A private-equity inside-look at running multi-billion-dollar casinos, saving $100 M p.a. with data, and turning Vegas hospitality into a revenue lab.
What you’ll learn
Guest bio
Eileen Moore Johnson spent 21 years at Harrah’s–Caesars, rising from VP of Revenue Management to Regional President over four Strip resorts during the one the largest LBOs in U.S. history.
Chapters
00:27 Welcome & Stakes — the Future of PE-Backed Operations
01:42 Hotel-Kid to Cornell: Early Path to Data-Driven Ops
02:32 Rolling Out Yield Management at Hilton → Fairmont
04:17 Bringing Revenue Algorithms to the Vegas Strip
05:08 $31 B LBO Inside View, the Caesars-Harrah's Playbook
07:19 $100 M in One Year: Slots & Segmentation Playbook
09:20 Post-Katrina Turnaround
11:45 ‘Hospitality Pod’: Four Resorts, One P&L, on the Las Vegas Strip
13:38 PE Pressure: $260M Renovation & the Iron Debate
18:20 Cromwell Launch: How a 200-Room Hotel Prints Cash
19:55 Casino Math → SaaS: Why Ops Execs Should Consider a Rotation in Tech
23:46 Gaming × AI — What’s Next & Wrap-Up
If you run high-volume ops or scale companies under PE pressure, hit Follow.
Want to pay it forward on the show? Reach out.
#PrivateEquity, #Hospitality #Operations, #RevenueManagement, #Casino Analytics, #ML, #CaesarsLBO, #AgentNative #TechCEOs #FutureOfWork #HospitalityLeadership
Mary Brainerd led 26,000 employees as CEO of HealthPartners, the largest consumer-governed healthcare system in the U.S. She also served as Board Chair of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.
In this episode, she and Jason talk through:
– “Alignment, not sameness”: how to drive bottom-up change
– What cancer taught her about fear, empathy, and patient care
– How a co-op hospital model built real accountability
– Why AI is a lifeline to healthcare
– The Itasca Project and lessons from civic leadership
It’s the rarely discussed side of CEO work: culture, empathy, governance, and what it really means to lead at scale.
🎧 Full video version available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ceotradecraft
#Leadership #Healthcare #Governance #WomenInLeadership #CEOTradecraft
Rich Williams (former CEO of Groupon) joins Jason Radisson to talk about the realities of hypergrowth, what it takes to become a product-driven CEO, and why curiosity, conflict, and decision speed are non-negotiables in leadership.This episode of CEO Tradecraft breaks down what most leadership conversations gloss over—operational scars, inflection points, and the actual skill set behind the title.🔗 Links📺 Subscribe for new episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ceotradecraft🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ceotradecraft/🎧 Listen on Spotify: [your link]📱 Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-radisson/Chapters:00:00 - Intro01:44 - Welcome + Why Groupon Was a Hot Mess (in a Good Way)06:46 - Inside the Founding Team: Andrew, Eric, and the Samwers08:32 - IPO, Chaos, and the Three-Legged Stool Problem11:28 Is Hypergrowth Just What Tech Does?14:56 - Operational Rigor, Manual Systems, and Scaling Pain17:56 - Forward-Deployed Teams and the Future of Work23:05 - Reflections on the CEO Skillset Groupon Built25:36 - Seeking Out the Hard Stuff: Intentional CEO Pathing28:28 - Becoming a Product Leader (Even If You Start in Marketing)31:33 - What Great Product Managers Actually Do34:34 - From Technical Co-Founder to CEO: The Next Generation37:36 - CEO DNA: Curiosity, Conflict, and Rapid Decisions43:40 - Outro
CEO Tradecraft goes deep with founders, operators, and executive decision-makers. Real stories. Real tactics. No fluff.
This show isn’t coaching. It’s not hype. It’s not media-trained narratives.
CEO Tradecraft is about what it actually takes to lead a company when the answers aren’t obvious.
Hosted by Jason Radisson—founder-CEO of Movo and operator behind five unicorns across three continents—this show digs into the hidden playbooks, sharp decisions, and hard-earned lessons from founders and senior operators who’ve been in the chair.
If you’ve ever had to scale through chaos, manage power under pressure, or carry the weight when no one else would—this podcast is for you.
