How To Avoid Burnout And Maintain High Business Standards - I Love Marketing Episode #226

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hello, this is Joe Polish. Welcome to another genius network interview series. Today I've got my good friend that I've known For many years, Mr. Mark Tarbell, restaurateur and just all around great business guy sitting across from me in my offices in Tempe, Arizona. How you doing, Mark?

Very well, Joe. How are you doing today?

I'm doing awesome. So try not to be too funny. Okay. Because I know you're sort of a funny guy. But this is serious. We're going to talk about some how to become more successful in business. And you've done it in one of the most competitive industries on the planet, which is the restaurant. And not only have you been successful in the restaurant business for what, 20 something years?

Yes, yes. I've had Tarbell's 16 years and I have three others.

Yep.

Okay.

And you also have one of the most high end restaurants in Phoenix. Here in Phoenix, Arizona. You are sort of a famous guy and you've won Iron Chef on television so quickly. What's the Mark Tarbell bio? Who is Mark Tarbell? And I know you're not a guy that typically brags about yourself, but I want you to actually brag about yourself just in the beginning here. So people that are listening, you are.

Okay. Well, I started in the, in the restaurant business as a dishwasher. It's, it's very classic in my day where you started kind of at the bottom and worked your way up. And so what I did is I started as a dishwasher in high school, loved, you know, cooking, loved to eat, really. And that was my main motivation, kind of was looking at the cooks in the kitchen and wanted to be one of them, became one of them, left high school and went right to Amsterdam, Holland, to become an apprentice at a hotel there called the Hotel Sinesta. I there for one year as an apprentice and then went directly from there to Paris to go to culinary school at Ecole Cuisine La Varenne. While I was in Paris at school, I took on a hobby which I became interested in in Amsterdam and that was wine. I went to the Academie du Vin, which was Stevens Prairie School, and began my studies, formal studies in wine there. And so I was doing both, all while I was doing unpaid apprenticeship or what they call stagiers ships in Paris. I worked at Michel pasquet, which was a 1stor restaurant. And I did a little stint at Willy's Wine Bar, which was a whole lot of fun and wanted to Open my own wine bar. Came back from Paris with this excitement and knowledge and having eaten in probably every three star restaurant in France at that time. I was very busy and ambitious, traveling and eating for fun and for my own edification, went all over Europe, you know, Spain and you know, ate in Italy while I was there. It was really a really mind expanding time for being there in my business. When I came back to the States, my desire was open up my own wine bar. So I started a wine bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, right near Harvard. You know, I wanted to gain some experience in that business. It was just starting. That was the number one wine bar in that sort of area. I've been given some good ratings in the Boston Globe. First started as a sous chef and then after I was there a little while, the chef left and I kind of finished out a stint there very briefly as a chef. And I was always a very crazy, crazy worker. I worked also as a night baker for the Clear Flour Bakery, which provided all the rolls for all the top restaurants. So I would kind of, I'd work from, you know, until 11 at night as a chef and then I'd sleep for a couple hours and then get up at 3 and go to work at the bakery. And then at the same time, I was interested in educating. So I taught a class at the University of New Hampshire in French regional wine. I taught at a, at a school which was just above the wine, the wine bar, which was run by the wine shop below us. And I taught some win classes there. Became an early member of School Club, not a club, but an organization that was done at Radcliffe College with Julia Child. And I met her for the first time when I was living in Boston in the early 80s, which became a long, you know, casual but friendly acquaintance over the years. And joined the AIWF at that time. Eventually became the Arizona chairman of that group. Long story short, I wanted to get, you know, my own restaurant. So I, after cooking for a while, I moved. I sent out resumes and asked a couple people if I could work with them and as a assistant manager in restaurants so I could learn the service side of it. Because all I knew about service is frantic, servers coming in, overwhelmed, screaming at, you know, cooks and cooks screaming at them. I had no idea what happened in the front of the restaurant. So I felt that I really needed to know something about it to. In order to get my own restaurant. So anyway, after a search, I was hooked up with Deer Valley Ski Resort in Park City, Utah. And I was an assistant manager for their fine Dining restaurant called Cafe Mariposa, which was really an eye opening experience for me. Very difficult because it was so different than the kitchen. Much less control, much more nuance, you know, much more human interaction. That was, you know, wild. It really was an eye opening experience and a lot of celebrities, a lot of high demand people that went there during the winter. And I also was able to apply my wine knowledge and just help educate the staff there, kind of tweak the wine list and work with the crazy Utah laws and the wine liquor laws in Utah, but ended up having a very successful year there. So much so that the guy that ran it asked me to come down and work for him. He moved down to the Boulder resort in Carefree, Arizona, and I came down to work with him as a beverage manager, which was wild, you know, coming from the kitchen to being a beverage manager, running the bars and the wine program. But I jumped into it full on. And after one year was promoted to be the food and beverage director. After my first year as food and beverage director, I was almost fired for firing too many people. I mean, I was just so European trained and crazy that I. And I was so ambitious that I wanted to make great there, that I, you know, I had a lot of learning to do, which was a very poignant lesson, being a young guy almost getting fired. But they gave me one more year and then I ended up studying, spending eight years total at the Boulders as food and beverage director, growing the business. We had five restaurants. I ran the club of house operations for the private club. They started a bakery there, which I took over, which I made into a wholesale bakery, which we sold to airlines and hotels. And we had a catering business. We used to do dinners in the desert. A lot of special events, a lot of very elaborate special events, very dramatic, sort of theatrical type things, Bringing in camels and monkeys and soothsayers and it was a lot of fun.

Camels and monkeys? Yeah. Maybe come back to that. We'll see.

Yeah, yeah, it was very. We had a lot of great. Because it was such a high end resort, one of the. Considered one of the top in the world and very small, 116 rooms and very, you know, so we got a very interesting elite group of people there. Decided it was a choice then between taking a number two slot at a hotel they had just taken over called the Peaks at Telluride in Telluride, Colorado. Or my choice internally was do I make this moment, you know, at this time in my life to start my dream, my own restaurant. I chose the dream which was 1994. I left the Boulders, took a couple months off, traveled all over the world, did some fun stuff, went to Southeast Asia, climbed the Mount Kinabalu on Borneo, and, you know, just, you know, experience life. I hadn't had a lot of time off. I've been working so much so it was fun.

Did you save your money or were you a trust fund kid?

Oh, no, I saved my money. I mean, I, I spent a lot of money, but I saved enough to do this. And I had borrowed money to open my restaurant, plus what I had saved. So I then went on the search. I promised them that I wouldn't do any search or take anyone from the restaurant or do anything about my restaurant until I left, which I didn't. So after my vacation, I was a bit panicked because I had nothing to do. I had no job to go to for the first time in my life. And I started looking for locations, had one under contract, did the designs at. I decided to wave off on that and then found the location where Tarbell's is currently. That was in. We opened in December 8th of 1994, had a lot of success there. You know, we were very fortunate. We had mentions in the New York Times, several in Wall Street Journal, had a major four page feature in Wine Spectator. You know, we're featured on Food Network a number of times. I did, you know, ready, set, cook with the Food Network in the early days. Five times I did cooking live with Sarah Moulton, you know, Today show, weekend, did, you know, abc. We did a bunch of stuff. And then I did a regular gig for Good Morning Arizona here in Phoenix, Channel 3 for 14 years. So had a regular monthly or a couple times a month gig, you know, cooking on tv, entertaining, really on TV with cooking, and a number of shows. Developed a show with Dweezil Zappa and Lisa Loeb on the Food Network. And then ultimately the last thing I ever did, the most recent thing I've done in the Food Network was competing on Iron Chef America against Cat Cora, which I. Which I won. There have been many other things I've done. You know, a lot of generous awards have been bestowed upon me, best restaurant by Food and Wine magazine, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think my restaurant's total. We've, you know, city best ofs or national nationwide bestows. We're in the 50 or 60 best of. In 15 years we've won that many best ofs, whether it be best bar. I got one of. One of the ones I'm most proud of is Best Restroom with my restaurant, Best Restroom. Yeah. I was like, oh, I'll take it. You know.

You know, they'll make awards for pretty much anything.

Pretty much anything. That's why, that's why I have like 56. That's why I have so many. I'm also a two time inductee into the Arizona Culinary hall of Fame.

Wow.

One of two people that have in the history that have gotten it two times and I was just nominated for a third for our wine program this year. So pretty. You know, I don't think about those things much, but you told me to and that's all I remember. You know, I'm sure there's more.

Well, yeah, there's more. You're in your friends with a lot of well known people from Sandra Day o' Connor to Muhammad Ali to. You've done dinners for the Dalai Lama. You've had a numerous celebrities and sports stars that frequent your restaurant on a regular basis. Because you really are known as having one of the finest restaurants in Arizona and probably in the world for a lot of people's opinions. And this is funny for a guy that can't even make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's true. I will say, all kidding aside, I mean, your restaurant is superb. I've known you for many years. I've been there a bunch of times. I've referred a lot of people to it. And although you know, you know that business inside and out, one of the things I actually want to interview you on is really what you know about business. Because more than anything, you're not just a skilled chef in a restaurant or how do you pronounce? How do you actually say it?

Restaurateur.

Restaurateur. Okay, See, because I'm not obviously a very educated dude, so I can sit.

Here and talk to people like you that you know. Hey, Joe, I can tell you a secret. I couldn't spell it until two years ago, so don't worry about it.

Really.

Okay, good.

That makes me feel less stupid than I actually am. But the fact is you're a great entrepreneur and you've learned a lot of stuff and I wanted to talk to you about that because I know you've never really shared that sort of stuff with people and you've had some situations where you've spoken to people that run restaurants and you've kind of shared with them your strategies. And what I've heard is that they respond very favorably. And that's why I wanted to do a genius network interview with you and, and talk about that so? Yeah, there's a lot more. But tarbells.com is your website. Anytime anyone gets a chance to come down to Phoenix and you want to go to an amazing restaurant, go to Tarbell's. And also in Denver. What are your places in Denver?

I have two organic pizza places, little bistro's called the Oven Pizza avino, and that's theovenpiziavino.com and then I have my newest restaurant is a Tarbell's restaurant. That is we call restaurant away instead of homework. We're away.

Gotcha.

All right.

I like that first question for you about business is what would you consider a successful business owner? What would that look like to you?

Well, what it would look like to me is early on in my life, it was probably all the outer trappings. I remember there was one guy in my little town or the town next to me. My town was 600 people, so that was very little. But there was one guy that in the biggest town next to me, I think it was 10,000 people, had a Mercedes, you know, one of those big old Mercedes. And, you know, he always had the right clothes and, you know, he kind of looked like he had a comfortable life and a nice house and things like that. So my earliest recollection of what looked like success to me was obviously the material success, the outward success. And I still think that that's true as long as those things make you happy and bring you joy. But what it's nuanced into is having some sort of peace, internal happiness and pleasure out of what you do. And in order to do that, you have to have passion for what you do and to be able to direct that passion in a way that people respond to it. I mean, success is clearly measured by, you know, how many people come to you on a daily or weekly or monthly basis and what they're willing to. Their loyalty and commitment and the level of it is, I think, a measure of success in business, really. Continuity, longevity is certainly a measure of it. But, you know, I could go on in that. But we know we're all in business. We know that every day, you know, we're only as good as we are today. I don't care really what business you're in. We say in the restaurant business, you're only as good as your last meal, which is true, but I think it really is in any business, you're only as good as the quality of your last triangle transaction and whether or not you get another one.

Yeah, well, you've been doing this for a long time. In an industry that is just filled with failure and struggle. And it's also business where people. For the upfront cost of starting a restaurant, people can lose not only tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, in some cases millions of dollars. Why do you think there's so many failures in the restaurant business business? Do people think it's easier than it actually is, or what do you think causes it?

Well, the principle reason is a misconception of what the business is. I think the most common thing is, or one of two things. You know, someone has been told all their life that they're a great cook and all their friends really encourage them to open their own restaurant someday, and they may very well be a great cook and a great entertainer at a small and large level at their home. That's one thing. And the other thing is most people get into it. Most investors, most money people, most dreamers get into it because they see how much fun it looks like it is. It's like theater. You know, my job is to create an entertainment experience that will beat all other entertainment experiences. We will beat, you know, our local sports teams. We'll beat, you know, other, you know, ballet, theater, movies, anything, you know, two guys playing catch on their street. Anything that's entertaining to someone is my competition. So if we're successful, it looks like what we're doing is. All I'm doing is going around greeting people, hugging celebrities, you know, going to fancy parties, you know, going to the Oscar parties, which all things that I've done, going to Super Bowls. This. This is what it looks like my life is. And if they were to buy a restaurant or open one, that's what their life would be like. What they don't realize and what I tell people is that's only 3% of my actual life. My actual life is very, very difficult, very grueling, very intense, very minute by minute, very, very tenuous. The existence of a restaurant is very, very tenuous. And to do it for a long period of time is rare. You know, there is a statistic out there that of independently owned restaurants, in the first year, nine out of ten will fail. I don't think that's too far off base. I know it's a much higher success rate for chain restaurants or, you know, like McDonald's type. They just don't fail because they have great systems and great real estate. But independent restaurants are a high failure rate. And then out of that, another nine in 10 will fail in the first three years. And then very few of them, if any, will make it to Five years. The five year mark is if a restaurant can make it past five years and is making money and not just being funded by a wealthy investor, it will probably continue to make it if you keep at it every day. Gotcha.

Well, and I know that a lot of people that are restaurant owners and people in the food business are going to be listening to this interview. However, a lot of my listeners are people that are just entrepreneurs running a whole variety of different businesses, from service businesses to information marketing businesses to, you know, you name it, Internet businesses, etc. And so there's a lot of business lessons that I know that you know, and I'm going to ask you some questions about those things. What are the characteristics and traits necessary in order to succeed in. Let's say first, just the restaurant business in general, because it's an interesting business with a lot of moving parts, with a lot of upfront cost to open up a restaurant. What are the necessary ingredients? The same way that the ingredients needed to make a great meal. What would be the necessary ingredients to have a successful restaurant business?

