Through wars, depressions, terrorist attacks, and devastating blizzards, Rockefeller Center has been the beacon of Christmas every year since 1936. 🎄  

But in 2020, New York was facing a new challenge — a goddamn global pandemic.

I found myself in charge of pulling off Christmas at Rockefeller Center that year, and I was NOT going to be the one to drop the (snow) ball on 84 years of holiday history.

Even though it nearly killed me. ☠

P.S. — I couldn’t have done it without Ben McLoskey & Tim Minter. This issue of Drunk Business Advice is dedicated to those absolute legends. ❤

👉 Gratefulness is only a healthy mindset when the thing you’re grateful for isn’t screwing you over.

👉 When the task in front of you seems impossible, the best move is to enlist help from people you’d trust with your life.

And now — the story behind why this advice matters. 👇

Six years ago, I pulled a pretty major career pivot, and gave up my successful real estate advisory practice to join corporate America. Why? Because one of my clients offered me a pretty cool job.

That client was Tishman Speyer, the big fancy corporation who owns and operates one of the most iconic pieces of real estate in the world—

Rockefeller Center. 🎄

The timing was nuts.

A few months after accepting the role in December of 2019, the world halted as the global pandemic unleashed chaos everywhere. If I had declined that role, my income would have shrunk substantially, as most of my former clients (understandably) put their projects on hold.

I watched as colleagues were struggling to keep their businesses afloat — all while my livelihood remained largely untouched by the horrifying impacts of the pandemic.

So my mindset at that point was pure gratefulness. 

And while on the surface, gratefulness would seem like a healthy mindset, in practice, it primed me to get royally screwed.

Tishman Speyer, like many other commercial real estate companies at the time, didn’t want to simply be a landlord anymore. They wanted to own and operate businesses on their properties.

If done well, not only could this strategy result in higher margins, it would give them dramatically more control over the visitor and tenant experience.

Which, for a place like Rockefeller Center, was a huge advantage.

So early in 2019, they hired me as a consultant to work with a world-class team of architects and engineers who had been brought in for a top-secret project—

The redevelopment of Rockefeller Center’s concourse, plaza, and beloved ice rink. ⛸️

The guest experience in those areas, especially during the holiday season, was embarrassingly horrendous. So they kicked out the tenants who were operating in those spaces, and prepared to take them over themselves.

I was honored to be on the team that was redesigning the Rockefeller Center experience to be worthy of the bucket-list status it held for people around the world. ❤️

My role within that team was to:

However, when I accepted a full-time position, my scope shifted from simply being an advisor, to being the person who actually had to execute everything.

And that’s when shit got sticky.

When most people imagine Rockefeller Center, they envision the famous plazas, television icons like Saturday Night Live, The Today Show, 30 Rock, and Jimmy Fallon, and of course, a giant sparkling Christmas tree. 🎄

But the economics of Rockefeller Center is underpinned by its six million square feet of leasable office space. And guess what office tenants stopped doing during the pandemic? 🤷

Paying rent.

This left Tishman Speyer in a precarious position. Some quiet layoffs soon led to a rigid hiring freeze.

That really sucked for me.

I was responsible for launching a completely new business which included the upcoming wintertime ice rink, followed by the summertime activation of the plaza.

We needed solid operational talent to pull this off, and the leanest, zero-contingency version of my holiday launch plan included hiring three superstar venue managers.

…Not a huge ask for a business that would require nearly 150 hours of management coverage every damn week. 🙄

And after months of begging, I finally got permission to hire—

One. F*cking. Person.

They were going to let me hire a single venue manager. All other staffing would be strictly seasonal, facilitated through a temp agency.

But since I didn’t feel like I had any leverage in this strange new pandemic world, I just put my head down, and decided to personally fill in the management gaps.

To pile on, we were under construction at this point, and the redevelopment budget was moving under our feet. Designs were being redrafted on a weekly basis, and nobody could predict where things would land.

But pandemic or no pandemic, team or no team, we needed to be ready to open our doors to thousands of skaters, and millions of holiday visitors, in a few months time. The weight of responsibility was heavier than a dozen Santa Clauses sitting on my shoulders. 🎅

When the task in front of you seems impossible, the best move is to enlist help from people you’d trust with your life.

And for me, those people were two former colleagues, Ben McLoskey and Tim Minter.

I ignored the formal recruitment process for the one internal management hire I was granted (screw HR), and handed that job to Ben.

