From Military to Master Chef, Robert Irvine's Success Story

They pick the partners that interject like a cog in a wheel of everything that we do. It only works having partners if you're willing to listen and willing to give and take. You've got to realize the power of what you have that you're giving to somebody else.

Hey, everybody. Big treat for you today. On the home front, we're hanging out with the one and only Robert Irvine. You know him from his incredible work on shows like Restaurant Impossible, Dinner Impossible, Worst Cooks in America and Operation Restaurant. This guy is a dynamo, traveling most of the year as a tireless supporter of the U.S. navy. And let's not forget his roots in the British Royal Navy and the Falkland Islands. He's turned around countless restaurants, starting with casino restaurants. Working for Donald Trump. He now leads a team of over 5,000 employees across his many companies, including his own brand, Fit Crunch. In this episode, we're going to discuss his turnarounds with Donald Trump. Getting real with family businesses in small restaurants and traveling 150 days a year. Sit back and relax and get ready for some great conversation. I promise you won't be disappointed. Our listeners are entrepreneurial people who are at that crux in life where they're trying to figure out, you know, do they take the leap? Do they, do they leave corporate America? Balancing risk and reward. It's helpful for people to know your journey. Somebody who's been very successful in many things. Would you care to go back a little bit to how you grew up and where you grew up, and maybe we'll walk through a little bit of your history.

I'll try and condense it a little bit, but yes. So I started an interest in food at about 11 years old. I was not a very good kid. Kid at school. I played great sports. I was very athletic. I liked history. I like home economics. I joined a home economics class because there was 30 girls in me. I was the only boy. And I thought, there's a good chance I get a girlfriend. Made my first Keith. Lorraine took it home to. My father was a British army chap and very meat and potatoes. He said, well, it's just crap. Um, and my. My journey started in food. I was a young secret at the age of 11, which is basically like, you'll see scouts here or, or boy Scouts, but we go to naval bases, marine bases, warships, et cetera, et cetera. And I fell in love with the food aspect. So I. My mother and father both worked and I would cook whatever was in the refrigerator or whatever was in the cupboard, bearing in mind that England Is not known for food. It's canned stuff and frozen things and, you know, kind of stuff like that. I always had a meal prepared when my mother and father came home from work. That was the beginning of my love of food. I always was into sports. But when I left, well, I didn't really leave school. I never really went to school. I would actually dress up in a uniform, which was a secondhand. We have ox family. You have goodwill here. My parents were very poor, and that's an understatement. So my mother would go to work and I would double back instead of go to school. Drink my dad's beer. My friends. One day she called the house, caught me and marched me down the recruitment office. And, you know, not being the smartest guy in the pack, five being the lowest on the spectrum, one being the highest for maths and English, I got five, five. But the recruitment officers are great. In the Majesty's Royal Navy, I ain't gonna be a cook. And I said, well, that's great. Cause that's what I wanna be anyway. So off I went, 15 and a half years old, to Emergency's Royal Navy, Royal Marines and started to do what I love, which is food. Eight weeks of training, six weeks of basic training. Had a, you know, march and whatnot and eight weeks of culinary training. And then I was in the Navy. I was hired at it on a warship. I came out the military after a total of about almost, I don't know, with reserves, I would say 16, 18 years. Didn't know what to do. Went to Warsaw in the West Midlands, got a job in a hotel. Saw an advert in a paper shortly after that for cruise lines in America. Applied for that, went up to London, chatted with a few folks, paid some money and found myself on a cruise ship in America as a sous chef. I was. My first contract was six months, my second contract. I became the executive chef at a very young age. And that's kind of what started me off on this. This momentous journey. And I say that with tongue in cheek because after many ships I came off, I went straight to work with Donald. Actually, I went to Jamaica, put two hotels together, and one thing I'd be known for my whole career is fixing things. From a very young age, I put two hotels together, the Renaissance Jamaica grand, and it was called the Hyatt Mallows beach and the. And the Hyatt Malas or something like that. But it would basically put the two together to create the Renaissance Jamaica Grand Hotel, which was a 720 room hotel mainly run by Jamaicans. Funnily enough, even though Renaissance was an international company, I was the only Caucasian they get chef called you and Heinrich, I was the number two guy. Did a year there and then came back to the States and started working with Donald Trump for four years. Took their company from 784 million a year in, in revenue, only 15 in food and beverage, and end up doing my first year, 83 million in food and beverage reporting directly to Donald Trump.

Was that across all of his properties and hotels?

No, it was only one.

It was only one.

It was one to start with.

Okay.

And then they wanted to amalgamate. So I went in to do something that nobody else had ever done in that industry, which is buy futures. So I started buying meat, seafood, you name it, toilet paper. I would, I would buy futures. And as we started to save money, we wanted to amalgamate the services of bakery and gaming and things. So we put a central kitchen together, which I oversaw everything for the four casinos. And it was funny because I was making $33,000 a year and it went from that to 250,000 a year to four point something million a year way back when.

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Because nobody was doing it. And I, I worked 18, I lived on property. I worked 18 hours a day. For the first four months of me being an employee of Donald Trump, I literally walked the hallways from 6pm till 6am in the morning, nobody knowing who I was. I didn't put a jacket on it and nobody knew who I was. I just had an ID card in case the security stopped me. But I literally listened and watched to everything before I went and put a uniform on and then fired 320something people. They called me the Grim Reaper. I was there for about four years and then I did a dinner for Donald Trump and one of his arch nemesis. I would suppose at Caesars. And at the end of that dinner, the, the guy from Caesar slipped me his card and said, come and see me tomorrow and made me a. And I was having, I had the best life ever. I mean I reported directly to the President and to Donald Trump and I wanted a challenge. I, I, I felt I'd achieved what I could achieve there and I jumped ship. But once Donald found out, I called him and said I'm going to leave. I mean 15 minutes to leave the building, literally. Luckily I'm the smart guy working in 4 years know that I packed all my stuff up and left anyway did the same thing. Another casino there, Caesar's. And then I, I try to figure out that why am I making all this money for people, even though I was doing very well and making a lot of money, why am I doing it for them and not doing it for myself? You know, I, and I had no, probably half a million dollars saved up in my life savings. I had a brand new baby at least, who's now 24 and I was living in a hotel. I didn't have, I had a car. But the, have you seen the movie Roadhouse?

