Meet Ernesto Mandowsky | CEO of CPD Advisors, Author of NewBee, Creator of The Cashflow Engine

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ernesto Mandowsky and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ernesto, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I’m originally from Miami, Florida-one of the few-, and have lived here my whole life minus a couple of years in New York City and DC. My family is a varied mix of people with roots spanning France, Italy, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Romania, and Germany. Growing up, 5 languages were spoken at home. When our family would visit, we spent lots of time eating, drinking, and celebrating life, which led to my interest in Hospitality and the dream of opening 6 restaurants. Eventually, I would pursue a career at the intersection of my passions and skills that lead me to open up a digital challah bakery in my apartment, open a food hall in Grand Central Station, modernize a 96-year old family-owned steakhouse, and write a book about the importance of cultivating your uniqueness.

Today, I incorporate hospitality into every element of my business, CPD Advisors. As a business systems consulting firm, we design Michelin-starred experiences into each touchpoint that starts with welcoming new clients into our space, understanding their unique needs, and presenting a menu of solutions that they can choose from.

“I can’t remember what I ate. I only remember how I felt during the experience” is a philosophy that we believe in.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I have a relentless drive for pursuing my goals.

Dedicated to combining hospitality with systems engineering, I got a job as a Tech Consultant at Deloitte. In my 1st week, I searched for the leaders of the hospitality practice and would reach out to them in hopes of finding projects in the space. I would eventually get a chance to work in cruise lines and hotels which opened up my eyes to how dysfunctional even the large companies were.

On weekends, I would take a course to write a business plan to help open up a digital challah bakery (@ChallahBackBakery). After telling every instructor about my passion, one of them would offer me a position to help open a restaurant group in NYC that included a michelin-starred restaurant and a food hall both in Grand Central Station. This was the first opening I had into the intersection I had been searching for since I was a teenager.

For the next 4 years, I would work in different restaurant groups and startup companies serving as the point person connecting the dots with the different technology tools being used to scale and grow the organizations I was working for. For example, connecting data such as sales, inventory, scheduling, communication, financials, ordering, and the many other complexities within a restaurant. Frustrated by the lack of resources available to help me learn, I started writing a book that would be passed down to the next generation of Restaurant Analysts.

The book would evolve into a story inspired by how bees make honey. Through cross-pollinating our lives with different events, courses, conferences, and jobs, we extract tons of nectar and insights that we pass along to other companies and people we meet to help them grow and develop. As bees transfer this pollen across flowers, fruit and vegetables grow which people and animals eat to survive. The bees (and us) meanwhile return to the hive to create honey. Our honey is the unique intersection of our skills and experiences that we offer back to the world in the form of a job, product or service.

Everyone is in the business of creating their honey.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I absolutely love how diverse the city is. I would pick a different part of the city for each day. For a 5-day trip, here’s what I would recommend

Day 1
-Drive Down to the Keys and head to a beach where you can relax, rent a kayak and enjoy the beach. Go to sleep early so you can then go Deep Sea Fishing the next Day
Day 2
-Deep Sea Fishing and Tarpon Sighting at Robbies.
-When you return, drive back to Miami and go to Little Havanah for dinner and drinks at La Trova
Day 3
-Spend the day in Wynwood (duh) to take pictures of all the art for your Instagram refresh!
-Eat at Zak the Baker or Suviche
-If its the weekend, head to Smorgasberg
Day 4
-Go to Miami Beach and walk up and down Ocean Dr
-Go to South Pointe Park for some sunset yoga
-Can go to the nightclubs in SoBe
Day 5
-Enjoy shopping in Brickell’s City Centre
-Plenty of restaurants around
-Favorite is Ceviche 105

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
This shoutout is dedicated to 1) my grandfather Maurice who represents the engine of perseverance, 2) my mother, who represents the engine of customer dedication and 3) my father, who represents the engine of vision and creativity.

Although my parents didn’t always encourage me to do risky things like quitting a cushy Fortune 500 job as a consultant, they did emphasize the importance of working hard and dedicating yourself to your craft/mission/purpose/company.

My grandfather (and grandparents) escaped persecution from World War II to South America, and was very scrappy in his early years. He would eventually join a large American company and open up South America as a new market for them which led to years of prosperity for all. This required lots of travel and sacrifice to provide for his family. Listening to these stories growing up infused a sense of responsibility, tenacity, and grit in my work today.

Website: https://www.ernestomandowsky.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ernestomandowsky

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernestomandowsky/