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

• The playbook that added $100M to slot profits in one year
• Inside a $31 B LBO: weekly flashes, board pressure, and a $260M room renovation debate
• How hotel yield algorithms became the backbone of modern ML systems
• Why Caesars pivoted from gaming to hospitality—and won
• Translating high-volume P&L skills into tech leadership

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.

Subscribe for new episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ceotradecraft

Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ceotradecraft/

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 strategies. Real tactics.

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.