Alex Gisbert, CEO Fastpayhotels – From family business to corporate boardroom to entrepreneur!
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Show Notes
Jeannette is with Alex Gisbert Co-Founder and CEO of Fastpayhotels, innovators in B2B hotel distribution.
As a fast-growing business who now work with 30,000 hotels around the world and in 78 countries Fastpayhotels have shown that entrepreneurial spirit and innovation is the way to grow successfully on a global stage.
As someone who pivoted from the corporate space to his own innovative start-up he explains why the details and being authentic make the difference.
Alex and Jeannette also discuss the importance of integrity, your network and understanding that the things that don’t work out are always opportunities to learn and move forward if you are prepared to work hard.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Going through your cost ledgers line by line is the way to understand exactly where the money goes in a company.
- You can do a Masters IN business or DO a Masters AT a business, resulting in Alex turning around and selling his family restaurant chain to Pizza Express
- Learning from the grassroots up makes all the difference to be credible as a leader in a family business – from bottle washer, to waiter to being able to work the bar.
- You have to work your way into situations.
- Creating empathy with suppliers builds huge bridges and opens doors, criss cross your career into interesting conversations
- As a CEO you are broadly looking at 3 areas costs, profit and brandApproach of I don’t need to know the details, just make it happen
- Take risks, there always has to be a better way of doing things
- The right mindset is vital to understanding that even if something doesn’t work out it’s a learning opportunity.
- If you don’t think of failure as failure but as an opportunity to learn you can always move forward.
- As you progress in your career, you build confidence in taking risks and gain comfort taking even bigger risks as you progress.
- People worry about what they may lose instead of what they might gain, which often means they never get going in the first place.
- Globalised growth is really hard to do
- The use of language is hugely important when you are trying to globalise a business. Jargon and idioms can be easily misinterpreted and you can alienate people whose first language is not englidh overnight so you have to watch out for that.
- You can never underestimate the cultural differences, diversity and the importance of understanding the different ways of doing business around the world.
- Understanding details makes all the difference.
- Having a supportive partner in your life and in your business, that backs you all the way helps massively in making those big leaps into the unknown. Just go for it and do something that will make you happy!
- It’s about giving it a go - you have to work hard with integrity and professionalism.
- Setting up a business isn’t easy but it’s worth it – from remortgaging the house to ramping up credit card debt
- You can only regret what you do, you can’t regret what you don’t do, so just do it.
- Your reputation and integrity are everything and people make decisions to work with you based on it despite which big companies you have worked for.
- Never try and be two personalities – take your personal values and traits to work with you everyday. Its part of having integrity.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I was exposed to entrepreneurship and leadership early in my career and it does give you confidence’
‘If you only ever do your job description you will only ever be your job description’
‘Working with integrity is massively important’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
Brave, Bold, Brilliant podcast series
https://www.jeannettelinfootassociates.com/Fastpayhotels website
ABOUT THE GUEST
Alex Gisbert
Founder and CEO, Fastpayhotels
Alex is founder and CEO of Fastpayhotels. Based in Mallorca and created in 2016, Fastpayhotels represents the evolution of the B2B Hotel distribution model bringing much needed innovation to this space. Fastpayhotels is a private equity backed business operating in 78 countries and in 3 locations around the world with over 30,000 hotel partnerships.
Fastpayhotels has been winner of Start Up the Year by Travolution UK 2016, Start Nominee in Spain by Segitur 2017, and New Business of Year by Desarollo in Spain as well as finalist at Phocuswright Summit in 2016 in Los Angeles.
Alex left Lowcosttravel Group in 2015 where he was COO and member of the board leading the B2C and B2B sales, product, revenue management and marketing teams globally.
Alex joined Expedia in 2007 as Regional Director Strategic Accounts responsible for the negotiation and management of global hotel deals and relationships with the major hotel chains across the EMEA region for Expedia’s Partner Service Group as well as Online Partner Marketing leading the marketing efforts across branded affiliates, display, metasearch and various other online Expedia partnerships such as Yahoo, Nectar and Payback.
Alex joined Expedia from Opodo where he was Commercial Director based in London. Prior to that he spent 4 years at the Thomas Cook group working within the Tour Operations group and the E-Commerce Divisions.
Alex won Travolution Magazine’s Rising Star of the Year award in 2009.
Alex is a Combined Honours Graduate from the University of Exeter. Alex is Spanish and is based in Palma de Mallorca.
ABOUT THE HOST
Jeannette Linfoot is a highly regarded senior executive, property investor, board advisor and business mentor with over 25 years of global professional business experience across the travel, leisure, hospitality and property sectors. Having bought, ran and sold businesses all over the world, Jeannette now has a portfolio of her own businesses and also advises and mentors other business leaders to drive forward their strategies as well as their own personal development.
Jeannette is a down to earth leader, a passionate champion for diversity & inclusion and a huge advocate of nurturing talent so every person can unleash their full potential and live their dreams.
CONTACT METHOD
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