I have.

I fired 327 people. That car was, was, I left it there in the same parking spot for two years until I left.

Oh, you didn't want to have, you didn't trust it.

It was, it wasn't even that they wrecked it, they scratched it, tires, windows, you know, whatever. But, but yes, I, I changed the mentality and boarding chefs and, and had 1135 employees to play with and change a culture of 5600 employees. Yes. Yeah. And that's what we did over, over almost a four year period. I had the best time ever because I come from small hotels, from warships, the Navy, the Royal Yard, Britannia, all those kind of things. And here I am running a, you know, a, a multi unit or multifaceted hotel chain and casino. You know, the, the, the arena was 5, 000 people every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, feeding them, you know, and so on and so forth and re, and completely revamped the banquet menu. I mean, you name it, I did it. I worked very hard and got rewards for it. After that I was like, okay, I'm going to do on my own. I started my first company and got hired by other casinos to come in and fix them, which was great. They were paying me a lot more money and I'm like, okay, seems like a good idea. And that's how it basically started.

Fantastic. Did you get your culinary education in the Navy? Is there, did they have a, associated with the culinary school? What was the programming?

Nope, no such thing. Eight weeks of company training, the rest. You're on a warship. I went to the Falklands. Figure it out.

Yeah. If it's not good, you're in trouble.

Well, you know, you're on a warship with 240. And by the way, there was no, there was no females in the British navy on warships or submarines at that time. Never. You know, it was not, it was, it was 240 males. I was responsible for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a group, group of, of 15 people in watches of three. So three people, you know, do eight hours and you have three people, you know, and so on. And it was, it was a great experience. I loved it. I mean I, it was a great. From a person, a young person that was very non rule conforming. I would say it was great for me because I had a very direct discipline. You know, you're in the military, this is what you do to say you do it and they say salute and this is who your boss is and, and you don't talk back. And. But what I found was if I, if I watched and listened and kept my mouth shut and just looked at the systems that were in place, I would ask a lot of questions. Why do we do these things? Not in the middle of them, but at the end. I had what I call a sea daddy who was, he took me under his wing and, and, and he would answer all the questions for me. And I said, well, that's really, that's really stupid way to do it, you know, So I started picking holes in the whole system of the, of our military. Why is that? Why do we do that? That's stupid. And I had plenty of time because we were in the middle of the Forklands, you know, sailing six months in Falklands or, or, you know, wherever. And I started to change the processes of that military. So, so it was a great grounding experience for me.

So bad student questions, everything. Pretty perfect. Entrepreneur. How did you transition to television?

It's interesting because when I came out the navy, there it wasn't like in the United States to transition from the military. And it's, look, here's, you signed off, you're done, get out. You know, you do your three years of reserve and that's it. There's no, there's no love like you get here in the United States. So, um, I never forget it. I was working at Atlantic City. I do television on the weekends. My first TV show was a local television show that I paid to do, actually, I paid for the airtime I got the studio and whatnot, because I was getting 3,000 letters a week on how to fix things. So I thought, oh, I'll just do a TV show. It worked every week. Did that for about a year. And I was doing a couple of food shows. One was in Atlantic City, one was in New Jersey, and Paula Dean was the headliner, and I was kind of the warm up act. But at that point, I had a cheesecake company. So the only reason people stayed, they were waiting for Paula Dean, but I was giving away free cheesecakes. But I stayed on. And one day, Mark Summers from Double Dare, you may know him, he was doing something. I emailed him, I said, oh, come and watch me do this. Open for Paula Dean, and if you think I've got something for tv, then maybe we'll work together. He was already doing Food Network shows at that point. He came, he said, yeah, I think he brought something. I just don't know what it. What it is. I said, well, that's really great. What helpful are you? So he said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to write, you know, write out ideas for shows. But while I was doing that, I was traveling with the US Military to aircraft carriers with the first lady from the White House to all the stuff I do to this day. But I was a guest chef at the White House for, oh, my God, years before I even started television. So I would go with the first lady over there or the president over there, or the, you know, uh, So I wrote 13 episodes based on my real life of what I did. Um, Food Network loved it because it was called Fit for a King was its original name. And I would drive up in my seven series with Fit for a King license plate, and I would get on the screen on the dashboard. The mission of the day, it was like Mission Impossible for one better one.

What was the premise of the show?

The same thing as dinner. Impossible is to this day. No. No knowledge, an amount of people to feed, no food, and a time limit. And by the way, figure it out just like I would do in my normal life. Um, the first one, the first episode, it was a pilot. It was in New Jersey at a wedding. And all I had was three dishwashers to help me roll up Meet the Bride and Groom. No food, no equipment. I had a kitchen, but no equipment in it. And these three. Three kids, young.

How many plates did you have to put out?

270. All right, okay. 170 people, not plates. That was just the people. And they were called the Knowlton. It was at Knowlton Manor. And I remember like, it was just because at the end of it, I was so proud of these kids, although I scolded them the whole way through. Just being Robert, not for tv, because I needed asparagus peeling. They didn't do it properly. I had to do it three times, taking more time and all this other stuff. And at the end of it, I pulled them all together and we were filming this. And I didn't know they were actually filming my end because the show had finished. The dad did dinner and all this stuff. And I took them outside and I said I would hire every one of them people because they were so good and they worked hard, regardless of how much pressure I put them up. And somebody filmed there from through a window. And a couple of the kids started crying and they hugged me and it was very emotional.

And you were still miked up.

