Gordon Ramsay Motivation: Why You Can't Master Cooking With Quick-Fix Recipes!

I suppose I get turned on by pressure. That's how I thrive. I spent 3 years getting my ass kicked in France and then literally 8 years, 10 years like reading medicine, studying under some great chefs to really perfect my trade. Just show a little bit of passion to why the fuck you're a chef. Do you understand? I'll pay for your flight to fuck off back to Australia.

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe and I believe in you. I believe in your potential and I want to see that thing that you've got inside you explode out into the world to have a big impact for you, your family, and the world. So to help you on your journey today, we're gonna learn from entrepreneur and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and my take on his top 10 rules for success, volume 2. Rule number 1 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. And as always, guys, as you're watching, if you hear something that really, really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired. And when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick for yourself as well. Enjoy.

How do you deal with stress, Gordon Ramsay?

Um, good question. Um, pressure's healthy. It becomes stressful when you can't handle that, and I don't think we should never sort of misinterpret the difference between passion And anger. Of course I get upset when things go wrong. If I was flipping burgers and dressing Caesar salad, then I'd be high-fiving everybody. If I was a chef at TGI Fridays and, you know, doing barbecue wings with a sour dip that was sort of sat there for 30 days at a time, then you'd see a completely different Ramsay. I decided not to cook at that level. I suppose I get turned on by pressure. That's how I thrive. So some of you, you know, can handle that. Enormous amount of pressure. And I suppose more than anything, I don't, I don't think I've peaked yet. That's a weird thing about it. I don't, I don't feel I've, I've given everything I've got in food. After Casimiro ruined the meatballs— what the fuck have you done?— and has now refused to cook pasta, Chef Ramsay is frustrated not only by the chef but also by Tatiana's lack of management. I've been his friend for 10 years.

I know.

I'm sorry. Well, okay, great. He's got kids. I thought it was your sister. It's your Business. Come on, honestly. Italian cafe. Wow, what a joke.

Jeff, don't leave. Please don't leave.

I don't know what to do. It's my fault. I just— it's just insane. No restaurant anywhere in this country functions like that.

Just help homeless because I can't, I can't have it fail.

When a chef outlasts two owners already, trust me, there's something not quite right. Because if the owner previously, i.e. Charlie, was that invested in his chef, trust me, he would have gone with him. He would have gone with him. It's not rocket science, Tatiana, and you're a smart girl.

How could I have not seen this?

Well, you're scared to upset somebody, yet you're happy to see all three family members homeless. But they rely on you to manage the restaurant. They depend on you to give them that security.

I feel.

Not some chef that won't even take on board what you're trying to say. Stand in there for 5 minutes, just watch what they do. That's if he's, you know, happy to cook again.

So I need to fire him?

I'm not asking you to fire him. I'm asking you to take responsibility.

I'm so embarrassed by the restaurant in general, and it's all my fault, and I'm the only one to blame because I'm the owner. And I'm doing such a horrible job. Put all your orders in, we're closed. Put them in, I want to close. I guess I just have been walking around with like a sheet over my face and not seeing these little things that are so easy to see. Val, Mom, I need to talk to you now. We need to go outside.

Okay.

I'm mad at myself. I need to be the owner of this restaurant. We have to fire Kassimir.

You do have this ruthless way of approaching approaching your, your character, your, your who you are on Kitchen Nightmares, Hell's Kitchen. You have high standards professionally, um, but it must be said, on TV at least, you do, you attack kitchen staff on their gender, their appearance, their intelligence. It seems like you're bigger than life in your reality, your TV persona. Is that for an American audience? Is that for, for, is that a character you're playing?

First of all, I don't attack any form of gender, that's for sure. Being put in that situation under intense pressure creates you know, pressure in terms of explosion. Honestly, if I was flipping burgers and dressing Caesar salad, then I'll be the happiest chef in the world. Give me a slice of tuna for sashimi and no heat, then trust me, you'd see a different Gordon Ramsay. Where you see a very cleverly edited scenario with 45-minute cut-down version, I don't play in an edit suite. That's nothing to do with me. All I do do is keep it real. There's nothing poncy, there's nothing made up, there's no autocue, there's no, come on, let's get upset because it looks good. It's drama, unscripted, and I can't tell you what's going to happen because even I don't know I know what's going to happen. But what I will tell you is when people try to undermine me, lie to me, lie to the customer, cut corners, and then try to, you know, sort of almost in an embarrassing way, um, dictate to the customer that they know better in terms of trying to undermine their integrity, that's when I'm going to cut their balls off. Listen to me, you're in denial. Yes, you are. Don't even accept it. Hey, you'll walk out. There you go.

