to start building it. pretty early in your career because you wanna have a large resource network of people who know you and know your work, and understand your capabilities and think you're capable of doing much more. So that's the second half of your question. How do you do that? And for me, yachting, golfing and drinking was really not ever gonna be something I could deliver successfully. None of those three things are really gonna be winning strategies for me. So for me to build exposure and image I have to get out there if I'm on the podium. And I'm doing a good job at building my exposure and building my image. If I'm presenting myself as the most knowledgeable person on a given subject by publishing a statistical report or by putting an article in a magazine about something that's an industry leading idea. or something of benefit to my clients and the other people I work for that's going to build my image and my exposure. And if I'm on a nonprofit board in the industry. Like we built the International Society of Hospitality Consultants, a group of us. So starting that organization, being on that board, becoming that board chair, that gave me a chance to work with people in a really wonderful way that I wouldn't have had. Otherwise. So it let me build relationships outside of my own company, but it also let me be recognized as a leader both inside my company and in the world outside of my company. So whether it's volunteering now with the age and LA foundation, which I'm so proud to be. Or working with the other nonprofits I work with, or supporting the Hunter Conference and Alice and Lodging with work on their advisory boards, or working with schools like Georgia State University and Michigan State University. I'm proud to do those things, but they're also truly valuable in a career sense on the performance and exposure side. Thank

Lan Elliott:

you. That's really great advice. You are an introvert like I am, but doing those kinds of things can be very intimidating, a little bit scary when you start. Do you have some advice for other introverts out there of how to get through

Peggy Berg:

it? In the very beginning when PKF hired me to go out and actually interview people and gather information, An odd thing to hire an introvert to do, but in order for me to go out and interview eight to 10 complete strangers every day, I had to give myself a rule like Peggy, you will get to 10 today. 10. Here's the list of 10. You will get to 10 today. If you get to four, you get an ice cream, then you have to do six more. So it was really a forcing myself to do it. And what I learned after a while, both through that and through public speaking and through networking, is that for an introvert to be in extroverted situations, It. There is a formula. So for each of those situations, there's a way that you can learn to act a series of things. You can learn to say a way that you can learn to hold your body, a way that you learn to dress, a way that you learn to walk, and you do that formula and it's okay. You can do it as an introvert and you can do it really. So figure out what it is you have to do and do it. Really do it really well. Just figure out the formula. And honestly, I think not so much. I think somebody told me the other day that for introverts to be an extroverted situations, they come across better. And the reason they come across better is that they put the effort into figuring out exactly what they have to do and then they do that thing. So if you're an introvert, you can do it better. Just figure out the program and go right through it.

Lan Elliott:

That is really comforting to hear. So I love that piece of advice. I

Peggy Berg:

know you do the same thing,

Lan Elliott:

so I absolutely do. Switching gears a little bit when you got into hotel ownership, it was a bit about building equity, but you did it in a really interesting way, which was, you did it with your husband, Randy. And I had said early, I would've said in early in my career that I'd never go into business with my husband who does that, but I did it as well and it really worked for us. As it has for you. Can you share a little bit about going into business with Randy, but generally also how he's been supportive of your career and what's that, what that has meant for what you're able to do?

Peggy Berg:

Randy is wonderful, so I highly recommend wonderful husbands. It's a great asset and a delight. Randy and I had really good income, so we lived really well, but we weren't building our balance sheet. We weren't building our assets. We weren't building financial security the way that I really wanted us to. In order to build assets, you have to do something different than whatever's generating your paycheck. And for us, that was doing a hotel deal because that was the place where I had the smallest learning curve. I still had a huge learning curve, but it was smaller than it would've been in any other business, so I had the opportunity to buy a hotel. It was truly among all hotels, the pit of hotels, And the thing about buying the pit of hotels is that once you buy it, you have to turn it into something completely different. in order to be financially successful with it. So I knew going in that we were going to have to gut and renovate this hotel and we hired a a construction company and a cons, and to do the actual work of making the pit into a very nice award-winning sort of comfort in. But it turns out that you can't just hire a construction company and expect everything to turn out. You have to have project management. You have to really run the program. You have to know what you're doing. Randy's been in construction. Randy's a residential contractor, as it worked out. And I can honestly say we did not plan this. We invested in the hotel together, but we did not plan that this was what we were gonna do. I did the financing, I did the deal, I worked on the marketing, I worked on the hiring and the oversight. I did the asset management. But you. roofs, floors, electrical systems. Randy stepped up and he did all the construction management for that project, and he did a phenomenal job. So it was a new thing for him. It was an unexpected change for us as a couple. I mean as a couple we had two. We were used to me jetting off and doing a consulting assignment every week or two, and Randy working construction within two or three miles of the house. And all of a sudden Randy was spending five days at a time in Augusta, which is two and a half hours down the road. Kids were still at home. And how do you. Do that. So it was a big upheaval in all of our lives, but it was a great thing for all of us. We worked together in a different way. We respect each other in a different way, and it worked out really well. So very risky thing to do and and you can make it work. And when it works, it's the best thing that could possibly. That's a great