Well, I think passion is one of the things that is necessary because passion and your drive to do something will push you through the down times, and there are plenty of those in business. You know, if you really have passion and drive and care about what you're doing, then you will weather some of the very difficult storms that are in front of you. The other thing, restaurant businesses are unique because they do take a lot of upfront capital and the risk is very high. And then the other thing that's, you know, I think the, if you have to love the dirty work, and I know that's a. How to make that. How to. What is that specifically in the restaurant business? I'm talking, you know, unplumbing plumbing, toilets, clogged toilets. I'm talking doing dishes when a dishwasher leaves. I mean, I did that last year. I mean, I pulled a ship on the dish machine. Here I am. I should have made it. Yeah, I've cooked for the Dalai Lama, Clint Eastwood, a million other people. But, you know, I have to willingly and happily do that at times. You know, I saw some coffee beans spilled on the floor when I walked in yesterday, took a broom and swept them up and, you know, threw them away because I didn't want them to be tracked on the carpet and ruin.

The carpet, which, you know, the whole.

Which would cost $10,000, you know, to repair. You know, eventually, if you keep letting grime going in your carpet, you. You increase the cost of operations. Yes.

And I would know that from being in the carpet cleaning business. Well, okay, so you're not at all. None of that is. So one of the things you're saying is don't have that stuff be beneath you, right?

You have to love the hard stuff. You have to love the fact that it's a high intense business. There's a lot of perishable items, there's a lot of knowledge required. So the passion for your knowledge in food and wine has to be limitless because you can never in your lifetime, no matter how smart you are, learn everything there is to know about either subject. And then the other thing is, which is really, really doesn't. People don't talk about it much because it isn't. Being a great chef alone cannot make you a great restaurateur, or being a wine guy cannot make you a great wine bar operator. The biggest secret is that we have to love being servants. We are truly paid servants to our customers and we have to take a servant's attitude, a subservient attitude towards them. And some customers can be difficult or they can be frustrated. They can have their own, you know, issues when they're coming in the restaurant. And we have to be there, you know, to accept that and try to turn that around and turn their night around, to create a great experience and have them leaving smiling and not combat them and not feel frustrated or angry that they may be attacking us without meaning to. We really, our position is to deliver in a very quiet and sometimes humorous or sometimes accepting way of what they are, you know, with how they come in and be positive.

What about, do you consider yourself an introvert or extrovert?

Well, I consider myself an introvert. But, you know, most people would argue, I guess because I've done so much in the media and radio, tv, and I write a weekly column for, for the Arizona Republic. You know, I put myself out there a lot. But I think that, bottom line, I think a lot of people that think they're introverts actually behave in an extroverted way.

So that would be me. I do the same thing. So what about mindset wise, you know, what are the necessary mindsets needed in order to not only succeed in the restaurant business, but in any business, in your opinion?

I think you have to be open, you have to be very tough minded. You have to, to be, you know, disciplined. You have to understand your strengths and, you know, either naturally or systematically surround yourself with people that, you know, cover the things that either you do not want to do or you're not good at. Often this happens through failure and happens natural through the evolution of growth. Growth in a business. But I would advise people to recognize that before they open and really, really focus on what they do best and then not sell themselves any other way than what they are. Okay.

You have really set yourself up to service the very high end.

I mean, you.

You are definitely at the highest level of your industry. What have you learned about selling to wealthy people?

Well, I. You know, I. What I've learned is they're, you know, they're people like any other people. I mean, what's great about them, I think, is they have a lot more knowledge and experience. Experience. And they're better traveled than, you know, they've had that privilege and benefit in their life. So in many respects, it's easier for them to get and understand what you're doing. You know, there's that innate knowledge. You're not trying to teach and push through, you know, push through a concept to them. You know, if you have morel mushrooms and you just want to do it simply, you know, with a veal stock reduction, maybe some, you know, shallots and a little bit of puff pastry that you make in house, but it looks very simple. But it isn't simple to make. They get it because they may have had something very similar in their travels. They may have had at least the same kind of composition of integrity and ingredients. And so it's easier to sell those simple but great dishes to them because they get it. And the other thing they're looking for is that instead of flashing a flash presentation, they're looking for real quality flavors and composition. And my restaurant concept is that it is actually appears very simple in every single way, except it's not. You know, our ingredients are the best. We've been doing buying from local farmers since the beginning. We've been doing organic since the beginning. And we are. We are just. My whole goal is to deliver excellence to them without making a big deal out of it, you know, without the fanfare, so that it could be that you become their regular place while they were in town.

Why do you think people keep coming back to your restaurant? Because like we were talking about earlier, before we started recording, it's, you know, there's a newness factor that people get all excited when something's brand new. And here you have Tarbell's as an example, that's been on the corner of 32nd street and Camelback, you know, for six, since 1994. And, you know, which is really funny as an aside, that's right around the time when I first started Piranha Marketing, my marketing company. You know, it was like at the end of 1994 is when I started that company. So it's interesting, I never even realized that as many years as me and you have known each other, that it was right around the exact same time both of us started.

We were both crazy in the same year. Exactly, exactly.

There's something about that year, 1994. But you've been there for a long time and you know, people keep coming back. I mean, what's the secret sauce?

The secret sauce is, it's simple. Within humans, everyone wants to be. First of all, forget about that. We serve food and wine. It has nothing to do with that. Anyone can get any food and wine anywhere they want. It's, there is, it's a commodity. There's, it's not even that unique. I mean there's a restaurant on every corner. What we, what we believe and what we sell is, is service in a simple word. But you know, hospital hospitality is really what it is, which is a little more robust word because we're truly hospitable. We take it a little further recognition of all of their needs, not just them as people, but you know, we consider ourselves and strive to be the best place to be a regular. And once you commit to that and you deliver that, it's hard to break those bonds. Yes, all of our customers go try all the new restaurants and we encourage it. Of course there are 365 nights and in a year we only need 24 of them. We'd love to have 48 of them, but you know, we strive for 48 once a week. But you know, and we do get that a lot. But you know, we'll, we'll concede that there are other nights. And that's another reality of the restaurant business. People think they're competing for all the same business. They're not. There's so many nights of the year. But once they go to a new restaurant, they may end up liking it. And we hope they do actually. And we hope it's close to our restaurant, like it so they don't have to drive too far from their home restaurant. But we want to be their home restaurant and we want to be their go to their default, their everyday, their no brainer, you know, the one where they know that they're going to get everything they need and to be comfort. They're comforted and not have to think at all about what they're doing. Their drink gets delivered exactly like they want it. They set exactly where they want to. If they want, they get the server, they want whatever it is they want, they get it without having to ask for it. And that's. That takes. You earn that. You have to earn that over time, and you have to earn that business over time.

Well, you have very high standards. I mean, it's clear when someone goes into your restaurant, the people are extremely pleasant, very service oriented. Like you mentioned, you've done a great job of not only hiring good people, but obviously, I guess, having the systems in place that allow them to shine because the service is world class. And so I want to talk to you about standards because one thing I'd like to have everyone take away from listening to this interview with you is to understand that I'm talking to a guy that has really high standards and demands it. Not demands it to be a jerk, but demands it because you do have the servant mentality. People are here to have an experience and darn it, we're going to deliver it to them. So talk about standards. How have you developed your standards? Standards? Because you really could have slacked in a lot of ways, but you really don't. And when you went on Iron Chef, I mean, you were committed to winning. You're a guy that wants to win. You want the best. Talk about that.