It was. It was really interesting because I'm not that emo. Well, I am actually in work. I'm not. So they cut the show. It went to Food Network. They picked it up immediately because started off as a 30 minute show, which is 22 minutes of real time, even though the show was eight hours, it went into this first six episodes and the fans went nuts. Became number one Food Network. It went from 22 minutes to 42 minutes. We did 260 episodes. And that was literally 14 years ago, actually long 15 years ago. And they took a. You know, it finished after about four years and then it was a 13 year hiatus and they brought it back. But that was the basis of television. And then they said to me, after 13 years, after. For four years it was running, what do you want to do next? I said, I just want to help business, you know, and that's. I wrote Restaurant Impossible way before Gordon ever had his F word, F Kitchen, you know, you know, Kitchen Nightmares. And I wrote it and I sent it, mailed it to myself, I mailed it to the Writers Guild and I mailed it to myself. It's still in my box I have at home. Never been opened. Just a proof of concept with a day stamp and all this, right? And that show, Restaurant Impossibles, up until it was just finished now was 14 years. Two restaurants a week for 14 years. Now.

Have you sunset that show?

No, no, no, no, no, no. I've just finished a contract with Food Network. I just signed another big deal with a major network. So there's a lot more coming.

Oh, congratulations. When I watch you deconstruct a restaurant, it's a couple of things are clear to me. Number one, you have a great process to cut through. Bullshit. And it takes a minute, right, because you're walking in, they don't tell you where you're going. They're not. This isn't a setup. You walk in there, you've, you've done this, you served, you've been in difficult situations, you've done this in hotel after hotel. So you walk in there and right off the bat you're just, you're just breaking things apart to figure out what's, what's true and what's not true. Fair?

Absolutely. So there's no knowledge of who they are, what they're into? The TV people, there's 42 of them set up the day before they do all that B roll, they meet the people kind of stuff. Yeah, I have nothing to. I fly in that afternoon, I go to work out the next morning. I get up at 3 o', clock, at 7 o', clock, I walk in just like you see on TV. I don't know them. They meet, they tell me the story. And then from that point forward, I have to ask questions to figure out where they are. The producers. And that's my fault because I never wanted to know anything because I feel if, if I know something, I prejudge them and I never want to prejudge somebody. I want the real truth. And people find that very hard to give. So the reason the show is so successful is because it's real. 48 hours. From minute I get there to the minute I leave. And, you know, I wish I could show you the 48 hours because it's not, you know, you see, you see 42 minutes. 48 hours. What, what you won't see is when somebody told me they got raped or the husband couldn't have sex with him and they cheated on him, or the, all the things that are life cycles. Right. The minute they tell me that, number one, it gets cut from the tape. But number number two, I have the responsibility to help them.

Yes.

Even if it's got nothing to do with the restaurant? Because it does have something to do with the restaurant. If your husband cheats on you, if you, if you, if you got raped, it, it's, it's mental and physically changes your, your relationship with your staff, your husband, wife, et cetera, et cetera. So we never show you anything. That's that. But I have to get the therapist and I have to deal with that because that's what I swore I would do. So once I get in there in the first. The first hour, I can pretty much tell you how much. In the first 10 minutes, I can tell you how much BS you're giving me. And numbers don't lie, right? All I have to do is look at numbers, and I can tell you you're a pastoral entity. You're stealing money, somebody's stealing from you, you're paying too much. You know, all of the things that I do, but not only with restaurant Impossible. I do that with Fortune 500 companies. Now, we can get that later. But it takes me literally, in a Fortune 500 company two days to look at a system or their systems and find out where the problems are, which I do every day of my. My life. But with the restaurant, it takes me like 10 minutes because I'm so used to. Nobody wants to. To shame themselves on national television. But what I try and do is make it easier for them to trust me. We don't tell them what to say. I ask five questions in rapid succession. They tell me the answers, and by the time I finish the fifth question, they're answering the first one. So they compute. It's an interrogation technique used in the military many, many years ago, World War II. But it works. And I, and I mastered it because I can do it with any person, literally. Um, and the show goes on and, and, and what you don't see is, yeah, you'll see the kitchen, you'll see the dirt, you'll see the DA DA. But I'm there for 48 hours. I take a couple of hours off to go to the gym in the morning. Um, but I literally. And I let them sleep a couple of hours because otherwise they're no good to themselves. But I go through step through step to break it down not only on food, cost, labor, marketing and websites and so on and so forth. And it's a real education. It's the only show. And believe me, you can go online and read all the. What we do. Because I invited people and volunteers to help me to see it for real, including celebrities, to see how real it actually is and how I break the people down to build them up. Not to chastise and. And demean them, but to. To. And people say, oh, sometimes you're really assertive and rough. And I'm like, Yes, I book 48 hours to change 16 years of behavior. So I. And I make no apologies.

What's most impressive to me about the show, and I think if you're a casual observer, you could miss it is, it's tough love. But when I see an inflection point in the show, what you say to them tells me that you actually care about these people. Like you have real empathy, it's clear because I mean I've worked with lots of assholes before and if you didn't care, you would say something completely different. But the fact that you actually care about the outcome for these people. And by the way, I've never seen more businesses than restaurants that have family dynamics in them. Like it's when you go across America, small business, painting companies, plumbing, like sometimes they're family businesses but oftentimes they're not. But restaurants always seem to have the kids or a brother in law or somebody's working in there, which complicates things.

And those kids, those kids and those brother in laws don't choose to work there. They do it to support, in my, in my opinion and experience, do it to support the family because they have to, they don't want to work there.

Right.

You know, I had one girl, 16 years old, wants to be 18 years. Sorry. I wanted to be a nurse and she couldn't go to college even though she got great education because she had to help her parents. And I'm like, no, you're going to college. That's it. We're not staying in this restaurant. So yeah, I, I, I think I don't go in and paint around things. If I, when I go in and I design a restaurant on the fly, literally then look at the menu, see what's around, I do my homework as, as we're working and create something that is attainable to the people that I'm working with. So I could go in there and put in a five star menu, right. But if they can't produce it when I leave, it makes no difference. They fail anyway. Right. So I have to really careful of what, what the level of culinary is, what the level of leadership is, what the kitchen equipment is and then how I'm going to design it to be faster moving and great.

Great. Food can be simple.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, so I look at that and even in my own companies again, we'll talk about that in a minute. But I, we are 96% successful in the last three years of this show. Right. So in fact I just had one, call me Liffe as I got off the plane here, Rosie's in Indiana. The car went through, a driver went through the frontage of the. That's the sixth time that's happened to one of my restaurants. Or restaurant possible a car has gone through the front of me, which is kind of. I, I don't know if that's bad luck or good luck.

