It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast

Dr. David Corsun, Director, Fritz Knoebel School of Hospitality Management, University of Denver

• David Kong

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David shares his journey from working in NYC restaurants to owning a Manhattan jazz bar, and how that experience motivated him to create humane workplaces, which ultimately led to him leading the University of Denver’s hospitality program.  David also explains the benefits of making deposits of “idiosyncrasy credits” in helping one distinguish themselves.

Lan Elliott:

Hello and welcome to its Personal Stories. My name is Lan Elliot on behalf of its personal stories and today I am delighted to have my friend David Corson here with us. David is the director of the Fritz Noble School of Hospitality Management at the University of Denver, and I am thrilled to have him on. David, welcome.

David Corsun:

Thank you so much, Lynn. It's great to be with you.

Lan Elliott:

Thank you for making time for this. We have 30 minutes, which I know is gonna go really fast, so I'm gonna jump right in. And I wanted to start with your journey to leadership, because I know a little bit about it. I know that you ran a jazz club in Manhattan at one point. And there have been multiple steps along the way to now leading the hospitality program at the University of Denver. Could you share some of the inflection points in your career and if there was a factor or factors that you think led to your success?

David Corsun:

I'm happy to, so I have never done anything but hospitality. My next door neighbor as a kid growing up, owned a party rentals company before I turned 13. I was the second guy on the truck for that summer. I started working in a catering hall a year later. And did so all through high school. I was working at a wedding Saturday night and a double on Sunday every weekend pretty much that it was possible to do and at that a, at a young age, I had more money than any of my friends, anybody I knew because I was working so hard and and loved it. I ate it up. And that was what really propelled me to pursue hospitality. I had a high school counselor who said it's possible to study hospitality. I applied to Cornell the hotel school and to several state New York state business schools. I grew up in New York City. I was born in Manhattan, raised in Queens. I ended up in the hotel school at Cornell when I went up there to interview the. Faculty member who interviewed me asked me, where will you be in 10 years? I was 17 years old. I had never been asked that question or anyone like it, and I did not even think, I said, in 10 years I will own a restaurant. And it was a little less than 10 years, it was two weeks before my 27th. Birthday that we signed the lease on the space that would become Zanzibar and Grill, which is the restaurant jazz club that I co-owned and operated. My path to Zanzibar includes several really pivotal stops for me. I worked the summer after my first year at. Tavern on the green as a back waiter and it was a team style service. And I loved being in the back because I loved the kitchen and it provided me with an opportunity to learn by watching. And then the following summer, after sophomore year, I apprenticed under Wolfgang Puck at Maison in Los Angeles in pastries. I spent. 14 weeks there with him which was obviously pretty pivotal for me. I have a very checkered past as an undergraduate student. I was way better at work. And at play than I was at school. And it was not because I wasn't smart, I think it was because I thought I was smarter than everyone else and could get through college the way I did high school, which is to say, show up. Do enough work. So that showing up worked for me. And that was not the case in college in part because I was a very straight arrow in high school. And let us say, I was not my first two years of college. So Cornell actually invited me to take a semester off, and I spent that semester, that spring, winter, spring back at Tavern first as a captain in Metro D and then I was the assistant manager of the Garden, which is a 200 seat outdoor dining room in Central Park. And I was not yet 20 years old. So I was playing above my age. And this I think, is a reflection of the maturity I showed at work that I did not show as a student. I was really hungry to succeed at work. I had not been so hungry to learn in school. When I graduated I apprenticed at Leser under Alens in New York, which was a New York Times three star restaurant. Out of three and spent a little over two months there commuting in from Queens and, making myself crazy because I was doing that full-time and working a part-time job. So I said to myself, you have to stop doing this. You're probably not going to be a chef. You need to get back into the front of the house and get a real job. I went back to Tavern and I was hired as a restaurant director. I reported to the general manager within. Six or seven months. I was the senior restaurant director