Well, I think that the hard part about being an owner or a boss or anything is that you're the one that always has to be the bad guy, the standard holder. And you have to uphold them yourself, personally. And you have to demonstrate your standards and actually demonstrate them every day stronger and, and more powerfully than everybody else. And you have to be the person that points it out when they're not being upheld. And the human, the natural human tendency, especially when you're tired, and it's easy to get tired in the restaurant business is to just kind of ignore something, let something go, not really pay attention to it, not harp on it, not, you know, point it out, not try to build another training system around, you know, creating it. My whole thing is always about communicating and training. And if there's something going wrong, I look back and say, why didn't we train this person well enough? What happened in the communication and training where it didn't work? Because I don't like to think about stuff, I don't want to think about anything. I don't want to do anything any day. So I always try to build systems around problems. And when I see a continuing problem or a problem that happens more than once, I Look at problems in our training and communication. So that's what I do. But upholding the standards, you know, I just. The older I get, the less I care about really how people feel about that. Because I know that I'm protecting them and I'm protecting the business, and that's my job. If a server who's new to us, has only worked with us, say four years, doesn't quite get how crazy we are about this stuff, it doesn't bother me anymore. I don't have to feel compassion or sympathy for them. I just know that they'll get it. Because I know that if we uphold our standards, we will be an earnings place for them and we will be a sustainable business for all that are there. And we will be able to continue to operate at high levels and pay at high levels and, you know, all of that. And that's more important. The whole is more important than the individual. So it's very much part of what we do.

Great. Let me ask you about hiring people. What is the process? I mean, in your opinion, how contingent upon the success of. Of delivering a great experience in your restaurant is the person versus the system and the training process they go through?

I mean, well, the person is number one always. It's always we're people. We're a people business. And we can't deny that our people make the difference. But great people with no direction or bad direction are just horrible. Their service is going to be horrible. They may be wonderful as human beings, but given put in the wrong environment, they're not going to perform well. So it's almost like what's more important, the chicken or the egg? Yeah, I do think that you know the chicken, right?

No, I'm kidding.

Well, I don't know. The systems probably have to, you know, have to systems are incredibly important and training systems. We asked about hiring, which is a good one in our business. You know, I'm like, everyone's adverse to pain. And I don't know if I'm sure people that are listening have all had to terminate or dismiss or invite someone onward or fire someone, whatever words you use in your business. But it's very painful. There's never a time when that's not. That becomes a wonderful experience. And the less you do it, the better. So I don't like to have pain or adversity or turmoil or crisis. So what we decided is that the firing people, if we end, if we can end that, our lives would be better. How do we end that? We just, we spend more energy and time and effort on our hiring practices. We make that the difficult part. We make it really hard for people to enter in. And not because we're looking for, you know, the top of the top or the best of the best. We're looking for someone who has the right, what we call cultural fit. It's often used in business, but it means something to. If it means something to us, it means something to them. But we're looking for the right relationship and we consider it a relationship. So, you know, we're not like dating.com but we do have a system of questions and processes that are we force them to look critically at us and we force ourselves to look critically at them. And if we meet at the end of this with an agreement that we think we should try it for a week, we do, and then we try it for a week. And if we try it for a week and it works, we try it for 90 days. If it works, then typically after 90 days, we've made a decision to either part ways either together or one of us or the other, or we've made a decision to continue to work together. And to give you an idea of, I think, how powerful this is and there are systems around it and techniques and things, is that we're in the restaurant business where turnover is pretty much every, for servers about every three to four months. So you have massive amounts of turnover in the serving positions. And we have servers that are celebrating their 15th year with us or their 12th year with us, their 13th year, their 9th year. Our new, our newest server until last, until three weeks ago, was. Had been there four and a half years and left to go be a fireman in New York City. So we now have a new server who's been with us a month. But our newest server, up till, you know, then the gap between that person and the next one is seven years. So we really are in the business of keeping people, but keeping the best people. And there's another whole complexity that comes with having long term employees because, you know, then it becomes like family. And there's another whole motivational issue, but we've addressed that as well.

Yeah, let me ask you about that because a lot of people hire friends and family. And what have you learned about that? Pros and cons.

I think that this may be shocking news and probably not to most. You cannot be friends friends with people that you work with, whether they work for you or you work for them. The friendship is based on an understanding that neither person needs something from the other, that they have common shared interests. And that there's no power struggle. You can't have a power imbalance in a friendship and have it be successful. If you see marriages that have a power imbalances, they tend to have strife and conflict. It's the same in a working relationship. But beyond that, it's absolutely a cancer of a business. If you have managers being friendly or thinking they have a friend in the staff, it's a very dynamic, debilitating problem. And I'll explain just one example. You have a manager who's friendly with a server, and for all the right reasons, they get along, they love each other, they cycle together. But all of a sudden you have a person that wasn't hired or paid to be your manager, to de facto be a manager of all the servers just because of their relationship. There's an unspoken, oh, we have to be careful around this person. Or this person has a bigger voice than the rest of them, or. And sometimes they take advantage of. Oftentimes they do. Anyone has power, especially if it hasn't earned, they take advantage of it. And so you create this whole other language and universe that is not strictly controlled by your system. And it's very, very negative. And it never works out well, and it always ends up in disaster. I've never seen it work out well in anything. You know, that's why, you know, dating staff and all this other stuff, it just doesn't work. We even. We can't tell people not to, but we don't like staff to date each other because, you know, it can be complicated and often imagine. So, yeah, I don't know what the question was, but you can have. So don't hire family, which is another layer of complexity. Family has another layer of emotional complexity to it. Bad idea. You shouldn't have family as investors. You shouldn't have family as owners, partners. These are what most people don't realize about the restaurant business is they fail most often from the inside out. What I mean is it often happens between the partnerships. It often happens with the investors. It often happens with a poorly structured deal from the beginning, meaning the real estate deal is not good. Most of restaurants fail not because they don't serve good food and have good service. They fail because they weren't built right and they weren't entered into it with the right frame of mind or the right partnership or the right agreements or the right understanding or the right, you know, real estate. That's how they feel.

So let me ask you about. You made the comment about not being friends with. Are you suggesting that I Mean, how does one interact and elaborate on not be friends with your. With your employees? Because I've, you know, I mean, I've seen you with your staff. It seems to you that you have extraordinary relationships with them.

Yes, I think that, you know, when people are confusing being friendly and having a friendly relationship, you know, or a very positive, open, transparent, you know, beneficial and positive relationship with a staff member is not your friend. I'm not saying don't be friendly to them, don't be nice to them, don't engage them, don't learn more about them, don't, you know, learn who, but their family, you know, their family. I mean, I don't, I don't dive into it. That that has to come voluntarily from the staff. I have people that have worked for me a long time that I really don't know very much about. Wow. Never been to the house? Well, I think it's healthy. You know, it, you know, I, you know, if it turns up that I end up at their house for some, you know, plausible, reasonable reason, then I would do it, but I wouldn't invite myself to do it. I wouldn't open myself up or ask to do it. But, you know, I guess what I want to get back to is the crux of it is I think I know a lot about my staff and I really care about them deeply. But I understand because of the power imbalance that they're not going to be my friend now if they leave and that we develop a friend because of our familiarity with each other in our intimacy. We develop a friendship outside of that. I would welcome it. Absolutely. Because then there is no. If you can fire someone, you can't be their friend. I mean, it's just simple. It's always there. It's. You're always going to get sucked up to and you're always going to have that. That power over them. So the person is going to. There's going to be a level of sucking up and there's going to be a level of, I can fire you if I don't like you anymore as my friend. You know, I hate to say it, but that's just the way it is.

