How David Grutman Built A Hospitality Empire By “Taking It Personal”
By Christopher Rim | Apr 24, 2026, 04:54pm EDT
Every student, from high school to college and graduate school, has heard some version of the platitude “follow your passions.” While well-meaning, the advice is often hollow when it comes to real-world execution. Young people know they need to discover their interests and develop their career accordingly—but what does this look like in practice? How can you convert passion into scalable success?
David Grutman has lived that process.
The Miami-based hospitality mogul behind LIV nightclub, Swan, and a portfolio of some of the most sought-after venues in the country did not arrive at success by simply loving what he did. “Passion alone is not enough,” Grutman tells me. “You have to take it personal. When you care deeply about every guest, every interaction, and every detail, that mindset turns into success, you begin to understand what works, what people respond to, and how to scale it across your brands.”
The title of his recently released book, Take It Personal, reflects the centrality of this advice in Grutman’s own career. The book details the philosophy behind his celebrated success story, including the importance of relationships, a detail-oriented mentality, and the ability to synthesize day-to-day decision making with big-picture thinking. Beyond presenting a compelling narrative about Grutman’s ability to beat the odds, the book offers a blueprint for anyone, particularly young people still figuring out their driving motivations, who wants to turn genuine interest into meaningful work.
One of the foundational steps toward Grutman’s own long-term success was developing a network of genuine friends and mentors who guided him through his journey from bartender to nightlife empire-builder. The instinct for many ambitious young professionals is to think of networking as a strategic exercise, identifying the people who can help you, expand your network, and extract value. But Grutman’s philosophy runs counter to this mentality. Genuine relationships, he argues, are built through genuine curiosity about other people, rather than calculated attempts to build one’s own brand.
“Relationships are not transactional,” he says. “You need to genuinely care, add value, and think long term.
Real relationship-building is a habit to be cultivated, not a tactic to be deployed. The payoff of this approach, as Grutman has found, is that it compounds in ways you don’t often predict. “Talk to everyone, not just the people you think can help you,” he adds. “Some of the most valuable connections come from unexpected interactions. Focus on playing the long game and building trust consistently.”
That long game started early. Grutman traces his obsession with hospitality back to his days behind the bar, where he approached his work as a laboratory of human interaction. “I started as a bartender early on and became obsessed with how people feel in a space,” he says. “It’s not about the drinks or the music. It’s about energy, connection, and creating memorable moments.” This kind of attentiveness came to define his approach and differentiate him from others who quickly burn out in the unforgiving nightlife industry.
Mentorship played an equally critical role in shaping Grutman’s trajectory. While young professionals imagine a ceiling on what feels realistically achievable, this is often defined less by actual circumstance than by the limits of what they have witnessed up close. The right mentors elevate that ceiling. For that reason, Grutman encourages a posture of curiosity and continuous learning: “Find people you genuinely admire. Learn from everyone and extract the best from each experience. That guidance helps to shape the mindset needed to grow and scale a hospitality brand.”
The advice David Grutman offers is not revolutionary in its core substance. Care about what you do; build real relationships; find people you admire and learn from them; take ownership of your goals. What makes Grutman’s story worth studying is not the novelty of these principles, but the demonstrated proof of their application in his wildly successful career.
For young people still searching for direction, his success attests to the fact that the fundamentals are not complicated. The differentiator is how seriously you are willing to work at them.
Originally published on Forbes on April 24, 2026