because of turnover. I had other restaurant directors who were peers, but essentially reported to me and I had 145 front of house employees reporting to me. At the age of 22. At the time Tavern was the highest grossing restaurant in the country. In 1980$3, we did$25 million in revenue. On Mother's Day, we did 3,500 covers. And it's over a hundred thousand dollars in revenue. So I was I learned high volume which I had the experience of at Tavern previously and fine dining because some people might dispute that, but that's what Tavern really was. And it was an extraordinary experience. I was young and I was. I was ho, oddly, a combination of humble and cocky. I never told anybody how old I was with whom I worked because that would have cut my legs out from under me. And I got a call from a headhunter about an opportunity that I should not have taken another pivotal. Choice for me. I took, I interviewed for and took a job to help create a new restaurant concept, and it was a big raise for me and an opportunity to really strut my stuff and create something. And I thought I was ready for that. And that hubris bit me because there was a managing partner who actually owned the real estate. And there was somebody who was a passive investor who was not very passive. I lasted two weeks in that job. Thankfully it only took a couple of weeks to find that job, but the path to that job was an interesting one as well. I. I interviewed with a restaurateur who didn't have direct in. He had certainly plenty of influence in day to day. He owned and operated two restaurants in Manhattan. And this person who I'll leave nameless who is interviewing me, who was the owner, was a good friend of the GM I worked with at Tavern. And he spent an hour in that interview telling me why I was an imbecile for having given up tavern for the job I took, why I didn't deserve the opportunity to work for him because I was so stupid. And then he offered me the job for$5,000 more than I'd been making at Tavern. And I said, if this is how you treat me during the wooing process, I'm not coming. You can take your money and shove it up your ass. That is exactly what I told him. And I got up and left and some might say that I showed my hubris again there, but I think that was my first step. Toward realizing that creating a humane workplace was a critical thing and that I couldn't work somewhere that was inhumane. I went on to be Assistant Director of Operations for Restaurant Associates at Lincoln Center. And then I went to work in a Mexican restaurant, a Tex-Mex place. That still exists on the east side called El Rio Grande, and while I was at Rio a former colleague from Tavern with whom I'd stayed in touch, got in touch with me and said, do you wanna do a restaurant? I was like, yes, absolutely. We found a location half a block south of where I was working and nine blocks north of where I lived. And we acted as our own general contractors, but we didn't get open in the amount of time we thought we would. We opened in January of 88 two and a half years later in order not to commit homicide. I sold my shares back to my partners in exchange for being absolved of all debt and responsibility for the business and left. And, while I was contemplating leaving Zanzibar, I had applied to grad school at NYU. A friend had gone their undergrad in their hospitality program and I was offered a teaching fellowship despite my checkered undergraduate past. And I guess my experience helped me. And I started, taking classes and teaching at NYU as a full-time master's student working owing them. I think 15 hours a week where I was supposedly a grad assistant. What caused me to apply to graduate school was the realization that the most important thing I did in owning and operating was that I actually created a humane workplace where people could come to work, bring their whole selves, feel safe, and earn a living wage. And it was more important than anything I did for our guests, but it made everything we did for our guests possible. And I realized that I could have a bigger impact if I could teach young people to do the same thing. And the epiphany for me was that I realized that you can't spell hospitality without hostility. And in my experience, most of the people running restaurants were unbelievably hostile to the people with whom they worked.

Lan Elliott:

I love that story of your journey and the vulnerability of sharing the hubris that was in there, but also the learnings and also the part of putting yourself in positions where you might've been in over your head, but you took the chance anyways and you said, I'll figure this out and I'll make this work. Let's move on a bit to continuous growth because a lot of leaders have shared this idea that curiosity is an important skill. And being able to develop new skills as you advance in your career.'cause you need different things at different points in your career. Is there a leadership skill you wished you had developed earlier, and if so, how did you develop it?