You know, it's. It's interesting to hear that sort of perspective on it because I've interviewed a lot of people and I hear different sort of opinions on that. And in my experience, when I see companies of all types that have the biggest problems, they're usually, when it comes to employees, it's friends, family, people, they go to church with anyone, they have a Personal relationship with. Not that I don't have many companies that have had successful family businesses. And heck, I even, you know, newspaper article that I wrote was about, you know, having successful family businesses several years ago. Because in the industry that I'm in, there's a lot of companies that have their family. However, the. For everyone that's successful, there's a hundred that just are littered with, you know, internal problems due to the personal relationship. So. And you've been doing this for a long time. And so it's not like this is your theory. This is something that you've experienced firsthand. And so it's good to hear that and keep an arm's length sort of relationship. So let's just talk about the difficult chore of firing people. How do you, when do you make the decision to fire some people? Say, you know, the moment you start thinking that you should let someone go, that's probably the time to do it. I mean, how do you look at. When do you have some. Someone move on?

It's a very good question and it's one that, you know, of course, I've given a lot of thought to. And our philosophy is very simple. If, you know, it's an unsuccessful dismissal, if it's a surprise to the person you're dismissing, and if it's uncomfortable, I mean, it's always uncomfortable, but. So let's back up from there. What has to happen to make it, you know, a relatively comfortable situation where there's an understanding and agreement to leave without negative emotions come. Having come pouring out. You know, I think what has to happen is there has to be a lot of communication. See, by law, we're sort of mandated to give people a lot of, you know, coaching and counseling. And then, you know, 1, 2, 3. Right. Written right up. So written documentation, clearly explaining your position, where they're, where they need work, what they did wrong and how they're going to fix it and what's going to happen if they don't. You know, there is a lot we, you know, it's basically 1, 2, 3. We have this philosophy that because we like to grow and develop and mold people, we like to hire the right people. So we stay below that first write up. Because once you do the first written documentation of an employee who's having trouble understanding what you need, there has to be a big failure in the coaching, training and counseling part. So we like to stay in that world a lot where we're coaching and counseling and doing a lot of communication when it's clear to us that that's not working. Then we go to the. Just in order to put a fine point on it and to bring it to a new level of clarity and also intensity, we do take it to a written documentation. And if that doesn't work, you know, in a time frame which we think is reasonable, and if it isn't accepted in the way we think, you know, it's going to work for us, then we just move right to the second, you know, right when we say we do. And then after the second, you usually means it may end up in suspension or dismissal. And we just review all those things very carefully every time. But we're very, very open about our process. We don't jump people. We don't sneak it up on people. It's in writing. They sign it. They understand where we're going if things don't improve. And again, it's a painful process, but our whole goal is we're waiting for that one moment where the epiphany that the switch is clicked and the person goes, I get it. I could lose my position here. And these people care enough about me to really explain what it is they want me to do and how to correct, you know, what I'm doing wrong, what they want me to do and how to correct it. And when, I mean, how much more could someone. How much more could someone do for a person? And then ultimately it just. It could be just the wrong fit. You know, I feel like when you're dismissing people, you're setting them free because that person is going to. Going to be great for somebody else. There's going to be a right cultural fit. There's going to be a right, you know, skill level fit. There's going to be a right fit. You know, there's a lot of places to work, thousands of restaurants, jobs, and in every town, hundreds of thousands. Probably we're not the only place, and we're not. Our place isn't right for everybody. We know that. So we're just trying to put them in the right place and get us, you know, get people for us who are right for us, you know, and.

That'S a good thing for people to hear too, because I certainly, certainly have experienced it. And most people I know, and I'm going to ask you about the same thing, is what have you found to be one of the most worst consequences of keeping someone on when you knew you needed to fire them or they needed to really be put into another environment?

It never goes well. If you keep someone on that is not a good fit for you and everyone, they know it. Your staff knows it, everybody knows it. It can destroy your culture, it can destroy your morale, it can destroy your productivity or your quality of your delivering, your experience. It's very, very negative. And it doesn't help anyone. You're not helping the person that you're not setting free by keeping them around. You're just avoiding a difficult conversation. And that simply is unacceptable for a leader or a manager to do. It is never easy to have a difficult conversation, but it's worse not to have it. You know, the unintended consequences of, of avoiding that conversation, or you'll have 50 more like it because your place just falls apart. And it takes a while to recover from that and bounce back from it.

Well, let's talk about leadership then.

I mean.

You certainly have led a great team of people for many years. What are some characteristics and qualities of great leaders?

Well, I think great leaders, you know, that I've been around, the ones that I've witnessed and seen are, you know, just people that have a very, very driven, very passionate, have a clear, you know, vision about what they want. They don't, you know, veer from it. And I think that great leaders have to have, have be very attached to simple, basic concepts of what it means to them to be great. You know, your business can change and evolve and what you deliver can change and evolve. But the core of what you do and how you do it has to be consistent. You can't be changing how you're doing things. But I will say that, you know, being strong, no matter what you are, is really important. You know, I think that what I've found is that I know my way is not the best way because there are a lot of successful restaurants out there. But I know my way is my way. And, you know, we will find the people that think like us to work for us. You know, that. That we know. And the people that don't like our way will not work for us. So, you know, it's very important to be strong in your vision and strong in your leadership because it does attract and it's kind of like a magnet to people who have the same kind of passion and the same kind of vision. And that is hard. You know, it's. Being a leader is very lonely and very challenging.

Well, you know, people listening, the entrepreneurs out there, they don't have a boss. They listen to things like this because they are trying to learn something. They're wanting to get insight, perspectives, strategies, solutions, suggestions, results, etc. Etc. There's a Variety of reasons why people continue their education. How do you learn? How do you become better? I mean, when you're the top in your game, you know, in your industry, you're. You would absolutely be considered one of.

The best in the world.

However, you know, knowing you for all these years, you're an avid reader, you're learning, you're inquisitive, you hang out with other people, you look for people that are smarter than you in certain areas. You're coachable. How, how do you learn?

Well, I learned what I. What I. How I learn is just what you said. I talk to a lot of people. I listen really more than anything. I'm really listening and asking questions. And I can learn about business from a variety of people. I mean, I've spent time with people that own multiple McDonald's businesses and learned a tremendous amount for them about systems of the best systems in the world. They're not even restaurants, they're systems, but they're amazing, right? I've learned from people that are in manufacturing computers. I really try to absorb it. I have a great passion for it, as you say. I read one of the things that I do know that's kind of coming to me is I think we all know what the right thing for us to do is. If we were really to listen to our inner self and we were listening to ourselves and letting ourselves guide ourselves and teach ourselves and show ourselves the next step, we all have it in us. But the way to get that out, I found, is you really having no boss, you really do need to go to outside sources to be able to basically reconnect or hear that again from someone else or hear parts of it again from someone else. So I'm a big believer in hearing speakers speak, you know, who are motivational and have experience in business. I'm a big believer in reading books and trying to glean from it what is adapt. What I can adapt to my business. Not all of it is. I think if anyone in business is looking for that one answer, that one thing that's going to make them rich and successful, they'll never find it. You can read a million motivational books. What you have to understand is there's something in every one of them that will speak to you and your business, and you need to do it. The hard part is, for me, and I think for many other people, is to apply that and apply it immediately and effectively and consistently. When you receive something that makes sense to you, you need to apply it. And when you apply it and it doesn't work for your culture or team to take it away.