Flip the bird.

You are insane. You are. Yeah, blame me all you Easy excuses. You're insane. I'm insane? You're insane. You can't even be a fucking cook. I don't even talk to my staff like this. I want you to get the fuck out of my restaurant. I would love you to go. I will go. Get the fuck out of my restaurant, please. You are so in denial. You need therapy. Madam, unfortunately you're talking out of your rear. Cameron, don't watch your mouth. I really don't care. You're just walking around looking for trouble. You are. Why don't you just sit down and stop trying to cause trouble? There we go. Ladies, welcome. Good evening. Hi, how are you? So sorry about the old bag. I've never seen this before. Every fridge is full of fresh stuff and old stuff. Unfortunately, the old stuff's tainted the fresh stuff, so what you think is fresh is no longer fresh. And those poor fuckers out there are eating this. No, you can't. I'm not gonna let you cook anymore. Yeah, that's right. You want to continue cooking? You think it's funny, do you? No, Elise. If anyone can walk past rotten food in a fridge and continue cooking fresh, you shouldn't be anywhere near food. And then when I hear, 'Oh, I've never seen that before,' then open your fucking eyes. Just show a little bit of passion to why the fuck you're a chef. Do you understand? I'll pay for your flight to fuck off back to Australia.

So where do you get your passion from?

Yeah, I mean, passion got installed very early on in life. Sadly, what do you do at the age of 19? Do you get bitter? No, I just wanted to get even. So in that team-spirited fashion, kitchens function exactly the same way. But Mum always told me to get off my ass and stop whinging about spilt milk, go and look for the next cow. So that's my Scottish background, I think. And if I can't work and continue to be that passionate about what I do, to be honest, I'd rather not do it. 20 years ago, I got dealt a dysfunctional card. My little brother became a heroin addict and my father became an alcoholic. What do I do? Do I sit there and join my little brother, or do I become an alcoholic alongside my father?

No.

I got off my ass, I stopped feeling sorry for myself, and I got on with it. Not on TV. How competitive is— and how fiercely competitive is the chef world? Yeah, the TV part, good question. It's very competitive. The majority of chefs I know can't run a bath, let alone 18 restaurants across the world. And they are always striving to steal recipes or poach your number two or poach your maître d' or poach your customers or do something. So very competitive. We have the Michelin Guide as our sort of standard bearer out there that keeps us all on our toes. Thirdly is taking on competition. Everyone thinks that it's rife and it's difficult, but competition is healthy. Every time a new restaurant opens up, I'll make sure that if it's not me, one of my members of staff from the kitchen and the dining room are there over the competition. There's so much to learn from a bad meal and so much to gain from a good meal. So staying in front of your competition is healthy.

So do you think you're tougher on Hell's Kitchen contestants than MasterChef?

Two completely different competitions. You know, Hell's Kitchen's about professionals, and like I said, even before I started working on television, you know, I'd mastered my craft. You know, I spent 3 years getting my ass kicked in France, and then literally 8 years, 10 years, like reading medicine, studying under some great chefs to really perfect my trade. So then when I got a chance to sort of do my profession on television, it was Kitchen Nightmares that really started first. So that was real because I wanted these businesses to work. MasterChef is completely different. These are amateurs that have full-time jobs as firefighters, school teachers, bank clerks, and so the journey from apron to finale, they finish like professional chefs. So the arc of that incredible monumental journey is so exciting to see. With professional chefs in Hell's Kitchen, etc., I'm not going to tolerate their mistakes because they should know that stuff before they come anywhere near me. So many hours of TV that you're putting out, is there ever a moment where you've thought, oh, I regret that, because you're not sort of carefully thinking through sort of exactly how you're coming across on TV? Do I regret it? I think there's always sort of regrets. What I never do is sit there and ponder as if we've made a mistake. All I want to do is find a solution. I call it as I see it. Sometimes that's incorrect, but at the end of the day, that's what you're going to get because I don't sit there and pretend. So do I sit there and waste time? No, life's too short. I was very fortunate to be taught with some of the best chefs anywhere in the world. And the most important lesson I learned was passing that knowledge on. And I always ask that amazing question: if you're such a hands-on chef, restaurateur, who does the cooking when you're not there? Well, it's the same people when I am there. There's no difference. So I have an unselfish way of teaching people to invest in their palate to get it as strong as mine. I try to say to them, it's lazy to copy. Anybody can copy. So Take 25% of everything you've learned from other chefs and then put yourself on the plate. And over the years of experience, reduce me less and improve yourself. And that's, that's the foundation to becoming a great chef. Now watch very carefully. First off, in order to fillet it properly, you've got to scale it properly, okay? Right, nice sharp knife. Get comfortable with the fish, okay? Tilt the knife. Forward and just let the knife do the work. Don't over-hack the salmon, otherwise you're going to bruise it.

