 Cover Story
Shelia
Johnson Links Sports and Hospitality
By Carol Cortright
Her penthouse suite
overlooks the 18th hole of Innisbrook’s Copperhead
course, site of the PGA TOUR PODS Championship and,
according to Ryder Cup Captain Paul Azinger, “the best
course we play on TOUR.” From these floor-to-ceiling
windows, Innisbrook’s new owner, Sheila C. Johnson, sees
900 acres of “good bones” and ample opportunity for
taking this property, “the lifeblood of the community,”
she calls it, to the same level of excellence as her
other business ventures.
As CEO of Salamander Hospitality, LLC, Johnson manages a
growing portfolio of luxury properties from the Mobil
Five Star- and AAA Five Diamond-awarded Woodlands Resort
& Inn near Charleston to the Salamander Resort & Spa
under construction in Middleburg, VA. Other ventures
include the gourmet prepared food shop Market
Salamander, with locations in Middleburg and Palm Beach,
and overseeing development of New Orleans’ Royal
Cosmopolitan Hotel and the Colosseum in Blacksburg, VA.
But wait—there’s more: Johnson is the only woman to have
a stake in three professional sports teams. Not only is
she President and Managing Partner of the WNBA’s
Washington Mystics, she also holds a minority interest
in the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the NHL’s Washington
Capitals through Lincoln Holdings.
So how did Sheila Johnson go from accomplished violinist
and music teacher to entrepreneurial dynamo in the
hospitality arena? It started with a little cable
channel called BET. She and then-husband Robert L.
Johnson “were very disturbed by what we saw—or weren’t
seeing—on TV,” she said, “and we were in the right place
at the right time.” It was the dawn of the 1980s and
cable networks were popping up all over. “We created BET
to give African Americans a voice, another outlet
besides print media, like Ebony and Jet. It was a lot
harder than we thought in the beginning. It was a tough
first three years. We actually sold pieces of it to make
payroll and then bought it all back later,” Johnson
recalled.
That hard work paid off twenty years later when Viacom
bought BET’s multimedia package for over $2 billion.
Sadly, however, Sheila and Robert’s personal and
professional partnership
 was coming to an end. They
split the earnings—making her America’s first black
female billionaire—and went their separate ways. Johnson
was ready for the next chapter in her life.
Hospitality was a “natural fit,” she said of moving into
this new business field. While involved with BET,
Johnson frequently entertained celebrities and arranged
travel and accommodations, so “it was a good transition
for me.” After the divorce, she came across a piece of
property near her home in Virginia and said: “This is
where I want to build a hotel.” The Salamander Resort
and Spa is slated to open in the fall of 2009 in the
heart of picturesque horse country.
Johnson is no stranger to the Sunshine State. Her
daughter is a Grand Prix show jumper, taking the family
to the equestrian community of Wellington in Palm Beach
County. The second Market Salamander opened on
Palm Beach in February. Now she’s got her eye on the
west coast and that can only mean good things.
She appreciates the business climate in Florida. “It’s
much easier here,” she said. “Florida embraces
entrepreneurialism.”
 Why Innisbrook?
“The property itself,” Johnson answered. “We fell in
love with it.” She and her team spent a whole day
touring the resort, which had been on the market for a
while. When they got back on the plane, they looked at
each other and said, “Can we do something with this?”
Salamander was already running an award-wining resort in
South Carolina. They saw no reason why they couldn’t do
the same with Innisbrook.
“It’s nice to see the pride that the employees have in
this place and once you’re here, you understand why,”
Johnson said of the Innisbrook staff, many of whom have
been with the resort for years. The outside world
recognizes that dedication as well. In September, the
resort was awarded the prestigious 2007 Corporate &
Incentive Travel Award of Excellence—making it the
thirteenth time Innisbrook has received this coveted
designation.
Johnson and her team have big ideas for Innisbrook, from
improvements to its four championship golf courses to
upgrades in conference services and the fitness and
tennis facilities. One of the most exciting additions
will be the development of a full service luxury spa.
When Johnson announced Salamander’s purchase of
Innisbrook in July 2007, plans were revealed for an
immediate renovation of the Island Golf Course, already
rated 4.5 out of five stars by Golf Digest magazine.
Before Island’s grand reopening in early November, it
experienced a top-notch test run by hosting the final
round of the Golf Channel’s Amateur Tour in October.
Soon, the resort’s entire 65,000 square feet of meeting
space will get a complete overhaul too, according to
Chuck Pomerantz, Vice President and Managing Director.