Right.

You know, it's. It's a constant pushing. I think leaders push. I know that my staff is, you know, when they hear that I'm going to go listen to another, read another book or hear another speaker, they are just, like, freaked out because they know I'm going to come back, I'm going to have this new idea, and I'm going to implement it. And I've been more nuanced about that in my. As I, you know, gracefully go through the years, but now I look at my whole picture and try to find a better way to implement it. If it is truly something that would work. Or sometimes I'll talk to about it, talk to my staff about it, listen to what they have to say, and then tell them to do it anyway. That's great. That's great.

So in the process of all of the moving parts that you have in a restaurant, and, I mean, they're, you know, from an outsider's perspective and also a guy that, fortunately for what I do for a living, I get an insider's look backstage in a lot of different businesses. There's a lot of stuff going on in a business like yours. Constant pressure, constant distractions. How have you learned to not only manage your time and focus on what the essential stuff is, but you also are a guy that most restaurant owners are not. Like, you're not in the restaurant every day. I mean, you take off, you do a lot of stuff. I mean, even competing on Iron Chef, you still have these restaurants that need to run, so you're able to really step out. You're not a slave to the cooking of the food every day. Not that you won't step in there. Like you said earlier, you'll clean up messes. You'll wash dishes when you need to do it. But what have you learned about how to manage your time with all of the stuff going on?

Well, you have to come to the realization that. That you can be good at almost everything if you want to work 17 hours a day. But then you have to realize that what is, you know, you're actually. There are two things I could go a lot of ways with this, but I think it's very important. I've learned. It's very important for me and my businesses to have restorative time, whatever that means to me. You know, for many years, I was like to go meet famous people, go backstage at every concert and, you know, go to the Oscar parties and, you know, do fabulous. What we consider Fabulous things, you know, like very. Things you can brag about, things you can tell your kids, things you can tell your mother. You know, I would do that. I was probably addicted to it. And I had that opportunity. I don't know how it came to me, but it happened. And so I did a lot of that stuff. And then I stopped doing that for a while. And my business, they were going crazy because I was around too much, because I'm way too high energy. And I think way, you know, I think about a million things, and I, you know, end up just being disruptive, actually. So what I learned to do is there's a certain rhythm to it. I can go in and come up with a lot of great new ideas and innovation and energy. But I need to go away for a while, you know, for people to actually assimilate that. So what it has manifested in is that I do like to go out and get knowledge. I do like to go to conferences and things like that. But I also like to do sports and, you know, travel and things like that. All the while I am working. What I always felt guilty about is I'm not working. I don't deserve this. It's not right for me. But the bottom line is my mind never stops working, and I never stop looking for inspiration and ideas. And frankly, I'm just doing it in a different location. And sometimes, physically, I won't leave. I'll be in a ski resort and I won't leave for five hours because I'm working, because I'm excited about something, you know. So I guess as a leader and entrepreneur, you don't stop working. You're just doing it in a different location, or you happen to be skiing while you're working, or you happen to be out eating and drinking at a fabulous restaurant in New York while you're working. But don't worry about that. You need to give your staff time, learn the rhythm for them to accept and assimilate what you do. The other thing is when you do everyone's job for them there, you find this really negative energy happen in your business. You really. And I. Because I could do stuff. I could do everything I felt, or at least I tried to, and I was doing everything. And then I realized that these people aren't growing. You know, they're like, what am I doing here? And they begin to behave like they really don't have much going on. And they. It really frustrated me more. And they're like. I'm like, why don't you just do this? Because I'm doing it. Why would anyone, why would anyone do something if someone else could do it for him, is going to do it for him, who is their boss? It's like, go for it, dude. I'm out. So I just stopped. Literally I would just stop doing stuff and then leave that, what I call that space. There's always this space between stopping doing something for someone and then having that void filled. But I became comfortable with the failures and the dip in standards that would happen between me stopping doing something and someone else taking up the charge. And I now like look for those opportunities and I will step away and leave the void and wait for it to be filled. Wow, that's great.

I interviewed a guy many years ago about hiring people and he had this funny line where he said, you don't buy a dog and then bark for it.

That's a good one.

Yeah, let the dog do what the dog is. And that's not as I'm referring to employees as dogs. That's the point is you do not. Our friend Dan Sullivan that we went to Chicago to meet Bill Clinton is when you met him for the first time. And yeah, that's a sleazy little way of name dropping there. But he says that you never really know how good your team or your staff is until you leave and let them do their job and let them work. So when is the wrong times to actually leave? Because there are some people that don't quite have the people up to snuff and really they are not, they've not been given enough direction to really do without the owner. And then the owner or you know, whoever the person is gets very frustrated with the people. What's the fine line?

The fine line is between delegating and dumping is what you're calling it. Delegating, you know, is probably a nice way of putting that. You really need to give people clear direction. You need to make sure they're trained and have the skills and tools that they need to do it. And this takes work. And this is where me as a crazy, you know, ADD leader, I don't like to do it, but I do it because I'm more self preservation minded at this time than I used to be. So I'll go through the work to make sure that they're well trained and they have a clear direction and they understand what I'm looking for, an outcome and they have all the tools that they need and you know, everything's pretty well explained to them without doing it for forum. And then that's when it's time to go away. And I like to leave with about 80% of that complete and let them figure out, you know, you need to let people own and take charge and create their own sort of answer to some of the questions. And sometimes I'll leave with really good people that I've had around a while. I'll leave them with really a framework and, or an outcome that I'm looking for and just say it's yours now and kind of give them the end result that you're looking for and just let them do that. The rest. And I think that it just depends on who it is and what, where they are in your company and how much, how many, how much they've developed with you, how your rhythm of working with them, how mature that is. So, you know, but it's, you can't. If you just walk away from something because you become so exhausted, burnt out and tired, it will fail and you will be even more frustrated and the people that are will give you their resignation when you come back because they'll feel like you, you let them down and, and you abandoned them and you did. So, you know, no one said it would be easy, but you know, it is important to work towards a place where you can get away easily and give someone an outcome you're looking for and then walk away. That's what I strive for. I want just to give a bunch of outcomes once a year and then walk away.

Gotcha. Okay, well, you mentioned restorative time. And if there's any industry where I see a lot of burnt out into individuals, it's definitely in the restaurant business. And so what are some of the danger signs that people that are listening here that doesn't matter if they're in the restaurant business or not, that they're burned out or they're going down a path. And what have you learned about danger signs and how to avoid them?

Well, burnout. I've been there a number of times. I used to be proud to be able to work 14 hours a day for 45 days straight and take a day off and get up, you know, that following day and just go at it again. I, you know, I would. My goal was to just crush the competition and crush my employees and crush my managers. And you know, and I was blessed with that energy. You know, not everyone has it, but I realized like, what am I winning? You know, why am I trying to crush my employees? Yeah. Crush my competition.

And when you say crush them, you mean just outperform.