David Corsun:

I wish I had more self-awareness earlier. I was fairly self-aware and I think I had a pretty high eq. But I wa it was accidental, it wasn't purposeful. I did things along the way that helped me develop my own thinking around leadership. So part of applying to grad school was that. Again, some may say this is hubris. I actually wrote a syllabus for a course I thought should be taught in hospitality programs. And it was around, I. Leadership and it drew on a couple of different things. It was philosophical. It drew on lessons about human behavior that we, many of us, anybody who's read Dr. Seuss as a child, learned as a child, but never applied them in that way. Same for Winnie the Pooh. The class was half around leadership philosophy and developing oneself as the tool and then. To actually practice that self-development. And this is where I think I started really tuning in to my own self and my self-awareness. And as much as my self-awareness, my ability to read others' cues was through while I was at Green Street. I. Did. I took, IM improv classes and and comedy writing, and I was performing improvisational comedy and standup in my spare time, and I learned a lot about the world from doing that. I. And a lot about myself, and so I applied many improvisational theater games exercises in my teaching in that of that material so that students were forced to put into practice things that would help them grow personally.

Lan Elliott:

That is really incredible. I would've loved to have taken that class. I think I would've had to be ready to take that class, to be honest. Because self-awareness isn't something you always have when you're in your early twenties. Maybe even much later for some of us. But I do think restaurants are a microcosm, to really understand leadership when you're in. The Wes and learning how to lead your team through that very stressful process and then come back again and do it again and again. And yes bravo to you for taking and distilling all of that experience and to something that you can teach.

David Corsun:

And I think to your point about curiosity, all of this came from me realizing in running my own business that the challenges I was facing on a day-to-day basis were more physical than mental, and then other than my own sanity and that I wanted to be pushed intellectually. And that was also a revelation to me, and I was hungry to learn. And that could only happen in grad school.

Lan Elliott:

Finally, h Hungry to learn.

David Corsun:

Yeah.

Lan Elliott:

You had been learning all the way along in real life. Let's switch over to approach to challenges and how you overcome obstacles generally, because academia can involve navigating a lot of challenges, and I know you've told me that people from business are not always super successful in academia, especially at the beginning. It requires very different. Tools and ways of working. Could you share how you approach a problem? How do you process it? What tools do you look for? What do you do first?

David Corsun:

The first thing I always have to remind myself is to be patient. Patience is not my strong suit, but I actually had an assistant in my current role a couple of assistants ago who said to me one day, you are the most patient person I know. And I burst out laughing and it was because I was I managed my emotions so well that I displayed patients that I was like renting'cause it wasn't mine. And that was, that's the first thing, because change happens in the academy at a glacial pace. One of the things that I realized about leadership earlier and applied in the academic setting was that the, other than vision, the most important responsibility of a leader is to remove the barriers to others' success. And in an academic environment, maybe even more particularly than business, although probably not the barrier to everyone's success, top number one, students, staff, and faculty is money. And so I set about as soon as I was made an administrator and put in this role to create money. That would break down those barriers, and that's been really instrumental. The New Yorker in me has helped me un hurt me. I ask for forgiveness more often, way more often than permission, but I have found at the University of Denver, despite its age, it's it's older than the state of Colorado. That, yeah. Amazing. 1892. That that if I have been able to pay for it, I have been able to do it. It's a very entrepreneurial place and going out and seeking those resources, passionately selling a vision and what we have to offer has been really a key to success and has removed not only my own challenges, but the challenges of those I work with and teach. We've, this is the sixth year in a row. We do not have a junior or a senior with a student loan. I.

Lan Elliott:

That's incredible what you have done with the students and Denver is a private university. Most students probably think they can't afford to go there. But with what you personally have brought to the hospitality program, it is an astounding accomplishment, especially for Thank you, the program and the value of the program and how well your students are prepared.

David Corsun:

I I will say one last thing about challenges. That's really. Really critical is that I have surrounded myself with a team and with an advisory board that constantly challenges me to be my best, me to think more clearly, to generate better ideas and not alone. As a team, as a leader, and that push has made me so much better at everything.