Not only will it become an even more beautiful space for
conferences and special events, big name speakers will
be hosting seminars here, if all goes according to
Johnson’s plans—and she’s not one to take “no” for an
answer.
Which brings us back to the PGA TOUR PODS Championship.
Johnson has her sights set on getting Tiger Woods on the
Copperhead, so don’t be surprised to see him swinging
his pitching wedge at Innisbrook in the near future.
 How does an entrepreneur like Sheila Johnson keep up
with it all?
“My mother told me I’d always been very organized,
laying out my school clothes the night before,” she
explained. “In a house with one bathroom, I had to plan
my time wisely,” she added with a smile.
Weekly briefings are a must. “I don’t like surprises,”
she said. “We cover the whole nine yards. If something’s
not working, tell me and we’ll find another way.” The
people in her company are the force that keeps the world
of Salamander turning. She believes in hiring only the
best. “Don’t hire people who are going to learn on your
dime,” she advises.
When Johnson went looking for a president to head
Salamander Hospitality, Prem Devadas was her number one
choice. There wasn’t a backup. With twenty-five years in
the industry, Devadas has a sterling reputation for
turning properties into five star winners. Likewise, the
team’s latest addition, Director of Sales and Marketing
Jim Bullock, joined after a nationwide search to find
someone who brings the depth and experience necessary to
implement the company’s stellar plans for Innisbrook.
 As team manager, Johnson has a healthy philosophy for
dealing with challenges. She makes no qualms about
wading into a problem and dissecting it play by play.
“Why are there problems when good things are happening?”
she asks. “Many times, it’s not a real problem at all,
it’s just a perception that needs adjusting. People
create more problems through misperceptions, so you
listen carefully and realize it’s not a dire problem and
you find angles.”
“Death is dire,” she says flatly. “The rest of these
things can be figured out.” Like a coach on the
sidelines, she’s ready to “be flexible, switch gears,
tackle problems head on…It’s human nature not to take
responsibility for one’s own shortcomings, so the
manager has to see the whole picture and not be
reactionary.”
Marketing opportunities wait around every corner and
they go hand in hand with networking. Johnson offers a
rapid-fire assortment of ideas that work for her. “You
don’t need to spend a lot of money (on advertising). You
can get stories placed anywhere (through press
releases),” she says. “It’s important that you
continually market yourself by word-of-mouth too.” She
recalled a teachers’ retreat that she welcomed to Innisbrook’s conference center: “All those teachers will
go back into their communities and tell their friends
about the positive experience they had here. Any time I
buy a table at a charitable event, I buy an ad in the
event program too. I also give lots of speeches.”
 “Networking is huge,” Johnson says of its value in
navigating the waters of entrepreneurship and
philanthropy, a perfect combination that leads to
professional and personal fulfillment. “All businesses
should have a hand in their communities—it’s critical to
make your community feel invested.”
“I sit on many boards,” she says, including Parsons The
New School for Design, VH1’s Save the Music, and the
United States Equestrian Foundation, to name just a few.
But she cautions that boards must be carefully selected.
“There are only so many hours in a day—you have to make
sure they help in the networking end too.”
Johnson is extremely proud to serve as an ambassador for
CARE, a humanitarian organization that works to fight
global poverty. This role allows her to be an integral
part of the “I AM POWERFUL” campaign, empowering women
and girls as catalysts for change around the world.
To fully understand the connection between business
success and philanthropy, Johnson recommends the book
The Greater Good by Claire Gaudiani. “It’s all about the
importance of treating people well, giving from the
heart,” she says. “Remember that America, more than any
other country, is so philanthropic—many hospitals,
performing arts centers and schools wouldn’t be here
without people giving back to their communities,
developing that social conscience.”
Johnson’s path to entrepreneurial success and her
charitable nature didn’t start with a book, though. It’s
been a part of her from an early age. “Besides my
mother, my high school orchestra director, Susan
Starrett, helped shape who I am today,” she says with
admiration. “Susan showed me the importance of a moral
compass and the epitome of what a woman should be:
fierce in business, but always a woman of grace.”
And following that advice is how an accomplished
violinist and music teacher became the CEO of Salamander
Hospitality, LLC, and the new owner of the Innisbrook
Resort and Golf Club.
Sheila Johnson‘s Advice for the Entrepreneur:
--Have passion
--Be resilient
--Realize things don’t happen overnight
--Have faith
--Don’t listen to anybody else-stay true to your heart
--Never take NO for an answer
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