Some people are born to expect gold standards, and others are actually born to create them. Knowing exactly what people want and need is a skill that can show itself incredibly early on. Such was the case with Horst Schulze, who began as a busboy in a German resort town and worked his way to the top.
In a seven-part Threads post, business consultant Alex Foulke summarized Schulze’s story well. He explains that at just 16, while working as a busboy, he observed a maître d’s classy treatment of guests. It moved him so much that he wrote an essay about it for a high school class.
‘We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen’
Foulke shared, “The essay was called ‘We Are Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen.’ Decades later, Schulze was the founding president of Ritz-Carlton, and that sentence went on a card. Every employee gets one on their first day. It’s laminated. They carry it. The point of it: the dishwasher is a gentleman. The housekeeper is a lady. Same as the guests. Nobody at the hotel is beneath anyone.”
Schulze realized he belonged in the hotel business years before he became a busboy. In a 2019 Chief Executive Group interview with Digital Editor Gabriel Perna, Schulze shared his unlikely journey in his own words. “I grew up in a small village in Germany. There were no hotels. I’d never been in a hotel, and I don’t know how it got in my mind. When I was 11 years old, I went to my parents and said, ‘I want to work in the hotel business.’ I was persistent.”
His persistence not only paid off for his own aspirations, but it also helped define what a first-class, five-star service actually meant. After Perna asked him how he got from busboy to co-founder, Schulze answered, “I left home when I was 14 and started as a busboy in the hotel business. I worked in Germany, worked in Switzerland. I honestly worked in the finest hotels in Europe.”
He named hotels from around the world, including the Plaza Athénée in Paris and the Savoy in London, as a few examples. In the early to mid 1960s, he came to the U.S. “I worked for Hilton and Hyatt and then was offered a job to start a new hotel company in charge of operations…that ended up becoming the Ritz-Carlton.”
Busboy to CEO
What exactly set it apart? Schulze explained, “I understood what it means being a busboy and dishwasher, a waiter, a cook. I understood that. I’ve looked at it from their side, made a few beds. So I said, ‘Okay, I want to create an environment where the employees are really part of the organization.’”
After watching a speech by Schulze, Lenbrook Senior Living President and CEO Chris Keysor shared how impressed he was and what he took away as a business leader himself. “Mr. Schulze recalled that when the hotel’s Maître D’ entered the dining room, everyone took notice—not just the dining room staff, but even the hotel’s finest guests. He saw how the Maître D’ personally interacted with the guests and how each showed respect for the other. It was obvious that although the Maître D’ was an employee, he was neither invisible nor inconsequential. In fact, as a youth, Mr. Schulze could tell that the guests assigned the Maître D’ a high level of importance.”
Setting the bar
He added, “Mr. Schulze is big on the word ‘serve.’ He’s a big believer that in hospitality you serve. But he believes, as do I, that you are not a servant—if you perform your job with excellence. That’s what’s at the foundation of his philosophy of ‘Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.’”
Schulze’s inspiration didn’t end with the Ritz. He later founded the Capella Hotel Group. His site explains, “This luxury hotel company managed some of the most elite properties worldwide, and gave Mr. Schulze the opportunity to further define the luxury hotel industry, receiving countless awards and recognitions.”
As an author, keynote speaker, and visionary entrepreneur, Schulze continues to set a high bar.
