Valuetainment - February 21, 2026


“I’m Working For Barbarians” - Ritz-Carlton Founder REFLECTS On His Culture Shock In America

Topics
working for barbarians
Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
Stephen Covey Stephanie
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Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

148.02

Word count

851

Sentence count

136

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Ron Meyer talks about his early career in the hospitality industry and how he went on to become one of the most successful men in the world. He talks about how he got to where he is today, what he did to change the world, and why he decided to write a book.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 When you got that call at 23 to go to Houston, was that Hilton or was that Hyatt?
00:00:05.440 It was Hotel Corporation of America, which became Sonesta later.
00:00:09.180 Okay.
00:00:09.880 So I went to Houston. Frankly, I didn't stay long.
00:00:14.220 Very short, because I was totally new. 1.00
00:00:19.140 And when you have cultural beliefs, they're sometimes very stupid. 0.99
00:00:24.740 And the first day, first of all, I lived in Hawaii, no air condition. 0.99
00:00:30.000 And I got there late June.
00:00:32.500 I've never experienced heat like that.
00:00:34.860 In Houston?
00:00:35.520 In Houston.
00:00:37.840 And next door I worked.
00:00:39.520 And the first day I worked, as a waiter, actually, it was there a few days.
00:00:43.540 And the first day I worked as a waiter, I had an order of fish order.
00:00:49.840 And I looked, where are the fish knives and the fish forks?
00:00:53.300 I had worked in the finest hotels in the world, mine knew.
00:00:57.160 And they said, what is that?
00:01:00.000 And I came to the conclusion, I'm working for barbarians. 0.99
00:01:04.820 No fish knives, no fish fork.
00:01:07.440 Cannot be.
00:01:08.960 And I live, and they live in a situation where human beings shouldn't live with this heat.
00:01:13.640 I thought, I didn't know that was air condition.
00:01:15.400 And Houston is pretty hot if you're coming from Europe.
00:01:20.500 You better believe it.
00:01:21.320 Yes.
00:01:21.980 My wife's from Houston. 0.87
00:01:23.160 It's very hot.
00:01:24.340 So I called a friend of mine who worked in San Francisco, a civilian in a French restaurant.
00:01:31.360 And I said, I'm going back.
00:01:32.540 This is their barbarians. 0.99
00:01:35.120 They serve fish without... 0.99
00:01:36.400 How ridiculous can you be? 0.99
00:01:39.080 That shows you how silly we sometimes have beliefs, our beliefs that we set because the culture is sometimes very silly. 1.00
00:01:47.100 We have to look into it. 0.87
00:01:48.020 So I left there, took the bus to San Francisco, worked in San Francisco, started in a restaurant.
00:01:55.880 But then I worked back in a hotel because I wanted hotels and worked for Hilton and afterwards joined Hyatt.
00:02:05.620 How long were you at Hilton?
00:02:07.460 With Hilton, I was not long there.
00:02:09.900 But then I went to the club and back to Hilton.
00:02:11.820 I was with Hilton for nearly four years.
00:02:14.220 Four years.
00:02:14.820 Yeah.
00:02:15.140 What did you learn at Hilton that you took on with your career?
00:02:18.400 Well, process of management of what you do or the organization.
00:02:24.900 Because I worked for a while in catering and selling, how you organize to sell and so on.
00:02:33.160 So I learned, but not traditional service, because we have kind of all forgotten what is table etiquette and so on.
00:02:47.280 I learned that when I was a kid, believe me, that everything had to be 100% correct.
00:02:52.520 But in Hilton, it was working and systems.
00:02:57.620 I realized that every effort has to have a process.
00:03:03.720 Started learning that.
00:03:04.960 And then I joined Hyatt.
00:03:06.660 Is Hyatt where you became, where you made a name for yourself?
00:03:10.420 Yeah.
00:03:11.240 Is Hyatt where you wrote your first book or was it at Hilton?
00:03:15.140 No.
00:03:15.600 No.
00:03:16.200 I read that after, basically after I retired.
00:03:19.740 But after, the book was written, I became quite good friend with Stephen Covey.
00:03:28.180 And Stephen was urging me to write a book about what we had accomplished with Ritz-Carlton.
00:03:35.400 So this is post-Hyatt.
00:03:37.260 Yes.
00:03:37.720 This is at Ritz when you met Stephen Covey and he said write a book.
00:03:41.060 Yeah.
00:03:41.500 Got it.
00:03:41.980 Okay.
00:03:42.360 And he told me and I didn't do it.
00:03:45.400 And he kept on telling me.
00:03:46.900 And then one day I was driving home and he called me.
00:03:51.580 And I answered, Stephen, that's how he talked.
00:03:55.740 You, I'm disappointed, so disappointed in you.
00:03:59.320 He's telling you this.
00:04:00.380 Yeah.
00:04:01.140 I said, why, Stephen?
00:04:03.220 You have still not written your own people, your own people to write your book.
00:04:08.300 Promise me your will.
00:04:11.980 And I said, I promise you.
00:04:13.380 A few months later, he died.
00:04:15.980 And that's when he died.
00:04:17.520 I was so, and he always said, I want to be the one who writes you forward.
00:04:22.160 And he died.
00:04:23.100 Unbelievable.
00:04:23.280 And I said, Stephen, I write a book for you now.
00:04:25.580 Wow.
00:04:25.940 He sat down.
00:04:26.760 Well, I mean, he wrote a book that sold, I don't know how many copies.
00:04:29.320 Changed me.
00:04:30.260 Oh, yeah.
00:04:31.000 Impacted me.
00:04:31.780 Yeah.
00:04:32.460 Life changing.
00:04:33.320 Oh, no question.
00:04:34.680 Seven Habits.
00:04:35.500 And then he wrote the Eighth Habit, right?
00:04:36.900 He wrote a book called The Eighth Habit as well.
00:04:38.160 Yeah, The Family Habit.
00:04:39.300 One of a kind.
00:04:40.140 He was very unique.
00:04:41.240 My year.
00:04:41.780 Unique.
00:04:42.340 Very unique.
00:04:43.320 Success is built on how you think.
00:04:47.160 Influence is built on how you show up.
00:04:51.660 Every detail matters.
00:04:54.480 Because presence speaks before you do.
00:04:58.480 This is more than style.
00:05:02.820 The future looks bright.
00:05:06.900 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.
00:05:12.320 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.
00:05:15.100 And if you want to watch it, please, close it down.
00:05:16.360 There's a Дав reklam in all.
00:05:19.860 Try that.
00:05:20.440 After all, watch a great video.
00:05:21.860 Stephanie.
00:05:23.100 Bye.
00:05:23.580 Bye.
00:05:26.440 We'll see you next time.
00:05:27.920 Bye.
00:05:28.900 Bye.
00:05:29.400 Bye.
00:05:30.040 Bye.
00:05:30.680 Bye.
00:05:31.060 Bye.
00:05:31.280 Bye.
00:05:32.100 Bye.
00:05:32.360 Bye.
00:05:34.320 Bye.
00:05:35.100 Bye.
00:05:35.480 Bye.
00:05:36.960 Bye.
00:05:37.860 Bye.
00:05:39.080 Bye.
00:05:41.240 Bye.
00:05:43.400 Bye.
00:05:44.140 Bye.
00:05:44.460 Bye.