In Tim’s case, I was able to slyly circumvent the hiring freeze because he’s an incredible friend who was willing to go through the temp agency with a promise that I would move mountains to get him officially hired once the freeze ended (a promise I was eventually able to keep).

And let’s just take one last moment to appreciate the absurdity of being instructed to launch an ultra high-volume hospitality business without f*cking hiring anyone. 🤦

But I still felt lucky, because here’s the thing about Ben and Tim—

They don’t have an unreliable bone in their bodies. And that was exactly what was needed to pull off the impossible.

Both of these guys have earned permanent “legend” status. I love them like brothers.

Our circumstances were ruthlessly chaotic. We were sprinting toward zig-zagging goalposts like a trio of drunk crocodiles. Ever-conflicting mandates were being passed down which impacted every aspect of our operation. 👇

We were working directly with the Mayor’s office to figure out how the hell we could make Christmas happen at Rockefeller Center, safely, in the middle of a dangerous a global pandemic. And I’m really proud of what we were able to achieve in a ridiculously short period of time:

👉 For the first time in the rink’s 84-year history, we implemented virtual timed ticketing.

👉 We commissioned the design and manufacture of the world’s first “mini” lithium-ion powered ice resurfacer.

👉 And we blew the shit out of the operating space, more than doubling its size, and replacing a grimy guest experience with an open, clean, and meticulously functional design.

Plans changed every day, and there was no time to go through the proper procurement and billing process for a lot of vital expenses. Tishman Speyer, a $100+ billion dollar company, denied me a corporate credit card, so I ended up maxing out my personal credit cards to pay our vendors, and get us across the finish line.

And sometime during the first couple of weeks of October, I unknowingly took my last day off.

Being on-site every single day for three months wasn’t part of the plan. But every time it was looking like I might be able to take a day off, some crazy curveball came hurdling toward the strike zone.

Most days I arrived before sunrise, and worked for 10-12 hours. But there were also plenty of 18-hour days sprinkled in.

It sucked, but it was up to us to make Christmas happen at Rockefeller Center. 

There was literally no one else to do it. 🤷

As chaotic and miserable as all this was, we f*cking nailed it.

Beyond the metrics, we were showered with gratitude from thousands of thrilled visitors who, after the worst year of their lives, were able to forget their troubles and celebrate the holidays with us.

We had hoards of “regulars”, who had been ice skating at Rockefeller Center for 50+ years in some cases, who were overjoyed by the beautiful renovation and thoughtful operational improvements. 

One of them even made me a custom face mask featuring an image of the rink. 🥰

And we also, albeit temporarily, got to employ a heroic team of truly special people who each lended their hearts to craft the unique experience we delivered to guests — day in and day out.

At the end of the season, one of our dedicated staff members tearfully told me that this was the best job she had ever had, and she didn’t want it to end. 🥹

And if you think you know the reasons why I quit based on what you’ve read so far, then you’re in for a surprise.

This wasn’t the first business I had launched. Nor was it the first time I had worked for multiple months straight.

It comes with the territory. 👇

I compiled all of our learnings into a detailed action plan. For everything that went wrong, I developed thoughtful recommendations for how to improve, complete with budgets and impact analyses.

This culminated in a restructuring proposal that would not only dramatically improve the ice rink business, but collectively elevate all of the other Rockefeller Center operating businesses…

…And it was wholly ignored by the executives. 🤦

But perhaps the most perplexing moment came during my annual performance review.  Like many companies, Tishman Speyer had a 5-level ranking system (tied to my bonus) that looked something like this:

Keep in mind that I had:

👉 Over-performed on every available metric.

👉 Worked every day for three months straight during a pandemic because the company refused to hire the management team that was needed to launch their new business.

👉 Gone into personal debt to ensure Christmas happened at Rockefeller Center because the company was unwilling to make the prompt vendor payments that were required to move vital aspects of the project forward. (I was eventually reimbursed for those expenses, but it’s still outrageous).

And while my boss claimed he wanted to give me a “5” on my review, and my full bonus, company protocol disallowed any first-year employees from receiving a perfect score.

So I got a “4”, and only received a partial bonus, which I was told I should be grateful for because I received a higher percentage than most people.

There is no better way to alienate high-performing employees than to say:

“I know you’ve absolutely bled for this company, and achieved impossible results, but you’re new to us, so we gotta knock you down a peg”.

Joy to the world. 🙄

Cheers! 🍻

-Kristin