Well, they are on the street. Yeah, generally.

Well, that's.

Thank you for doing the show. I get a lot out of it and the blocking and tackling of the business is always fascinating to me. But it wouldn't be what it is without the underlying care and empathy that you demonstrate. It's a delicate balance to do and it's exceptionally well done. So I really appreciate you doing that.

Yeah.

So now Today you've got 5,000 employees across a myriad of businesses, billions of dollars in sales. What have you learned about leveraging partnerships? Because we can. Right. I mean, so I was really. I built a business for 25 years, national disaster restoration business, you know, and. But now in my second or third phase of my career, it's all partnerships. Because when you scale, you have to. What have you learned, good and bad, about partnerships as you've built your empire?

Well, I think, number one, I do not personally have any investors in any of my companies. It's all been built from me. And then I hire people that are smarter than me. That's number one. Right. Because if you think you're the smartest guy in the room, there's always somebody going to be smarter. And I, and, and I just watched the show that kind of shows you that I want you to watch it. It's on Netflix right now. It's called Race to the Summit. And about. It's about two, two climbers that, that, that literally run up, you know, everest in like 10 minutes kind of deal. But they're rivalry and it's really important because it kind of goes into to why I'm telling you, at the end of the day, you can be faster at anything you want and it's the end result that matters. And in this case, I'm not going to share what happens in it, but it's really quantitative to what I'm going to tell you. What have I learned about partnerships? Well, first of all, when you start your own business, you think you're great. Right. You think you know everything about business. You think even if you've worked for somebody else, you think nobody's better than me. I'm going to be the guy. Ego is through the roof, you know. You know, nobody can touch me. I do everything perfect. That's number one. Which is all BS as, as you know, but you feel that way. Yeah. And then as you start to go through business and you Start to meet. So most of my business is, is done through meeting people at events. I was in an event last night in Atlanta with a lot of technologists. So we, you mentioned a few business. But we have AI, we have technology, I mean cutting edge technology for restaurants, stores and all these kind of things. Partners, American Airlines, Samsung, Grubber, Cisco, Cisco Computers, Comcast Business, NBC. All these people that I, that I. And it's really interesting because I picked the partners that interject like a cog in a wheel of everything that we do, whether it be television, whether it be business, whether the Internet, Earth and that. Right. But it only works having partners if you're willing to listen and willing to give and take. And there's a book, Stephen Covey, you know, five, seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Families. I, I bought all my People at Taj Mahal, my, my mid level Managers, that book when I first went in there and said read it as a test next week. Right. Because you, there has to be a win win situation for, for both parties. Now what it could be financial, it could be trade offs, it could be whatever, whatever it is decided to do. But you have to be able to listen and give in and then take at the same time. That makes sense.

Yeah.

And it's the listening that tells you when to give and when to take.

Do you have a couple? Yes.

So, yeah, so funny. When I started so 11 years ago, Comcast business, who I've been a partner with for 11 years, multi, multi billion dollar company worldwide now, couldn't figure out how to get into the restaurant space or the business space. And they came to my show, Restaurant Impossible when it first started, a couple years after we started and said, hey look, we just want to look at what you do. So I went in, it took me a year to do a deal with them and it was for big money by the way. You know, it was up there and they wanted me to teach entrepreneurs how to use technology or how to embrace technology instead of a technologist going in there and going blur. And the moment pop business were like, well what do I need that for? Why? So I said, well you got to dumb it down number one. And I started the first year and we started doing dinners for small mom and pop restaurants. I would do a hundred people or seventy people, whatever, and talk about your point of sales and your inventory control and all this kind of stuff to the point that, you know, here we are 11 years later and now I, I'm doing it for the Walmarts of the world, the, the American Airlines and all those big companies. But I had to. I had to, the first couple of years say, yes, yes, yes. Then after the second year, I said, guys, you're missing the boat in, in. In what we're doing with business. If you want to teach business, then we should be going after the Marriotts, the Hiltons, the. The big companies that then can have a training within their companies to teach this as, as technology changes and because young kids, you know what young kids are. I mean, you use these things now is great. Us old people, you know, not smart. But so I, I stood and I said, hey, no, this is what I think you should be doing, which is a complete 180 turn. And they were like, well, no, we don't think. I said, I can prove to you. And I did. I called up a very big CEO and he got on the phone and said, you should be listening to what Robert said, because we need this in this company. And by the way, they did a 3. $3 billion deal with them.

Wow.

Right. And then the other company started, you know, Constantina. So I think you've got to realize at that point, the power, without being egotistical, the power of, of what you have that you're giving to somebody else. Yes, the information that they're missing. And I do that in my daily life every day, not just. I was with Nax, the consumer show yesterday with one of our. Three of our brands, teaching Fortune 500 companies how to do business. Get them in a room. I do it with, with veterans now we have a. We have a program which we teach veterans how to get into business and put them into food trucks and then put them onto bases after in brick and mortar restaurants, but that's another story.

That's fantastic.

So I think, I think that's when, you know, without being. Again, I, I use this without being egotistical because there's four. There's four pinnacles of success. One is empathetic leadership. What does that mean? Know that, that Johnny has an autistic son or daughter, and he had a hard time this morning because she was playing or he was playing up. You know, that Missy, her son is sick, you know, and, and the list goes on. Right? You have to walk in the, the footsteps of those that work with you, because once you understand that, I have never made a schedule for people in my life, never. And if somebody says to me, hey, you know, I need three weeks off because I can use Johnny the autistic. A child is sick. But, yeah, go ahead. You got no worries. Do whatever you need. Because once you have the empathy and once the people understand that you care, they work three times as hard for you. The next thing is trust. Next one is egos losing theirs and yours. And the fourth one, fourth one is inspiration and hope. What do you give? How do you, you read the book. So you know what I'm talking about, how my job is not to be the head of a company. My job is to find my replacement and their job is to find their replacement. And that's how we run our companies, all 11 of them in silos.