Outperform them? Yeah, I just meant you know, work harder, faster, smarter, you know, but I'm like, why am I competing with my staff? They're. They're on my side, presumably, and most of them weren't. I learned because I was trying to crush them. So I had to change my philosophy a lot, and it helped my life a lot. But getting burnout can manifest on, you know, health issues, of course, Bad eating, you know, starting to drink more, you know, if you're. If you like to consume alcohol or if you can, you know, you just. You're eating poorly, you're eating out of stress, you're stress eating. You're eating salty, salty, crunchy, if that's your thing, or sweet, if that's your thing. There's a lot of indicators, and then there's, you know, flash anger. You know, patience is really thin. Productivity goes down. You know, your productivity of your team goes down, your numbers start failing. You know, your actually financial performance starts failing. There's like a million barometers of burnout, and they all can happen simultaneously or slowly in sequence. But you have to really just. There's only one person that can monitor it. But if you find yourself saying, you know, I can go and just. I can. I can take. Push my vacation or time off until next week. I need to get these five more things done, and I'll be fine. If you find yourself saying that or everything will be okay if I do this, you're wrong. Everything will be okay. If you are making excuses for not taking a day off, you're wrong. You know, and. And believe me when I tell you there are a million excuses not to take a day off in the restaurant business. It's open seven days a week, 365 days a year. There is, you know, there's only one reason why you take a day off. Well, two, for your own health and for the health of your business. And those are the two right reasons. There are a million reasons not to, and they're all right, too, but they're wrong.

I love it. I love it. That was great for the health of yourself and the health of your business. You know, people really need to take to heart what you just said there. And, you know, one thing I'll say is, and we'll wrap up here in a few minutes. You've always struck me as a guy that takes responsibility. I don't. When something goes wrong with your team, unless it's clearly someone that is, you know, acting out of integrity or whatever, you take personal responsibility for what happens in your life. And I think that's One of your biggest attributes is you just take responsibility. And you're a guy that when you have things that have been very frustrating situations and you just, you know, I can just kind of tell when people internally want to scream, you know, you're not a guy. That's a complainer. You're a creator, not a complainer. Talk about personal responsibility and the importance and what it plays for what you've built with your. With your businesses.

Well, personal responsibility in business, as an entrepreneur, you know, it becomes this tagline. You see it on slogans in various different ways on board rooms, and, you know, becomes this cliche thing. But if you've been in business long enough, you realize, no matter what, no matter who did it and what, it is your responsibility, you know, ultimately, and. And it's not fake. And the reason why the power is taken out of it and people can. May argue it or may defuse responsibility and is one they're afraid of getting sued and being liable, which I think is a terrible, you know, thing that happens in this world. Because accountability and responsibility and taking it is one of the most powerful things you can do as a leader. It's also the most truthful thing you can do. You have to be louder and bigger in taking the blame for what has happened in your businesses. I have three restaurants in Colorado. I don't visit them. I love them. I don't visit them as often as I'd like. I'm maybe there once a month for a couple days now. That leaves 28 or 29 other days where things can go horribly wrong and a customer can be upset. I will call them or write them myself and apologize. I mean, I know I wasn't even in the state, you know, I wasn't even remotely close, but I put the systems in place. I put the hiring systems in place. I hired the managers. I had the managers trained in the system. Somewhere the system failed, which I designed and I control, and it is my responsibility, and it is my fault. And, you know, there's a part of everyone that wants to kind of go, well, you know, I apologize for my manager's behavior. You know, we'll look at our training well, and then everyone that hears that it's all BS because it's not true. It is. My fault is my business, and everyone sees it that way, you know, and I put myself out there as that. You know, I do own it. It's real. So I can't say, well, it's actually a blind LLC that there are a number of members in and Partners, and it's all of our fault. You know, that sounds kind of silly, doesn't it? Even though that's the truth. But, you know, hey, you know, everyone sees bs, you know, I think you can diffuse a lot of problems in the world by taking accountability honestly and forth, rightly and immediately, and in a way that people, you know, in a real human way, you know, for them to accept it. I've been through situations which could have brewed into very large legal battles in my career, which I've signed agreements not to talk about, which I won't, but they didn't ever get to a legal battle because I aggressively went right to the principal person involved. I engaged in a human conversation, which. And I defused it immediately by my willingness to chat and accept and negotiate and to talk without the use of lawyers. And it has resulted. And maybe I had to give up a little bit in the meantime, but I can tell you, I can tell you it saved me a lot of stress and money and anguish. And I've remained friendly with these people who I was quite angry with for coming after me, for what they were coming after from me for it. I mean, personally, like, engaged and angry. I thought they were wrong, but I didn't know them. So I wanted to get to know them and find out what their concern was. You know, why were they doing this? Why were they considering this action? And, you know, I'm not saying it's going to work every time, but I do, because there's more and more barriers to people being honest with each other and having human interaction. But I do think that when you can do that, if the restaurant business teaches you anything, is either if you're good at human interaction or not, because if you're not, you can't be in the business. It's all about being good at human interaction.

Yeah, I think that helps in pretty much every sort of business. And, you know, if you're going to relate to other people and have relationships with other people, if you despise other people and you despise the interactions, it just makes the road a lot tougher. Not that there's not some strange people out there that have been able to pull it off, but for the most part, it absolutely helps. So to the people out there that are inspired, or the people out there that are absolutely frustrated, they're burnt out, they don't know which direction to go, how do you inspire yourself through difficult times? And when things are going really well, how do you not get complacent?

Both are hard and Equally hard probably it's hardest not getting to close complacent when things are going well. And I found my, I look back on my life and found myself doing that when things were going well and I regret it. But you know, those are things you learn is just remember that, okay? When things are going poorly, you just what my method for dealing with that is time. Time is my friend. And time diffuses sort of the emotional negativity that comes pouring out of you when something negative or some bad problem has arisen. And if I can as much time as I can negotiate for myself, you know, to be able to reflect on it and to start to begin to look at it from all angles and put myself in other people's shoes and really just put some time and thought and energy in it and also ask myself how do I want to be behave and be perceived out of this situation? What is, who am I? And am I, I want to behave like who I am Now I think if you're an aggressive jerk 100% of the time, you should always be an aggressive jerk because that's who you are and that's honest. There's nothing wrong with it as long as you don't try to pretend you're something else. But if you're, you know, if you're a compassionate human being and you behave in a very aggressive, mean, non compassionate way, that's, that's a, that's off brand message and it's also something that's going to hurt you as a person because you're not that person. You're going to regret it for the rest of your life. So you know, when you're engaged in something negative, you really have to go back to who you are and be consistent with who you are and then work through the problem as the person you are and you want to be when you come out of it, regardless of the outcome. That's one thing. The other, being complacent is just know is just have a great level of fear. I mean everyone, we all have it but engage that fear because as an entrepreneur, entrepreneurs, I think that's our most powerful motivator is we have to be honest with ourselves. We're all fearful of our next, where our next check is coming where our next bill, we're our next client where our next, you know, we're fearful because we all know that it's all dependent on our performance. And I really look at every day as this, you know, gift, but also this. I engage that fear and you know, for me some days it's real. You know, I really. It's more often than not, it's actually real. I can engage it pretty easily because I think, you know, as one of the great. I think Don Shula said once, I worry so much, it worries me sometimes. That's hysterical.

Yes, well, I can relate to that.

All right.

Last thing I'll ask you is about an entertainment experience. You mentioned that going to Tarbell's, you like creating theater. You're competing with all the other entertainment experiences that people are having, having. And in marketing, I think one of the most important things to get attention, to get noticed, to engage people is theater. Like they're going to a play. I mean, you want to wow them, you want them engaged, you want them to be staring at you in a very compelled fashion. You want hooks and cliffhangers and all the other elements that make the whole process enjoyable. So how do you create theater?

