Making room

As the former president and general manager of insurance giant Cigna's operations in Indiana, Mary Brandt oversaw a $900 million business with 200 employees.

Today, she owns a 10-room boutique hotel in Naples.

Brandt's journey from the corporate heights to hands-on entrepreneur may be a familiar story to women. Brandt retired from Cigna in 2003 when she became pregnant with her first daughter, moving to Naples for lifestyle reasons. She invested in real estate with her husband while doing some health care consulting as time permitted.

But as part of her subsequent divorce, Brandt became owner of the Hotel Escalante last year, a 10-room boutique hotel off tony Fifth Avenue in Naples, just steps from the beach.

Now a single mom with two daughters ages 10 and 4, Brandt lives a block and a half away from the hotel. She's invested about $200,000 of her own money into upgrading the rooms, adding a restaurant and planting an organic garden. A staff of 11 including a full-time gardener looks after the guests.

Brandt seems to relish her entrepreneurial life today, balancing the opportunities to be involved in her children's school activities with running the daily operations of a hotel. She doubts she could be involved in her daughters' lives to the same degree if she had stayed with Cigna.

Although work is so close, Brandt says she leaves it behind when she goes home. “I've always been great with balance,” she says. Still, her children enjoy the social aspects of the hotel. “My 10-year-old loves to be at the front desk,” she says.

Brandt stays in touch with changes in the health insurance industry, inviting her colleagues to the hotel for meetings. “Sometimes I miss it,” she says. But, she adds, “right now I can't go back.”

Brandt got a fast education in the hotel business when she and her husband bought the Hotel Escalante at bankruptcy auction in 2004. The manager quit the same day and she discovered guests scooping pastries from the breakfast buffet into their bags.

“You figure out everything fast,” she laughs. “The hardest part was finding the best place to find supplies.”

Because of its Napa-like charm and location close to the beach and Fifth Avenue's upscale shops, Brandt says she can charge $200 to $900 a night. In the winter season, the hotel is fully booked and 80% full on an annualized basis.

Brandt uses skills managing the hotel that she acquired running Cigna's operations. “I always try to hire people better in all areas than myself,” she says. “I was never threatened by it [at Cigna],” she says. “I'm not worried someone's after my job.”

To control costs, Brandt decided to bring in-house what many hotels outsource. That includes laundry, catering and landscaping. “When you're 10 rooms, outsourcing may not make sense,” she says.

Although she's a good delegator, Brandt says every one of her 11 hotel employees reports directly to her. The hotelier says she doesn't need more than four hours a sleep at night to function effectively. “It has to be four hours consecutively,” she smiles.

Because she's the final decision maker at the hotel, Brandt says she's less concerned about tracking expenses than giving guests a great experience. At Cigna, she says, “I'd know where every penny went. Here, I don't. It would probably keep me up at night.”