Yeah, there's a lot in the book about leadership and your beliefs around it. And, and I've also heard you speak about one hour of exercise a day and time that you, you know what's expected, what you give people, the opportunities, what's expected of them and then what are the deal breakers and things that you. Boundaries and things that you won't tolerate. So you, you clearly have a high performing team, lots of different businesses going on. Can you talk a little bit about your leadership style?

And, and yeah, I'm one of these again, military driven. So most of my leadership qualities come from being in the military, which means there's a, there's always going to be a boss and then under that boss is, you know, a bunch of other people and then a bunch of other people. So it's very layered. I set the expectations and the direction. I don't tell you how to do it because I want you to engage in your brain. So, so I'm very lucid to a point of here's where I want, this is what I want, this is where I want to be. And you need to give me a timeline of how to get there and how you're going to do it. When I look at it, I'll say, okay, so talk to me about it. So every business we acquire or we buy or we go into, because there's not one company that we don't own. Literally from manufacturing buildings, the property, we own everything. We don't. I don't own license my name except to Comcast. That's the only time that nice is my name. Everything else we own, the liquor, the bars, the food, clothing, we own everything. So give me a timeline and a trajectory of where that is. Even new projects today, we just created a new restaurant style for the future, for all models and military. So, um, I allow you the leeway. You know what they say, give enough rope and let him hang himself.

Yeah.

Because I want them to make mistakes. I don't expect them not to make mistakes. And if anybody tells you that they, they're not going to, then they're full of it because they will make mistakes. But you let them make mistakes that don't damage them or you, but teach them. I've got a young 34 year old CEO of 11 companies that does a lot of money. He's doing my tea and coffee on a TV set. It's true story for years. And then one day he said to me, I can help you. And I said, well, I'm not going to pay you. I'll give you 10% of everything you bring in. He made a hundred phone calls every day outside of television to the point that I can't tell you his salary now. But it's ridiculous as a 34 year old. And why? Because he worked hard and so do the rest of the team. So allowing them the flexibility and creativity to be able to get a job done and sourced. And I give you an example, the President of the United States for the last six presidents. Five presidents, six in my term. But we'll call and say, hey, we're going to be somewhere, I need you to be there. Right. I send a team, make a menu, get on the ground, ready to do a dinner. I don't have to worry about that. I just show up that time that or, or you know, our manufacturing protein bars. I am, I am so heavily involved in flavor profiles and drinks and things. Nothing passes me. They bring it to me. I'm like, no, it needs this, this, this, this and this. But I've got guys that have worked with me for 27 years. So if I don't trust them, who do I trust? And then what I've done is bringing people smarter than me, as I said earlier, that, that are heads of companies or presidents, companies that by the way are older than me, that report to a 34 year old. Right, right.

Well, age is not, you know, age is not an indictment on your intelligence or your energy or anything else. I've always said that young people are just as smart as we are that just have less experience.

And I would disagree with that. Okay, they're smart as, but they're smart as us. Absolutely. I would agree with, but they have a different experience. Right. And that's how I think. Because if I don't let this young man talk and give me his side of view, it's like a marriage. It's a one sided marriage, it never works out. And business is like that. If you don't allow your employees to talk, invent or come up with ideas. One of the rules I have is, look, if we have a problem, you can bring me the problem and the solution. I don't tell you how to do it, but you better bring me the solution. I don't set hours of work. I know that if I get a call for from Korea and I'm in Reno, Nevada right now, if I get a call from Korea, you get in call 10 minutes after I get it and you have 10 minutes to return my call because somebody's life somewhere depends on that call. And that, and that's a true statement. I'm not talking about a protein. I'm talking about somebody's life in our military. So I find loyalty is huge to me. And one thing I will not allow in any of my companies is if you have a problem, if I have a problem with you and I, and I back talk you to everybody else and I don't come to you, you're gone. The minute you talk about somebody, you're gone. I don't care how, how powerful or how big a position you have, because that's military feeling. We don't tread on people. If you get, you do your job, you will rise in the ranks regardless if you do your job and you're a good team player. And we look, in 16 years, I've lost three people because I choose to lose them, right? Because they were doing just that. And I will not have anybody infighting or badmouthing somebody else ever.

That's, that's powerful. Robert, when you see an opportunity and you, you connect some dots within your businesses and, and you, you see it clearly, obviously. Do you define the results or do you define the opportunity and what the outcome looks like and then your team designs the results, timelines, goals, numbers, things like that.

I think it's a bit of both. I get given opportunities, I would say that are huge opportunities. I then look at, okay, what is it going to take in realistic to deliver an expectation, right? So if the chairman of Joint Chiefs comes to me and says, hey Robert, I need you to put feeding across the DOD this way, what's the timeline going to be? I'm not going to say, oh, I can do it in a year or 18 months, I have to go away and I really have to give a real expectation and think about what does that mean exactly? What is he asking me to do? And I break it down and I say, look, here's where we are. I sit with a team. Once I once I mentally figured out what the project is and what the expectation because you have to manage expectations, and if you don't, then you'll never achieve your goals of being a successful entrepreneur. Because if you just say to me, oh, I want you to create the iPhone and I need it in three days, and I say yes, stupid me, right? Silly me. Because it's not possible to do that. I don't care how smart you are, but you have to really think in the delivery. Delivery, deliverables. Once I figured out that for me, what it should look like, then I go to the team, I get the team around and say was, okay, here's. Here's the challenge or the opportunity, here's the end result that I look, that I want, forget what they want for a second, what I want it to look like, and this is how I feel we should go about it. What do you think? And then we'll literally sit for sometimes 2, 3, 4 days to ideate the program. And then once we all agree on it, we put it in writing, we send it back, they. They sign off in it, we move forward.

Done is done.

I. I'm very, I'm very. I mean, my team has been with me for a long time. I said, oh, I just told you 27 years. The one guy, everybody else, 16, 17 years. So they know the process and they know that we, we will only deliver something that's excellent. If it's not excellent, I won't do it.

One thing I didn't realize until we had this conversation today, it seems like education is a core fundamental to what you do. You're at the trade show, you're educating, you're teaching people, you're teaching really didn't come through in all my research that loudly, but it's clear to me, speaking with you today, that you look at things, if you can teach people how to do things, it's positions you in a way to be valuable, to be a value add. And also you're teaching them probably in a way to either use or incorporate your products or, or whatever that may be. Can you talk a little bit about that?