Lan Elliott:

Yeah, having been on the advisory board for a couple years, I think one of the most important things that you do is being open to advice because it's very easy to bring in a group of people and get advice, but continue to what you've been doing all along. But to open yourself up to taking that advice and saying, maybe there's a different way I could look at this, that. That does take some true self-awareness and the ability to say, Hey, we can all get better. And I see that in you all the time, and I love that.

David Corsun:

Maybe I'm over some of the hubris.

Lan Elliott:

Maybe it's just earned now. Let's talk a little bit about support systems, because one of the things we've talked about is this concept of having a personal board of directors that acts as our personal support system, and can you share how you identify who you include in your. Personal board of directors and what types of things do you rely on them for?

David Corsun:

I have surrounded myself, as I said, in terms of the advisory board with a group of very senior executives who challenge me. That's a really important form of support. It is the truth and recognizing that there's not one best way and that that I'm not this font of all good ideas. And it's, that's been an unbelievable I. Support system to me, I opening myself up to those challenges is really important. I will say that my team challenges me as well, and I am very fortunate to have a colleague, Dr. Sherry Young, whom I met in graduate school in the PhD program at Cornell. Who's also my wife and she, I will tell you more than anyone else, is my greatest supporter and the person who challenges me most. And I owe her so much for that because she leverages the safety. She feels knowing that she can challenge me and and even to call me on defensiveness when I experience it. And we. Both of our PhDs are in organizational behavior, and so we know the same things or many of them, and so we can call each other on our stuff, and Sherry is not shy about doing that. She doesn't do it. In public typically she will question a decision or an idea or push for a better one. But when it comes to personal things she definitely pushes me in private and has made me a much better person.

Lan Elliott:

It's incredible to have someone in your inner circle that you trust and that you know when they're challenging you. It's coming from a place of love. Yes. And that they wanna help you be better. And that defensiveness that so difficult sometimes to put down. So

David Corsun:

I can give you a very quick example that I think is pivotal and you've experienced it as an advisory board member. It was Sherry who said to me, I. The members of your team need a new strategic plan. We were coming out of Covid. Covid gave everybody a convenient reason to be in the moment and to be reactionary, and I had allowed that. That, that need to be reactionary to stall me, pushing us as a group, as a team, toward a new strategic plan. As soon as she said that, we launched, we, and we put one into place with the board's ratification in January, so it was. Like an eight month process, obviously to get there.'cause it takes time. But I feel so good about where we are now and where we're heading and it is because the team needed that direction.

Lan Elliott:

Yeah, I think what you've done is phenomenal in addition to everything else you had going on. Being proactive and setting the long-term goals for yourself and your team will really serve you very well. Along those lines, sometimes advocating for yourself can be. Difficult, and it's hard sometimes to ask for what you want. And it's been said that some people, because they don't advocate for themselves, it's a challenge for them to move ahead to get promotions, to get on those big projects that will lead to career advancement. And I'm curious what advice you have for people in our audience who are struggling to find. Their voice. What advice do you have for the right way to ask for something you really want?

David Corsun:

I think you need to make yourself bulletproof. That's first before you ask. I. I had a colleague at UNLV who in a faculty meeting, didn't speak up a department meeting. We were in the same department, and I knew that something that had been said ran completely counter to her values and her beliefs, and she did not speak up. And I asked her afterward, why not? And the response was, when the elephants come out to play, the mice go hide. I was like, wow, that is powerful. I could never live with myself under those circumstances. Now pair that with the former president of the university, Carol. Harder having told me once that it was a useful strategy to do high profile service that. Enabled me to be known beyond my department and my college. That would make me more indispensable, and ultimately it made me bulletproof. So I created an environment for myself through hard work in which I was comfortable saying what was on my mind, and doing so in a way that. Most of the time did not ruffle feathers. I will say also though, that a willingness to own one's mistakes and apologize sincerely is so important and I have apologized for with to students for things that I have said that inadvertently offended them. And I think example that for them is so powerful. And being sincere in an apology is very disarming, particularly if the person didn't even let you know they were upset. And when you have the self-realization that you made the mistake and you own it and apologize for it, it's very disarming. It's hard to stay angry at someone like that. So all of those things, I think I have made it so that I feel really quite comfortable in advocating for myself.

Lan Elliott:

Yes, and I think all the money raising that you did as well probably helps being bulletproof.

David Corsun:

Yes, it does. It absolutely does.

Lan Elliott:

David, I know that you and your team do an incredible job mentoring your students. They're really the next generation of hoteliers, and you do it in the most wonderful, gracious way and. It's so tailored to each individual. I know that you know every single one of your students, and I'm curious what you think is required for a young person to distinguish themselves and advance in their careers.

David Corsun:

So a lot of people say yes, and I believe that saying yes is very important, I think saying yes. And still maintaining enough of a boundary so that you are taking care of yourself first, because you can't be your best you if you're not taking care of yourself. And so sometimes you have to work your way to a place where you get to tailor how that happens. Nobody on my team schedules a meeting with me in it before 10:00 AM because I work out every morning. So I, and I eat breakfast before I work out, so I need an hour between those two events. I'm in the office, I leave the house by about 10, but, and I can make it to a 10 o'clock meeting, but I really don't love it. But I think I've earned that. If I. We're coming out into the world of work and not wanting to work before 10:00 AM that would be really quite limiting and I would not have earned that. So I think knowing the culture of the place you're in and saying yes every time you possibly can so that you are. Doing exactly what the Chiron says there, distinguishing yourself. And at the same time, by distinguishing yourself, making yourself somewhat bulletproof you're buying what are called or putting in the bank, what are called idiosyncrasy credits. So when you do make a mistake, you have made deposits that you can then withdraw from. And I've always tried to put way more in that bank than I've withdrawn.

Lan Elliott:

I love that idea of building credibility and it being a bank, right? You wanna have more deposits than withdrawals. Yeah. And then you get a little leeway when you need to do something. Wonderful. One of our favorite questions on the podcast is what advice would you give to your younger self, and you've had such a journey. I usually say 22 years old, but I'm gonna let you pick any point in time. What advice would you offer to your younger self?

David Corsun:

I think the advice to my younger self is my college age self. And I very firmly believe in not having regrets about things I've done. I love where I am. I love the life. I live the people by whom I'm surrounded. I got here because of everything that I have done to this moment. So I have no regrets about things I've done, but knowing what I know now. I would have told my younger self, having the opportunity to experiment and play a little less dangerously, a little less frequently and a little more humbly early on.

Lan Elliott:

Beautiful. Love that. David, we're coming to the end of our time and you've shared a lot of really fabulous advice with our audience. Thank you. Keeping in mind that our mission is around empowering personal success. Is there one last nugget of advice that you would offer for. Our audience.

David Corsun:

I, I hate giving advice even though I probably, in telling these stories, I probably have because I don't want responsibility for other people's choices. But the one piece of advice I give perspective students when they visit with us or I get to meet them, and I think this applies in. Other settings in organizational settings that are not colleges and universities. Learning involves discomfort. Growth involves discomfort, and I. I think what's really important in order to be able to manage well, the discomfort, one experiences from learning and growth is to find the places where one feels comfortable. The place, the organizational culture the space. If you don't do well with gray skies, go somewhere where the sun shines a lot. Know yourself well enough to seek out that comfort personally so that you can best grow and change and learn.

Lan Elliott:

Amazing. So beautifully said. Thank you so much, David. I so appreciate you being on and sharing your extensive wisdom. I learned from you all the time. Thank you. And so I am so appreciative to be able to share your wisdom with our audience. And for our audience, if you've enjoyed this conversation with David, I hope you'll go to our website, it's personal stories.com, where you can find many more interviews with hospitality industry leaders. Thank you.