Lan Elliott:

story. Yeah. You mentioned your two sons and you raised two sons in the middle of all of this, owning hotels, renovating them, asset managing them. Can you share maybe some some learnings that you. Got from raising two sons that are helpful to ha your career afterwards. Applicable skills.

Peggy Berg:

So being a mom made me a much, much better boss. Being a boss made me a much, much better mom. Your whole career as a boss, your job is really to bring other people up to develop their skills, to help them become more emotionally mature, to help them get educated, to help them get along with each other. And as a mom, you're really. doing the same thing. You're developing a human being. You're helping them become their own person. You're helping them learn. You're pushing them, you're encouraging them, you're setting guardrails around what they're allowed to do. You have to have a reasonable level of discipline and a business, and you have to have a reasonable level of discipline with kids. And so it was helpful to me to have both sides to be raising kids. and running a business is the perfect combination.

Lan Elliott:

That's really wonderful to hear. There are a lot of mothers out there who think being a mother can impact their career, but really there's great learnings that go both ways. Switching over to the Castell project, which you founded in 2018. Can you share the story about how Castell started and why it was necessary?

Peggy Berg:

So I'm on the Hunter conference advisory board. And as part of that, we get together once a year and we plan what to talk about at the conference the following year. What's going to be important to the industry so that we can be. Always relevant and always up to date for the industry leading, thought-leading. So we sit at a table, about 30 of us, and go around the table once a year and say, what's on your plate? What do you see coming? What are, what's the big issue? So in this particular year, I had sold my consulting practice, sold my two oak. And I figured I was on my way out of the industry and so I could say pretty much anything. And what I said was, women in leadership, we as an industry are failing to take advantage of our female talent pool. We're not moving them up into leadership. They're a majority of our employees. This is gonna be a big issue for us going forward. And I was so relieved that after I said that, everyone going around the room said our company has solved that whole thing with women, and let's talk about supply. Let's talk about the economy. The things that we usually talk about. So that was great, that the industry had solved the problem. and then we all stood up and every woman in the room, plus Chris Daley of Daley Gray PR came over to me and said, this is not solved. This is a real issue. What do we need to do about it? And so a group of us got together a few times. Many of the people in that group became the Board of Castell Project. And others in that group are still supporters today of the program and what it's developed. And we felt like there's two sides to first we felt, yes, we think it's an. is it really, we need to understand this better. And then we felt that there were two sides. There's the corporate culture side. Is there really something that needs to happen to enable companies to take full advantage of their female talent and women to have the full benefit of their careers? And then there's the women's side. Is there, are there things that we need to know? to help us grow our careers that we're not getting, we're not learning as faster or as well as we should, or where we're all inventing the wheel. Where if somebody just told us what the wheel was like, this is a pie chart at the beginning, we'd be able to move along better, and that's what the Castell project does. The first thing we. Was to try and answer the question, is this really an issue? And there were two reasons for doing that. One was to find out if this is really an issue, and the other was that you have to have real data in order to truly help the leaders in the industry understand the issue and how they can move forward and to benchmark their success. We put together a report called women in Hospitality Industry Leadership. We've published it once a year, and it's Pure data. What are the numbers about women in leadership? And that I think, has been a wonderful tool to keep the conversation positive because it's not about good guys and bad guys or about you doing this to us or us doing this to you. It's really just, these are the numbers. how do we move forward from here? How do we move forward in a positive way? And the second thing we did was start offering leadership development specifically for women in hospitality. Because truly there are two sides. And the more we talked about it, the more we realized that there were things that women were each having to invent their own wheel. and that we could solve that problem by introducing women to the wheel at the par at the right time in their career, so they could move up at their best pace.