What does the Bible say teach? Feed a man a fish. Yeah, great meal. Teach a man to fish, you'll eat for the rest of your time. And the more you educate people, and that's what I. And, and when we don't talk much about what I do with the military because is. Some of it's very secret. And I mean that most sincerely. But what I tried, what I tried to, to do is educate everybody that comes into our circle, not only about our business and about the the depth that we go to, but the depths that they can go to. Because I sometimes think that CEOs get so focused on initiatives, they forget this. Outside of those initiatives, there's a lot of great ideation that will not only build revenue but also build excitement within the team. Because if you do a 9 to 5 job every day and you ha, you, you know, you, you answer a telephone or you, you stand at a reception or you, sorry, you get bored, you get fed up, you get, you get chewing gums, smoking cigarettes. Oh, I hate this place. I hate this place. But the more you challenge people, and I challenge my teams, all of them to learn something new every day, including myself, not just them. You know, and that's how we go into business. I mean we just, we just put technology into fuel pumps that go into gas stations. Well, I'm a chef, I'm also in consumer. But the more you, you step outside of your, your comfort zone and the more you're open minded and the more you meet in circles. And most of my, most of my business dealings is so funny. I do an awful lot of charity with our foundation, Robert Irvine Foundation. I bring a lot of business in. I stand at a bar and I have a tequila or a beer and somebody will say something to me. The next minute I'm on a plane going to meet them in wherever, talking about a product that they make or, or, or a service they want to give and want, want an opinion. You know, just like when you used to clean up houses and restore things, right? You, the experience you get from one job to another and the mistakes you make. Because believe me, I made a million mistakes and then some. You try not to make those same mistakes twice. And you know, okay, look, I turned down, I turned down a deal from a company of $8 million because I didn't agree with the company. And they said, oh, just fudge it. Just, you know, just, just do what, do half of what you want. Like, no, I want, it's not about money for me. It's about the name that I leave behind and the people that have to work that system that I put in because I don't want them talking about me. You know, I can do that on my own. I don't need to bad mouth myself, but I don't want somebody else to if I'm trying to fix a problem.

How do you, to run an organization like you do, you've got to find a way to surround yourself with people that have that growth mindset and that are problem seekers and solvers. One of the things. So anytime that I speak to the troops, and if I reference. Let's say I reference your book in. And I. I'll use it. Or Five Dysfunctions of a Team or. Or Covey or anything like that. So I'll speak to the troops and. And then I'll leave 20 or 30 books behind, and maybe 10 of them will be picked up, or 15 of them will be picked up. But you'll see two or three or four of the people actually take the book, devour it, have it with them, and then apply it. And those are the people that seem to advance because they are intrinsically motivated to solve problems. Regardless. I think there's a connection between. An irrational connection between what people get paid and who they are. And I learned that very early in life because regardless of what I was getting paid, I was on a concrete crew in Chicago. And these guys would hide behind the houses for half the day because. And I would. I would work and they'd say, hey, you're going to get us all in trouble. We've established this pace with which to work. And by you going out there and working harder than us, it's going to show that we're all sandbagging for half the day. And I thought to myself, that is the absolute worst view of life that you could. I want to do my best. I don't care what they're paying me. You know, I want to. I want to work all day or get it done in half the time and go do something else.

And connecting that personality, and there's no difference. As an old said, my mother used to tell me, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Right? Yeah, there is. There is. Look, I remember taking my first job at my executive job at $30,000 because I wanted the experience. And I did the same thing. You, you. So the way in which I hire people, my 60, I have six, zero senior leaders, not executive, six executive 60 leaders. And if I'm going to hire somebody or they're going to hire somebody, each one of those leaders talks to the person for an hour, and then the last person to talk to the person we want to hire is my wife.

Okay?

Because I feel that women have more intuition about people than we do than men do.

Yeah. My wife's always right.

I'm not kidding. Always told me not to hire the three people that I fired. And sure enough, she was right. So I literally said, okay, the last person will be my wife.

Had I listened better, I'd have saved a lot of money. I could tell you that, but we're all the same.

I decided not money, but I would, well, yeah, money, but I would have saved a lot of, a lot of investment in time because I train people, you know, and these three guys went off and started their own company, failed miserably by the way. But because they didn't have the work ethic. Everybody I have in my company, they have work ethic. Not because I, we set the culture. I take care of everybody, but I expect the same of everybody else taking care of everybody else. And if somebody needs something from another company, they don't have to call me. They call the company and they deal with whatever they need. And I think once you set the culture and you hold them accountable, right. Accountability is, is, you know, number one for me. Trust, resiliency and accountability are things that to me are. If you say you're going to do something about his date, don't tell me, oh, I didn't get it done. Worst thing you can do to me. Tell me a date and I'll get it done. I'm gonna be very upset.

How many?

Because that's what I have to live with when I set a date with company. I have to make sure that I can achieve that date.

How many of your 60 leaders are veterans?

Oh, probably 20, 20, 25 of them.

That'S got, they understand the program.

So yeah, I've got, I've got a guy who was, lost his leg in Afghanistan. He runs my clothing company, but also is a, my foundation, Dave Reed. I trust him because I taught him. I, I met him. This is how I met him on a yump, a 54 mile yump in Scotland. I took a 100 wounded, ill and injured veterans from America, met up with 900 wounded in Scotland and marched 54 miles with Ukrainians, with, with Germans, with Italians, all, all folks with post semantic stress and legs blown off and, and, and burns and, and I was walking with him 54 miles. I just love the guy who's five years going to school to be a doctor. And I said, look, just, why don't you just follow us for a year? And within that year I, I hired him. He, he dropped being a doctor to come work with me. Now he runs our clothing, that we do clothing for the military and our foundation. So I think good people, you know, they say, oh, the cream rises to the top. They really do. If you do spend time with them and you get to know their values and morals and their work ethic, you want people as hungry as you to work with you, right? Nobody works for me, we work together. I don't set, I don't set. I set the tone for the culture, but everything else is done by the team itself. And I think that's really important. It's like in a kitchen, you know, the military's got a hierarchy. The kitchen has a hierarchy. As an executive chef, an executive sous chef, sous chefs, cooks, da, da, da. And I think that fits really well with me because of my military background. And that's the people on hire that, that know they're self starters, for want of better words. They, they, they don't need to be told what to do. They already know what to do. They may need directional stuff, but they know what to do in general. You don't, you don't need it. And that's why veterans are such a great asset. And by the way, so are spouses, veteran spouses, because they're hardworking, they know the systems. So. Yeah.