Well, what we try to do, what we've done for so long, is try to create a suspension from reality so that when people are in there, they're in a safe bubble where they can quietly and without any effort or stress on their part or engaging any of their mind other than enjoyment is to have this experience. So we crafted most of our service around that element. But the theater part, when I say we're in the entertainment business, that's something we're doing, developing more. We like to be unobtrusive at Tarbell's, but in my other restaurants, there's a little bit more of a lively, robust attitude. So we're creating a little bit more theater. We're introducing that, but we don't want to be a distraction to their. We want to be an add on to their. Their quiet, their lovely evening, whether it's they're engaged with each other or whatever they want to do.

So no dancing clowns or they're trying.

To eat a salad. We don't want to get to that level, but, you know, there has to be an element of that. But more in integris, food or way, I think is what we're going to do. But when I say we're in the entertainment businesses, I look at the things that negatively affect our business in a real way. Basketball games, the Grammys, Oscars, a big movie launch, you know, a big charity event. So all of those things are entertainment. They just have a different name to it. They all are entertainment and they have various values to them. So we know we're in the entertainment world when we know the only thing that affects us is other entertainment. Experiences. So they're making a choice to go there instead of to my restaurant. That's clear. When other restaurants open, we get busier. So whenever I tell this to people that are opening around me, some of them come in, are nice and say, hey, I'm going to be here. Some are just like, I'm going to kill Mark, and he's going to be over soon. Either way. I don't care. But I just go open more, like, silently with my staff, and they all think I'm just being nice. No, I'm serious. Every time another restaurant opens in my area, I get busier. So I'm like, open 10 tomorrow. I'm like, please, I beg you. Because it'll, you know, increase my business tenfold. So. But what. The one thing that I talk about a lot that people don't realize is that we have to compete. We have to be bigger than the Suns. Phoenix Suns, in my case, because Tarbells is in Phoenix, we have to be bigger than the Colorado hockey team, you know, which is very popular in Denver. You know, all of these things really affect us, and we. We work to be bigger as an entertainment draw than them.

Well, I've seen a ton of Phoenix Suns players at your restaurants over the years.

That helps. They feel if they can at least see them there, that will help.

Exactly. Well, last time I went there, I took Paula Abdul, and she loved it. And that's another name dropping, in case you wanted to point that out. But, you know, there's tons of people that I've referred to Tarbells, and every single person has just loved it. And not only is the food great, but the experience is great. So if someone was to come to your restaurant, what would they. What would happen? What would they find?

Well, I think that what they would find and what we're working against right now, to be very honest with you and your audience, is that we are the best place to be a regular. But how do you be a regular on the first day? So it has this reputation, you know, it's been around a long time. It's a Valley institution. We've done a lot for the community, so we're very bonded with the community. I've been on Iron Chef, so there's a level of expectation that that brings with it. And they come into this restaurant and it's like, where's the, you know, where's the, you know, Vegas ziz. You know, there's no Z. And so we're trying to create that regular experience, that familiarity from the first time in challenging to do because we don't know your favorite drink, we don't know where you like to sit, we don't know how you like to be served. Exactly. So we can nuance our service. So that's our biggest challenge right now. I don't have an answer to it. What I do think is that if people come in just expecting the restaurant they would most like in their neighborhood, then I believe we will deliver that experience. So we want to be the greatest neighborhood restaurant in the nation. That was always our mission. And if you come in with that expectation and not like you're going to get this Iron Chef Vegas TV Food Network experience, you will get that. It's just, it's packaged in a neighborhood restaurant.

Cool. All right, so this will be the, this will be Mark Tarbell's famous last words directed in this particular area. There's a business owner that's just starting out in business and really hasn't learned the ropes, really doesn't know what to do. But, you know, is an entrepreneur, wants to create something, is a risk taker, he or she and wants to build a business for themselves to, you know, create freedom. And they're starting out. What advice would you give them going forward, knowing all the things you know now?

Well, that's a very. That answer could last a couple hours.

Of course. You got 12 seconds.

I got 12 seconds. So. Well, first of all, you know, everyone thinks they're being realistic when they're going into any business. They think that they're doing all the research, but all they're doing is trying to get yes, get yeses to the questions they're asking. The questions they're asking is to affirm what they believe they want and what's going to happen and what's going to do. So what they need to be, they need to find a mentor who's been in the business and have that person tell them exactly, exactly what it is and what they're going to be facing and their chances of real failure and financial ruin. They need to be told that. And from that they can form where they're deficient in their plan. They need to find the deficiencies in their plan, not the reasons why they should be doing what they're doing. Everyone I've ever had come talk to me about opening a restaurant was always just trying to, for me to give a rubber stamp to everything they were doing. And they were very disappointed. But I always tell them they're going to be because I spend the entire hour trying to convince them not to do it. For reasons that are very good and valid. And then I spend time going through their plan and shooting holes in it. And what I found is that only one in maybe 100, really listen, only one in 100, I encourage to do it as well. You know, I become their silent supporter and their endeavor because I see that they have the right stuff in place already to do it. But one in 100. I had a kid who had the money and everything. He was coming to me to talk to me about it, wealthy family. And I did my usual thing and listened to him first and then went through and kind of destroyed his entire dream. And he came back to me six months later, and now he's an airline pilot, which is one of his other dreams. And he thanked me, really just genuinely heartfelt thank me, me for convincing him not to do that, because he actually was really more interested in being a pilot. That tickled him more than the restaurant. The restaurant was just something he was in when he was a kid and he really liked it, being a server and blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, good, you know, thank you. I'm glad. It was great to see him again. I'm glad he didn't lose all his family's money. Certainly glad about that. But I've seen a lot of people get destroyed financially, sadly, who did the things that, you know, did everything that they shouldn't have done and did it who I told not to. I'm not right every time, believe me. But, you know, I have some experience and I can be helpful. At least I think, you know, waking people up to some of the realities.

Yeah, well, that's good. So get a mentor, get a coach. And I've, you know, and what's clear.

Is going to be brutal with you. Not just going to go, hey, you know, you're awesome. I love you. No, you need someone who's going to be real. Really, Really. A true coach is going to tell you, be hard with you and listen to them. Don't just pick them, you know, don't just pick them to be the rubber stamp. Pick them to be tough. And if you don't listen to what they say, then you have to really step back and question what it is you're doing and why you even asked to have a coach.

Right, Right.

Awesome.

Well, you know, you've shared some really incredible perspective and insight. And like I've told you over the years, I think you understand and know things that you've never really taught or shared people. So I hope this genius network interview is just a glimpse of some of the knowledge that you have. And I know you have some very, very cool processes at Tarbells and how you do things, from hiring and firing to marketing to positioning to PR and all of the things that you've done. And I would say this is just the beginning. I'm sure we will sit down and do a continuation of this. So to all the listeners out there in genius network land, give me your feedback on this interview. If someone wants to visit your restaurant.

Mark, what are the websites tarbells.com can get you to? Everything. You know, there's just links on that to the oven, Pizza vino. It's an E vino and restaurant away. Okay.

And so that's Tarbell's is T A R B E L L s dot com. And this is Mark Tarbell. So thank you, Mark.

Thank you, Joe.