Lan Elliott:

So you started Castell project after you'd already had a few careers. Did you find that there were skills that you needed to then develop over the course of launching and leading Castell project?

Peggy Berg:

Oh, I have learned so much from this. You can't imagine. It's been great Yeah, absolutely.

Lan Elliott:

And can you share a little bit about, now that Castell has merged with the A H L A Foundation, what are some of the key priorities that you see for the next few years to focus on to help women advance?

Peggy Berg:

For us, merging with the h and l a foundation was the right thing to do because. It allows this whole opportunity for the industry to develop women to be amplified to and to be delivered at a much larger level, and with a kind of credibility that an organization like the Foundation can deliver and is is always a struggle for a small organization like Castell by itself, so it's a terrific opportunity I think for us and for the industry. The foundation made a commitment to this about two years ago at the direction of its board and has put a significant financial commitment behind. Of 5 million. They've brought on a really terrific team to affect change, to deliver programming, to build and deliver initiatives. And the initiatives that they've chosen to do have been really thoughtfully developed. And it's, it was interesting to me rewarding to me that they are also working along those same tracks. A track about helping companies develop their culture in a way that lets them benefit the most from their female talent pool. And also a track that develops women to let them build their careers in the best way possible for themselves. The programming that we brought in is really. Helping women develop, and that includes Castell College, which you've been involved in. In fact, you run with Fern Cantor, where we go out to schools across the country and have teams of executive women talk to students, both men and women students, about building careers in this industry. and that's turned out not just to be for women, but actually for the whole industry as we need to build our pipeline, our talent pipeline. I think that's been a terrific resource and super, super impactful. So thank you. And then for executive women, we do this, still do this leadership training, and I'm hopeful that within the h and l a that will have a much larger platform. Be able to reach more women and h and la itself through its forward programming also provides terrific programming to help women have the resources they need to advance in their careers. And then on the corporate side, h and l a has put. A guide for companies to, to do their own de and i assessments and set up their de and I programs. And it also runs leadership, a leadership academy specifically for senior executives to understand how they can move the needle in this area when they really need to be developing all their people whatever their characteristics, men, women. Black, white, and there's dozens and dozens of differences between us that together make us truly a strong industry.

Lan Elliott:

So many more exciting things to come oh yeah. Yes. Lots of new things to come. Could you give one more piece of advice, maybe a

Peggy Berg:

piece of advice

Lan Elliott:

you would give to your younger self?

Peggy Berg:

They say Burn no bridges, and I think Burn no Bridges is a great piece of advice. This is a time where civic discourse is not necessarily civil, but I think more and more we're learning that civility and understanding what other people are thinking and how they're moving forward is so valuable. Burn, no Bridges. Develop the people around you.

Lan Elliott:

It's a very small industry, so I always remind the people that I work with is that you'll see these people again, so don't burn bridges. Great

Peggy Berg:

advice.

Lan Elliott:

So my last thing, I wanted to go into a little lightning round of questions so people can get to know you a little bit more. And also I'm gonna put up our d e I advisors website. They're at the bottom of the screen if people would like to check out other videos. So let's go with the lightning round. Peggy, what is your favorite hotel that you would love to return?

Peggy Berg:

I love the H two in Hedberg, California. Wonderful.

Lan Elliott:

And is there a bucket list hotel that you've always wanted to go to, that you hope to stay at

Peggy Berg:

one day? There's that hotel in Bali that's those individual little units set on top of the water. I wanna go there. I wanna

Lan Elliott:

go there too.

Peggy Berg:

what is your favorite? Gone With the Wind, a great

Lan Elliott:

movie. And who is your favorite band or musical

Peggy Berg:

artist? Oh, I love Bonnie Ra, and I'm happy to say actually at a hotel conference I got to see her live and sit right up at the front, close to her, and just terrific experience.

Lan Elliott:

That sounds like a great event. And lastly, what is your idea of a perfect.

Peggy Berg:

Oh, I'm I'm basically retired now, so every day gets to be a perfect day. But I love days when I get to ride my horse, when I get to walk the dog when I get to ride my bicycle. So getting outside and moving makes a day perfect for me.

Lan Elliott:

That sounds wonderful. I hope you get to do some of that today. Thank you. And thank you so much for being a part of our podcast today, and I really appreciate everything you do to advance women in our industry and to inspire myself and others and hospitality. Thank you so

Peggy Berg:

much, Peggy. Thank you for having me.