Robert, there's a great statement in the front of your book, and it says for anyone who has ever looked up at the stars in the night sky, thought of the thing they always wanted most, and whispered someday. And that stopped me in my tracks because it's a very visionary statement. And when you look up there today and you look across your empire, you look across the time that you've got left to make, continue to make an impact, what do you see?

It's interesting because I wrote that, that statement, that paragraph, that saying, because I often reflect back, and when I reflect back, it's normally, where have I come from? Which was eating two slices of bread, butter and sugar five days a week. My dad was a soldier, didn't make any money. Not an alcoholic, but close to it. It was spending money on alcohol instead of, you know, for a family. He was a great dad, by the way. But, you know, that was the way life was. And I look now where I am, and that's when I wrote that it was kind of interesting because we all have dreams, we just don't know how to get there. And I was one of them people. I didn't know what. I had no idea. But I followed my gut and here I am. So I reflect mainly. Look, business opportunities come all the time, but what, what is the legacy you leave behind? And that's my biggest thing. I just have my 58th birthday. I've got considerable companies and wealth and I'm, I'm comfortable. What, what is the legacy? And my legacy is my foundation, where I take care of our men and women. Weather Cloth foundation, first responders, firefighters, police, Officers, that's my, you know, that's everything that we do. A portion of everything, including my TV and my salaries and everything goes to, to buy wheelchairs and dogs and the houses, build houses and, and run programs for pts, psychedelic programs and all the things that we do. If you look@robert irvinefoundation.org you'll see it. That's the future. That's, you know, if I saw one of my companies tomorrow, Merry Christmas for the rest of my life and my kid's life and their kids life. But what I do with that money is. And I give such a huge amount of money away. I mean I really do because it makes me feel good. And if you just said to me, you know, 15, when I was 15 years old, oh, by the way, you're going to be worth this much money? You're going to give this much away, I would have laughed at you and probably punched you and thought you were taking the, the mick out of me. But, but I think that's the legacy. Look, we're always going to get business opportunities, but it's. How do we change other people's lives? One day at a time, person at a time. And that starts with the people that you work with and that you care about. I'm not saying it doesn't cost money to help people. It can be owning the car door, helping somebody across the road, listening to somebody hugging somebody if they say it's okay. Buying groceries at a store because just, just because, you know, you see the, the food go through the cash register and people put it to the side. And I see that more and more. So I give you an example of this. So I was just at a big this weekend called music festival called Ocean Calling in Maryland. Ocean City, Maryland. A hundred thousand people. So I'm there with Oar, the band and smaller and all these famous, you know, rich sambor and all these people. And I said, you know, we just finished this cooking demo with the bands and whatnot with a hundred thousand people. I mean just mind blowing. And, and I, I just turned back to Oar and I said, hey, we should just take a walk on the boardwalk. So we did and we just. Worth hundreds. I just, I've never seen so many people in my life in one space. And one of, one of the, the bass player from OIR said we, you know, we should do something really stupid. I said, what? He said, let's go and buy french fries for all these. There's a line and there must have been 300 people in this line and I said, all right, let's go buy French fries. So I went up to the guy. The guy went nuts. I said, hey, here's my credit card. What does it cost for a big bucket french fries, 300 times? He's like, well, they may want drinks. I said, no, I'm just buying French fry. They want drinks in bucket. I went, here, just take. I don't know, it was like 500, 600. I don't even know what it was. I didn't even look at it. And every one of them, people came up to me after, and I just stood there and I was just in the moment. We just did this really crazy thing and then went and bought little stuff, crabs for kids at the next door and taffy, and decided to just hand it out. And the amount of people, as you said, thank you. That's the nicest thing somebody's ever done for me. It was the funnest thing I ever did. So we started doing it every day of the three days. And I think that's. That's the smile on people's faces. And you see the emotion on the TV show when we give back the restaurant and they do great and whatever. You see that emotion, then you see that as simple as it is giving a piece of tapio, French fries, and people. And I got up on a stage that night in front of a hundred thousand people and said, hey. Oh, before that, the night, the morning after, the first couple of nights, I did a. What we call breaking bread for heroes. So I had all the police officers, firefighters, EMTs that were working the event. I made breakfast for them. Out of a hundred thousand people in three days, two incidents happened. They never booked anybody. They just imagine that. And I said, I got up on a stage the next day and I said, a hundred thousand people are here and you're all having a great time. There's no problems with anybody. Wouldn't it be great if we could take this feeling of this, a hundred thousand people out into the real world every day and feel as good as we feel, listen as music and doing food. That's what I want the legacy to be, is how many people's lives have we changed? And again, whether it be a house, whether it be a wheelchair, whether it be a dog, whether it be a hug, whether it be some food, God puts us on this planet. And people get upset when I say that regardless of what religion somebody puts us on this planet to do something good for somebody, and you don't know what that is. And I give you an example Another one. And then I'll, I'll be quiet for a second. But I come out of a pub in Trump Taj Mile, Atlantic City. I've been there with my executive chef, Shane Cash, who's been with me 27 years still to this day. And we'd had a couple of drinks after working all day most of the night. And there was a kid sitting outside the pub on, on the wall. And as, for whatever reason, I just said, where are you staying? What are you doing? And when will you have your last meal? And he said, I have nowhere to stay. I haven't had a meal for 12 hours. Whatever. I said, well, jump in the car. He could have had an ax. He could have had a, you know, Atlantic City. I took him to a diner close to my house and bought him breakfast and talked to him for two hours from the Dominican Republic. I then found a hotel close to my house. I said, hey, I'm going to put you in a hotel for a week, pay for the hotel. Don't ask me why I did this. I had no idea. To this day, I think it was a divine intervention. But anyway, I said, if you need a job, come see me tomorrow at 9 o'. Clock. Well, at 9 o' clock he showed up. So every day he would come to me and say I hired him as a dishwasher. Every time he come today, he would come to me say, this should be especially one of the restaurants. I said, no, here's my books, here's a computer coin. Look, you need more. Whatever. To the point that he was the only one bringing me food and making food and bringing me. And I'm like, this guy is working so hard. So I made him a cook. Then I made him a sous chef. He was a sous chef the whole time I was there. Then I left to open my own companies. He worked on television with me. I brought him on some television shows. He's now the executive chef of Caesars in Atlantic City. Oh, and I, and I, I talked to him every two days. I, I was there when we painted his first apartment, when he moved into his first apartment, plastered the walls and. Yeah, it just. So you asked me a question, I just give you 16 different answers. But, but I think it's people. I think that's what, that's what excites me the most. People.