I'm trying to just memorize every little move he's making, and I am just— I'm freaking out.

I'm going to slice through, feel the bone halfway through, and come down. Okay, turn the salmon around, hand on, and just come all the way down. Let The knife, do the work. Down, off. First slice, off.

Gordon starts to work on the salmon like he's cutting through butter. And Susie's next to me having a complete orgasm watching.

Oh, wow. And I'm just thinking, do not be fooled.

It is not that easy.

Trim that tail. So there's my tail. Second portion. Off with the belly. Off with the top. Portion size across the board. Nice and fat.

Look at that.

Beautiful. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Frank Robert Jean-Pierre asked me to. If there's something you'd like me to cover in a future top 10, check out the link in the description and go and cast your vote. I'd also love to know what did you learn from this video? What lesson really hit home the hardest? What are you going to immediately apply somehow to your life or to your business? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Riza Pereira. Thank you so much, Riza, for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, taking that picture, posting it online. I really, really appreciate your support, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed the book. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Peace, much love, I'll see you soon.

Let me get back to your ambitions. You said you never set out to be famous. You are clearly incredibly ambitious. You've got multiple TV projects here and in Europe. You publish cookbooks. You're opening more restaurants and pubs all over the world all the time. You're already wealthy and successful. Do you want an international empire?

I'm exposing talent, really. I am the most unselfish chef anywhere in the world. My team are no longer chefs, they're partners. And unfortunately, I'm always the one that's sort of regarded as spreading himself too thin, but there's 1,500 of us now. There's 1,550 in the team. So if I wasn't propelling talent and exposing talent and pushing them at the forefront, you know, in modern, you know, haute cuisine, then they wouldn't be as talented as they are. So for me, it's a way of not giving back to the industry— I hate that scenario— but in terms of of finding talent, nursing it, and then exposing it.

So what, you want it just as big as it can grow?

There's no script. Everyone says, how do you manage? I don't see it as TV, I see it as work because it's an incredibly fortunate position to be in, but I keep it real. So I look at the success of something like The Voice over the last 2 or 3 years globally, and the reason why that's become a massive hit globally is because the judges can actually turn it on and literally go on the stage and belt out a single and inspire those individuals. MasterChef's exactly the same for me. I don't have any problems looking vulnerable, feeling under pressure, or being in a position where we start from the bottom and we have to climb the ladder. So I'm in it together. So I see that relationship with those contestants as I'm in your boat, you know, I'm in, I'm in your camp, I'm here for you, use me to make you look good. So I don't tiptoe around it in a way that I want to look down the barrel of an autocue and present as a presenter. I'm more on a hands-on approach. One of the big turning points in my career at the age of 33 is when I came back from France, opened up my first restaurant, Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, and my ambition was to go on and win 3 Michelin stars. An actor wants an Oscar and a soccer player wants That's a World Cup medal. From a chef's point of view, there's no higher than 3 stars. So that night when we were inspected by every inspector across the world, and the following day they asked for a meeting to be told that the restaurant Gordon Ramsay in this year's guide will be featured with 3 Michelin stars, it just— I don't know, it made me stop for 5 minutes and think, do you know what, I've made it. But I hadn't, because winning it was one thing, maintaining it is 10 times more difficult. And for 15 years today, still, we remain as London's longest 3-star Michelin. But the biggest kick in the balls for me was the next day, going into my kitchen, serving this beautifully glazed sea bass, a customer asking me for tomato fucking ketchup. Man. It's true. I was pissed off. I'm so fucking— Are you kidding me? I've just won 3 Michelin stars. I just cooked the best sea bass in my entire career. And you ask me for fucking tomato ketchup. Man, get your white sneakers out of my restaurant. Fucking hell. What a donut. So let me give you the one word secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy. The most important word ever. If you had to think of one word That's most important to you, or that sums you up, or that would be kind of like a little beacon.

Hey, Believe Nation! If you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.