Everybody or many people see clearly the opportunity to do things like this, but so few act. You could have walked right by that gentleman and he would have taken a completely different path. It couldn't have been possibly as good as the one that you helped them on. Some people just need a hand up in their life. And there's a point that I see in great entrepreneurs lives like yourself where all of your self limiting beliefs just fall away. And I don't know if it's a couple of successes that you have in a row or you get this confidence or you realize that nothing's fatal and the upside is everything and the downside is de minimis. But when you see and now you're on, you're on the road 150 days a year, taking action. And like one great thing after another is just, it's happening and it's a powerful lesson for people.

I'm a mitigating risk type of guy. I'm on the road 345 days a year, 150 just with the military. So I'm on a project with the military right now of helping them modernize their food system. But I think it's mitigated risk. Look, you assess the risk on everything I do because that's. Yes, I've had some wins, I've had some. And I talk about L's and L's and W's in the right.

You just need one W. You just.

Need one W to make it all worthwhile.

That's right.

And no matter how and, and here's the funny thing, Jeff. It doesn't matter how big that win is, as long, as long as it's a win. And the losses, the L's, as I write in the book, the L's don't exceed the W's, you're okay. Right? But, but again, you've gotta be able to learn from your mistakes. And I, look, I am, I am not the, the messiah of business. I am not the. I have made more mistakes than I can care to remember. But those mistakes have been learning opportunities for me of, you know, oh, don't do that again or don't listen to that or don't next time do this right. So I think all entrepreneurs, regardless of what business, the restaurant business, the, the flower business, the fuel business, you really got to understand the business, assess it before you go and get into it. You know, I people all the time, oh, I make the best meatballs, I make the best this. I'm going to open a restaurant and I, and I'm like, I wouldn't do that, you know, because a $1.2 million restaurant is going to give you $90,000 at the end of it and you're going to work 160 hours. Is it worth it? And by the way, you're going to be calling me at three point, you know, $350,000 in debt in six months. And. And by the way, the most I had a restaurant in debt is 1.1 million. And it took them eight years to turn it around. Now they do 3.4 million a year and very successful.

Brilliant.

But, you know, I just think everybody thinks life is easy and you don't have to work at it. Just like you were saying about the concrete workers. Right? Oh, it's just you're making us look bad. Well, guess what? I'm going to make every one of you look bad unless you're going to jump on board just like yourself. I think we owe it to. To families that we employ. And this is. This is something that's really big with me. Being loyal to the people that are loyal to you. Right. Whatever the needs are. Yeah. Right. My job is not to hold you back. My job is to build you up. And if there's an opportunity comes along that is better for you than I can give you at this time, I. I'm the first one to say, get out, go and do it. There's always. The door's always open here whenever you want to come back. And by the way, I've had them do it a thousand times.

Right.

You know, but I encourage that because I want to. I want them to see something different.

Yeah. Companies sometimes fall into the trap of treating loyal people in such a way that they no longer care and they're squandering an asset. When I sold my business after 24 years, I had nine people that have been with me for over 20 years. Many of them have come back. I mean, that they, you know, or I've supported them and going to do something else.

It's.

It's one of the proudest things that I have is the fact that, you know, people started with me right out of school. I grew up here, learned it, and now they're doing great things elsewhere. And it's. You can do well by doing good. You know, it's absolutely doing the people piece.

Well, man, like you saying, you know, with franchises, you got to understand the business before you spend, you know, a million or. Or whatever on a franchise. I mean, a McDonald's franchise is 1.9 million right now. Right. Or Chick Fil A or whatever. You know, you better understand it before you get into it. Yeah, absolutely.

Robert, this has been amazing. I really appreciate what you shared today. I've learned a lot. I know that our listeners have. If you had one sentence, one go to sentence to make an impact in someone's life, what would that be?

It's not a sentence. It's more of a. More of a listen, learn, enjoy and question. That's what I would say. And question at the right time. You know, when somebody says to you to do something in company, don't question them at that point. Do what they ask and then ask, why do we do it that way? You know, if, if you feel there's a better way of doing it, you know, I think the respect then will garner as your company grows with you and you grow with it. But I, I would say, yeah, listen, learn, have fun and ask questions. They're my four, four of guiding principles.

Awesome. Thank you. And if people wanted to keep up with you for all the things that are going on, where would you direct them to look?

I have on Twitter. I, I'm very, I do my own Twitter. You'll know it's me at Robert Irmine. Then we have at Shephermine on Instagram. You go on LinkedIn, you'll see Robert Irma. I mean, there's no way you can't find me.

That's right.

A public book. You'll see where I am. But I would encourage those are listening or watching, just be true to who you are. Don't try and be something you're not. And learn, have fun doing it and take care of other people while you do it.

Awesome. Robert, thanks for being on the home front today.

Appreciate you, Jeff. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. And as always, this podcast is brought to you by Homefront Brands. Building the world's most responsible franchise platform, encouraging entrepreneurs and helping with education of children, and transitioning us veterans into civilian life. This sounds like something you'd like to get involved with. Check us out@homefrontbrands.com today and start your next chapter of greatness. Building your dynasty on the homefront. And I will be here looking for you. Thank you for listening.